The Transaction

Did you see Ed Norton's new company?

Yeah, yeah, that I did not expect.

Wait, you know what, though, speaking of marketing, the reason we all know it is they were pushing that into our feed.

All every day, I was getting an Ed Norton update.

That's amazing.

I just can't believe he's a SaaS founder, which is wild.

That was not on my 2024 prediction list, so yeah, yeah, after watching Fight Club, I was like, this is a guy I would trust with my board deck.

From ABM to PLG, from Meddic to med pic, the world of business is constantly evolving.

We'll cover the who, what, where, when, why, and most importantly, how you get the transaction.

I'm Matt Amundson and he's Craig Rosenberg.

Let's get started.

All right, so by the way, dude, I just want you to know we're, we need this episode so bad because we're winning all these awards as a sales show, and we're a go-to-market show.

Yeah, come on.

So, yeah, my god, no, by everyone that made us a great top sales show, thank you.

But we're more versatile than that, yeah.

So, I'm just gonna say this, is that, you know, like your Twitter game, your social game, your content game is so good that, like, I'm just, like, so it's not only that we wanna show our versatility, we only want smart people who are recognizing that the game has changed.

And dude, you are that guy.

And so, you know, I don't know, it's so funny, because when I think of you, I know SEO is at your core in content, but I think of you from a strategic perspective.

You talk about talking to founders, you talk about talking to CEOs and their overall strategy.

So you guys, I just wanna introduce everyone, the Transaction audience to JH.

John Henry Schurk, who is one of the smartest guys I know.

And if you follow, if you listen to this and follow him on the socials, you will understand what we understand.

So Buddy, thanks for coming on the show.

Craig, thanks for having me, man.

All right, so the lead question, are you ready?

Here it goes, here it goes.

So what is something that the market thinks they're doing right or is a standard best practice or methodology and they're actually wrong and they should be thinking about doing it the other way?

To you, go.

Oh man, it's a good question.

I think it's especially prevalent with when founders are involved in marketing.

And I think what it really comes from is like the Eric Ries book, The Lean Startup about having like a minimum viable product and be like small and iterative.

And oftentimes when we start working with companies and we're like, hey, we need to start broadcasting your opinion.

We need to start having a message to get out in the marketplace and really let people know why you're here and why you exist and what you're trying to change.

Everyone kind of takes this like, I wanna dip my toe in the water.

I wanna do a little test.

I wanna do like, just like, what's like the smallest amount of budget we could allocate to this to see if it works?

And the thing that I realized in my career is that bold moves get bold results.

And when you are doing these like small tests to figure out like, is this the right channel for us?

What you're really doing is like hamstringing yourself and not really seeing the full potential.

Every big win I've had in my career, there was significant risk attached to it if it went wrong, whether that would be I got canned, I would lose budget the next quarter, whatever.

There was always risk associated to like my biggest wins.

And I think what people wanna do is have big wins and minimize risk.

And I think that those two things are at odds with each other.

And I think in order to win, you have to open yourself up to risk and to loss.

And we're always trying to play it safe instead of really just trying to swing from the fences.

And that's really where I think wins come from.

Okay, but you are talking, so this is important.

I guess you could be talking in general terms about a startup, but you're actually talking about the product that marketing puts out there.

Like you're not talking about like a big risk through this new feature we're gonna invest in.

You're actually thinking about like this big risk in terms of putting yourself out there from a marketing awareness, marketing perspective.

Is that right?

Yes, it's like, oh, you know what?

We're gonna hire a writer to kind of like see if SEO works for us.

We're gonna spend a little bit of money on paid search.

We're like, oh, I'm gonna hire a ghost writer to do 10 posts on LinkedIn.

And then if I get any traction, we're gonna see if it works.

And it's like these like very small tests to see like, oh, is there a feedback loop here?

And the stuff doesn't really start working until like, it really comes from the channels being highly saturated now.

And the only way to stand out is to be unique and have something meaningful to say.

So whether that's, you know, I think like one of the worst things I see is founders like posting on social to do it as like a box to be checked.

And then wondering why the channel doesn't work for them.

Like I think you have to also play to your strengths instead of just trying to do the tried and true tactics that other startups have grown off of.

And it also comes with, I think a lot of people model after successful companies and venture runs on like kind of a 10 year timeline.

So the stuff that worked for that company five or six or seven years ago, where that executive from that company came over and joined your company and like, oh, we did this, it was really effective.

That channel has been kind of swallowed up now by every startup trying to get a piece of the pie.

And it's really about like no longer being able to just, if you're early to something, like if you're early to TikTok right now, I don't know, I've never used it, but like that's a channel that you could take market share on and develop a following on because it's less competitive.

But these channels like search or LinkedIn ads, which I already have LinkedIn ads, it seems just like LinkedIn in general, everyone's on it.

So the idea that you can just like kind of start doing it a little bit and then see meaningful results, that's not how it goes.

And I do think it's the same thing with content.

Like I think back to a piece of content that I worked on with a company called Gremlin, it was Chaos Engineering.

At the time, we knew that the market, and this was a long time ago, five, six, seven years ago, we knew at conferences that when they explained what they did, everyone would be like, oh, you mean like Chaos Monkey?

And Chaos Monkey was this open source tool that Netflix created that like shuts down Amazon EC2 servers, it just makes them fail.

And we'd be like, yeah, like that, but like way, way, way more.

And like, it's actually this whole process called Chaos Engineering, but we knew the market was geared towards Chaos Monkey.

So I worked with their marketer at the time, Austin Gunner, great guy.

And we went to work mapping out like, what would be the penultimate resource on this thing?

They hired a designer to make these like really cool graphics that were illustrated, kind of have like a, like a anime type, like feeling to them a little bit.

And then hired a Python developer to write like this with this very detailed tutorial of how to spin it up.

When all was said and done, it was around 40K of total cost, just on like the 20 or 30 pages for this guide.

And it was like different web pages and everything, but it launched and it was literally, I remember, it was like a hold on to your butts moment when it launched because if it failed, I definitely would have been canned as a consultant and marketer there, Austin, definitely would have been canned or he would have like lost the ability to do risky stuff anymore.

He would have lost the ability to be like, I have this idea, I think it'd be really great.

And if it totally falls on its face, that's you calling your shot for losing and losing a lot of credibility internally, but it worked, it did really well.

I think it drove about a third of MQLs for a quarter.

So, and it continues to be like a very powerful asset today.

It still gets traffic today, even though it's quite old by like internet standards, but that was a bet that was made and a lot of budget was allocated to it at a pretty early stage in this company's timeline.

And it led to an outsized win.

And thinking of, I'm thinking of back when I was at Docsend, I, and granted I was not always the best at like calling my shop or allocating resources, but I got lucky a few times.

I knew that there was a really big push to see more account-based marketing.

And so worked to, with the team and I was like, okay, I got an idea, pulled all the target accounts out of Salesforce.

And then I did a thing.

It was like a file that you can search in Google like file type colon.

So I did file type PDF, and then every single account that was in Salesforce and with the word case study attached to it.

So I was able to find like case studies that were just like in the wild on the internet for every target account.

And they'll like an interactive library, but I got a plugin off of like some WordPress website, which was probably risky and dumb to do most likely.

But-

But you're a risk taker.

I do like-

You're a risk taker.

But yeah, I built like an interactive library where you like mouse over it and flip it, and it would show you like a case study from like BrightEdge or Adobe or Salesforce, and these companies that we were trying to get in front of.

And it became this like big interactive library, and it was driving like 15,000 or so visits a month at its peak.

And I remember even after I was gone, I was talking to the founders of Docs and He's like, that thing still delivers.

Like that thing is like the hub of our traffic.

And it took me probably three weeks of just sitting down at my computer and going at it, whether it was like getting all the logos or coding all the cards myself.

And it wasn't like real code.

It was like baby code and anyone could have done it.

But it was something that if it totally failed, they would have looked back and been like, hey, we only have 12 months a year.

You spent one month of the year doing this.

And it was a flop.

Like you need to, you need like the ability to know when you're gonna win and when it's worth investing in, when it's worth taking that risk.

That's what I really look for.

Cause I feel like, I don't know, man, when you have a good idea, you can feel it in your bones.

Like if it's something that's gonna work, then you know what is going to work and you are not afraid to take that risk.

And that's the level of, cause I think like with this desire for risk, you also need that level of confidence.

And not BSing yourself, but true like I've been there, I've done that, I had the experience to know this is a damn good idea and I'm willing to risk it.

But yeah, no, I love to gamble.

And so it's like, I am willing to take that risk and I definitely, I don't know, to be totally honest, like if you do screw it up and you get fired, getting fired is not the end of the world.

I'd rather get fired for taking big risks than get fired for like a series of mediocre decisions.

So those were amazing stories.

You have to do that now though, right?

Cause those were older and there were huge wins.

You laid it out.

But what you said at the start is it's crowded.

The channels you're going for, although you did bring up like finding a unique channel and beating the crap out of that, which we could take second.

But like part of your message here is that, you know, you can't do chip shots.

You definitely, I have so many where they're like, we hired a writer, we're going to do a blog post each week.

And it's like 500 words or less.

And it's just like, it's not even a bunch single.

You had to bunt out and they got to double play on it.

But what you're saying is go big.

And then it sounds like, like on the example from the Gremlins, what's it called?

Gremlins.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that.

Sorry, I just, I mean, I just, it's stuck.

It's stuck.

I'm a big Gremlins two guy, by the way.

Are you?

But that content, that content piece was not just a seminal content piece.

It was like a centerpiece around how they talked to the market.

Cause the first thing you said was, you got to tell the market, you got to sell the market on your vision and mission and why you exist and those things.

So, so anyway, I sort of, I said a lot, but what I've, what I've tried to sort of sum up is like, A, those examples you gave are like, go bigger, go home approach to content, which you have to do today.

That's one.

And then, you know, number two is that go bigger, go home content is, you know, sort of stems from or becomes a centerpiece around how you talk to the market or gives you a guidance on how to do LinkedIn.

We just had Adam Robinson on, you know, that guy, you know, he's crazy on that.

Yeah, RTR, B2B or whatever.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, look, besides this controversial thing that he's involved with right now, he's doing LinkedIn a lot, but he has a way of, he's bringing ideology to market.

It's not random.

Maybe to some, it would seem like that.

It's not random acts of content, right?

He has a way of, you know, he wants to expose them to how he's thinking about the world.

Anyway, I just said a lot.

Is there any way you could react to that four-minute long quasi question slash statement?

Yeah, yeah.

So when we work with a company and we help them figure out what's your content strategy gonna be and everything, we also build a financial model for what this content, and typically we're gonna do a company being like, hey, so we've gotten an input of everything you wanna do, where you wanna go, what you wanna be found for online.

And we've typically, it factors into somewhere between 180K and 300K in terms of cost of just content production.

And I think that number really catches people off guard.

When I'm like, oh yeah, no, it is like, whether it's internal resources and like two or three full-time hires, depending on how senior or junior they are, or whether it's outsourced costs, like you are gonna be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to compete and to, not only to compete, but to accelerate to the point where you can catch up to your competitors so you have a growth trajectory that actually outpaces them.

And for us, the only way that we're able to justify that is then we take their AdWords cost, we show them like, hey, over three years time, we were to amortize this cost.

Here's what content can really do for your business.

And the thing, like social is great, but social is a rented channel, like all respect to Adam and everything.

You have to keep feeding that beast all the time because like the posts fade very quickly, but that Chaos Monkey post is still driving with very qualified traffic to Gremlin this year.

And it's, you know, year seven of that thing beyond the wild.

And they've had to update it, they have to do some upkeep over time, but it's just, it's a different type of channel that like the more you publish, the more it compounds.

And with, I think LinkedIn is like a very ephemeral channel where it's always fleeting the other way.

And yes, you do build an audience, you get more engagement, more invisibilities, more people follow you, but the posts don't last.

It's like, it's very fleeting.

So I think for us, we really, what we do is I'll go into their AdWords, I'll be like, listen, you're spending, you know, $14 a click right now.

And over three years time, we can get that down to like 22 cents.

So it's really about like long-term investment versus like short-term, like feeding the beast of like giving Google and Meta all your money.

So I think for us, the only way that we can really justify those big bets is being like, listen, yes, it is a very big bet.

Yes, it is gonna cost money.

Yes.

But over time, this is going to be much more ROI positive than just giving it to Sergey and Larry.

And so it's really a matter of like, do you want to build an owned audience of people who can come?

And like the thing, like SEO sucks, by the way, like I've been doing it for years.

It's very like formulaic, it's question and answer content, it's referential content.

The thing that's very powerful about SEO is that it continues sending you traffic after you publish it.

And I think the real value is grabbing that traffic because not like, what is it?

Like the John Miller post where he's like 5% of companies near Tam are actually in market.

So it's about like really grabbing that 95% of other people and then not having to do this like performance based content.

Like LinkedIn content is structured in a way to get engagement.

SEO content is structured in a way to like answer questions and fulfill search intent.

But if you can get beyond that, if you can use those channels to then grab people, get them to subscribe to you because they like what they're seeing on the performance content, then you can send them whatever you want.

You don't have to think about like, how is it structured for this algorithm?

How is it going to get engagement and get in front of the right people?

And there's this concept, I forget who I was stealing it from, but I really like it's called barbecue content.

And it's like, Craig, if you were at a barbecue with five, six other people, GTM leaders, what is the actual stuff that you'd be talking about versus like the stuff that gets a ton of engagement on LinkedIn or the stuff that gets a lot of traffic through organic search?

That stuff is typically either like engagement bait or very general broad topics versus like the really nuanced, fine-grained, granular stuff, same thing as fine-grained, being repetitive here.

But I think like that's really the power of these channels is you can leverage them to get away from them.

And with LinkedIn, I remember I was advising this company and they had a bunch of like, I was way out of my league here, but there was a bunch of CMOs in the room.

The thing that was interesting was how they were talking about LinkedIn when there was like an algorithm change.

They were like, oh, LinkedIn changed.

And now my visibility is down.

I was like, y'all are leaders of companies.

Y'all have a lot, like large teams.

And you are acutely aware of an algorithm change with your distribution on LinkedIn.

I thought that was very interesting to see like how senior people were and how fine tune they were.

But it's like, LinkedIn can go away in a heartbeat.

But you think about Upworthy, which was that kind of like, look at these cute puppies and how amazing they are.

Yeah, like that business died overnight when Facebook changed its algorithm.

And there was a company called Examen that did these like supplement reviews and Google just wiped them off the market overnight.

And I think when you use these channels, there's inherent risks to them.

There's inherent platform risk because you don't own it.

Like even with SEO, like, yes, you own the content, but the distribution is totally algorithmic and is rented out.

And so I think like the real value here is being able to get away from these channels and being able just to say whatever you want via email or, you know, maybe it's like a private community you have.

But that's, I think, really like the value that you can use is actually like, we're gonna build this to get away from it instead of being reliant on it forever.

And I think with paid, it's typically pretty acquisition focused and not really audience development focused.

So I think that that's again, like another thing that's in our camp as opposed to like the paid media houses camp.

So it's really about making the value of like audience and of like just the compounding effects of own content relevant over time to like a senior stakeholder.

That's really how you can kind of get that message across.

I mean, a lot to unpack there.

So I mean, if I'm hearing you correctly, channels are valuable, they're all valuable, but they all have inherent risks in terms of how much traffic you're getting from them, how much investment, how much time you have to dedicate to optimizing content for each individual channel.

But what you're really advocating for here is to own your media and own the engagement with that, with the folks in whatever that is, whether it's your blog or whether you have something that's slightly more interactive that includes like things like emails and whatnot.

And once you get people bought into your channel, your owned media, then you have a lot more flexibility into the way you can talk about them.

It would talk to them, is that correct?

Yeah, I mean, I think a great example is Jason Lemkin with Sastr.

I mean, he revered Quora, like I've never seen, I think he's like the Quora guy and he was just answering questions on Quora and now he's got an entire media company, more or less, going around Sastr with events and the email newsletters.

And he's talking about things like, yes, things that are very Googlable, like comp plans for reps and whatnot.

But he's also now talking about whatever he wants and going direct.

So are you, do you advocate for things like, you know, no free commercials here, but you know, they're starting to become more of these like kind of marketing content hubs that you can sort of put on your website to that can optimize things like video and blog posts and like are really geared towards the person, not necessarily just coming in and reading, but also subscribing and getting, you know, their updates and collating all that content that you're creating on a weekly basis into like a newsletter.

And so it feels like you're part of a community as opposed to just reading content from a brand.

Yeah, I'm an advisor for one of them.

So I'm a fan of those, but I'd say, I'm also not a fan of like one size fits all.

I really think we're lucky enough to be able to work with companies in a lot of different areas.

And I think like I can't, like for certain like DevRel audiences, I just don't see them react in the same way.

Like selling marketing to marketers is fairly easy.

But for selling, you know, marketing to a DevOps crowd, very difficult.

So I think it's really like the medium is the message in a sense.

But I also think companies need to play to their strengths.

So if you're in like, if you are, if you have people inside that can write, it can really create some meaningful stuff.

Like I think there's a company called Sakura and they do the best, like private market valuation write ups I've ever seen.

That's what I want from them.

I don't need video from them.

I don't really want video from them.

I want to understand like a detailed write up of how ramp grew the way it did and why it has the valuation that it does.

Other folks that are entertaining, I do want that write up from them.

I do want that video from them.

So I think it's really about like, I guess, like almost in a sense, like company channel fit and really, and there's a whole thing of like hiring influencers and it does that make sense for your business, but I think it's, you got to find your own footing that's unique to you.

And also not going to be easily duplicated.

I don't like, and apologies for anyone that's listening, that's building this, like the automated newsletter thing, that's not for me.

I think anything where it's two clicks and it's done is like not really a moat.

So I'd want to do something that's a bit harder to duplicate than just like, hey, we got blog posts, we ship them out, we send them, they're good to go.

Like I think everything intelligent right now that I read typically comes through like a sub stack or some, someone of their competitors, like the intelligent content I get comes through email.

So that's what I'm really looking for.

Like I have stuff that I'm waiting to read that is really interesting that I wouldn't find necessarily through other channels because it's so finely attuned to me, whether that's about like different types of attribution models and data warehousing, or it's about companies private market valuations, like I said, with Sakura.

Those things are unique to the company and it's part of like their own media mix.

And I think so it's really, I don't know if you necessarily need to have, I think email is a great way to send things out.

But I do think the idea of looking at like a Hulu or like Netflix style experience that makes sense.

There was a lot of companies trying to do that 10 years ago.

And the issue is, is like, all we were producing were PDFs.

So it was boring.

But now it's like how easy it is to create video.

Yes, I'd say Apollo, just they have Apollo Academy, they just released that.

That is impressive.

Someone on their team shared it with me, really, really impressive.

I think the stuff that Audience Plus is building, who I advise, their media hubs, also really impressive, the whole gearing towards subscribing and then opting in with like sort of audience analytics.

That's all very interesting to me.

But I think like the bigger issue is creating something that's worth people's attention and being able to do that repeatedly.

And so I don't really care so much about the tools as I care about like the substance of what's being broadcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you so if you're let's go let's use Adam since everyone knows as an example.

So if you are advising him, you'd say, Look, you're doing great on LinkedIn, but you're trying you're abusing LinkedIn.

Right.

So that you don't have to use LinkedIn.

Right.

So that so you would tell him, Hey, like you got to bring what you're doing here to your to your web property and get them captured.

So you're you're there now.

But your goal should be to have them on your website.

Is that is that I got that right?

Is that kind of the idea?

Because LinkedIn is never ending.

Yeah.

I had this great post the other day.

I had like 300.

For me, it was a lot.

It was like it tons of comments is going great, then it just died.

It stopped.

Now I got to go do another one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I got like a tangible example that I can give you.

We work with this company, Fanoa, and they do international tax automation for B2B.

Not exactly like the most exciting space in this guy about I'm always into that.

Invoicing and digital reporting.

So there's a guy on their team, Aiko, needs to run tax technology at Uber.

He is legit.

He is a dude in the space, but he's also funny and he creates memes, whether it's like he took like a clip from 40 year old Virgin about like using all these big words when Kevin Hart's like about to lose it in the store and he like posted that meme, but it also led to their like terminology guide for international taxation.

So he like leverages memes, leverages LinkedIn and then sends people to this like referential content that's helpful.

So he finds he kind of plans like being and if you look at the comments, it's like head of indirect tax at Activision, head of indirect tax at Wayfair.

And it's like, you know, he doesn't get a ton of comments because the TAM for this product is so small and the buyer is so specific, but he's getting the right people engaging with his stuff and leaving these feeds, which is hard to get people to do because the feeds are like, it is like pulling a slot machine, like this feeds, like you can literally refresh and be like, Oh, give me new stuff.

I'm bored.

And I think people kind of go there just to fill up their day.

So to pull people off the feed is like a real challenge.

And I think it's easier just to like be on the feed, keep racking up engagement.

And yes, some people will reach out.

Some people like, you'll definitely gain brand awareness, but there's really something to be said about pulling people off the feed onto your website and with Fanoa specifically, they do have this like evergreen content that's referential.

But they also because it's a regulated space, they publish breaking news about regulation changes.

So they pull people.

They're like, Hey, we got this breaking news.

You gotta go check it out.

And then they actually get trying to get you to sign up for a newsletter that keeps feeding you breaking news whenever it happens.

And that's the way that they can actually take people off the feed because like, this is the information that you need to do your job.

And it makes you more effective at your job to be in the know.

So that's like their unique pitch.

Like does Finoa need a media hub?

Maybe one day right now a newsletter that just tells people when like, you know, Malaysia's tax rate change for whatever you're shipping over there change.

That is what they need right now.

And that's what they're able to leverage right now.

And I'd say I'd argue it a pretty successful way.

That's amazing.

Yeah, so it's we talked about this concept a little bit last week with Adam, right?

Like it's a concept of the content market fit, right?

Which is like, it's not a one size fits all your audience.

There's a specific type of content that your audience is really going to lean into.

And you got to figure out what that is.

And then you got to hammer it.

Right.

But so I'm just but like we started this with like home run content.

So I guess we're doing all of it is where distribution matters.

But I'd say like for Fanoa, when we worked with them, we won, had their tax experts actually create the content and you read it, it is legit.

Like I have had people compare it to competitors and like this is so much more helpful.

It's detailed, it's clearly written by people who know what they're talking about, but we published three pages for every country that they were operating in and it's only expanded over time.

It was a 90 plus day project where people who were literally like working on the product side or in the tax technology side were pulled off to do marketing.

Like it was rare that we were able to get that level of buy-in, massive bet.

And if it failed, they wouldn't still be working with us.

But it did work.

It is effective.

It does drive traffic from people who have a fit for the product.

So it's again, it's about these like big bets, whether it's collaboration, but yeah, they also have a guy who does some like funny, goofy stuff on LinkedIn and helps distribution.

But I'd say with NOAA, part of the core of their content strategy was a really big bet that did pay off.

And I'm not going to sit here and pretend like everything I've done is like a home run.

Like I've definitely shot some bricks in my day.

But I think that comes with the territory.

So, yes, there is a little bit of everything.

There still needs to be distribution.

But people aren't going to notice your safe bets.

Or if they do, you're getting really lucky.

I love it.

By the way, shooting bricks.

I need that one.

This is great.

I always say air balls.

Air balls always feel like the most embarrassing.

By the way, in this thing, am I the funny, goofy guy on LinkedIn?

The funnel-holic?

Yeah, I mean, I've always capitalized on fun.

I don't know about goofy, though.

Goofy is the wrong word.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Inappropriate, I guess, according to you, Matt.

That's one of them.

But that's more in private than in a public channel.

Thank God.

Thank God.

Thank God.

All right.

So one thing I wanted to talk about then is when I've talked to you and I've seen your stuff on Twitter, so I know we're trying to not just be a sales show, but you do account for the sales and you're coming in from content SEO, marketing, but it sounds like I've seen you sort of talking about it or writing about how this relates to sales.

I wonder if you don't mind just expanding on that for a minute, particularly around everything we just talked about.

I mean, we're all only here for pipeline.

We're here for pipeline and closed one deals.

Any marketing team that's just there to, I don't know, I think as much as people are like, yeah, you got to create an own audience and become a media company or whatever, at the end of the day, you got to get paid.

And I think that the feeds have broken some brains, I'm going to be real direct.

And people love like equating eyeballs with value and eyeballs with revenue.

And those two things really don't line up.

And I think there's almost a way for a company to be so out there, so demanding of attention that they almost get themselves written off.

I think there needs to be like a little bit of seriousness and like clearly like, no, we're a company operating.

We're not just here to entertain you.

And there needs to be an exchange of value and getting close to the product and you understanding how to work that product into your marketing, maybe not in the most top of funnel stuff, but you need to be able to pull people into like your actual into your funnel and then convert them into pipeline.

And if your marketing isn't going to do that, if your marketing is just you getting attention online, it's not going to do anything.

I'd say I think the HubSpot platform has come a really long way in the last five, seven years or so.

The revenue attribution there is not perfect, but it's pretty damn good.

And if you know how to use the reporting, you can really see like, hey, these people, they started checking out this stuff and then they've moved to deals.

And I think attribution has gotten so and it's maybe it's not like the I don't want to get caught up on like what models are you using or what to look at.

But I'd say like if you're using HubSpot or if you have something like visible or dream data or ramp metrics, you can tie together your own media, like the activity that you're doing to deals in the pipeline.

And if you're not doing that, if all you're looking at is like form fills, I remember when I first went, I used to, I started out my life in an agency world and then I went in house.

I was a WP Engine.

And I remember when I was like in an agency side, I was like, Oh, you see all these, these goals we're getting in Google Analytics.

We're just ripping it up.

And then I moved over in house and WP Engine.

I was like, Oh, it's literally people like fake names, people who don't respond, don't show up to calls.

Like it's total bullshit.

And then you actually find out that there is maybe, you know, depending on the market you're in, this was like enterprise WordPress hosting is what we were getting like the larger leads for it.

There was a lot of like just totally unqualified people being like, Oh, I'm enterprise.

It's me and three other guys in a, in a shop writing about like a dog encyclopedia, um, which would actually do a lot of traffic, maybe the worst fit.

But, um, the, uh, but like, very tied to revenue.

You need like every marketer I'd say, I always try to align myself with the sellers in the organization, understand how they were selling the product, trying to use the same language that they use on sales calls in our marketing content so that it's not like when, if the, like, I think if the marketing and the sales dialogue are totally divorced, it's going to be kind of a, uh, an abrasive experience for that lead to be given like one type of entrance into the company.

And then when it actually times it gets sold, they're told very, very here, it's a totally different set of vernacular.

So I think really alignment is, is not just important.

It's almost like disingenuous or doing the company a disservice if you're, all you're doing is like racking up eyeballs and trying to get a lot of attention.

But none of that leads to hype and necessarily pipe that is primed to close.

The what I mean, like, but what about content distribution via sales?

Is that something that or change you guys even think about, or is it just.

What do you mean by that, Craig?

Well, I mean, like, for example, to me, one of the most targeted ways to get content into the right hands is instead of sales and SDR is telling them that you're going to be in town and you'd love to see if I could buy you a coffee.

You say, Hey, have you have you seen our latest international tax guide for this country?

You know what I mean?

Or, you know, like the other day, a guy sent me an email and it had all of his products in the body and a data.

I mean, it was ridiculous.

I know everyone makes, I'm not in to bad SDR email porn, but like, I mean, it was once again, just poor use of content, whereas like, you know, isn't there a strategy here where one of the best channels is actually the people that are reaching out to other people?

I, I agree with that.

I'd say one thing that we've had really a lot of, it's been a very effective for sales distribution is battle cards, essentially, we structure them as like competitor pages.

But again, I think those are things that like really need to be like bigger bets that are written by people who really know what they're talking about.

Like we work with this company, Superblocks, and they have a, they compete with Retool and they have a Retool alternatives guide.

And if you look at it, it is clearly like the best alternative guide or the best buyer's guide in the market for internal tooling.

And the reason why is because it was written by their product manager and not someone who just like looked at a bunch of G2 crowd review, G, it's now, it's no longer G2 crowd, just G2 reviews and like was like, Oh, this person said this and this person said that and they've got an 89 and they've got a 62.

It's like, Hey, here's all the things that you're going to try and do with this product.

Here's all the things we support.

Here's the things that we don't.

Here's when you're a good fit for Retual.

Here's when you're a good fit for us.

Here's when you're a good fit for AppSmith.

And he gives a breakdown of the market that comes from deep expertise.

And if you gave that to someone who was trying to like narrow down their consideration set and figure out what's the right thing for me, it's a really helpful piece of content.

So I find that when sales reps can give people that like basically ungated sales and implement material that also happens to like rank and search and be on the website, that can be pretty darn effective.

I do like that quite a bit.

I think the top of funnel stuff can be used to create conversations, but I like when sales can really harness a piece of content that can help people make a decision in their final stage of their process.

And I think that is a great use of it.

No, I love that.

I mean, it's a little bit of a back to the future, right?

Because this was stuff that worked.

I know you mentioned HubSpot, but this was stuff that worked really well at Marketo, like, in the early 2010s.

It's not just like, hey, here's a definitive guide to lead scoring, although that brought in tons and tons of people.

And it sort of established us as a leader on how to do lead scoring and lead nurturing.

And there was a bunch of other definitive guides that John and team wrote.

But also our buyer's guide.

I mean, that was a big deal.

It was like, here's when is, you know, we had things in there.

And I don't think we ever shot ourselves in the foot and said, here's an opportunity for you to go buy HubSpot or Eloqua ever.

But definitely it was like, we set up really clear guidelines on when was the right time to be migrating off of like your ESP and onto a marketing automation platform.

And people found that stuff really, really useful.

And it was deeply product driven.

So it was like, hey, like, not just hyperbolic, if you want to be able to do this, this and this, but it's at the moment when you go from this place to this place, you're no longer going to be able to see the same benefits from an email service provider.

And you're going to need to transition onto a marketing automation platform.

If you want to do things like, and Craig and I make fun of people who talk about this all the time.

If you want to do things like bring sales and marketing teams together, they need to have visibility into what the marketing team is doing and what better location for that is inside CRM, et cetera, right?

Putting together stuff like that really got the attention of our buyers.

It was deep subject matter expertise, and we were lucky enough that one of our co-founders was also our CMO and John, but he understood the architecture and he understood the problems of the buyer in such a real way, where they were like, okay, great.

I have a milestone.

At some point, I want to get to this place, and it will be at that moment when I give Marketo a call or I fill out their form to see a demo of the product.

Okay, well, that's a good example, then why, wait, hold on really quick, JH., but isn't the truth that that doesn't, like, if you listen to John now, definitive guides don't work anymore.

Agreed.

No, but that's not what JH is saying.

I mean, he's saying definitive guides do work.

Well, I think what he's saying is like, maybe the tactic of a definitive guide in a super long form piece of content isn't as effective now as it used to be, but the idea that you have this really valuable piece of content in whatever media or format it comes out in that captures people's attention so that they're coming to you, I think is still valid.

It's just the sort of old playbook of it needs to be 42 pages and it needs to have an analyst quote every seven pages and a customer story every 12 pages, et cetera.

That's broken, but the concept of something that people can really learn from isn't broken.

I agree.

I also think that it depends on the maturity of the category.

This is a new category and people do not know how to buy it and they do not know how to leverage it.

That content is way more valuable than if you were trying to start some new marketing automation platform around right now and everyone already understands how to use it, what it integrates with, how to leverage it.

The newer the category, the more useful information about how to leverage the category is.

I think one space right now that's really interesting to me is internal developer portals and platforms.

They are two separate things, but they are all about getting rid of tribal knowledge and actually helping developer organizations centralize and make the best use of resources, be the most productive.

These are really new technologies that haven't existed before, and enterprise folks do not know how to leverage them, if they're even going to be useful, how to roll them out, how to get them adopted.

So that information is really useful for this emerging category.

Whereas yes, like the how to use a marketing automation platform, that's old hat.

So I think as the technology comes to market and gets more in demand, that content becomes more and more useful, but it has sort of a bell curve of usefulness and kind of dies down over time as it becomes just like a table stakes category for the for the for companies.

Yeah, but you could but you could also you guys could both be right, which is I just want to make sure like the definitive H is right.

Yeah.

Well, I'm just trying to make you not feel as bad for your bad.

Thank you.

Thank you.

But you threw a softball to me.

I knocked it out.

I mean, it was like the easiest pitch I've ever had.

Like, no, but actually, so because look, like the so so you couldn't do the definitive guide model, which is big.

But you're right.

Like basically, Matt, what you're saying is people followed a formula and they assumed it would work.

In my opinion, it was also incredibly uninteresting, the things that people were creating.

So I go back to what was said in the start, which is there in I know this is old school, but the truth is we broke it, which was unique, big, unique point of view.

Right.

So for example, we do a lot of work in the robotics space.

That's Greenfield, man.

You could write like they're just crazy.

There's no, you know, like you would have to read the most boring book to understand it.

There's Greenfield for their own content to bring a unique point of view and show all the different ways that, you know, there's a lot of really great potential examples that would work.

Right.

But like, you know, so I feel like, um, I think it all comes back together, which is like you, I would worry if you take the incremental gain approach to content and you take that approach to the, a big guide, you will lose and lose that you'll actually, for going small, you'll lose bit.

Yeah.

So it costs a lot to create that thing.

Go.

So when I think, yeah, go ahead, please know you're, you're the guests and likely have a better take than me significantly better.

Better than Matt than me.

Well, I just wanted to touch on, and Craig, no, we love your takes, but I want to touch on the ultimate guide thing because I think I did a disservice by skipping over that.

I think companies used to act like attention was a given and that people had intention span.

But again, like the feeds have kind of broken our ability to do anything longer than 30 seconds.

So two big things that we really stress at my agency, one is time to value.

So making the value clear the second the person lands on the page of what they're going to get out of this and why they're there for it.

And the other thing is sort of like skimble and scannable.

So I don't think anyone's sitting down to read a 4000 word guide unless it is they are deeply engaged and it's something they need to do to do their job.

Most people want to like I can't tell you the amount of ebooks I've read and then never or to be downloaded and never read like there's just a very limited amount of time to get stuff done in the day and even more limited amount of people's attention that you can grab.

So structuring content.

So that one it says upfront, here's what you're going to get if you stick with me and two here's going to get right to the part that matters for you.

That is critical.

I wouldn't want to do a 40 page ultimate guide.

I want to break it up into different sections based off of different problems that you solve that chaos monkey post, which is like 40 pages, it's 40 different web pages.

Each page aligns to a major thing that someone's trying to do whether that's learn about the use case, have a tutorial to spin it up, find alternatives, do a deep dive so they can really like master the technology itself.

There is, it's sectioned out by jobs to be done as opposed to expecting someone's going to read the entire thing.

And I think making your content work so that someone can jump in at any given point and start getting value out of it immediately is critical to succeed today versus creating something that you have to go back 5, 6, 7 pages to understand what you're even reading.

Everything needs to be, we call it staccato content, where it's like everything stands on its own.

There are a lot of jargon out here, but everything can just kind of be sort of containerized and be consumed individually instead of having to go through the entire thing to get any point of understanding.

So content marketing is not dead?

I, I don't think so.

I think that's what we're doing right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's changing.

Yeah.

Big time.

So, well, actually not big time.

It's a, it's actually from what I'm getting from this conversation from you and Matt, it's actually, it's changing, but with, but there's a lot of roots of what we knew about years ago.

I think we, what we got wrong was we beat the crap out of something that worked 10 years ago.

A lot of the elements are the same.

Yeah.

What else in SEO are people thinking about wrong?

I think that people are very afraid of, it's called a SGE or the search generative experience is this new sort of AI thing that Google is testing right now.

And they think, oh, it's going to be the death of search.

And one, the models still need to be trained and the models still need to spit out information.

So I don't care if it's not 10 blue links anymore that people click on.

I think a lot of the waves of free traffic, like thousands and thousands of visits every month for like one blog post that you wrote, that might be coming to an end.

Google might be shortcutting our answers there.

But if someone just needs like a really quick definition that Google can put into the search results, I don't think they were going to be a great visitor for you anyway.

There's a chance I'm wrong.

But I think when people want to deeply engage with someone's content, their ideas, they're still going to get to that website.

Like we still see, we're starting to track now, like perplexity and open AI and these various sources, the conversion rates on them are pretty high.

Like when people click through from open AI into your website, the chances of converting are stronger than, I'd say the conversion rates typically over seen, even though they're small numbers right now, are better than Google.

But I think we've kind of gotten like high on the hog with free traffic from Google for ranking for like very top of funnel, what is type things that traffic generally doesn't matter unless you're able to run like best in class demand gen to capture top of funnel visits and then, and then nurture them over time to being pipe.

But I think people are very afraid of where Google is going and that everything's going to change.

The models are going to eat this all up.

People still need information online.

You can be the thing that trains the model and gets out the responses that you want.

It's a developing very early stage.

But this idea that there's always been, since I've been doing this, I'm coming up on like 15 years now.

Every three years, someone tells us it's all over.

I think that Google is in some trouble.

But I think the idea of like getting information online is around for the long term.

And I'm not worried about what interface it's coming out of.

I'll move.

I'm adaptable.

My whole team is.

But I think that there's a lot of talk around Jason Cohen from WP Engine.

Great guy.

I used to work there.

Brilliant leader.

He was talking about like, I don't know if I'd invest in search because without things are changing, it's just a very unstable channel right now or unpredictable channel.

It's like, yeah, maybe doing basic what is content or looking at some tool that tells you how exactly to structure your content.

And that stuff is on the chopping block, but that's because the search results are getting awful.

But I think it needs to be original, have a unique point of view, kind of buck what's called the sea of sameness trend where everything in Google is the exact same.

Still have from Will Reynolds this year, another brilliant guy I used to work for.

But if you go to Google and you look at how to generate pipeline, it's like 10 articles that are exactly the same thing.

And I think you need to buck that trend and be unique and get engagement that way versus just copying everyone else.

Again, it's about these safe bets of like, oh, we're going to use this tool.

This tool is going to tell us how to write this content.

We're going to publish this content.

It's going to get traffic.

And then our website is going to act like this machine that harvests great leads out of the Internet.

And it just works like magic.

And that's not really how it goes.

Like there's a very clear connective tissue from like the content you put out the door to the leads that you get in to the pipe that gets generated to the pipe that closes.

And it's you can't see that if it's sort of like these ambiguous sort of marketing functions that just work to create this stuff, there's a good chance it's not working the way you want it.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Transaction.

Craig and I really appreciate the fact that you've listened all the way to the end.

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