B2B SaaS startups: How to create better content

all right so let's talk about content this is a topic that a lot of startup Founders and marketers struggle with they struggle to be consistent they struggle to come up with ideas and they struggle to to stand out so that's going to be my objective for this video is just to talk about content and and how you can stand out and how you can avoid being an influencer who you know only knows how to get attention and be a dancing monkey on on the internet to being a business operator someone who can get attention but also knows how to convert that attention into future cash flows that's the aim here always tying it back to you know your product's value proposition so we experience business outcomes now why should you care about content in the first place well there's a couple of reasons you should um let me figure out how to use this thing so the number one reason why you should care about content is because it benefits from the eighth wonder of the world compounding um so a concept that you should be Familiar of you know in the world of uh investing where you know you have let's say you put money in um an investment fund and you you know the principal uh collects interest but where you really experience compounded interest is where you're topping up that principle so the principal is gaining interest but also the the extra money you're adding in also gains interest and so you get this kind of Snowball Effect and so a lot of marketing channels are very uh so if we look here we have time and we have results so a lot of marketing channels um if we look at say cold email or any kind of cold outbound uh even ads they're very linear right um like if you want to get more results with ads you just you just spend more money or you know you you can increase your conversion rates you can increase efficiency you know uh the conver like your click-through rate or uh metric lower down the funnel like the conversion rate on landing pages or offer Pages or you know the conversion rate between let's say a demo to an opportunity or an opportunity to a customer but broadly speaking they are very linear if you want more outputs you have to give more inputs very very linear um whereas and sorry something to mention about these as well is and why these are often more favorable is because the the time to result is far quicker with say cold outbound and ads like within ads with ads um depending on a few variables you can start seeing results you know within a few weeks you're not going to you're not going to really find that point of efficiency until maybe two to three months in but you're going to get you're going to start seeing results like right away similar of cold outbound um as long as your domains are prepared correctly you know how to write copy you have something the market wants you're going to get results within weeks and so that's why these are more favorable whereas with content there's a bit of a slow start you know you're you spend weeks sometimes months posting and it just sound it just feels like you're you're poting into a black hole you feel like a loser you know nobody's uh engaging with your content your friends are sharing it in the group chat saying what you doing you cringe bag posting content on LinkedIn and YouTube and all this kind of stuff and and that's this is why most people give up and um you know uh say content never worked for them so it's it's a slow start but eventually what you start to experience is this exponential uh growth curve and this is the power of of compounding over time you know um let's say and your content has to be good to achieve this um but let's say you know you start to build that audience people who resonate with your message um and then what happens is the previous uh pieces of content that you've posted you know like the principal if if we refer back to the uh the concept of investing you know they start getting more views but then because you keep topping it up with new posts you know they continue to get views as well So eventually you reach this uh inflection point where you know the momentum switches from you know you having to push this Boulder uphill you know post every day for weeks and months with nobody with not getting much feedback to this inflection point where the momentum changes and then it feels like you know the momentum is pulling you rather than you having to push um and that's all due to compounding because the the more content you put out there the The Wider your surface are there the more people that are going to see it and your old content is uh continuously getting watched as well so it's really really powerful and this is like one of my favorite things about um content and really what this is is leverage right like I can post um let's say you know one piece of content and it can reach you know thousands of of people my drawing is uh steadily declining here but I can post one piece of content that can reach 10 of thousands of people and I've done this hundreds of thousands of people and that's leverage right um it's it's really hard to get to that kind of scale with a cold outbound you can um but that you really do hit this um this uh ceiling and also with cold outbound there's especially in the world of B2B there's also considerations that when you get to that scale you know burning through your Tam isn't really a good thing especially if you're going to be in this game for a long time and you know there's considerations there about how that negatively affects your brand if you're just you know um just absolutely railing through your Tam all the time whereas content it's very I wouldn't say it's easy but you can you can definitely hit that kind of scale um without you know being a nuisance very easily due to leverage you know one piece of content you can influence the minds of hundreds of thousands of people if you do it right but you just need to get to this inflection point here whereas most people um give up here and honestly this sort of um period here can take months it could take years honestly it depends um who you're targeting how good your content is how quick your feedback loop is and and how quick you are to react to to new feedback um like really to get to hear what your posting on day one is going to be very very different to what you're posting uh up here and that's just because you've been improving you've been listening to feedback you know what people like you don't uh you know what they don't like and you've iterated your content now another Factor here is this isn't just a given you have to actually be good um that's kind of the the I guess the the secret here um I recently put a model together um for a workshop that I did on content and frequency is um a massive variable when it comes to content marketing I did this for LinkedIn specifically I only work in B2B and uh LinkedIn is one of the best platforms if if you're working in B2B Undisputed um and so we have the the blue um Trend here which I think is uh two posts per week so if you were doing two posts per week on LinkedIn over a a 12-month period this is the kind of growth you would um achieve so we've got time here and we've got total Impressions um uh on the left and I think we this model was based on 10 to 15% month over Monon um um improvements which is very conservative and then in red we have five posts per week and so we can just see the like the Delta here especially if we get to like here you know between somebody who posts two times a week and somebody who posts five times a week so frequency is really really important you know just posting one time a week for um a year you're going to be in a far different position to somebody who's posting five times per week so frequency is another um factor in here now before I get into it if you're like uh this your if this is your first time watching one of my YouTube videos just a quick intro on myself so um and like you know who am I to talk about content well I I do a lot of content like here's my analytics from LinkedIn from the last seven days and something really important to remember here is that um I haven't been doing a lot of content recently I've just finished a a 10ish week intensive work Sprint focusing mostly on product as I haven't been doing a lot of marketing and so these are my Impressions on LinkedIn in the last seven days uh nearing on you know 10,000 followers and what's really important to remember here is that I I have a very Niche audience I only target B2B startup Founders and marketers I don't do Mass Market stuff I don't Market to people who want to start their first business or I don't Market to people in e-commerce I don't post content like you know here's my top 10 productivity books or 25 lessons I learned when I turned 25 I don't post about that stuff if you look at my content content and you can go to my LinkedIn profile very very Niche and targeted content mostly utility based content um and so my audience is very very Niche um and you know I get uh over a dozen inbounds per month um just for my content and then a quick intro on myself so I've been working in B2B SAS for the last five years um uh I started off in-house and then I founded my own marketing agency consultancy where I exclusively worked with B2B SAS companies and I've helped companies go from zero to over 10 million Revenue uh mostly bootstrap so I don't I don't work with e-commerce companies I don't help people make their first $110,000 online I'm not in the online money space I exclusively work with B2B SAS company so everything I talk about when it comes to content or just anything in my content is uh related to to B2B SAS and it's you know as a result of thousands of hours of firsthand practical experience in the industry so you know I'm not just uh jumping on any kind of trend here so number one of the most important things I think when it comes to content is you need what's called a a narrative um probably a a mistake let's actually get rid of this and let's see if we can get some text here this is actually my first time using this for a YouTube video so bear with me we're keeping it raw here so narrative um now you might ask me what the hell is a narrative I've talked about a narrative before in um in previous pieces of content there's a couple of reasons why you need a narrative okay number one is stand out okay so what's happened over the last 12 to 18 months is everyone and their dog has realized that content is powerful you know it gives people leverage and you get to um benefit from compounding and so what that means is more people are posting content um I've seen this happen you know happened on Twitter Twitter's kind of falling off now um it's happened on LinkedIn uh a lot over the last 12 months everyone's posted on LinkedIn people who who've never posted before and now it's happening more on on YouTube because um you know as more competition enters these platforms and people are looking for new platforms and I think YouTube is more difficult to uh to do and then you also sprinkle in the fact that you know chat gbt was released well the barrier to entry for creating content um has has just lowered massively and so there's just a lot of noise uh you know if if you um spend some time on LinkedIn you'll see this you know there's these AI generated comments uh there's these posts that just are are garbage and so there's just a lot of noise and so it's really important to to stand out you know for people to people are craving for um human interaction because everything just feels automated everything everyone's optimizing for efficiency um you know how can I just post as much content as possible with with um as as least effort as possible and so we're losing that human element um and so having a narrative is really really important for for standing out the second reason is relevancy okay so I'll I'll talk about um you know how how you should consider sort of uh targeting in your content in in a few minutes but relevancy is really really important for a couple of reasons one we're not trying to be an influencer here you shouldn't try to we the the the aim of the game here isn't Fame it's not to be uh a celebrity it's to um grow a profitable business that can generate cash flows and hopefully you have some kind of liquidity event or or maybe it's just cash flow you're optimizing for here right we're we're doing this um for for income we're not doing this for fame and so your content needs to somehow tie back to business outcomes it needs to tie back to the value proposition of your product otherwise um you know you're going to just get loads of likes you're going to get loads of comments you're going to get loads of views and Impressions but you're not going to get many conversions and you know just just scroll through Linkedin or Twitter and you'll see these posts right you know um like and comment on this post if you want 100 chat gbt prompts I've created and they'll get so many views and Impressions and and comments but I can guarantee that you know people who are posting that content aren't making a lot of money because it's just it's it's it's Mass market right if the a man who chases two rabbits catches none okay if your content isn't specific to uh a niche audience then it's just not going to resonate with anyone and so sure you know people are lazy people want the shortcut they'll they want those prompts they'll engage with your content but they're not going to buy from you especially if you're selling something High ticket that's you know thousands of dollars per year tens of thousands of dollars per year these aren't the type of people um that you want um and so relevancy means that your content is relevant to a niche audience and it it's linked to to their fears their desires their wants and it's also relevant to your products value proposition so your content is eventually going to um Downstream lead to business outcomes it might not it might not immediately but eventually that's kind of the what we're optimizing for here now you might be asking what the hell is a narrative like how how do I create a narrative so really a narrative is just an overarching framework that gives structure just so you're not you know posting random content like here's my favorite productivity books when you know you're a B2B startup founder um who's struggling to grow your your narrative ensures that you know um you're you're staying relevant there's actually to to hit this home there's a a concept I like to talk about called the line of relevancy so if you imagine this uh line here is uh relevancy and the further you stray away from this line the weaker the potency the weaker the impact of your content and so you always want to ensure that your content is relevant to the problems you're solving to um to your product to to what your target audience cares about the the more you do that the the more loyal uh your audience is going to be you know the the more you're going to convert start rining away from this and you know going into the to the Realms of Lifestyle content and productivity and like Mass Market stuff that you know people love and um you know you'll get loads of Engagement but it's not you're you're risking that um you know you're sacrificing business outcomes if you do that hope that makes sense let me know if you want me to to Riff on that a bit more so a couple of elements of a narrative um so number one is uh like a change or um problem so a good narrative is revolves around these so what do I mean by change well there's always change happening um but sometimes you know sometimes it's micro stuff sometimes it's macro stuff so if I look at um the SAS industry uh specifically so and I talk about this in my content right this is like a a meta example of a narrative and practice I talk a lot about you know in previous pieces of content I'll actually link one in the description about the Golden Era of SAS um so this was a period of like 10 or 11 years where um you know due to low no interest rates um Founders could raise a lot of money um and you know companies were being valuated at extreme valuations and some Founders were you know reaching that unicorn status and you know hitting hitting the jackpot getting those big exit and so there was this kind of go old rush to to start a tech SL you know SAS company raise loads of money and um hopefully reach that exit but what this did is it it people were incentivized Founders companies like employees were incentivized by these short-term behaviors right all they cared about was that end goal that IPO or that exit and so they were just doing whatever they could to grow um and so that meant a lack of efficiency they were AC acquiring customers for for too much um they were running uh unprofitably and so they were just kind of ignoring all the fundamentals of creating a good business and so that was like the Golden Era of SAS um which eventually led to the market crash of 2021/2022 and so we've now entered this uh new phase in the SAS industry which I call efficient growth so we've gone from like growth at all costs I will spend whatever um to to acquire a customer you know Silly short-term tactics hiring the wrong people to now okay how can we do more with less um where now the conversation has changed to okay how can I you know be leaner how can I you know avoid hiring large sales teams how can we increase um you know the outputs of my existing team members how can we acire acquire customers more efficiently okay and so that's like a change that has happened in the Sass industry and that's something I talk about a lot because it's relevant people care about it it affects um SAS Founders you know it affects their um their their multiples their you know exit potential how they acquire customers and so it's it's hyper hyper relevant so you need to think what is what is a change that has happened in your industry it could be uh industry specific or it could just be you know more um you know related to the economy or or what's going on in the world you know the the golden AOS SAS or the market crash was also related to what's going on in the world you know war in Europe and um pandemics and all this kind of stuff and so it wasn't just specific to SAS right everyone felt the crunch but the point I'm trying to make here is that I hooked I've hooked my narrative onto a change that's happened because it's relevant everyone has felt it in their bones people have you know uh lost relatives and you know businesses have gone under and hundreds of thousands of employees have been laid off in the tech space people understand this and so that's a key part of my my narrative is I I talk about the impact of that and how you know um people were just incentivized by short-term behaviors and and tactics and you know look where it has ended up right you know lots of people lost their jobs and it it's just um hyper inefficient and so I've hooked my narrative around like a change that's happened now if you can't think of a change then a good narrative can also be related to a problem what is wrong with you know the the status quo um what I mean by the status quo is like that the normal like um what are people what have people been doing for the last 5 to 10 years just because they've been told it's the right thing to do um you know could you form a narrative around that like could you challenge the status quo and bring a fresh perspective in um and this is just going to give substance to your narrative um it's going to give meaning you can always relate it back to to that thing so I everything I talk about like so this is a meta example like I'm talking about content here the reason why I'm talking about content is because it's an efficient um method of acquiring customers and why do people care about efficient methods of acquiring customers well because um because of the golden ER of SAS you know people have are burnt they they you know they know that they can't raise Capital as as easy as they used it before and so they're looking for more efficient ways to grow and so it all kind of uh ties back up to to the narrative that that I have here so really important to focus on a change that's happening micro or macro or just a big problem that you're seeing the next thing is um existing solutions that that um are available so great writing um Harry aged five writing so what existing Solutions are there in your market so this could be you know again this is aimed for startup Founders and marketers what existing products are in your product category you know who else is operating in your space um what capabilities do they have what features do they have what is their narrative you know what are they what knowledge are they spreading to the market what information are they giving uh what promises and claims are they making what are the existing Solutions in your market so you need to be aware of this because if you're competing with these with these companies then you need to know um you know why you're different and so that brings us on to the next one which is um I guess let's just call it like why are you unique so why is your solution better faster and cheaper than existing Solutions and when I say cheaper I don't necessarily mean you know just copy your competitors and charge less money cheaper is also a function of speed if you can because we're we're B to be here right so if you can get somebody to the end result 10 20 30% quicker well there's a cost saving attached to that and so therefore uh inherently your product is is cheaper so it doesn't just mean like undercut the pricing of your competitors that's not a good strategy um so you need to know existing Solutions so you know what is the status quo what are people using what are the um the the shortcomings of of those products maybe they're good and so you know you need to spice your product up a bit but you need to be aware of what are people using today um this you know products aside it might just be you know uh current methods maybe they're not using products they're just they've got internal methods and methodology that they're using to to solve problems or or to get to some kind of outcome it doesn't necessarily have to be products but you just need to know what is the current way of of doing things and this is going to help you create some common enemies in your content right uh polarization is really really good in content like um just showing people give creating this common enemy that you can throw rocks at and um it's a really good tactic to to create this tribe to to give people something to throw blame at so they don't have to blame themselves um because nobody likes to blame themselves and be wrong um and so what we can do is we can create a common enemy instead that you know we can throw rocks at and we can we can use as this uh chain agent to to Really s to to build this desire within your target audience so that's existing solution and so why are you unique you know what makes you so special is it um do you have some kind of unique mechanism so you're using um uh you have uh new features that um others don't have in the market so we've seen this happen in the cold email space recently or there's a lot of change happening in the go to market space where you know maybe two three years ago we saw uh features is like inbox rotation be introduced to the market uh domain warming uh what else those are two good examples where you know previously companies were using tools like Outreach and sales Loft one SDR would have one email account sending 40 to 50 emails per day semi automatic and then other tools came out where basically an SD's output could be increased by 100x um and you know mechanisms like inbox rotation and domain warming ensured that you know not not only the the output of these sdrs could be multiplied but also the success rate of these sdrs as well because more emails would be landed in the primary in box because deliverability was now uh you know uh rightly so been given the attention that it deserves so those are unique mechanisms now that's the best thing you can have you know ultimately you could be making a claim in your marketing you can say you're better faster cheaper than the competitors but if you actually not better FAS or cheaper then you know people are just going to find you out um you know you're selling snake or and so that's really important that the claims you are making in your marketing are actually backed up by your product or they are going to be backed up maybe your product isn't there just yet but you know you as a team are are kind of manually bridging that Gap uh at the moment um so just really important that the claims you're making can actually be backed up now it might be that you don't have like any sort of um unique mechanisms or or features or capabilities that don't already exist in the market and so an alternative there is well just by having a unique voice a unique narrative you know um someone or being a company that um you know challenges the norm goes against the status quo that's being unique and it's going to stand out especially in Industries where you know things have just been done a certain way for so long if you're coming with a fresh perspective on how to do things and you know it's it's a better option for your target audience then again that's being unique and so you need to be clear on that um like what's really important here is this is just like a 20 minute video but you know this stuff takes hours and it you you're always updating and iterating it um and so you know after this video you need to sit down and write these things down like what is that change or problem like go research papers um look at data understand what's going on in the world um you know that's how I sort of discovered the golden ER of SAS and efficient growth and stuff like that because you know I I'm always listening out to these things I'm I'm hopping on calls with people and getting feedback um so this isn't uh as easy as just listening to a YouTube video and then your content is great same with existing Solutions speak with people you know if you know people are using com uh competing products pay them you know $25 gift card from Amazon hop on a call with them I've just been doing that this week um you know really really useful to understand uh not just like okay they're using this tool but how does that fit into their workflow where are the shortcomings what do they like what do they don't like um you know how urgent is uh how urgent of problem is it is it solving and also why you unique okay you've got like what you think in your head but you know that's filled with biases and so speak with your existing customers why do they think you're unique have they tried previous Solutions before what's the Delta um interviewing cold prospects as well so people who aren't a customer but you know roughly fit into your ICP well what do they think of your product are they using other Solutions you know why don't they like your product or what do they think of other products you need to be surfacing um these insights and then another thing is why now we need some urgency so this is um this is sort of derived from the the change or problem that your your narrative is formed around um and so we need to create some urgency and this is I guess the difference between good and great marketers is great marketers are really good at getting people to act you know getting introducing pH to the market where people feel like they're missing out drift was really really good at this drift.com um like absolute you know case study there of where you know everyone felt like they were they were missing out by not using drift because drift was so good about talking about the problem they solve and this this new mechanism called conversational marketing I might be saying that wrong but they you know they pushed out so much content about it and um shared you know the capabilities and use cases of it that people felt felt like they were missing out by not using this thing they felt like they were losing money they felt like you know their their peers their competitors were getting ahead because they weren't using drift and so what can you do to to to build that fomo to build that urgency and this is just this just comes through your marketing you know sharing data about um that backs up your your argument and your argument being you know why they why they need to solve this problem why they need to you know um act now um sharing data research you know sharing guides utility based guides that help people solve this problem or you know get ahead of the pack um just building that urgency so these four variables are going to give you your narrative and you know this might sound complicated it really really isn't um just if you want to see what my personal narrative is just DM me and I'll send it to you it's one or two sentences because I've distilled it you know I've spent hours and hours of uh conducting research and breaking all these different areas out um but then I've distilled it just into two sentences um where if I said it to you you would understand and it would make sense but underneath the surface it's hours and hours of research of looking at existing Solutions and understanding the trends that are going on micro and macro level you know why um my narrative is unique and why people need to act on it and and so it's all backed by evidence but really how I communicate is just in one to two sentences So then whenever I'm thinking about content I'm always thinking about that that narrative Okay so we've got your narrative this is kind of like the top level uh at the top your narrative so regardless of who you're targeting um what channel you're you're posting content on whether it's video text graphic YouTube LinkedIn whatever your narrative um is is really constant U and what I mean by that is you should always be iterating your narrative you know over time as things change but it's not changing based on the platform or or who you're communicating to your your narrative is at the top level of the hierarchy it's it's it's the thing that drives all of your marketing all of your content and this isn't just for Content this is for outbound this is for ads your narrative is at the top it's it's why you exist it's you know the the change you see you you've seen or or the problems you're trying to solve and and how you're doing that um it really it's at the top level of the hierarchy then underneath your narrative we have uh unique viewpoints okay so for Unique povs what you need to be thinking is you know what are those what are those things that you believe that either go against the status quo or you know not many people are aware of and you know unique okay so not many not many people are saying these things or not many people are aware of them and why it's important to for them to be unique is well because we're trying to stand out here we're trying to bring something fresh to the market remember um we're we're trying to stand out you know things are busy um everyone's just you know there's a lot of noise going on and so we need to try break through that noise and the best way to do that is through unique points of view and it's important that with your content that there's actual substance you're not just being contrarian for the for the for the fun of being contolling you're not just like going against the status quo because you're you're trying to rub people the wrong way and you're trying to rustle a few feathers um because you're just going to piss people off and you know there'll be negative backlash um you know there has to be actual substance and the best way to to get these unique um viewpoints and this is the I guess the kind of kicker is well unique people vs are a function of actually doing things you know running experiments like being on the edge speaking to people all the time understanding what's going on up here you know what are those changes that are happening um you know what are the problems that people are experiencing um you know just just being immersed in your market and this is where most people fall short right everyone just wants to skip to the um to to the end point of the race um but really the the new once the The Edge is found in in the middle point of actually doing the things like being in your Market speaking to people um you know being on the edge you know there's just no shortcut there um and so that's really how you're going to get your unique point of view and to give you an example of one of my ones that um I need to change because the market has just sophisticated so much but um you know one of my viewpoints was just you know the the the old way of cold outbound is dead and so it's just a statement it's just a a unique un point of view I have and so if I said that to someone at a dinner or at a bar or whatever you know I just said to them hey you know the old way of cold outbound is dead you know it gives a bit of idea of the Viewpoint I have but it doesn't really like add context it could be like well why or how well if the old way is dead what's the new way and so that's where we then come on to the actual subject matter of the content and I'll talk about that in a few minutes but your point of view should just be these like short statements of things that you believe that are unique you know when I come up at this point point of view nobody I mean of course there were people out there who who shared the same beliefs but um most of the market didn't believe that you know they were still stuck in the old way of doing cold out Banner we've actually got to the I think we've reached the inflection point in the market where most people are adopting the new um uh sort of methods of of cold outbound so I need to update my my point of view on that but you know just as an example here you know it just needs to be these statements what do you believe that most people don't uh it doesn't need to be some crazy thing you know as I said you know the old way of cold bound out old way of cold outbound is dead you know another one I have is um companies must achieve Market Mastery to succeed again so it's like well what the hell does that mean Liam but um and that I'll come on to the subject matter but the Viewpoint I can then I can then you know talk forever about what I mean by that and so your viewpoints or points of view are just sort of short succinct sentences that you believe that all tie back to the narrative so why do I think the old way of cold outbound is dead well because it's inefficient you know large teams spending too much money spending too much money on software and so it's inefficient it's I think it's a product of the the the growth at all costs era where people just throw money at thing sure let's higher expensive sales reps and buy all the enterprise software we can in the world um but you know people have realized that it hasn't been the most um efficient way of of allocating capital and so again it ties back to my narrative and so all of your viewpoints you know there sort of a step down in the hierarchy um when it comes to your narrative so and so you know you need to think you know what are these viewpoints these opinions these view these points of view that you have that tie back to your narrative that you know not many people are are speaking about at the moment this is something I think um you know I do quite well in because even though I've worked in stas for the last five years you know I'd say I'm I don't really fit into this typical Tech bro uh stereotype or Persona you know I'm quite unconventional I like to do my own thing most of the time I don't really you know um identify with a lot of things that people in SAS do and so I'm able to bring these unique points of view to the to the market and distribute it V my content and people resonated with it because it's fresh I'm not just regurgitating the stuff that you see on you know Hub HubSpot blogs or you know SAS podcasts like I'm bringing fresh things to the market and again going back to the other point that's because I've I've you know done thousands of hours of like you know actually my own research speaking to people doing self exploration you know not listening to what the books say and what the podcasts say like just figuring it out for myself and so you know as a result of that I've been able to bring unique uh points of view to the market so really important for you to have them again they can just be statements we then come on to the actual uh subject matter subject matter maybe I'll do this on my uh iPad next so subject matter are the actual pieces of content you're going to um you're going to write you're going to create and a good way to summarize this is you know who what why how so for example my viewpoint U might be the cold the old way of cold outbound is dead but there's so many ways I can communicate that Viewpoint um you know who okay so who are some examples of companies that um you know align with this Viewpoint you know given a case study of a company that's adopted the new way of cold outbound and you know using that to sort of show proof that hey look like this thing actually this thing I'm talking about is actually true um so you can show examples of people doing that uh what's this one what okay well what are the tools what are the methods what are the tactics I can use to adopt a new way of cold outbound and so you know we'll come on to formats in a second but well that could be a YouTube video like this talking about that it could be um a short post on LinkedIn you know here here are some tools if you want to do this I actually have a uh a post on LinkedIn that's done very well which is kind of exactly that um it could be a graphic like a cheat sheet you know here are the tools you can use uh tactics here's how to write good email copy um you know here's how to find leads it could be a cheat sheet could be a carousel could be a short form video and so you know again we've gone on one like uh piece of subject matter but there's like so many different ways I can communic unate that we've then got the why so the why could be um research and data okay well this is my argument and here's how you know um trying to back up that argument sharing data of how the performance of sdrs has diminished over time how um you know having these expensive sales teams um you know there's you can you can do more with less today um so just like backing up my core argument and then how this is just be again like utility based content here's how to do XYZ uh this is actually my favorite um sort of form of content is utility based content where somebody reads it and they can take something away like this this example uh this this sorry this YouTube video here like you can watch this and you have something to take away you've either increase your knowledge your skills or you can do something that's going to benefit your company that's my preferred type of content and so this could all just be utility based content around that single Viewpoint and so just from that single Viewpoint we could you know Splinter off into dozens and dozens of individual pieces of of content um so who what why how another important thing to consider here are the personas you're you're targeting so really really important um you know different people are going to resonate with different things now I've in my content I've hared on a lot about how to understand your audience in more detail but just to briefly touch on it and then get to the main point I'm trying to um make here so to understand your audience where you need to understand that's supposed to be an F which is firmographics you know the industry of the companies you're targeting the company size uh the geography that kind of stuff um so for me that would be you know like SAS industry early stage companies you then need to understand the demographics of the people that work at those companies so you might be in B2B but really it's the people you're trying to influence um in those companies so this is d uh for demographics so demographics could be as simple as you know job titles um are you targeting Chief marketing officers or are you targeting marketing managers or you know bdrs or VP or sales really important all of these have their own selfish desires and interests and then probably most importantly kind of derived from the demographics are psychographic so these are psychological attributes of the people that you're targeting and so commonly this is breaken in broken down into interests activities and opinions but I think another way to think of this and something I prefer to uh a horis I prefer to look at it through is you know um fears desires interests wants you know what do they really really care about um and just to Riff on this a bit is you know a common mistake that companies make is they always talk about business outcomes they always talk about increasing Revenue uh increasing productivity in a business and sure you know ultimately um why a for for-profit business exists is to generate profit an increased you know shareholder value but a marketing manager if if that's who you're targeting does not care about Revenue sure yeah you know they want to be at a company that is secure they want to be in a company that is going to be around for a while but on on a day-to-day basis a marketing manager does not care about Revenue what they really care about so up here you have you know Revenue that's like top layer underneath that you have sort of pipeline all right you need pipeline to create Revenue underneath that you have let's say uh like demos if if you're operating a sales LE model um and then underneath that you'll have like leads okay a marketing manager really cares about sort of these three here I'd probably mostly say these two here right because a marketing manager in most cases uh digital marketing manager is going to be responsible for generating leads for the sales team so they're going to be doing like content indication they're going to be doing SEO they're going to be doing um uh paid advertising all these kind of things email marketing to generate leads which ideally turn into hand raisers which are demos or mqls which ideally turn into sales qualified leads which um you know create pipeline for the for the sales team and so ultimately yes this does uh lead to revenue but the the marketing manager daytoday cares about lead generation or pipeline generation this is probably what gets them their quarterly bonus at the end of the quarter or annual bonus at the end of the year this is what they you know they they dream about every night this is what you know gives them anxiety at night when they're not hitting their target they care about you know website visitors new trials um uh Channel efficiency uh generating demos this is what they care about if you're pitching to a marketing manager 3x your company's revenue and all this kind of stuff they don't care about it they care about you know keeping their job uh hitting their bonus and so they're really worrying about these things so specificity is really really important um when it comes to understanding your your target personas now the real point I wanted to make uh about personas which is I think is often overlooked is the import the uh distinguishing between strategic and tactical so um going back to I don't know if I drew it out uh so let's say you know in in B2B you're you're often influencing different layers within a business right um especially if your product costs thousands tens of thousands of dollars um it's not just going to be one person who's signing that off it's going to be unless you're targeting Founders uh and they're willing to pay that money but if you're going like mid-market Enterprise you're influencing multiple stakeholders which means uh they all care about their own things um and so in your content you can influence these different layers within an organization so let's say uh in a in an organization very broadly speaking we have like the top layer this is going to be like cxos so CMOS cro CFOs you then have middle um so these are like you know your heads of departments directors um uh and and managers and then you're going to have uh sort of the bottom these are going to be the end users you know the maybe the team leads and and the sort of marke and Executives how you communicate in your content to these different layers within organization varies massively okay so at the sort of these two layers here this is very um tactical this is where your sort of what I call utility based content is going to be this is where it's going to be like here's how to do XYZ um so this is what I do a lot on my content here's how I would be the performance of an SDR team um here's here's a framework I use to write High performing Cod emails that's what these sort of people care about um because you know this person here is probably the one in the cold email tool every day or writing cold emails or running the ads or writing the content this person might have some input on that but then you know they might not but they're not so far removed that um they don't care about it cuz that type of content this uh manager this director is probably sharing it with with that person so they can improve and then this person is probably sharing it with their team like hey guys like here's some really good content and so we're creating sharable content that is going to influence people within an organization now does a um a CMO cro you know cxo do they care about how to write a high performing cold Emil probably not if they see it they might share it with these people because they want them to perform better but what this person really cares about is strategic change so this is the distinction here uh strategic versus tactical and so the type of content we want to be influencing the the top Corridor within a business is thought leadership now I used to think thought leadership was a buzz word that uh I don't know um content gurus um used but thought leadership is just um sharing your your unique viewpoints with the market so it could be like podcasts um it could be short Snippets it could be talking about you know problems like if I wanted to influence strategic change well I would be talking about you know um this sort of top level thing here that the the kind of change I would be talking about how um you know SAS companies need to adopt a new operating model how I'd be sharing data about how you know the current way of operating is inefficient and how they should be adopting this new way does this person care about that sort of stuff yes maybe but it's it's not what they're worried about on the day-to-day and so to influence people at the the sort of top player within an organization you need to be mostly uh Distributing thought leadership you know sharing your unique viewpoints about the change or the problem you're solving and the reason why you want to influence these people is well because most often they hold the pur strings uh does a mark executive or an SDR or an account executive do they have you know the Authority or you know the social credibility within an organization to you know change strategy they don't um whereas these people do and so we still need to be touching on them we still need to be trying to influence their decision making whereas these people they are going to influence bottom up so they're going to share content internally um they're going to um sort of increase the awareness of internal team members uh which then influences from the bottom up so really important I just wanted to make that point and this is one of the key distinctions between B2B and B Toc is in you know B2B we're not selling $20 t-shirts to consum we're selling um we're selling solutions that you know lead to business outcomes um and so we need to influence multiple layers within uh an organization now uh final points on this because this has gone on a bit longer um than I intended to is you need to also think about like format and Concepts so format and Concepts so by formats well you need to think okay well um what format is going to help me best achieve my uh objective here or you know what channel am I on for example on LinkedIn text based content works really well um graphic based content and i' say video based content works really well most recently they're Al they're actually running a um a pilot at the moment uh with a video feed similar to platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram reals uh whereas on YouTube well text based content isn't a thing right so naturally I'm going to focus more on like video based content is it right in long form articles on your website you know this is why we have this sort of hierarchy um you know why do why do you exist what unique viewpoints do you have what do you want to talk about okay well what's what's the best way to deliver that topic so for this piece of content I thought a long form YouTube video would be the best uh format but I could also chop this up into short form content for Instagram reals I could uh do a post about this and summarize it in you know a few hundred words all right so I can take the same subject matter and and redistribute it uh or reproduce it into different formats also concept so this is really important for standing out um you know again what concept is going to best help you achieve your your objective so would uh so let let's just use my viewpoint as an example the old way of cold outbound is dead to to distribute that Viewpoint to my market well I could um have a weekly talk show where I invite sales leaders or marketing leaders and we talk about you know the new way of cold emailing and how the old way was inefficient and we really dig into their their methods and their tactics and and how they do cold email and so I'm going to be Distributing that viewpoint but through a concept which is a weekly talk show could also uh the concept could be I hire uh creators or influencers to do like more of a a humor-based skit so these are different like Concepts and this is um really where you you can stand out because you know most people are just writing posts uh on LinkedIn or Twitter you know doing uh YouTube videos um and so at the con concept level this is really where you can Stand Out bring something fresh and exciting uh into what is typically quite boring and mundane right B2B it's it's not exactly sexy um and so if you bring new Concepts you know these weekly series talk shows um bringing humor into it this is really where you can stand out while still Distributing um your narrative so that's it for Content um this was just uh crazy you know Saturday session in the co-working office didn't really have any plans here so hopefully it made sense let me know if you want me to you know send any resources or more thoughts on this happy to just follow up with a loom video and and share my thoughts but yeah I'll see you in the next one cheers