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What's a Better Content Marketing Approach: Quality or Quantity Content?
47 Plays4 years ago
As more B2B companies embrace content marketing, here's the question: what's more important: quality or quantity content.
In other words: is less more or is more more?
Dan Sanchez firmly falls into the quantity content camp. He believes that marketing success is driven by brands willing to create lots of content as way to perfect production.
Dan also talked about the importance of brand positioning as a pillar for marketing success, and how podcasts are one of the best ways to connect with prospects.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
My name is Mark Evans, and I'd like to welcome you to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers small doses of insight, tools, and tips from marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches. By small doses, it's conversations that are 15 minutes or less.
Guest Introduction: Dan Sanchez
00:00:16
Speaker
On today's show, I'm talking with Dan Sanchez, the Director of Audience Growth for Sweet Fish Media, a podcast agency for B2B Brands. He's also the co-host of the B2B Growth Podcast. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Dan. Thanks for having me on, Mark.
Dan's Passion for Yerba Mate
00:00:31
Speaker
I love on your LinkedIn profile that one of the things that you love, aside from marketing, is your bay mate. My wife's from Argentina and mate is something that is in our house on a regular basis. So where did that come from? Why the passion for mate?
00:00:46
Speaker
I was hiking with a friend in Colorado and just whining about how I'm addicted to coffee, but I still loved it. But I still hated how it made me feel every day. Cause I was drinking a cup, maybe two cups a day. And he's like, bro, you got to check out this thing called Yerba Mate. My missionary friend from Argentina introduced it to me and it's, it's all I drink now. And I'm like, he was so excited about it and so passionate about it. I think he pumped me up. So as soon as I had it, I was like, yes, this is the future. That was 10 years ago. And now I drink it every day. Do you drink coffee still?
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah. But I drink that's kind of on occasion. Like if you go out for coffee to meet with somebody, then I'll get a latte or something. And on occasion, I'll just drink a cup of coffee with my wife. Or if I run out of Maté, then I'll definitely drink some coffee. But Maté is definitely the way to go.
Why Create Lots of Content?
00:01:31
Speaker
In the tech landscape, now we can get to marketing and the good stuff. Content is the bell of the ball. For many B2B companies, conferences and meetings are out of a question. So content has become the way that they're looking to connect with prospects.
00:01:45
Speaker
Personally, I think there's too much content being created, and most of it is mediocre. But you have argued vociferously on LinkedIn that brands need to create lots of content so they can get better and better. In a recent post you said, you have to post more often, fail, learn, and improve consistently to get to where you need to go.
00:02:04
Speaker
The more swings you take, the faster you grow. I'm really interested in your take because I sit on the other side of the fence. I'm more of a quality person when it comes to content, not to say you're not quality as well. But why do you think that quantity and writing often is so important?
00:02:19
Speaker
You know, it's something that just came from personal experience. When I first started my career, I wanted to be an artist and then I wanted to be a graphic designer. I thought it'd be a good idea to write a blog about graphic design. I posted a few times and guess what I did? I stopped posting. And the first couple of posts, as hard as I tried, they just weren't that good. And I spent all my time trying to tweak the
00:02:38
Speaker
the design of the site and all optimizing it, subscribers, blah, blah, blah. I got really good at site optimization. And I actually ended up taking on a career in digital marketing because of that. So thanks to procrastination, I ended up into marketing. But at the end of the day, I ended up trying to just over and over again, people talk about content marketing. So I'm like, okay,
00:02:57
Speaker
I would try to do a blog post a week for a certain brand I was working for. And when I finally worked for a university, I had a student team. I was like, okay, your job student working 15 hours a week is to write one blog post a week. So we did that. We did that for a couple of years and it got some traction, but I didn't really start getting traction on that blog.
00:03:15
Speaker
Until I figured out how to scale from one blog post and then we did two blog posts a week. And then we started doing 10 to 20 blog posts a week consistently. And that's when traffic really started rolling in and it was it was incredible. James has seen the same thing with B2B growth. He's not doing one episode a week. He's doing multiple episodes a day.
00:03:35
Speaker
at least once a day, if not two or three times a day. And that volume of content has led B2B growth to be at a place where it's at now where it's getting 150,000 plus downloads a month. And it wouldn't have happened. We both know that volume was a big, big factor in that we all we both made mistakes along the way me and blogging and him and podcasting.
00:03:57
Speaker
But we both learned that the lessons we learned honestly took dozens of dozens of tries. It was 150 episodes in when James figured out he was interviewing the wrong person crazy and then had to figure it had to pivot and then started going on a different track and he got better and better.
00:04:12
Speaker
but he got better because he was doing 20 to 30 episodes a week just himself when he first started. Well, some people would argue that it's brute force as opposed to taking a strategic approach to content marketing. How do you respond to people who suggest that?
Quality Over Quantity in Content Creation
00:04:28
Speaker
There are a lot of people who try to hack the system who are like, oh, let's just flood, let's just flood Google with tons of content. In fact, nowadays you can just, I'm pretty sure I could, if I really wanted to, I could string together a couple of WordPress plugins and some like SaaS products that can automatically scrape blog feeds that I give it, rewrite it by like robots rewriting it, and then republish it automatically on my WordPress site.
00:04:52
Speaker
So that it's unique content but it's just regurgitating everything that it reads and you know that it that now i can do thousands of day.
00:05:00
Speaker
But you know it's going to be no good. There's going to be even if the sentences are coherent and make sense, all the content is going to be commodity content. There's no original thoughts to it. There's no unique thinking to it. There's no stories. There's no message. So that's not the kind of volume we advocate for. We know there has to be you, at least a person, a human trying to make the best they can make. But you know what? We all have to start somewhere. You know, the best pitcher in the world didn't throw fastballs at first.
00:05:26
Speaker
He had to perfect his art and throw a lot of pitches in order to get to the point where they're at now pitching pro baseball. So over the last, let's say three or four months, the content marketing landscape has become busier and busier. I mean, there are no conferences and a lot of brands are kind of at a loss in terms of how to connect with prospects and customers. So how do you see the content landscape right now? Is it noisy? Is there room for opportunity? As a brand, how should you approach it?
00:05:54
Speaker
Honestly, it is noisy, but it's noisy with really crappy content. When I look at the search engines, even for competitive key terms, I'm like, yes, the fields are just ripe for the picking. If you can just really get in the heads of what people are looking for, you can write better content than even what HubSpot makes. And HubSpot makes some great content, but still, it's a little vanilla pretty often.
00:06:16
Speaker
And it doesn't take a lot to really get good at one particular niche and produce better content. So I'm saying that it's noisy, but it's noisy with commodity content. Right. Why do you think that happens? Like everyone talks about high quality content and it's important to write the right kinds of content, but so many brands just seem to go through the motions. I don't understand that.
00:06:35
Speaker
different reasons for different platforms on search. I think it's because the SEO community got a lot of facts wrong. I think facts that maybe were true in the early 2000s are no longer true. And so that's led them down a rabbit hole of fighting for backlinks, like spending half to maybe 80% of their time looking for backlinks to boost an article, instead of focusing on making the best possible answer to the question people are asking on Google. And that's led to a lot of commodity content, lots of gaming, lots of
00:07:04
Speaker
putting out posts so you can make your own linking schemes. Now that that's kind of dead now. But you know, it's just thrown a lot out there. All those blog posts they created are still there. And then hiring, like HubSpot created a formula hired pretty good writers, and they they've been able to scale their their solution. And even that's even that's, I'd say, somewhat commodity, though, I'd say it's still, I mean, it's still the best because it's ranking for a lot of different marketing keywords out there.
00:07:28
Speaker
So that's SEO. I think the SEO community has kind of gotten everyone mixed up on what's important. I think it's different for social. And every social platform is a little bit different when you're trying to game the algorithm that leads to you doing a certain kind of thing instead of zigging when everyone else is zagging.
Gated vs Ungated Content Strategies
00:07:43
Speaker
Let's wade into another controversial topic these days, the idea of gated content.
00:07:47
Speaker
For years, B2B companies have generated MQLs, and we can argue about MQLs as well, by putting out content and asking people to provide an email address to get access to it. But now there's a growing school of thought that that shouldn't happen at all, is that B2B companies should make their content as accessible as possible and not require an email address. Where do you stand on that issue?
00:08:13
Speaker
I like to do both. I like to gate content, but I like to ungate all my content. Here's an example. I might write a killer blog post, or at least every blog post I try to publish is aiming to be the best on the internet so that it ranks. Over time, I will find out which one of those actually hit a note because a lot of volume will go to it. It does well on social, or for whatever reason, I know this is a killer blog post.
00:08:36
Speaker
I will then repackage that blog post. I'll let it continue going out there, getting the rankings, getting the traffic, but I will pull the content, maybe run it through a designer, put it into a nice PDF, break it up so people can consume it quickly and easily, and then I will gate it. For all the other blog posts people are hitting on that same category, and then might give me their email in exchange for this more designed piece of content. Because most people, let's be honest, are not going to go to the search engines and try to find out if that gated content is ungated somewhere.
00:09:03
Speaker
They're just to give the email, it would actually take less work for them to give up the email than for them to go search for it elsewhere, unless you're smart and listen to me. And now you're like, Oh, that gated thing I saw on sweetfish media, I could probably go find a post. Yes, you can go search for it, you will just find it ungated. So that's how I like to work. I like to do both at the same time, ungated and get it let it continue to do the work that it's doing ungated. But I still think there's a place and a time to gate the content to build build a list.
00:09:27
Speaker
And that's where Chris Walker and I really would probably disagree. He's into demand generation, right? Create enough demand so that when people show up to their door, they're ready to buy. But they're going to find their way. You don't have to lead them across the yard to get to your front door. They will find their own way. And when they show up, they're going to run through the sales cycle because they had to take so much initiative.
00:09:47
Speaker
where I'm kind of like, yeah, let's throw a good party out past the yard. Let's draw a lot of people in, but I'm still going to try to lead people from the gate to the door in the nicest, most helpful, value-driven way possible. Yeah, that makes complete sense. In fact, a great example of the approach I think that you and your partner James Carburry are taking is a PDF that I downloaded after giving my email address on the 26 ways, the 27 ways to launch a B2B podcast.
00:10:16
Speaker
Now I know that James writes on that a lot and he certainly talks about that a lot, but nevertheless, I gave him my email address for that PDF and there was value in it. I can see exactly where you're coming from. Let me shift gears a little bit. Some of the things that I've been talking a lot about recently over the last of a while are our value propositions and brand positioning. And I got very excited when you spent, it seemed to be an entire week, talking about both of those topics. And I'm curious about
00:10:43
Speaker
why you decided to focus so much time and real estate on what I see as fundamental business pillars.
00:10:50
Speaker
Probably because it's the thing that made the biggest difference in my career. It's what made me take the jump from just being like a web designer to a marketer. I knew how to use the tools, I knew how to run the emails, but I didn't know how to write copy. And I honestly feel like the value proposition is the crux or the most important part of all your copy, of all your messaging. If you have a bad value proposition, it doesn't matter how good of a copywriter you are.
00:11:15
Speaker
You're not going to get the conversions. You have to figure out what's appealing and equally exclusive about what you're offering that's going to attract the right kind of people. I actually learned about it through a man named Flint McLaughlin. He wrote my favorite marketing book that no one's ever heard of, or at least a few people have. It's called Marketer as Philosopher. Have you ever heard of it? No, I haven't. What's it about?
00:11:40
Speaker
It's about value propositions, but it's also about conversion optimization. Those are kind of like the hard things in it, but really it's approaching marketing from a philosophical standpoint. Flint has a master's degree in philosophy and then somehow, I don't know how he did this, but he transitioned to marketing. You know, a lot of us have interesting paths into the world of marketing. His was through philosophy.
00:12:01
Speaker
And because he came at it from a philosophical approach, just had a really unique perspective. He's trying to, he's like, everyone's talking about what and how, but we need to talk about why. The why is the most important question you can answer as a marketing. So let's unpack that. And that's the book. It's, it's a short and concise book, though. It's a little bit of an expensive book because he like wrapped it in leather and made it all fancy and stuff. So how does it have a commitment? I think it's like 50 or 80 bucks or something like that. How does it align with, uh, with Simon cynics always ask why?
00:12:30
Speaker
Simon Sinek is talking about like a brand perspective, like big, big picture, almost aspirational identity of the company. Like why does this company exist versus Flint McLaughlin is going to hit more on like the why he's going after is answering the question of a value proposition. And that's all a value proposition is, by the way. It's just an answer to the question from your ideal prospect. Why should I buy from you versus your competitor or not buy at all?
00:12:58
Speaker
The answer to that question is your value proposition. So you can see it's a very different why question, not why are we here, but why should I buy from you? That's probably a succinct the definition of a value proposition that I've heard in a long time. And there are so many different flavors. But at the end of the day, you know, I totally agree with you is that people don't know what you do and why it matters to them, then you're irrelevant. And they'll move on to the next next company, the next competitor.
00:13:25
Speaker
Finally, let's talk a little bit about podcasting.
Podcasting Opportunities for B2B Brands
00:13:28
Speaker
Obviously, it's something that you're in the midst of every single day in addition to being on LinkedIn and writing content. So you're in the eye of the hurricane with Sweetfish. What's your take on the podcast landscape? And if you're a B2B brand, how do you get into the game at a time when everybody seems to be jumping on the bandwagon? A loaded question. Sorry about that.
00:13:48
Speaker
Oh man, honestly, people think blogging's dead and SEO's dead. And I'm looking at the search engines and I'm just seeing green fields everywhere. The podcasting, it's even less competitive. So I'm like, oh my goodness, do you know how many topics I find with customers? And I'm like, there's hardly anyone even podcasting in this category.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot in the marketing business marketing. So like in our niche in our LinkedIn feeds, we're seeing all the marketing podcasts. Yes, there's a lot of marketing podcasts, even then I could probably still find a lot of niches within marketing that have no one talking to it manufacturing marketing, there's only a few podcasts in that niche. So if you want to find a vertical and specialize in it, there's still there's still a lot of room to grow that and if you actually go and search for the podcast, you'll find that most podcasts just aren't up to date, they haven't been updated in six months or
00:14:32
Speaker
longer, there's still a lot of room to grow there. And honestly, our approach, even if there was a competitive space, our approach is such that it still works. It still works. I don't know. Are you familiar with like James's content based network networking model? No, how does that work?
00:14:48
Speaker
It's the key to podcasting. Before understanding the concept, podcasting was probably my least favorite channel. I was like, oh, it's hard to get discovered there. You don't even get to really, it feels like an owned channel, but you don't really get the relationship with them. It's not like I can single out individuals. I have to jump them over to email or texting in order to like really own the relationship.
00:15:09
Speaker
And it's just hard to grow an audience there. But then I discovered content-based networking and it changed the game for me. It's the idea that instead of just creating content for your prospective audience, we want to do that. But we also want to invite our ideal prospects, our ideal buyers to be guests on the show. How many emails have you gotten from people saying, hey, we have this thing. I think it'll make a world of difference for your business. Can I have just 15 minutes of your time to tell you about it? You get a lot of those emails?
00:15:37
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, all the time. And you say, no, thanks. No, no, thanks. It's not relevant. You probably don't even look at the offer. You're just kind of like, nope, another one. Goodbye. But what if someone came to you and said, Hey, saw what you're doing at your your company, and it looks fantastic. Would love to ask you questions about it on our podcast and feature you while you'd be like, Oh,
00:15:59
Speaker
Okay yeah you might go and check out their profile and see what they're doing in their podcast see that they've had a couple episodes going and you at least get a reply to that and you're probably gonna say yes we find that quite a few people will say yes to being invited to be a guest on a podcast.
00:16:14
Speaker
in most industries, some industries are don't just don't like to talk, but industries people are going to say yes. And when you have them on the show, just kind of like what we're doing now we got on, we started talking, there's a little bit of a pre show back and forth, we're doing this conversation right now. And then when this episode ends, we'll have a little bit of more conversation afterwards.
00:16:34
Speaker
And in the meantime, you and I, Mark, are building a relationship. Like we will walk away from this episode and creating content together with a better sense of each other and a little bit more trust.
00:16:47
Speaker
So the next time you messaged me even about your services and said, hey, do you have 15 minutes? I have this idea. I want to run by you. I'm probably going to take that call because there's more relationship there. It's the fastest way to building relationship, especially in a B2B space where you really just need one good conversation with one specific person to make the difference. The podcasting is the gateway into that relationship with them.
00:17:12
Speaker
They don't always turn into buyers because they might not be in the market, but after you do it a long time, 20, 30, 50, 100 episodes in, man, that's a lot of relationships you now have in your pocket. And those people, they won't stay at that company. They might go to a different company, and when they want to build a podcast, guess who they're going to call.
00:17:29
Speaker
Exactly it's interesting cuz i have a be to be client that is looking or i'm encouraging the start of podcast and one of the things i said to them is when you invite someone to be a guest on podcast it's very rare that someone would say no because people.
00:17:44
Speaker
Just love the idea of having a conversation of building their profile of creating some some content in a different way in that respect. It's so powerful from a relationship and a prospecting point of view. Well, then this has been great. I really appreciate your insight. We've covered a lot of ground in about 20 minutes.
00:18:02
Speaker
which is really hard to do, but clearly you're doing some great stuff on LinkedIn.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:18:06
Speaker
If you are interested in what Dan has to say about personal branding, value proposition, podcasting, and a slew of other topics, follow him on LinkedIn. And thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe by iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you heard, please rate it.
00:18:24
Speaker
For show notes of today's conversation and information about Dan, visit marketingspark.co slash blog. If you have questions, feedback, we'd like to suggest a guest or want to learn more about how I help B2B companies as a fractional CMO consultant and advisor, send an email to mark at marketingspark.co. Talk to you next time.