Episode Summary
In this podcast episode, we discuss the impact of the ongoing recession on content teams, which are often the first to face budget cuts. Many companies perceive content teams as dispensable, but our guest, Anthony Kennada of AudiencePlus, argues that content is essential for marketing success. As Kennada puts it, “Without content, there is no marketing. Content is the flywheel that makes marketing happen.”
Anthony explains why companies should keep their content teams, emphasizing their role in content distribution. He also discusses the shift in consumer behavior and how people consume content. According to current trends, as Anthony notes, content built around consumers, and not an algorithm, will drive business growth in 2023.
Guest Profile
- Name: Anthony Kennada
- What he does: Anthony is the CEO of AudiencePlus.
- Company: AudiencePlus
- Noteworthy: Prior to founding AudiencePlus, Anthony was the CMO of Hopin and Front and was the founding CMO of Gainsight. In addition, he’s worked at Box, LiveOffice, and Symantec. Anthony also published a marketing playbook in 2019 as part of the book Category Creation: How to Build a Brand that Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love, which debuted as a number-one new release on Amazon.
Key Insights
- Product marketing and content marketing should work in tandem. Otherwise, we may end up with rigid product descriptions that will make lead acquisition and conversion more challenging. On the other hand, content that speaks directly to customers and sees them as human beings dealing with specific challenges will drive traffic. ''Product marketing plays a valuable role in helping articulate that story, making sure that at the highest level of the brand and the brand messaging and positioning. And as we start producing some of that content, whether in partnership between content and product marketing, we can start building a journey for our audience. Or we can start talking more about how our products make these best practices and optimize or accelerate the adoption of some of these best practices. And so the two — thought leadership and the product value proposition — have to fit together or else we're ineffective at both.''
- We'll continue writing for the algorithm, but our focus will be on people. As content creators improve in SEO optimization, it's much harder to reach the first page of Google. But in 2023, the race will change its direction. The goal for content marketers/creators should be experimenting with different styles and formats to create content that allows relationship-building with actual consumers. ''The formats are evolving, and the way consumers are engaging with information and content online is changing. [...] Performance-oriented content, we have to do it. But it takes a long time to start seeing the value in organic traffic. [...] So what I've found is investing in writing or creating videos or creating podcasts like this for humans — instead of for an algorithm — where we're focused on delivering value, having a conversation, and building relationships with someone in the audience; that is extremely powerful.''
- Your content should say that we are in this together. And the magic word in the content space this year should be ''retention,'' while also focusing on providing value and helping existing customers. Present yourself as a partner, not a one-time service or product vendor. And the best way to articulate that is by creating high-quality, customer-centric content. ''Think about your content as a way of making folks more productive with your products. They're going through the same stuff we're going through. They have their issues when it comes to churn and fear for their role and budgets being reduced and all these things. So creating content that's helping build relationships with our existing customers and helping them through this season of their careers and companies is a wise place to invest from a content perspective.''
Episode Highlights
Reasons to Keep Your Content Team
”Content is how we can hit our number as a business. […] What we’re doing is building a message that we want to package into something that people can learn about what we do or the problems that we solve or what have you, or the problem in general in the market. You need someone to distribute that content.
Those are the critical things that any marketing team would need to keep the lights on. I would have a hard time understanding the logic behind taking the oxygen out of the marketing flywheel by not investing in organic content.”
The Role of a Content Marketer in Distribution
”The rented channels are starting to evolve. And so, we always talked about social media, for example, as a community management thing. And it’s great. There’s a lot of merit in doing so.
But when you think about how consumer media companies conceptualize the marketing funnel, it starts with some rented channels like social media, YouTube, and Spotify. And that’s a language that, in the B2B growth marketing context, we’re not thinking about.
But what I’m imagining is happening is that a lot of content creators, and folks like that, want to be creators themselves, like outside the context of work. They’ve figured out how to play to the rented algorithms to build an audience on LinkedIn, TikTok, and other channels.
And that’s a different skill set than SEO marketing, A/B testing, or digital marketing through that lens. And so, I see that being a reason why a lot of content folks are starting to own more of the distribution side of the equation.
It makes a lot of sense, and I think it also speaks to other trends of companies hiring creators, training creators, finding someone who naturally has this proclivity of creating amazing content but also knowing how to distribute in some of these more emerging rented channels.”
Creating Content for a Broader Audience While Hitting Your ICP
”Where we are right now is that we want everyone in the world to hear this. So let’s make as much noise as possible, be repetitive and on message, and spark a conversation at scale.
Even if you’re a mid- to late-stage company, there’s a benefit to that. There might be folks that are potential partners or somewhere in your ecosystem that are not the target buyers of your software, but they believe in the bigger trend, and you become the center of gravity for that discussion.
There’s value in a strategy that casts a wider net and evangelizes an idea far beyond the products you sell. But that only works if you have a target set of content, franchises, or however you want to refer to it, targeting your buyer. And being explicit about, ‘Hey, as a brand, we are the patron saint for that buyer.”’
The Rationale Behind Building an Engaged Audience
”We need to start building our own audience if we’re not doing that today, doubling down on our own audience, or engaging our owned audience with content and media. […]
You’re doing so by exchanging real value that’s helping them in their roles today in the economic uncertainties of today. […] And you’re delivering that in a medium that is inspiring them and educating them and entertaining them.
We can’t forget that there will be an end date to this season of our economy, hopefully. In that world, you don’t want to be stuck saying, ‘We ran marketing to the ground and froze everything, and now we have to start turning on the engine again.”’
