Jess Cook and Joshua Perk are the VP of Marketing and CEO of Vector respectively, which is a marketing signal platform. They also host “This Meeting Could Have Been a Podcast”, have a combined 50,000 LinkedIn followers, and actually have fun with their marketing.

In this episode, we talk about how they built one of the most entertaining podcasts in B2B marketing, how they’re using LinkedIn holistically as a growth channel, and why the things that work best in marketing are always the hardest to measure.

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We discuss:

* Why their first podcast concept ”Funnel Cake” flopped, and how Jess pivoted the entire show in 24 hours

* The prep that goes into filming an entire season for their podcast in 2 days

* Why livestreamers get the most applause, and what that means for your content strategy

* How Jess uses Claude projects to turn bi-weekly interviews with her founders into LinkedIn posts + how they outgrew that

* 58% of followers came from comments, not posts, and what LinkedIn is signaling us with that

* How Vector… uses Vector

* The micro-events strategy that closed 100% of attendees (yes, actually)

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Connect with Jess and Josh:

Jess Cook’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesscook-contentmarketing/

Joshua Perk’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaperk/

Vector: https://www.vector.co/

This Meeting Could Have Been a Podcast: https://vector.transistor.fm/

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Connect with Finn:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/

Project 33 - LinkedIn Agency for CEOs: https://www.project33.io/

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My personal takeaways:

* When Jess asked marketer friends what they’d want to hear a VP of Marketing and CEO talk about, every answer was basically what was already on their agendas for their 1-on-1s. That has become the show. Some of the best podcast concepts come from what’s already happening, not what sounds good on paper.

* $4,000 for a studio day that produces a podcast 80% of open opportunities listen to vs $6,000 in Clay credits for 10,000 cold emails that get a 0.1% response rate Founders get perceived value wrong constantly.

* Attribution is a mechanism of control. As companies grow, they introduce attribution, not because it makes marketing better, but because someone five layers removed from the campaign needs to prove their dollars went somewhere. Actual great marketing takes courage, taste, intuition and, partly, doing the opposite of what everyone else / best practice says is the right approach

* Jess’s LinkedIn workflow for her founders: interview them every two weeks, run transcripts through AI trained on their voice, hand them posts. Once Josh understood the mechanics, and got addicted to posts doing well, he started writing more of his own content

* Every single prospect from their first dinner event converted to a closed deal. They mixed in existing customers to have advocates present, kept it small, and made the whole thing feel like a fun night out rather than a networking event. Now they’re scaling it into the “Ghost Tour Tour” (see their mascot) - a dinner plus a walking ghost tour in whatever city they’re in, with concert-style merch listing all the tour stops

* People should be able to become fans from a single clip (Jess learned this from Devin Reed). It happened a couple times that someone saw one 60-second clip, walked up to them at an event, and said “I love your show.” When they asked what their favorite episode is, they didn’t have one - they’ve only seen clips. Which is ok. Don’t aim for subscribers/followers, but moments that stick.

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