Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, we're here for session five. Nate Turner, co founder and CEO of 10 Speed. And I'm here again with Kevin King, co founder of 10 Speed, back at it again.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: What's up, Nate?
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so we've talked a lot in previous sessions about GEO and just a lot of the ways SEO is evolving and whatnot, but obviously they're, you know, that kind of all fits in some ways broadly within content marketing and there's a lot of aspects of that and then obviously beyond that, marketing in general. And so we're now on the back half of this year, which means ultimately we start looking towards the next year. And so we thought it'd be helpful to spend some time talking about kind of where we're at in 2025 and looking ahead outside of those, you know, some of the other non paid marketing channels and tactics, things that are working and how that kind of all works together. And just some of our tips from what we've seen across a number of B2B companies doing that. Because ultimately, you know, the defining challenge of B2B marketing in 2025 has ultimately been two things. One is have to drive efficiency when there's a lot of, of things changing while also building like a human centric authenticity for your company and your brand.
You know, in, in a world where AI is becoming, you know, bigger and bigger piece of that.
And so it's just kind of requiring a lot of like reorienting of the strategy.
Some of the traditional lead gen tactics have really fallen off, you know, measurement. We've talked a lot about that and how that's needing to shift.
So today we're going deeper into five additional areas of content marketing that aren't SEO and Geo, but they matter because we are halfway through Q3, heading into Q4, when people start to plan for the next year. And so, you know, as you and your teams are thinking about what lies ahead for next year, how do we keep growing?
We want to step outside of that piece that's been talked about a lot by us and by many others online and really get into it. So that's kind of what we're going to cover today.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's also important to reinforce again because of the planning aspect, we talk to a lot of prospects who are asking us, even when they come to us, to talk about like organic as it relates to SEO or geo, like where else should they be investing so it is timely and like we are hearing, we are getting those types of questions. So it's informed a bit by that as well.
But also wanted to qualify that with the channel. Like the channels that we're going to talk about. There's a bunch of things that we won't dive deeper on individually but there's reasons that we're talking about them and that we're going to recommend or address which is they're all unique things that are basically considered unique disciplines or functions within a business. So there's like teams maybe oriented around them and they aren't purely just like you know the SEO team or the content team. Right. Like but they are heavily overlapping with content marketing.
So there's a cross functional collaboration and things should be looked at holistically for teams to be coordinating their. Their plans for next year.
They are all channels that are very impactful in driving business. Lower funnel KPIs. So leads pipeline, brand awareness.
Brand awareness being the top of the funnel. But, but leads pull pipeline and customer relationships. Those being the, the. The big three.
All of them have a heavy distribution component.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: So we'll talk about repurposing a lot. So just a heads up on that not to bury the lead.
And then there are keep the lights on tasks within all these. But the you should have budget to test new channels um or tactics and maybe there's some that you want to place like a bigger bet on ICP is super critical. So like everything we're going to talk about like you should deeply understand your ICP before betting on that channel. So yes they are effective but like always take that into consideration.
Like if your audience is actually there don't just blindly take our word for it I guess.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: And then across all only to only take on what you can do well which we have conversations with a lot especially low like smaller companies that we work with and all that. Like there's only so, so much that teams can take on. So that is like a good opportunity to think about like whether you're outsourcing your resources and getting help or whatever. But like only do things that you know you can really kind of go hard on.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Yeah yeah. The we have a lot of resources. We're going to drop into the show notes for this one in particular we're going to cite some stats along the way.
I know that one of the things will include Emily Kramer MKT1 newsletter did a really solid multi part series around marketing, planning, building strategy. I think there's some really good stuff in there that ties well to this around understanding effort and what it ultimately takes. How to be goal oriented, how to play to your strengths, understand your icp. So there's a lot in there. Certainly would recommend checking that out.
But yeah, very much ties to what we always say.
There's a reason that we exist and people outsource work to us because, you know, we have tooling, we help with bandwidth, we have expertise in an area where they could figure it out with enough time. But, you know, it's easier to kind of bring us on and let our, let us do our thing.
Yeah. So a lot of the stuff Kevin went through really kind of applies through all of these. Nothing here is going to be groundbreaking by any means. But, you know, according to, there was a study with Content Marketing Institute, like B2B marketers report content marketing is like the most effective thing they talk about in terms of what you talked about.
Generating leads, driving revenue, improving brand awareness and building relationship with customers. And that's pretty much, that's all market.
You know, I mean, like there isn't a lot else. So again, we're not talking about paid. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but we do think that there's some really cool stuff. And again, a lot of these things come up in various forms with clients. And so one of the other things we're going to do as we kind of run through these is kind of score out of five, two things like level of effort and ease of testing. And so that's what we'll kind of run through as well. And as you said, the thing I want to mention and just kind of double down on.
Every team has stuff they have to keep the lights on. You got to just do these things that takes up bandwidth no matter what.
But then beyond that, everything else is where you have that room in your marketing plan to figure out what should we do with where is their opportunity. And the biggest recommendation is have things that you can test, but then also typically you have maybe 1, 2 at the most big bets that you can place for the year. And so that's why we thought it would be helpful to kind of layer in the level of effort and the ease of testing, just because that I think ultimately does kind of factor into some of the decision making and how and where you, you choose to, to place those bets.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: So jumping into the first one, which is more broadly organic, social. So we're talking, you know, individual profiles of people at your company or of your leaders, company profiles, Reddit, and then any sort of, you know, influencers, which is obviously far bigger on the consumer side. But B2B influencers definitely are a thing and can potentially be part of your strategy as well. So couple quick stats around that.
According to Financial Times, LinkedIn usage by C Suite delivers 4x higher engagement and 39% follower surge, especially when posts are authentic and from leaders themselves.
And then additionally a study by Conveyor, 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make purchasing decisions. So I think that those seem logical to me. Like nothing surprising about those stats, but again a big reinforcement that yes, your website should be good. Your product, you know, positioning on your website should be tight, you should have good content, you should have case studies, but there is still a lot of outside of that and ways that you're getting in front of people beyond your known people that are already on your website. And so I think social brings a big piece there. So there's a lot of different ways we can and should go about it. But kind of broadly we considered level of effort a two out of five.
Five out of five being the hardest. So there's not a ton of unique tooling. A lot of extensive planning to try social and then again ease of testing is also five out of five. So that would be considered the easiest. It's not hard to start to dip your toe. It's not something that's difficult to unwind if you start it.
But wanted to kind of get started here because we do see a lot of opportunity across unique posting, authentic aspects there as well as all the ways that it can support your repurposing.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah, well, one thing too to I think because I know we'll. We'll talk about some specific things or like general advice that we have. But one of the stats you said cited was about C Suite and that being higher engagement, this is not limited to just that. Right. This is also like making sure that just generally organic social across all these individual company profiles is done only because let level of effort 2 out of 5 on that end may seem intimidating to get like C Suite involved in organic social, which I think is where a lot of potential opportunity is actually maybe some of the best biggest opportunities.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: So I just want to point that out.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: But, but yeah, I think I agree it's I think table stakes to some extent for, for B2B brands. Um, and it's just about like understanding again where your audience is at and which channels you or which networks and sites you should be on.
But I do think one of our number one pieces of advice though is for you trying to coordinate on top of your, your, you know, traditional social motion is getting the expanding to SMEs and advocates and executives.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah, but. Yeah, but to your point, I think there's.
There are plenty of CEOs that will not post no matter what. Like, that's. It's just not happening. It does not mean that that entire concept is.
Is dead in the water. Like, there are a lot of things you can do.
Sometimes people, you know, rise up, you know, on their own through the organization.
Devin Reed comes to mind. You know, when he was at Gong. Yeah, he. In a content marketing role. But very, very quickly, him, and I think his name is Chris, the sales leader. There were the, the two biggest, you know, posters and, and sort of individual faces of the org. So I think.
And we've. You can look across a ton of companies and see examples where there's just a person who enjoys it. They're. They're naturally inclined to it and they can do pretty much as good of a job in terms of like bringing that authenticity and whatnot as the CEO. So I would highly recommend finding that person instead of trying to go against the grain and, and get resistant CEO to be the one to be doing it.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Totally when I sh. I guess name drop. But when I was working for an employee advocacy platform at Sprout Social, there was a big push when we would work with customers on, on getting more of the team involved. And like, that was one of the key things that we would talk about was not pushing employee advocacy. Employee advocacy specifically or advocacy in general, which is, you know, getting the. The team or people to share about and promote the company was like, really lean into the people that like, are just like willing to do that. The more you push on anybody who's not gonna do that or not inclined to do that, it's going to be a tougher, tougher initiative. Yep.
But with that, the other piece of advice that I think we would have would be like balancing the thought. Thought leadership, which is I think naturally going to come from execs and SMEs with proof metrics, wins, screenshots, that type of stuff, things that can back up the things that you're saying, because that's going to build authority. But I think, like, if you can balance those two things, like across not only the brand profiles, but the personal profiles, like, you're going to be in a really great spot to gain some traction.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely.
Yeah. And I think, you know, distribution first mindset is also really big. I think there's a lot of opportunities where people don't have to reinvent the wheel. They can repurpose and redistribute things you're already doing.
Did you see the Wall Street Journal did a piece on clippers?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Recently.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: No.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: That made us like this whole new thing.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Hair clippers.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: No, no.
People who are making clips of videos for social to.
To try to go viral.
And it's literally just that exact. I mean, just, you know, the editing, repurposing, like just cutting clips and posting that.
It was kind of funny to read about. I mean, there was some stuff in there. Like some of those companies are spinning up hundreds or thousands of profiles and posting across all of them and, you know, really brute forcing it in some ways. But yeah, the concept of clipping, you know what? So again, you. You maybe don't have to go try to get a bunch of stuff if you already have, you know, webinar content that can be done, video content that can be pulled. If you have video podcasts, like a ton of ways that you can get clips from stuff to just bring a ton of. Of content to your social feed. It doesn't have to be all text posts in that way.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the.
One of the most consistent things that we talk about with clients and advocate for and strategies if we're not doing it ourselves or doing it for them, which is just taking every piece of content and just making the most out of it, which is not a new concept, but, like, couldn't. Couldn't emphasize it enough just because of the longevity and power it has on those networks.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: So last. Last piece of advice I would add there is just like, well, maybe it'll end up being kind of true. True for most or all of these, but social in particular. You may already be doing some stuff or none. And I would just say, like, it's an easier one to just try. Like, just try to do more try. You know, it doesn't have to be, oh, we're gonna, you know, post eight times a week and here's this crazy calendar and all these different content types we're gonna try to make and all that kind of that, like, 1% better mentality. I think there's an opportunity there to just add to what you're doing already or start in a small way and then just kind of build from there and kind of see what naturally evolves.
And lastly, just again, find the people in your company that are well suited for that, and maybe you just need to empower them with a paid social tool to make some scheduling or make things a little easier or whatever.
So there's a lot there, but I want to move on to the Second item, which is webinars kind of been like, it kind of in some ways reminds me a little bit of like gene podcasts, like podcasts were a thing and then went away for many, many years and then came back kind of in a different way. And so like the tech and some of the stuff around webinars has evolved.
Yep. But one of the interesting things was a study by a company called contrast said 68% of marketers report that they can directly tie webinar attendance to revenue.
And in that same study also said webinars with guest speakers drive more registrations and 3x more engagement.
So some of the things that we're talking about like webinars can be educational. Like that's probably one of the most common ways for it to be done. Like types, they can be product focused. So like product launches.
A lot of companies do product webinars for existing customers. Like there's a lot of things you can do there too.
And then co marketing, which would be that concept of having a guest speaker, finding a company with kind of an adjacent audience or adjacent product that you can collaborate with and bring that on. So I think that's a good stat to support that.
And in general, if you are not doing webinars currently, potentially something to look into because of the fact that there are some ways to be able to tie that directly to pipeline and revenue.
And again, as I just mentioned a moment ago, clip that or repurpose that into more ways so it's not just a one and done, but it can be then available on demand afterwards. You can clip it into different things you put on YouTube.
There's some different stuff there.
Real quick level of effort. Put three of five, a little more coordination, you know, a little more tech. A lot of tools have kind of a built in registration page can handle that. But there is a bit more to stand it up and try it. So ease of testing. We put four out of five. So not quite as easy, but again, you could do one for the whole year and, and try it and like no one's really going to notice that you only did one or two. Yep. You know, you're not wasting, you know, resources or an investment or something by, by doing that. So that's why I kind of put that a little bit higher.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. And I think it's almost interesting. It just dawned on me. You can kind of maybe split up the level of effort into two depending on if you're the host or if you're the guest speaker. But I think one of the Nuances that should be communicated is that it doesn't have to be just the co marketing aspect. Doesn't have to be you hosting and getting guest speakers. You, if you're just starting out and trying to gain traction or have network of people you connected with or businesses you connected with, you participating, you just go kind of ham on that like just joining and collaborating.
Level of effort there is probably a little less than maybe the ownership of a webinar, but debatable. Either way, that's a good way to get out in front of audiences that are relevant. Again, making sure that your ICP and all that stuff is really dialed in and you're going doing the right ones. That's going to lead to the actual like webinar attendance tied to revenue stat that you called out there. But, but yeah, clips.
I would say one of the other things is like if you are owning the webinar and like you're producing it for your brand, your business is community driven content. Like start with a community driven approach to some extent in terms of how you inform the subject matters. Because I think that is naturally going to lend itself to providing the most value.
Like what do your custom, what do you know, maybe your customers, subscribers or leads actually want to be educated on versus like going and doing something just super topical.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Don't just go do some sort of whiteboard session about all the topics you think would be cool to do a webinar on. But actually.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Right, yeah, exactly. I think that that's a really easy and powerful way to like get a lot of ideas for what you're going to create content on for the or for, for a webinar.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: So yeah, and when we, when we built out the co marketing webinar program at Sprout from scratch, the thing that was, was nice. I mean it was, you know, social media tool. So like social was a pretty broad category.
And so you know, we went to why am I blanking Owistia and just said hey, you do video, we do social. Do you have any topics where you'd want to talk about video and social? And then let the guest speaker be the one to kind of bring that specific topic that they know resonates. We do them with unbounce. And we said hey, what about social and landing pages? And so there are a lot of ways that you can kind of just take that, tie that to your product and do it that way. Clearscope is a great more recent example of not as much co marketing, but they're just really good about finding guest Presenters and mapping out topics that don't have overlap.
So still coordination on their part. But to your point, they're not having to plan the topics and, and create the deck and a lot of the heavy lifting. And so I think that's something.
There's trade offs there. You have more work to align line up guests and all that stuff. But I think there's a lot of opportunity there and I think it's something that people are coming back around on a little bit. I think everyone got very burnout on them a second time around with COVID and it was just like everything turned.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Into that because everything was a live event too because events shifted to basically web.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: So it was all in person events.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So yeah, I think there's a lot to it. But I think again because it's pretty easy to test, you know, it's not, it's not unreasonable to say, hey, even though we don't have a lot of bandwidth, we're going to do one this year, we're going to do two or one per quarter. Like doesn't have to be this really, really big thing that you're. You're trying to take on.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And to that, to that point or in the spirit of that couple other pro tips to like think through and I've seen some other people talking about this online, but also the technology just lends itself to easily doing this now is that you can pre record like that's happening a lot more. And I think that that is a way to not only you can bank some webinars but like pre record them, have the time that people are signing up to go watch them when you debut it. But it also allows you to actually have maybe even a more live Q and A response depending on your resources.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Not every team has like a person who can moderate and this and that. So like just know that there's scrappy ways for you to like scale it and it doesn't have to be this overwhelming thing.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: And then I would say also just consider playing around with length. I think traditionally at least back from the time you're talking about with like co marketing a sprout. Like I feel like it was like typically like an hour, maybe 45 minutes.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: There used to be longer and attention spans are shorter.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: So like you could maybe shorten them up which also gives you opportunity to. To do more.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. We. So some of the stuff we're posting in the show notes, there's some really good additional data around things you can do like Q and A polling for engagement during that packaging it up, length of the webinar. There's a lot of that stuff which is positive and you can check out. And then just please, for the love of God, don't pitch your product for the first 15 minutes of the webinar.
That does still happen. Yep.
And also please don't do it once and then just leave it.
And that is very different ROI on your time. If you're, you're not going to post it to places, get the clips, make it on demand. If you're not doing any of that, then it's a big waste of time.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Don't make it a demo either. Don't backdoor a demo into the webinar where you're actually showing product in that way or anything. Just be authentic and resourceful, valuable, helpful.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Speaking of authentic, we'll ignore the the inevitable meta ness of this next one which is podcasting.
So there's a couple ways to go about it.
So originally we did the Content that Grows podcast, which was almost entirely a guest interview.
Podcast started with Rand Fishkin, had a wide variety of marketers, content marketers, SEO people, and Antique had a lot of great conversations and then we also did a number of them, just two of us or with our team.
And I think it was a good format. This is obviously a different approach to be in studio and a little bit longer form, but I think those are typically the probably the two most common that we're seeing. Within B2B, there are a number of people that do like an ABM style.
So it's interesting because there's not as much care for what the podcast is about or the content of the episodes is purely a tactic to get into a conversation with target accounts, the people that they want to go after.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: I'm not a huge fan of that approach and I think folks have started to kind of see through that a bit.
I think if you have a bigger brand and whatnot, you can probably pull it off a little better just because they're going to know you have distribution. But if it's obvious like you're not a big company, you have this podcast, you know, they can look and see there's two or three views on YouTube or whatever. It's just the way to do that. And I've done a couple as a guest and then you just get pitched hard at the end and it's not great.
And then obviously there's a lot of tactical approaches as well. So maybe you don't have guest interviews, but you're focusing the podcast on very tactical, educational type of stuff. Maybe just a little more bite size than a webinar.
But one thing I wanted to say was if you are considering it.
A company called Fame did an analysis of over 100 B2B podcasts and found that shows that prioritize guest relationships over audience size generate 25 to 50% higher ROI in the first year. So definitely some logical aspects to that, like having guests can increase your reach.
Do that. You get probably a bit more tuning it. Like right now, if anyone's listening, they either want to listen to us or they don't.
But a guest format can pull people to listen to a one off episode and we saw that before when we did that. We'd have certain episodes would have way more downloads and stuff than others based on the guest.
So a logical stat. Level of effort. Five out of five for sure.
A lot of effort and ease of testing. I'd say one out of five.
Because you're going to go to the trouble of developing what the podcast is.
There is some.
Either you're going to, you know, spend the time researching, finding a studio like we did, or you're going to buy the, you know, Riverside or some sort of recording platform. Maybe you'll use Zoom, you're going to have, you know, Castos or some sort of hosting platform.
There's a lot that you're getting into. Plus you're just going to put some hype behind it and launch a podcast, put it on your site, do all these things that like, you don't really want it to fizzle out after, you know, doing just a couple. And honestly, if you're only going to do a couple, then then don't bother because it's definitely more of a long term thing. So yeah, so that's kind of where we rated it. 5 out of 5. Level of effort. 1 out of 5. Ease of testing.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's clear who of the two of us has driven the podcast production.
So if anybody has any inquiries or needs advice, you can email Nate specifically. Yeah, but yeah, I agree with all that. It is a level of. Is a significantly higher level of effort. Ease of testing. I think one of the big pieces of advice was don't test it unless you can do it for like long. Like you have to roll with it. I would say do it consistently similar to social in a sense. Like keep a, make a plan, stick to it. Like be consistent. I think that that's going to end up becoming the best way for you to understand if it is going to actually pay off the one thing I would say though, before the other pieces is like, with that, even though the level of effort is high, don't be afraid, I think to be scrappy about it. Like, I think even this, this is like a really nice setup we have here and looks good and high quality cameras and all that. And now this day and age, like podcast, every podcast, so many podcasts are like really great looking and I just, you can, I think you can just get, do it through your webcam, do a call. Like as long as your content is great in terms of like the value you're providing your, your audience, like start there versus like maybe investing a ton in the gear. Right. Because like all the distribution and all that stuff is going to be important.
And at the end of the day, I know a lot of people watch their podcasts, but it isn't a lot of majority. You're probably going to listen more than watch to some extent. So, um, wish I had a stat to back that up, but I would just say like, don't overly invest in the production until you figure out the like content and topic aspect of it. Yep, keep rolling.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah, go for it.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: Yeah. If you're dependent on a CEO or other exec, again, we brought this up earlier, like they have to be fully bought in or it's not going to be compelling. So like, I think that's going to be a big part of bringing some thought leadership into your podcast if you're going to do that. I don't know if you have anything else to add on that one.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: On that one in particular.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Kind of. Yeah. I mean that's the reason we want to talk about the formats is in like the stat that you can actually do well in sort of a guest interview style is a lot of times in that B2B function, it's not going to be a CEO or exec that wants to do it and has time to do it.
And so a lot of times you have a product leader or marketing leader or someone who's all for it, good personality and they can very easily be the one to interview guests and do that especially. There tends to be a lot of overlap between marketing.
People in marketing sometimes have journalism backgrounds. And so that plays quite well into interviewing someone in a media format.
And so I think that those two things play well together. Again, it's.
You shouldn't be like, well, my CEO said, you know, never. I'm not going to do this. So we can't do a podcast because I think that, you know, that opens up some Opportunities to have other people come in and then hear from other voices in your space and go that route.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Yep, agreed there. And then measuring success.
Get away. Don't plan on sharing. Vanity metrics like listens and downloads are important, but leadership isn't going to necessarily be wowed by them.
To continue investing in something like that, I would go recommend checking out fame, the stat you suggest or shouted out earlier, which we have will link to. But like they have a bunch of different stats on podcast ROI and just investment and trends. And one of the things that we didn't include in this but was one of them was a really powerful stat on just like targeting. So, like, if more and more you can continue to attribute that like any piece of content to, you know, influence pipeline and revenue and stuff, which will come with time. So in the beginning, you're probably all you're going to have is maybe listens and downloads.
Just know, like, I think it's best to have maybe a plan of like when you maybe expect to see some of that stuff grow beyond those because obviously that's all you're going to have to start with. But just don't think you can stick with that in the long run.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And that's. We wanted to include that just because, you know, obviously There are many B2B podcasts that have far more, you know, listens and downloads than we've had.
It's just not something we've ever put a lot of stock in because from our perspective there. There are many different ways that it benefits us. It benefits our marketing.
Again, you know, the clipping of posts and.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Or you know, short clips to be able to put on social and a lot of different places that we put that there and you know, sometimes have prospects bring stuff up or, you know, sharing the content with others. So, you know, if I were thinking about being a marketing leader, having to report on this thing that I asked, you know, going back to the beginning, like this is. This would probably be considered a big bet, like your, your one big bet for the year kind of thing. Yeah.
If you're hoping to test stuff. And so I would not go into that being like, hey, we got, you know, 85 downloads per episode and, you know, we now have this like, I odds are it's not going to.
It's not going to be enough to wow. Especially for your company that has whatever tens or hundreds of thousands of website visitors a month and, you know, hundreds or thousands of leads, like the numbers just aren't going to stack up. It's it's going to seem like a lot of money and time.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: For not a lot. And you really have to kind of view that holistic impact and how it creates a lot of fuel for marketing and builds awareness and builds authority and a lot of those different, different things. So yeah, I think that all, all plays into it for sure. Yep.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah. I think to that point the ability to the value that these like ours and, and the way you can use it is injecting it into all these other pieces of content and channels. Right. Like so I just think it's another way to have a very scalable, scalable even though the level of efforts high, I don't know, a dynamic piece of media to incorporate into stuff that maybe you write about and all that. Right. You can chop it up to your point and put it in content. So yeah, it isn't necessarily just about like trying to figure out if you can get revenue or pipeline, which is what I was saying earlier, but also the, the, the brand power or the power fuel that it can give your brand in a lot of different ways is going to be worth it.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: And then I'll share this last thing which will kind of segue into the next part which is about data reports.
One of the other things for guest interview style podcasts is you can be smart about it and either in a form where they're filling out a form to book a time to record or you just ask it before or after you record live. You can have two, three, four questions you ask every guest which then can kind of end up being like a mini survey which you can then turn into some roll up, you could, whatever you make another podcast episode. It just goes over this. But you know, hey, we asked, you know, 30 CMOs this question this year.
Here's what you know, here's the breakdown or whatever and turns into, you know, blog posts or that kind of stuff like totally, which is kind of a survey. So data reports, the fourth thing we want to talk about two big categories I'd say one is first party data. So looking at your own product usage or any sort of access that you have internally to a lot of data, that's great. And then the other big way to get that is survey data.
And so we've talked a lot about how data reports give you a lot of unique stuff to really make your content stand out and not just be yet another piece on a topic.
And generally I think it was Hanover Research, there's a lot of studies but saying market research tends to have an ROI of 4x so there, you know, if you're again applying it, using it in different areas, even doing one data report or two data reports through the year, you know, later this year or into next year could have a lot of impact on a lot of different parts of your marketing plan.
So this is another one we put level of effort five out of five.
Um, I think we maybe can give some tips on being a little more scrappy with it but and the ease of testing 2 of 5. So still not super easy to, to do it which is why that's lower. But it's not a one out of five because I don't think that you're really. It's not gonna be awkward if you do one and then decide it's not for you.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: You know, so I think that that's something you can test. But still, still fairly complex.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'd also argue it depends on where you're at with the growth of the product company and all that. Like if you're just starting out, might be harder to like invest in doing a research report as like one of your initial like go to market pieces of content, but you never know. That's something to test. But yeah, I think this is one of the, my favorite things we're talking about in this episode. Um, only because of just the power that. One of the things that we're going to talk about here with our vice is like having original data. Right. And that can be not only data that you're analyzing from like customer data. So like that lends itself to the point I just made around like maybe you've been around for a long time and you have tons of customer data that you can analyze and incorporate into a, a report which is something we recommend or just doing a big survey or anything like that. It's just crafting a compelling narrative around those for your industry and your audience right now is like. And, and it always has been, has been super appealing. It's highly shareable on social.
I still am. If, if, if it's something that is of an interest to me or in our, our business and our clients, like I'm always going to jump on it and try to see there's anything interesting in that that we can share or anything. So anyway, I just mean it's highly shareable, always will be. I think it's like one of the most evergreen types of content that can be created.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: So obviously we are citing stats throughout this entire episode that are.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: All data reports that are either first party data or survey data.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, good point.
And the. Yeah. The other thing we've talked about a lot, which is just like repurposing, like, it's one of the other pieces that can be like, very, very easily chopped up into a bunch of different types of content, like depending on how much data and what you're.
What the focus is. If it's a longer report, it can be chopped up into little individual ones based on how you structure it, you can do, which we recommend, like building like supportive blog posts that maybe analyze one data point within that. Right. And go deeper on that. I know, like hub and spoke model. Um, yeah, there's just so much. There's just so much you can do with it. And I think in B2B content marketing, one of the things that, I mean, we hear it all the time, and I've struggled with it as a marketer in the past, like, is visuals. Like, when you write content, especially in maybe, maybe not the most compelling of spaces, is like, you want to have a visual component to it. Right. Especially if you're not producing video or something. And you're always like, what do I do? There's stock imagery. This data reports just lend themselves to charts and visualization and marketers love charts and leaderships love charts and stuff like that. So as long as they're good ones. But I think, like, it informs that in a way that is really impactful and powerful. And so those are two at least things that I'm like, I really love about the research reports.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Or data reports. Yep.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: And I think that there's like, on the scrappy front, I think there's one thing would just be you ultimately have to scope out what it's about, like, what are you surveying or what data are you pulling? What's the focus of this report?
And so going out, you've never done one before, and doing the state of your industry for 2026, that's a big undertaking.
It's going to be much larger, which means you either have to pull a lot more data or you have to get a lot of people to fill out a longer survey. And you have to have a lot of people to have significance across all of those different questions.
Or you can take a much narrower focus on just one aspect that's impacting your industry or whatever that might be, and make it smaller, more focused, a little more bite size, but could still be heavily impactful. And all the benefits and things you were talking about still apply, even if the focus of the data report or the study is much smaller.
So I think that's definitely one.
And I think hopefully you're kind of picking up on the interconnectedness of this. And this is where I think being very intentional about how you go forward on your marketing plan and strategy for next year is, you know, you could do one data report for the year and you could do one webinar for the year and you could space them out so that each of those gives you a lot to work with on social and different things there. Or you could say, we're going to do these two topics and we're going to. For those two topics, we're going to do a webinar for each one and we're going to do a data report for each one. So now you have two of those. But those are the things that you're.
You're going to get six months worth of marketing push out of. Yep. And that starts to fuel your blog content and social and just all that stuff. So hopefully that's coming through because that is a really big part of this, that the interconnectedness and relation of it is that it's. We're not just stacking a list of things to do where your bandwidth depletes if you plan it correctly. It's just using.
Getting the most out of the bandwidth and resources you do have to make it go as far as possible.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And then it's just, it's almost endless. Like, you can integrate that into just any other content outside of that. Like, just being able to cite and link to your own data is so powerful.
But yeah, to that point though, like, the more you build that up, the more you distribute it effectively lends itself to not only building your own authority, like in your space from like a topical perspective, but also just the actual. If we go back to the organic and SEO roots, like, these things are highly linkable assets, which is really big. So, um, you distribute them effectively, you'll get backlinks that you, you know, you still get a. They don't come automatically, but like, you build the right stuff and put it in the right places and continue to promote it, you will get that which will contribute to a lot of different other things. From an awareness and authority standpoint that we've. We've talked about a lot on previous episodes, but yeah, it's huge.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: Which, you know, we're not even going to tee up the gated versus ungated debate because, you know, there is arguably no debate. I think ungated is going to be far more effective for those same things like getting those backlinks and citations and Just adoption and eyeballs and all that stuff.
Obviously there could be, if that's kind of your business model or whatever, fine, gating it. I think there would be some scenarios, but by and large marketing teams should just be posting that and making it widely available.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean people want help and resources that are helpful and that'll go a long way in building trust. And I mean, if anything, ease of testing. We put two of five. You can test that gated versus ungated.
Probably one of the easier things to test in that regard on this list.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: Yep.
Anything else on data reports?
[00:48:52] Speaker B: No, I mean we could talk about it for a while, but that's, that's pretty comprehensive.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
Awesome. And then the fifth thing that we had was email slash newsletter. So obviously email is a broad category.
We're not talking about outbound.
There's a lot that can be done around, you know, nurturing and life cycle.
Not really talking as much about that. I think good areas that you can and should do more, get better conversion rates, you know, on your funnel and better customer marketing.
But you know, by and large kind of talking about two things. One is sort of like through your company, esp, like a, you know, roundup style newsletter or in some cases like I think more companies are becoming comfortable doing like substack or like it's the CEO or the person at the company that runs it. But really kind of thinking through that and so it's ultimately an owned audience.
You're building your own list. It doesn't go away. There's no algorithms, you know, is certainly a big piece but again is big for just like it's touch points, you know, it is a great way to distribute all the things you're doing and just get it in front of more people.
I think I just constantly remind myself that like no matter what you're doing, like you put this, you know, a blog post on your blog, it doesn't mean that everyone's seeing it. Like you spend time to make a data report. Not everyone's going to see it or know about it. Like you had launched a new podcast six months ago. Not everyone knows about like, right. Have to just keep reminding yourself that like maybe we should have a way to, you know, once a month or twice a month just be sending a roundup of resources to people because gets in front of more people. Not everyone's going to open that email when you send it. But those that do, you know, hopefully you have like at least 30% open rate and just getting more distribution of that content. So there's certainly ways that you can approach it where it is a unique channel with like some POV or different things like that. But by and large, you know, that's kind of what we're talking about here. So level of effort, we said two of five. It's not, not too difficult at all to stand that up. And ease of testing, we said four out of five. So again, you don't want to be like, hey, everyone, come sign up for our newsletter.
Even if you only get 100 people to sign up, that's still 100 people. They go, I got one. And then they stopped.
You don't totally want to flake on that, but I'd say it's a pretty easy thing to try out and just see if it works for your company.
[00:51:56] Speaker B: Yeah, agreed. I, I think, I feel like we're at a time where they're becoming more effective. I personally subscribe to a handful of really, really great email newsletters that touch on all the things that you have just pointed out. Meaning, like, I mean, we always talk about Aleyda. Her newsletter is great within the SEO world, but it's a mix of roundup and like, value from like a advice standpoint ties back to content they've she's created.
Yeah, there's, there's lots there. I mean, consistent value.
Make sure that it is just something that you are delivering on the value component consistently because that's the only reason people are going to continue to come back to it. And I think it's a word of mouth thing too. Like I've, I have in. I'm going to pepper and just put a lot of anecdotal stuff here because I don't think we have like a really solid stat necessarily, but is that word of mouth is big. Like if you continually provide value within whatever format you decide on for an email newsletter, people are going to tell other people about it.
[00:53:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: So easy to be.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: Easy to forward.
[00:53:05] Speaker B: Easy to forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The mix of curation and commentary is another one that we'd recommend. Meaning like this could be curating sources and things that are relevant to your audience and industry.
I think that that is like such an easy thing to incorporate because one, you didn't write all of these or create all these resources. I think we're beyond the days of that feeling like it can cannibalize. I know you're not going to list something that may be a direct competitor, so that should go without saying.
Although there's, you never know. Maybe there's something to that.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Yeah. But just I think just being authentic in terms of what you're trying to provide from a resource and value standpoint is big in like curating resources. Is a big fan of and yeah. Commentary on like third part or on industry trends or things like that and how it can impact your audience.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that, you know, we are marketers marketing to marketers often about Martech like that right now that is like there's still opportunity there, but maybe not. Like there's probably a lot more opportunity in some other B2B industries and places where like people are a bit more starved and literally just rounding stuff up and getting that out to them with a little bit of commentary does make them better at their job, make their life easier, you know, and is worth the.
To subscribe and open every week or whatever. So. Yep.
Definitely, you know, another good piece. And you know, again, if we're just going back to kind of bandwidth and how you're building out your, your marketing plan, I think in many ways it's not a. It's like a roundup style. Once a month is not hard.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: No.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: You have the upfront, you know, design the email template, get that built out and then you're just sourcing stuff you've already done. Dropping in the links and the headlines and then writing a subject line. Scheduling, that's a nice little Friday afternoon type of project that you schedule to go out on Tuesday morning or whatever.
That's not a heavy lift but could build up to be a nice channel for you over time as you're thinking about kind of the overall plan and strategy for next year.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And you've already done majority of the work if you're rounding up your own stuff and if you've done the work to source third party stuff. I mean obligatory AI shout out. But there's a way to create those email newsletters pretty quickly once you've done the legwork. Like it's not going to just do it for you, but that can speed things up and be a really easy win for you.
To your point.
[00:55:55] Speaker A: Yep.
Cool. And then just real quick, we did want to mention kind of an honorable mention. Didn't fully.
Didn't necessarily fit as much into like the content marketing umbrella and that like some aspects can be considered. Maybe paid. But we did want to talk a little bit about events and so obviously for some companies like trade shows and events, that's like number one or number two in their marketing budget. Big deal.
[00:56:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: For other companies they don't do any. Maybe thinking about doing one But I think that the couple quick things that we just want to mention is like, obviously, you know, you're talking about a much bigger bet and in a bigger level of effort. If you're saying we want to design a booth, we want to, you know, do a $50,000 sponsorship at this trade show that people staffing it, we have to. You know, there's a lot that goes into that if you're not a company that's big enough to have an events person or an events team. However, we have seen personally quick plug check the links in the show notes. We have Chicago Marketing Happy Hour in September and Denver Marketing Happy Hour happening in October.
So if you're in either of those cities, check it out. Please come out, hang out. It's fun.
What we found from doing those is there are a lot of people that are very excited to do those things. And it's kind of like the phrase be back in person is still being used a lot. And so I think that one thing we'd recommend is curated dinners, curated breakfasts, or just hosting happy hours, or even just hosting a party that's at the, you know, in the city, at the event, at the conference that costs 50 or $100,000 to sponsor. You know, go spend 5k to host a happy hour party or, you know, some sort of event around that conference. I think there's some good, scrappy ways to kind of get into that. That's not necessarily a full on, you know, trade show investment if that's not something your, your company is doing. So we felt like that was worth throwing out there. And then, you know, in some ways you could easily tie this to many other parts of that and in terms of kind of how you're running those and who you're talking to and that kind of stuff.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Yeah, and it could be the big bet for the year too, if it's a little bit more of an investment, especially if you're going to do trade shows. But yeah, I, I don't have a ton to add on it except that, like, the be back in person aspect of it seems to have been really powerful. I know from when I was leading marketing at Review Trackers before this, events were big, they went away quickly because of COVID But I can see that has swung back around big time in the past two years to some extent. And we've worked with clients too, who are like, even smaller and, you know, they're figuring out where to place their bets and like, they're gaining some traction online, but, like, they've really gained traction at events so they're just like going all in there and, and letting that feed fuel their future investments.
So I would say like there's a, an ability to prioritize some of these things in that way. But just I, I know that they have been impactful for a lot of clients that we work with depending on the space so don't shy away from it. I think it's something that's grown again.
[00:59:27] Speaker A: Absolutely awesome. Well this has been good episode as I mentioned at the beginning and maybe throughout we have quite a few links in the show notes so definitely anything that we chatted about that's all available there.
Please visit 10 Speed I.O.
for more information about what we do and how we help companies.
You can also do 10 speed IO blog for our blog content and podcast for any other episodes we've been doing with this or with our past podcast as well. So with that we'll wrap it up.
[01:00:04] Speaker B: All right, thank you.
