Episode 129: Content Marketing Works: Why Aren’t You Using It?

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

According to the 2019 B2B Content Marketing Report produced by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, a report sent to nearly 2,000 B2B marketing professionals around the globe, it revealed that 93% of the most successful B2B marketers report their organization is extremely committed to content marketing. So while the rest of the B2B world is reporting incredible success and a devotion to content, The promotional products industry, for the most part, has not made content a primary part of their marketing strategy, which is odd because content creates trust that virtually no other form of advertising can. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Commonsku, and I'm joined today by Mark Graham, Commonsku's Chief Technology Officer, as we sit down with our special guest and friend Bill Petrie, President of Promo Corner, to try and solve this problem and offer some ideas. Bill Petrie is a high-profile personality. Many of you know him. Many of us respect him. He's held leadership positions in the industry for nearly 20 years, sought-after speaker for numerous events, a promo kitchen chef, and a lot more. But what you need to know about Bill is that he's a turnaround artist. He's reinvented himself and the brands he's worked for and is a constant champion of change. As the leader of an industry media company, Promo Corner, he's not just a content marketer by trade, he's someone who's very passionate and knowledgeable about it. What I love about Bill is his direct, honest candor and how he demonstrates effective content marketing, not just by teaching, but by doing. In today's episode, we chat with Bill about the challenges and opportunities of content, how to build trust, what types of content we should be producing today, our most admired content producers, and the future of content. This episode is brought to you by Cometski, the platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To begin your free trial now, visit commonscube.com. Now here's our chat with Bill Petrie of PromoCorn.

Content is more important than ever, and yet do we or do we not see a lack of it in use in the industry still? Bill?

Yeah, so I'd love to lead off. First of all, love being with you guys. It's always fun to chat with, with two people I like, respect, and admire. So always fun to do this. I think it's more important today than ever because marketing is getting so noisy. We are bombarded continually by messaging, and I think true content marketing, when it seeks to give first— and I think that's really what content marketing should do— it helps us cut through the clutter by giving first and showing that you care. And secondarily, I think it allows you to show a little bit of transparency. You know, people still want to buy from people and brands they know, like, and trust, but it's getting more and more difficult for the ultimate consumer of marketing or the ultimate audience of marketing to really understand what's real and what's not. So by creating content that is transparent, it really allows you, you know, obviously to establish credibility, and you can stand out by taking a stand as opposed to just kind of blending in with everybody, but allows you to be really transparent, and people get to know you a little bit better than they would if not, especially in a noisy, cluttered marketplace.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark, do you think content is being underutilized by most of us in the business?

I think yes. When you think about the promotional products industry, I still think that content is, is not as utilized as it could be. I was interested in, in reflecting on that, that stat that you had, Bobby, with 93% of the most successful B2B content marketing, uh, sorry, content marketers report their organization is extremely committed. I don't think that that percentage would be nearly as high in the promotional products industry. And I think we can talk a little bit about that as we go forward, but I think that to complement Bill's point, I think that for those that invest in content, I think they find a couple of things. Number one, they cut through the clutter as Bill was saying. I think number two is I also think that you have a less expensive form of advertising/media compared to some of the more traditional forms of advertising and media. And I think that's also very interesting. I know someone was asking me about this a little while ago when I was talking about the growth of Right Sleeve and why it is that we use content so much at Right Sleeve. And to be honest, was that we had hardly any advertising budget and that we were able to go and tap into content, which didn't cost as much as advertising in other areas. And it allowed us to cut through the clutter at a very low cost per impression compared to, say, advertising in a more traditional sense. So I think that that, is, is what's always been very compelling to me. And I think it remains surprising to me that the adoption has been lower than one might expect in the industry.

Yeah, I also think we've covered this in a previous episode, but we've discussed how the fundamentally the marketing role in the marketing department is, is practically non-existent for a lot of folks in the business too. So you kind of have that fundamental problem that exists first, and then second, you have what I think is a, is an underutilization because of a lack of understanding of how much ROI you can achieve through, you know, smart thought leadership type content or client-driven stories and things like that. When we— when I mentioned the word content marketing, obviously that covers a broad umbrella of tactics. Who do you guys think are doing— are exemplars in content marketing today on the distributor and supplier side? Bill, let's start with you.

I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Kirby Haaseman. He produces so much content for Haaseman Marketing, whether it's blogs, video, podcasts. I mean, he really— you talk about someone who's really kind of on the Mount Rushmore in our industry of someone who has adopted content marketing as his marketing platform, that's Kirby. He creates content not only for the industry, but he really shows people how to create it for the ultimate end user, his customers. So I, like I said, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Kirby. I think Scott Dunstan and Brian Young from the Dunstan Group do a great job with their Brand Builders podcast. It's something I listen to on a regular basis and always get something out of it. I think Sam Kabert, we all know Swag Sam, he does a ton of content, both really focused a lot more on video and podcasts, but I know that's helped him and his brand. And then I was actually thinking about this, Bobby, when you sent the question, and I think, gosh, you know, the big distributors really don't embrace this as much as I am. I'm surprised that they don't. I think Geiger has done a nice job. They've done some videos of Gene Geiger and our friend Dale Denham on a couple occasions. They've been fun and cheeky and things like that. But, you know, it's interesting to me that the ones that have the resources to really invest in content marketing don't seem to do it. And on the supplier side, obviously Snugs and Gold Bond do some great video. I think Tervis does some great video. And Common Skew— I mean, I guess we'd throw Common Skew in the supplier category. You guys with the, the blog and the Skewcast, I think you guys kill it consistently.

Yeah, thanks, Bill. Mark?

I agree with all of what Bill has said. I think that one that I have absolutely fallen love with over the last couple of months is SanMar, specifically SanMar Radio. For those that have not listened to SanMar Radio, and this is not just me saying it because we like SanMar, it is truly phenomenal content. I listen to it on my walk in or to and from work. I just love how it is that they've taken this approach where they are interviewing the internal people at SanMar. So an example could be the supply chain logistics manager, and they'll get that particular person on a podcast and they'll talk about not only what that person does, but also we'll talk about global trends. We'll talk about the things that are impacting shipping. We'll talk about how it is that they source their products. And you might think at first blush that this is just an advertisement for SanMar. And that's, I must admit, is what I thought it was before I started listening to it. But what it is, is you're tapping these people who've got this extensive experience in these, in these parts of the business that we as distributors or suppliers may not necessarily think of as, as part of their day-to-day. And so they've done a really, really good job of it. And I think the end result of it is that they're building trust in the SanMar brand, and they're also educating people in parts of the promotional products business they may not otherwise know. So big, big shout out to SanMar Radio.

That's a great one. That's a great one.

It is a great one. They do such a fantastic job. One of my favorites, 12NYC, does such an amazing job with their Instagram posts. And the reason why I say this is because you talk about someone who gets content marketing. When you go look at their post, you might at first blush think it's not that impressive, but these folks work with a lot of cosmetic and style and fashion brands. And so when they post custom cosmetic bag that they made for Drunk Elephant, you know, the skincare product company, or brushes that they've done for Anthropologie, they're speaking right into their prospective and current client audience. They know their audience, they know their niche. And so they're, and they're also beautiful posts that those kinds of brands respect. So I love the tone, the vibe, the energy, because it's very concentrated around the right kind of client for their brand. We could, we can all mention Denise at, you know, Fareware and Sarah and what they're doing there. Again, you have a very hyper-focused energy spent around the right kind of content for the right kind of market. And so in both of those brands' cases, I think it's really cool that they're building this boutique experience for an audience that listens. You know, a lot of folks would say to me, when you write an article, sometimes someone will say, who's going to read that if they're outside of the industry, if they're outside? And when I first started getting into content marketing, this is what a lot of people would say. And my, often my response was, well, you're, well, obviously not you because you're not our target market. So I really don't care that you like my article or think it's effective for you because you're nowhere near the target market that we're trying to reach. So anyways, I love those brands. That get hyper-focused on their target market and then channel that content toward that. Here's where I think we're at. People understand the importance. They do get that content is important. Guess why? Because they're ingesting it all the damn time for the things they love, the brands they follow. Why they're not appropriating that for their own brand still baffles me, especially the larger ones, as Bill said. Is there anything else around this why question we should ask or answer?

I get a lot of inquiries of, you know, Bill, how do I start a podcast? How do I How do I start a blog? You do a lot of that and you're so committed to it. How do you do that? And it just boggles my mind. You know, here's the thing. I know people who started blogs and after 2 or 3, they quit. They buy the podcast equipment and they do a couple episodes and they quit. And I'm, you know, I'm a big believer. Look, if I tell you I'm busy, it means it's not important to me. If I didn't do something because I told you I was busy, I'm basically telling you it wasn't important to me. And so I think people like to talk. How important content marketing is, but I wonder if they're answering from the perspective of consumer, not from the perspective of marketer, because I don't see people investing the time and calorie burn that's necessary to really produce content marketing consistently. And consistency doesn't mean every day or every week. It could be every, every other week. It could be every other month. It could be whatever. But I, you know, people just don't stick to that consistency. And therefore I feel like they don't feel like they have a voice. You know, when I started writing my blog, I'm not even sure my wife read it. So I have— you have to keep turning and churning on it. And if you're producing content marketing because you think the more likes and comments I get on social media, the more my business is going to grow, you're really looking at it wrong. But I think a lot of people look at it that way. So they start off, they do a few blogs, like, gosh, nobody's reading. I think, I think that's the big problem.

Right, right. I think so too. And Mark, you mentioned that, that it's, you know, it's a cheaper form of content, but in, in the sense of human energy and human investment, it's actually one of the most expensive kind. And I think that's what Bill is addressing here, is that it's incredibly expensive from a time perspective. For example, Orbit Media just put out the, the, they put out an annual report on blogging stats. And so the average blog post is 1,236 words, and it takes up to 4 hours, which is up 56% since 2014. And those who spend 6+ hours report even better returns.

I think what's interesting in, in the industry is that I think you see, I think you see some larger, more traditional suppliers that over the years they've relied upon advertising that they can write a check for. So it may be an advertisement in a, in a industry publication, it could be an advertisement in a, in one of the popular search engines, it could be also an investment in an outside sales force that, that goes and calls upon distributors. And those investments over the years have been really fruitful for a lot of suppliers. And I think that when you look at content, what's ironic is that content in many respects is actually much less expensive than a big ad in, let's say, Counselor Magazine, but is fundamentally, I think, a lot harder for some of these larger traditional suppliers that have just relied on different forms of advertising. So to now shift away from something you write a check for, and now you're trying to go and create your own podcast, or you're trying to go and create your own blogging platform, I think that they struggle a bit more with it because it, it's actually harder work than writing a check for an ad. So I don't know what you think about that, but that, that, that's always been my theory, especially when you look at the types of suppliers that have thrived in content. They're usually the ones that are a little bit smaller, a little scrappier, more nichey in their approach, and typically the ones that have not relied as heavily on aggressive advertising in, in the traditional categories.

Right, right. This gets into the, uh, the, you know, all pervasive ROI question. Bill, you run a media company. If anyone sort of grapples with ROI around content frequently, it's gotta be you. And we all do to some extent. And I want us each to speak to this ROI because that's what we're wrestling with here too, is that the larger companies can't either can't see it, or as Mark said, they don't want to exert that kind of creative energy for it. But Bill, how do you answer the ROI question for folks that have tuned in and said, all right, I get why it's important. Help me out, help me across the finish line.

It's a hard question to answer because there is no one answer. For me here at Promo Corner, it's, you know, for us, we had a problem when I got here, is that we were seen primarily as a company that sent out emails on behalf of suppliers. I used to joke, hey, you know, the, the emails you, you, uh, get 85 times a day, yeah, those come from me. And so our challenge was, you know, we needed to change the focus of the organization to become a media marketing and advertising agency that serves both suppliers and distributors in the industry. And boy, that sounded like a nice segue into a commercial, didn't it? Um, but that was, that was the goal, and that still is the goal. And so to do that, my philosophy was do the same thing I did when I had my own company in Brandivate, which was content marketing, content marketing, content marketing. Because again, it's low cost, right? It's low cost financially. It's, it's certainly a high cost personally and emotionally and, you know, time and things like that. But I wanted us get viewed as a, a thought leader in the industry because we weren't in that discussion. And over time, I know I can't tell you this specific client came on board because of that specific podcast or that specific blog post, but what I can tell you is we've experienced easily double-digit growth over the past 2 years really due to our content marketing. Can I tie specifics to it? No, I can't. But I get enough of people telling me, we love what you're doing. We have a line basically of people waiting to sponsor podcasts. Those things tell me the things I need to know. So as far as ROI, it's there, but you're never— you're not gonna be able to tie specific numbers to it.

Right, right.

Mark, I reflect on a couple podcasts that I've done with Kirby Haussmann where we've talked about the same thing, and I love Kirby's answer in that he's not necessarily looking to tie a specific sale to a particular blog post. But that his whole content strategy as a whole is what is building this trust with his community of customers and prospects. And that I think is a much stronger thing to aim for, is this idea of overall trust in your brand. That's way more focused on, on ROI than trying to drive that back to say an advertisement in an industry publication. So I think that for him,, and I would echo, this is the same thing for us at Common Skew, is that if we can create a brand that is trustworthy and we can create a brand where there's a strong sense of emotional connection with the people who work there, then at the end of the day, we're building trust. And trust is the cornerstone, the absolute cornerstone in, in how business operates and particularly works in the world of software where people are having to make a huge change. It's very stressful. And I think it's the same thing when they're looking to buy your services Bill, and I think the same when they're looking to buy Kirby's services as a distributor. So I think when done well and done consistently, it creates this incredible level of trust that I think very few other forms of advertising can do.

Yeah, it's that transparency I was talking about earlier. I mean, it allows people to get to know you. I mean, I've shared— you have, Bobby, you have— you've shared— we share honest thoughts in, in this. And it's kind of— in, in a society where no one wants to take a stand on anything, it takes some pretty big onions to say, this is what I think about our industry, and here's what I think's wrong with it, right? Right. And, and I think people, boy, they love that, and they're scared to death of it at the same time.

Speak to one aspect about the ROI, and that is that once you've seen a direct cause-effect with content, you're sort of hooked. And I'll give you an example. We had, when I was with Robin several years ago, I don't remember, I wish I remember the year I created it, but we, but I created 3 ebooks. 2 of them were very shitty, they were awful. One was called the Company Store Planning Guide. The two were kind of offshoots of that, but they were all three separate pieces. And it took me— it took me a very slow period of time. I remember the summer distinctly because it was a slow period in business. Now I'm going to get this done. I'm sitting on— get these things done. And what was an ebook called the Company Store Planning Guide? And the way we used it was we put it on our website as an ebook. Prospects could come fill it out. It wasn't a book that said, here's why you should choose Robin as your company store provider. It was, here's what you need to create a successful experience with your brand. And it was a worksheet, it was a 10-page worksheet that had them fill in the blank. They had to bring in like what titles and other people in the company need to be involved. What kind of merchandise would they need for a successful program? What kind of marketing would they need? All of these things. And none of it had to do with us being the better provider for it. And what would happen with us is that the prospect, when a prospect would fill that, I would literally have prospects fill that out. Like back then in the day, this was before Drift and a lot of the forms that we have, they would download the PDF, fill it out, and send it back to me and go, hey, I think we're ready to talk about this now. And I'd be like, holy shit, this is— talk about a hot prospect. They've thought through this entire process, and I can literally say it helped us land six figures. In fact, I could say six-figure clients. I can say it was the linchpin that kind of led them to us. So my point being, and don't laugh at the analogy, guys, because I know you're going to suppress a belly laugh here. But when you look at any productive artist, Any artist that you respect, they would produce a tremendous amount of work. Out of that, they would become memorable for a certain number of pieces. Picasso painted over 50,000 paintings. And yet, we know in our mind when I say Picasso, we have the Old Guitarist or one of these iconic Picasso paintings in our mind, but we forget that the guy went through 50,000 different pieces of work. So the ROI question, I think the reason why it's a tough question for folks is I think they do see somewhat of the ROI potential. Exerted in a lot of what Bill said, a lot of calorie burn.

It's that consistency. I mean, Picasso had to keep painting, right? I gotta keep— I gotta keep writing. Yeah.

So let's get practical. What types of content should a distributor be using today? Let's get focused on this. Is it any more just one or two key things? If you were to talk to a distributor— I don't want to speak to— I don't want us to make the mistake of speaking to maybe just the independent solopreneur who's trying to figure things out because they're, they're trying to do everything in their business at once. I want to speak to to all brands of all sizes? Get practical. What do they need to do today? How do they get started?

I, I think it's, it's difficult to get started, but it's also easy to get started. I'd start slow and I'd start focused. So I'd start where either you're most comfortable or interested. If you're into— if you're a writer, then start, start by writing. If you think, I'm going to be better on a podcast, then start a podcast. I think trying to do everything at once is a recipe for frustration. It's a recipe for failure. Like you said, a lot of, a lot of people who would be doing this, whether they're, you know, that might be part of their full-time job if they're in marketing at a large distributor, or they might be a solopreneur and they're doing everything and they got to worry about, you know, hit payroll and doing all the other things. But I think you need to stay where you're comfortable or interested, not something that you think is popular. Well, everybody's doing a podcast, so I'll do a podcast. That's the wrong reason to do it. People want to hear your authentic voice in the way you are best suited presenting that. And so where do they focus? I, I don't know. I'm a big a believer that I like the original. I always think the original content marketing is case history, right? If you think about traditional case histories, especially for distributors, that is the original content marketing. Here was a marketing problem, I worked collaboratively with my client, and together we came up with this, and here's what we delivered, and here were the results. Wouldn't you like— wouldn't it be great if we were able to work together? That's the original content marketing there. So I think you can start telling stories. People love stories. Stories. We've, you know, Bobby, you give such a great session on storytelling and the importance of it and the arc of it and the art of it— arc and art. But I think, you know, you got to make it really interesting and relatable. Have something to say. So if you don't feel like you have anything to say, don't convince yourself you do. But I'd really start off by where you feel— and then generally I'd say do what makes you uncomfortable. Here's where I'd say do where you feel you're going to be most comfortable, because if you don't, you're going to bail much sooner.

I want to add that this intersection of art and commerce is what we're talking about with content, right? We've got this, this intersection of art and commerce that we're grappling with. And one of the things that I think folks should start with is to look at their market. And I'm thinking solely on the commerce side. I love your answer, Bill, because I think you're right. I think they're going to stick with it longer. I think they're going to fall in love with it quicker. I think they'll have less roadblocks and they'll just get When you look at the, at your business and you analyze your top 10 clients, either what business you're doing now or where you want to go, you'll find out that Fair Wear and 12NYC did this. Like, 12NYC understood that they speak and do most of their big merchandise, their sales to high-end merchandising in the fashion industry. Where does high-end merchandising in the fashion industry live? They live on Instagram. What medium appeals most is obviously photography and videos. In Fair Wear's case, You'll see them do a high use of blogging and also, which is thought leadership because of the niche that they're in, thought leadership is perfect for them. And their video series was fantastic where they highlighted the heroes with their customers and how they, how they're sustainable customers and just the passion around that focus. So you see them exerting their thought leadership through those different types of mediums. So I think you should start with where your clients are at. And this will help maybe the, uh, the proverbial ties in the room to, to map ROI quicker, is to start by looking at your client list and what it is that you're passionate about that aligns with what it is, where it is that they would want to see and read content.

Absolutely. It's where they live. Yeah. You know, as much as I don't love Facebook, but a lot of my audience lives there. So do we share content on Facebook? You bet your sweet bippy we do. And hopefully no one's ever said sweet bippy on this podcast.

Or again last time. Something that Larry D. Mercer would say, Bob.

Yeah.

You know, something just came to me and I wanted to throw this into the conversation. So Bobby, I shared a newsletter with you from a winery in Ontario called Pearl Morissette. Okay. And Bill, Well, your comment about case studies is what, is what triggered this in me when we're specifically talking about like, where do people start? What do they focus on? And Bill, when you said case studies is, is kind of the original form of content marketing, newsletters also fall into that as well. Newsletters is the kind of thing that we might've been talking 25 years ago. Hey, create a newsletter, send it out to people. So to some extent it's a bit old school, but if you're listening to this and you're someone that is in a newsletter frame of mind, newsletters are a phenomenal form of content marketing. So I'll give you this example. So I get this newsletter, I get a ton of newsletters, but newsletters that are written well and that kind of grab at your heartstrings and inspire you and are well written and right to the point and have a strong call to action. So in this case, it was this whole story about the vineyards and about, you know, the, the forthcoming frost that was going to come. And it was written in this really great way. And we're talking about, hey, we've got these limited amount of chardonnays that are available. You can purchase them right now in our store. And that, from the time that I read the newsletter to the time that I had $400 worth of wine in my cart, was probably 8.5 seconds. Right? And I thought to myself, like, this is amazing that they've not only inspired me, but they inspired me to open my wallet and to go invest in this wine. And I'm very excited about that. So I think that for some people, they may look at Bill and be intimidated by your output, Bill. They may say, well, Bill's totally new age. He's doing blogs. He's got Brandon doing his videos. He's got podcasts. Like, that's way too high-tech for me. I think the message here is that you can also rely on some of these older school formats to inspire and to be relevant these days.

Yeah, I agree 100%. I'm glad you mentioned the email newsletter because I think we still buy into the sexy artsy parts of content and forget that the buyer, especially a B2B buyer, still lives in their inbox. And that's their number one residence. And that's where they spend most of their time. Let's get a little personal here. You've both been involved in content marketing for a while now. Mark, you with Right Sleeve. I mean, you guys were kind of originators in the day, at least in the industry. You were doing some pretty progressive things back in the day. And Bill, even prior to Promo Corner, Can you describe your evolution as a content marketer from where you were to where you're at today so that we can understand, mainly so we can take away what it is today we should be focused on and we don't make the mistakes that we kind of made in our prior years?

Yeah, my evolution is really a 4-step process from, you know, I started off as a scared ninny to, to share my content, then I was a less scared ninny to share my content, and then I, I'm a still scared a scared ninny to share my content. And then finally I've decided I'm a perpetually scared ninny. Here's the thing: every single time I hit send or post on a blog post or I publish a, a podcast, I still wonder if it's good enough, if, if it's relevant enough, it's speaking to people, if it's giving people value. And so I, I— my evolution has really been to really look at that. And I'm a much— I probably have 35 to 50 blog posts that are a quarter written, half written, and I'd start writing. I'm like, I have no idea what I'm talking about, why anybody would want to read this, what value this has for anybody, and I scrap it. Now sometimes I go back to it and I finish it and I figure out what I was trying to say. Many times it just sits there in blog purgatory. And so I'm, I'm much more discerning about what I put out there now, and I'm much more comfortable though putting out things that are very, very transparent for me and very, very uncomfortable for for me. So I've, I've been— I'd say over the last year, year and a half, I've been very comfortable sharing my failures and thought this was going to work out, you know what, it didn't. Here's what I learned from it though, in hopes that other people can learn those same things. So I'm more confident. So I look at my evolution as a content marketer, I'm much more confident in doing so, but I still am that scared ninny. And but I do have the courage to trust my instincts. If I think it's worth publishing, there's at least a few people out there that are going to relate to it, either whether it's a podcast or a blog or whatever. So that be my answer to that.

You know, I think, I think for me, if I reflect back on the very early days of content production at Right Sleeve, because this would have been going back to, you know, maybe 2006, 2007, it was the wild, wild west of content marketing. Social media was just starting to get traction and sort of moved out of the sort of Harvard dorm, so to speak, into from the college market into the world of business. And at that time, the approach was highly experimental and random, partly because no one really knew what the hell they were doing. And I think in part because it was just fun to experiment. So examples of that, like we would go and produce YouTube videos that were rooted in comedy and rooted in sort of being off the wall, because that's what I had seen in the consumer market. And that was a lot of fun, but was not terribly strategic or terribly analytical. So if you look at where we are right now, and I would probably give the example more of Commonsku because that's really the world that I live in now. You think about our content strategy is it's about consistency. It's about certainly about experimentation, but also measuring analytics. You think about the analytics meetings that we now have, there's no way in hell we would have come close to doing that 13 years ago when we started doing this at Right Sleeve. And so I think that the learning is that we started off random, creative, experimental. But I think that now I would hope that we haven't lost our sort of creativity and our sense of experimentation, but it's very much backed up with very strong consistency a strategic plan, as well as analysis. And that's, that's the holy grail. So for people listening to this, like, by all means, take inspiration from how we first started, but don't be inspired by our very hack approach when it came to analyzing whether we were actually getting any impact. I think it was more like vanity metrics at the time. Things are much different now, and we're certainly much better for it.

So something I'll add is something we've really looked at here and something we've really embraced I really embrace. The second I get comfortable with producing a weekly blog or producing a weekly podcast, the second I feel like it's becoming comfortable for me, I start thinking about how to dismantle it and change it. So we— if you listen to the first few Unscripteds, man, you talk about terrible. I've got, hey, hi, boys. Hey, Kirby, I'm real happy to talk to you. Okay, I'm really nervous. I'm going to talk really fast. And before I found my voice and comfort level. But what I find is that the second I'm basically just walking in the podcast room doing the podcast, watch, walking out and not thinking about it. That's doing the audience a disservice, in my opinion. And so that, you know, we've changed things on that podcast, for example, at the peak of its popularity because we felt it was about to go stale. And those instincts have served me very, very well. So this, this, you know, once you get comfortable doing something, it's kind of like when you make the same bowl, you know, you say make the same chili now and again Maybe add a poblano pepper this time and roast it and see what that does to the flavor profile. Might add just a little bit, a little bit more spice in there. Yeah.

And to, to, to add to both of your comments, there's a great article recently produced, a great article, but written by Velocity Partners called Something Happened. And he talked, they talk about how they operationalize content marketing and how it doesn't mean you have to suck the soul out of it. And I'm going to quote from the article. They said there's still enormous scope for experimentation, play, discovery, and occasionally just plain winging it. Fresh, smart, crisp, compelling, confident content is as powerful a force as it's ever been. But to make it, we need to get back to why we all went into this work in the first place. It wasn't to tick all the boxes on the persona buying stage matrix or to count the form fills and call them NQLs. It was to move markets by moving people. You know, I love what Mark said because I agree content itself has matured to a point where, for one thing, you can't produce dancing cat videos anymore to get attention. You have rely on compelling, consistent, and helpful content. And to map that to Bill's comment about still doing things that are edgy and fun, you know, that's smart. That's still what gets your attention with all the content that you still read and produce. It's just, I think it's a lot smarter now. I think it takes a lot more work now because of the signal-to-noise ratio, for sure. And I'll add that I think a couple of my key lessons has been the first post I wrote was in 2009, ironically, and about this time in 2009. And like you, Bill, I think getting myself out of the way, and in my case, it's not just ego, it's also the inner critic. And so getting that inner critic out, not thinking good or bad, but rather thinking useful. How useful is this going to be to our audience? How am I going to help someone? How am I going to liberate them? How am I going to help them cross the finish line? How am I going to help excite them, inspire them, help them imagine with this? How am I going to encourage them? And to me, it's much easier to write that way. Way than it is for me to think that I need to produce a piece that everybody's going to be impressed by. Because once I do that, I spend— of the 4 to 6 hours I might write a piece, I'll spend 3 to 4 of those agonizing over the piece instead.

Oh, absolutely. You end up torturing yourself, and you have a lot more hair to pull out than I do. So I really don't have the luxury to do that.

Right, right. But going back to Mark's example, I love that because here you have the other— my other lesson has been nothing is dead and, and nothing trumps anything else. Like, nothing is better than anything else in terms of media, and therefore nothing is dead. Like, the email newsletter is still an exciting place to be, is still an incredible place to make your mark and to move your market, just like that wine company that Mark read as well. So let's talk about the future. What do you see in the future for content marketing? What do you guys— what are you guys looking at down the road? What's most important to you? And maybe the way to ask this, because you're already thinking that way all the time, both of of you what's on your desk right now, because I guarantee you, with you guys, what's on your desk right now is what you're thinking of in terms of content. And Mark, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tie in all the events and everything— that's all content marketing, which is what we're doing. So where do you see the future for content marketing?

Obviously, I think blogs, podcasts, video is going to remain relevant. I think podcasting is going to continue to explode. It's such a low-cost, easy, no-barrier-to-entry platform for people to get involved. I think you're going to see a lot more collaboration like what you and I or the 3 of us are doing right here. I think you're going to see a lot less use of quote-unquote influencers. I think they are losing their juice because there's a credibility issue there. And then I think really you're going to see, I think what's on my desk, live streaming. What can we do that's live streaming content where it's a little more renegade, a little more dangerous, and a little more transparent? So to me, I think live streaming content is really going to balloon over the next this year.

Yeah, great, great point.

Mark?

You know, I certainly would add or would echo everything you just said there, Bill. I think the, the one comment that really struck me, Bill, was this whole idea of the decline of influencers. And I, and I do agree with that. I think that, I think you start to see that as brands themselves become more empowered to produce content. And I think the, you know, the idea with influencers, I think a lot of it is brands that have kind of outsourced content generation to other people. But as we were talking about at the beginning, I, I, I really see more brands developing the confidence themselves to go and produce more and more content themselves to become these personality-driven brands that I, I think means that there'll be less reliance on these outsiders. I think the, the other thing that I would add is, is seeing how events continue or in-person events continue to drive engagement. Engagement and how that can be married with an online experience. So, Bob, we talk about this all the time is about how we can create this kind of 360 experience where, you know, people get the benefit of those in-person relationships but also being able to continue those relationships on an ongoing basis. And that's typically done in the virtual world because many people are obviously not in the same city. So, I think that that's really represents a very dynamic opportunity for brands as they continue to build their content strategy.

Yeah. I'm gonna touch on something you guys didn't touch on because you covered it well. You guys covered it well. I'm gonna touch on something else and that's tone. I think you're gonna see far more intimate content built for even more finite audiences in the future. That's already happening now, but you're gonna see even the most boring brands, quote unquote boring products, insurance, finance, any B2B business you can think of that will get closer to the emotional reason of why we buy and therefore heighten the intimacy around building tribes, building communities. And you're going to see these continue to flourish because that's the heartbeat of why people buy and why people purchase. So I think the tone of content will actually shift and change more and get more intimate as well as smarter. I think I, I, and all three of us know that for anything to get seen or heard or to get appropriated and used proactively by a prospect or by a client, it's got to be incredibly helpful. So it's going to get harder. It's going to get harder. And I think you're going to see also more and more focus, of course, on the customer experience. Yeah, I think that I read a study that every CMO in the world is asking themselves the question right now is how do we, how do we tap into the experience of marketing with our business, experiential marketing, and how do we tap into that communicate that experience, and build that out in a way that touches people's lives.

Love that. No, that's great stuff.

Hey, Bill, I want to throw in one question before we start to wind down.

Sure.

What is your favorite blog post you've ever written and why?

I don't think I've written it.

Um, great answer. That's a Bobby. Oh, that's a great answer.

I'm bowing at Bill's feet right now.

I don't think I've written it. I mean, how haughty would I have to be to say, well, Let me look through my list of blogs.

Let me rephrase. Let me rephrase so I can actually pin you down. What post inspired the most amount of debate?

Okay, there's been a couple. That's a good way to put it. I don't know how to choose, Mark, but you're forcing me to.

I'm in charge here, Bill.

You aren't.

That is increasingly clear. I think the ones where I've been really transparent about the business before we've done something, saying this is what we're going to do. So basically committing it to paper and then sharing it for the world to see. I know that, like, I think the one that really, you know, when we launched Promo MBA, there was a lot of internal angst. How are we going to pull this off? And are we ready to pull this off? And my, my response was very much of a, well, I said we're going to, so I guess we have to now, right? So I, I, I'm a believer that with a big grand goal like that, when you put it out there and say, you know, you got to do it, you got to do it. You know, you can never plan long enough to get married. You can never plan long enough to have a child. You can never plan long enough to have a corporate merger because there's always things that happen on day one that you didn't think about. And so I'm a believer of just kind of committing and running. So that, that one definitely comes to mind, that blog post. And then one where I railed against customer service and how how customer service has become automatonized, if that's a word. But, you know, I, I— my wife went to go pick up fast food for me and my kids and their friends one night, and I ordered— I said, you know what I like? I just want a hamburger. I want cheeseburger with lettuce, mayonnaise, and onions only. That's what I get. That's what I always order. And she went to a local fast food place, and they gave— that's what they ordered. That's what she ordered, a cheeseburger with lettuce, mayonnaise, and onions only. And it came with a bun, cheese, lettuce, mayonnaise, and onions. No burger. Because they didn't— they, they were not— they were trained to the customer's always right, and they weren't trained to ask clarifying questions. So they just continued like a zombie on with their day. And I got quite a bit of engagement on that one where I was like, you know, why we have— uh, we've— nobody's empowered to make any sort of decision. And I kind of went off on a rant. Yeah.

Mark, what about you? I'm asking your own question.

Oh, that's not fair.

Okay.

Well, I suppose I'll have to answer it. A quick thing, and I just wanted to comment on what you said there, Bill, and then I'll answer your question, Bobby, is that I think what that demonstrates for people that are listening is that the more you have chosen to either A, be super real, B, have a firm position on something that others may disagree with, or C, B, you come across as radically transparent, then those are really the recipes for a great blog post or great piece of content because they're either going to get people to get to know you better or they're going to— it's going to inspire debate and there's nothing wrong with that. So for me, it was a blog post that was written around the failure that we had at Right Sleeve to launch in the e-commerce space. And this— I wrote this a couple of years ago and I wrote it on, I think it was on the Kominsky blog. And I think I also shared it in Promo Kitchen because I wanted to get sort of the maximum amount of readership in terms of this massive failure. And for Bobby, you know me fairly well that it's challenging for me to talk about failure. And this was really therapeutic and talking about how it is that we had invested this huge amount of money and had staked our brand and identity and reputation all on this expertise around e-commerce. This was maybe about 10, 12 years ago. And writing about that story, I remember we did it as a two-parter, was probably one of the more engaged pieces of content that I had ever written. And it was really around all the ways that we had screwed up. And I thought, well, hang on a second, maybe this is what I need to be doing more of. But I remember remember really being nervous to click publish on this because I thought about how bad it would make us look. And it may have made us look bad, but at the end of the day, I think it was a great learning experience. And it also allowed me to connect with a bunch of other people that felt the same way, that had kind of come out of the crevices, so to speak, and where it then allowed us to have this really fruitful conversation about how to do e-commerce right and how to do it wrong. And that, that was really beneficial special for me. So that's my answer if you put me on the spot.

What about you, Bobby? What's your favorite piece of content, or the one that's moved the audience the way you wanted?

Or—

I wouldn't say— I, you know, it's funny, nothing— what's kind of— I'm just actually learning as I'm talking with you guys and we're asking this question. I just learned something. None of it— none of the most— the pieces that answer that question in my mind are the original pieces. They're actually response pieces, probably similar to yours experience, Bill. There were two pieces that we wrote, one that I actually, you know, Bill, you know that rare experience you get when you not only are responding to something or writing something, but it's speaking to you as well, and it's just a great experience all around. There's a couple of pieces that you write that, that not only resonate with everyone that reads it, but it means something to you. And one was called The Symbols We Wear That Speak Our Lives. And you guys remember, if you remember when Trump was in the primaries, where the Pussyhat Project with the pink hats. And so I wrote an article called The Symbols We Wear That Speak Our Lives, and response to that. And then fast forward, and this was Mark's idea, not my idea, but it was the Elizabeth Segrin response from the Fast Company piece about— it said it's time to stop spending billions on cheap conference swag. What's interesting is that both of those weren't original content, like it wasn't an idea that we created, it was a response to something happening in the market. And like your experience, Bill, it just resonated with a lot of folks. But not only that, it resonated with me personally. I you really, you know, you throw yourself into those kinds of pieces and you're really thankful when it comes out. But I, it's an interesting lesson to learn that, that your, some of your best content ideas are not going to be original ideas that you created, but rather response to something happening in the marketplace. Final thoughts on content in terms of encouraging folks to get started, either to get started or to amp their content if they're doing it and they want to get reinspired or fired up again. Final question, final answer on this.

Bill? I think, yeah, I think people get scared of, well, how am I going to find content? Number one, you can share content. You don't have to write it all. You don't have to produce it all. You can share relevant content. And that is not— it can be your only marketing content marketing strategy, but it should be part of your content marketing strategy. So you don't have to write it or produce it all. And then the second thing I would say is when you start writing content or producing podcasts or whatever, whatever content you're doing, videos, doesn't matter. You quickly realize that life becomes content. Everything in your life is relatable to something. You know, I mean, I'm— I'll be— I don't know when this will drop, but I turn 50 in 10 days. There— I'm gonna— there's gonna be a blog on that. There's gonna be a blog on the fact that I realized this weekend, after 7 trips to our grocery store in the span of 2 days, that I have become my family's personal and direct Instacart. I don't know how that happened, and I don't know how I'm going to relate that to something, but I will. And so, you you can realize everything is content and every customer experience you have is relatable to what's happening in the promotional products industry. And so when you start looking at things like that, the content a lot of times actually produces itself.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.