We’re finally starting to see an increase in humorous content in the B2B sphere. There’s been a noticeable surge in entertaining content lately, which is like a breath of fresh air for all of us.
However, while this trend is enjoyable, what’s its actual impact? Does it drive revenue? Does it enhance brand recall? Does it improve product understanding and desirability? Or could this creative content boom potentially lead to more marketing layoffs?
Join us this week with Todd Clouser (dubbed “The worst marketer in the world”) as we delve into the art of creating fun and creative content with a clear purpose that ultimately improves bottom-line results.
Podcast Transcript
What’s up, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of digital banter. Got myself, Andy Grohler, James is joining us from paternity leave. Decided to come back for the show. Thank you so much for doing that and join us today, a special guest, Todd Clouser, head of audience marketing at audience plus, also the CEO of Worst marketer in the world.
Todd, how’s it going, man? It’s going good. What’s going on guys? Not much. So let’s get, let’s set the stage for today’s conversation a little bit. Todd, you’re, I would say at this point, pretty well known for creating [00:01:00] some entertaining content, not. For yourself, but also at the different brands that you’ve worked with Cognizant hockey stack, what you’re doing at audience plus now, um, lavender.
I mean, I feel like everybody fell in love with lavender the year that you were there. Um, the question I really want to dive deep into today is like. In B2B, right. I think we are all psyched that there’s actually exciting, fun content that we can watch and engage with. Now, I think that the question that a lot of B2B leaders are asking at this point is like, that’s all fun and great, but does it, Actually have a purpose.
And is there a reason behind it? Cause I think every marketer can say that we’ve seen marketers who just create content for the sake of creating content. And really what I want to dive into today is like, how do you add. The entertainment factor, but also the purpose and have reasoning behind that content.[00:02:00]
Yeah. So, um, I’m glad you use the word purpose. Um, so I’m going to, I’m going to tell a little story here. I think that will, that will kind of ground this. Um, and then we can go into that. Um, but it’s really all about purpose because like, there’s so much entertaining content out there that like, You can get likes, you can get engagement, you can get all that kind of stuff.
But like at the end of the day, like, is that all it’s getting you? Um, so back to the story, um, probably like two years ago at this point, uh, it’s back when I was at refine labs. Um, and it’s when I just started creating entertaining videos, specifically Tik TOK content. And that stuff. Was like blowing up on LinkedIn for me personally.
So I opened up my, my calendar on LinkedIn. I put my calendar in there and I said, if anybody wants [00:03:00] to grab like 15, 20 minutes, like it’s wide open, um, to talk about entertaining video, more specifically Tik TOK at the time, um, book some time and I did about 300, two to 300 of those, um, over the course of like three to four months.
Um, And as I started doing those, I started asking like the same three questions in every, in every one. And the first question was, we’d hop on, we’d do like the intros and we’d say, I’d say, why do you, why do you want to create entertaining video? Like, why do you want to create TikTok content? What’s the purpose?
Um, And 99 percent of the time, like out of those several hundred interviews, maybe three or four people gave me a different answer. Like when I say 99 percent of the time, [00:04:00] like I mean, 99 percent of the time people gave me one of two answers. It was either, um, I want to create brand awareness, like grow brand awareness or drive inbound demo requests.
And the problem with those, with those two responses is it’s not an actual purpose. of your content. It’s the side effect of having a purpose that is successful. Like those are the outcomes of having a purpose that works. So, um, this kind of started, uh, or was built into a framework that, that me and Obed created together called the easy mode framework.
And it’s, it’s the second part of that. And we tried to define or like build out like buckets of like any content should have. fit into one of these [00:05:00] buckets when it comes to the purpose of your content. And the way we broke that down was top down strategic narrative content, middle out implementation content, or bottom up evangelism.
And essentially the purpose, like if we, if we break that down, it’s, it’s two parts. It’s defining who the audience is that you’re trying to reach with whatever piece of content you’re creating. Like when we talk about content, we typically talk about it from like, uh, a series perspective or a long term perspective.
So if they become a fan of that content, what, what do you want to happen? What do you want them to do? So like the idea being, if they become a fan of the content, not if they consume one individual piece of content. So bringing this all back to the original question regarding entertainment. [00:06:00] That can, it can fit into any one of those buckets.
But nine times out of 10 where it really works and where it really shines is that bottom up evangelism piece at the bottom. So the purpose of that bottom up evangelism is essentially we’re, we’re trying to evangelize end users of the product. So if they already use the product, they love it even more because of the content, it resonates, it’s entertaining, it’s good.
And if they don’t use the product currently or if they use a competitive product, they aspire to use your product because they kind of feel on the outside of like the cool kids club. So like Lavender Joe is a perfect example of this. Um, our main target was SDRs and AEs who are doing cold outbound. And like, we personified all these terrible tactics through that character that just resonated with that audience.[00:07:00]
So they gravitated towards it. Like it helped us build the community. Like that was one of the, the launching points for Lavender as like a brand was those Lavender Joe videos. So I think one thing that you kind of hit on there, Todd, that’s important for anybody listening or watching this is like purpose doesn’t equal outcomes.
And that, that through line is like applicable to any content, not just video, not just series, but the old outdated eBooks, white papers, answer reports, everything. Like if you want somebody to read one of those things, yeah, you want an outcome of that to be. Ultimately adding yourself to pipeline or adding a prospect to pipeline, but that’s not the purpose of why they’re going to want to read it.
And I think that’s like something that so many times gets lost on B2B marketers across the entire landscape. Yeah. And I mean, even if we look at again, coming back to purpose, and this is not specifically for entertaining content, but like how people typically, eBooks and white papers and that sort of thing.[00:08:00]
Um, the old playbook was you create that. You know, valuable piece of content. Um, you gate it, you promote the crap out of it with the, with the intention of getting the person’s email to enroll them in some sort of nurture campaign. And then once they hit like a certain lead score metric, like the, the sales team reaches out.
Um, and like, we’re, we’re even kind of flipping that on its head because, um, I’ve kind of shifted my thinking on this in the past, like year or two, to where. I don’t think gated content is the issue necessarily. Like everybody has been crapping on gated content forever for several years now. And I don’t think gated content is really the issue.
It’s what you do with the information once you get it. And like, that’s, that’s what people really have the [00:09:00] issue with. So like, this is something we’re, we’re kind of, you know, thinking about and playing with right now at AudiencePlus is like, even with, even with some of our, exclusive or gated content, whatever you want to call it.
Like we’re not gating it for the purpose of throwing you into a nurture campaign and then, and then reaching out cold. Um, we’re playing around with this idea of like, uh, a qualified subscriber and like, do they subscribe to the media property? Um, You know, we can start to measure like the content that they look at so we can start to make informed decisions on what to invest more in what to stop doing so like we’re using this idea of like gating for the benefit of like deciding where our future content is going to go versus reaching out and.
Also value of content at the end of the day. There’s so much crappy content out there to begin [00:10:00] with, whether it’s gated or ungated. Well, it’s interesting. Cause like one of the main purposes of gating content, most gated content is meant to be like some sort of like evergreen content. Like let’s talk about like the really bad stuff.
That’s just like a sales guide. It’s the same sales guide that everybody else uses that gives all of the information on the product. And I think what. Marketers have really liked historically about it too, is like, we’re going to create this one piece of content and we’re going to use it for a year versus some of the stuff that you’re doing, Todd, like that, quite frankly, it takes a lot more work, like to build a series, to build a show, to like engage an audience consistently over time.
Like that is a lot. So here, here’s the beauty of it. It. It seems like it’s a lot more work. It’s really not because, and this depends on what the actual series is. So this doesn’t, this doesn’t, uh, this isn’t like for everything, but like [00:11:00] in everything that I, I start with and that like, I did this at Lavender, we’re doing it at Audience Plus, like HockeyStack did it.
Um, everything that like we start with, We start with as, as low effort as humanly possible. And the way that we build out these shows is that we create some sort of concept that’s super repeatable. And this, this is like doubly true if you’re not marketing to marketers. So you need to tap into other, other teams like within the company.
So like take lavender, for instance, like. Our subject matter experts were the sales team. So like the sales team has all of you, they’ve got meetings all day. They’re cold outbounding doing demo calls, like closing deals. The last thing they want to do is, you know, help me create content all [00:12:00] day long. So like we create these.
Concepts, and there were several examples, like if you look on Lavenderland, there’s several examples of this, where the, the host that, that comes to the show, there’s no prep work for them. They literally show up, they, they do the same exact thing every single week, and then they leave and the marketing team edits.
Produces, distributes, like handles the rest. So it seems like a lot of work because they’re like these like interesting concepts and different ideas. But the beauty of it is all of the work for the, all of the difficult work is done upfront in coming up with the idea, like, how do we make this? So it says light a lift on the actual subject matter expert as possible.
That’s where all the work is, um, like even, even something like this, like a, like a [00:13:00] podcast or a weekly live event to me, this is like significantly more work than like 90 percent of the shows that I produce because like you guys as the producer of this show. You have to find the people that you, you want to interview.
You have to schedule that, which can be difficult. You have to do research on that person and figure out like how you’re going to ask questions of them that don’t make them say the exact same thing that they’ve said on a hundred other podcasts. Um, like that’s, that’s like a lot of pre production work.
Whereas like. The shows I was producing at Lavenderland, like Three Minute Sales School, uh, Jen versus Will, Raina was producing that one. But like those, those two shows are great examples of like where myself or Raina, we basically did all the work and then the subject matter experts showed [00:14:00] up. They did the same thing, but like other than the actual recording, nothing was, was Needed from them.
Is there like a level of like burnout that comes with that though? Cause I’ve been on podcasts before where they, you know, they send over the six questions that they’re going to ask you ahead of time. And it’s the same six questions that they ask every single guest that comes on, no matter who they are.
And then they have the funny theme that you do some exercise with them. Like, how do you, I don’t know. How do you kind of keep that interesting? Or, and also like, how do you gauge when maybe it’s like time to shake things up and move on? Yeah. So that, that, those two things that you mentioned are, are the two things.
So like, um, the way that you keep it interesting, um, is the concept of the show, the, even though the, uh, the concept is the same every time the insights are typically different. So [00:15:00] like, and, and even if the insights are the same, they’re very nuanced because they’re like, I’ll use an example from, from three minute sales school.
So. The show was the, was the exact same format every episode. Um, we would take a cold email, we would grade it in lavender, uh, host would rewrite it, grade that one, choose a winner, and then explain why his email won and why he rewrote it the way he did. Exact same format every single time. The reason that people continue to watch every time is because the email that we used The email that came into one of our inboxes that we did the episode with was different every single time.
So even if the advice was the same, like advice you hear from Labrador all the time, like subject lines need to have like that internal camouflage, right? [00:16:00] Even though that was a very common thread between a lot of the episodes, the way in which he showed how to, like, change what it was, was always a nuanced change.
So like the insights were new every time, even though what we were telling you to do was the same. And this is something I learned like a long time ago back in, in my YouTube days. So I’m going to tell you another story that kind of grounds this. So. When I was doing YouTube full time, we were probably like six years into doing YouTube videos twice.
And then we went to three times a week. So like after about ballpark, like between like year five and year seven, somewhere in there, we just, we ran out of ideas. We’re like, we’ve, we’ve lit and it was an educational show. So it was like a bunch of how to content. It was like, [00:17:00] after we had created like 700 videos or something.
We’re like, what do we do now? Uh, like we’re, we’re running out of ideas. So essentially what we did was anytime in the past. Because at this point, we probably had, I don’t know, two, three, four hundred thousand subscribers. Like, we had a significant audience. Um, and anytime someone would ask us a question that we had already created a video on, we would send them a link that answered their question.
But as we started to run out of ideas We were like, well, we could just go back and create old content and try to make it like better, highly, more highly produced, that sort of thing. Or, we could just start answering questions from the audience, even if it, even if we have a video that’s, that’s old. That answers that question.
They always ask the question in like a slightly nuanced way [00:18:00] so that the response to it is slightly nuanced. Um, so, and once we started doing that, um, we, we started, there was other factors, but we essentially started doubling every year, um, to where before that the growth was slower. So, um, figuring out how to repeat yourself.
in the audience is, is one of the biggest unlocks in any of this content. So, um, I think that was part one of your question. And then I think you had also asked like, how do you know when to kill it? When, when to kill it? Um, and when to adjust, when you adjust, yeah, basically it’s going to. It’s going to depend.
Um, but the audience or the lack of response is going to tell you when you need to start to adjust. So like, if you have a show that’s doing really well, and it’s, it’s kind of like doing this, [00:19:00] and then all of a sudden, like, it starts doing this. Flatlining is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you, you maintain.
If you start losing audience and people are getting bored with it, at that point, um, you can either decide like, all right, we need to lose this show and think of something completely different or, you know, let’s try to tweak it a little bit. All right, so I got 1 more follow up question because this is something that I know we’ve struggled with.
And I know anybody who’s tried to do this has struggled with a lot of the shows that you have created in the past have involved some sort of user submission, user submission of emails, user submission of questions like, you know, Uh, and that’s great. Like, it’s awesome. I would love to have like a million submissions to be able to create content on that’s not easy either.
Like, do you have any like tips or recommendations for people who are looking to get submissions [00:20:00] and build content that involves whether it be a partner or even just something that’s as simple as a submission. Yeah, so, um, the, the, the easy, well, not the easy, the answer that most people don’t want to hear, which is also the truth is that, um, when you’re starting out, you don’t start out with a show that requires submissions because you don’t get submissions until you start to build an audience.
So like in the, in the YouTube example that I just gave, like, We would, we would use submissions as we got them, but that didn’t become like a major part of our strategy until like we were at several hundred thousand subscribers. So like the, the maybe answer that people don’t want to hear is that You need to come up with concepts that are going to build the audience first.
And then once you build that audience, now you’re going to, the submissions is where you go from like [00:21:00] audience to community or like audience to die hard fan, um, and that’s the submissions is really how like you, you level up to that. To that next level. Yeah. With that one. I mean, I always think of like what Chris Walker did at refined labs with like the live events and just like the audience that he was able to build there.
And like, I’m just thinking like us as an agency, like, yeah, like that’s awesome. And he always used to make it sound like so easy. And I think the reality that a lot of people just don’t realize is that it’s, it’s not that easy and you do have to start with something else first. Like you have to establish the point of view first, right.
That people actually follow along with. So I think, you know, Todd, you’ve been a part of organizations that have bought into this either initially or over the course of time, but there’s plenty of people out there that struggle with that and they hit roadblocks. Whether they want to do it or not. Um, or, you know, what are some of the roadblocks that you’ve encountered in getting it off the ground?
And then what are your suggestions? I [00:22:00] can imagine ideation being one creating buy in be another, but like, what are some other ones? And again, you know, what are your suggestions for those that want to at least get a concept in motion? Yeah, I think, um, I’ve been lucky enough that there haven’t been many roadblocks for me because typically when I go into a company, this is like one of the reasons they bring me in.
Um, but that being said, uh, I’ll use, I’ll use refine labs as an example. Like I was brought on at refine labs, um, to start to kick off like YouTube and Tik TOK at the time. That was the purpose I was brought on, but like the purpose was not entertaining content. Like I had not created entertaining content up to that point.
Um, and if you looked at like refine labs, it was very, it was known for like thought leadership. Like everybody on that team was like an expert in what [00:23:00] they did. Like nobody thought of refine labs as like the funny brand. Right. Um, so, and, and when it, when it came to demand gen, like Everyone on that team was smarter than me.
So like, you know, I wasn’t going to be like the, the, the thought leader, like expert, uh, at that company. So, um, in order to like launch entertainment there, uh, And what I tell people that, that typically they have to do if like you work at a company that’s not, might not buy into like entertainment is, that’s the beauty of like your personal LinkedIn brand.
I mean, you, you prove it out yourself and, and then once you start to get traction from it, and this can be. Like hardcore entertainment, like skits and like straight up entertainment. This can be something more on like what we call an easy mode, like type two, which [00:24:00] would be like still, still like mostly insights, but in like a conceptual way, uh, kind of like Jen versus Will or, or three minutes sales school.
Um, you, you prove that it works yourself. You get some data behind what you’re doing personally. And then you pitch it to the brand. Like, Hey, this is, this is working really well. Like seeing a lot of traction. Like, I think if we do, you know, X for the brand, um, you know, request some, some experimental time or budget in order to do that.
So how do you quantify, how do you flip that into quantifiable results then, because that’s ultimately what the brand side is going to be asking for to legitimize it. Yeah. So there’s, there’s a couple of ways. Um, Like one that I’ve been, you know, kind of pitching ever since I was at refined labs and everybody knows at this point, not all companies do it, but everybody knows is self reported [00:25:00] attribution.
So, you know, ask people, how did you hear about us when they, when they come in through, like, a high intent? Form. Um, that’s one way you start to see, you know, a series or LinkedIn or like whatever you’re doing start to pop up. So that’s one way. Um, this is also like what we’re doing at audience. Plus, like, one of the reasons that we’re even building audience plus is so people can start to like actually measure.
The impact of content, because like right now we put out content, we use self report attribution, but like for the most part, we look at things like, you know, how much engagement did it get on social? Uh, are we getting invited to podcasts based on the things that we’re saying? Are our names coming up in conversations when we’re not there based on like our thought leadership?
Like those are like [00:26:00] the, the. Qualitative things that like we look at now, um, but that’s the whole purpose of like, that we preach, like, you need to build an owned audience and why we’re building audience plus. So you can actually measure, like, what pipeline was generated from these, these, uh, content efforts.
So interesting. Um, I mean, on the audience plus side, I don’t, I know a fair amount about the tools, but are you guys, like, are you guys integrating with like, um. Like, like, are you able to show results of content off the platform as well? Cause I know a lot of like the content is hosted on audience. Yeah. So the, the whole idea is.
Is basically using like these rented channels, like LinkedIn, well, any, any social media really in building an owned audience. So like in the past, an owned audience, [00:27:00] like it was a newsletter, right. Um, we’re kind of leveling that up now, uh, with this whole like Netflix style model in that, you know, what we did at Lavenderland was, I would create, so like, we’ll take, we’ll take like, at the series level, um, we may have recorded 20 episodes of a series, and this wasn’t every series, some of them were week to week, um, but like, in some cases we would, we would record 20 at a time, I would throw out like 5 on Lavender Land.
And we would drip those out weekly for five weeks. Be like, Hey, you know, here’s the episode on episode one. We put it out on LinkedIn or whatever channel it’s going out on. Um, if you want to see episodes two through five, like you can go, you can go get them at Lavender. Um, and basically like we are pushing people back to the site in order to subscribe again, [00:28:00] not so that we could, you know, start like hitting them with the SDR team and that sort of thing.
But so we could make better informed decisions on what content was working, what content wasn’t, um, and continue to invest in that sort of thing. So short answer to your question is like, we’re not measuring what’s happening out on LinkedIn, right? Um, the, the whole point is to bring them back. So that you can start measuring like what basically, so you can get the same data that YouTube has.
If you post content on YouTube. Gotcha. So here’s a question that I want to actually wanted to dive into a little bit earlier, but we went on different direction. So how much do you, like, when you create contents specifically, like, entertaining content in the show type content that we’re talking about, like, how much do you think about distribution ahead of time?
Right. Cause like now we’re talking about like, okay. This [00:29:00] content can be distributed on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn. Uh, you know, I’ve heard people say that it doesn’t matter whether or not, like you tailor the content towards that channel, a lot of people are posting their TikToks to LinkedIn as an example, and they do better on LinkedIn because they have a better audience there.
Like, how much do you consider that in the strategies that you build? Um, And also like with that, you talked about like driving back to the site to like, how much do you balance like content that you own on your site versus content? That’s more or less owned by social channels. So I think, um, to the, to the 1st question, um, you absolutely have to think about.
How the content is going to be distributed when you’re in the like the ideation process of any of these series, because at the end of the day, um. You can have like an amazing piece of [00:30:00] content. This is cliche at this point, but like, you can have an amazing piece of content. If nobody sees it, it doesn’t matter.
So like distribution is. I don’t know, let’s say 80 percent of the battle, like making sure that people see it. So that’s why a lot of these series that we create and like, if you go to, if you go to most companies, websites, pretty much everything they have on there will either be long form content. So webinars, blogs, or it’ll be short form product content, demos, and that sort of thing.
So. There’s not much in between, but if you go out on social channels, we’ll have like entertaining Tik Toks and short form written content on LinkedIn and like clips of talking head, like where, where people are, are screwing up. The things that [00:31:00] work on social media platforms, they’re not doing on their own website.
So like when we think about distribution, we think about the distribution for social, but we also think about how people are going to view it on the actual, like in our case, the audience plus platform as well. So like we are creating long form, but we’re also creating short form series. that are made to be bingeable.
So, like, for example, I just started doing this one with, like, The Wheel, where, like, I’m pitching, like, different companies, different series ideas. Most companies would put that out only on social, but we’re also building that as a series on Audience Plus. So we think about distribution in the creation of the content, because I know that that short form series is going to bring people back if I have, you know, 10 more of those on the site that they can easily go and watch and when they’re there, because it’s the right [00:32:00] ICP, if they’ve come for that, the other stuff that I’m, that I’m showing on, on audience plus.
Is probably going to interest them as well. So like it’s an opportunity where they may not see it on LinkedIn or, or from the algorithm, if they don’t follow. JK or Anthony or someone else on my team. But if they come back to audience plus, because they saw the content wheel show, and they may see like one of the seven or 10 other series that we’re doing, and they start following those things as well.
And it, it only expands our reach from that point. When do you hit them with a hard call to action? I think that depends on, on
we, we don’t, we don’t hit people with a hard call to action based on like. The content that they watch, like the goal. Like I said, the goal of our content [00:33:00] is to collect the, the audience data to make better informed decisions about what’s working. And if we do our job correctly, them coming there and viewing all of this, like because our audience content marketers demand marketers and, and marketing leadership, they’ll see how effective it is.
And they’ll, they’ll come inbound themselves. It’s interesting because with the way that you guys have things set up, like you have the opportunity to use that data for. A lot more things than just that. Right. Like that’s like a advertising person’s dream to have that level of data of like, Oh, these are the people who subscribe to our series and come to our website.
Well, and so like, that’s a way better retargeting list than somebody who came in, like visited your homepage, like somebody who’s actively engaged in content and like to Andy’s point about like those hard call to [00:34:00] actions, like you really could take your most engaged users and. Force them through the funnel via advert.
I mean, advertising is just one thing. There’s a million other ways you could use that data for more distribution with harder call to action. So yeah, but here’s just saying that you don’t go that way. Well, yeah, but here’s the thing. Like what is that break point of when you push somebody too far and now they’ve actually become turned off by the brand?
Well, and, and I think there’s also a difference between a hard call to action and retargeting people with ads. I mean, what’s the goal though? That’s at the end of the day. Right. So like you mentioned first, like what was the two purposes for entertaining content? Second one was demos, brand awareness and demos.
Like that’s, first of all, that’s brand awareness and demos completely, completely different. But like everybody knows, especially everybody in tech at some point, you’re going to be asked how many demos you drove. Right. And that’s, I feel like that is where the advertising piece comes in. That’s what the hard call to action is likely going to [00:35:00] be.
That’s what I’m saying. Like when I think hard call to action, like right now, if you, if you look at, if you look at most marketing strategies and basically like what we are trying to like offset or replace is like the old school MQL model, right? So like hard call to action in, in that model is. You download a piece of content.
I enroll you in an email nurture sequence. You hit, you know, a 327 lead score or whatever. And then I give you to an SDR to, to do cold outreach to, to me, that’s a hard call to action, right? Like salesperson is reaching out to you based on something that you did not request to me, people coming to the site, subscribing, watching content, and then I retarget [00:36:00] them with ads.
It’s not a hard call to action. Yeah. And that, well, that’s honestly like the whole shift that’s happened in B2B with the whole demand gen movement, we’ll call it. It’s gone away from the, uh, was it the funnel that you used to see on every marketing presentation of like how we’re going to move people through the funnel and different stages to more of more aligned with like, we’re going to build our audience and then we’re going to retarget our audience and they can convert whenever they’re ready.
Yeah. And I think, I think there’s, there’s also something to be said, um, this is going to, this is also going to depend on the advice you get based on like the role of the person that whatever company you’re asking, right? Like I’m a content marketer. Like if it were up to me, like, We’re just going to create cool shit all day and like people are going to come in and it’s all going to be like gumdrops and rainbows.
But like, if you talk about, if you, if you go a level up or you’re talking to the demand gen [00:37:00] or you know, some CRO, like they’re going to be like, yeah, like we need to, we need to hit these people up. So like, it also depends on who you talk to in the company. Who’s paying, who’s writing the checks and who’s paying the bills.
Yeah, exactly. Well, as a content person, if you do your job effectively. And this is, this is like exactly what, what happened at refined labs. Like we didn’t do outbound sales. Like if you do your job effectively, like those inbound leads come. So, yeah, I think it just comes back to how, to your point before, like, and we don’t have to go back to this point, but like, how do you measure it and how do you justify your existence?
Because if you’re unable to do that, it doesn’t matter. Right. Audience plus. All right, Todd, as we get towards the end here, before I give you a chance to do your actual plug, uh, so we have our magic wand here. So if I give it to you and you have the [00:38:00] opportunity to use it to change one thing about B2B right now.
Um, I, I would, if you ask me this a year ago, I would have said, I, I would love to start seeing people like really think differently about how they’re creating content and trying new things and video and entertainment and stuff like that. Um, at this point, I’m starting to see a lot more of that. But I think it’s, it, it comes back to the whole point of like this conversation is I would, I, I want people to really start to think about like what the purpose of that entertaining content is and try to build that into the show because the, the risk here.
And this is the risk with any, with any content marketer trying to like push, push content forward is, um, if you, if you do get like that approval or that experiment to do this stuff [00:39:00] and you’re just creating vanity metrics. And nothing like business metric wise is coming from it. Um, it gives this whole like entertaining movement, a bad, a bad look.
And like, uh, people say it don’t, it doesn’t work. So really think about the purpose of the content that you’re creating. Um, and that way you’re always driving to achieve something versus just like likes and shares and that sort of thing. All right. Bring us on home with three actionable takeaways. Uh, three actionable takeaways on content creation.
Um,
is this okay if I just recap? I mean, I think, I think big actionable takeaway is like we, like you asked James, like think about the distribution, like in the actual process when [00:40:00] you’re, when you’re coming up with the, with the idea for the show. Make sure that like the content that you’re creating specifically when you’re, when you’re putting it out on, on short form channels, like LinkedIn, Insta, Tik TOK, any of those that like the information that you’re putting out and the information that’s in that video, uh, is upfront and you’re not like the time to value is quick.
And you’re not like giving all of this interim information before you get to the next, like. interesting insight. Um, and then the third one insights are basically the, the foundation of any content, whether it’s going to be entertaining or like straight up insights. So even if you’re creating entertaining content, you need to make sure that it’s grounded in some level of insight.
[00:41:00] And I’ll give a very quick example. Like this is what I used to do at Chris would have his like talking head video from From demand gen live that he would put out every week and super educational. I would just take that exact same concept and I would create something funny or, or poke fun at it or a skit or whatever.
But the reason that they work so well is because they were always grounded in the education that he was talking about. So it resonated with people. So make sure that there’s some level of insight. Within your entertaining content. Cool. All right, Todd, now’s your chance for a plug. How can people connect with you and learn more about audience plus?
Yeah, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Todd Klauser, um, audienceplus. com. If you want more, uh, we’re throwing a conference in April in Brooklyn, New York. It’s on April 17th. Um, we are really trying to flip [00:42:00] conferences on their head. So, Everything there is going to be all about content. Um, there’s just too much for me to tell you at this point, but like hit me up and I will gladly talk your ear off for like 15 minutes on, on how we’re doing that.
Awesome. All right, Todd. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Check out audience plus everybody connect with Todd, like subscribe and catch us next time with digital banter. Catch you guys later.