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Adopting a Video-First Strategy with Lindsay McGuire
410 Plays1 year ago
As the Associate Director of Content & Campaigns at Goldcast, Lindsay McGuire's days are spent overseeing and creating content about how marketers can use events as a top revenue-driving channel.
And believe you me, she practices what she preaches.
In this episode, Lindsay shares with Jess:
- Her transition to Goldcast and marketing to marketers (00:02:26)
- How she juggles and differentiates multiple event series for varied audiences (00:06:15)
- Ways to engage live event audiences that spark stories, social proof, and future content ideas (00:12:50)
- The importance of engaging with an event audience BEFORE an event (00:17:33)
- Adopting a video-first mindset and the ease of converting video content into text assets (00:19:47)
That's Marketing, Baby is sponsored by the incredible people at ércule and their free SEO tool, ottimo.
Can't get enough? Subscribe to Rants & Raves, the official newsletter of That's Marketing, Baby.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Show
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to That's Marketing, Baby, the weekly show where two marketing besties talk all things marketing in the world of B2B and B2C. I'm your co-host, Susan Wenegrad, and I've spent over 20 years in marketing focusing on paid media and email marketing. And I'm Jess Cook, copywriter and creative director turned content marketer. Every week, we'll tackle a topic that's on our minds and hopefully yours too. Ready? Let's go.
Sponsor Introduction: Air Cule
00:00:32
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Air Cule. Air Cule is an agency focused solely on organic growth for B2B SaaS brands. I've worked with them before and I can tell you I've never felt so confident and in control of my content strategy, SEO, and analytics.
00:00:48
Speaker
They also have this great free tool, Automo, that translates Google Analytics into actual, usable data. Which pages are killing it, which ones are declining, and what you can do about it. Check them out and give Automo a whirl at ercule.co. And now, on with the show.
Guest Introduction: Lindsay McGuire
00:01:10
Speaker
Everyone and welcome back to that's marketing baby super excited this week, we have a guest we don't normally have guests and when we do they're good ones, so this is so exciting today we have Lindsay mcguire she is head of content at gold cast.
00:01:28
Speaker
And so excited to have Lindsay here today to talk about what she's doing at Goldcast, how she's using Goldcast to market Goldcast, a little bit of dog fooding, which is so exciting, such a unique case. So super excited to have you here, Lindsay. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks, Jess. Super excited to be here. Awesome. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, how you got to Goldcast, all of the things.
Lindsay's Journey to Goldcast
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I am one of those journalists turned marketers. So that's kind of my origin story. I actually went to University of Missouri, thought I was going to be a news broadcaster, got to site visits, decided, A, I didn't want to wake up at like 4am to do the five or six day of news, and B, I am a very highly type A person and the vibe of a newsroom was just like not cohesive with my mental health stability.
00:02:15
Speaker
So I decided to change out of broadcast into strategic communication. And then from there really have been a content marketer ever since I did spend about five years in magazine and like women's lifestyle. Then I went in house. My first role was with the largest credit union in Alabama was there about two years moved to Indianapolis with my husband joined United Way of central Indiana for two years. But when I discovered Indianapolis, I realized the tech hub that's here. And I knew like, I have to get in.
00:02:44
Speaker
This is where I need to be. This is where it's happening. So that brought me to form stacks about almost five years at form stack, building their content function along with a fantastic team. And then unfortunately was part of a tech layoff, the same old story that seems to perpetuate last few years. But luckily I found gold casts fairly quickly after that incident. And so I had been here, Oh my gosh, almost like five or six months.
00:03:06
Speaker
Time flies, I joined the team in June. So it's been a wild ride, but man transitioning to marketing to marketers is so much fun.
00:03:15
Speaker
It is, isn't it? It's like you're in your genius zone at that point because you're able to use all of your background information and all of those insights and like all of the little inside jokes and all of the little intricacies and nuances. And like, you can put that into your work and it's so much fun. And you just get so much more freedom. You know, I was marketing automation for a long time, which isn't like the sexiest thing necessarily.
00:03:37
Speaker
And so to be able to market to marketers, especially in Martech, I mean, it's just like a whole new world for me. And to be able to tap more into my creativity and test things and try maybe some crazier things is really fun. That's amazing. And you and I are Midwest buddies, but that's exciting. I love Indianapolis. It's a great town. I'm coming there next year for my second stop on the Heiress tour. So very exciting.
00:04:00
Speaker
So let's meet up then because the city, we'll see if I'll be there or not. I don't know if I, I'm a T Swift fan, but I'm not a mega fan. And okay. Hey, that's all right. I mean, but I got lots of friends. And so we'll see, but yeah, I need a place. We've been here six years now. It's crazy. That's awesome. Very cool.
Using Goldcast for Marketing
00:04:18
Speaker
All right, let's get into it let's talk about the unique opportunity, you have at gold cast to use gold cast to market gold cast, which I think is just like so incredibly unique you don't always get that chance so talk to us a little bit about how you're doing that and what that looks like.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think the best part of it is that our tool is not technical. Like it's so easy to use and get going and set up and engage with that. It gives me a whole other level of ability because I've worked in products before where it's a little more technical. It takes a lot more training to get up and running. And it just gives you that much more of a timeframe. You have to spend to be able to create that really robust, great content. But with gold cast, I mean, I can set up an event and have an event running in like 10 minutes flat.
00:05:01
Speaker
And then the actual physical running of the event is also so simple and easy. And so as a content marketer who's not really a technical person by any means or format, being able to have easy instant access to my product and be able to then use it in my marketing strategy, we run now, right now, two ongoing series, two monthly series, Event Marketers Live and Donuts in Demand. And just to be able to have those two functions directly out of our product
00:05:28
Speaker
And then every large campaign I'm running is also attached to our product. We just ran our AI summit that had almost 1000 registrants in October and being able to have that whole entire campaign literally running out of our platform so people have a firsthand experience. And then not only that firsthand experience, but like a fun one, right? Like we're a fun tool, we're an engaging tool and we're like a tool built for B2B marketers.
00:05:52
Speaker
So it's just a whole nother world of just opportunity. And it's very fun. I can't be challenging because sometimes you just want to do everything and you can't do everything. You need to like stay focused, but it's been great as a SAS person to have a tool that makes it so easy for me to go in and do whatever I want and be almost self-service in that way. Yeah, that's amazing. Coming to a Goldcast event is a demo, right? Like in doing that, you are providing someone a demo. It's brilliant.
00:06:20
Speaker
Man, what a great way to like bring somebody into
Goldcast Event Series Explained
00:06:23
Speaker
the product. I want to double click on something. You mentioned you have two series and I'd love to talk about one. Why two series? What's the difference between them? What led you to that? What business decisions did you have to make to know like these are two very different things or they have helped us hit two very different goals. Talk me through that a bit.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, great question. And we actually sunsetted a series in May to make room for the new one I'm hosting, Donuts in Demand. Okay. The host CMO Diaries, which now is all available on demand on our website. So we used to actually run CMO Diaries and Event Marketers Live together. And I think at one point we were actually talking in our QPR recently, Belinda, our head of events was talking about how at one point they ran Event Marketers Live weekly, bonkers. That's a lot.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yes. So I don't know how long we ran it for a weekly series, but then we stepped it down to biweekly. We did two a month. And then now we're down to one a month because of the other things we've scaled up and other facets and CMO diaries. I'm not sure what our cadence was throughout the entirety of that series. We ran that series for probably over a year. Kishore CEO hosted the intention of that was really to position Goldcast as a thought leader in the B2B marketing space. And.
00:07:32
Speaker
How better to do that than to have literal CMOs come and talk on your show. So that was kind of the intention of that show. But then when I came on, we were differentiating our markets a little bit more. We've been very, very event and field marketer based from the origins of our tool. Cause we started in the pandemic. So we were very much like. Wow.
00:07:52
Speaker
virtual events platform and now three years later the market has diversified so much and marketers have embraced digital events in all sorts of ways shapes and formats and sizes so with that change both from the market and our own product we realized oh we need to not only welcome event field marketers into our brand but also demand gen marketers
00:08:15
Speaker
Because they're the ones who are running those series, those webinars, those other campaigns that are an offshoot of like a traditional event or field market. So that is kind of the reason why we have those two very separate shows. So event marketers live, we've run for probably close to, I want to say one and a half to two years.
00:08:34
Speaker
And that one is very much focused on our core original audience of event and field marketers. We're bringing on leaders who are talking about trade shows, virtual events, summits, conferences, whether they're in-person, hybrid, digital, whatever it might be.
00:08:49
Speaker
And it's very, very event-focused and event-based. And then my new show, Donuts in Demand, we launched in September with Chris Walker and LaShawna Jackson. She's into a mail chip and then Chris is with Refine Labs. And that show is to expand our brand into demand-gen marketers.
00:09:06
Speaker
So we've done some very surface level marketing to this group, but we hadn't really tapped in deep. And this is our opportunity now to build a community with this new arm of marketing that really fits in the trifecta of our audience now, which is event and field marketers, and then content marketers, and then demand-gen marketers and that kind of
Scaling Back Events for Quality
00:09:25
Speaker
triangle.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. How often do you do Donuts in the Band? It's monthly. So, EML and demand are both monthly now. And that's just because capacity, you know, you can't do something all the time. And are they staggered? So, it's like you'll do... Yeah. Yeah, EML is the first Thursday of the month and then Donuts in demand is the second Tuesday. So, our next episode is actually on the 14th next week.
00:09:47
Speaker
Awesome. So a couple things I love that you said there. One is instead of like, okay, we can't do this live show anymore because we have this other audience, like just dialing back the cadence. You went from four times a month and now down to one time a month. Like think of how much that decreased the mental load, the workload, right?
00:10:04
Speaker
And then it also allowed you to add on this second series that's like for this new audience that you realized you had totally different show totally different thing but now you're able to kind of balance the two and I think that's so important because I think a lot of marketers I found and I know I've been killed of this too is like I started this thing I have to keep it going at the same pace I've been doing it people are gonna be so disappointed when no one cares people might not even notice
00:10:26
Speaker
You know, really, I think the video content that you put out is like, it's great if someone shows up to the live thing. Awesome. But to me, that's like a cherry on top because if someone can show up and see what was recorded, if they can see the same thought leadership, a clip, like an interesting sound bite, they're still getting the same information. So let's give ourselves some more grace and room to like, it's okay if you have to like dial it back a little bit to keep the quality and keep the level of the content high.
00:10:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And I even gone through that myself with Practically Genius was the podcast I ran a forum stack. And by the end of the series, we had shifted from Chris Byers, our CEO, being host to myself being host. And then we brought in kind of a second show flow with Ryan Greaves, who was our director of communications. And at first we were doing our show segment twice a month for each season. And we quickly realized this is just too much.
00:11:21
Speaker
We're spinning our wheels. We're spending so much time trying to prep for this. And is it really like a worthwhile investment right now with the whole conglomerate of everything in the pyramid and all the things weighing on you? So we just ended up making the decision of, no, it's not worthwhile to keep this cadence. Let's cut it down to once a month. Let's really focus it. Let's make sure that one episode we're doing is super high quality. So you're not just running yourself ragged because marketers are historically successful at running. Yeah, we will say yes to it all. Yeah.
00:11:51
Speaker
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00:12:16
Speaker
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00:12:37
Speaker
I know I heard about Goldcast because of Dave Gerhart. He uses Goldcast for his Exit 5 events. And one, I will say, it is such a lovely experience. It feels so much more interactive than a Zoom webinar. That's the point, is to bring digital events, virtual events, into this new age. We can't all be together physically, or we want more people. We want the reach of this to be larger. But we still want it to feel fun and interesting. So love that.
00:13:04
Speaker
Because of that, I'm sure social proof is huge for your brand. Who's using it, the brands that are using it, the people, the kind of notable folks that are using it. So how are you using your customers and people like Dave and their stories to get people to hear about you more awareness and win more often?
Incorporating Customer Feedback
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, I was actually thinking about this the other day because again, the type of product I have makes it so easy for me. I have the usual things I do because in my role, I'm also the customer marketer. I'm doing our customer story. I'm doing our testimonials and our quote collection and all those things. So, you know, I do the traditional things of like sitting in our NPS channel. And when one that's brilliant comes through like, Hey, CSN, like hook me up. Yeah. But with.
00:13:44
Speaker
Goldcast I can literally sit on our more customer facing events and I can watch that chat populate with great things from our customers and like we had a content lab deep dive webinar we ran I want to say Wednesday I think and I was there in the chat and Molly had said something about how all I just started using it as one of the best tools I've ever used and yada yada and I was like I'm DM in her right now.
00:14:08
Speaker
Literally, we're literally watching the same content. We're in the same exact event together. I have instant access to her, and then I can either Slack or DM my CSM in Goldcast at the same time say, hey, I'm going to reach out to Molly, ask her if I can use this, yada, yada, yada. So even in that instance, my product is allowing me to have those moments and have that accessibility to our customers.
00:14:31
Speaker
And then of course, just being aware of who are our advocates, who is out there talking about us on social or honor events. And I have to connect with the team who ran the Apollo event the other day, Olympus. It had like thousands and thousands of people on the event and it was ran in Goldcast. So there has to be gold in that chat too of like, oh, this platform's so fun. Or like, oh, this is so great. Or like, oh my gosh, I love the gifts. And it just makes my life infinitely easier.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's so great. I even think event comments in general are a great place to mine for questions that pop up all the time. I was loved when we would do webinars. It would be some thought leadership topic, so not super focused on the product itself, but more of a, hey, we want to help this audience solve a general problem that so many of them experienced.
00:15:20
Speaker
And the questions and the things that come up in those comments are always like, Oh, we could write a whole article on like how to solve that problem. Or like this version that somebody just kind of dropped into the chat of like how they solved it one time. Let's collect that. I love that. Like you get to do both. You get to pick up product comments, people testimonials and people loving on the product. But then also I'm sure, you know, I know you all have these events where you're just talking through like problems marketers face and you can pick up great content that way. So man, what a win-win.
00:15:50
Speaker
Well, and you make an excellent point of that is such a huge value proposition of running a live event because you have direct interactions with your audience. And one thing we do with donuts in demand is in my confirmation email to everyone who registers, I ask, Hey, what do you want to ask our guests live this month?
00:16:08
Speaker
Tell me what you're wanting to learn about because that's the point, right? Producing this content for my audience. So being able to directly ask them, what do you want to learn about? And having that feedback channel, it's crazy to have that access and to know what is trending and what is not. And this might stress some people out, but.
00:16:24
Speaker
You can even in live action change your programming when you see something resonating. And sometimes I can throw people way off and you're like, oh my gosh, this is wild and crazy, what's happening? But that's the magic of having a live event is that you can see in real time what is trending, what people are really resonating to and be able to adjust your show flow as necessary to the flexibility you have, right? You can't totally go off the rails sometimes.
00:16:52
Speaker
All right, I don't know if you all heard that, but Lindsay just mentioned an amazing hack. So sometimes you'll be an event, right? A virtual event and you'll get to the end and there's like this 10 minute period where like people are supposed to ask questions and it's crickets.
00:17:06
Speaker
Usually the event team has to like come up with, we'll seed some questions in, in case nobody wants to ask questions, right? I love that whenever someone confirms a registration, you're like, what do you want to ask this person? Because I wonder what your response rate is on that because I bet people are more inclined to be, this is what I want to know in that moment than they are right when that FAQ opens
Video-First Strategy in Marketing
00:17:25
Speaker
up.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah. I hadn't really thought about the difference between the pre time in the event time, but yeah, the last two, I've had an average of three to six plus questions come in pre event. Huge because you usually have what time for maybe like five or six questions. That's all you need.
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah, so it's been really great. And I'm also an advocate of like, don't waste your real estate, right? No one needs just a generic confirmation event email like, Hey, thanks for registering. This is the time and date and the title. We know all that. And with Goldcast, you get a calendar hold anyways. Yeah. Reiterate that. No, use that real estate for something valuable, you know, like, yes, you need to like acknowledge. Yes, we got your registration. All is well and good. Yes. Don't waste that email, y'all.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah, especially because event registration emails, the open rate on them is huge. So yeah, such a great point, Lindsay. Love that. Okay, we love to get into tactical weeds on this show, and we love to talk about repurposing. So I would love for you to tell us what kind of content, maybe besides even live events, are working for you at Goldcast right now, because obviously live events are pulling their weight over at Goldcast. And then how are you repurposing or distributing that content? Even one example would be awesome.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I hate to go into the live event example, but we are a live event platform, so I am going to lean a little bit into that. Okay, go for it. But I think we all know 2024 is going to be the year of video, right? We have seen that happening and we've been talking about it probably for the last five years or so of the shift to like a video first mindset in marketing. But I think we're finally there with the tools and the workflows, the accessibility and the level of cost to actually all play well in the sandbox.
00:19:04
Speaker
You know, for a long time, it was like, you gotta have a lot of money. You're a lot of people are a lot of reasons. And now the barrier to entry has lowered where almost any brand can play with a video first kind of mindset. And that's really where we're coming into it at. Yes, it's going to be based on our live events, but it's really honestly at the end of the day, a video strategy. So.
00:19:24
Speaker
For instance, taking our AI summit we ran on October 18th, we had 12 speakers across five virtual sessions. And so now not only do we have those live events we ran, we had huge massive audience for that. Now we have the on demand of all of those, but then we're taking each session, we're using our content lab AI tool to then
00:19:44
Speaker
parse it out with AI to make video clips we can use in blog posts and eBooks on social media, on TikTok if we want to, and on TikTok, but maybe someday we will be, who knows, or whatever next video platform is like. Yeah. But being able to have those very easy, just
00:20:02
Speaker
snip here, clip here, pull here, and AI supported tools. And we even have content pieces of that too. So I can come in there right after the event, my events uploaded into our AI tool, I can easily pull a synopsis, I can easily pull the top 10 quotes, or like if I had three speakers, I can tell it, hey, pull the top five.
00:20:21
Speaker
five quotes from each of the speakers on this event. And then that is propelling our sales enablement and our sales team and their follow ups and their conversations. And then
Repurposing Content from Events
00:20:30
Speaker
that's also preparing my writers when they're doing like for AI Summit, not only do we have the on demand event for each of those five sessions, we're creating a gated ebook based off all that. We're creating individual blog posts off of each session to then redirect into that gated landing or that gated ebook piece.
00:20:47
Speaker
We're integrating the video clips from every session into all of those different channels and distribution tactics. Also, I automatically have so much more content to go put on our YouTube and then use that as a distribution channel as well. So I think it is based off of a live virtual event, but when you break it down, it's really a video first. Figuring out how you can use that video in plethora of ways. And also obviously the copy and content that comes from that as well.
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because I think video first strategy is relatively new. I think even just three, four years ago, it was like you wrote the blog post, then you decided if it was worth creating a video series on, it might not have been. So you move on to the next blog post, right? I think the way that you were doing it and so many video first kind of content teams are doing it is it's so much easier to go from video to text than it is from text to video. We're realizing that now.
00:21:37
Speaker
And like you say, we have the tools, we have AI, we have things like Descript, where like someone like me can now go in and edit a video when it's a video that doesn't require a ton of like professional polish, right? Which is a lot of social clips and things like that. So it's so much easier, I think, to start from that point and let that be your content waterfall nowadays. And getting started is actually the hardest part. Like once you start, I should have done this so much sooner. This is
00:22:02
Speaker
so much easier to go this way than it is from text to video. And I will say you do make a point that it is, especially if you're doing like a recurring series or a close series of five or six things or whatever it might be, the hardest part is getting started. And that's actually why we are running like a series masterclass right now. It starts next Wednesday on November 15th, but now we are seeing the value of these series and we want to like highlight this with other brands of like, if you've ever thought about doing a series, but always felt kind of spooked or overwhelmed or like, Oh, I can't
00:22:32
Speaker
do that or I don't have the budget or resources or people or whatever it might be is so much more feasible nowadays. And it's just like getting started, having the roadmap to get started and getting the buy in from your leadership team to trust you on that journey to creating that series. Yeah. And I signed up for that. And to go back to the social proof thing, I signed up for it because I saw Travis Tyler.
Creative Event Promotion Tactics
00:22:52
Speaker
It's about how he's gonna be in it. And he had this adorable, totally geeky promo video. It was so lovely. And I was like, I have to see this. So you're doing something right. Yeah, I will say I've never had a speaker or event presenter or anybody take my assets and like make them their own in that way. And I was like, yeah. Yeah.
00:23:12
Speaker
So good. You all have to go scroll back on Travis Tyler's post. You'll find it. It's great. Lindsey, so good to have you.
Launching a Video Series Masterclass
00:23:21
Speaker
Thank you so much for coming and revealing so much about like your strategy and what you're doing and like sharing all of that with us. I'm sure people are walking away today with just like what they can do with live virtual events and that recorded material and how to repurpose so many new ideas. So thank you so much.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been a blast. Awesome. Where can people find you? LinkedIn's my home base. I'd say as far as social, just search Lindsay McGuire. Yes. It's like, Lindsay McGuire. But I will say, one thing you see it's weird is actually my maiden name is still my slug on LinkedIn. And there are days where I'm like, should I update this? But I'm like, it's been so long. Why does it matter anymore? Yeah, exactly.
00:23:56
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Don't be kidding me now. You'll see it's Lindsay Latteru on LinkedIn, but it is indeed me. So please connect with me there. Or if you want to jump in and join me on Donuts in Demand, we are on the second Tuesday of each month. We have Susanna from Nokia and Sarah from Qualified on November's episode. December, we have Brendan from Gross Prince and we have Joyce from DocuSign. So it's going to be a really jam-packed two next episodes. Those are heavy hitters. That's amazing.
00:24:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's gonna be fun. And it's all donut themed. Why wouldn't you want to join? Come on, grab a donut, take a break, come learn about demand generation. Heck yeah, I love that. All right. You're my bang buddy. You're my Midwest friend. And I'm so glad we got to have you on the show. Thanks again, Lindsay. Thanks, Jess. That's Marketing Baby. We'll see you guys next time. Bye.
00:24:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening to That's Marketing, Baby. If you dig what we're putting down, be sure to subscribe and share with your marketing besties. Because, you know, hot marketers don't gatekeep. And if you're like, this is not enough, I need more, we got you. Ransom Raves is the official newsletter of That's Marketing, Baby. Every week, Susan and I share one thing we love and loathe in the world of marketing. Get on the list at thatsmarketingbaby.com. Okay. Bye.