Eric Schwartzman

Our guest is 5x start-up entrepreneur Jason Smith. He's the CEO of Klue, a competitive intelligence platform used by Cisco, Dell, and Hootsuite. They’ve raised $19M in venture funding so far. 

Jason is the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner, and Klue was off to great before the pandemic hit. He quickly realized they needed to raise another round of funding to survive. 

The problem was he could only do it through video conferences, which everyone advised against. But he had no choice. So he went for it. And he learned that pitching investors on Zoom meetings had some advantages.

https://youtu.be/rWbpGMUEWQc

Remote meetings eliminated the need to travel back and forth, so he could meet with more investors in less time. Plus, Zoom brought in a surprising level of humanity. You don’t usually see kids with sock puppets in the boardroom, but when you’re working from home and the schools are closed, everyone understands because we’re all in the same boat.

For the first time in a long time, it was no longer all about data-driven startups. The data was still crucial, but there was a genuine human connection that didn’t always exist in the conference room. But that doesn't mean he didn’t get grilled on his numbers,

For those unfamiliar software-as-a-service startups like Klue, whether you’re an enterprise sales or product-led startup, one of the most critical numbers investors want to know is monthly recurring revenue or MRR. 

To be attractive to investors, SaaS startups have their own unique set of requirements.  Whereas investors considering a B2B online marketplace would be looking at growth on the supply and demand sides, SaaS investors are interested in net customer growth. “You’ve got to prove that customers care about what you have enough to keep paying. And that will be reflected in your MRR,” says Jason.

The other thing they’re looking at is churn. You have to distinguish new customers from departing customers. You’re looking for overall expansion. That’s the net. New customers are fewer departing customers.

If they like what they bought, they’ll stick around. But if they’re saying ‘I overbought, and I want less now,” that’s a negative. Some customers may be around for a while and then leave, which also causes a reduction in MMR. 

What is Klue?

“Klue is a competitive intelligence solution. We’re trying to understand what your competitors are up to,” says Jason. 

The complexity comes from scripting the analyzed company - What’s happening on their website, what are they doing on Twitter, profiles on their employees, pricing, etc. 

The other side comes from analyzing the client – Emails and Slack conversations about the competitor or rich text notes they’ve put into their CRM. “We combine everything we find from the external web and internal data into one continuously updated activity dashboard on what they’re doing.”

Klue uses unstructured data – more challenging than financial data – to create competitive intelligence profiles, competitor analysis templates, and target customer research that helps B2B tech companies generate and close more deals.

Eighty percent of the data that’s currently generated inside companies is unstructured. This data comprises rich text, voice-to-text translations, SMS messaging grits, Slack conversations (in Slack, podcasts, etc.), and other forms of natural language, which Klue analyzes with AI technology for competitive differentiation. 

AI is moving from understanding images to understanding words. “And Klue looks at 3 million pieces of data every day. There’s no way that a human will crunch that down to something of relevance,” says Jason.

To subscribe to this weekly audio masterclass on how to generate, qualify, and convert leads to revenue, subscribe to the B2B Lead Gen Podcast.

SEMRush CMO Olga Andrienko Discusses Latest Study on Voice Search

Voice search is rising in popularity on mobile devices. Once voice search is enabled on a device, you can use it hands-free and most people do when they’re out and about looking for something.

Semrush, a popular service search engine optimization consultants use for keyword research and site audits. They recently released a study on Voice Search Optimization.

Olga Andrienko

I spoke with Olga Adrienko, their head of Global Head of Marketing about it and this podcast has everything you need to know to optimize your site for voice search.

About 25% of all searches are voice searches, with half are for local businesses. Optimizing your website to get found by Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant is a new and evolving SEO specialty skill. Different voice search engines use different algorithms and rely on different source material.

Most local businesses don’t realize it, but if you want to get featured in voice search, you need a presence known in Google’s Local Pack. The Local Pack is the graph that appears in search results listing local businesses. Local Pack powers voice search and look like this.

A Local Pack contains the top three local businesses relevant to your query and getting listed there is a local SEO specialty, which is why local SEO is voice SEO. Schema has no impact on local or voice search. 

Voice Search Algorithms

Since 1 in 4 searches are voice searches, voice search optimization is an opportunity for first movers. At this point, people tend to ask different questions to different voice search engines. 

Voice search on Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa use different algorithms.

Google Assistant uses Google and Google Maps

Siri uses Google for text, Bing for images and Apple Maps

Alexa uses Bing  and Yext for location information

For voice searches about local business reviews, Google Assistant pulls from Local Pack, while Siri and Alexa pull from Yelp. 

Getting Featured in Voice Search Results

Local businesses that rank in the top three results Local Pack will appear in voice search results. 

When it comes to non local voice search, Google Assistant answers informational queries by reading out loud texts from Featured Snippets. About 12% of all voice search answers from the People Also Ask box. So voice search optimization for informational queries is driven by snippets.

Optimizing your content marketing for Google involves targeting long-tail keywords, Featured Snippets, and People Ask boxes.

For Siri, a local business can update its listing and include additional content to improve its Yelp profile.To learn more about how voice search assistants can drive customers to local businesses, listen to my interview with Olga and subscribe to the B2B Lead Gen Podcast.

If you want more from SEMrush, I spoke to them about their international B2B content marketing strategy as well.

Before the internet, trade media coverage was the primary source of inbound links for B2B technology companies. 

Now, bloggers, podcasters, influencers, and other B2B content marketers have expanded the chorus of third-party voices. At the same time, the migration of ad dollars to the web has decimated the traditional trade and media landscape.

If you're at a B2B tech public relations firm, there are more outlets to communicate to and through, but fewer are run by journalists. So, while there are plenty of new voices when it comes to ad-supported trade and mainstream news media, there are fewer opportunities for coverage. 

Keeping track of reporters coming and going is challenging. Keeping dips on the editorial personality of the different tech outlets is another piece of the puzzle that an account executive at a B2B marketing communications agency has to deal with.

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey

https://youtu.be/mlxWKSWsQiA

For B2B communications firms.

Sam Whitmore has covered tech for decades, starting as a reporter, editor, and EIC at PC Week. In 1998, he launched Sam Whitmore Media Survey almost by accident, and it has provided enduring tech media analysis and consulting services to tech PR pros and media buyers ever since.

“B2B editorial is service journalism,” says Sam. “There’s two communities, the buyers and the sellers. As an editor, I’m with the buyer, providing perspective, data, pricing, and everything I can to make the buying decision easier and more efficient. If I’m a reader on the supply side, I want to know what’s happening on the competitive side of things, the reseller landscape, etc. B2B PR people must see themselves in the service side, either to the supplier or the buyer.”

B2B Tech PR Insights

https://youtu.be/h5a8ofB3--c

If you’re in B2B Tech PR, you’re probably representing sellers. Good Tech PR firms focus on what the demand side wants to hear. A bad B2B PR agency leads with the message the vendor instinctively wants to deliver. But editors wish to a balance.

So if you’re representing a CRM provider and trying to land your message, frame your pitch against buyer pain points. Get beneath the superficial ‘we’re better than the other guys’ angle. Talk about something like how your API is easier to program and maintain because that’s a value proposition buyers can identify with.

When it comes to social media in tech PR, Sam says it’s changed a lot in the sense that the algorithms in many platforms have become less organic and more commercial, making it tougher to be heard without paying for reach. 

Also, advertisers are not as concerned with reach as they are with engagement, as measured by session duration and activity and authority, as measured by how narrow and deep their coverage is. The number of followers isn’t as crucial for B2B tech advertisers as the number of engaged followers.

For example, tech publisher IDG decided in early 2020 to concentrate their news coverage on specific topics on specific media brands. For instance, they now run all their digital transformation coverage on CIO. You'll find next to nothing if you search their other brands, Computerworld and InfoWorld, for digital transformation.

B2B Tech Media Relations Tips

https://youtu.be/RJYm109_B5U

The approach is to define a narrow topic, cross-link the sites, and get rewarded by Google for being an authority in each niche. So by putting a disproportionate amount of content about one topic in one title, they make it easier for Google to index and categorize them as authorities in one area, instead of distributing those topics like confetti across their editorial portfolio.

By contrast, they concentrate their crypto coverage at Computerworld. You won’t see anything about crypto on CIO or Network World either. It’s a programmatic decision to increase time on site by aligning content by brand. Study special reports and topic pavilions on tech publisher’s sites to see which topics they’re most interested in, and map your pitches accordingly.

Jessica Lessin, CEO and founder The Insider

The hot publication in the tech space is The Information, run by Jessica Lessin, which, pound for pound, has the highest IQ of any magazine out there right now. The other two not to be ignored are CNBC and Business Insider.

On the topic of tech PR in the age of COVID times, Sam prophesied the advent of a new type of marketer who can monetize the activity of people who participate in online events. “There’s going be a premium paid for people who have experience monetizing the data and the behavior -- whether it’s cross-selling content, memberships, creating new partnerships -- from virtual events,” he said.

You can listen to the interview at the top of the post and subscribe to Earned Media Podcast for more on the latest developments in earned media marketing.

The way to compete against a tech PR agency in Austin, Palo Alto, or any other hot tech PR market is by focusing on a measurement like share of voice.

More B2B Tech PR Resources

Email Marketing Best Practices Guide

SEMrush Voice Search Optimization Study

B2B Lead Gen Podcast

Tech Stacks for RevOps with Jen Spencer

How To Stack Marketing Technology with Scott Brinker

B2B Lead Qualification Process in Niche Markets

How to Generate Leads in B2B Marketing

The way things are headed, social media marketing courses could soon be a thing of the past. 

A new social media sharing startup for content marketing agencies called Lately uses artificial intelligence to generate and optimize social media posts automatically.

Lately CEO Kate Bradley Chernis

I spoke to Kate Bradley Chernis, the founder and CEO of Lately, a tool that’s doing wonders for content consultants who struggle to translate their written or multimedia content into engaging social media posts. 

Lately uses AI to automatically transform long-form content into dozens of smart social posts that optimize audience engagement. Kate talked to us about generating leads for B2Bs, how to successfully create a human-AI collaboration, and how to earn the trust of your customers.

The idea behind Lately is not to waste something we’ve spent a lot of effort creating by giving it just one shot at being viewed. This is especially true of long content marketing initiatives like blogs, podcasts, videos, reports, white papers, checklists and other lead magnets which aren’t so easily shareable in social media. 

When you load this content into Lately, the tool transforms it into dozens of posts you can schedule to go live on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin.

Lately uses AI and natural language processing to select the most shareable, conversation worthy snippets from your long form content based on what generates conversations with your community. 

Lately takes you three quarters of the way, but requires a human touch for the last stretch. Before Lately, this process had to be performed manually, which takes a lot of time and resources. Lately analyzes all of your past content, and treats past user engagement as a proxy for future performance, and automatically produces posts likely to generate similar responses.

Bradley recommends users start in Lately's Analytics section before the content creation process. "Why look at Twitter when we're telling you what's trending with your customers?" she says. "Emotion is what a purchase is all about",  says Kate. "The number one reason for loss of sales is lack of customer trust. That's why it's so important for you to like me and believe me."

Kate believes first and foremost in organic marketing, and she asserts that, for B2Bs and small businesses, this is the cheapest, easiest and most reliable way to make a dent. 

"The time and effort you put in is exponentially valuable,” says Kate.  Following that spirit, her company doesn't use paid media, cold calls or cold email to do their marketing. They use Lately. "When you know what your customer cares about, why would you guess?"

Lately can transcribe whole podcasts and webinars and automatically pull excerpts that your audience is likely to respond to, and is even able to turn those into shareable mini-movies. 

Bradley is a big advocate of “after the fact” marketing, now that people rarely consume content at fixed times. The process can work even for whole books, like David Allison’s “Valuegraphics”, which got to a number 1 slot at Amazon’s global best sellers list, thanks partly to social posts generated by Lately.

The last part of the conversation touched upon confidence issues, in these times where people have lost faith in news and social media. For Bradley, people now tend to believe more in trusted individuals than in organizations, but at the same time long-standing brands give a feel of security. 

https://youtu.be/tBL8Z6aKjR0

As I learned when I was handling social media communications at the US Dept. of State, we trust the messenger more than the message.

Is it time for brands to take a public political position? She’s not sure. “But all Americans have the same KPIs. We all want a house, a decent wage, not to be killed, etc,” says Kate.

And she was positive about one thing: America needs real leaders, who are in short supply these days.

For this episode of the Earned Media Podcast, we’re joined by 3 top social media influencers to discuss the new Talkwalker Social Media Trends Report, which predicts the top 10 social media marketing trends for the next year.

Social Media Influencer Panel

Gini Dietrich with her book Marketing in the Round.

Gini Dietrich - Founder of Spin Sucks, creator of the PESO Model, co-author of Marketing in the Round and co-host of Inside PR and The Agency Leadership podcast.

Neal Schaffer - who helps businesses maximize the effectiveness of their social outreach efforts as a speaker, author, trainer, and consultant. His 4th and latest book, The Age of Influence, was published earlier this year by HarperCollins.

Social media influencer Christina Garnett.

Christina Garnett - Through inbound marketing and audience intelligence, she creates strategy playbooks and visual intelligence reports to help clients to produce content that resonates with their audience.

Talkwalker is a powerful social media analytics platform. Their report showcases the top trends from experts and surveys them with consumers to rate how they'll impact brands. 

Top 10 Social Media Trends

10. Remixing is on the rise thanks to apps like TikTok, Koji and Instagram reels.

9. The 4 C's of COVID-19 content - Community, contactless, cleanliness and compassion will be governing content marketing principles.

8.  Memes are big among younger generations. We discuss mimetic media, and how brands will use memes to connect with customers.

7. Nostalgia content. During times of uncertainty and economic downturn, with consumers looking back on happier times, brands will use demographics to align with nostalgic content that appeals to their target personas.

6. Conversational marketing engages customers through conversation, chatbots, social messaging, Zoom calls, and other live interactions. The panel shares how a content marketing agency can leverage conversational marketing.

5.  During the lockdown, people turned to video games as another form of distraction. And video games present tremendous opportunities to brands that understand and appreciate these communities and cultures.

4. We’ll see a rise in old school marketing tactics as a result of marketplace uncertainty.

3. Which social networking platforms will be dominant?

2. How will digital disinformation impact brands?

1. What opportunity do socially conscious audiences present?

Neal stressed the growing importance of brand ambassadors and how Talkwalker with social media monitoring. 

On memes, Christina says as long as you’re ready to laugh at yourself, you’re good; otherwise it’s best to steer clear. 

Regarding how brands can leverage their conversational marketing, Gini says build that by community and conversation, you build trust and brand equity, so if you screw up, you can say “okay, let’s fix it and move on.” 

Videogames are huge now, and Christina explained how communities such as Fortnite have become a “living ad.” 

On Old School tactics, Neal brought up how brands have had to reset their marketing and message, and all of a sudden we’re seeing great customer education content. He pointed out that content for social media doesn’t have a very long lifespan, while the opposite happens with blogs, YouTube videos or podcasts.

https://youtu.be/jG21jrKyikU

Regarding the #1 marketing trend is socially conscious audiences, Christina says it’s easy to say that you have a great culture and that you’re forward-thinking, but it’s harder to actually be those things. She cited the example of Coinbase, which lost a lot of their staff because the company told employees not to talk about BLM. 

For Neal, if these issues are important to your audience, you’ve got to have a voice and take a stand. This can involve efforts like redoing packaging, rebranding names, etc.

Reference Links:

CXPR with Brian Snyder, Executive Digital Director at Golin

Intellectual Property and Digital Usage Rights Training

Subscribe to the Earned Media Podcast

Talkwalker 2021 Social Media Trends Report

With the onslaught of a pandemic, startups are pitching investors these days via Zoom.

At least not for Blair Silverberg, CEO and co-founder of Capital, which uses a proprietary analytics platform to identify startups worth funding, and accelerates the fundraising process in stride.

Blair started investing young. He turned $5,000 in Bar Mitzvah money into $100K by value investing on the stock market. An impressive feat.

His grandmother gave him Beanie Babies when he was about 6. He sold them online for a modest profit. By the time he was 10 years old, he was reading John Burr Williams and Philip Fisher.

“Back then I think I was fascinated with business examples of the economy at work. So I thought every time I learned about a new business, I was learning about how the economy actually works.”

He’d go home after school and would order the physical annual reports in the investor relations sections of company websites. He still had these reports stacked up in giant boxes at his parents’ home.

Blair likes value investing.

Standing Out to Win the Game

“Pause. Take a breath. Think about things with first principles. Don’t follow the crowd instinctively.”

The biggest lesson Blair learned as a young investor stays with him today is monitoring performance. Monitor daily and respond instinctively.

Don't get swayed just by what others are doing. With this kind of thinking, you lose sight of your goals. You have to avoid distractions and focus on what you need to do and where you need to be.

There are great investors who think conservatively. But no matter how great they are, they miss opportunities. They get scared of financial bubbles and avoid tech investments as Warren Buffet did. 

Yet the times have changed. Buffet took the risk of investing in technology stocks. Now he’s winning the game.

Are We in a Financial Bubble?

We live in unprecedented times battling a global pandemic. Despite the crisis, the stock market is still high. Is this something that we have to be worried about?

The global stock market is worth $350 trillion and continues to rise. Every year, wealth continues to pile up. Asset prices are inflated. Not even a global pandemic can deflate these prices.

But there's a real tension between the US and China right now. And what could burst the bubble is the transition from the US to China the global financial leadership.

One day, we’re going to look back at how a Chinese company dominated the IPO list before making its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. Alibaba Group’s record-breaking initial public offering of $25 billion is a testament to this.

The three largest IPOs in history are Chinese-owned companies with zero involvement from the global financial superpower. These events have been to catalyze the shift of global financial power.

How the Pandemic Changed the Business Landscape

The pandemic took its toll on many businesses. But it has not killed the economy.

Some businesses are actually doing better because of the crisis. With the ongoing secular changes, they've benefitted tremendously from the shift to the new normal. Zoom and Slack are good examples.

Food delivery services are all rage. It's just some businesses that thrive on in-person activities are negatively affected. The healthcare industry, where a lot of in-person activity is still ongoing, remains strong.

Some SaaS companies are doing well too. Meanwhile, wealth continues to accumulate and grow in size and intensity.

The volume of pitches at Capital has not declined. There was a blip in early April but by the second week, the numbers rose 3x.

Pitching Investors in the New Normal

The absence of conventions and trade shows on the companies in Capital’s portfolio has been negligible. Blair attends virtual events these days, and in many ways, prefers them to real-world events.

He likes connecting virtually, listening to talks online and jumping between virtual breakout rooms.

Blair says the setup feels like a replica of the real thing, and that it is much more efficient. You didn’t even have to leave the house. That's disruptive innovation.

What's Makes for Winning Investor Pitch?

Pre pandemic, charisma and height went a lot further. On Zoom, none of that matters.

“A real pitch gives you an idea of what is going on in the business,” Blair remarked.

This is what a good pitch is, which is in stark contrast to the pitches in Shark Tank that Blair describes as “salacious”.

A good pitch goes into detail about the metrics. Why is the startup’s mission exciting? How can it change the world?

Capital is looking for businesses that can articulate what their metrics look like and what’s fundamentally working in their business. A good pitch for Blair is where a business shows how $1 spent gets a $3 return. 

What Makes a Great Startup Company?

Can you grow a business? Startups with good PR nail this question .

To assess if a startup is a potential investment candidate, Capital looks at post-metrics and pre-metrics. Companies use Capital’s analytic system to analyze financial data. At the same time, Capital funds businesses based on the data reflected in the tool. 

“The way Capital works is a little different. We have an analytics system that sits at the core of what we do.”

The quantitative side of the equation is post-metrics. 

A company that spends $1 and earns 70 cents back can show a lot of potential in terms of growing enormously. 

However, that’s not a business he would invest in. Capital doesn’t invest in growth marketing plays that buy market share at a loss.

Startups need to show substantial growth in revenue and how quickly they do it. The process is pretty much straightforward.

The quantitative side is pre-metrics. 

This is where you assess a combination of team, product, and market. You try to get a picture of how a company is going to achieve its goals in building a business. Once you know your market, the product you want to create, and the team you need to assemble, you;re ready to start pitching. Having these three areas covered is what makes you stand out even with zero results and metrics.

For startups, Blair emphasized that the funds in the early stages need to go to the team at a hundred percent. As a business owner, you need to build a team that stays motivated and works well together for the first year of the business. This is what Blair found to be the hardest part of getting the business done. Early on, your team members should clearly understand what their roles are. 

The seed round in the funding life cycle is where a startup needs to show how things are being accomplished. What are the early results? It can be conceptual. You may talk to a hundred customers when in fact you can just categorize them into three types. You need to show how clear your product vision is. 

PR and Marketing for Profitability

A short-term business can be built in two ways whereas a long-term business can only use one. For short-term businesses, it can either be steak sizzle or a combination of both. PR for startups can get a business off the ground even with no strong fundamentals.

Steak is what matters in a long-term business. Blair used Amazon as an example, where all the nuts and bolts are already in place. PR is a complementary tool that can be used alongside businesses like Amazon already have the fundamentals nailed. 

On hiring a good PR consultant, Blair believes that “the Socratic method is your friend.” A good public relations or online marketing consultant is someone who does not just listen and understand, but also someone who can clearly repeat what the business does.

“You can just ask people, what do you think the business does? Where do you think this business is going in the next 12 months? And how do you do what you do?”

According to Blair, a good public relations consultant must be able to do these 3 things:

Demonstrate a strong understanding of the business you’re trying to build.

Bring media relations experience and know how to get press coverage.

Implement a smart digital public relations strategy for amplifying your message.

Conclusion

At Capital, fundraising is an innovative process that leverages a proprietary platform to identify opportunities based on a startup’s financials. 

The algorithm neutralizes a founder’s charm and charisma and focuses on value.

Even after the global pandemic subsides, expect many of the innovative processes that grew out of the necessity for social distancing to endure. 

For more on how Capital makes uses of financial analytics to spot the best and brightest investment opportunities, subscribe to the B2B Lead Gen Podcast.

If you’re at a content marketing agency in the world of digital marketing, lead generation, or social media, or you’re simply a content creator wishing to increase your visibility and performance, chances are you’re constantly looking for new ways to improve your SEO. 

While there’s no shortage of websites, tools, and courses designed for this purpose, few (if any) have proven quite as powerful and efficient as INK. This new content marketing optimization tool not only has come to stay but promises to set a new standard in the field. 

Edgy Labs CEO Michael Umansky

We spoke to Michael Umansky, CEO of INK, who was kind enough to share lots of info about the app’s creation, principles, and technology, and how it can help content creators boost their results with a very convenient interface and lots of innovative, AI-powered features.

INK is driven by a vision of a world where storytellers control their destinies. While it works beautifully for anyone wishing to streamline their content creation process, it’s particularly useful for those writers without an SEO background.  But even if you are an SEO consultant, INK makes your life easier.

It’s currently offered as a Desktop app, though you can also find it as a WordPress plugin, and Mr. Umansky told us that their idea is to put it in any CMS out there eventually.

When asked if content optimization is meant for Google or for readers, he assuredly remarked that optimizing for Google IS optimizing for readers, by producing more readable, engaging copy, which ultimately results in more traffic.

https://youtu.be/G7xm8kVvHSA

INK for ALL Demo by Michael Umansky

The app has a clean, distraction-free interface, and there’s no question that its most significant selling point is the INK SEO Score, a big, fat number that quantifies the readability and SEO potential of your text. Users have to load their documents, and the app’s AI analyzes it and generates the score. 

If your current score is too low, INK will assign you a number of tasks that will help you to vastly improve it. There are currently three types of these (Relevant Topics, Word Tasks, and Document Tasks), and each time you complete one, your SEO score rises.

For instance, if the top performers for your topic have an average number of 1,000 words, you’ll need to make your text longer or shorter in order to meet that. 

INK also tells you if your text has complex or very difficult-to-read phrases, increasing your score each time you eliminate one of them. Of course, it’ll also help you to find the best keywords for your topic, as well as their optimal density.

According to Umansky, content with a score of 90 or more gets huge traffic increases in a very short time. INK’s own website, Inkforall.com had an increase from just 400 users in May to their current 100,000 unique monthly users. Best of all, you can use it without paying a dime. 

Although some functions (such as the Relevant Topics Tasks) are reserved for PRO subscribers, the basic version will still do wonders for your content. INK is good, free, and has a low learning curve – you can hardly get a better deal than that. 

I spoke with INK CTO Alex de Ridder about starting the SEO process off strategically with topic clusters and keyword maps, and that episode is available as well.

If you want to try it, download the Desktop app from their site, and if you don’t want to stray too far from the WordPress environment, there’s a plugin you can use in conjunction with the app (the plugin by itself has limited functionalities for the time being).

If INK’s present growth continues, they could soon be the go to tools for B2B marketing agencies.

B2B content marketing, the cornerstone of a brand's online presence, encompasses creating, earning, sharing, and spreading your brand messaging.

More than just being a vehicle for sharing your brand’s messaging, though, content marketing can be -- and is -- an effective way to meet your organization’s bottom-line goals.

With great content, you can attract new investors and customers, nurture cold leads and convert warm ones. 

Without it, your organization will become a ghost -- something that’s there, but not seen.

I recently talked about the difference between B2B and B2C content marketing, how to create content that effectively generates leads and how to develop content marketing skills with Christopher Null of Null Media.

Coming from a journalism background, Christopher is a 20-year veteran of magazine and internet trade, working with big names like Yahoo!, Intuit, McGraw Hill and other large companies in publishing and news media.

But while reporting is more about looking for the truth and sharing facts, content marketing requires you to have a clearly detailed end destination and objective in mind and work towards that. 

The differences between a B2C and B2B content strategy

The answer to “what is content marketing?” can often be defined by the industry, the product being marketed, and the audience you are speaking to. 

In other words, it’s defined by the organization itself.

That being said, both B2C and B2B content creative needs to create a robust strategy with well-defined goals.

Your content marketing strategy also needs to address every part of the content marketing funnel. Top funnel content is typically more introductory in nature, while bottom funnel content is toplines information that drives conversions.

A good content marketing agency executes on your content marketing strategy, bringing a pitch or outline to life and connecting you with your ideal audience. 

On the other hand, a digital marketing consultant like me works closely with decision makers and brand stakeholders to build strategies for owned, shared, and earned media outreach - as well as a methodology for how to measure the ROI of your content marketing program. 

Owned Media

While they do have clear differences, B2C and B2B content marketing begins when you learn owned media marketing. Owned media is media you own, and it's comprised of content marketing materials like blog posts, technical guides, white papers, checklists, and product reviews that live on your own website. Hence the term, owned media.

Consumer-facing organizations tend to produce more superficial content, but it still needs to be vibrantly written and come off the page to capture the attention of readers.

B2B content marketing is usually more research-focused, but it still needs to be compelling. Even though it’s written for a niche audience, B2B content should be nothing less than dead-on accurate with useful information  detailed specs. Targeting the right topics starts with researching the B2B keywords people search when they are looking for answers to problems you can solve.

Some brands overlook the importance of their owned content marketing channel. But I’ve seen multiple companies rapidly expand using smart growth marketing strategies and by leveraging SEO content. 

Earned Media

Earned media is the union of content marketing and digital PR. You can learn earned media marketing anytime, but you're not ready to implement earned media outreach until your owned media strategy is in place. Earned media is media coverage you earn on someone else's website, which link back to your website.

Earned media marketing is what PR firms do. Media relations pros know how to get press for startups and other unproven companies by finding a news hook. For B2B organizations, there will again be a lot of research needed to understand what you want to get across and who your audience is. 

“It may be so narrow that you create content that’s only intended for 100 people -- or less. But a company with aspirations to become a household name will want to show up anywhere and everywhere, no matter what,” says Christopher.

Having a well-planned content brief and success metrics will be a determining factor in the effectiveness of your content marketing or public relations consultant.

Social Media

Any discussion about sharing and spreading your content while likely include SEO (organic/owned), PR (earned) and social (shared). Shared media is media you share on social media.

Regardless of whether your organization is B2C or B2B, content marketing relies on you showing up where your customers are engaging already, and if that's on social networks, you should be there too.. 

A well-written technical guide that provides solutions to your customers’ needs is useless if it’s not read. Social media marketing is how you can engage a community that's interested in what you have to say, as long as the content brings something new to the table, and isn't just another me too blog post.

Knowing how to create viral content in your niche and designing content specifically for use on the social channels where your audience is engaging will help you fill the top of the marketing funnel.

I personally like the concept of scaling social media algorithms by enabling a community to engage on your behalf. My sense is, why not teach everyone in your organization to be able to decide what can be shared publicly and what needs to be kept private, and encourage them to use social media to get their jobs done. That way, marketing becomes a byproduct. But for that, you need a good social media policy and training in place. I have a detailed social media policy template you can start with, if you want to take that approach.

Paid Media

A B2B content marketer will need to understand the relationship between paid and organic content marketing efforts. I implement paid media marketing last, because I want a proof of concept that proves my path to purchase converts before I buy traffic.

Pivoting to paid advertising will serve as a way to get a quick, short term surge of interested leads, and should be coupled with a long-term organic growth marketing strategy to ensure you have multiple inbound marketing channels working for you.  

How to create content that generates leads

Attribution in content marketing can be more difficult than direct marketing approaches. But when it comes to measuring your content marketing funnel, lead generation, customer engagement and SEO rankings are three trackable metrics.

“Everything you write should be aimed toward generating leads. It’s critical to understand how keywords and SEO work. It’s simply got to be better than everything else out there. Which, honestly, might not be that hard,” says Christopher.

B2B content marketing that converts is informative, fact-checked, uses eye-catching imagery and makes the company -- and anyone associated with it -- look smart. I wrote a separate B2B Lead Generation Guide as well, that you may want to check out.

Regardless of the industry, good content marketing is simply good writing.

And pushing a hard sell will only send your (formerly) prospective customers running the other direction.

“In B2B a lot of content marketing is written by developers in their spare time on a Saturday night because management told them to share something. It reads like a page in a technical manual and it’s not compelling. There’s a huge opportunity for smaller organizations with limited resources to stand out,” says Christopher.

Don’t be afraid to be a bit controversial. Have a perspective, tone or approach that’s not the standard for SAAS or tech brands and you’ll begin to get noticed.

How to find a B2B content marketing consultant

Keeping with the suggestion above, someone from your dev team is likely not the best fit for a content creator. 

Proximity to the product does not make you a good B2B content marketer. 

A B2B content marketing consultant niched to your product or industry can help you create -- and execute on -- a winning content marketing strategy.

Christopher shared with us his shortlist for what to look for in a content marketer:

First and foremost, writing experience. This does not need to be a journalism background such as his, but there does need to be some sort of portfolio.

A research-driven approach. Someone who is dedicated to and capable of learning every part of your product in a timely manner is key.

Collaboration and investigation. The expertise is in your company. A B2B content marketer needs to know who to talk to and how to talk to them in order to extract the information that only your team knows.

An understanding of lead generation. A good B2B content marketer understands the psychology of reaching readers and how to turn them into leads or customers.

Subject matter expertise. While not essential, if you need to move quickly, it can speed up the content creation process and shorten the learning curve.

The last one may depend on the individual marketer, as there are generalist content marketers and writers who can use the tools of journalism to research and learn about something new. But there’s no substitute for someone who’s already familiar with concepts like product-led marketing, starting an online marketplace, or online reputation management, if that’s your jam.

How to work with a content marketer

Like any consultant or agency relationship, you can mitigate risks of a failed venture by preparing in advance.

No one can know what’s inside your head. 

Compile your expertise, create a brief and be prepared to talk to the individual. An initial call is an important step when it comes to picking up on and understanding the voice of the founder and other decision makers.

Conclusion

If you are a content marketing agency owner representing product-led growth marketing businesses, you need to know product-led marketing.

In SaaS marketing, there are two popular models:

enterprise-level price points with a sales-led approach to marketing and...

a product-led growth approach. 

Enterprise doesn’t need as much volume, but you need to account for a long sales cycle and the responsibility of closing deals will fall almost exclusively on the sales team. 

Product-led growth is more about volume and one-to-many.

It lets people interact with the product before buying in a freemium or limited-time, free trial format.

In product marketing, your marketing -- and the product itself -- will also bear the brunt of the work when it comes to new customer acquisition.

“With many SaaS companies, marketing is built into the product -- that’s what product marketing is.”

With that being said, product-led growth falls on a spectrum.

A pure product-led structure, is when the product is a channel, like Typeform or Zoom.

“Say, my friend or client uses Zoom. I now have to download it to use it, but can access it for free as long as I want. But, as I see the features, I’m now thinking about being a customer. Using the product itself generates leads.”

Another common approach is the freemium model.

“It’s still product-led growth. The product is still the marketing vehicle. But it’s not as pure because there’s a time frame. The user needs to activate it and see the whole value of it during the free trial period.”

This can present a problem for SaaS marketers because most are focused on monitoring the content marketing funnel. Instead, product-led marketers track how people use their products.

Derek Skaletsky, founder at Sherlo

To help SaaS companies master a product-led growth strategy that turns more leads into customers, I recently talked to Derek Skaletsky, Founder of Sherlock, a product engagement scoring solution that helps SaaS businesses track utilization. 

Here are just five valuable tips that came out of our conversation about product-led growth in the SaaS industry.

1. Know where you are as a company

Before getting into a product marketing strategy, remember not to think of all SaaS companies as the same. There’s a difference between go-to-market and the other steps along the line.

And each one requires a different approach to growth marketing.

So, start by evaluating what your goals are as a company and team before building a strategy or collecting data that will help you reach them.

2. Leverage data in all aspects of marketing

The next generation of technology and product-led growth marketers will be even more comfortable with cloud-based software, marketing and PR enablement technology. 

They’ll be dependent on data -- not just to make decisions, but to also drive messaging. 

“Cloud-only companies in the SaaS industry are actually still a small percentage. I think it will go more in that direction to the point that, in the next 5-10 year it will be majority SaaS -- but I don’t think it will (or should) ever be 100%.”

3. Create a strategy and environment that’s nimble

Effective product-led growth also means that marketers should continually be more aggressive and flexible.

“Changing a website used to be something you did once every 3 years. Now, you should be running tests weekly at a minimum.”

Constant A/B testing is not the exception but the status quo.

4. Remember that customer success is everyone’s job

We tend to look to customer failure as a failure to just one department.But blaming product sign-up and subscription churn on the customer success department is like blaming a waiter for a bad meal.

They didn’t pick the product (the menu), the benefits, the features or the price.

If you’re experiencing high churn, it’s time to dig a little deeper and...

5. Understand your customer engagement

There’s a simple equation to know if your product-led growth is actually leading to business growth:

New monthly recurring revenue = new deals - churn + expansion

Knowing that monthly churn rate is super important for your future ability to grow and will be very important to investors.

And you REALLY need to understand how your free users are using your product in order to convert more people into paid accounts.

That’s where Sherlock helps companies.

They help SaaS companies collect data and create a meaningful framework of signals and scoring. These are tied to key user behaviors and will signal your team when a user has met the established criteria. 

Two important signals are knowing when a freemium customer is ready for a sales call and when a user is about to drop out of the B2B customer journey before buying.

By establishing these, your sales team will know how to spend their time and you can fine-tune the product marketing messaging to speak to the aspects users are most interested in.

Conclusion

It comes back to our opening idea: if you are leading marketing for a SaaS company, you are likely already applying product marketing to some degree.

Taking it to the next level requires understanding user engagement as granualarly as you can. This includes:

The full customer experience finding, downloading and setting up the product 

What features they are using and where they spent time within the product

The messaging and marketing used while they interacting with the product 

If they saw the value of the product and purchased

Knowing the indicators that a user will share the product with others

Product-led growth is an expanded marketing role. It touches all parts of the customer journey and leverages owned, earned and paid media.

For more insights like this, be sure to like and subscribe to the B2B Lead Gen Podcast.

Ever wonder why some brands have better search results than others? Or how Google decides who gets rich results like knowledge panels, snippets, and image results?

Brand search engine results are what you see when you Google a brand name.

At some point in the B2B customer journey, your customers and prospects are going to Google your name or the name of your brand.

And what they find will either hurt or help your reputation.

Search results have a direct impact on perceived authority and credibility. Negative results surfacing in search has compelled many brands to retain the services of a good SEO consultant.

For example, if you call yourself a world reknown expert and it's hard to find your website, or someone less influential outranks you, there's a disconnect between what you think about who your are, and what Google thinks about you who you are

In this episode, I have a very special guest. 

He’s a world-renown brand SEO specialist Jason Barnard who publishes a series of brand SERP courses and we’re going to talk about how to manage your reputation in Google Search, which is very different from trying to rank for unbranded keywords.

In this podcast, we discuss:

What are Brand SERPs and why do they matter.

The difference between online reputation management and SEO.

Impact of brand SERPS on brand reputation.

How brand SEO impacts thought leaders.

Skills required to manage brand SERPs.

Impact of earned media on brand SERPs.

And much, much more!