B2B Thought Leadership Strategy with Manuela Barcenas

[00:00:00]oh our organization might be having a meeting problem my mission is that the first software they think about is fellow spend time and resources on thought leadership and on content creation because as we know this will nurture that 95% of people that aren't ready to buy your product just yet what are those content formats that you're using for the 95% Playbook we want to be everywhere that a customer is searching for a software like ours but that 95 person is more on that demand creation we do it through channels like the podcast the newsletter ebooks webinars I think all of this together creates this trust in people that in the future will think about you when they want a solution what is the the one out of those that you've seen is like this is actually having the biggest impact that we can see from user acquisition customer acquisition standpoint I will say the podcast has been huge I see the podcast as one of our big rock content pieces I also like to think of it as a Trojan hor is like the center of a lot of things since we started posting podcast Clips on our LinkedIn account our following has increased by 30% written content is easy to replicate but these insights you're getting from expert Le conversations you can't replicate those from like an AI prompt fellow is in a very competitive environment I I think now more than never uh founder Le marketing is becoming super important how do you continue to know that this this is something to continue invest in one thing that has been a big learning for us at fellow [Music] is all right Manuela thank you for being here today Eric thank you for having me this is so exciting what an honor to be a guest on your show yeah thank you um yeah we've known each other for uh a little bit now we've worked together a bit I'm a huge fan of what you and the team are doing at at fellow in terms of your marketing your content all of that that's why I thought we could have a great chat today so for those listening just a a recap like the goal of this show is to uh identify the ways you can reach the 95% of the market that is not actively buying right now through content and you know traditionally most most companies most teams of years past have f focused and fought over the 5% that that are in market and actively searching out a solution and so what we want to uncover now is what are the ways we can use social and content platforms podcasting YouTube LinkedIn Tik Tok newsletters all of those things to stay top of mind with Buyers so that when they do move into a buying motion you're you're on that short list and I know you and the team at fellow think a lot about that and um 100% yeah and and yeah so it's my mission at fellow Eric as you were saying to make sure that when people think about you know oh our organization might be having a meeting problem too many meetings right now should we find a solution to help us with this my mission is that the first software they think about is fellow but I am very conscious and I think everyone at the company is very conscious that this takes time so I'm really excited to chat with you about what it takes right for a marketing team to invest in these like long-term content initiatives knowing that some of them might not have an immediate Roi and I think as marketers we need to know that that is okay preach preach and uh and yeah by way of a little background just so everybody has contact so right now you're the head of marketing at fellow um if you want to maybe just give a you know one or two minute overview of of fellow and your role there um and then we can kind of dive into your playbook I joined fellow almost 60 years ago now as the First Market getting higher so I joined when the company was only made up of five other employees like counting the three founders and all of them were coders or developers so I joined the CEO as the first non-technical hire and I was basically Aiden who's our CEO I was Aiden's right hand at the beginning of everything right like we were talking to customers via intercom together like I I was doing a bit of a bit of customer support uh but I was originally hired as the first marketer which meant I helped Aiden write the copy for the first website uh Aidan and I together built our first Google ads campaigns uh we launched the product behind uh behind a wait list uh we announced it on product hunt very early early on so it's been a really fun ride because I was there for like the very beginning of everything when we didn't even have a website when people didn't know didn't know we existed and now fellow as you know is like a very um you know like solid product that organizations across the world are using we have some really well-renowned customers like Shopify teams at companies like HubSpot like a lot of companies that you know are using fellow and that is so exciting for me to see because I was here even before we had a website and that and that context is great too from a marketing standpoint because you know you've probably experimented with quite a bit over over that time you've created strategies and then kind of got those motions down and then maybe buil the foundation to the next one so we can we can kind of go through that um and what that look like for you and and maybe maybe to set a little bit of context for what your 95% sort of content Playbook is is is how would you what is the breakdown right now I guess um you know percentage wise or however you look at this between you know the revenue that's generated uh for fellow between like marketing Le activities or like sales Le activities um yeah is there is there like a breakdown you can share for that for sure so fellow uh is a product that has a plg motion so I will give our growth theme a lot of credit for how we acquire new users into the product because I do think that the product has a very strong you know like influence and responsibility there a phow is a very viral product that uh gets a lot of word of mouth as well like from company to company uh but apart from that our motion is fully inbound um at the moment we don't do any kind of outbound uh I'm sure we will start doing some in the near future but uh for like from the beginning of fellow's History until now like six years later everything has been inbounded and I've been responsible for that obviously with the help of everyone in the marketing team uh to bring in those uh new users through content through uh programs that you know very well like our podcast our newsletter so I think that um one thing that I wanted to say Eric just going back to the story of when I joined fellow is I think it was very important that from the beginning Aiden who is a CEO of fellow knew that he wanted to position fellow as a thought leader when it came to meetings and management because we know that managers people managers are the employees or the or the people that have the most meetings right like when you start to manage teams that's when you start to see your calendar go crazy so to go back to the thought leadership conversation I really appreciate that I joined a company where the CEO from the beginning hired me saying hey we need to become thought leaders in this space and this is going to take time and this is going to take a lot of content and for the listeners Eric and I don't know if you knew this uh I have a background in journalism so that's why Aiden made the decision to hire a journalist as his first marketing hire because I think he from the beginning want wanted to make make this bet that content was going to be really important to position fellow as a thought leader in the space so I think it all orginates as well from like the CEO understanding that this is a long-term play and six years ago I mean 2018 like you know 2018 2019 like that was a much rarer type of for forward thinking you know strategy I mean there was there were still companies of course using content but in the way that you're describing For Thought leadership it was a little bit more rare and so yeah kind of actually leading right right to to this question would be within your inbound so everything is either you know plg um product leg growth Word of Mouth based on you know how how valuable and compelling the product is um and then also inbound so everything being inbound within the inbound is there a breakdown of how you're attracting those new users and customers in the 5% who are bottom of funnel search SE in keywords in you know search engines or things like that they're actively seeking out a solution similar to yours um and how you're showing up versus like the 95% who are not but you know those are the places where you can build that Affinity with them before they're ready to buy like is there how do you think about the the split between those two when I think about that split I think about let's let's start with the 5% right so we want to be everywhere that a customer is search in for a software like ours so that is like the bottom funnel keywords bottom bottom of funnel content right like when someone searches for meeting agenda software or if someone listening to this works at a perhaps CRM system right like you want to show up for those keywords when they are sure that they want to buy a product like yours so for that we obviously use Google organic and Google paid which has been like a very like equal split for acquisition so that I like to think about as theand capture I don't know if like you've seen this term I I've been seeing it going around on LinkedIn a lot like the difference between theand capture and theand generation or theand creation so I think of that 5% as capturing existing demand like who is typing and searching for these things let's capture them with Organic and paid content on Google search engines like Google but that 95% that you're talking about and that I think this podcast is focused on is more on that demand creation and actually today Eric I think it was super relevant I saw LinkedIn post saying that we shouldn't call it demand generation but demand earn like earning or earn demand earn like you earn that demand like you earn that trust right like because you've been putting out so much great content over the years uh we do it through channels like the podcast the newsletter um that ebooks for example as well and webinars I think all of this together creates this trust in in people that in the future will think about you when they want a solution so I I wanted to bring this up because I like that concept of earning the demand agreed I feel the same way about owned audience or owned media like that term which I think is it's very relevant for you know marketing to the 95% but you don't own the audience like you earn the audience every single week just because they subscribe to your newsletter or subscribe to your podcast doesn't mean you own that even if there's no algorithm in between you and them it they have to continue to opt into wanting to consume your content and that's that's something that you earn by repeatedly giving you know high quality high value content so yeah I agree I really love the term like earned for all of this honestly earning yeah like earning trust earning that demand when they eventually think they need a solution like yours so that's what we're trying to do with all the content we put out yeah so let's go through that a little bit you started listing off some of those some of those channels some of those content form formats um if you if yeah if you could give us like an overview of what what are those channels what are those content formats that you're using for the 95% Playbook and then we can maybe go into some details about them but first first that overview maybe yeah I can't talk about our podcast without giving you guys had hatch a huge shout out we've been working together for a few years to produce it and I I see the podcast as one of our big rock content pieces right like the I I also like to think of it as a trojan horse I don't know it's like the center of a lot of things that then get produced thanks to the podcast so our podcast is called super managers um I was telling you earlier that we know that the core or uh most active users of our product are managers people who lead a lot of people and teams because they they're in a lot of meetings so that what that's why the Strategic decision uh was made to call it super managers and to Target this audience and yeah we have guests from like very well-known companies we've had the CTO of IBM the CTO of Zoom the president of Shopify on the podcast a lot of great guests uh but that podcast is a center of a lot of initiatives like our newsletter right like out of the podcast we write a newsletter um that we send out to to our list of subscribers with other fellow related content that perhaps we write on the website so uh those are like the podcast the newsletter and um most recently we've also started a motion to have a month monthly thought leadership event or round table which is what we want to call it so events around themes that our customers and people in our ICP are experiencing like for example one common one that we just had is meeting blow or having too many meetings in an organization and how do you tackle that so those are three that come to mind Eric and uh yeah I will say the podcast has been huge and and of course I'm missing social here but again I think everything we post on social stems from those those other core pieces of content like the podcast and the round taes so um I wanted to tell you I recently checked our LinkedIn stats and since we started posting podcast Clips created by hatch by the way on our LinkedIn account our following has increased by 30% and we know that LinkedIn is the channel where are ICP like leaders in organizations operations leaders that's where they hang out most of the time so we care a lot about this Channel and it's awesome to see that our podcast content being shared as Clips is helping us talk to this audience on LinkedIn and continue to build that trust so super super exciting to see amazing yeah I love that breakdown and and using it as the pillar piece that then can fuel those other those other pieces that you mentioned and one thing I think is important to note is that Aiden is the host of of the podcast the CEO of the CEO of the company is is the host of the podcast he's a domain expert in the field um highly credible in the space and it and champions the brand as the face of the brand um in a you know individual's you know personality based way more so than like you know individuals over institutions is like something I think is is like really going to be a powerful thing in the future and Aiden um you know deciding and choosing to dedicate time to this um whereas other CEOs think they don't have enough time for something like this it sounds to me like Aiden Aiden is has been bought in for the last I mean even when you started six years ago that like we have to do this yes I know Eric you are friends with Dave Gart but he has this saying that I love which is life is too short to work for a CEO that doesn't get marketing and and I love repeating that because I think yeah as as marketers like even for people listening to this podcast like if you're ever considering switching jobs or looking for a new company make sure that the CEO understands Marketing in the sense that they are willing to make this bets right they're willing to uh spend time and resources on thought leadership and on content creation because as we know and what this podcast I know is about this will nurture that 95% of people that aren't ready to buy your product just yet totally and and out of those those three um or four really including social is there one that you would say so the the podcast is of course like the pillar but each channel has its own in platform success or might actually have an a higher waiting of like what you see on you know attribution with self-reported attribution or what you see on you know acquiring new users even though the podcast is the pillar maybe LinkedIn is the the number one channel or what have you like so what is the the one out of those that you've seen is like this is actually having the biggest impact that we can see um from user acquisition customer acquisition standpoint um you know or how do you think about that in general like yeah we definitely see a lot more customer acquisition on our organic Google channel than for example LinkedIn or directly from the podcast But Eric the way we're using this other content pieces is by adding quotes and information from all these content pieces into our Google organic content right like the blogs we produce on our website for example so I would attribute a lot of the success of the blog to other pieces of content like the podcast and the webinars because that is where we get a lot of quotes and like relevant information from and how we build trust with our blog readers uh the newsletter has also been a channel for uh customer acquisition because I think it not only allows us to distribute the podcast content but it allows us to include some product ctas or plugs to check out new features in the product so that is also a nice channel that allows marketers to share valuable content but also includes some plugs to check out the the product uh for people that perhaps haven't checked it out yet totally and um I think that's a really important part which is to say like you know keyword driven content uh is not going away it's not I I really I really am not a fan of when like there's these you know everything's black or white like cold outbound is dead quote unquote or this strategy is dead like none of none of them are dead they're just is it the most Roi efficient way of going about it today or F future proofing the the brand um you know is that the the really where you want to place all your bets and how I think you just described it is really smart because especially now with you know written content is like e fairly easily you know uh easy to replicate basically um and generate you know on a uh quote unquote surface level way but these insights you're getting from like expert-led you know conversations essentially um you can't replicate those from like an a an AI prompt an AI tool cannot replicate those that's a great Point Eric I think especially now with the rise of AI tools and more marketing teams using AI to write their content a resource like a podcast and interviews with your customers are more valuable than ever to make sure that your content sounds human and quotes real people and has insights from experts like you said and we also know that a lot of um companies are getting penalized by Google's algorithms for using AI to write their content so I know we don't write content for search engines we write content for humans uh at least that's our mentality at fellow but I think also in the eyes of search engines like Google if you have original quotes and original content that comes from your podcast or your webinars that in the eyes of Google I think also looks organic so you will be less likely to get penalized for AI generated content so um as you know I'm a big fan of media like podcasts uh and and a huge advocate that companies should do this yeah and and one place I I know that you also distributed on is YouTube um how do you think about video in general in terms of this Playbook fitting in whether it's like the distribution from the podcast video but also any other video strategy you have on YouTube or elsewhere um what have you seen from that yeah and I'll be completely transparent here Eric I think as a small and mighty team we made a decision to focus more on LinkedIn recently because that's where we see our customers and people in our ICP interacting the most uh I think YouTube is a channel we definitely have like in the kind of like on the backlog like we we want to continue posting shorts there we definitely do um but I guess like a piece of advice for smaller teams is you don't have to be everywhere at the same time if you feel like it's too much for your team's bandwidth um I know YouTube is a super powerful Channel and I'm excited to explore it more in the future but right now I think our main focus as a social platform and also for sharing videos is LinkedIn cool yeah I very much agree with that which is essentially like perfecting Channel by channel before you try to be everywhere you you basically take it Channel by Channel um to the point where you're posting consistently and you're getting the results you want from it consistently before you move on to the next Channel yeah and I will give a shout out to Emily on our team because she's being super assistent on LinkedIn uh for the last 48 days since she started managing our LinkedIn accounts so I'm excited to continue seeing the growth because we got a 30% increase in followers in only 48 days so aming uh I'll keep you posted on that follower growth for the next month and and are you how do you see how do you delineate between like Aiden's personal LinkedIn versus like the company and like what how do you look at the differences between those strategies or any other thought leaders you have you might have some other you know smmes at uh F fell outside of Aiden that maybe you're doing this you know Playbook with as well so how do you look at the personal profile strategy versus like the company profile yeah I I think now more than ever uh founder Le marketing is becoming super important I don't know if you agree and if you see a lot of companies do this uh especially because look fellow is in a very competitive environment right there are a lot of tools that you can use to transcribe your meetings to take meeting notes but fellow of course is like the all-in-one tool that brings all these features together uh however it's a very competitive space so we also like to think of Aiden as this trust Builder that by generating thought leadership content around leadership meetings productivity people will perhaps be doing research about different tools and then when they look at him his profile and how much he cares about this problem they'll think you know what these guys really care about this problem their product must be really good and then they check out our product right right so we do think of Aiden as a very important pillar of our content strategy and lately starting this year in 2024 he started posting very very actively on LinkedIn so the way we see his LinkedIn profile to answer your question is the goal there is to build Aiden's thought leadership and position him as an expert in the topic of meetings and meeting productivity whereas the fellow LinkedIn page I would say it's a mixture of that type of content from our Superman adders podcast but also promoting some things that are happening in the company like features that we release webinars that we're hosting um so I think it's a mix of both like promotional content about the product but also a lot of thought leadership as well is Aiden uh getting help on his personal content for for his LinkedIn like are you all kind of powering some of the some of the content that he's using obviously extracted from the podcast but then are you like helping tea up ver v1s of some of these posts or like how what's that you know execution look like yeah well a lot of it comes from the podcast Eric so uh a lot of takeaways from the podcast because he's the host like you mentioned before um he's writing his own LinkedIn posts so whatever he thinks was like a great takeaway from a conversation but uh your team at hatch is helping us with the clips that he's sharing so that has been a huge huge benefit for him and for for the team awesome and um so when you look at the when you look at the sort of quote unquote Roi or success of this obviously you know Aiden and and the rest of the team has like been fully bought into this methodology for a long time so it it was not necessarily that you had to come in and say like we need to do this and then you had to sort of change the direction of how everybody thought about this but how do you continue to know that this this is something to continue invest in like do you have self-reported attribution um do you do any like win loss analysis do you um ask customers in some other ways like because obviously a big a big challenge with this in general is when someone's listening to your podcast for six months and then they go to Google when they're ready when they're finally in Market they go to Google and they type in the brand name fellow or they just go direct you are not able to with digital touch Point attribution see that oh this person listened to our podcast for the last 6 months and that's actually why we've got the trust and affinity and and recognition with them so how are you directionally capturing that as best as possible yeah um so one thought that is coming to mind right now Eric is as a marketer you can until when your sales team gets excited about things right so let's start with that one apart from like the attribution systems and everything um we have a weekly Town Hall at fellow weekly town hall meeting where every Department shares updates and good news and I can tell when people in the sales team get excited about certain things so for example sometimes we share like oh this this person is going to be a guest on the super manator podcast as like a a piece of great news and then we get some some people from the sales team say like amazing I'm going to share this with Prospect or oh great like I think this will really resonate with this people so one is that right like The Arrow of your content could also be like how excited is your sales team to share it with like people who are already in in the pipeline um but also attribution for example on sales calls like we do get we do ask our sales team to let us know also and we have systems also to to tag us when someone mentions the podcast during a discovery call or during a sales call and just like anecdotally I get a lot of like slack DM and convers from sales reps saying like this this Prospect has listened to the podcast or this Prospect came through the podcast so I think having that that relationship or close communication with the sales team can help you understand if your content is is generating opportunities for them even if it's opportunities for conversations right like if they get excited like oh I'm going to send this to a customer I'm going to send this to a prospect um Eric we also have a slack community that we started uh for the super managers podcast listeners um um and yeah it's really cool to see people join in join that community and let us know for example that because of the podcast they're going to check out fellow like that's something that happens often like they join this black community and they say hey I'm a super bag podcast listener not a fellow user yet but I'm excited to check it out so I think those like bits of qualitative data can also tell you a lot about like is your is your content resonating with the Right audience and is is the sales team excited about it and I think for us like the slack Community has been a really cool way to see who's listening to the podcast and he's so excited about it that they want to join a community of listeners for that podcast which is very rare the fact that fact alone that you have a a community around a slack Community around the podcast is literally D direct attribution that the content is working because if that Community is youry yeah EX people joining the community are people in our ACP people that we care people that we care about not that we don't care about everyone but people you know like we're we're targeting the Right audience like Executives at tech companies people who we want to have in our Network and and we want them to be aware about FAS a solution when the when the time comes so yeah those are some examples of qualitative data and then we also for example ask when someone signs up for the product where did you hear about us and one of those uh options in the drop down menu is podcast so that's another easy way for marketers to attribute some of some of the uh Roi because the reality is Eric not everyone is going to answer that where did you hear about us question right right uh and even if it's mandatory like I don't know how reliable it is sometimes because people just select some random options sometimes but I think it's a great way to also filter some data yeah directional insights on it and and yeah that that term podcast might be maybe they heard Aiden on a a a podcast that he was a guest on or something like that or you know maybe it's LinkedIn but that LinkedIn was the content that's on LinkedIn that resonated came from the podcast so all these things it's it's an ecosystem uh of all these things working together um but I think the main point is that really I think we can get a little bit too hung up sometimes and like can we directly attribute every single lead to the podcast to the newsletter to what have you and really like Roi Step One is this is the source material for all the other content or most of the other content that's powering everything else um and then number two is are we getting that anecdotal feedback that it's resonating like that's really what you want to know is is the content resonating if it's resonating with your ICP then it's going to work but yeah and is is it starting conversations for your sales team you did post something on LinkedIn recently that I really like I I I like your take on this I think your post was around choosing two paths for your podcast like you can either want to become like the top listen podcast for management in the world or you use your podcast as an Avenue to for example nurture your customers by inviting them to be guests on your podcast was that is that right like what I got from your LinkedIn post that second Point there's a there's a little more to that second one but yes that's exactly right like I think having Clarity around the goal of of your content in general so it can be your podcast can be your social can be your newsletter video but knowing what the goal is in the beginning setting that correctly because if you execute really well but you execute on the wrong thing it's not going to succeed so you have to select this this correct strategy in the beginning and I see um some folks be a little bit unsure on are they trying to do one or the other or both of those so for example if you want to become a number one podcast in your category you would likely make and you will make different decisions than if you're using it to help Aiden be seen as a thought leader in general in your Market not just in the podcast not in the audio feed on Spotify and apple but in your market and and um you'll make different decisions about what types of episodes you produce who you have on as guests what types of topics you cover how that material then gets translated to Social and newsletter and all these things um you know what type of marketing you do for the Show versus for you know Aiden and the company in general like all of those decisions are stemmed from that one from that one thing and um and so yeah I think I think you know executing the correct strategy executing the correct strategy poorly will lead to better results than executing the wrong strategy perfectly and uh so yeah that's kind of what I was getting at a little bit with that that post a great post I like this um do you so yeah in terms of increasing the the so you've got an audience Tam essentially your total addressable Market of like who could be in your audience at fellow how do you think about increasing that audience what what are the levers that you're pulling to like try and grow the LinkedIn followers grow uh the podcast listeners grow the newsletter subscribers like there's kind of obviously a bunch of ways you could do that um you could just go you know pure pure content uh quantity and quality and some sort of organic strategies or you could also like do paid amplification of the content itself so yeah how do you think about like growing the the audience because you've got content that's resonating so now it's like how can we get that in the you know eyes and ears of more people yeah your questions are even prompting some ideas that we're not doing yet like oh yeah we should get our listeners like promoting the podcast more like maybe maybe even tell them like hey let's do more giveaways right like I don't know he just prompted some ideas um I think Eric like one of the most powerful things about podcasts is leveraging your guests Network right for growth and I think that's why social sharing is so important and generating clips that they can share on their profiles as well um I think that podcast producers and hosts need to be very empathetic about the content that they post on social about their guests like I have a friend here at fell director of engineering Alexandra she wrote a book and she she her book is called uh remote Engineering Management by the way and she goes in a lot of podcasts and one day she sends me this clip that another podcast posted of her and she said there's no way I'm going to post this like I I don't like what I'm saying like I I look too zoomed in such a great Point uh right and I don't know I'm going on a tangent here but I think that being super empathetic with what will your guest want to share on socials I think that's powerful because then they'll share the clip then they'll tell their Network to listen to the podcast you see it right with super managers most of our guests like we're super careful about what content we pick even the title of the episode like I think will this person like this title because sometimes they might not right so I think when they like all those things that you're doing like picking the right thumbnails picking the Right video clips the right title that that they will share um it's super powerful it's super powerful because we see guests with thousands and hundreds of thousands of followers share our podcast and as you may know right after that we do see an increase in follow followers and an increasing listens because guests with a large following are sharing the podcast yeah it's such a good point it's actually a very under talked about point which is like what actually does happen quite often with with podcasts and with video series that have guests on them is after the episode and when the team publishes the episode the guest does not share anything about their appearance on that and for a lot of teams that's actually a pretty important strategy that they're hoping will happen to get net new you know followers listeners things like that and to your point a big reason for that is you don't get feedback from them usually on why they didn't share it so that it's hard to learn but really usually yeah it could be as silly as oh I didn't like the thumbnail you used or i' I was recently an MC for a conference in Vancouver and the conference posted a photo of me that I didn't like so I didn't share it but I emailed them marketing manager and I said hey could you make another graphic with another photo and I'll share that but most guests are not doing that so I think that's like super underrated and yeah it's true no we don't talk about it often agreed yeah that it's either what moment you selected to highlight for their snippet or for the promo material you gave them what what picture what thumbnail what head shot you know all what title all of those things matter I think another underrated lever Eric is internal communication within their company so recently we had the chief design officer at Pepsi come to the Superman addor podcast um but what I did was I simply asked him like Hey who on your team manages internal communication at Pepsi so I can like send them some resources to share with the team internally and think about how many employees a company like that could have and like if the internal communication team actually shares the episode with everyone in the company that's a huge lever and I don't think we talk about that often like we see large companies like CTO and Executives of large companies get a lot of listens on their episodes and our Theory internally is we think they're sharing that internally yep and and that's that's another under underrated talk you know talking point because one of the best ways that large company executives are able to disseminate their ideas and information to their team is through external interviews that they do funny enough because like a lot of teams that have thousands and thousands of employees like it's hard for the internal comms team to like actually get information to them sometimes but they're more compelled when it's like some interesting external like media interview podcast video you know what have you and so the team can actually get good info from the the exact at that company from an external interview um yeah just as an anecdote uh we just had someone on the show you might might have heard the episode uh from a company called ripling and I think ripling just raised like a like a big round of of funding and I got in touch with their Communications team and now they're being super responsive asking me like hey can you make us a clip of this specific section where he talks about the company and the product because that's what they want to share on their company profile like the specific part where he talks about the product and we're okay with that we're going to create a clip for them super smart super smart and those are like you know the things that don't scale quote unquote but those are the things that actually get the result that you want um and I'll say the guest strategy isn't obviously the end all Beall of like how you grow up grow a show or grow a Content series or things like that but these things matter you know and um and and part of it is big big names people will actually just come listen they'll seek out interviews that person has done and so they'll they'll stumble on super managers because they're following somebody they didn't see it on social or whatever maybe they typed it into the apple or uh Spotify you know the person's name and then they found it so the key is it still has to be really good content because if that person comes and listens and they happen to be a manager and love the the how Aiden you know led the discussion and the format of it and all of that you've just now earned uh another subscriber you know just through that so um yeah I love all that and um yeah I guess I guess what I would say um as kind of wrapping up like the 95% sort of content Playbook and then we can move on to a case study I'd love uh to see if you know if there's any companies like you love that are also doing this um what would you say for so you had a a really wonderful situation that you chose and I'm sure selected um smartly to join a company that believes in this what would you say to you know a Content leader content manager head of marketing that is isn't necessarily in that position and is trying to affect change um to be able to do some of these things at their company yeah I think I mean speaking of case studies just like talking about the largest companies in our space like look at the content they're producing right like hopspot is really well known for this like they were creating tons and tons of content on their blog they have this podcast Network like how do you think pod like how do you think hopspot is like top of mind for anyone who needs a software like that it's because they're everywhere with all the all the content they produce so I think also companies like Shopify right like they care so much about their customers they produce great content great podcasts great even like downloadable resources for their customers so using case studies I think of companies that have transcended over time and that are still thought leaders after years and years of being around I think hopefully will help this marketers make a point for if we want to position ourselves as thought leaders and be around for years and years to come we need to create great content and Eric I think that's something like you said that I was super lucky to have with Aiden as a CEO because when he hired me he did say like this is a long-term play like fellow will be around for years and years like want this company to succeed and to like be a big player in the productivity space so I think that when the CEO knows that this is like okay a long-term play let's do this uh then it's perhaps easier to to convince them to create content like this yeah and in some cases like I hate to say it it's it's actually impossible to to change some situations but I think to your point like there are some that just haven't been given the information on like how this works or examples of how it works or why it's important for the future or are all of those things and um and in one way I I would also kind of make the case is like what's the alternative like are we just going to keep trying to outspend everybody in you know paid search and Leen ads and things like that um because that's I mean like literally look at the trends of that it's getting more expensive more competitive there's more competitors in general everybody's fighting over the same people who are in market so like like what's the alternative we're going to do um and I think that's another good way to approach it yeah and I think people don't buy like they used to anymore right like we were talking about attribution earlier and marketers like we love to think that people see an ad and they convert immediately but the reality is that they might have heard about your product through a podcast and then talk to a friend and then I don't know saw a billboard if your company PS for Billboards uh and then one day they saw a ad on Facebook and they're like all right I was meaning to sign up for that product that my friend told me about and that's when they do it uh so that's one thing and I think that I mean I hear so many marketers say that in 2024 Network and like your network and Word of Mouth for products is so much more important so I think that great content also enables that that word of mouth and that word mouth is Not Just Happening you know where it used to happen on at at events like Live Events and trade shows and things like that it's happening on social media it's happening in slack groups Facebook groups yeah one example Eric because you were asking of a company that I think has done this really well uh that I see all the time on my LinkedIn feed is Pocus I think do you know of them there's their CEO is Super Active on LinkedIn I think her name is Alexa and there so active uh on LinkedIn I think they're empowering every employee in the company to to post about plg and they want I think they want to become leaders or the leaders in the in the plg space so see at fellow when our sales and growth teams were considering options for like oh we need a product to do this our head of growth was like we need poker I'm like why and he's like because I love their LinkedIn content and see like that's how it works these days and I bet they're they acquisition stats or data didn't say that it could have said like Google because we googled their name and signed up for their product right but was the reality our head of growth was a big fan of the CEO's content on LinkedIn so that's why he went for that product amazing I'm gonna I'm gonna study them now that's a that's a cool one and and one more I'll mention it's a Canadian company called clue uh their CEO is Jason Smith I'm a big fan of Jason he also posts a lot on LinkedIn and he's such a kind human uh to everyone in the startup community in Canada and I love what they're doing with marketing because what they're doing now is they have this thing called the compete Network where clue hosts a wide variety of podcasts for product marketers so also very cool uh concept to to build trust with your ICP and that's clue with a K right KL U I think I've seen them they're doing a good job I didn't know what necessarily what they do but I've seen their stuff just coming through the feed and and what not um they have I think like a competitive intelligence product for product marketers and just like we were talking about like I love their content so much that I told Jason like don't worry the moment I have this problem clue will be the First Tee that comes to mind yep and that's and that's the thing like winning winning before Google um and being on that short list because most buyers will end up purchasing from some some company that's are already on their short list the day they decide they need to make a purchase even when they go find others when they're actively searching usually they're still going to ultimately select one that was already top of mind for them on that short list so yeah this is uh this has been great man Wella thank you thank you for the time my last question for you is just in general if there's anything that comes to mind that we haven't covered yet on like what you're excited about with the future of content specifically uh for B2B you know what what trends are you like fascinated by excited about anything like that yeah one thing that has been a big learning for us at fellow is how to leverage AI right I think every marketer right now might be worried or wondering like okay how is our team going to use AI to make our processes more efficient I think one learning for me has been you don't use AI necessarily to write your content like for example like I was saying earlier uh Eric Google rolled out some some algorithms that said your content could be penalized if you use AI so I don't see AI as a writer anymore but more as a facilitator of uh personalization in your content and getting to understand your audience so we use it a lot internally to perhaps like understand what our audience would care about what are some things that this piece of content hasn't covered yet that someone in our audience would like to hear about uh so I think the biggest Trend that I'm seeing with the marketers that I'm speaking with and also listening uh is uh personalization through Ai and an understanding of your of your Audience by leveraging AI to understand what are some holes or missing pieces in your content yeah I love that and I I think there's a lot of sort of people on both sides of the AI topic right now like you know is it scary for specifically for Content um and marketing like is it going to replace some needs for actual human you know experts in here or is it actually on the other side going to empower and and help make marketers 10 times better than they used to be because now they've got sort of assistance at their disposal um I tend to lean towards that camp personally but uh I recently listened to an interview with Kieran Flanagan he he's a CMO at HubSpot he was at sapier and then moved back to HubSpot and he was talking about personalization through Ai and I was listening to the things they are doing at SA with like Ai and how like when someone signs up to the product and they know they're a marketer they're using AI to for example create some personalized resources to send them like these are the saps you should be using these are the Integrations you should you should be using so that is the type of stuff that gets me really excited about AI I think it can make us like super efficient in personalizing our content and it doesn't have to be the Tope of funnel or the content to acquire customers it could also be the content we send after a customer becomes a customer to help them be successful in the product exactly I mean for example you all have been producing super managers for quite some time like there's very likely a absolutely perfect episode for one of your prospects or customers or audience members at that moment in time that would be amazing for them to receive at that exact moment in time that they need it but they don't know because it's in the archives and they don't know which one's which but that's a perfect example of like how you could use that so um amazing awesome well thank you Manuela this is this has been great um I would highly recommend you know any managers out there who are looking to to make their life a little more productive go check out fellow. apppp um and and Manuela anywhere else you want to point people to connect with you or you know the company yeah I love LinkedIn to have conversations about marketing and what's going on in the space so feel free to connect with me there and we'll continue the conversation but thank you so much for having me Eric this was was a lot of fun awesome thank you5 [Music]