209 - The Blog Isn't King Anymore And Why You Need An Owned Media Portfolio (Ian Faison, Founder ...

If you're at an early stage startup, you're in the right place. We should be able to get our startups over the hump and without guessing or throwing spaghetti. Marketing is an important part of your go-to-market strategy, but you need to understand the why behind the what in order to get clarity, make the right decisions, and get results. Welcome to season four, where I'll be asking why in order to help bring more clarity to the messy world of early stage startup marketing. EO and founder of Caspian Studios and Caspian Studios creates shorts, shows, and moonshots with podcasts and videos for B2B companies. I just want to apologize to the listeners if I have a cold. My son gave it to me, but it doesn't matter because this happens like multiple times a year. So if I have to blow my nose, I apologize. I'll try to go on mute. But Ian, thank you for joining me this time on my podcast. Yeah, it's fun doing the home and home, as they say. You came on our show, Remarkable, and talked about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and now I'm coming on your show to talk about marketing content stuff. Yeah, it's great. So that episode, if people want to check it out, it's called What B2B Startups Can Learn from the hit series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It's on Remarkable. It's also episode 196 on modern startup marketing. So check it out. I just want to mention that it's one of my favorite episodes. that I worked on, which is interesting because I've worked on so many, but that one, you were able to create such cool sound effects that you brought in from that movie, the audio at just the right moment. And my kids still ask me to replay it for them. Oh, that's so adorable. I love to hear that. It's really cute. And I don't mind replaying it back because I laugh at it. It's like those are the episodes where something magical happens. So anyway, Ian, you wrote to me and said, I have an idea for your show. I have an idea for an episode we could do together. And whenever you write to me with an idea, I just want you to know that I will always say yes. I love that. That's awesome. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. because you're really good at what you do and I love your creativity and I love your ideas. So here's what you wanted to cover and here's what we'll cover. You wanted to talk about the new way to do content marketing and I won't get into it because we will get into it as we talk here but you wanted to talk about something called the owned media portfolio but not yet. First I want to talk about the old way of doing content marketing and content marketing strategy and i think i posted about it maybe a week or two ago and i talked about how the old way of doing content marketing content marketing strategies they focus on keyword research keyword research drives the content strategy and if you're doing keyword research then of course you're going to focus on blog content and the blog drives you know your pillar content starts from the blog and everything else goes from there now i'm not saying it's wrong for every company it's just basically what everybody thinks of first when they think of oh we need a content marketing strategy we need to do keyword research that's going to drive our content strategy we need to have a blog up we're going to share snippets on social media take people back to the blog hopefully they'll see our website see our product hopefully they're going to schedule a call with us And then they're going to purchase. That would be beautiful if that's how easy it was. That's not how easy it is. Nobody wants to go to your blog and read your blog content. I almost feel like we're tired of blogs in a way. Without a doubt. Right? Yeah, without a doubt. What was the last blog you read? Well, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know either. Because we're served things. differently now than we used to be. And so, so much of what our friends are sharing, and you can talk about dark social and you talk about all this other stuff, but like, just how we surface information is very different, right? Whereas like a decade ago, like, yeah, more often than not, you did Google stuff. And then now more often than not, you're seeing it on your feed, your friend told you, it's marketed to you in some way, or maybe you're Googling it, but there's just a lot of ways in now, right? there are a lot of ways in so it's not just your blog snippets on social and then they'll come in and read your blog post there are a lot of ways in and i was just actually i think every company needs to do this is check how people find the way in to you because you might be doing a bunch of stuff but that's not how people are finding the way in to learn more about you getting intrigued by you right so That's always kind of a balancing act. And I think the balance has shifted away from the blog being king and driving content strategy. Okay. So that's funny because I do still write blog posts, but I usually start from the podcast. Yeah. My podcast is the pillar. And then it's so much easier to start there. I tell everyone, like, I don't start from a blank page. I start from my podcast. And then I could, since I wrote everything, basically, if it's like a solo episode I'm doing, I wrote things that I want to talk about. So it's way easier where I could get the transcript to create the blog post from the audio, right? Without a doubt. Right. And I have like the video clips that I can automatically just like pull those and share on social media. So it just gives me way more leverage going from the podcast versus going from a blank page. Yeah, I feel the same way. So new content marketing strategy. Well, I want to touch on old for a second. Oh, sure. I think that most people are still probably doing a lot of this. So first off, it's just your marketing strategy. It's not your content strategy. So I think we're off base pretty hard with content is a person that we hire on our marketing team that runs content. and it's a division of marketing when like they are one in the same. Your ad copy is content. Your product marketing copy is content. You know, your podcast is content. Your SEO stuff is content. So like, what are we even talking about here? Like everyone in your marketing team is creating content anyways, in addition to your salespeople, right? So like everyone is already doing this anyways. It's whether or not... how you're doing it, how you're creating it, and all those things. I think you need to start to first say, if our strategy in marketing is looking and sounding smart, or being futuristic, or explaining and educating, or educating, inspiring, and entertaining marketers, excuse me, if that's the job of marketers, to your customers in your community, then you need to figure out what you need to say to those people. If your marketing strategy is, I just want to talk about features and benefits, which is fine too, that's totally fine, then you're going to be creating different stuff. And I think that that's core to the problem here, which is you don't have to do SEO. You don't have to make a podcast. You don't have to do any of this. If that's not your strategy, that's totally fine. But if you're going to try to do all of it, which is what everybody is trying to do, is try to do everything. then inherently you need to figure out a better way to do it. Because what you are creating now, a bunch of blog content and getting a bunch of writers to do it, albeit brilliant writers most of the time, unequivocally is not as effective. It's not reaching the people that you want to reach. It's not having the impact that you want it to have. And you might have an absolute ace SEO team and is doing great work there and driving like a ton of value. And I've seen people with just like the best SEO. things in the whole world. And then they don't know how to make serialized content or they don't know how to make other types of content. And if you're already doing all that work in SEO, you should definitely be doing this other stuff. So I think you have to back it up from the strategy. And I think that obviously marketing fuels sales, right? That's the point. And the point of that is to accelerate know, like, and trust because you want them, when the salesperson gets on the call, they're supposed to go, oh, I know y'all. I've heard of you. I see you everywhere. And I love the way that y'all think. Yes. Like that's what you want, right? And you're like, I know I'm product aware, you know, I'm solution aware, or I'm problem aware, I'm solution aware, like all that stuff. That's the neurona, right? It's like you want all that stuff. Well, if you need to do all that stuff, you need to figure out a way to communicate with these people where they are, your prospects, where they are, the way they're looking at stuff now. And unequivocally, they ain't just reading blog posts. They're doing all sorts of other stuff. They're listening to podcasts, they're watching stuff, they're scrolling on their feed, they're watching videos on YouTube, and most importantly, they are learning from their peers. That is where they look for information. So if you don't have, part of your strategy is not co-creating with your prospects, then inherently, you're not going to be speaking their language. And so therefore, If your team of writers is sitting there writing the most brilliant stuff ever written, but none of it is coming from their peers, then that's probably not the best strategy. Yeah. It's such a company-centric approach, too. Like, we're going to write the best content. People are going to come to our website and read it. You can't. force that anymore because people won't come to your website. They're going to stay on their social channels. They're going to scroll through their feeds. They're going to get on Slack and ask those questions of like, hey, do you know how to solve this problem? And then get answers from their peers. When you say co-create with prospects, what do you mean? Yeah, like doing a podcast, doing an event, doing a small batch event, doing a video series, doing a customer testimonial. I mean, that's not a prospect, that's a customer, but same idea, same exact thing, co-creating with your community. I think that this is like core. This is like a core element of marketing. You need to accelerate the stories of your customers and you need to accelerate those stories into your prospects, right? They need to know what your customers are doing, how they're using it, all that sort of stuff. And you need to put your customers with your prospects. right at the same dinner table at the same watering hole at the same thing so that naturally they can talk hey i saw you're on their website they're putting you all over telling is it really that good you know like those are the sort of things like you need to increase things like that happening if you're creating serialized content which we'll get into here in a second then inherently you're going to be putting them together you're going to be peer positioning them together. And you're going to be the one who's facilitating the creation of this content. You're the one who's, you know, building the table, then inviting all the people to sit at it. And like, this is super important. Again, people learn from their peers, that's who they trust the most is their peers. Like they don't trust you the most, you want them to trust you a lot. But at the end of the day, you're selling a software. And if you're early stage, you're selling a software that does not have as much social proof and all these other things. So then it's even more important to co create with your customers and prospects. Yeah. I work with Novatic very closely as an advisor and they have a team of advisors. And so you could also co-create with advisors or influencers. Without a doubt. Yeah. Customers, prospects, and influencers, without a doubt. Yeah. And like this partnerships thing is under leveraged as part of a marketing strategy because you have to get out of your comfort zone of like, we have this team and we can create stuff and we're the best at this and we're subject matter experts. And then you have to like reach out and get rejected or, you know, so it's tougher. It's tougher because you have to think about like, who, who's that going to be? How does their brand affect, you know, our brand, right? It has to be a good fit for both. So it's a little bit more complex, but I think it's definitely an opportunity and under leveraged. And so, Thank you for sharing that, Ian. Yeah. And I'll just add one thing, like part of the reason why I hit you up, because I've been thinking about, I think about our marketing strategy here at Caspian Studios all the time, because I'm, you know, essentially our CMO, right? And what I realized was our marketing strategy. So, you know, the great Chandar, former CMO at Coupa, one of our advisors, you know, he always told me, hey, Ian, you can only do three things. That's it. You can only do three. You got to stop everything else. And so I really tried to do that this year. I'm like only three, no shiny objects, no other stuff. And so the three things that Caspian is focused on is portfolio, partners, and paid. Like those are the three things that we're doing, which coincidentally kind of means owned, earned, and paid, right? Oh, yeah. And I thought, okay, this is our strategy. These three things. Well, what is inside of these portfolio play, which is we have a portfolio of content of which The majority of it is serialized. And then I was thinking about, okay, like, what is the type of content that we're creating? And I'm like, we're creating short videos for social. We're creating shows like podcasts and video series that people subscribe to. And then we're creating, you know, moonshots, like big, crazy, audacious projects that can cut through the noise. And then I was like, wait and our product also like our not product because we're not a product company but like our offerings are the same thing and then so i sort of was like okay well that's what a portfolio is it's the short shows and moonshots the second thing being partners and that's like whether it's someone who sells to the same group as we do whether it's influencer with a big list whether it's going on someone's podcast whether it's you know any of those like sort of traditional pr type things like finding partners co-creating with them is super important, sharing each other's audiences, right? And then the final thing being, you know, we run paid ads to surround people with, hey, Caspian's cool, what we do and check out, we want a Webby and, you know, all the other stuff that we want to remind them of. And then you look at that and you go, okay, well, that feels really comprehensive. And that's what we're focusing on. I'm like, I think I need to tell more people that like, this is what we do and sort of introduce this idea of this short shows and moonshots, which I sort of just had the realization of like, okay, this is exactly what people should be doing. And by the way, we should also make sure our business is perfectly suited to sort of deliver those needs. But more importantly, we do this stuff and it freaking works. And that's part of the thing. It's working for our customers, it's working for us. And that's where I'm like, I just don't think people realize that like, we could do this. So I started sharing that with a bunch of people and a bunch of marketers and they're like, Oh, you finally verbalized what we've been trying to do, which is like, what is this portfolio approach? Like, how do we invest in marketing like it is an investment portfolio? where there's little wins and medium wins and big wins and hopefully really big wins that can return the entire fund so that's sort of how it all came to be i love that so much now it's way more clear that's why i'm glad that we're discussing this because when i say owned media portfolio portfolio takes me to a different place because i work with startups and vcs right yep but it does tie back in it's like how you invest in companies and how you invest in your content with the shorts you know small things medium size and the big things and the riskier stuff right totally ties in thanks for explaining that and i also agree like not all marketers not all fractional marketers do marketing and so personally i think that's like if i'm a company and i'm looking at somebody and they're just telling me like i have these clients i have this roster i do this work and you're not doing stuff like for yourself and experimenting i personally think it's a leg up when you as a business believe in the work that you do and actually do it as part of your efforts yeah it's better Yeah. And I can show you how we've been doing that. And I can show you, we can talk through that. But I also, you know, I can show you how our customers are doing it. And it's not just us, right? You know, Chris Walker's, both of his companies, we mentioned sort of like AK from Audience Plus that they've been talking about this. Devin Reed talks about this. Like there's a lot of people talking about this sort of thing. And I think that in that reason, it's like, we've all been doing it. You've been doing it for a while. Right. we need to be able to connect this back to, okay, maybe the marketing department setup that we've had for 20 years, maybe just needs like a little bit of retweaking in terms of how we think about content, because it's a little silly to have it be siloed. Right. Yeah. And so then if you start to look at your content, which it's kind of our, your marketing team is kind of already like this anyways, but I think of thinking about it as product demand, and then brand content columns or corporate marketing or whatever you want to call it, brand content columns and community, which is the other thing now, right? So you have that sort of content community brand is one person and demand is one and product is one. And that works pretty well. You can sort of structure that thing, but their peers, not, oh, our director of content is a former writer who we just shucked. making blogs at them and never let them do anything else. Because that's what happens a lot is like, oh, you were a writer, you were a journalist, you're a very brilliant person, you write really well. And that's just what we want you to do. And they never give them sort of any of the other sort of things that they go along with a really, really important job. So anyways, yes. It should start not from you hiring a writer. Great, you have a writer that knows how to write well. It should start from who's your target buyer and what channels did they hang out in. If you need to hire a TikTok video creator, then that's what you should hire for. I've worked in so many different industries and it really just depends where. is your target audience hanging out and don't force don't shove them into your blog because that's not where they're hanging out or want to hang out and you should hire for that and that ties into this new content strategy canvas that i was recently i put this together it's on my website it's in my blog haha it's also a podcast episode that i just i was hashing it out with aaron balza She works with companies specifically just focuses on content strategies. And when I was working with my clients, I noticed that their content strategies, early stage startups, content strategies are just all over the place. Oh, yeah. So tough. So I finally asked them, like, how did you come up with this? And they're like, well, it's a mishmash of stuff. I just think that my content should be, you know. it should just fall into these three buckets right and that's all we're going to do we're going to put content together around these three buckets so there's just like no systematic approach to it so then i decided to just put something simple together because that's all that you need is just something simple but at least there's something there's structure and you're not leaving something out that you maybe should have included so if anybody wants to check out this content strategy canvas It's not filled in, right? But it just gives you the sections to think about for your own company. It's great, by the way. Oh, thanks. I love it. Thank you. Yeah. And I would say that what the Own Media portfolio fits right in the middle of the canvas that you created. What you're saying is what should you be talking about? And what channel should you pick? What format should you pick? Like what, you know, like all those sorts of things. And the own media portfolio where this fits is to say, we have limited resources, we have limited budget, but we know that we need to do these three things. We know that we need to do shorts because shorts target scrollers and people are scrolling. Like no matter who you are, your people are scrolling. And predominantly that's on LinkedIn. The second thing is. shows target subscribers. This targets people and they might listen to one episode a year or they might listen to 20. That's totally fine. It doesn't matter. It's 45 minutes of their time or 10 minutes or whatever it is. That's okay. But it's targeting people who are looking for long form or like medium form practitioner-led content. And then the third thing is like the moonshots, which is like, hey, what's something crazy and big that we could have an outsized impact? Maybe it's a comic book. Maybe it's a fiction podcast. Maybe it's a documentary. Whatever it is, what is some big, hairy, crazy thing that we could do that people are going to look up from their computer and go, oh, that's pretty cool. So I think that that's super important. Yeah. To like be able to bucket those three things. And that targets. bingers, right? Like the binge watcher, the binge listener that they're going to, this is so good. It's a page turner. They're going to finish the whole thing in one sitting. Maybe it's a big commercial, something like that. I don't know. But I think that sort of, it fits really neatly into your content strategy canvas because how people are talking about things like this is the buckets that you should be creating. Unequivocally, you should be creating in these three buckets. If you're a super early stage startup and you don't have a lot of money and you don't have whatever, Like, I get it. I'm there too, right? My company's there too. We're still creating these three buckets. You have to, because like you are trying to create things that are like Chandar says, paint the sky, Koopa Blue. And you know, so I think about the same thing where you need to paint the sky, your brand for your audience. So they need to be able to find you daily. weekly, and then once a year for that big thing. I firmly believe this. And again, we've seen this work over and over and over again. And most often, what people will do is they'll create in one of these ways, and it doesn't work as well. Yeah. Am I supposed to be creating a moonshot? Is that what you're telling me, Ian? I mean, yeah, you should. And it's like, I don't know what that is, but what your version is, I would say, what is the thing that only you can do? That's what we're thinking about at Caspian, right? It's like, what is the thing, the story, the element, the creative spark there? What's the thing that only we can do that no one in our competitive landscape could possibly do other than us? Well, you just did the murder in HR. Would you call that a moonshot? Oh, big time. Yeah, and that was a moonshot for us too, but that's a moonshot for Jim Pass, who's now WellHub. That was a moonshot for them. And if you saw what people in HR said about the show, they were like, this is really cool. This is fun. No one has ever done something like this. And I could go sort of on and on and on about fiction because I think that fiction is really, really underinvested. And it's funny to me because as marketers, fiction is our nirvana. you get to control the whole story. Like we should, we should be making more fiction. We always try to make nonfiction. And then you're like, well, that person didn't say exactly what I wanted them to say. And the customer testimonial by do fix it. You get to write the whole thing. So like, it's funny to me that we don't make more fiction and then you can make characters and they can be three-dimensional and like people can learn stories also like telling allegories and things like that. I mean, you can tell a story a lot quicker that way, but of course we're very bad at making fiction. But yeah, no, Murder in HR is an example of a moonshot. The Hacker Chronicles that we did with Tenable was a moonshot. For some companies in certain industries, just making a podcast is a moonshot for them. Yes. For some companies, just doing video at all is a moonshot for them. And that's if their audience feels that that would be a moonshot, right? Right. Like if you're in construction, for example. And a lot of construction is done like SMS, you know, like they're texting each other all the time. So you got to figure out a way to get in front of them. That's a moonshot. And it's like, if you bring a 24 pack of beer. Yeah. I was going to say, what beer would they bring to Cate, you know, to the job site or Coors Light or something? That's a win, right? That's your shorts, right? It's like, hey, let's make a little content out of this. you got to know your audience and figure out what that stuff is. But generally speaking for like the B2B audience, we're on LinkedIn and we're scrolling around the internet doing other stuff. So you got to figure out a way to get in front of them. Yeah, I think that's a great point. It depends on the industry. It depends on the audience. It depends on what they're used to seeing. And in... places like sales tech or MarTech, I think where they're pushing the envelope a bit more on what does a moonshot look like or mean, right? Or if I do this podcast, or if I do this video series, will it actually stand out? Will it be interesting for them? You need to take a different approach depending on what industry you're in and what content is already out there. That's a great point. Yeah. I would also add though. So, you know, I wrote this book, The Serialized Content Framework and we studied shows for a while. And if you look at Disney, if you look at Hollywood, if you look at the people who are the best at making content, they've been making serialized content for a long time. And then they quadrupled down on it recently to say, making the first thing is really hard. But making the sequel, well, that's way easier, right? So we all inherently know that. In B2B, we don't do anything like that. Like, let's recreate the wheel every... single time. And so if you look at the best serialized content, it's like Dreamforce. Dreamforce is an event series that happens every year that people know exactly what they're getting. And it's easier to market Dreamforce year seven than it is year six because people know about it, right? They built a series. Podcasts or series, there's video series, there's your newsletter, which is a series, right? Like the newsletter that I write, I write once a week. for Caspian and on LinkedIn. That is my series. That's just like musings of me talking about random crap. Those are all series and it's a lot easier to market those as they go. And then if you start building a portfolio of different series and you say, okay, let's say you're selling, it's like a MarTech product, but it's also data and it's a little bit of IT. So instead of saying like, hey, we're going to make a bunch of blog posts, let's make a series for marketing because we sell to marketers. And we sell to IT, so let's make a series for IT people. And we also sell data people, so let's make a series for them, rather than just bundling it all up and being like, content for all of you. Because none of those people consume the same stuff. So it's like, you have to create stuff individually for them. And again, this is just something that people don't necessarily do. So then they'll go say like, hey, we're going to make the state of IT report. And then... They do that the next year and, oh, hey, year two, a little bit easier. Year three, state of IT report. Hey, this thing works pretty well. And then they kind of stop there and it's like, no, take that, then go make a podcast called State of IT and bring on your customers and prospects for a video series and talk about the learnings from that in addition to their other stuff. And then you have State of IT Podcast. I love it. I'm pitching this to Nevada because they just did a state of interactive demos last year. They're doing a new one coming out this end of May or early June. And they're going to continue doing that. Why not? And they have a podcast. Yeah. And that's such a great idea is then to bring it into your show and start talking about the state of things in whatever area you play in. Yeah. And to your point about like, And I get this a lot of, you'll talk to a senior executive and they'll go, I don't listen to podcasts. And you're like, yeah, that's cool. What do you listen to? What do you watch? Whatever. So I was talking to this CMO, very famous CMO. This is like last year, two years ago. And he goes, and you still doing the podcast thing? I'm like, yeah. We're still cranking along. And he's like, is that working? And I was like, yeah. I mean, we drive like 21% of our business from sourcing it from our pipelines. He's like, no, no, I know that play. And I was like. okay, well that play, you know, the one that really works. Yeah. Okay. So that one is always like, but outside of that, it's like, do people sort of listen to these? I'm like, well, yeah, I mean like 300 million Americans like listen to podcasts and globally, it's like more people, but what are you sort of getting at? He's like, well, I don't listen to podcasts. I'm like, well, you are like one of the most famous marketing people in B2B. So I'd imagine you're probably not trying to listen to other people talk about marketing. I'd imagine that you would probably be more like creating stuff that other people would consume. And he's like, yeah, I guess that's right. I was like, what do you like? And he's like, oh, I like Marvel movies. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Why don't you make one of those? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, you should, why don't you make a Marvel movie? Like what's stopping you? And he's like, well, how, how could I even do that? I'm like, that's the question. That's the million dollar question. You like Marvel movies. People like you like Marvel movies. It stands to reason that other people who are CMOs probably like Marvel movies too, because they're the most successful movie franchise in history. So why don't you try to make content that's more interesting than the stuff that you're making? And then once you go down that route, you kind of realize, oh, you know what we all like? We just like shows. We like True Detective. We like The Real Housewives. We like Star Wars. We like Marvel. We like all this other stuff. We like fiction and reality TV, right? That's what a lot of us like. Or, you know, nonfiction, documentaries, all those sort of things. Nobody is making any of that stuff, even though that's what we like the most. So it's like, you know, I created this edutainment graph where it's like education on one X axis and entertainment on the other. And I'm like, plot your content. Is anything that you make even a five out of 10 entertaining? And so, you know, when we went to make Murder in HR, you know, my mom listens to it and my sister listens to it. we're talking about at the dinner table of like who killed Larry and who does people think. That actually is entertaining because other people, it's so good that other people were not in HR would actually listen to it, which means that the people in HR who are listening to it, it's incredibly entertaining for them because all the hidden jokes and all the little Easter eggs are meant for them. So they have a different experience with the content than my mom does who doesn't really understand all the HR jokes. yeah it's like when you go watch disney films and some of the content is for the kids a lot of it is but then some of it is for the parents exactly and so you're like i'm okay watching this because i know they're gonna put something in there for me that the kids won't understand a hundred percent said it better than i did yeah no that's exactly right but you know we've got marketers listening to the show we got founders listening to the show and everyone's wondering ian How does an owned media portfolio actually create ROI? Because I get it. People are listening to murder in HR. People are watching that Marvel video series that you created. It's entertaining. But how does that tie back to ROI? How do you measure it? Yeah, it's a great question. So first off, I believe that you have to have conviction that something should be made. It's like, should this be made? is like an important, an important sort of distinction. Does your community need this information? And if the answer is yes, like you should make it, right? And then I guess like, how much does it cost? Right? So I think the first thing is people lack conviction to make the stuff that they think should be made. People get sort of wrapped up like, what is our thought leadership? It's like, I don't know, dude, it took me four years to write this book, the Serialized Content Framework, because I didn't have anything to say. And I hadn't put my thoughts together. And finally, I wrote this book. I'm like, listen, it's all in there. 69 pages, everything that I think of. And then now, you know, I have a bunch more stuff that I want to write. But I think the first thing is you need to have conviction. Your goal needs to be to paint the sky Caspian green, right? Like that has to be the goal. The goal is that you want your prospects to know, like, and trust you. You want them to look wherever they look, that it's your stuff. that they see you, that they see that you are smart or funny or serious or irreverent or whatever you want them to see. And so if you start with that, then you say, okay, how are we going to do it? We're going to do this short shows and moonshots idea. What is the goal of that? Okay. The goal is to educate, inspire, and entertain. That's your goal. You want people to know more. You want people to be pumped up when they see, you know, it's like you have a conversation with somebody like, how are things like, oh, things are bad, whatever. I don't want to do business with that person. I want to do business with the person that pumps me up. And then, you know, you need to entertain them, laugh and learn, keep them laughing, keep them learning, right? Get a smile on their face. And so I think you should say, A, do we think this should exist? B, do we think our audience will love it? And C, will they tell a friend? Will they hit that little share button and share it with their group chat? And then it's like, okay, if that's worth it, then the next step is your content goes one of two ways. It's either co-created with your customers and prospects, which is where we'll start getting to ROI, or it's original thought leadership that you created in-house. And hopefully it's created by a combination of your senior leaders, inputs from the outside world, and then your content team who can take all those ideas into something really good. With co-creation, what's great is there's multiple ways to look at ROI. You can say, every time we do a customer story, we can put that into our paid media. That makes our paid media perform that much better, right? Because those ads, and I don't know if you've seen this with your work. If we do a customer ad, people who know that person will comment on it. They'll like it. It's like, if I did an ad with you, that was like, it is a customer of Caspian. and your friends saw it, they're definitely liking it. And they're definitely going to be like, go Anna. That happens. So what's the ROI of that ad? Well, you're accelerating your customer stories. It's hugely important, right? Because then when they're thinking of, hey, this sales rep, you know, hit me up and I'm going to talk to them. They're like, is she a customer of Caspian? Like, I see that freaking ad every three days. And it's like, okay, that's super valuable. Also, and it comes on your show and she's a guest on your podcast so they see her face somewhere else on your website you know in your content that's super important and then with prospects you can say okay these are our top 100 accounts we want to get people from those top 100 accounts on our show that have no idea who we are not a customer And I want them to have the best experience coming on our podcast, coming to our event, coming to our small batch thing, whatever that thing is, just writing a blog post with us. And then you just look at how many of those deals were influenced by this, how many of those deals ended up closing. And I would bet my entire company that deals that get influenced by people coming on your show are going to outperform the ones that don't. I guarantee it because I've seen it with my company. I've seen it with our customers. I've seen it with other people. I think Chris Walker shared that it was like 47% of the deals that they close, the person listened to their podcast. These are like absurd numbers, right? And it's just like you're trying to get them to that sales conversation where they know, like, and trust you already. And the ways that you accelerate, know, like, and trust is not with a chat GPT written blog post. it's with a human being who they heard and they like and they think that gal is freaking cool and she's really smart and whenever she talks about stuff or predicts stuff it kind of comes true and she always has the smartest people hanging out with her and by the way those are my friends like that is who you follow that is how we do things in modern b2b buying and then by the way It sure doesn't hurt if you're like, oh, by the way, we're on the magic quadrant. And oh, by the way, we're using AI. And oh, by the way, it's all this other stuff, right? Because you've already accelerated know, like, and trust. And now all of a sudden they come to your site and they're like, they're a leader in the magic quadrant. And you know what? I like their brand better than the other thing. And that's how people buy. They're incredibly irrational in B2B. Totally, totally. Yeah, you're talking about magic quadrant. That's like larger companies, a lot of. early stage startups are listening to this show but what you just talked through is a different way to do attribution and i think that's also something worth calling out here is that not everything should be measured in the same way like You don't measure your content efforts in the same way that you measure your paid ads. And yet some people still are like, it's not working. Well, because you're not going back and you're not, you like do some podcast partnership thing. And you're like, well, that didn't work. That didn't bring it. But did you ask, like, did you make that part of your check back process of how you then got opportunities and deals after that? Or were you looking for someone to give that information to you? Or were you looking for that in your HubSpot report or something? Right? Yeah. I can promise you, and I've been on a lot of sales calls, that the ones that they come in and they go, my boss wanted a podcast. I Googled it. Y'all came up. That's all the contacts I have. Versus the calls go, oh, I see you everywhere. Yeah. What do you think? Which one goes better? I can tell you that. I just had a call with a prospect. He literally put into the form, long time listener, first time caller. Oh, shout out to them. That was so cool. That's so cool. That's so cool. Yeah. And that's the best. Maybe they listen to the show a bunch, or maybe they just see your clips on social media, which are great, or on LinkedIn, which are great. Or maybe they heard you on other people's podcasts or whatever. But it's like, those are the things that again, accelerate know, like, and trust. And that's when you talk about ROI, it's like, that's what gets you on the slide. If you're a startup, you got to get on the slide. And the other companies on the slide are way bigger than you. They have better security, without a doubt, they have better security than you. So they're going to crush you on that. They're going to crush you on their logos. So you can't compete there. Like you have to compete. asymmetrically. You have to. You have to find the ways to say, hey, at the end of the day, Ian is just like, I like the way that he thinks more. And yeah, it's not all on the roadmap yet, or it's not all in product yet, but I believe the vision that they're working toward. If you're early stage, you have to be able to sell the fact that like, hey, we're not going to be able to beat that, but we're going to be flexible. We're going to be transparent. We're going to be honest with you. We're going to answer all this stuff. Like you have to be able to answer that. And those are human centric things. That is where you win, right? And it's like human centric things. That is something that you get across via short shows and moonshots. That's something that you get across from like founder led sales. Those are the type that super matters. It really, really does. Yes. Coming from, again, I'll pull in the Novatic example since I work with them closely, but they do awesome stuff with their growth marketing efforts and they're growing and it's a really hot space, interactive demos. There's a lot of competition out there too. And people would say, Natalie Marcotulio, she's the head of growth. And so people would tell her, I love what you guys are building. I love what you're doing, but you have no face to this company, right? Yes. So once they got that feedback, they knew it was time to start thinking about like, what's going to be our show, right? Because it needs to happen. I feel like, I don't know. How else do you show the face? It needs to happen. You need to know, like, it's great that they were putting out, they do amazing reports. They put out a bunch of data because that's what people like love to read about, right? Like data reports and how things are changing. I'm getting smarter and all that. But at some point you have to agree that you need to put a face to your startup. And the best way to do that is with a show. And then you can create shorts from that show. And then if you can. create that moonshot which i mean i look at people like devon reed with what he's been doing have you seen his stuff with between the lines he had a little premiere event and i went oh you did yeah and it was he's just so rad he's just great yeah yeah i'm so proud of him for making that show and taking it he's his own money this is his own money it's his own money that ain't company money that's how it starts. It's your own money. And then, you know, you put it all in there because you really believe it. And he really does. I mean, he's really good at content creation. So he rents out spaces. He was in Chicago. He like interviews people. He's really good at it. And then he creates really nice shorts to get you interested and listen to his show. But I feel like that's the way I would recommend that early stage startups best leverage this new way that we've been talking about of creating content. Yeah. So we rolled out, not a plug, but so we rolled out an exact thought leadership like video as a service offering because basically just from feedback from our customers and people where they were like, my CEO doesn't have time. Yeah. And there's a lot of sort of services out there that's like, hey, you don't have time. We're going to do all this stuff. But for me, it was like, the problem is as a producer myself, I go into those conversations and there's so much knowledge. They have had so many conversations with customers. They understand the market so incredibly well. And so anyway, so we just started, we'll interview the CEO or a C-level exec for two hours on video, but you need someone good asking the questions to get all the answers out, to dig at all this different stuff. And so we come in and we're able to do that. We're launching our first few of these here coming up. We've been doing them sort of in one-offs and oh my, this content you get is unbelievable. It's so good. And that's the sort of stuff where most of that knowledge is trapped in the founder's head. And it's just trapped in there. And you could have so much brilliant content if you just unearth it. But you got to get them talking and you got to pick and prod at their brain. And how do you think of this? And what do you think of this? And turn it upside down and look at it every different direction. Oh my goodness. That's the other thing. It's so hard to write all this stuff. It's so hard to think of it. But that's why we have editors. That's what you need. It's not a matter of getting it down. It's a matter of editing it to make it great. You need to be able to do both. Yeah. I just want to also mention that creating videos is very easy today. I know you do video as a service, and I think that's awesome, and I think some companies do need it. But there are also people within companies that pick up their phone and do a video using TikTok every day. And you've got those people at your companies and they're sharing it, maybe not on LinkedIn, but on other platforms. So it's so easy. Like I would actually use TikTok to create three minute videos and sometimes put those as like bonus episodes for the podcast. So it's a matter of finding those people too, if you have them, right? Totally. The difference with you though, is that you're... The really good subject matter expertise is probably going to come from the CEO, and the CEO is probably not using TikTok to create three-minute videos and putting them up. Therein lies the rub, right? That's the rub, right. Again, it just depends on what industry you're in, who you're selling to, what kind of content. But who's to say that that creative person that's already creating videos isn't right for selling your product? Ian. We have one minute left and I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to answer your question in a bonus episode. What, if any, burning questions do you have for me? And I'd love to circle back and answer it. Yeah. By the way, thank you so much for letting me join the show. This is super fun. What is, other than Diary of an Oimpy Kid, what is your favorite show of all time and why? I love this question. I've never gotten it before. People are like, if you were the CMO of my company, what would you do differently? I actually would love to know the answer to that too. Oh, well, one thing at a time, one thing at a time. But it's a great question. And I appreciate you joining me here. Great idea. I think we need to be talking about more of this stuff and getting more comfortable. with shorts, shows, moonshots, this idea of own media portfolio. So thank you so much for joining me, Ian. If anybody wants to find Ian, you can do so on LinkedIn, Ian Faison. And check out Caspian Studios by going to caspianstudios.com. Thank you so much, Ian. Later. Okay, so Ian asked me the question, what's my favorite show and why? And I wanted to answer it. I just kind of decided to do it right away. So I don't watch a lot of TV. I don't watch a lot of anything. The last movie I saw was Kung Fu Panda 4. Don't judge. I have kids. When I say I don't watch a lot of anything, I mean like shows, right? Just like turning on the TV. I read more than I watch. Like if you ask me what books I'm reading or what's my favorite book, that's easier to answer for me. But what's my favorite show? I do watch YouTube. There's this series called Sitting With Dogs where the dog whisperer sits in dog shelter cages with scared dogs and gets them to come around and gives them treats and talks about them. And I just love that guy. My kids love this guy called Mark Rober. He's a former NASA engineer turned content creator. So a lot of his stuff on YouTube. is actually educational. It's more engineering and science related. But what's my favorite show? Looking back, I remember binge watching Game of Thrones. I mean, who didn't, right? It was suspenseful. Characters were just amazing. The settings, the graphics, and then word of mouth. Of course, everybody was talking about it. You'd come into work and like everybody. was talking about it so you could not fall behind but if somebody was like hey anna let's watch game of thrones i don't think i would say yes now right what could i watch again and again i've got two so one of them is called seinfeld and the other one is called family guy and why those shows so i think like what i like about them is and the reason i could watch them again and again is because they make the ordinary funny And they help you look at the world in a different light and make it funny. And I think it's just evergreen content. Like it never gets old. And I think that's hard to get right. And many shows do not do that. Like you wouldn't go back and watch a lot of the shows that you've watched before, you wouldn't go back and watch them again. You're like done, right? You saw everything, you're done. But it's a truly unique ones that you could watch again and again. Ian, hopefully that answers your question. Great question. And I hope that my answer was sufficient. Thanks for listening to this weekly episode of Modern Startup Marketing. New episodes are dropping weekly, so make sure you're following wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me on LinkedIn, search for Anna Firminov, visit my website to learn more about how I help early stage startups, go to firminovmarketing.com. And don't forget to leave a review if you're loving the show.

Ian Faison is CEO and Founder of Caspian Studios where they create shorts, shows and moonshots (with podcasts and videos) for B2B companies. Ian wrote to me and said “I have an idea for your show…” and when Ian writes with an idea, I will of course say yes.  








Here’s what we cover:



The old and dusty content marketing strategy;



The new content marketing strategy and why companies are adopting an Owned Media Portfolio;



Examples of shorts, shows and moonshots;



How do you create a podcast that breaks through the noise;



What goes into a Moonshot like Murder in HR;



How does an Owned Media Portfolio create ROI and how do you measure it;



How can early stage startups best leverage this new way of creating content;



AMA: Ian asks me his burning question which I answer at the end of our episode.








You can find Ian on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison/) 



Check out Caspian Studios: www.caspianstudios.com (https://www.caspianstudios.com/) 








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