How to use AI for the Perfect Content Marketing Strategy

Hello, hello, everyone: this is your host Akil Jabbar and welcome back to another episode of saas district in today’s episode. Well be talking about how to use ai for building the perfect content marketing strategy. Today we have our guest jeff coyle joining us. Jeff is the co-founder and CEO at market news, an ai powered content, marketing service that collects and analyzes your content prioritizes the best opportunities based
On authority and roi and helps you build topic models for you to write and create the best content for your strategy prior to starting market news in 2015, jeff was a marketing consultant in Atlanta and led the traffic search and engagement team for seven years at tech Target which is a leader in b2b technology publishing and lead generation jeff frequently speaks at content marketing conferences, including content, tech marketing, ai conference lavacon content, marketing conference and much much more so welcome. Jeff super excited
To have you on sas district show today, oh thanks, so much and yeah just getting back from content marketing world, which was uh the last week in Cleveland, so excited to jump in, and this is going to be a great discussion, awesome, so uh. We we met through a mutual friend, um Kevin. So if you guys haven’t checked out his podcast, we actually had him on the show Kevin
Peterson and uh, you know, were part of a mutual group and facebook community, that’s uh that’s, pretty big and you know, love being part of it. I mean I’m a big fan of market muse myself. You know i use it and i love what you guys have done. Um and you guys have started introducing you know ai into the mix. You know before, just being an SEO tool so well, I want to start with that side of it. You know what what exactly is
Ai marketing and what and what exactly does it mean to incorporate ai techniques into marketing strategies? And maybe, if you can share some results that we can expect, you know for some examples that you’ve seen that have worked really well sure. So i mean, i think, you kind of walked through the intro and thanks for having me, um, the i think, understanding the origin of how market muse came to be in a really quick, concise. I promise story makes it
Clear why we built market news the way that we have um so in my early part of my career, so I’ve been in this space for about 22-ish years, doing, search engine, optimization content strategy, lead, gen, every element of inbound marketing and i was primarily focused on Using content and getting people to think content was a thing right. These were big b2b companies. They even have content on their sites. It was just like they had white papers over here. They had physical brochures over there, so we’re trying to
Convince large companies to actually get content on the web so that we could syndicate it and generate leads um so fast forward in 2007, when we were acquired by TechTarget what they had that we didn’t was a huge editorial team. You know 300 writers editorial experts. You know a thousand writers on call like uh, you know kind of guest writers, um, and i was sitting there with you know, SEO strategy. That was it. You know i could push out. A million-plus leads in a
Month right, but it wasn’t an editorially, um, sensitive uh strategy and so working with them over the time that i had, i went from being completely not empathetic, for what editorials have to do to really understanding their workflows, and i saw an opportunity for if we could Figure out how to use data to inform what it means to be an expert on a topic that would be something that
Connected and crossed the chasm between editorial and SEO right – and that was when I found my co-founder aki blog, who had built the original technology that powers market muse, and it is a topic mod. It is a branch of artificial intelligence called topic, modeling um. That says, it builds and basically tells you, if I’m an expert on a topic here. What an
The ideal framework for this content would be, and then we’ve taken that infrastructure and turned it into solutions at every stage of the of the process, so from early stage, research and planning and prioritization. So what should i do? What should i write about? What should i update and why giving the? Why, for content is something that i say a lot like whats your. Why? For content,
Why are you building this page? Why have you decided that this page is the one you need to create now right, um and then connecting the dots and pushing all the way down that process, so we built uh the first-in-market content brief that was powered with artificial intelligence, so the actually building The outline giving insights that a writer should consider when they’re crafting uh content, um and also updating existing content, giving frameworks for saying for evaluating content and a quantified measure for quality so saying how high quality is.
This, how comprehensive is this its, not a subjective, only measure right, so we can actually evaluate a content item and say whether its written by an expert most likely, whether its missing key elements um, that an expert would have communicated, and then we were able to roll That up from the page level, to the site level, so we can say what strengths do you have on
Your site, when you cover this topic, you typically do it really. Well, when you cover that topic, you typically do it poorly and what are the gaps, and how do i fix that? So you imagine, the main stakeholders for market muse are strategic editorial leads or content strategists if its a a technology firm, they’re deciding what we create and what we update, how much money we need to investigate and invest, but then getting in kind of the boots. On the ground, folks, the writers, how do i get information?
That creates a single source of truth so that when i deliver content its not going to get punched back in my face, you have to actually give me a brief. If I’m going to write, i cant just have to do all the research first of all. Why? Second of all, why would you want your writers doing keyword research because they’re not as good as a great search engine, optimization professional would be much like a great search engine.
Optimization person isn’t going to be a great writer. Naturally right there are those jacks of all trades, but they don’t exist very often um its its its like uh. You know asking uh uh asking somebody who you know sells milk, if theyre a farmer in some cases right, um, so uh and that’s, not typically gon na, be the yin and the yang. Some of them are, but very rarely and so its everywhere in between there. We even have also innovated in the
Natural language generation, space uh so where weve built our all of our own technology, which uses our brief technology, which is basically effectively. If you can imagine hey if market muse knows what it means to be an expert. If market muse can build an outline and market music can generate content that exhibits, expertise, obviously that’s a beautiful triangle right, so we’ve already launched that into the market, and you can use that to inspire possible ways to approach a particular concept and that can really rev up Your team, if you have the appropriate attitude, um and
I say that probably well probably get into it, but with generation there’s a lot to think about both ethically as well as workflow. It can be a complete stopper non-starter for some people and it can be a huge amplifier for others, um and its just because everyone’s brain works differently and that’s the thing with all this technology there are, there are editorial people who, if they hopped in a
Popular SEO tool, their brains would just be like no doesn’t help me still to this day and that’s, okay, its really its actually quite good right, because they’re not theyre, being guided by their own expertise. They understand they’re not being given the thing that fits into their workflow and that’s been the problem with the market and that’s. The problem were looking to solve its how to get something that both an editorial leader or subject matter expert would love
As well as your techies SEO, nerd and I’m allowed to call them that, because i am one um and are are also happy with it. The person that unlocks that has a major major, exciting thing – you don’t talk to editorial leadership and find one find an editorial lead that spends a lot of time inside an SEO tool and ill uh ill uh ill personally write you, a one-dollar check, which you Have to go to the bank and deposit, so
Ill, take you up on that offer jeff. So you mentioned an interesting question to ask yourself when writing content right. So, if I’m a sas company I’m thinking, okay, i need to do seo. Everybody says i need to whether I’m already doing it or I’m starting to um. Why should i create this specific piece, um, but you know looking thinking from an SEO perspective I’m trying to understand right. There’s, like you have that optimization feature which i love. You know you can go in and
You know, optimize the page for for trying to rank your piece over the you know the competition, but from a Google perspective, I think a lot has changed over the last few years. Where you know were hearing, google weighs a lot of the writing based on just the quality of the content you put outright. So if you put out something that’s really high quality, you know probably doesn’t need too much technical stuff. Uh versus you know, focusing on just the technical side, um whats your thoughts on that when it comes to
Ranking for for the keywords on those articles, you know you want your. Why is i want leads, and I want to create. You know good piece of content and i want to rank obviously to do that so whats. Your thoughts on that, yeah, so there’s there’s a just unpack that um it has changed for a long time. I was uh unfortunate for me fortunate for you. I was on top of the hill
Screaming into the world that quality content really mattered for now over a decade, right, um and now its hit people hit a lot of people in the face that weren’t listening, but its very, very important to understand and ill start. My response there, with looking at google, has to always get better. They have to its just what they provide has to answer the questions that people care about. They also have to do a better job surfacing what i reference as googles.
Favored intent to a query, which means Google may not always have explicit intent, which means, i know absolutely that this person is typing these words in and they are looking for this thing. So what they have to do is assess the level of fracture in the intent right. It can also have two different meanings, so there can be meaning disambiguation, but I think it all starts there. So you, then, if you are writing for your
Site um need to understand whether there are things like multiple meanings for what your think, what you care about and then also whats the fracture. Now you the easiest way to say that is group and then googles, favorite intent, doesn’t match the fracture, and this may sound esoteric but ill explain it in easy, easy phrase: uh in case you don’t, have a visual aid here, um. If someones searching for CRM. Everybody knows crm the primary um, the primary definition for that algorithm, for that acronym is customer relationship management. So Google has to
First, do meaning disambiguation against other acronyms, maybe there’s a cool ride in mamas Viking gang right and they’re in they’re in uh uh. You know, Sioux falls south Dakota, right, so you know let’s just make that right. So, first of all, they have to decide the favored meaning right, based on most of the data that they’re getting, but now I’m looking for CRM whats the. What could i be looking for? I
Might be looking for what is CRM? I might be looking for CRM software. I might be looking to review or compare. I might be looking to buy a software package. I might have a problem with my CRM system, first of all terrible query to put in, but you know, but Google has to figure out what the favored intent is going to be right now. So some of those results in practice are
Going to be more basic guides, what is because theyre, assuming that somebody who theyre, just like so you’re around whats, that right um and then some of them are going to probably be a little bit comparison in the search results. So that is a signal of google recognizing that there’s fractured intent right. You could be at multiple stages of the buyer journey, so the reason why i describe it this way:
Is because you have the obligation as a publisher or a sas provider or a selling a widget, you know selling a coffee cup. You have the obligation to be there throughout that entire journey. You have the obligation to write content at all stages of the by cycle. To satisfy, as many intents, that make sense for you right. So how do you start to decide what you need to write? You need to understand the topics that you’re covering the level of expertise of those potential
Readers right and then, where do you have content already in that funnel right and what are those related concepts, so that has to be done at the starting point. So what we support basically, is we look at who you are today and say where you have strengths and weaknesses, and then we give you the potential research components to learn about what would fill out the rest of
Those journeys and the way that manifests and commonly is like a content, cluster or a collection of content that, as a mass, tells the story that you’re an expert right and if you don’t have that mass you cant rank. Well, I always like to say you don’t deserve to rank for content at the top of the funnel. Unless you have content at the bottom of the phone, you don’t deserve to rank at the bottom of the funnel. Unless you have content on top of the funnel um and you
Need content that is post-purchase as well? Troubleshooting um champion development content for people who have already purchased that are for in the future, that’s the story of how you build the most trust, and that is how you can perform with content. Big asterisk uh technical stuff gets you an invitation to the party you’re, not even invited without it all right um if you’ve got a slow site, if you’ve got technical problems, if you haven’t managed your migrations properly in the past, my
Background, certainly in my i have a computer science degree to focus on usability theory, but you know I’ve done a lot of technical work. I’ve done 100. Sadly migrations because ive got you know, gray hairs to prove them. Um. You got to get those things right. You got to get that that technical side, you got to focus on conversion rate. Optimization you got to focus on. You know a great user experience right, but um, those things are invites to the party and then they keep people at the party right. But getting in the
Door is effectively what, where you are, are you modeling expertise or not um and your existing authority really matters so lets just say you have a great brand you’ve been writing for you know 20 years um and you own this topic right. Even if you haven’t tuned, your you know, tune the 24, even if you haven’t sharpened the knife for years on the content, you just you, know correlatively. When you publish about this, it does well right. Okay, right, you can go from that to
A laser-guided missile system if you’ve got it from, you know, luck and chance, and just from editorial excellence. Those are my favorite people, because I can turn them into a you know: a deadly machine if you’ve got nothing or you’ve got you don’t know why stuff does well. You don’t know why stuff doesn’t that’s, where you need to be more introspective, because the four main reasons, why are quick wins? I want to win whats the content. I need to create today that wins today or tomorrow, or update what content
Should i update, then I’ve got business goals. I’ve got. I want to own CRM. Okay, good luck, its going to take you a while, but here’s how much you need to build, and there’s a lot of stuff you need to update. The other ones are risks. Most technology companies have huge risk factors that associate with their site from competitive risks. People are publishing and you’re not taking into
Account that or you’ve got pages that for one reason or another, get too much of a percentage of your traffic there’s. Probably people listening to this that have a lot of red faces. They’re, like oh yeah I’ve, got that page its. It gets 14 of my i get 40 percent ive had one technology coming 40 of my leads. Come from this one page and I’m like you’re, happy about that, you realize what a tremendous disastrous
Thing is uh. That is because what? If? What? If you don’t even lose traction on that? What if the world changes and intent changes? What, if there’s news in the space, so you’re gonna, say, if there’s a news event in the space you’re, okay, losing 40 of your traffic um and so there’s there’s? How do we get around those risk factors too um and and that those are the types of reasons why
We create and were looking to inform all of those so that you can have high high content, efficiency rates and that’s. How much content do you create? How much of it is successful? How much content do you update? How much is that is successful? Those are the metrics we’re looking to move so and then you know you mentioned
Authority as being part of it, so lets say you know, i still you know, I’m the leader now in CRM and then um. You know i want to move into. You know i don’t know sales outreach or you know so. Maybe sales tools um. How do you kind of think about that way? You know, is it, you know, is domain authority which is kind of you know. A lot of people look at is that the metric from you know moz that that’s kind of uh penciled in and everybody uses as the as
The as the goal post is that still a factor in today and is that, okay, when i hit a certain threshold im at this da and I’m ranking for all these crmt keywords, and i think I’m a leader there. I can now move to you know another another segment or the cluster. I know uh, taking off a few pieces of jewelry here right, no I’m just joking um, so uh no domain authority is an extremely it. First of all, it isn’t used by google um just to be clear, uh the the concept of
Domain authority, the metric is a completely correlative derivative, metric um. It is and there’s. Oh. There are related ones throughout the web that were connected to that. It is agnostic of expertise, authoritativeness trust, metrics or other technical metrics uh, and it is a its a finger in the air of potentially the likelihood of you having enough off-page power to perform uh hrefs, for example, their
Difficulty metric um is also solely based on linked data, okay um, so when they look they’re looking at its link cohort analysis, so its basically saying uh, here, a snapshot of whos performing here’s the links and the link profile of those pages. Thus, if you have close to that link profile, you might have a chance to perform right. That’s, the theoretics behind d, a domain authority, its to say you’re about this
Powerful generally, um, the problem with that is it doesn’t account for anything that relates to the real topic, relatedness or even the cohort of content you have that has performed or hasnt. It doesn’t account for your content at all. So its only actionable, if you take a cognitive bias, leap and the cognitive bias leap is you say,
I’ve already done the work, and i have the historical data that i already have data. That tells me that i have done well on this or related topics connected to it, so it creates this natural bias. So if I’m going in and I’m researching a word, the origin of that word comes from me right. So I’m probably relevant but let’s just say, you’re crazy. That day and you wanted to look up a word that wasn’t related to
You so your das, 84 uh youve, never written any content about looking around the room about um hulk. Some of my kids. Toys are on before about the incredible hulk. All right. Um your site is about coffee cups and you’re, the market leader in coffee, cups, right and you’re like well. This search result the average da is like 65 um. My link profile is relatively similar to the ones that are ranking well, for you know the incredible hulks real identity. So that means i can go write an article about the biography of the incredible
Hulk and the answer: is you cant? You can try if you have, if you’re in the top two percent of all power, because its a logarithmic chart, you have the ability to do that right. You can get away with anything its not going to be long lasting. If you are like the rest of us, you’ve got to understand the connection between topics and your site and your authoritativeness at the topic site, section level. That is how it is
Calculated um, it is calculated at the topic site, section level, its super hard, its super con. Imagine googles tasks. Imagine how computationally complex! That is right, but they have to do it and the example that they give that i always like to use because its from the horses mouth is um. The careers section of the Johns Hopkins website is not the authoritative place to get medical advice.
Okay, right all right that one sentence explains why google cannot operate by da one sentence to describe why that platform. Those platforms have fundamentally trained us on correlation, and what we have to do is retrain ourselves on content driving, topical authority, and you can always please feel free to use it. The career section of the Johns Hopkins website is not where you should get medical advice and once people once your brain, explodes pick it up off the ground. Smoosh it back in realize that SEO has been all the touts have been standing in front of screens.
Telling you bad information for years um, you can go okay. Now, what and now what is putting data behind you know you can use correlation theory right um, but don’t. Do it stupidly right, don’t, look at a search result on an intent, fracture query right: youve used optimize right, don’t use it and don’t smash all the content together and try to make something that
Is the aggregation of four pages that are about different things? So, if you get, if you go get advice about SEO, it says: take the top ranking three pages: smoosh them together and do a better page uh-huh. You do that you’ll be calling me a year later, crying on my shoulder, especially especially if, in those top three results, is a extraordinarily high
Powerful entity do not emulate your idols if that is a site from a letter name and you try to copy them or, if that’s a site from im allowed to say amazon that’s the site from amazon, um you’re in trouble. You try to go copy. An Amazon page you try to go copy. A three-letter: publisher, page um, you’re, going to get your butt kicked, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but there is mathematics that will tell you that the day will come and then you’ll look back and go. Oh gosh! What did
I do and unraveling that mess is a disaster. So what do you do? Instead? You got to build the infrastructure and the foundation that tells the story you’re. The expert then you’re allowed to perform well on those topics consistently right and you have to rely on getting lucky and you don’t rely on copying anyone which will create its own set of problems. So i mean, if I’m thinking from a sas founders perspective. You know we have time is always on our against us right.
We have 18 months six months, whatever we have right, we have to, we have to deliver. You know what about right quarter by quarter time, every quarter right. So i need to see results right, like okay lets say, lets just use CRM, but maybe its a less competitive keyword and I’m just getting started. Is it a volume game here is like do i push out? You know 100 pieces of content in a month and try to become a leader.
Or you know, how can you look at this from you know, lets say a quick wins perspective or you know best use of our time to start becoming a leader here and in our segment and especially when there’s so much competition around. So if you imagine me as a sas founder, i have to be able to answer that question, because why i got to get you hooked. I got to get your hope on market
If i walk in, if I walk in the door and you’re like me, like hey, kill, um, you start working with our platform. You know build 350 pages of content and publish it all at once and then wait six months. You’re gonna be like yeah. That sucks um by the way in a lot of cases. That is your best strategy, and I know that that’s not popular to hear but
In a lot of cases, it is your best strategy, and that’s going to make people cringe if they listen to it um. I have a client not going to say who they are um, who, for their most recent site, launch launched with 550 pages uh covering four core uh top-line concepts. Um and its you do have to take the leap of faith, sometimes um in that effect, because that was what the data told us right. Competitive cohort analysis is a
Uh not very well known, but it is a real process practiced by probably about four people who actually know how to do it right, um and what we do is we try to look at these things and use them when we’re giving that type of advice or When the technology is giving that advice um, but if the the answer is, you know the SEO diapers that depends right its. It depends on what you’ve got
Today, right, it depends on your um, what kind of authority you currently have um and where you have future authority potential so ill. I like examples right so ill. Give you three examples here: um one is a brand new site can only create you have to do competitive analysis to get the data because there’s nothing to look at right. So how do you do that? You either take the leap of faith and you tune the timing or you niche build and you are looking for.
Niches that have opportunities – and you believe you have a shorter time horizon there for one reason or another um if you’ve got an existing site, quick wins most frequently will come from content updates, okay, updating, existing content, expanding existing content that has authority – or they can inspire New content to create that can be connected and have a quicker wind cycle. So if i bring somebody in im most likely going to get my quickest wins by instructing them on items to
Update it, updating them based on their existing level of expertise, exhibition and by you know, looking at ways maybe intent change since they built their last content. Um, then those things might create what we call intent, mismatches, intent, mismatches. Your page is ranking for uh yeti, blue yeti, uh troubleshooting right, but its just a basic page uh review all right. Well, hey, go right, either. Add a section to this that focuses on problems and troubleshooting or go create a
Section that is about uh common problems and troubleshooting and link to it. Okay, so that’s an intent mismatch, because today they go to it and its a review, but they were researching troubleshooting, so they wanted one thing i gave them another. What does that do that gives me a that tells me i am authoritative about the microphones already. I have the opportunity to rank for
Another intent which is troubleshooting right, so those are commonly the quick wins. The other side is to say i want to own this topic. I can give a relatively predictive metric on how much content is created, needs to be created or updated. It may not be what you want to hear the other example ill. Give you real story. I will not say the names, a major technology.
Company two product lines they said they needed to grow leads 30 in one year to each of the product lines. I said well on this one I’m not going to say the exact number, so they kind of dont. Remember them on this one product line. You would have to create 240 articles and update 35 on this other one. You can get the same outcome from creating 60 and updating 20
Guess what they did, the path of least resistance. They said well focus on this other product line next year, and then they focused on this. So it can be at that level of predictive niche building. Is a skill uh its very difficult its? Not? What I’m talking about here, its no matter where you are today finding a quick win, can make everybody happy i like to instruct my onboarding team and my uh training team to try to find three or four quick wins, because nothing
It gets people excited then hey, I updated this page, and it went up ten percent. Obviously this works right, but there’s a method to that madness, its it can be a you know. It can be a parlor trick. Seos have been doing it for years. If you’ve ever heard, anyone say the word striking distance its an SEO parlor trick, it means that its correlative someones on page two, you tell them hey, go make that page better and then they do there’s a high
Degree of possibility that they will go from the top of page two to page one, naturally so that make. That is what the SEO agency world was built on. That was the first-ever SEO. Parlor trick outreach was hey here. These words go update these pages and they would were not doing that either, although it still works by the way um. You can go do that when its combined with the data
About your existing authority and you can turn that into a laser strike machine. You can say: oh wow heres, why im updating that? I wrote this article about you know blue yeti, microphones, and I never talked about the sound modulation. Okay, i go do that. It works. Okay, so that’s the type of insight um that that is a little bit different, but that’s how you get to quick, wins and that’s? How you
Get the long ones um and then you know kind of diving deeper into the ai side right. So i understand the powerful tool around it. Data analytics you can streamline. You know manual work saves you a lot of time, better predictive outcomes and predictive analytics right, but there’s also the other side, which is how ai is used to interpret you know, human emotion interactions. You know customer experience don’t cover those actionable insights for maybe a more personalized. You know uh customer journey lets call it is it. What points are you looking at there is it points like bounce rate? Is
It time on page or what else can we focus on to really? You know, look at that side of the overall metrics. I do not uh in our platform um, i don’t look at analytics uh, yet um. I don’t look at. For example, google search console data um I’m looking at uh how predictive my metrics could possibly be and then how much content needs to be created is my focus um. So i don’t need that data to do that work. I want clients to certainly be looking at
Um data points uh like entrances, isnt entrances is not your only metric for a successful page right. It is a metric, but not all pages should be generating entrances. That’s scary, for someone to say a page may solely exist to be a support page. It creates. It adds to that remember. I was talking about your content moves in a mass, it adds to the mass and it is the most common thing someone
Clicks on after they read the page that gets all the entrances. Well, that has intrinsic value to google as well as it does to um. You know, because that page represents another piece of expertise. It may not be as popular of a piece of expertise, but it is very important um. So next click information um, certainly if measured right, bounce rate, um and uh and entrance data as well as uh
If you have a really good beaconing system, you’re getting true true dwell time, true scroll depth data, all of that should go into your analysis, um. I say if you’re doing it right, because, sadly, most people calculate bounce rate wrong, google analytics does not calculate it properly. Unless you have a beginning system, so if you think you’re calculating google, if you think you’re calculating bounce rate properly or average time on site properly and you haven’t configured analytics you’re wrong and I’m sorry
The reason is because there’s a false numerator denominator in uh average time on site uh a bounce page, a one, a one page experience uh is uh unless you’re beaconing for time on site, which hopefully, this isn’t completely insane as I’m describing it, which means you’re, hitting The analytic system, over and over again to tell somebody that somebodys still on the page um a a bounce, will be recorded as a zero but zero on the numerator and a one in the denominator. Um and uh thatll really really skew your time on.
Site data um, so uh net-net, look at your um average time on site and page with and without bounce segments, um, and definitely use that data its very, very important and then your best case is to have a solution that allows you to almost look at A DVR of those user sessions, whether its a full story or something similar um youve, got to get to that level of detail to be a great content strategist, because
Just getting them there has um, and then they leave not only does that stink because they’re not converting it loses. You lose the trust of your organization um. They don’t want to build that content anymore, because its not doing anything, but what it also does is. It gives really negative signals to google um if somebodys landing them bouncing back. They call it dolphining and dolphin back there’s some amount of dolphining that goes back and um, but you don’t want that to be true.
There’s a lot of myths about how that works and how its injected into the algorithm there’s even a huge tribe of seos. That says that Google doesn’t even track that data um, guess what they do. Uh. If you want to know how, maybe we can do that in another session, but yeah they track everything just because you mouse over a link, folks and there’s. No tracking parameters on the link doesn’t mean its not being tracked uh, it is every click on google is tracked and every click
Every placement of a link has a name uh there’s. In some cases, hundreds of them they all have specific names, and so google tracks that and they want to know they have that first-party data, if you’re bouncing back and forth so they know that information um. So you don’t want a page that creates bounce rates, both because there’s its a signal of negativity internally, its also a signal of negativity to them, got it um, jeff kind of last question on a little bit of the technical side for for maybe our founders. Listening in before we go a
A little bit deeper on on the personal side, if I’m a sas founder thinking about planning my strategy for 2022 um, what are some barriers or obstacles? I should be thinking about, for you know, adopting ai in terms of my marketing strategy, or you know what are some things i need to think about there to help me build a better strategy. Yeah. I know that’s a great its a great question. I think that um, it depends on the size of your business, of how
Difficult its going to be to pilot these types of things, internally, um right, uh, if you’re but you’re. If you’re lets just say, we throw that out. Um really want to think about each stakeholder in the organization and how they’re going to view the innovation um and what what is it doing? Is it disruptive? Is it an amplifier uh or what is it? But part of that? Is i really really what i would challenge everybody to do by the end of the year is to do a really
Exhaustive process inventory and flag the things that are being done manually or the things where the process hasn’t changed in more than lets, say two years for one reason or another or you’re, using what you believe to be a best practice, but its all manual, any manual Um needs to be accounted for there, um and from that you’ll find winners um. If any just and then i always like to say, write down anything you think is a 100 subjective thing right or where the data doesn’t match.
Peoples, perspectives um, one example of this uh in most organizations is lead scoring all right, lead scoring is uh believed to be subjective. People say these are good. These are bad um, its also a derivative of um, often like demographic data right, but there’s technology out there, where you can actually inject your entire CRM and demographic information and build ai models that do predictive lead scoring, and then they create look alike. So when coming someone comes to your
Site, if you know who they are because of you know, maybe you’re using a drift or a um quickfire or you know, a solution uh, you know zoom if or whatever um a clear bit those types of things and you’re like hey this persons from Boeing. All right well is Boeing, a good lead. The answer is, if you’re using traditional. If then statements – probably yes right, but the real answer is
Who knows how? How successfully has your team sold to large aviation companies in the past? How slow those deal cycles been? Have they churned? You know like so traditional lead scoring is looking at demo, only all right, so I’m, giving you an example of something where people will judge leads good or bad some people, some people, think you do it based on. If a rule-based system that’s antiquated right and then those are the workflows that your business can be helped by with
Ai, so how does that correlate to content? I do manual keyword, research, okay. I use a data point like search volume to guide prioritization. For what i write. I my content team manually writes with a small set of instructions. I have multiple feedback loops commonly when a writer gives me a draft, i manually review it and then i kick it back to them. I uh look at google analytics data to decide what content to update that’s playing results uh. So any of
Those workflows, if you’re still doing them manually or you’re using a data point or a data source that has been around for quite some time, can be accelerated with artificial intelligence, so that process inventories first, you know be real tune. The mirror so that its clear be. Okay with the fact that you’re probably doing a whole bunch of stuff wrong, i know i am every day um and
Then realize there’s, probably something that’s going to solve your problem. Um, you just might not know about it yet um and the the best place in the world is when that technology gives you its first response. That was better than anything you could have ever done. That’s, when you know oh crap, I’m a human, its, i have a blind spot. You know its
When you’re writing an article, if you’re a writer ive been on this, beat for 20 years whats this technology going to tell me and you’re writing an article about content marketing strategy and its like, hey um, make sure you talk about target audience the article you wrote last week, didn’t, oh wow. Obviously i just had a blind spot whoopsie right um. So those are the types of experiences that we think you know grammarly used to not work. Now we trust it right. There’s other things like that that you just you haven’t gotten. You know used to you’re, not mature
Enough you haven’t had that experience yet and leave yourself open to those types of experiences um. In one case, you know. In our case, we use a predictive lead, scoring platform called mad kudu, which i believe to be a rocket ship uh that i would love to hang on to um uh, which you know first few months. It was like lets see if these things that this is good data right lets, say that’s a pilot and then
You’re, like whoa, this is really really good data. You know the first time you use the spell checker. You were like this thing can never be right and then you, the first time you use grammarly it wasn’t very good. The first time you talked to Siri, they probably stumped or your echo um. So take that approach, like you probably
I don’t know what it will feel like for this to be good and then you’ll be successful with ai got it. That’s super helpful, um, so jeff kind of want to move into on the personal side a little bit more rapid-fire question for for people to understand. You your background kind of uh, how you think um, so you know you’re part of a founding team and you, you know its obviously quite demanding. Now you guys have grown. You know significantly over a year over year, you know triple-digit growth at
Some point um: how do you currently measure your own leadership success and you know within your own team today? Oh gosh um. I am, I measure it by the skill set and the abilities and success of the team of the individuals who i give responsibilities um. I didn’t always see that i didn’t see that as the metric i was always looking at. You know kpis and such, but in my current role and where i am in
The organization i see it as how much i trust rely um and the what the outcomes i expect um, the level of emotional intelligence in communications um, the level of of of support when things aren’t good, because a lot of times things aren’t good um that exists. Inconsistent that’s, what makes me feel it makes me feel a lot better than any particular number um, because i wasn’t always i didn’t always act that way. I came from an in-house team and i
Wasnt thinking critically about that um, and the way that that changed for me was when i hired um my co-founder and i hired a um the person who is now in our CTO position, um hes, you know and be like. Oh wow weve. We got someone whos better than us at almost everything that hes responsible for and like that that’s that’s, the key that’s. How i measure myself is that I’ve got a CEO now uh I’ve got a CTO ive got a vice president of marketing. Vice president of sales account management, who are better
At what they do than i could ever be um and ever will be um and and if i can do that, consistently, then I’m a successful leader. If i cant do that successfully, then I’m not um and im, you know I’m a little wacky and, as you can tell I like to get into details and uh, you know I’m really passionate about content. I’m.
Really passionate about SEO its the only thing I’ve ever done, 22 years um and the only thing I’ve ever done professionally is content and search and uh, with a few exceptions. I’m another im, a founder of another business as well, but the that has to come through the legitimacy has to come through, but it doesn’t yield success unless there’s a team who also has the ability to let their experience.
And expertise, shine, yeah love, it whats one piece of advice: you wish you had known and you would tell your 25 year old self. If you go back today, oh man, i got a lot of those um but for sure um you know nothing trite or silly. Uh, but what i would you know, there’s a lot of those um, but i would say from a um i would say: become an entrepreneur a lot sooner.
Um, you are one um and i i always ex i had you know. My father worked at the same company for 41 years uh. We neither of my parents, went to college um uh. You know he was a. He went from. You know bag boy, all the way up the chain to supervisor at a supermarket chain. My mom was a homemaker and um, and i just always thought that you latched on to a business and
That you worked and the harder you worked, the better things would come. So me at 25 would be to say: hey, hey, that’s, not the case um. You know you and plus you have the ability to do this, its not something where you have to build up. So much wealth so that then you can take a leap of faith, um, which is what i did. I built up a
Particular amount uh until i was able to jump off the cliff, you can jump off the cliff a lot better and things will work out um and the one way you can uh support, that is through uh communities of like-minded people always have people in your Rolodex. That have done it and are at a uh and they’re smarter than you, and also give back with people who are maybe a level earlier in the same career path. I used
To do that with in-house seos and in-house content and lead gen teams and maybe multivariate testing and all that, but what I had never had the experience of is doing it with people who have jumped off the cliff and that’s whats been life-changing for me. So i would have reached out early on and said: hey jeff um find some people who started their own thing, see if that’s right for you um you don’t
Have to you know have a particular amount of money in the bank for you to even take a chance on being an entrepreneur. While i had a side hustle and always have, that’s not the same as actually jumping off the cliff nice. And you know, adding to that, is there any you know favorite books, maybe top three or maybe people who be mentors or people you followed and whove helped you, you know succeed who you say have been the most instrumental to your success over these last few years. Um
Sure uh gosh um, i believe in a storytelling, um, so um, i love storytelling as a concept. I believe that most founders could really be benefited by two things: um value selling, um selling, with value whether you agree with you know, IBM consultative selling, approach, value selling com, or you know bob apollo, inflection point uh and his efforts um. You gotta figure out how to make it not about you real, quick or else you’re, not gonna be successful. You gotta, make it without
Everyone, you know the the the value that you’re bringing the problem, the business issues, you’re solving um and if you believe, you’re exempt from that, because you’re in a plg sas company you’re wrong. You need to call me and we need to talk because i don’t want you to fail, and i will explain to you why that isn’t, the case um so uh storytelling, and so i mentioned that but um uh, storytelling there’s, a great uh author called Matthew, Dix Uh hes a storytelling expert one, multiple moth, grand slams um go read, story-worthy and
Believe that it will be changed its not related to sass at all its just how to tell a great story um you need it now, most likely you need it um and um, and then uh from a personal. You know my mentor and manager at my first business for years. Jeff raminger, who now is the primary at a consultants, firm called brand publish um, really showed me how to um think critically about presenting value presenting the. Why um in my communications, uh and you know a couple of words of advice, he
Always gave was you know if you get upset about something someone says about you, um just ask yourself how much you respect them um and if you dont well, it should mean a lot less to you what they stated or what they’ve done. If you do respect them, then next thing you gotta look at is yourself um, and so those are really meaningful pieces of advice that I’ve done over the
Years and books that i read um more recently, um gosh there there’s been a lot of mentors of the rhodium uh community is my my tribe now of entrepreneurs, our founders group um. If i have a problem 90 of the chance 90 of the time im. Looking at somebody in that group for the answer – and they have experience and the reason why that is, is they speak from experience? I wish for that for everyone um before you look to a guru or a tout, as i like to call
Them on facebook or youtube um go look, go look to a community of people who have experience um, first um, because uh so many times I see people fail being a founder because theyre, you know they’re worried about you know what they saw on this person said And its not the same as what they’re doing um or they got their advice from
Somebody whose whole purpose in life is to sell their course and um that’s a big red flag. So nice, nice uh last question jeff. What does success mean to you today? You know obviously had some good success with your company with your life. You know it could be it. Doesn’t have to be. You know, business-related could be personally
Business financially, life, no right answer: how do you define it yourself? Um, you know I’m still learning uh, i don’t know. I thought i knew um, but now i dont. I thought it meant that i was gonna. You know retire and be able to focus on you know a life of leisure uh. You know but that’s its, not the case um. I i don’t i trying I’m trying not to define it um because i think defining success that involves external medium. You know actually kind of can deny the experience um I’m learning that from the from from
Experience, you know, frankly, the hard way um and so for me now its going to be to realize that i can’t control it um, and i can be only successful if I’m really really confident that my contributions were the best that they could be. And if i retroactively look back at something and see that i didn’t put my best foot forward, even if i hit a goal, i wasn’t successful. Thank you jeff. This has been. This is
Fantastic I’m glad you were able to jump on today. I really enjoyed you know chatting with you um. You know hearing about your background and you know all you’ve done in the community. So thank you for all that um people listening again who who want to who get want to get in touch with you, say, hi or just connect, what’s the best player to reach out uh jeff at marketmutes com, m-a-r-k-e-t-m-u-s-e, dot, com, I’m on twitter, uh, Jeffrey underscore, Coil uh LinkedIn. I respond to like 90 of LinkedIn. As long as you don’t say you
Like i like your profile or something like that, if its like actual question ill respond to it – and i i respond to all DMS on twitter, um go check that out and we have a slack community if you’re a content, strategist uh called the content strategy. Collective uh, you can probably find a link online, but if you cant shoot me a note, um there’s, 1500 of the worlds best content strategists all hang out in that slack, and so you probably want to be there awesome awesome. Well, add all those uh
Links to our show notes for people to reach out and join okay. Thank you. So much really appreciate you jumping on today, thanks son. Thank you all for listening in to this episode and joining sas district today, don’t forget to leave a review and subscribe for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the sas industry. If you’re a sales company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at horizon, horizoncapital
Com and myself, or one of our consultants, will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please dm us on Instagram or LinkedIn at horizon capital and help us improve our content. For you all, thanks again and hope to see you on the next one,