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The 90/10 Rule The Drives Content Results
0 Playsin 18 hours
In this episode, Brendan and Brian sit down with Cassie Aite (Hoppier, PostBeam AI) to unpack the real driver behind content success: the 90/10 rule.
After years of trial, error, and wasted spend, Cassie shares why 90% of content performance comes from planning—not execution—and how most B2B teams get this completely backwards. From early SEO missteps to building a blog that peaked at roughly 80,000 monthly visitors, he breaks down what actually works today—and what doesn’t anymore.
The conversation goes deep on the shift from traffic to revenue-focused content, why AI and Google are changing the game, and how fewer, higher-quality pieces now outperform volume plays. You’ll also hear why LinkedIn, YouTube, and owned content are non-negotiable—and how to find your “content-market fit” through disciplined testing.
If you’re still chasing impressions, this episode will reset your thinking. If you want content that drives pipeline, this is your playbook.
Key topics:
- The 90/10 rule of content planning vs execution
- Why traffic is down but lead quality is up
- Content strategy in an AI-first search world
- Finding your content-market fit through repetition
- The myth of needing a large audience to win
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Cassie Ait and Hoppier
00:00:27
Brian O'Grady
Heads up, great news. It's B2B Marketing Pint. You're here. We're back. Brendan, who are we talking to today?
00:00:35
Brendan Ziolo
Well, I have the great pleasure of welcoming Cassie Ait to the podcast today. Did I get that right, Cassie? I didn't screw it up.
00:00:42
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
You got it right. You got it right.
00:00:43
Brendan Ziolo
Nice, nice.
00:00:43
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Good job.
00:00:45
Brendan Ziolo
And now I'm going to screw up his company name. He is the CEO of Hoppier, not Hoppier for our Canadian audience. And I got that right now too, didn't I?
00:00:56
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
You did, yeah. You got it right.
00:00:57
Brendan Ziolo
All right, two for two. I think I'm done today, Brian, over to you. No.
00:01:01
Brian O'Grady
Good
00:01:01
Brendan Ziolo
So Cassie is the CEO of Hopier, which is a global rewards and incentive platform used by thousands of companies now. Over the past decade, he's grown this company to seven figures in revenue, helping teams run marketing campaigns, events, and other engagement programs more effectively and with better results.
00:01:23
Brendan Ziolo
He's also the co-founder of PostBeam AI, a platform that helps B2B teams turn LinkedIn content into warm leads. Cassie and I actually met in relation to PostBeam a few months ago, and we've had some interesting conversations around LinkedIn content and a bunch of other B2B marketing topics. So I was super excited to invite Cassie on the podcast and even happier when he agreed to join us.
00:01:50
Brendan Ziolo
Cassie,
Beverage Choices and Casual Atmosphere
00:01:50
Brendan Ziolo
what are you drinking today?
00:01:50
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, think thanks for inviting me. Cheers, guys. I'm drinking a Topo Chico. So i I live in Mexico half the year, and we have this drink. It's called Topo Chico. It is the best sparkling water you'll ever have. And they they do Topo Chico now with all kinds of other mixes. So you can actually buy the non-alcoholic and the alcoholic version.
00:02:16
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
But if you like a spicy, it i tell people it's so bubbly, it's spicy. And and it's it's just the best. Like whenever you're in Mexico, you got to have a Topo Chico.
00:02:29
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So cheers.
00:02:29
Brendan Ziolo
All right. And, and clearly Brian Cassie's doing something right with the, I live in Mexico half the year. Yeah.
00:02:35
Brian O'Grady
Yep, that's right. I'm surprised to hear the Mexican Coke might be unseated. the People get pretty excited about their Mexican Coke, but here we go.
00:02:44
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, the cane sugar.
00:02:45
Brian O'Grady
Say it again. how do I pronounce it? Tapo Chico?
00:02:47
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
It's a Topo Chico, Topo Chico.
00:02:50
Brian O'Grady
Tapo Chico.
00:02:50
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
There you go. Free marketing for Topo Chico.
00:02:52
Brendan Ziolo
All right. There we go. And, and, and we are more than happy to accept them as a sponsor.
00:03:00
Brian O'Grady
Don't forget that.
00:03:00
Brendan Ziolo
There's our plug. There's our plug at the two minute mark or something. I'm rushing it today. Brian, what are you drinking?
00:03:06
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
What are you drinking?
00:03:07
Brendan Ziolo
Oh, what am I drinking?
00:03:08
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
yeah
00:03:08
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, I'll go first. So i I guess I'm joining Cassie as well with something that's of the non-alcohol variety, but it's it's a beer, just alcohol-free from Harman.
00:03:19
Brendan Ziolo
I think I've repeated this today, but I had to grab it when it said half day because I feel like it's been a lot longer than half a day. So hopefully this helps. But I'm having one of those today.
00:03:28
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Nice.
00:03:31
Brian O'Grady
I don't remember seeing that one before.
00:03:31
Brendan Ziolo
And oh good. Oh good. Sorry. Yeah, I keep thinking I'm repeating a need to get out and try new ones. So any suggestions, I'm all ears. Brian, what are you drinking?
00:03:42
Brian O'Grady
you'd never ask. Divergence today from my regular kind of Pilsner zone. This is a wheat beer, Weissbier, if you're fans of German, by Polliner. It's my favorite. I'm not a big wheat beer guy, but if I were, this would be my favorite wheat beer.
00:03:59
Brian O'Grady
And the lemon is already in the glass because this will be, i invite spr mitciroam which just makes everything sound cool when you say things in German.
00:04:02
Brendan Ziolo
Nice.
00:04:09
Brendan Ziolo
right. And I know Cassie beat us to the opening, so I'm going to open mine here and pour.
00:04:14
Brian O'Grady
All right. And this will let the B2B marketing conversation flow nicely.
00:04:16
Brendan Ziolo
All
00:04:19
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Cheers.
00:04:19
Brendan Ziolo
right. Well, cheers, guys.
00:04:23
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
cheers
00:04:23
Brian O'Grady
I didn't do the best job pouring.
00:04:26
Brendan Ziolo
if Excellent. All right, Brian, did you want to kick us off today?
00:04:32
Brian O'Grady
Yes, we're all lubricated.
Early Success and Lessons from Hoppier
00:04:34
Brian O'Grady
It's time to talk marketing. I want to ask you a question that I learned, Cassie, when in our pre-briefing. You talked about when you got started with Hoppier, you did some good old-fashioned blog work, and that good old-fashioned blog work resulted in you, you'll correct me where I go wrong, getting something lot in the order of 80,000 visitors a month.
00:04:57
Brian O'Grady
And I'm a big fan of that kind of marketing. I also know it doesn't generally happen overnight and you don't generally knock it out of the park on your first try. Maybe you did. or We're about to find out.
00:05:10
Brian O'Grady
what What did you get wrong when you were on your road to getting 80,000 visitors a month on your blog? And what did that lead to you getting right? Or did you just crush it from day zero?
00:05:22
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
No, we made so many mistakes and wasted so much money. i would say that the good thing that we didn't mess up at the beginning was our first 20 to 30 customers were all through cold outreach.
00:05:26
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:05:35
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
or basically door-to-door sales effectively, just you know reaching out to people. We would literally go into physical offices, selling to them.
00:05:45
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And also, so, and just pitching them what we were doing. but that helped us get our messaging down and understand who our customer was. And so we didn't mess up that part, but the part that we did mess up was when we said, Hey, what if we did this SEO thing? We heard about SEO, thought it was cool.
00:06:04
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And we were paying a lot of money spending on ads. And we thought, what if we could just get this traffic without having to pay Google? Right. And, um, And,
00:06:15
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So we started to create content. We hired two people to do the content. Both were generalist marketers that didn't have any experience doing any kind of, with and like understanding anything about SEO and and as writers. And we just said, hey, go create content. And I feel like the first 10 to 20 pieces of content were just like,
00:06:44
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
in the dark, whatever we thought was interesting. and And then, yeah, random.
00:06:48
Brian O'Grady
Random.
00:06:49
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And then we said, this isn't working, obviously. and We were kind of all over the place, random, and it didn't make sense. And we said, what if we just hired an agency? So we hired one agency.
00:07:02
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
feel like we got some results, but we were being overcharged. And then we hired a a second agency. And this second agency, we learned so much from them. And I think the biggest thing we learned was that 90% of the work was in creating an actual plan.
00:07:16
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:07:19
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And then 10% was actually executing on the plan. And that 10% is still really important, but we were, you know, we focused a lot on what keywords actually meant made sense to rank for.
00:07:32
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
But we made so many mistakes. Like I'd say that probably the biggest mistakes were not doing the planning upfront, number one. So having a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush and doing the research to make sure that you're targeting keywords that make sense, that you can realistically rank for, that are not overly competitive, that makes sense for your business.
00:07:50
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Number two, it's hiring the right people who understand on-page SEO so that when they're writing the blog posts, they use the best practices, they do internal linking, they understand how to you know set up you know, H1s, H2s, how to do proper page structure, meta descriptions, things like that.
00:08:06
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:08:16
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And AI helps with a lot of that now, but I still think the human part of the writing is still really important so that you can add like the the information gain. So having, you know, experts on that topic as well that are writing about it, I think is is key, even still to this day, even though that maybe some of those on-page SEO things aren't as important.
00:08:35
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
yeah, i would say those are the two biggest mistakes we made.
00:08:36
Brian O'Grady
Old, good old fashioned old school SEO. I love it.
00:08:39
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, that.
00:08:40
Brian O'Grady
as music Music to a search agencies ears from back in the day. I will, I will push back on one thing you said though. I don't think Brendan agencies have ever overcharged.
00:08:51
Brian O'Grady
Do you think that's ever happened?
00:08:51
Brendan Ziolo
No, i would I was going to point out that when he said that, he was not talking about zinc marketing or search warrant. Clearly, everyone.
00:08:58
Brian O'Grady
Definitely not. Nothing but value from these two right here.
00:09:02
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, that was, I mean, they, I don't think, to be fair, like, you know, I don't think this agency had much experience with with search. And that was part of the problem. Like, they were, you know, an ad agency trying to offer a new service because we said we needed it.
00:09:21
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
but But, yeah, like, that yeah, yeah.
00:09:21
Brian O'Grady
Fair enough.
00:09:22
Brian O'Grady
It was wild for a number of years.
00:09:26
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And then I think the other thing is, like, time. Maybe that's the only other thing, like, being patient. It took eight years to build our blog to that point. so yeah, just a lot of time, consistency reps
00:09:41
Brendan Ziolo
So I know, again, back to when we chatted with you earlier, Cassie, you you mentioned that, you know, you grew the blog. I mean, the the traffic was great. And then fast forward to 2025 or pick your year. And generally speaking, I mean, you, you were honest and said, you know, your, your blog traffic has has fallen considerably, which is, I don't think unusual to anyone out there today. but then you threw the curve ball to Brian and I and said, but the lead quality has gone up, which was very intriguing. So, you know, what's your take, what's your insight? Cause I know, I know you're a data, a data guy, so I know you've drilled down into this, but you know,
00:10:24
Brendan Ziolo
What's why did that, you know, traffic down, quality up, you know, what have you learned? What have
Quality Content and Lead Generation Strategy
00:10:30
Brendan Ziolo
you found? And then how are you measuring success now? Because, you know, the the I'm going to get up, you know, tens of thousands of page visitors or blog visitors is not going to happen now.
00:10:39
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Thank you.
00:10:42
Brendan Ziolo
How are you measuring success now?
00:10:45
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
It's funny because I think impressions was always a vanity metric and maybe there's too much focus on that, right? Like we used to write blog posts on all kinds of topics. And at some point, I think it, you know, we had 200 blog posts. Realistically, there's probably only 50 that makes sense that we truly have expertise on.
00:11:07
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And then we would we ended up just adding all of these content pieces about crap that is not even relevant and you know Maybe our ICP would read it, but like probably a small percent of them truly are in our ICP. For example, for Hoppier, writing a blog post about you know best lunch program best lunch program, best tips for launching your own company lunch program.
00:11:36
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Right? Like that's a blog post that would make sense for us to write on because I think we're experts at that. But we started creating content for stuff like best motivational quotes for a manager, right?
00:11:48
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
It has a ton motivational quotes for a manager has a ton of searches, way more searches than that other keyword. But,
00:11:59
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
like we tried to rank for it because we thought, oh, managers would buy or buyers of Hopier. And so let's rank for this keyword. And now, you know, like we've seen a huge decrease in traffic because I think the LLMs are just better at saying, hey, Hopier is actually not.
00:12:14
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And instead, we're just going to serve up a collection of, you know, content in,
00:12:18
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:12:20
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
you know in the LLM from Reddit and all these other sources and whatever, and instead of giving this traffic to you. And then same with Google. Now Google is giving an AI overview, and so nobody's clicking on the posts and then coming in.
00:12:33
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So we're getting way less traffic, but the traffic that we are getting is really high quality. And actually, we're getting less traffic to the blog But you know let's say that someone searches something like best lunch you know best you know tips to launch a lunch program, they may not be clicking on postbeam anymore to go to that blog post. But they see in the Google AI overview, here is some information, citation to Hopier.
00:13:05
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And then people may not you know click on that, but they may go direct to the site. So what we look at, what's most important is like leads and revenue at the end of the day. And then We've also seen an increase in direct traffic. So we've seen a decrease in organic search traffic, but we've seen a huge increase in direct traffic and also traffic from LLMs.
00:13:31
Brian O'Grady
Amazing.
00:13:32
Brendan Ziolo
so what i'm what i'm hearing and i couldn't i couldn't agree more is you know the the quality over over quantity uh is really how you're viewing things and by writing about topics that potentially are more niche, but that your audience truly cares about is is definitely important here. And, you know, I, again, couldn't agree more with the, you know, impressions as a vanity metric type thing, because I remember one place I worked that they would present, you know, I got a million impressions from this ad campaign. And I'm like, okay, you know, the only thing that tells me is you spent a million dollars of your budget. Like that's all that says to me and that, but that's all they'd talk about. And I'm like, that's just a budget number then. And you've spent a lot of money is what it's saying, right?
00:14:18
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah.
00:14:18
Brendan Ziolo
Clearly they they may not have been paying a buck an impression.
00:14:20
Brendan Ziolo
I get that, but it was that whole idea. So yeah, very interesting point on that.
00:14:27
Brian O'Grady
I want to drill in, Cassie. I mean, there's a number of questions i want to ask you. I'm glad we've got full glasses. I want to drill into your planning comment because that really resonates with me.
00:14:37
Brian O'Grady
A lot of people see digital success and go, I want some of that. And I feel it's one of those 10 year overnight successes, right? They don't see the 10 years. They just see the success. And I can think of other examples in life where this is true. In our pre-meeting, I mentioned one. I'm recovered technical writer. Brendan knows that.
00:14:56
Brian O'Grady
And when I started as a technical writer, I learned Every hour you put into your table of contents, every hour you put into planning what you're going to write as a document saves you something like five to eight hours down the road, right?
00:15:10
Brian O'Grady
So that's one example.
00:15:10
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:15:12
Brian O'Grady
Another one i can I can think of for sure is if you're building a website, everybody wants to make the homepage. Oh, good. Let's go make a homepage. But it takes some time for everyone to realize, well, a homepage is actually a representation of everything else on the site.
00:15:26
Brian O'Grady
So we actually have to plan the everything else and then we can do the homepage. So in both those examples and in yours, it's all about the planning, probably not the sexy or interesting or exciting bit. It's not the win, but you can't get to the win without it. So with those examples, give us a couple crunchy, crunchy tips or tidbits when you're doing that planning. You said 90% of your time for content goes into the planning.
00:15:51
Brian O'Grady
What are the big wins or big takeaways or big lessons there for other people in a situation like yours? If they want to try and make a content win, what's what's the takeaway for planning that's going to help them get there?
Effective Content Planning and Platform Use
00:16:03
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So I think about like if I was in the shoes of our ideal customer, what would what's the type of content what's the type content that gets them super excited where do they what can i say or do that has them sit up in their chair and want to listen to what we have to say and that's not just for the blog but like i when i when i say content i think of everything like all of these things affect now i think it's so exciting for people that love content creating content now
00:16:38
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Because you've there's never been a greater opportunity for you now than with AI. Because if you're creating really high quality content, the LLMs cannot ignore you.
00:16:47
Brian O'Grady
you
00:16:50
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And if you're creating really high quality content, they're going to recommend you. So we create content on the for us, the most important platforms, which are, if you're in B2B and you're not focusing on these platforms, you're going to lose.
00:17:07
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
You're going to lose. And I think you're you're at a huge disadvantage and your competitors are going to crush you in the long term. And that's just the reality. So you have to be investing in blog, number one.
00:17:18
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
creating own content. Number two, i think LinkedIn is huge and it's only improving and people are saying, oh, I don't want to post on LinkedIn. It's cringe, blah, blah, blah. Well, guess what? The content on LinkedIn is becoming more valuable and higher quality because more people are creating content now.
00:17:34
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
the algorithm has changed in the last six months to be more similar to Twitter.
00:17:37
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:17:39
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So you're seeing less content from people that you know and more content of people who are just interested and in your niche or your industry. And then they also updated the link structure of the URLs so that they're better, so so that they're they're they're more easily identified by LLMs and associated with you and your brand.
00:18:02
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
and then Other than your blog and LinkedIn, I think YouTube is huge. YouTube is so, so important. So we're doing all of that now.
00:18:13
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And and i think if you're not doing if you're not investing in these these channels and you're B2B, you're going to get crushed long term.
00:18:17
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:18:22
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
I think that's just the reality. And so, say yeah, just so valuable to invest in those channels. So important.
00:18:30
Brian O'Grady
Awesome. And one of my takeaways, I welcome your input on this guys, is all of these conversations eventually end up sounding like an old school newspaper or magazine with an editorial calendar, planning it out, what's going to go out when, what's the right topics. And that's one part of planning that I i think still has great value.
00:18:51
Brian O'Grady
And as people kind of resist doing, nobody wants to do that part. That's boring, but it it's a key. It's foundational to success in my opinion.
00:19:01
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, and I think, yeah, and and sorry, to your point, i actually didn't answer your question. You asked, like, what do I do that people can actually do to plan for these these channels?
00:19:12
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So i I think when you put yourself in the in the shoes of the customer, What is, I love Mr. Beast because he is the greatest content genius, one of the greatest business people of the last hundred years.
00:19:27
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And he is one person that I study all the time because he's he thinks about this so much. he has He hires the smartest people in the world when it comes to content work for him.
00:19:38
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And, What they do that I think is really impactful that anyone can do that's creating content is they start with the title and the In their case, they start with the with the the the thumbnail of the video.
00:19:57
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
But for if you're creating you know non-video, I think you can start with just a one-liner. What's the title? What's the hook someone is going to read? And how can you make that so irresistible and interesting that someone stops what they're doing?
00:20:13
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
They stop doom scrolling because that's what you're competing with all these other people that are trying to fight for their attention, that they stop in their tracks and they read what you you put out there and they laugh or they feel some emotion.
00:20:28
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And so start with that. And then if you have a good concept or idea like that, and that's why I think Twitter is really good too. Like a lot of people use Twitter because it's a great place to come up with, you know, short concepts.
00:20:42
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And then you can take that concept and make it a lot longer or a much bigger piece of content. But I think like, yeah, Twitter, LinkedIn, like that that's what I'm, that that's what we do is we just, you know, and then we're just constantly testing all the time.
00:20:55
Brendan Ziolo
All right.
00:20:58
Brian O'Grady
Rinse and repeat. Also not that sexy.
00:21:00
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah.
00:21:01
Brian O'Grady
Also very important in digital success.
00:21:04
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah. Yeah. yeah With content, especially, it's like people get discouraged fast, right? you get a post. I get posts all the time that bomb. They'll they'll do like five likes.
00:21:13
Brian O'Grady
I was actually counting the first episode of this podcast to make me famous. And here we are in season two. I'm still not famous. So I guess we'll just keep testing and seeing.
00:21:21
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
it It takes time, right?
00:21:22
Brendan Ziolo
10 years, 10 years, 10 years, Brian, 10 years.
00:21:22
Brian O'Grady
Okay.
00:21:23
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
It takes a lot time.
00:21:26
Brian O'Grady
Got it.
00:21:29
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
But you guys saw like, like, uh, have you, do you guys see the the tech bros podcast news, TVPN, the acquisition by open You see that?
00:21:37
Brendan Ziolo
i heard, I read about it.
00:21:38
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:39
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So like these meat, like media companies now are becoming so valuable. Right. And if you look at TVPN, they only had like 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. They got bought for, I think it was like $300 million dollars or something by opening on.
00:21:53
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And, they just have very niche focused attention. And I think every company should be trying to do the same thing, like create an audience, create content.
00:22:05
Brendan Ziolo
So we're not all Mr. Beast. and That's probably a good thing. but but But a lot of what you say is is true. And yeah, I read an article recently that apparently he's also also a workaholic and and doesn't stop working much to his family's dismay. And yeah, the amounts he spends on the videos is just like,
00:22:26
Brendan Ziolo
I don't know if it's hundreds of thousands or millions now to create a video. So it's just fascinating how he's built that. But, you know, Mr. Beast aside, what's like, what do you see working on LinkedIn and or YouTube?
Insights on LinkedIn and YouTube Content
00:22:39
Brendan Ziolo
You know, Cassie, take your pick or you know, tackle one at a time. But what are the types of contents? What are the things that are working? Like, I love your analogy about the hook and or not your analogy, but your point about the hook and the title and and the thumbnail or the graphic, but, you know, kind of walk our audience through some of what you see working on LinkedIn, what you see working on YouTube.
00:23:02
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Okay, so if I was starting from zero today, i would... And it's different for everyone, right? Everybody's going to be different. You can study your competitors and you can try to copy their formats and they may work for you, but it's it's likely that it won't work for you because that format of content is unique to them and it works for them because of who they are.
00:23:25
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And so everybody is unique. And that's also what allows anyone to create amazing content that is unique. you know eventually works. But if I was starting from zero and what I recommend to everybody, create at least one piece of content a day on your medium.
00:23:44
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Make it 1% better.
00:23:45
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:23:46
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Test different formats. And you you want to think about first, like who's your ideal viewer? Who are they? And I think a good you know one one way to think about this is, who were you 10 years ago?
00:24:01
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
What would me 10 years in the past would have wished I could, what kind of content I wish I could have consumed back then? Like, what did I not know then that I know now?
00:24:15
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Whether it's related to business, whether it's related to spearfishing, whether it's related to cooking.
00:24:20
Brian O'Grady
Is this where I say buy the index, Cassie? Do I say buy the index now or do I wait until the end to say buy the index? I thought that would be 10 years ago.
00:24:26
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
yeah Always buy the index.
00:24:28
Brian O'Grady
Brian wanted to buy the index 10 years ago. He just didn't know it until now.
00:24:33
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, that's, I mean, look, you you want to you want identify those those things that you wish you knew. Like it's it's really simple, I think. And then, you know, you identify those things, you create the content and you just put out a ton of different formats.
00:24:47
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
One piece a day, make it 1% better, test different formats. And then once you start to identify a format that works well, then you just do that over and over and over again. There was a guy who I went to university with. His name's Andrew Packer.
00:25:02
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Now he's a pretty famous Canadian comedian. And i remember in university, he was putting out TikTok videos of himself doing comedy, talking to the camera, TikTok. Everybody said, oh, that's so fucking cringe. Andrew, you're so awkward. This is so cringe. You know, like you're you're never going to be a comedian.
00:25:21
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
He did it for seven years. And then he finally figured out his format, which is him with his phone. And he's watching a video of another TikTok video.
00:25:33
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And it's usually something like, he calls it man news. So he's wearing a suit and he's just commenting on like a bunch of dudes throwing boulders off of this the edge of a cliff, right?
00:25:46
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And it's like satisfying for dudes. And he calls it man news. Today, he has over 2 million followers. And he's selling out shows for his comedy shows all over North America. He was on Kill Tony.
00:26:00
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
He got invited to do a bunch of extra, bunch of shows through that. And yeah, he's he's killing it now. But he figured out his format. And I think everybody has to figure out their format. Mr. Beast did Minecraft videos and all kinds of videos until he discovered, oh, maybe giving stuff away for free and doing competitions. He's still discovering his format. His format still adjusts as changing. and He's discovering new new formats that work even better than previous formats.
00:26:29
Brian O'Grady
Amazing. So, okay. but That highlights a point I think is worth driving home and you folks, you dive in and correct me if you think I'm wrong, but it
00:26:36
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
Keys to Digital Success and Audience Engagement
00:26:38
Brian O'Grady
goes like this.
00:26:38
Brian O'Grady
What people remember is dudes throwing rocks off a cliff. They don't see the seven years of discipline. And that's the word I'm going to use of try this, try that fail here, adjust, rinse, repeat, try again. And you don't read a lot of case studies or success stories that say,
00:26:59
Brian O'Grady
Beat your head against a wall every day and don't stop because you're going to learn and you're going to get better and keep going and have the discipline. Nobody wants to hear that part. They want to hear the part about guys throwing rocks off a cliff and now I'm a millionaire.
00:27:13
Brian O'Grady
So that to me is an underlying theme of this conversation here and maybe all digital is the discipline it takes to get back to your desk every day, even when you're not winning and keep at it and keep learning and keep trying.
00:27:27
Brian O'Grady
is that Is that the subtext of our whole conversation here? Discipline?
00:27:31
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
I mean, you guys are familiar with like product market fit, right? Like it is it's the exact same thing with, with content.
00:27:36
Brian O'Grady
We should be.
00:27:36
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:27:41
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
You're finding product market fit for your content. Sometimes that takes six months. Sometimes that takes six years. It's the exact same thing. You gotta, you gotta put in the time, put in the reps.
00:27:52
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And, I think a lot of people don't, Don't think about that. But if you can do that you own your audience, isn't that like the ultimate thing? Like you're no... you're no longer paying for advert ads. You can effectively launch anything. You see this in e-commerce.
00:28:08
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
All the top e-commerce brands are owned by celebrities, people that have attention, people that have an audience. And I think it's going to be the same thing for software, for even professional services in your neighborhood. You're starting to see local people who are becoming like local celebrities. It's the same thing. That attention is so valuable.
00:28:31
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
And, And yeah, i think everybody, everybody should be thinking about this. People aren't freaking out about it enough.
00:28:37
Brian O'Grady
So you're saying there's still hope. There's still hope for Brendan and Brian that we can become local heroes.
00:28:40
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
There's still, well, I think there always will be, because the fact is you will all like, there's always going to be a unique, different format. You can try and then, 99% of the people aren't gonna be willing to bash their head into the wall a thousand times and then know wake up and say, oh, I only got five likes, screw this. you know like that that's what you have to That's what you have to do. But when you make it out to the other side, you know you only need a thousand true fans really to to make million bucks, right even less and in a lot of cases.
00:29:14
Brian O'Grady
I love it. I love it. I could go way further down that rat hole, but I will resist because Brendan, I think this is your big moment.
00:29:24
Brendan Ziolo
Oh, I get to ask the big question.
00:29:27
Brendan Ziolo
Excellent. Excellent. So it's become tradition, Cassie. We like it. I don't know if our guests like it. I guess we'll have to do a poll at some point. But we like to wrap up every episode, giving you giving you a soapbox to get up on and talk about the biggest myth that I think in your case, let's let's let's generalize and call it the biggest myth in B2B content marketing right now.
00:29:27
Brian O'Grady
is the kicker.
00:29:55
Brendan Ziolo
You get to set the record straight. You hear it every day, week, month, and it's like, all right, I've had enough. This is just not true. The floor is yours.
00:30:06
Brendan Ziolo
What's that myth?
00:30:07
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
I think so. This is, i kind of talked hitting on this earlier. So, TBPN, their podcast, and they just sold to OpenAI for hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:30:20
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
they only had 50,000 subscribers. They were putting out a ton of short videos and they were getting a lot of views on those. But I don't think you need a big audience to make a lot of money.
00:30:30
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:30:31
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
and That is the myth. People think, oh, I need a million subscribers. You do not need a million subscribers. you You can have 100 subscribers. and make a lot of money. Like you you see it now in in different forms, like you know niche media, like TVPN, and there are others.
00:30:53
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Like I know HubSpot acquired three companies, undisclosed amounts in the last three months. They're all media companies. And those are probably really big deals, but nobody is really talking about it because people think that you need a big audience to make a lot of money.
00:31:07
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
But what if you had a thousand people who follow you, who love what you do, who are ready to buy whatever you put out there and you tell them, hey, I recommend this product and I think it's great. and You know, I built it because i understand you and I understand your problems. And I'm, you know, I've been thinking about this for a long time. They're going to buy it.
00:31:24
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Right. There's so many examples of this. So I think that is the biggest myth is that you do not you do not need a big audience. People think you need a big audience. You do not need a big audience to actually make a dent in the world and and build a great business.
00:31:41
Brian O'Grady
I love it. And maybe from a stats perspective, that means, you know, if a hundred people stone cold love you, that means you've crushed that particular demographic and there's more than a hundred of those people out there.
00:31:41
Brendan Ziolo
Right.
00:31:53
Brian O'Grady
It's going to work out.
00:31:54
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, put it this way. Like you guys, like you guys are this podcast, right? If you get 500, let's say you get 500 viewers on this podcast. If I owned a company that was, you know, selling to the same listeners that are listening right now, how much would I pay?
00:32:11
Brian O'Grady
Mark, can I just drink beer?
00:32:12
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah, how much would I pay for those 500 people to to hear a one minute ad read? Like even if if, let's say I'm selling something a high ticket that's worth like 5K a month, you know, let's say I'm i'm i'm running my own ad agency and i'm I'm charging whatever thousands a month, I would probably be willing to pay you guys like 10 grand just to, just so that you could do a one minute ad read for one episode, right?
00:32:18
Brian O'Grady
Yeah.
00:32:39
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
So.
00:32:39
Brian O'Grady
totally I totally agree.
00:32:39
Brendan Ziolo
so now now i'm now I'm trying to figure out if Cassie is our new biz dev guy or if he's our first sponsor.
00:32:44
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Ha, ha, ha.
00:32:45
Brendan Ziolo
So, Brian, we'll take that offline.
00:32:46
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Ha, ha.
00:32:48
Brendan Ziolo
We'll take that offline. We don't need that.
00:32:49
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
30% commission and i'll I'll do it. I'll send you guys whatever whatever you need.
00:32:55
Brian O'Grady
One, I'm going to wrap this up because we're we're running long and I'm clearly so engaged. I don't want to stop talking again, but I will say that maybe that's one thing the ad industry has really done for us is when you can compare your results to a cost per click model and see how many clicks you need at that price.
00:33:13
Brian O'Grady
Well, holy cow, a lot of things become valuable at that price when you start to do some math and multiply things. So I hear your point on that. It's not just about the ad clicks.
00:33:25
Brian O'Grady
And that's coming from an ad agency. So I'm gonna stop there before I dig myself a real hole.
00:33:28
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Yeah.
00:33:31
Brian O'Grady
I'm gonna thank you, Cassie, for joining us. I think Brendan and I might continue this discussion long afterwards. You've you've given us some real food for thought. Really appreciate the insights on content and in particular, the approach to planning.
00:33:45
Brian O'Grady
Thank you for joining us and cheers.
00:33:49
Brendan Ziolo
right. Yeah.
00:33:49
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Thanks, bud.
00:33:50
Brendan Ziolo
Thanks, Cassie.
00:33:51
Cassy (Postbeam.ai)
Thanks. Cheers.