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Hello everyone, welcome to the digital brand builder. Joining me today is Robbie Kalman Baxter and we’re going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, and a subject, I need to know more about which is what brought Robbie on, and that is subscription models and what she calls a forever transaction with your customers, how do you grow lifetime customer value I mean this is such a critical skill for marketers if you’re in the SAS business or any kind of subscription business. You’re going to want to tune in and stay tuned into this so welcome. Robbie to the show.
04:34 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Thanks so much for having me mark.
Mark Fidelman 04:36
My pleasure. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself in 100 words or less.
Robbie Kelman Baxter 04:42
Yeah, I’m a subject matter expert and advisor on membership and subscription models, and I’m the author of the membership economy and the forever transaction, and I work for organizations to move to a long term relationship with their customers to enjoy recurring revenue.
Mark Fidelman 05:03
Wonderful. And so you’ve just completed your second book right. Yes. Okay, we’re gonna dive into that a little bit. But first of all, can you kind of explain what we’re focuses on, say, the subscription models or is it just SAS businesses or is it across the board or just kind of give us a kind of lay of the land of what you’re focused on.
Robbie Kelman Baxter 05:26
Yeah, well, I first got interested in in subscription pricing. About 1718 years ago when I was doing some work for Netflix, and I fell in love with their business model and the way they were so focused on doing one thing really well, the people they serve. That which is professionally created video content created in, with delivered with cost certainty in the most efficient way possible. And I saw how they stayed focused on delivering on that promise to their members. By continuing to add to their catalogue of content, improving their technology, and really not letting themselves get distracted by any other things that came their way video games or user generated content or anything else just doing that one thing really well. And as I was falling in love with that model, everybody else was too and they I started getting calls from people who said hey we want to be the Netflix of our space, whether that’s Software as a Service SaaS as you talked about, or media, you know, news, music, and then crazy stuff bicycles dental brain pain management products insurance. Everybody was trying to figure out how to be Netflix and what I realized was, you can’t be Netflix, but you can start to apply these principles that I can put into a framework, almost any kind of business can use to build recurring revenue with the people they serve that there were these principles that applied it was this new world this membership economy, and businesses could use those principles to kind of reach the holy grail which we all want which is you know subscription revenue Predictable Revenue direct relationship with the people we serve and tremendous loyalty. And so, I’ve worked with companies across more than 20 Industries. I’ve worked with brand new startups, with just you know a solopreneur. I’ve worked you know with with with fan clubs and influencers and I’ve worked with digital natives Survey Monkey, you know, LinkedIn and then I’ve worked with really big traditional old line businesses consumer products, retail heavy equipment you name it somebody wants to join the membership economy.
Mark Fidelman 07:47
Can any business join this membership economy or is it is it really limited.
07:54 Robbie Kelman Baxter
The only things that I found that don’t really work are businesses that don’t need sales and marketing, so if your last gas for 100 miles or you have the patent on a drug that is going to save certain people’s lives and they have no other choice. You know you can treat your customers terribly and not work on a relationship at all because they’re going to find you, and they’re going to use your services. But even those businesses run the risk of being disrupted by a substitute that has a better model and is more customer centric. But for those of us that are you know marketers working with with businesses any business that works with marketing any business where the customer has choices to achieve their goal or solve their problem, those businesses can benefit from the principles that we’re talking about.
Mark Fidelman 08:48
Okay, so let’s, let’s then start now that we have the overview let’s then start from the beginning, and I’m very curious as to how Robbie if you’re brought in to help some of these organizations or maybe you have some examples from your book. How does somebody really decide on what their membership program is going to be. That’s the first question, and then followed by okay you decide what it’s going to be, how do you decide on how to price it.
09:13 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Yeah, so the first thing you want to do is think about what is your forever promise and who are you making it to. So those two questions, go hand in hand. The promise is, what is it that you’re going to do on an ongoing basis for them that justifies their loyalty and engagement and willingness to pay you on a regular schedule. So it’s kind of the difference between I’m going to sell you a blazer and I’m going to make sure you always look appropriate for any professional occasion, right there’s, it’s a different way of thinking about what you do for your customer. So you want to know what’s that promise and then who is it for so in the world of clothing is that for you know is the promise about professional or is the promise about looking stylish or is the promise about variety ease convenience cost savings. So you want to really think about who is this person and what is the promise you’re making to them. And then you want to think about what is the goal that this membership is going to serve for your business. So is this about what is what is the challenge that you’re facing Is it about the revenue, or is it about deepening the kind of marketing relationship that you have with your customers a lot of membership models or need for deepening the relationship, so that when a lumpy purchase needs to be made, you’re the one that has the release. So those are kind of.
10:46 Robbie Kelman Baxter
What is it that you’re delivering what is the value you’re delivering. And then, you know, you get into pricing.
10:54 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Right. Oh, yeah, so do one. So,
Mark Fidelman 10:57
yeah, I’m sorry. We’ll cut this part out, but why don’t you talk about pricing so for, for example, you know, I’ve got a course that I’m trying to figure out pricing for, and I want different levels, and I’m not calling a membership but I’m thinking rethinking that based on our earlier discussions. So how would you go about determining price for something like that or you can get into, you know, products product pricing I know Amazon’s probably studying this to death, and they’ve got subscription models for just about everything. But, so, you know, first a service and then a product, how do you determine price for those things.
11:36 Robbie Kelman Baxter
So let’s say that you’re that you’re trying to price for a service let’s say that you’re a solopreneur subject matter expert or celebrity, and what you’re really charging for what is the forever promise that you’re offering and maybe if that’s about. I’m going to teach you how to be successful in digital marketing. So you want to think about, well, who is that for Who are you going to help be successful in digital marketing is this for an individual, that’s trying to build their, their independent personal brand, or is this for you know a fortune 50 company so you really really want to get clear on who you’re doing it for you want to understand what is the value of providing this benefit forever. And then you want to kind of work backwards like what I always suggest to my clients is triangulate between what is your actual cost because you want to cover your costs and make it worth your time. You want to think about what are the substitutes what are the other alternatives that somebody would have to achieve that same goal. And you want to think about what is the value to that member of providing you know whatever you’re the access to your to your services. So those would be kind of the three things that I would use to come up with a price. The other thing that I would keep in mind is what is the goal of this offering is this something that you want to do to kind of bring everybody into your community you want to build a footprint, you want to kind of lock them into your community, in which case you might care less about optimizing for profit or is the whole shebang so for example Netflix, they only make their money from the subscription. Right, so, so they can’t give it away. On the other hand, LinkedIn, gives away a tremendous amount of value. Because if we weren’t there, the non paying members of LinkedIn weren’t there, there would be no value for the recruiters and the job seekers and the sales people that are paying the higher level subscriptions. So it’s really important to understand your, your model, and where the revenue is coming from you out you know you asked about Amazon Amazon’s model of membership amazon prime. You know, there’s been a lot of, you know, a study done on that and the revenue that they generate from it. But, you know, the biggest value that they get is not necessarily the revenue from Prime, it’s the behavior change that it drives once you sign up for Amazon Prime you buy everything from amazon prime, and then you start to use the other services that you didn’t initially sign up for, but they come with prime and you start to get exposed to that so things like using your Kindle. You know, the free books that you can get from them, the three storage you get from them. Yeah, the video content you get from them the music you get from them. And suddenly, their footprint they own you you’re you’ve made them a habit, and having that having that relationship to the customer gives them permission to sell a whole bunch of other things.
Mark Fidelman 14:49
No, I love, I love these big holes I’m, I know that a lot of people listening are gonna wonder well you know I’m not Amazon, and I’ll have other services to offer. Is there something. And I don’t know if you want to pick a retailer who’s really struggling right now. If you don’t know this It’s May one 2020 we’re in the midst of, kind of a depressing situation that you’re probably all aware of. And if you’re listening from the future. A lot of retailers are struggling, and some of them are if they’re not they’re not essential but not even in business, so they’re trying to figure out how they can pivot and change your business model so my question is okay if you’re speaking to those people. How would you advise them to create some sort of subscription or membership program.
15:36 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Absolutely. So we’re already seeing some, some early adopters and innovators. When you want to do like let’s say that you want a toy store, a local, you know, local toy store, you might build a direct relationship with your neighbors, where you deliver toys on a regular schedule that align with the child’s maturity level, you know so different different gifts. You might also say for members of our store so that’s kind of one model which is sort of the subscription box model, where you get, you know, a new product periodically and maybe you overlay that with insights about the value of play, how children, you know, are developing, you know kind of what you can do as a parent or grandparent or a good friend to support your child’s growth and creativity, that would be one model, another model would be what I think is very popular right now is that the premium services model, which a lot of retailers are adopting kind of following in the footsteps of Costco, but it’s a model where you say you pay a fee because this is a store that you know you’re going to use a lot. And so you get better value and better service for being a member. So this is where you know you might say again if you’re at the toy store, you might say well if you’re a member of our toy store, you get free wrapping. You get notified with, you know, when certain things go on sale, you have access to a toy concierge so you can call up and say hey you know I have a 10 year old birthday party. I need to present Can you, you know, help me pick something rapid and drop it off in my house, for example, that kind of service level of the Restoration Hardware is doing something in that space right now CBS is doing something in that space right now, different benefits of course Restoration Hardware it’s more about getting decorating advice. Access to swatches without having to put a deposit down and pretty large discounts, in exchange for your hundred dollar fee to be a member, and, you know, another example CDs where you get discounts on certain products you get kind of jumped a line at the pharmacy which is a big deal, especially right now. So thinking about what is it that you what are the problems that your members are coming to you for that you’re not quite delivering on. Right. And why do I go to the toy store I go to the toy store because I want my kids to have, you know, fun developmentally appropriate stuff and I want family games and activities that keep us connected. Why do I go to the pharmacy, because I want to stay healthy or get back to my optimum health and I want expertise, and I want it to be no cost savings. So how do you build that into your membership.
Mark Fidelman 18:28
Great advice. So, okay, and I know you can go on and on this subject and I encourage you to read Robbie’s book, and there’s gonna be more examples there. But let’s Let’s now move to the next phase which I assume and let me know if I’m missing a step. So you’ve got the idea you know what you’re gonna do, you got the pricing down. Now it’s like okay how do you deploy this and get the word out.
18:51 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Yeah. So if you’re a going concern. Let’s go back to this, you know, kind of marketing expertise example you’re going concern you have real clients. You’ve, let’s say that you’ve picked a segment of your real clients that you want to serve through your membership. The first place I would go is to your actual clients that are actually getting something that is pretty close to what you’re going to offer so in other words they’re the ones that are already availing themselves of all of your services, they’re the ones that have kind of verbally said to you. Just tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it because I trust you and I know you understand this space better than I do. They’re going to be the easiest ones to sell this to because you’re almost doing this already, and that’s going to be a good place, Derek, and to see how the membership works, what your actual costs are, you know, for example, a lot of service membership say one of the benefits is you have access to call me whenever you have a question, and people are often really scared, I offer this actually for, for, you know, my, my business I have, you know, unlimited access to me and when I first started doing it I was really worried that people would abuse it, they don’t, they really don’t. But But when you’re trying it out you wanted to see and make sure are people abusing the services, what are the actual costs I’m incurring. How is it working is it deepening the relationship like I hoped, is it doing the things I had a hypothesis about what this was going to do for my business. I had a list of hypotheses, how many of these are actually true so you start there. Once you know that somebody’s doing this gets value, it’s profitable for you. And it engages them for the long term. That’s when you want to turn on your loudspeaker because you know that the, you know, if you can bring them in, they’re going to stay and be very profitable and be very happy. So that’s when you start working on, what is your, I always think of it is your trigger benefit or your headline benefit that gets somebody to join. And once you know that, you know, then you can work your way basically you’re working backwards up the funnel. You start by saying if somebody joins are they going to stay. That’s the first thing to test, then you say, How do I get them to join. If I have them in front of me. So forget the kind of marketing piece if I was in sales mode hand to hand combat of sales. How would with with this confidence that if I had a prospect in front of me. I could get them to sign up and that they’d be happy. The answer to that is yes, then you say what are the ways that I can bang the drum and build awareness to bring those people, to me, and you’re an expert on that so I’ll leave it at that.
Mark Fidelman 21:29
Yeah and you know I’m kind of going through that right now. If you look at the best in the business for what I’m doing in terms of courses. What they do is a long lead up a kind of a launch, and they work with influencers and keeping a very short here but they work with influencers to help build anticipation. And they, they build exclusivity and they say it’s only open for a few weeks and all that these, these tactics I find manipulating, but you know I’m so deep in the business that I understand what’s going on. A lot of people feel like they don’t want to lose something, so they know there’s only a three week window to join that you know particular course or mastermind, you know, they get they get this anxiety about it and they sign up and when if they thought about more maybe it’s sad maybe the timing isn’t right for them. But
22:17 Robbie Kelman Baxter
here’s the thing. That is great, bringing people and giving them you know a sense of scarcity and and prestige to join something, those things are great in a membership model when you have a subscription, the way that you benefit it’s not a transaction that happens one time as a transaction that keeps on happening. So, you have to before you do those things before you reach out to your influencers before you, you know, start, you know, sending out the signals that this is a scare
22:50 Robbie Kelman Baxter
they sign up for that first month, they’re the right person to stay forever.
23:03 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Join and then they leave, because it’s not a fit for them. So that’s why I’m sort of suggesting that you make sure first that your offer has a very very long life cycle, before you invest in those. Those acquisition tactics those awareness and acquisition tactics, but they can be like those tactics work great at getting people in the door which is, which is really powerful.
Mark Fidelman 23:27
Okay. And I agree, I mean there’s so many acquisition tactics that that I mean that’s your right that’s what I do is I figure out what’s the best one for what you’re trying to do, whether it’s a subscription model, or whether it’s you know something else. There’s a variety of different things that you can do in order to maximize the top of the funnel type activities to bring people in and it really depends on what your subscription or membership model is there’s not one size fits all you really got to be strategic about it and then educate people as to, you know, why should I join a subscription Why should I. Why should I do this or that you gotta, I’ve already touched on a lot of reasons why. But you have to make it so plain and obvious to them they say yeah, it’s a better deal for me, and I don’t think not anymore.
24:15 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Yeah. And once they join you as the, as the business owner. Subject Matter Expert the influencer, you want to really think about what is it that I can provide for this person on an ongoing basis, how, how am I going, who is the person that’s going to stay with me for a long time, because it’s so much easier to generate revenue. If, if your customer stays with you than it is if you have to keep going out and finding new ones.
Mark Fidelman 24:46
Yep. Great. Totally agree so let’s Let’s now move to kind of a post acquisition phase let’s say you get them on a subscription model or membership model. How do you keep them there. What are so do you have some specific examples, or some
25:02 Robbie Kelman Baxter
very specific. Yeah. So, and again, I encourage people to think about this before you put on your loudspeaker before you reach out to your influencers before you do your marketing campaigns to bring people in. You want to make sure that if you get them, they’re going to stay so that involves what I think of as engagement metrics and engagement features. So these are the features that are going to make somebody say, Hey, I came for that pitch I came for that one thing that they were marketing, but I’m staying. Because something, whatever that is. So for example, I might join a committee like an expert community because I want to learn, you know, the five ways I can use video or the you know whatever the specific things, and then the reason I stay is because I say wow you know everything this person teaches me about marketing is something that I haven’t heard anywhere else. This is actually a really good place for me as a marketing practitioner to stay ahead of the curve, it’s my secret weapon for new and emerging trends in the digital world that’s very different than I have this very specific task around what we’re going to do this month around video. So I come in for the trigger I stay for that bigger reason I might also stay another hook that keeps people for the long term is the community itself, which is the people under your brand umbrella that have similar goals and help each other they’re actually creating value under your brand. They’re, they’re part of the product. So for example if there’s a whole group of people and we’re all marketing leaders that are organizations, and we have this opportunity together under the umbrella to talk about our digital marketing strategies. How amazing have people that have the same vocabulary and have sort of been learning from the same expert to be sharing our real world successes and challenges that becomes part of the value and then I say, you know, I came for that course that I’m staying for this community of trusted colleague. So that’s really how you want to think about how you keep them. And the other thing I would say is, especially in the world of subject matter experts and thought leaders. One of the things that you want to do is balance between your current members who are pushing the envelope on what you do next. Kind of like, okay, I’ve, I’ve absorbed all the expertise you’ve taught me. What’s next, you know I’m doing all the things you said what’s the next thing what’s what’s coming around the curve, you want to always stay a little ahead of your best members. On the other hand, you want to think about tomorrow’s members and see what is, what are their choices right now, what are their challenges and am I rolling out the welcome mat for them, because if you have a really successful membership. The risk is you focus too much on today’s members and forget about tomorrow’s members and even make them feel like outsiders when they join. And, and what ends up happening them is they look for an alternative or they create their own alternative.
Mark Fidelman 28:07
Okay. And. Okay, so if. Is there something you put in place to kind of measure the success of each of those things is there. How do you know things are going well or not going well are they benchmarks. Okay. The
28:24 Robbie Kelman Baxter
first thing is, most people, if you have a monthly membership. Most people quit after the first month. Vast majority. And then the second month is a little bit better and the third month is a little better, and usually in most businesses by about the fourth month it levels off, and then people stay for whatever the duration is at the value of membership so in Netflix’s land it might be three years or more. I was talking to somebody the other day who runs a program to help solopreneurs start their businesses. He was finding people were dropping off at seven months, so you want to understand the true customer lifetime value you especially want to track onboarding to make sure that people are doing the habits of your best customer so in other words when they join. So for example if one of the benefits initial benefit is joined to take the class, but you know that the reason people stay is because of the relationships they establish while they’re taking the class. You want to make sure that they’re establishing relationships so you want to start figuring out what are the engagement metrics to track that tell you that somebody is making your offering or your community, a habit. So you want to track those engagement metrics, and you want to really understand retention retention is not very sexy. But it’s super important and very lucrative if you understand why people are canceling their memberships, you can fix it. And you can fix it and lots of different ways you can fix it by communicating the value, better in the first place, you can fix it by onboarding members, better if the reason is that they joined, they had all these high hopes but they never figured out how to become part of the community or how to access your catalogue of content or they never made time to access the content. You can kind of provide breadcrumbs to get them there. If the reason they’re leaving is because they’ve consumed all your content and believe you have nothing left to teach them. You might want to add more content, but tracking retention is probably the single most important thing you can do to optimize your long term lifetime value.
Mark Fidelman 30:25
And there’s all sorts of charts and graphs and there’s a certain level that you got to keep signing people up at versus people canceling or else your, your situation you get into trouble. I mean, I have a lot of data experts that have given me those those charts and graphs and for the purposes of this podcast we’re not going to go into them. I might have them on later to kind of explain it but it’s really critical to kind of monitor monitor that and make sure that you’re above the line, else you’ve got a failing business over time. And like you said if you might if you’re monitoring that you’re being very communicative and you can make the adjustments, you can you can change that trajectory. So, yeah, very, very well said. Is there anything that we haven’t covered Robbie that we could have covered that people in this podcast or listening to this podcast should know I know you’ve got a book that goes far deeper into all this stuff but is there anything at a high level that we can give to the listeners to create a better subscription program or membership program.
31:27 Robbie Kelman Baxter
I think the one other thing that I would want to share is that, for better or for worse, you know, five years ago when membership economy came out, I wrote it because it didn’t see what I was seeing, they didn’t see the power of subscriptions and membership. Five years later that is not the problem anymore. Everybody understands that subscriptions are really valuable and important, but they’re not necessarily executing in a way where the product offering justifies subscription pricing where the offering is actually something that is for the long term, and provides ongoing value and consumers and businesses alike are getting much more sophisticated about subscriptions, and there’s some subscription fatigue out there. So when you introduce a new subscription. The good news is that your customers prospects are going to understand what a subscription is they understand how to be billed for it they’re willing to do subscriptions, but they’re also going to really want to see that you’re offering justifies subscription pricing so I would just encourage you, before you go out there with a subscription. Just ask yourself, Is this something that makes sense, like what is the reason this is a subscription and not something that you can purchase outright.
Mark Fidelman 32:47
All right, good. I mean this is so valuable if you’ve haven’t listened to this again I encourage you to do it. The other thing that you should do is buy Robbie’s book we’ve got two final questions Robbie. And I asked everybody, this. And the first question is what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend. I could tell you that you told me stream yard. Earlier,
33:12 Robbie Kelman Baxter
just gonna say stream yard I just, you know, I’m LinkedIn live beta tester so I’m one of the first, I guess, 500, people to have a live on on LinkedIn. And I’ve been using stream yard as a way of, you know, sharing my live streams both on LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube so that’s been that’s been something that I’ve been really having fun with.
Mark Fidelman 33:36
Okay. And our second question is who’s influencing you today in marketing.
33:43 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Well, today it’s you. I mean, candidly the conversation we had about how to think about video in my own business is very powerful and really thought provoking for me to think about very practical ways that I can be incorporating I always talk about how you package value. I have this expertise in subscriptions in membership and business models in strategy. And I packaged it as a book I’ve packaged it as consulting I packaged it as keynote speeches. And I’m starting to do more around packaging and video and candidly I found you did not pay me because Mark did not be shocked, but what he is teaching is actually something that I really need to learn at this moment in my career.
34:30 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Yeah, I,
Mark Fidelman 34:33
I would encourage everybody really to take a look at and I’m gonna be doing a lot of free stuff. And, but if you want to get the next level if you really want to turn video into this video sales funnel and really move it to the next level and where you’re not breaking breaking the bank, I mean you can I mean you can spend a lot of money if you’re a corporation, but you can also do it from home if you’re a solopreneur and you have a good idea. It’s, there’s no better medium, and I’ve what all I’ve done is combine it with a sales funnel, we figured out how to combine these videos with sales funnels on nearly every channel, and show you how to do it very very inexpensively and lead to a high ROI sale, again if your product or service resonates with your target audience so. All right, Robbie so wonderful conversation. Where can people find you and buy your book.
35:26 Robbie Kelman Baxter
My book anywhere Amazon Barnes and Noble, your local indie booksellers who probably need your support more than ever. Books really easy to find it’s in, it’s in Kindle it’s an audible print it’s going to
Mark Fidelman 35:40
be in multiple languages, give everyone the title again.
35:42 Robbie Kelman Baxter
It’s called the forever transaction, how to build a subscription model so compelling, your customer to leave. And you can find me on. Robbie Kalman Baxter calm, his website there’s tons of content there. you know, print, video, audio, lots of goodies and, and you can find me on all social media, mostly LinkedIn and Twitter.
Mark Fidelman 36:12
Wonderful. All right. Bobby thanks again for joining us on the podcast I think you know in a couple months you should come back and talk about perhaps what we’ve combined together because we’re going to work together, going forward, and would be interesting to kind of combine that element that you’re talking about in terms of subscriptions and memberships with a video sales funnel, it could be quite interesting.
36:37 Robbie Kelman Baxter
Really interesting.
Mark Fidelman 36:39
Wonderful. Thanks again and. And we’ll talk to you soon. All right. All right, I’m gonna cut out that ending, no one like we’re getting off a call or something.
SPEAKERS
Mark Fidelman, Matt DeCoursey
TRANSCRIPT
Matt DeCoursey 00:00
So like a news article is for the most part not what I would call evergreen content a piece written about leadership, or how to build a business with some timeless advice would be a better example of evergreen content.
Mark Fidelman 00:14
Okay. And, you know, when we talk about creating this long term content, what, what, what needs to be done prior to even starting that
Matt DeCoursey 00:26
gotta have some kind of plan. And really, whether it’s evergreen content or any kind of content, if you want people to care about it, pay attention to it, or find value in it it has to. It has to provide something to them you have to entertain them you have to give them some kind of advice or you have to give them telling the story, or something like that so you know when it comes to evergreen content, it’s a long play, and it’s something that that planning and creating it needs to be. You know you have a systematic approach to it, you should have some idea of what you’re doing, like so. Taking pictures and posting them on Instagram, not evergreen content yeah now creating a long term blog marketing plan with articles that link to each other and provide value and you know have embedded different types of embedded media and stuff like that’s a, you know, that that’s how you would create a plan for evergreen content. I mean,
Mark Fidelman 01:24
because we do content for our clients obviously and I like video. Although you know we’ve done infographics, but we always start from a perspective of understanding who their target audiences and then either doing surveys or research or something to try to truly understand who they are and then, and then the creative part kicks in, which is one of my favorite things is okay how do we creatively. Educate entertain everything that you just said, and come up with those concepts so I mean how do you do that.
Matt DeCoursey 01:58
It really depends. You have to start by defining your audience you know who you’re trying to reach, who is the likely person or organization that’s going to absorb your content and then what message resonates to them, so you have, obviously, you have different kinds of value that people are going to find, so give me an industry. Yeah. Okay, so just name it,
Mark Fidelman 02:20
name it, let’s say, a pet products.
Matt DeCoursey 02:24
Okay, so people don’t have pets they’re gonna. Possibly. Well, people. First off, there’s a lot of people that have pets. So, what kind of pet Do they have Are you looking for dog owners are you
02:34
let’s say cats, let’s say cats Yeah,
Matt DeCoursey 02:35
okay. All right, so if you’re looking for cats, then you’re gonna. Alright, so we’ve defined that, so you want to be pretty clear with the plan like you’re going to title your articles and put the content, it needs to be a rent you shouldn’t be publishing a blog article aimed for cat people that says nine ways to walk your dog or something like that, obviously that’s not a very good approach and then you know what kind of value where people are gonna look so, you know, my, and I’m not a subject matter expert on pet ownership but you know people that don’t test on assuming that they’re gonna want to research, animals characteristics they’re gonna possibly want to find healthier avenues for, you know, like CF pet, pet insurance you could have pet food. What are the benefits of each or whatever and then in some cases it might also be looking up. Yeah, maybe the change behavioral aspects of an animal so you know with that plan you want to structure evergreen content around something specific, I wouldn’t advise anyone to create an article that covered all of that in one those are all separate subjects you’d be watering down an evergreen article by giving too broad with it.
Mark Fidelman 03:48
And then how do you figure out what’s going to be evergreen and once what’s kind of whimsical. I mean with cats especially with cats Matt, I mean if you look at how many videos are out there I mean overdone so it seems like something that can be evergreen is, I look at it as okay with this person print this out, or would they bookmark it, or would they save this video for the future. And then always the issue is okay how do we how do we reach these cat owners in a way that they haven’t already seen or heard, especially in this industry what’s been extremely overdone.
Matt DeCoursey 04:24
Sir, so you know something that once again, if you’re discussing the term evergreen should not have a shelf life so characteristics of a Siamese cat. As an example, so that’s the first thing that came to mind when we if we had to produce an evergreen article so I would think that the characteristics and behavioral aspects and obviously the appearance of Siamese cats has not changed in a very long time, so that, you know, the Evergreen approach doesn’t require constant updating now let’s say you did an article on a litter of six Siamese kittens that you have available right now. Well once those are gone that article expired. Yeah, you could still kind of swing that into an evergreen approach, but you’re gonna have to do maintenance you’re gonna have to go up and update it. You know when I think of an evergreen article I look at something that I pop you, you set it and forget it, you know it’s like it posts and you don’t have to go back and do anything to it it doesn’t require it doesn’t have a shelf life and everything theoretically has a shelf life. Yeah. I’ll give you an example so technology changes a lot. And so one of the things that like front end technology for programmers changes a whole lot. And so with that, we’ll write articles that are about a specific type of tech, but not necessarily each individual version, because, you know, if we said like Angular is a popular front end, technology, and it comes out with a new version quarterly or something like that so you know unless you’re wanting to be specific about that version you’re gonna sentence yourself to constantly updating and maintaining that article to keep it current otherwise people are going to find it they’re going to it’s going to look data then they just bounce. Got it.
Mark Fidelman 06:07
Okay. So, I understand the challenges of of what I’m talking about, which is okay how do you come up with something that’s entertaining on the Evergreen front, what you’re talking about is, okay, these, these, these have a longer shelf life than your typical article and okay so now, now that we’ve got that definition this is mostly on me but why not on you. Why is evergreen content more important than the average, you know blog post or social post that’s put out there.
Matt DeCoursey 06:43
Any podcast article or blog any of that stuff, you have human capital that goes into it, you’re on time your own effort I look at everything that we publish or produce that is quote evergreen as being a digital asset, so you know that the longer the longer, it’s able to produce a return, the more value that you have out of it. Now, I really suggest that anybody and everybody always take an evergreen approach I mean that’s that’s the best place to start, I have blog articles from years ago that still get significant traffic and different web properties that I own and that’s because there’s an evergreen nature to them.
Mark Fidelman 07:22
Yeah, the same, I could say the same for video as well, although I don’t know if the SEO value is as good for video, then for the articles like what you’re doing, are you just dealing in in articles or do you venture into podcasts and video I know you’re at the podcast, but for your clients are you venturing into audio and video as well.
Matt DeCoursey 07:44
Well, we don’t do a lot of marketing services for our clients. Now, with that I do refer to full scale as if you want to learn about what we do, you can go to full scale.io, where I often refer to us as a marketing company that happens to sell tech services, hell I say that because I like the marketing approach first but, you know, when it comes to like, I give me an example, today we published on our yesterday we had an article what is affiliate marketing, and that article like the definition of affiliate marketing isn’t going to change a whole lot over the upcoming however many years this exists. Now, there are other things that go with it and you mentioned liking video and you know video can stick around for a while but it also has a shelf life as well. Some of that I think is a little more centered around it just not looking dated. But, you know, there are videos on YouTube that are eight 910 years old but still get significant traffic. So, you know, think the same thing with podcasts I’m sure this show is the same like, you know, I don’t get the same amount of traffic on episode files we get on episode 365
Mark Fidelman 08:52
yeah I mean the problem with podcast is the search engines aren’t that great. And I don’t think people go to podcasts to do search, you know, they go to Google they go to YouTube. Those are wanting to actually, and maybe Bing, so I like video because it’ll show up forever. Just as you mentioned, you know, there’s still some of my best performing videos that are four years old, because they were evergreen topics.
Matt DeCoursey 09:16
I would comment on that that was one of the things that I’ve seen seven, our podcast has been out for about three years and you know we get significant traffic we have over a million lifetime downloads, get ever in the 60 to 70,000 downloads, a month range right now, that’s seen a level of, I’m seeing a level of sophistication come up like I find our podcast Google Now indexes podcasts and does a lot of different stuff and I think that some things that we may not have considered to be as evergreen or SEO friendly may make a resurgence because there’s a lot of voice recognition technology and a lot of stuff like that seems to be entering the podcast world that’s making it easier to find stuff. So, and you know on the go without as well we’ve looked at any podcast aggregator as a search engine. So, when we title our episodes and stuff like that we do give some consideration to what would someone search for if they were looking for an individual episode, do you look at the data I mean do you have, because I use Lipson for my syndicator, do you have any data as to how popular your episodes were from last year versus any other year to see if people are still downloading them. Do you have any ideas as to what that looks like. Yeah. One of the challenges with podcasts analytics and it’s getting a little better but overall it’s still terrible, it is, how many, how many subscribers Do you have and you shrug you’re like, I don’t know what you don’t know. Like there’s nothing that accurately tells you and it’s all feels like half a guess, it is as now as far as the, the lifetime value of all the episodes I mean every month, every episode in the history of startup hustle gets a lesson. Now the signet there is a sharp drop off I refer to your podcasts analytics, they look like Enron stock, because they start real high. Right. And you know, then you’re getting better, but the thing is if you want to have, you know, if people are finding that the great thing about podcasts and the Evergreen nature of that is if people like your show and they like what you do, they’ll go back and we have some people in it, and God bless every single one of them that have listened to every episode, and you know that’s I mean, we have 300 I think 370 at the time of this recording and you know now. The funny thing is, is I listened to, if I go back and listen to Episode Five, I have absolute terror. A feeling of terror that we even let something that that low quality out, perhaps, so you have
Mark Fidelman 11:59
to start. You have to start somewhere I think it’s admirable that you know you you even put something out there like that. You didn’t know it Episode Five but maybe you did that you’re going to produce 350 and that you’d get better over time. I mean, you can’t start perfect it just doesn’t work that way.
Matt DeCoursey 12:17
Now we always read, we give a lot of advice and have a lot of conversations with startup founders and entrepreneurs and you know sometimes you just have to jump and don’t wings at some point when it comes to this stuff and you know Nike says it best Just do it. And yeah, it’s the same thing for anybody that’s wanting to create content that when it comes to content marketing. Everyone tells you you need to do it. And no one really effectively, well, very few effectively tell you how to do it. Yeah, because it’s hard, and, you know, and the thing is you have to be, if you’re going to do evergreen marketing Another thing is you have to happen within your plan you have to have a level of consistency and repetition, that matters because Google doesn’t care about the website that has to articles on the back end, you just not no one really cares and another thing to is if you plan it appropriately and you use cross channel marketing and just different things like you know for example in the blog at the full scale we have YouTube videos embedded we have podcast episodes and data, and that stuff all needs to, you know, kind of light the fuse on the other stuff and you know that that needs to be part of your plan as well.
Mark Fidelman 13:27
Yeah, I mean the biggest problem I have is okay coming up with what are the ideas and the content that you’re going to produce that hasn’t been done before, or does that even matter like you brought up earlier, you did an article on what is affiliate marketing well I guarantee you there are 1000 articles like that so what goes through your mind when you produce something like that is it that you already have, you know, a high producing site that Google recognizes and will, you know, move that up to page two or one, or is there something else that you have in mind when you produce something like that.
Matt DeCoursey 14:00
So I love the long tail. I’m not, I think trying to, to be number one for the term affiliate marketing, like if that was my goal that wouldn’t be a goal that would be a fantasy. True. We’re not inc.com or entrepreneur.com or anything like that, then you know the history of the internet means that pretty much everyone’s done it at least once. So, you know, the word looking and an article like that it’s either. In this case, that’s a value add, that’s something that we might show to a client or get out there and do some different stuff so I’m not necessarily planning on being first for that but it will the approach is what is affiliate marketing, don’t under don’t undervalue our underestimate how many people just type a question into a search engine and ask. So it may come up you know who knows but in that case I’d be expecting that to come up with some other keyword that might be in the, in the article. Okay, so yeah
Mark Fidelman 15:01
so you’re hoping for the long tail that you know what is affiliate marketing but for cat owners, or cat product, businesses, something like that. Right.
Matt DeCoursey 15:11
Yeah. And in that case it would be a little more centered around probably about someone including the word startup in there, or something.
Mark Fidelman 15:19
Yeah. Okay, well that makes more sense because I’m always looking at okay here’s content. And here’s the internet, which is a vast sea of content that you know is some of its good some of it sucks. How do you, you know, how do you position it so that you’re going to be found more than all the other millions of things that are out in that vast sea and that’s really the challenge and it’s I’m always curious as to what other marketers do in this. What is your thought process around that and making sure that it gets discovered, are you simply putting terms in the article and hoping for that long tail or is there something else that you’re doing.
Matt DeCoursey 16:01
Well I think it starts with the title and you know the title if you’re just using a basic WordPress site or something like that, that also many times turns into your URL. Those things are looked at, you know that’s what Google is looking at and you have to. So my book million dollar bedroom I actually have a section that says things like a search engine and search engines are logical, you know they are looking into their job is to, you know, Google’s Google is trying to put a searcher on top of the best results that answer the question that they’re looking for. So, you know, there are things that matter, you know like, I see people do a lot of dumb stuff you know they take a screenshot of something and then they upload that image to the to their blog article and then that file name is like screenshot 439 and 763 dot png, and you know and it doesn’t it’s not labeled or anything like that so you got to think like a search engine You got it. Like what would a search engine, why would a search engine want to recommend you and it needs to be either relevant references, or what it’s going to lead you to our, you know, I mean, or you have a hell of a lot of links to that, which probably isn’t the case especially right after you publish something so you know and then and then other things too is like I mentioned having videos and data and having podcasts and data. Remember, search engines want to take a visitor to the highest quality result that it can find so you know if it sees an article that’s titled what related to what the search is the images are labeled similar to that there’s a video there’s a podcast there’s links to other resources in case that visitor doesn’t find what they need that search engine likes that.
Mark Fidelman 17:44
Okay, so let’s say you come up with the content the title, everything you just described and you structure it properly. What team do you need to deliver it, what is the average team in a startup, what should it look like.
Matt DeCoursey 18:01
I’m fortunate because we have a 12 person marketing team I’ve got 200 employees so we do have we have a team of six writers. We have three graphic designers two video editors and cmo. Now, here’s the thing you don’t need any of that to publish your own articles. I mean you as a startup or a solopreneur, you can create content, it’s your own time now. Yeah. Looking at that from the outside in, it’s like looking at an elephant and someone just told you to eat it. So you got the thing is is you got to eat that elephant one bite at a time so you know as far as the team goes, I mean you can be the team. I really recommend if you are. So, one of the comments that people have given me over the years as an author is like, oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book, I’m like, Well, why aren’t you, they’re like well I’m still thinking about it, what do I need to do to start by going home and writing Yeah, dude, you know like anything so you know you can create the content but people are overwhelmingly uncomfortable writing. So, you know, this is like yours, that can help with that to help implement it. Now I really, you know, 15 years ago or 10 years ago I wouldn’t have been as adamant about using a company like yours. Now I highly recommend these things because, you know, there’s something to be said about people that have done it and understand it, avoiding errors and that learning curve are important. You know, so I mean there it really depends. I mean you can go anywhere from doing it yourself, to, you know, finding businesses like yours outsourcing that or whatever I mean it’s just there’s a lot of ways to go about doing it. Now for us we have a bit of an assembly line so five days a week we publish a high quality article, and the full scale blog. We also publish five podcasts a week so now it’s taken us quite a bit of effort energy and emotion to get that process down, and that’s why we’re able to do the content and the number of it, but you know I really recommend, whether you’re doing as a start up or working with someone you want to try to learn to make it a process so you’re not having to figure out how to do something for all six steps that you might want to come up with.
Mark Fidelman 20:21
Okay, I mean it’s very good advice that processes the way I think to do it also have a cod content calendar and stick to it as closely as you can know why, why do it. I mean I know a lot of people like ditch a lot of work to produce this stuff and keep people entertained and all that, it’s just it’s so competitive out there. Why should people create this content.
Matt DeCoursey 20:43
Okay, so let’s say that you want to do business with my company full scale right so theoretically if we strip away all the bells and whistles. We employ a bunch of software developers. So, so does a lot of people, there’s a lot of programmers out there there’s a lot of companies. So what makes me different, why do I want to do business with you. And when it comes to creating content. This is the reason I wrote books like people asked me a lot and they say oh you had three number one books on Amazon. Have you made a lot of money selling books. Hell no, no, I wrote books to establish myself as a subject matter expert it’s like an advanced business card. Yeah, no one throws away a book. It feels weird to throw away right people throw away a business card before they even get back to the car in the parking lot sometimes. Yeah. You know, so whether it’s a book is a good example of evergreen content, I find my book everywhere when I go all around town and visit people I see my book sitting on shelves doing this doing that. And sometimes, on a funny note people send me pictures of my book doing funny things like man I this book sucks but it holds my wobbly table. Well, it doesn’t. But here’s the thing, they’re still seeing it Yes,
Mark Fidelman 21:52
your name and title is
Matt DeCoursey 21:55
right now. The thing is, is there’s. Look, there’s a million people that do what you do. I don’t care how unique you think you are, there’s a bunch of people that do what you do, or can do what you do on some level. So what differentiates you so for example, and I haven’t we have a multi pronged approach so not only do we have our blog which gets significant traffic through web search the podcast so if you’re gonna come hire me as a hire full scale as a development service, you, you, you would feel a little better knowing that I know what you need, because I’ve been down the road, I’ve been a startup founder I’ve been an entrepreneur have invested over a million dollars in startups I’ve done a lot of stuff, and every day of the week, I have a conversation similar to this, with people like you. So that content, it starts to stack up and, you know, for us, it’s, it’s a lead here a lead there and then we got a, just try to sound humble when I say this but we have become so effective at it, that we, a lot of the leads we find now people like oh I you know I found your blog and that was great but then I listened to your podcast I felt like I got to know you and then we reached out and you know that’s, that is a great situation to be in. But, how are you going to differentiate yourself from someone if I don’t feel like you’re a subject matter expert and I’m operating on a more than beginners level, then I need you to feel credible and I need to know that you’re a subject matter expert, otherwise I’m just going to move on down the line. You don’t look like you’re in the business of doing whatever it is that you say that you do, you have problems and you don’t even know it.
Mark Fidelman 23:35
Yeah, I think you nailed everything I would have said with. There’s one other thing I think I’d add to that is, with that content you’re putting out there and building yourself up as a subject matter expert and an influencer, you can actually charge premium rates, because people want to deal with someone that’s well known. It’s like doing business with IBM. I mean going way back on this reference but you’d pay more to do business with IBM because you felt more comfortable with a big brand you felt proud to say you’re working with IBM. And I think there’s a whole thing around premium pricing, that we could get into not on this call.
Matt DeCoursey 24:13
Yeah, so that that’s 100% yeah and by the way that that is part of our model I mean we, we are very upfront that we have a premium service offering. Even the employees we hire like we you know we need them to be in the top 10% of wherever they’re at in their career designation, and those are the best clients to work with people, those are the ones that you want. And if you can position yourself for that, then that’s where you want to be.
Mark Fidelman 24:38
Yep, and they’re comfortable paying that amount they’re willing to pay it they understand the value in paying for it. And it just makes your life and your pocketbook a lot, lot better.
Matt DeCoursey 24:47
Okay, those clients won’t pay for anything else they’re buying in that category, whether it’s from you or from someone else, excellent point.
Mark Fidelman 24:55
All right. So I think we did a pretty good job of really, you know, letting people know what evergreen content is why it’s important how to do it, and the value of it. So I think it’s a good time to wrap things up and talk ask you a couple of questions that I asked everybody. The first one is, what is the hottest digital marking tech technology that you recommend today.
Matt DeCoursey 25:20
So I, I’m an investor, I’ll just close that I’m an investor in this platform as well but Diddy HQ di VVY Hq is a Content Marketing Management Platform it’s been around for a while it’s been award winning. If you want to have a plan. It’s very important to be able to be organized to be able to collaborate to be able to communicate. And if you’re gonna. I mentioned earlier that you don’t have to have a process on day one, but if you’re not working towards having a process on day one. You’re never going to scale and get it to the point where you need to be creating quality content, how is about collaboration and communication on many days, so that’s that’s a platform that I’m really happy about when it comes to that regard and then some other things too, like, you know, and I don’t know if this is truly digital marketing technology but you know what are you going to do when you get someone to your site, you know like, I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make they’re really great at generating traffic but they’re not doing a very good job of collecting it or what are you trying to achieve. So, like we use gigabytes calm to take appointments and streamline certain processes and stuff like that so I mean there’s a lot of stuff out there that can help you get forward. I’m curious what your favorite.
Mark Fidelman 26:39
Wow. Okay, so I’m using actually right now my current favorite is otter.ai. It transcribes on the fly. And it’s about 90% accurate, and then it goes back and checks itself. And then updates itself. And I just find it fascinating because I don’t even have to write the blog articles anymore it’s doing it for me. So this podcast turns into a blog article and it’s very all unique content you and I have never said these exact same things before. And just makes it super easy. So,
Matt DeCoursey 27:10
by the way, that’s a great way to create a large audience and content I’ve done that partially with the books that I’ve written. You can you speak a lot faster than you can type and. And one of the challenges that writers have in general is putting a voice in it, they sound robotic or it’s boring if you’re transcribing your presentations or your voice and your message, it has a little more flavor to it I
Mark Fidelman 27:36
totally agree. Totally agree so let’s go to the final question, question number two, who, who, in your opinion is the most influential person in marketing today. I could remind you before you put in the notes.
Matt DeCoursey 27:49
When I filled out the form I said Gary Vee that’s right I see him everywhere, yeah here’s the thing I don’t really spend a lot of time listening to Gary. You know I see him everywhere and that’s why that’s why I gave that answer but you know there I mean there’s a lot of people out there doing a lot of different things. I mean, I just like to, I like Gary’s approach, just because he’s not afraid to me he’s just he’s just who he is. Yeah, cuss words and all. I appreciate that because I’m my team is gonna be super proud of me that I made it all the way through this show without swearing.
Mark Fidelman 28:25
This is it, this is pG 13 or, so you can swear on this show,
Matt DeCoursey 28:29
we mark, we blank check mark in all startup hustle episodes with explicit. We have a hard time as entrepreneur, it’s hard to not describe your journey with. Oh yeah,
Mark Fidelman 28:40
I mean, no question so the one of the reasons I like the fact he chose Gary Vee is because one of the answers. You and I talked about was, you know, once you build your brand up to a certain point, you could charge premium services, he’s taken it to the next level where people come to him with huge business ideas, I mean he’s involved in sports marketing he’s involved in investments and things he
Matt DeCoursey 29:03
is an entrepreneur, and you know like here’s the thing like I like Tim Ferriss and his content but that’s not he’s not the same kind of entrepreneur like Gary is like Gary’s sells wine and he said yeah his online shoes and like, I mean, I’m like that like let’s talk about how we’re going to make money and see if it’s gonna happen and I have an easier time listening to someone like that, then a self proclaimed help self help person that’s never done it, you know, whatever. So, yeah, yeah.
Mark Fidelman 29:30
Okay. Ah, love this podcast we’re gonna have to do another one in six months or so. Where can people find you,
Matt DeCoursey 29:41
where can they find a good answer. I mean what I’ve been working you talk about your long term evergreen content marketing plan, you know, I started mine three and a half years ago when, so I used to be a ticket broker, and I made a hell of a lot of money doing it, but with that I only needed to exist in my little bubble I have relationships in technology that didn’t require a lot of human interaction and when I exit I knew the exit of that business was coming. I told my wife I said I need to reinvent myself, so I said well how are you going to do that so I’m going to start by writing a couple books and she’s like what the hell do you know about writing books i don’t know i’m going to hire some people that are going to help me do it so I have three books that are available on Amazon one the first ones balanced me a realist guide to a successful life, second one’s million dollar bedroom which is more popular than the first one that’s the story of my entrepreneurial journey I actually started my first business in the extra bedroom in my home. And I had nothing but a credit card with an $8,000 limit, and turned that into $30 million with revenue. Following eight years and then became everything we do now. And then last year I published my third book called The real estate guide to successful music career so I worked in music and ticketing for 15 years of my life and that was more of a pet project so those are out there, startup hustle podcast is easily my most consumed content of all, we are consistently in the top 25 of all entrepreneurship podcasts on Apple we’re very proud of that, and publish up so it’s five days a week. In fact, startup hustle is gone so well that we actually brought in additional hosts. So I’m not, and my business partner and I are not the hosts in every episode we’re moving towards a seven day 365 day. You know, publishing schedule like every day and passed out yeah you can find. You can find more about my business at full scale.io and some of the articles we talked about which are largely about technology and entrepreneurship and our blog.
Mark Fidelman 31:42
Wonderful. And if you have any questions for Matt, please post them either on the blog post that you’re reading this on, or on reach out to Matt directly and ask them there. So Matt, I really appreciate you having on the show great episode and want to have you back for sure. All right, that was great man I love it. Sometimes Oh, quick it was, was moved right to the.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, everyone, I am in Carlsbad, California. And I want to talk about a marketing campaign I did all the way over in New York City. Why am I doing Carlsbad, California? Well, it had to do with density.
So what we did is another marketing stuff where we set up a booth. And we had people come in and compare data speeds on their cell phone. And we compare those data speeds to this new provider that was in New York City. And we captured on film, and we showed them the difference between that speed that they currently had and the speed that they would get with a new cell phone provider. And those videos did extremely well out there because it was real as authentic, we captured the emotion we captured everything that had to do with surprise and shock of those people in real time.
So that is our lesson for today. If, in COVID land now you have a product that would do well in these densely populated cities, setting up a booth and demonstrating your product or service isn’t that bad of an option, as long as you capture it, as long as you’re creating content that allows you to put it out on YouTube or Instagram or even Facebook. So there’s that my current Tip of the day as well as campaign of the day. Talk to you later.
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TRANSCRIPT
Hello everyone, welcome to the digital brand builder podcast. Joining me today is Samuel Donner and we’re going to talk about four minute podcast episode drops as in that’s a new thing in marketing four minutes. I know our attention spans are shrinking, but very interested in what he has to say about this and how you know that is moving the needle for for us marketers and some of the sales people so Samuel Welcome to the show and you go by Sam, or Samuel.
Yes, Sam is fine. Hello. Hello. Marks audience.
Mark Fidelman 05:17
All right. Can you give us a little bit of a background of yourself. In 100 words or less try to keep it Telenor
05:22
Yeah, for sure. Um, so, I graduated, UCLA mechanical engineering a few years ago realized I was kind of bored with it, and started doing production work, ended up getting a few clients after college and and gravity into 30 people. And now we produce our own podcast finding founders, but we also make podcasts for television and fennel and kind of like as an VIP game.
Mark Fidelman 05:53
Okay, and you have your own podcast, right. Yes, called finding founders. And what is that about just finding people that start businesses.
06:01
Yeah, so I mean it started off. When I was when I was studying mechanical engineering, I was applying like to tons and tons of jobs and was literally getting no callbacks and then I started doing some freelance work and I did some work for Netflix and realized I like that more and then started to try to apply to full time gigs for creative work, and just got nothing back and one point I’m like okay I’m using all these editing skills. How can I apply it to a different medium, and maybe actually secure an interview with some of these people that I wanted to work for. And I initially just interviewed my roommate. Tim Connor says, I bet a cap and gown company ended that together and then that next interview ended up being with the founder of American Apparel, and then things kind of snowballed from there and so we interview. We started with entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, but now we’re doing series around the world. So, a couple weeks ago I was in Puerto Rico, doing a series on Puerto Rican entrepreneurs and delving into like a question on that that came up when I was looking at Puerto Rico and saw that their entrepreneurial community grew a ton after the 2017 hurricanes hurricane Maria. And, and they have this burgeoning entrepreneurship fraternity post 2017 it’s like much more vibrant than it was before the destruction. so the question was highly structured so the seasons seize opportunity and growth and so now we’re doing these series that doing kind of close up looks at entrepreneurial communities around the world. Okay, well, wonderful.
Mark Fidelman 07:41
I mean, certainly there’s a lot of interest in that and how many episodes have you done so far.
07:48
We’ve done around at. So we started doing it. So I started doing this a few years ago, but was like splitting that between full time work when I was working for some other companies and then the beginning of the school. And, and but now for the past year, we’ve been doing an episode every week.
Mark Fidelman 08:15
Well, okay. Wonderful. And I know how difficult these can be to put together and edit them and all the rest of that. So, um, you know I I really admire people that do one a day I don’t know how they do it they must not have any life whatsoever. Certainly, they’re out
08:30
there, imagine doing one a day once a week is enough for us but we’re also specializing in this like narrative audio. Yeah. So we put in music and sound effects and voiceover we have this whole six week production process that goes to the whole team, where we start from the research team and then going through script writing and going into the editing team music department and
Mark Fidelman 08:55
yeah you’re doing a full production, whereas you know I’m just here with the beginner’s mind just kind of winging it just based on my interest, and I you know I just try to pull things out of people as best I can. But you’ve got a full production going,
09:10
oh there’s quite quite a fall we’re definitely getting where you’re
Mark Fidelman 09:14
going, if you’re scripting it out and you got music and you got special effects throughout doing a lot more than I do. So, so let’s,
09:22
let’s not just add effects
09:26
for the experience, you know,
Mark Fidelman 09:27
I might even do a, an episode like that where I put it on the special effects just to see if it’s annoying, or if it actually works, just to throw it out there like that, or something. All right, let’s get to the heart of it so as you know I like to show people what others are doing that’s innovative and unique and that works and most importantly that works. So, you know, I want to talk about this concept of a four minute podcast episode drop First of all, you know if you’re not doing podcasts, you should really look into it, it’s not for everybody. And frankly I think if you can do video well video probably pays off better but there’s a lot more expensive when it comes to creating videos on YouTube. So, going back to podcast this four minute podcast episode drop What is it, can you tell us what that means and what that looks like.
10:21
Yeah, just on the podcasting ever. Everyone know. I actually think it’s like this very interesting medium that that is more what what podcast podcasting is at least how I see it is its top of the funnel content. And so when you sit down and record a two hour podcast, you not only have an integer recording video, you not only have that podcast but then what you can do is you can distribute that content into small videos that you can put to YouTube you can attach graphics to that and make it even more engaging videos. You can even go lower down in the funnel and make them as small like Instagram videos are like bite sized videos like Tick tock, or you can even transcribe it and turn it into a podcast, or you can take little pieces that to transcription and put it in like as as a, as a tweet and Twitter and so I think you’re right, in a sense that like many times podcasts won’t be the thing that people will end up consuming, but it can be a starting point in terms of content production so you can get all the people that are consuming content elsewhere. And so that’s how we’re viewing it like we released, you know, five pieces of content between LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, each week and we have like a social media team that that puts all that together and so I think that top of the funnel marketing is for content production is where podcasts really shine through. Okay.
11:59
But why four minutes, why four minutes,
12:02
but four minute podcast, podcast. So, I was talking to the founder, or the CEO of wonder. Jen Sargent, and wondery is probably, I think it’s like the fifth largest Podcast Producer, and they’ve had tons of number one podcast throughout the last couple years. And they’ve gotten their distribution and and their, their launches for Podcast Series down to a science, and they try to a bunch of different things. So, one of the classic podcast like drops that people did in the early days that podcast is they would just shout each other out, you know at the beginning of the episode like, I would say, hey, like if I was on fire upon finding founders that the only way to do it would be like, Hey, Mark is doing digital brand builder you should go check out this podcast right. And that worked fairly well coming from the house. And then people what they did is the original one they would shout the house and then just play the rest of the regular episodes but then it evolved to saying, hey, you should go check out Mark’s podcast, let me play the full episode and so that is like that would, what’s called like an episode spot where you would play their episode on your feed and they play your episode on their feed. And then it got to like, okay, they would listen to that whole episode but did they have a reason to actually go to your feed and take the extra few seconds to subscribe, and often they did. So the next thing is like hey can you post half that episode on the feed and that would get people but but the cut off in terms of like the critical kind of critical mass of people to actually get over to that other other feed with drops significantly after the 15 minute mark. And so when we did the series of tests to see what does at what minute mark are people engaged enough to, to have like a reason to jump over to another feed and check them out. Like what like how much of the pockets are there to listen to to jump make that jump. And then, how long is it until people just fall off. And they found that four minutes is that sweet spot. If you can put four minutes of a really engaging part of your podcasts and someone else’s feed. There, there is the highest likelihood that people will jump over.
Mark Fidelman 14:53
I mean what do you I mean videos do that all the time but I guess without listening to these four minute podcast, what’s kind of a frame work of how they’re fitting things into those four minutes interviews one problem solver quickly or. How’s it work.
15:09
Um, so, in terms of format for those four minute little mini episodes, is you want to have a hook within the first like 20 seconds you want something that gives a reason to keep listening So, an unanswered question, or a moment of, I guess in a narrative podcast like for us it’s usually an unanswered question with sticks, so there. For example, where there was sky Andrew Warner, that we interviewed a couple couple weeks ago his episodes coming out in two weeks. And he was losing $8 million. Like every couple of months for his company he was in massive amounts of debt, and we put that that’s like comes in maybe towards the end of the episode, we put that little clip at the front but with the unanswered question Hey like we don’t know what is going to happen next. So that’s really important to have that that that hook at the beginning and then you have your intro that establishes, who you are and what you’re doing. That might be longer than maybe it is on your, your regular feed for like your, your regular listeners on this format one you want it to be really fleshed out so people know what they’re listening to and why. And then you have maybe the first couple minutes of your episode that again that ends on a question so ends on a reason that people should continue listening.
Mark Fidelman 16:43
Okay, and where, where would somebody get a listen as to these format episodes maybe on your podcast you’re doing them now.
16:53
Yeah, so we actually usually do them on other people’s feeds so we actually try all the, all the different all these different methods so we’re actually doing a four minute drop with this guy Jim quick. In a week so definitely check out his feed. Soon, but I’d say that the best place to look at those is wondering wonder he will play those in the middle of their episodes. Those four minute clips at the end of their episodes especially. I think wonder he really is a leader, wondering, and creating that yacht One reason is, is incredible with that and they and they also I think works best. We get to work with any podcast, but when you have a certain narrative arc, to your podcast that helps a lot. And I think you can create narrative arcs. In talk show style podcast as well. It might be a little easier when you’re actually creating like that narrative maybe like preemptively with a script and we do. But really, that narrative can be created with anyone. It just, it just maybe takes a little bit of extra work.
Mark Fidelman 18:01
Okay, so you’re saying that this is the way to do the four minute episode is to build it within another episode or when would you recommend that they can do it outside of or just independently of any other episode.
18:19
So, I attempt to answer that question. Um, well I and I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re answering but I also want to address this in terms of giving in terms of where to place that that format episode you want to place it on someone else’s podcast on someone else’s. Okay, so so you want to place it on someone else’s podcast, but you want to also. Place it like integrate it into their content so it would usually come as a mid roll on their podcast. So why would they do this and
Mark Fidelman 18:56
why would they do that, I mean for what what benefit do they get.
19:00
So for us, for us, we have extremely high production value so we’re essentially making a documentary about these
19:07
people that
19:08
people’s lives. And we’ve gotten we’ve gotten feedback or like our people that we talk to you have cried listening to their episode. Because it frames your life in such a way that makes them just reflect on all they have accomplished and how far they have to go. And so obviously it’s an easier ask when there’s an emotional tie to that content. But let’s say you’re making a different kind of content that maybe doesn’t pull out the emotional heartstrings as much. The other way to do that would just be to do a swap. So, you do it for me and I do it for you. Right. And so that’s probably the easiest way to get started on it, but for us like we’re able to reach these massive audiences really quickly with people with millions of downloads because of that of that, you know, toy pulling on the emotional heartstrings but you know if you’re just getting started. Then what you would do is you would look at someone who has a similar audience size to you, podcasts are tricky because there’s not
20:14
much pouring. Yeah,
20:17
yeah, there’s not much data on that. So I would say that you just look at reviews, someone who has similar appeals to it’s incredibly accurate proxy but it’s kind of like the best one that I found. Okay,
Mark Fidelman 20:34
yeah, I mean that’s the, the key thing for me would be okay. I’m producing a four minute episode and I want somebody else to embed it within their own episode. Well, that would be challenging if somebody came to me, unless it was incredibly valuable to my to my audience and then I’d be thinking, Why don’t they just drop it within their own. Why are they dropping within mine unless they want reach my audience, which I okay I respect
20:59
that that’s the point is to reach your audience like this is a this is a clip from a larger episode in which they like that entices them to jump audiences and not be in what you would, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to have that audience crossover
Mark Fidelman 21:17
right so there’s obviously a call to action at the end of it, or the host comes on and says, you know the rest of this.
21:25
So, that call to action should ideally come from the person hosting the podcast. Yeah. So, for example, when we go on Jim quicks podcast and a couple. I think it’s next week or so, what they’ll do is he’ll record an interesting. Hey, I just did a podcast with these guys. You should go check it out. Here’s a four minute clip, right, and maybe it’ll be a little bit longer than that. And then right after he says, Hey, if you want to listen to more, go to finding founders and check Wow, check out what they’re putting together.
Mark Fidelman 21:59
And then, whatever it is that you’re doing in those four minutes, does it relate to the actual episode of the podcast host.
22:08
A the. So for us it does. Yeah. So like, we put Jim quicks episode on the Jim quick podcast. So,
22:17
what is Jim quick talk about what is Jim quick talking about.
22:21
So I mean, he talks about learning, and, and, and like brain improvement and. And so, that’s actually kind of like another part of our strategy is we’ve been targeting specifically entrepreneurs with a podcast. So we know that when we tap into their audience their audience is already primed for content that is like ours and that that people like we know that if they like what Jim Collins putting out they’re probably gonna like us too, because we’ve already screened his, his audience, or his content and made the decision Hey like this guy is similar to ours. So we put together the episode on him, and they see hey like there’s this really interesting podcast that is like well produced that is on this guy that we’ve been listening to for years, then what they’ll do is all listen to that four minute clip, look at the suggestion from Jim, and then those listeners will jump over to our feed subscribe to our podcast and and start listening.
Mark Fidelman 23:25
Okay. So yeah, I mean, you guys are doing a lot of work around that. And, obviously, it must be paying off you wouldn’t continue to do it. What are the benefits definitely has been and what what are the benefits that you’re getting. As a result, doing this because I know a lot of people are thinking the same thing um thing is yeah I mean high production value. I guess it’s gonna relate to the person’s episode maybe the subject matter of that episode. So, what am I going to get at the end of the day.
23:53
Yeah, so I mean we’ve seen like 300% growth podcast going from just a couple thousand listens to like 10 2000 persons and a matter of a couple months since we started doing this strategy a couple months ago. And, and, like, not only are like we we’ve seen those convergence in terms of like the actual listener numbers but we’re getting a lot of emails that are basically saying, Hey, we love what you put together. And, like, like, I actually I actually we got we got one from this guy, a couple days ago saying like hey I agree, I’m actually just reading it off. This was yesterday. I appreciate you asking when it says when is enough. When is it enough this is a guy from Andrew Warner’s audience, also exploring the serendipity of creativity talking about helping trick fail and the evolution of user generated content. He was curious about like what other other other things are other topics that we were going to explore and he actually suggested some, some topics for future episodes, and so like we’re engaging other people’s audiences at a level, while they’ll actually write an email to us. So it’s been it’s been very, like how like in terms of returns the returns have been super high already. Okay.
Mark Fidelman 25:23
So, if the returns have been super high. I mean, what would be I you got to go and do. You know, I don’t know, hyper hyper mode into producing Mustangs and and putting it all over, you know, wherever you can. As long as it relates to what you’re doing, I would assume.
25:43
Well, yeah, I mean, we’re trying to do one of these with every person we entered the past like when we have 10 or so in the queue right now, and the past 10 have been founders with podcasts so we’ve been doubling down on this method and I really think it’s one of the best methods you can do but it doesn’t necessarily have to be with founders like if you’re in the health and wellness space. I’m talking about health and wellness with that guest, and then trying to piece together like like let’s say you have, or you know like let’s just like use your podcast as an example, if you have this, if you were specifically targeting other people who are talking about like digital brand questions so like for example Chris Doe, you have a conversation with Chris Doe, and you put together a really kick ass four minute little piece and say hey Chris like was pleasure talking to you. Do you mind if we put this, this little four minute episode in bite you know your episode When, when, in a couple weeks, and he might do that if he sees enough value in it. Or if you could do that with someone, maybe closer to your own audience size. I feel like it’s not too hard to ask especially if you do it for someone else. And then now you’re both growing your audiences.
Mark Fidelman 27:05
Yeah, so growing your audiences and then from that once your audience has grown, you’re upselling cross selling some things that you you’re selling entrepreneurs in. Where’s the monetization.
27:17
So for me the monetization actually comes from TCP IP. So, I’m almost using this as a bid step tool. And, and I’ve like met a ton of people that are like wow I really enjoyed what you put together for me, can you create this about this topic so I can set us up. And so that’s what I’m currently working on right now is that is that project for TV. And because like right now. podcast IP is, is, is like the hottest IP for TV, and, and film. What, what like books were 10 years ago, is what podcasts are now so like we’re having a bunch of films and TV shows that are based on podcasts and one of the biggest examples right now, recently was homecoming was a gamma podcast they sold that to Amazon and they made a couple series out of it, or Amazon Prime. And so, and then one reads really double down, doubling down on that model. They make most of the money not from the ad revenue from the people that are listening to this podcast, but they’re making it because they’re selling the IP to a TV and felt so like, what essentially what this podcast is doing is it’s a really cheap way to test whether an idea hits a market, so they can produce this idea for pretty cheap compared compared comparatively to like what what TV would cost. And, and then that I pay like this, so many people are listening to this podcast. We have proof of concept. Now let’s make a show from it that we know can do well because we already have this big audience that’s listening to this one podcast imagine what we can do. If we put it in a more widely consumed medium like TV. No.
Mark Fidelman 29:14
Okay. Got it. Well, that’s interesting. I’m gonna follow you guys and see what happens as a result. But for now, Let’s wrap things up and we do so by asking two final questions. The first of which is, what’s the hottest digital marketing technology that you’re recommending these days.
29:35
Um, so, I mean specifically for for podcasts, yeah.
29:41
caspa.
29:43
I’d say castbox Yeah, it was caspases. Yeah, castbox is a, it’s a platform. But they also do really do really well with ads so they are one of the only podcast platforms that actively I think something about their AI. Well, will update in real time to whatever the listener is doing in that moment and so they might 10 times the amount of downloads, you get for your dollar, as opposed to other, like other things that I’ve tried specifically I did overcast and like per per dollar, I was, this is something that I’ve actually tried out, I got 10 times the amount of downloads from castbox than I did with overpass with the same amount of money, but what are they doing differently as it
30:39
really well, what do they drive so they
30:41
have they have their algorithm it’s a lot better. It’s, it’s much smarter updates in real time to what the user is, or how the users interacting with their, their podcast platform. Hmm.
Mark Fidelman 30:57
So, we should all podcast owners get it on you know put their podcast on cashbox or is it automatically pulled, honey, how do you get it up there.
31:06
So you don’t necessarily have to host your podcast on cast box to advertise on it. You just have to reach out to one of the representatives and I think they also have an advertising portal on your website. And that’s how you can put a ad on there and it’s really like you can just do a banner ad. And so all you need is a picture and a short description that that will do it in terms of bringing listeners to your ad section.
Mark Fidelman 31:32
So when you’re listening to castbox. They say let’s just use mine for example, they’re very interested in digital marketing. And because of that, as long as I’m advertising with them, they’ll show an ad for my podcast and then that person’s got the choice whether to check it out or not as ours.
31:50
Yeah, so I mean, they’ll have a banner ad at the end of similar podcasts and what they’ll do is say like they’re advertising, at the end of two podcasts that are similar to your own like pocket same podcast be, let’s say like 10 people like will click on your thing, your, your advertisement from podcast, 85 will click from podcast feed. What it will do is because your ad a podcast is performing better, they will allocate more impressions to that specific podcast, in real time, and they’ll constantly be updating it where they will drive impressions based on where you’re getting the most traffic or where you’re sourcing them of traffic.
Mark Fidelman 32:36
Got it is relatively inexpensive advertiser.
32:40
Ah, well, no. Like, I go kind of. It just depends on what your budget is like for us. They had like a limit of 1500, so a minimum of 1500 to start, but they’re rolling out a more. I guess like smaller round where you can try out like hundred like 100 or so to check out what it does, but initially just for their early users. They’re doing
33:14
the minimum is 1500.
Mark Fidelman 33:16
Okay. And you think that’s worth it. I mean, what’s the cost of acquisition there.
33:22
So, we were getting for, I think, her dollar. I think we were getting 10 lessons like 555 such subscriptions, something like that. Because pretty high. Yeah,
Mark Fidelman 33:41
it sounds like they’re targeting is dead on.
33:44
Yeah, okay.
Mark Fidelman 33:45
Well that was a long answer the question one but I was very interested in castbox because I’ve heard about before. Let’s go. Number two, who is the most influential person in marketing today.
33:56
I mean, I feel like this is a low hanging fruit answer but I’ve been just following Gary Vee alive. I think what he’s done in marketing has been incredible and that’s, I’ve learned a lot from him in terms of that that that content funnel. Marketing and content model. The idea that that idea where you have podcasts top and then you create little quick form videos from that. I learned a lot from him in terms of how to implement that strategy. Yeah. So I think he’s really, really ahead of the curve that he was super bullish on tech talk really early that paid off well. Yeah,
Mark Fidelman 34:38
I agree. So, alright so let’s wrap things up, where can people find you. I mean, you can find your podcast of finding founders podcast on like any major podcasting platform, of course. But how, if somebody wanted to reach out to you directly. How would they find you.
34:58
Yeah, you can check us out on finding founders podcast on Instagram DMS there you can also go to our website, you can email me at Sam at finding founders co.co. Yeah, check out our website finding founders co you can see all of our all of the stuff that we’re up to. We have a newsletter that you can subscribe to on that website we also do events every so often with like live events with our founders on various topics. The last one actually was on Tick tock, and that was incredibly interesting thing to dive into. But yeah, that’s kind of where you can find that so check us out on all of the phone of finding founders platforms. All right, well,
Mark Fidelman 35:44
Sam that was a very interesting and educational input on four minute podcast I have no idea where this is going. It’s very interesting how you’re doing it. And I’m going to give it a shot. And if anyone wants to approach me and do some sort of trade. You know I’d be interested in doing it. I mean I’m just curious as to how this would actually work. So with that, we’re gonna wrap things up and really appreciate you being on the show. Awesome, thank
36:13
you so much that.
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