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How a B2B Marketer Successfully Embraced TikTok
61 Plays3 years ago
One of the most interesting parts of the B2B marketing landscape is watching marketers do their own marketing.
I see a lot of it on LinkedIn – my social media platform of choice.
There are marketers who create text posts, videos, carousels, and, of course, polls.
But, believe it or not, there is life beyond LinkedIn for B2B marketers.
And one of the more intriguing places is TikTok. Yeah, TikTok.
It’s no longer just a social media platform for goofy videos but a place where B2B marketers can successfully leverage.
A marketer who appears to have cracked TikTok is Stephen Pope, who runs SGP Labs in L.A.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Stephen talks about why he embraced TikTok and his tactical approach to making videos that attract prospects.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey, it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark.
How do marketers use LinkedIn for content?
00:00:07
Speaker
One of the most interesting parts of the B2B marketing landscape is watching marketers do their own marketing. I see a lot of it on LinkedIn, my social media platform of choice. There are marketers who create text posts, videos, carousels, and of course polls.
Is TikTok becoming a hotbed for B2B marketers?
00:00:25
Speaker
But believe it or not, there is life beyond LinkedIn for BD marketers. And one of the most intriguing places is TikTok. Yeah, TikTok. It's no longer just a social media platform for goofy videos, but a place where BD marketers can successfully leverage.
00:00:43
Speaker
And a marketer who appears to have cracked TikTok is Steven Pope, who runs GGP Labs in LA. For Steven, TikTok has become a lead gen machine. So I'm excited to have him on the podcast to talk about his approach and keys to success.
Steven Pope's LinkedIn journey
00:01:00
Speaker
Welcome to Marketing Spark. Thanks, man. I appreciate you being on or I appreciate, I'm always saying that because I appreciate being on your show. I actually love being interviewed, so I'm really excited to be here and I'm really honored. Thank you.
00:01:13
Speaker
We connected about a year ago, like many people on LinkedIn. So I'd like to start by getting into your LinkedIn journey. Sure. It's a platform that you and I have embraced and seen tremendous ROI. So how did you get into it?
From engagement pods to authentic content on LinkedIn
00:01:28
Speaker
And how has LinkedIn evolved for you? Or how has your approach to LinkedIn evolved over the last year? Oh, yeah, that's a great, I actually love that question. So
00:01:37
Speaker
So I sold one of my companies or the main company that I built a couple years ago. And then after I started the next one, which I've actually gone through several pivots to where I am now, I had seen Gary Vee, he had been talking about LinkedIn, he had been talking about content. I just kind of like, I drank the juice ultimately. Like I'm one of those people where if I see somebody being successful at something,
00:02:06
Speaker
I don't have that many doubts. I might have doubts in myself, but I don't have doubts in what it can do. And so I was just like, you know what? I'm gonna go on LinkedIn and I'm gonna do what he says. I'm gonna start doing videos and I'm going to go for it. And so that's what I did. And I started posting every day.
00:02:28
Speaker
Just like he told me to do, didn't know what I was doing. And I started to do a couple of videos, terrified out of my mind, to be quite honest with you. You can go back to my first LinkedIn video. I still left it there just for memories. I'm just really stressed out. And then I ended up taking a video course that helped me learn how to articulate my ideas and get on camera.
00:02:53
Speaker
And then just to kind of like, I've actually gone through quite an evolution because you get a lot of advice from people. And I'll tell you one of the worst pieces of advice I got is join an engagement group.
00:03:08
Speaker
which is if people don't know what that is. It's pods. Yeah, it's a group of people that pretend to or that not pretend but they share links and content and then they all go in there and they all engage in everything and all of a sudden you're like you were nobody and all of a sudden you're getting like 50 likes and comments a day and you feel really good but then you don't ever learn how to make really good content.
00:03:32
Speaker
So that was kind of the beginning. I actually, right after I got on LinkedIn, I got a client within the first week, which I thought was pretty cool. Basically, I started to get really in tune with how I was feeling about what I was doing. And pretty quickly in those engagement pods,
00:03:53
Speaker
I would go to sleep and I'd even talk to my wife and I'd be like, this is ridiculous. What are we doing in here? I'm engaging with people that I don't even like their content. They have nothing to do with what I'm doing. And so I quickly got out of that. And I started the journey of really learning how to create content that performed on its own.
00:04:12
Speaker
And that started to reap the benefits and I started to get clients from that, people reaching out to me. And over time that has kind of snowballed. And it's really more, the more and more I focused on creating value, like showing people what they could be doing, showing what life could look like if they were doing these different things, dispelling certain things that they didn't know.
00:04:37
Speaker
or things that they didn't know but they needed to know and showing them that, then things just started to get better and better. And so I just kept doubling down on that and kind of trying to find my own voice and like what made me comfortable and what felt right.
00:04:54
Speaker
What I'm curious as someone who also produces a lot of content on LinkedIn, I'm curious about how you think the platform is treating content creators these days. You've got creator mode, which we'll talk about later. There seems to be a lot more people creating content as well.
How does LinkedIn compare to TikTok for creators?
00:05:13
Speaker
Do you think that LinkedIn is
00:05:16
Speaker
rewards content creators? Do you think that it's tougher to get the spotlight these days because there's more people creating content? It does seem harder. I always do wonder, do those engagement pods drown other people out? And we can talk about creator mode later, but I don't think that they're really empowering content creators, really, from my point of view. I think to empower content creators, you give them help to create.
00:05:43
Speaker
And I think that's why platforms like TikTok are doing well is because they invented a new way to create content. You know, they create a really cool app that lets you record videos within the app and you can you can edit it and you can add captions. You can do all this stuff with in 10 minutes. And I think that is the innovative thing. They like created real tools.
00:06:04
Speaker
And then you do see a lot of people getting banned. I don't know specifically about any of those specific situations other than people complaining a lot, but it does seem like a large number of people getting banned. I don't know what it is, but a lot of times when corporations get really large and they're dealing with a lot of stuff, individual people just seem to get crushed.
00:06:28
Speaker
But I would say this too. Number one, just because you create content doesn't mean you deserve a client or something. You do have to create good content. I think the first step of creating content is to commit like I did and like you did. But then the next thing, the next bar is it has to be really, really good content.
00:06:48
Speaker
That won't happen overnight, but you have to make that immediate switch. You have to say, okay, I committed, but now I gotta make it really good. It has to be better than everyone else's. It has to be more informative, has to grab more attention, and you have to be patient as you get there, but you do have to make that next leap. I think people that are creating good content, they do find their voice, and you're also developing the skills to move to another platform like TikTok. There are some annoying things that happen on LinkedIn.
00:07:15
Speaker
I'm curious about what prompted your exploration of TikTok because for many B2B marketers, TikTok is is a
The potential of TikTok for B2B marketing
00:07:23
Speaker
non-starter. They don't want to be there. LinkedIn is the place to be. What was it about the platform that intrigued you? Number one, I was so number one, like about a year and a half ago or a year ago.
00:07:38
Speaker
before I had gotten onto LinkedIn, I had downloaded the app and I was just kind of exploring it. And I thought it was interesting that what was going on there. And then I just, I had the realization, I was like, wait a minute, if I'm there looking at content,
00:07:54
Speaker
then maybe there's not as many of me, so I'm 42. So maybe there's not as many of me, but there's gonna be more. If I'm there, then I knew that there was gonna be, that there was potential there. And I also realized, hey, I'm going there to be entertained. And then, so then I was like, okay, so then if it's just my message that pops up instead of me dancing, there's no reason why somebody wouldn't, as long as it's valuable and it's,
00:08:21
Speaker
if I'm talking to another person like me, then there's no reason why that it couldn't just be my content. And then I started also kind of breaking down these, I think sometimes we talk about B2B and B2C and all this stuff, but I always just look at it as like E2E. I'm an entrepreneur talking to other entrepreneurs. I'm a person talking to people.
00:08:42
Speaker
So to me, I just think that way sometimes. Because otherwise, you get yourself boxed in like, well, there's no other businesses there. But it's just people. If there's people there that are running businesses, then I can talk to them. And then I also knew that eventually LinkedIn would get crowded and that TikTok, you'd see people blow up overnight, like one video. I've literally had one video on TikTok that kind of changed the trajectory of my business.
00:09:06
Speaker
And so I think when you go to a platform early, you have those interesting opportunities. Just like the people on LinkedIn that got in early, you see how they're doing now. And they have just a larger following. They have more likes, more comments, more exposure. And I just was like, hey, I feel like I could go to TikTok and do the same.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know whether you were smart or prescient or just got lucky at the right time, but it is interesting you mentioned life beyond LinkedIn and the fact that LinkedIn may be losing some of its momentum, it's getting more crowded. You could argue that a lot of the enthusiasm for Clubhouse, for example,
00:09:47
Speaker
was the fact that people were looking for something different. I sense that there's a desperation or not, maybe not desperation, but a hunger for another platform because people like me and I think you recognize that the runway for LinkedIn, that sort of that open space that we can run free and attract a lot of leads is running out. You've got to have another plan. You need plan B or you need another play. I totally commend what you're doing on TikTok and obviously it's
Steven Pope's TikTok strategy
00:10:16
Speaker
paying off.
00:10:16
Speaker
just wanted to get into how you got started and what are some of the lessons that you've learned both in terms of what to do and what not to do on tiktok yeah and just one note about that before i go in the the other thing is like so people also get frustrated with the platform either because it's actually your reach is diminishing and you're not reaching as many people or because you haven't really
00:10:40
Speaker
you haven't really done a good job on the platform anyway. So you're kind of like, you just have shiny object syndrome, and you're just like, oh, I want to go do something else, even when you haven't really given LinkedIn a chance. So you do got to give these things a chance. But so I will say, I was able to grow faster on LinkedIn because I had been creating, or on TikTok because I had already been creating content for a long time. So I knew how to do videos. I knew how to capture attention. I knew how to write headlines. So when I make a video on TikTok, I do talk
00:11:09
Speaker
quite quickly compared to the way other people do. And I've developed that skill over time. Every once in a while people tell me I talk too quick, which probably is fair feedback. But what I do on TikTok is I say, I tell you exactly what you're gonna get within the first three or four seconds of watching my video. I say, let me show you how you can generate 20 leads in the next week. Let me show you how you can
00:11:35
Speaker
make a video that is going to capture people's attention. So I get right to the point there's no little space in between when my video pops up between when I start speaking.
00:11:49
Speaker
I usually have a little bar at the top that reinforces what I'm about to talk about. I get to the point really quick. I try to show actual stuff so you can see me going around on my whiteboard and trying to demonstrate things. I think there's two different ways of going about getting attention on TikTok. If you're being entertaining, you might not have to take that approach. If you're being funny or
00:12:12
Speaker
Or you're playing a really cool piece of music and people connect with that you might not have to capture people's attention like that but i think from in terms of what i do which is like coaching people on how to do things. For me in particular it's important to be very upfront about what you're gonna get.
00:12:29
Speaker
and then show you the information very quickly and not lose your attention throughout the thing. So then to answer your other question, what I see a lot of people do is when their TikTok starts, it's like, oh, hey, how are you doing? This is what I'm going to show you today. And by then, somebody's already gone. Right, got it. And so one final thought, the interesting thing about TikTok is there is a huge opportunity to grow.
00:12:57
Speaker
right now, but it's also very competitive. So like you do have to use some of those tactics so that you are viewed, if that makes any sense. You mentioned earlier that there was a TikTok video that blew up and generated or basically changed the trajectory of your business, curious about what you were talking about and why you think it resonated. Yeah.
A TikTok video that transformed business
00:13:21
Speaker
And that's an interesting story too, because I had, I had done an earlier video which had done pretty well.
00:13:27
Speaker
And then I had looked back and I said, how can I make that one better? So I'll tell you. So all it really was was a post on how do you create a ton of content and generate a lot of business from a video podcast. So it's nothing different than probably a post that you've made about how do I take a video podcast and turn it into little clips and something that Chris Walker would have talked about or Gary V would have talked about.
00:13:55
Speaker
All I did is did my own version of it, said, hey, here's how I take, here's the marketing strategy that you can take. And it all revolves around a video podcast and creating, sending that to the podcasting platforms. And then this is how you can create a blog from it. And then kind of how it, how the second one blew up is that I looked at the first one and I made a few critical tweaks. And the tweak was the first one I said, steal my marketing strategy.
00:14:25
Speaker
And then the second one was steal this marketing strategy that's generating $9 million for one of my clients and also generated them 10 new clients in one month.
00:14:36
Speaker
So I adjusted it to put all the results up front. So it had a lot more meat to it in terms of like, this is why you should actually do it other than just like stealing my marketing strategy that doesn't work. And then I also improved some flow of it. So that was it, man. And then it just got like, it's like 200,000 views.
00:14:59
Speaker
A lot of people get more views on that and have more followers than me. That hit a certain percentage of the market and booked a ton of leads and booked me business. Then I've had several others that have done the same thing. Let's talk a little bit about actual tactical execution. What does that look like?
Creating engaging content with TikTok's tools
00:15:19
Speaker
How long are your videos? Do you script them? Walk me through the nitty-gritty of creating a TikTok video. Again, I have a little bit of an advantage here because I've
00:15:30
Speaker
created so many videos. I used to script every video, kind of like story brand. What do people want? What's the problem? Why should they listen to me? Display some empathy that I understand them.
00:15:41
Speaker
What's the process to actually go through to achieve what I'm about to tell you and then calling them to action? Not necessarily to call, not a call to action to buy my course, but to like, hey, if you do this, this is what's going to happen. If you don't, this is what's going to happen. So that's my general script that I follow on every video that I ever create, every LinkedIn post. That's the flow I use. So these videos that I'm doing on TikTok are generally 30 seconds to 45 seconds.
00:16:07
Speaker
and I'm following that makeup and they take me about 10 minutes to 15 minutes to make because I can do the entire thing within the TikTok app. I don't need to send it to a video editor or anything like that. I do send it to a video editor after that to repurpose it to other platforms. So what I usually do is like my tactical execution is I'm talking to the camera. I tell people exactly what they're gonna get.
00:16:30
Speaker
You're going to get this marketing strategy. You're going to learn how to automate this. This is going to help your business this way. And then I usually head to my whiteboard. I've drawn something out like a diagram. I think it's all very rough. I have pretty messy writing. I haven't washed my whiteboard in a while, so it's got that black streak. Yeah. And it doesn't really seem to bother people. So I'm literally just taking my phone
00:16:58
Speaker
going over the whiteboard or if I use an application like Zapier or something, I will just point the phone at the screen and I will record it. So it's very raw and uncut or it's actually very cut. With the TikTok app, you can go in and you can record your video in chunks. So if you screw up, you can just erase the previous chunk, which is pretty cool, right?
00:17:28
Speaker
you don't have to, I don't have to do the video in 45 seconds without making a mistake. So I can record in these little chunks and then you can go in there and then you can actually clip each little chunk to pull off any space. So if you look at my videos, there's no space without me talking. But when I recorded it, there was.
00:17:48
Speaker
Right. Is it hard to create a video, like technically hard? I mean, on TikTok or
The power of TikTok for lead generation
00:17:54
Speaker
is the app pretty intuitive? No, it's actually really easy. That's what, yeah, that's what, going back to our original question about what is LinkedIn not doing for people, this is what TikTok did for people. It created a really cool app to let you make videos. And so it's really easy to make it. Like a video that took me 15 minutes, I kind of stopped counting, but it booked over, you know, 25, 30 calls.
00:18:16
Speaker
Well, and I guess that's the other question I had about TikTok. What are some of the key metrics and how do you measure the success of your TikTok efforts? And what KPIs, for lack of a better term, do you focus on? Well, you know, I'm looking at my follower count. So like I have like coming up on 16,000 followers. I've done that in a few months and I surpassed what I ever did on LinkedIn. And then I look at the views. So what's interesting about TikTok is that you can have a video that has 300 views.
00:18:47
Speaker
And then you could have one that has 200,000 or 2 million. I've never had 2 million, but people do. So you have this huge range of organic opportunity, which you might say is a bad thing, but it's actually really a good thing. So you could have no followers and you could have a video that gets 2 million views. So I look at the views and the views tell me a lot. It's like, okay, so on LinkedIn, it's like you have a little bit of a variance.
00:19:16
Speaker
You might have a post here or there that just goes nuts and you have no idea why. But with TikTok, that variance is very telling. It's like, okay, people aren't into that. What I will say is on TikTok, if you have more general advice, this is how to develop a marketing strategy. If it's too generic, it doesn't tend to do as well than if it's really specific.
00:19:37
Speaker
One of the things I want to do with you is rapid fire round. But before we get into it, I'm curious about your video setup and some of the recommendations that you have for people looking to get started with video or to raise their games. Walk me through your camera, your mic, your editing software, and give me some sort of shortcuts and tricks that people can use to make really good videos.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, so on this, there's two approaches. So on my individual videos that I push to social media, it's all on my phone.
00:20:09
Speaker
I do have lighting in my room, so I do use that. But when it comes to the short TikToks and all that kind of stuff, it's just my phone. I don't let anything get in my way. I don't worry about too much of the quality. I could probably get a better phone and all that kind of stuff. But then when it comes to my podcast or my live show, I have a green screen. The main thing that makes that look good is I do have an arsenal of lights. Is this a video podcast?
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's a video podcast. Because I think I could actually show... So people can see me. I can actually show you the behind the scenes. So this is... Let me move that real quick. So this is what it looks like. So I got the green screen behind me. And then I've got kind of an arsenal of lights. And these are all very cheap actually. So these are the best ones I've found. They're Amazon LED lights that are also encased in a diffuser.
00:21:05
Speaker
And then I have this ring light here. I've got this light up here to kind of light the top of my head. Because the main thing that makes a green screen look good is a very crisp, very well-lit green screen. And so this lights the top of my head, gets rid of the darkness around that. And then because I'm doing live streaming, I have some other stuff. But just in terms of the basic stuff, then I also have a Logitech Brio, which is probably one of the best webcams you can buy.
00:21:34
Speaker
I do have another DSLR. It's a Lumix G6 or G7 or something like that. I haven't set it up only because I know I can make it look better, but to make it look better than the Brio, you have to learn some stuff and I haven't learned it yet. And then the microphone I use is the
00:21:53
Speaker
The Shure SM7B. Full setup. For all the video geeks out there, a behind the scenes look is pretty awesome. Okay. Well, let me get into the rapid fire round.
Opinions on social media platforms and tools
00:22:03
Speaker
And so you can answer these questions. You can say one word, you can riff. It really is up to you. So are you ready for this? Okay. I'm ready. Social audio, also known as Clubhouse.
00:22:17
Speaker
I never got into it, partly because I do a lot of video, partly because you have to dedicate specific time to it. For me, it was overrated and I could never make the time. I had ideas with it and I just never executed on it. Content marketing.
00:22:37
Speaker
Oh man, I love it. It's not only fun, but it works really well when you really commit to it and you make good content. I think it's probably the best way to grow your business at this point. Blogging, otherwise known as the workhorse of content marketing. I think that's probably a really good thing. It's harder for me. I'm doing it now only because I found that I can take a transcript of my podcast and I have an SEO strategy and I've been able to mix that and send it to a good writer.
00:23:07
Speaker
So that's part of my longer term thing. If I didn't have that, I probably wouldn't do it. But I think it's probably smart if you can figure out how to do it. Podcasts. I love them. It's funny, I don't listen to that many. But I think it's, I love to be interviewed on them. I love to have my own.
00:23:29
Speaker
I think it's a great way to create content. I have a prospect right now. I don't know that they're going to close, but I hope they do. But before the sales call, they said, hey, I've watched four of your podcasts.
00:23:44
Speaker
And it also helps me create content so that people don't understand all the, like people focus on, oh, how am I going to get a lot of subscribers? And to me, it's like, that's probably a good long-term thing to have, but it does so many different things for you right out of the gate, as you know, that probably very underrated. I guess that you really want on your podcast. Gary V.
00:24:10
Speaker
That's an obvious. Uh, Instagram for B2B marketing go or no go Instagram. I don't know that well. So I just started to push content there, but it's just to like build out my system. So I don't really know. I can't really give people advice on Instagram.
00:24:30
Speaker
Can't give people advice there either. I've read a lot of stuff there. So my guess is like most platforms is if you get dirty, create value there. It's probably harder to create value there and get noticed now because it's older. But my guess is if you go there like on any platform and you provide value and people can find your stuff that it's probably gonna pay off. How about Reddit? That's another place that I haven't spent a lot of time.
00:24:58
Speaker
But and I, from what I hear, it's kind of brutal. So you might have to have a tough mentality to survive there. But my guess is, again, like if you can, if you have that tough mentality, it probably would work pretty well. LinkedIn creator mode. Yeah, this one I just don't get.
00:25:16
Speaker
It kind of annoys me because to me it seemed like it created more confusion than anything else. People are talking about how it increased their engagement, lowered their engagement. I think it revamped your profile and I don't think anybody cares what hashtags I have or what hashtags I write about and it pushed my profile or the about section down. Yeah, I'm just not a fan. Maybe at some point they make it more meaningful.
00:25:45
Speaker
LinkedIn creator mode on or off right now. That's off. LinkedIn polls, the scourge of LinkedIn or something that offers insight and research opportunities.
00:25:57
Speaker
Well, it's funny. I did a LinkedIn Live today with a guy named Marcus and he was kind of showing you how you can really use it to basically drive business. So I think you could use it pretty strategically. I have my own opinions about people's content and how they use it. I try to kind of like, because I'm a content creator and I'm usually trying to encourage people to get going, I try not to
00:26:23
Speaker
You know, uh, bag on people that do this or that. But to me, it seems like there's a lot of, a lot of people making polls and like, I'm not sure why they're doing it. But I think if you use, I think like everything, if you do it strategically, you could probably get some good use out of it, especially because I think right now LinkedIn is pushing the reach on those more than other posts. Top three iPhone apps or Android apps.
Book recommendation: Strategic insights from Peter F. Drucker
00:26:48
Speaker
Yeah. So I use TikTok. Excuse me. I use TikTok a lot.
00:26:53
Speaker
I use LinkedIn a lot, and I use Gmail. I actually try not to use my phone too much. It's kind of a boring landscape. The best business book that you've read recently? One of the best business books that I've ever read is by Peter F. Drucker, and it was about management. But he went off on all sorts of stuff.
00:27:23
Speaker
And I thought that was one of the more insightful books that I read. He's a consultant and he's helped a lot of businesses. And he talks about all the different types of businesses, all the different strategic maneuvers you can make. You can be the innovator, you can be the copier. And there was no judgment in the way he talked about all these different things. He just kind of exposed them. And I would say that's probably the best book I've read recently.
00:27:49
Speaker
Well, thanks for all the great insights, Steven.
Connect with Steven Pope and Mark Evans
00:27:51
Speaker
Where can people learn more about you and SGP? Yeah, so you can go to sgplabs.com. You can always contact me there. I'm also on LinkedIn. You can just search for Steven G. Pope. I should pop right up. Pretty accessible if you want to chat or ask me questions. And you can connect with me, send me a DM, and usually get back to you pretty quick.
00:28:12
Speaker
Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor, and coach, send an email to mark at marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you next time.