Steps for Thought Leadership with Huge or Tiny Budgets

WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:02.740 Yeah, 2 00:00:05.540 --> 00:00:09.870 welcome back to BBB growth, I'm dan Sanchez, friends call me dan says and 3 00:00:09.870 --> 00:00:13.950 I'm here with Matthew Van den broek, who is the head of Thought Leadership 4 00:00:13.950 --> 00:00:19.150 at Woah and today I'm continuing the journey into the topic of Thought 5 00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:22.700 leadership marketing. If you're just joining us in this deep dive we're 6 00:00:22.700 --> 00:00:26.140 doing in the month of june today then just know that I've, if you haven't 7 00:00:26.140 --> 00:00:29.080 been following me to be growth for a while, it's like I've been fascinated 8 00:00:29.080 --> 00:00:32.409 with this idea of thought leadership and I've been waiting just to do a deep 9 00:00:32.409 --> 00:00:37.510 dive on an interview practitioners, interview vendors, interview experts 10 00:00:37.510 --> 00:00:40.720 and interview actual thought leaders as well as probably give a few thoughts of 11 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:45.620 my own along the way. I think this topic is very divisive, People don't 12 00:00:45.630 --> 00:00:48.970 like this topic sometimes, but a lot of people are still looking for it are 13 00:00:48.970 --> 00:00:51.930 still asking about it and that's because honestly I find that thought 14 00:00:51.930 --> 00:00:56.180 leadership is really important. It really works especially And AB two B 15 00:00:56.190 --> 00:01:00.460 context. Yet there's a lot of people who would say that thought leadership 16 00:01:00.460 --> 00:01:03.550 isn't even a thing that it's really just expertise that it's just a 17 00:01:03.550 --> 00:01:07.100 buzzword and I'm trying to do this thought leadership journey to really 18 00:01:07.110 --> 00:01:10.420 unpack that to dig into it. I think it's more than that and I think it's 19 00:01:10.420 --> 00:01:14.260 really powerful. So actually today I'm talking to Matthew who's been in it for 20 00:01:14.260 --> 00:01:19.550 five years at his company, Being full time thought leadership marketer, he's 21 00:01:19.550 --> 00:01:23.010 been doing it, he's not necessarily even like the subject matter expert but 22 00:01:23.010 --> 00:01:27.570 he's responsible for making sure he's positioning his company as a thought 23 00:01:27.570 --> 00:01:32.670 leader in this space of I believe digital is a digital communication 24 00:01:32.670 --> 00:01:36.740 benchmarking, Matthew digital experiences that, right, so it's 25 00:01:36.740 --> 00:01:40.910 digital experience, it'll experienced benchmarking which is fascinating, 26 00:01:40.920 --> 00:01:45.160 could be its own show in itself. But today we're here to just talk about 27 00:01:45.160 --> 00:01:49.700 thought leadership. So Matthew, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me then. 28 00:01:49.860 --> 00:01:54.490 Much appreciate it. Absolutely. I was just talking to him about what we're 29 00:01:54.490 --> 00:01:59.200 gonna be talking about in this interview and what I stumbled upon, 30 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:03.340 what I'm fascinated to kind of unpack is what being five years into this 31 00:02:03.340 --> 00:02:08.199 position or for over five years and I'm curious to hear what Matthew would do 32 00:02:08.210 --> 00:02:12.250 if he had almost no budget and was starting over from scratch as well as 33 00:02:12.250 --> 00:02:16.980 like if it was times of plenty and he was, if Ceo walked into his office and 34 00:02:16.980 --> 00:02:22.180 been like Matthew I'm going to 10 x your budget, give us the best bang for 35 00:02:22.180 --> 00:02:25.570 our buck as far as thought leadership is just concerned because it's working 36 00:02:25.570 --> 00:02:29.770 and I want 10 times more maybe they had just landed around a VC funding and 37 00:02:29.770 --> 00:02:33.650 knew that this was the route they wanted to go, what would that look like. 38 00:02:33.660 --> 00:02:37.390 So, but let's start off on the small end Matthew, if you were starting over 39 00:02:37.390 --> 00:02:41.750 at a small, maybe tech tech company and you were tasked with creating thought 40 00:02:41.750 --> 00:02:45.210 leadership for them company, I'd be interested to hear what would be some 41 00:02:45.210 --> 00:02:48.960 of the first couple of steps you would take in order order to get that started. 42 00:02:49.340 --> 00:02:54.330 Yeah. So I would definitely, if you, if you have to start small and have 43 00:02:54.330 --> 00:02:58.890 limited budget, you definitely start by looking around what, what's already 44 00:02:58.890 --> 00:03:03.260 there. So the human capital that is already within the organization and 45 00:03:03.270 --> 00:03:09.020 that you might want to unlock and that's also how I am, how I started at 46 00:03:09.070 --> 00:03:14.280 you are we just take a look at the data and all the research that we already 47 00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:19.210 provide and see what stories are already there and unleash those stories 48 00:03:19.210 --> 00:03:27.580 to uh, the most relevant public that we that we could find. So I think if you 49 00:03:27.580 --> 00:03:31.600 want to start small and you have limited budgets, you'll you'll start to 50 00:03:31.600 --> 00:03:37.150 see what what people already can do. So you see the talent, the talent that 51 00:03:37.160 --> 00:03:43.260 with the people who are on the, on the payroll and you could definitely 52 00:03:43.270 --> 00:03:51.020 organize events or webinars or or small knowledge platforms or communities on 53 00:03:51.030 --> 00:03:56.040 on linkedin. There's so much out there that is free to go. But I think 54 00:03:56.050 --> 00:04:01.440 critical success factories, do you have compelling and relevant content that 55 00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:08.870 people want to read or listen or watch? And that's where uh in my opinion, a 56 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:14.100 great story and and good content marketing. Start it starts it all 57 00:04:14.100 --> 00:04:18.970 starts with great content and then uh the distribution phase and the scaling 58 00:04:18.970 --> 00:04:24.630 up phase and the frequency phase of your of your most interesting articles. 59 00:04:24.640 --> 00:04:29.080 That's step two or step three or step four. That makes a lot of sense. So 60 00:04:29.080 --> 00:04:32.030 essentially you kind of go and do like an audit of the organization. You find 61 00:04:32.030 --> 00:04:34.980 out what content is already been written that just hasn't maybe gotten 62 00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:38.700 enough exposure yet. What subject matter experts do we already have 63 00:04:38.710 --> 00:04:42.480 access to if we're going to be creating thought leadership content. I'm curious 64 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:47.120 to hear. Like is there a step you take before you go do that? But did you even 65 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:51.410 find out like what the markets hungry for? Um, what customers are asking 66 00:04:51.410 --> 00:04:55.890 about or what, what's considered even thought leadership in that particular 67 00:04:55.890 --> 00:05:01.060 industry? If you're not a subject matter expert yet, it would be smart to, 68 00:05:01.070 --> 00:05:06.900 to start with. I think it would be starting to start with buyer personas. 69 00:05:06.910 --> 00:05:13.470 So who are my customers and uh, what people will I be doing business with? 70 00:05:13.480 --> 00:05:19.990 And what kind of or types of content are they looking for? And we did that 71 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:27.970 like uh with the revamp of our website in January 2019, we decided to aim more 72 00:05:27.980 --> 00:05:32.690 on on the buyer personas so that sea level and it's marketeers, that's also 73 00:05:32.690 --> 00:05:38.370 market researchers, it's you exercise. And it's also the web analytics uh kind 74 00:05:38.370 --> 00:05:44.300 of guys at this moment and girls of course. So that would be uh smart to to 75 00:05:44.300 --> 00:05:50.640 talk to your sales people or people who have a lot of customer contact. So how 76 00:05:50.640 --> 00:05:54.880 do how do you buy a personas look like? And what types of content are they 77 00:05:54.880 --> 00:05:59.900 interested in? So serve the right target audience with the right with the 78 00:05:59.900 --> 00:06:05.950 right message. That would be a good start when you when you want to craft 79 00:06:06.040 --> 00:06:10.820 For leadership program. And if you wanna, especially in B2B, you might 80 00:06:10.820 --> 00:06:15.650 want to have, you might have not won just one stakeholder, but multiple 81 00:06:15.650 --> 00:06:22.290 stakeholders before uh the seal the deal is done, and you want to convince 82 00:06:22.300 --> 00:06:26.360 all those stakeholders that you're the relevant company and with the right 83 00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:32.950 tools to work with. So I think that that would be smart to do to diversify 84 00:06:32.950 --> 00:06:39.940 your your content before you start, uh publishing it makes a lot of sense. So 85 00:06:39.940 --> 00:06:45.660 essentially we do a little bit of work, we established the personas, figure out 86 00:06:45.660 --> 00:06:49.000 what kinds of questions are asking, figure out what are the essentially, I 87 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:51.310 guess what thought leadership, you're really looking for gaps in the 88 00:06:51.310 --> 00:06:55.140 knowledge, right? Because it's not your thought leadership is usually a new 89 00:06:55.140 --> 00:06:58.060 idea, something that's pushing forward the boundaries that haven't existed 90 00:06:58.060 --> 00:07:02.120 before. Um So you're looking for gaps, you're looking for what's relevant to 91 00:07:02.120 --> 00:07:07.200 the customers and then um doing inventory of the company, establishing 92 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:10.860 what pieces are we already providing. Because you don't want to have to 93 00:07:10.860 --> 00:07:14.580 reinvent the wheel and then getting, do you like try to repackage those who 94 00:07:14.580 --> 00:07:17.880 just get them in front of people in different ways before you start 95 00:07:17.880 --> 00:07:23.490 creating new content? How does that work well if you were packaging? Yes. 96 00:07:23.490 --> 00:07:29.100 In a way. But the business we're into is is so customer experience 97 00:07:29.100 --> 00:07:35.040 benchmarking. It means we uh we compare sales funnels and we benchmark sales 98 00:07:35.040 --> 00:07:41.740 funnels and we tell our clients what is the best the best sales for. Not there 99 00:07:41.750 --> 00:07:46.090 are the best customer journey there and what you can learn from your 100 00:07:46.090 --> 00:07:51.600 competitors in a way. So it's a it's a kind of a mystery shopping on steroids, 101 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:57.670 what we what we do and digital and strategic decisions on on on budgets 102 00:07:57.680 --> 00:08:05.470 are made by sometimes by sea level, but C. Level people are more more into the 103 00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:12.250 strategic questions. And I want to have a management summer we've with clear 104 00:08:12.250 --> 00:08:19.350 KPs. But the market researcher uh they want that the research is done in a 105 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:24.660 proper way that it's uh that it's valid that it's trustworthy. It is repetitive 106 00:08:24.670 --> 00:08:31.920 and that the outcomes are just clear and and sure, so other uh we we we have 107 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:36.860 a product that is suitable for all layers who are working with Digital 108 00:08:36.860 --> 00:08:40.770 within the organization, but they're looking at other aspects of our 109 00:08:40.770 --> 00:08:46.610 products. So we created in the past, we created uh storylines about digital 110 00:08:46.610 --> 00:08:51.070 excellence and the digital excellence part really for the for the C. Level, 111 00:08:51.080 --> 00:08:58.380 people who are looking at Digital at a more strategic in a more strategic way. 112 00:08:58.390 --> 00:09:04.110 And they just they want to have the KPs go up and I wanna see an uplift in uh 113 00:09:04.120 --> 00:09:09.860 in online sales volumes. But how you how the product works and how you how 114 00:09:09.860 --> 00:09:15.290 you can make a deep dive into what customers are saying about your website 115 00:09:15.300 --> 00:09:20.330 uh compared to the competition. That's not not directly relevant for those 116 00:09:20.340 --> 00:09:24.950 people. And if you know that, then you can craft your message in in another 117 00:09:24.950 --> 00:09:31.850 way. And yes, that also means that uh sometimes you recycle content a bit 118 00:09:32.140 --> 00:09:41.810 because the message for the C. Level people is also aspiring for the people 119 00:09:41.810 --> 00:09:50.510 working under the those uh sea level or our management boards. So definitely 120 00:09:50.520 --> 00:09:57.170 it's good to see what's already there. And also recycle it a bit. But you 121 00:09:57.170 --> 00:10:01.750 don't want to copy paste too much because then if you copy paste too much, 122 00:10:01.760 --> 00:10:08.080 then you get not the SEO ranks and the find ability that you that you want to 123 00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:16.010 have. So it's also a threat to uh to recycle too much, I think. Yeah, I do 124 00:10:16.010 --> 00:10:19.280 like, I mean, I like recycling contents. I find that people need to hear things 125 00:10:19.280 --> 00:10:22.620 over and over and over and over again before it sinks in, right? Especially 126 00:10:22.620 --> 00:10:27.200 if you have a really powerful concept. Yeah, but again, you have to mix it up 127 00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:30.610 a little bit, you know? So I love it that you have all this research to pull 128 00:10:30.610 --> 00:10:33.850 from. Now. I'm curious to know like how do you repackage it? What's your 129 00:10:33.850 --> 00:10:37.820 favorite, like, especially if you're in a low budget situation, do you try to 130 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:42.500 get it into writing? Do you try to get it into video form? Infographic? Like 131 00:10:42.500 --> 00:10:47.050 what's kind of like your favorite medium to go with? Just to start, wow, 132 00:10:47.640 --> 00:10:52.650 We're based in Amsterdam. So we're a Dutch company founded by Dutch cheese. 133 00:10:52.660 --> 00:10:59.600 So my my favorite recycling is translation, so I can publish the 134 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:05.980 original content within the Dutch language area, that's not, not too too 135 00:11:05.980 --> 00:11:10.860 big, but we're talking about 20 million people or something or maybe a bit more. 136 00:11:10.940 --> 00:11:20.260 So if I translated to uh us English, then i it cost me uh some, but not not 137 00:11:20.260 --> 00:11:27.310 that many, and I have an original content in my head, um it's, of course, 138 00:11:27.320 --> 00:11:34.440 of course it's exactly the same, but it delivers me directly a broader, broader 139 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:39.250 audience. And it also means that I can can recycle it and have the double 140 00:11:39.250 --> 00:11:44.980 amount of use just by translating it. So that's the most, most easy part of 141 00:11:44.990 --> 00:11:51.430 content recycling and reusing a content from my perspective. The other way is 142 00:11:51.440 --> 00:11:58.180 what we, but we also uh did the first steps is we have a podcast since half 143 00:11:58.180 --> 00:12:04.970 year, or uh we did now nine episodes. And what I'm also trying to do is uh 144 00:12:04.980 --> 00:12:10.920 get the most important and most interesting parts per topic out of the 145 00:12:10.930 --> 00:12:17.240 podcast and create white papers out of out of bed. And that's what I I tried 146 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:23.590 that with with external writer. His ideas were really good, but I had to I 147 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:27.150 still have to follow up on that on that project. But it's also really 148 00:12:27.150 --> 00:12:34.100 interesting because he proposed to add if there's any new episode on your 149 00:12:34.100 --> 00:12:41.160 podcast To also renew the white papers and publish it when it's like seven or 150 00:12:41.170 --> 00:12:47.980 8 or nine pages long. And that's really interesting from from recycling 151 00:12:47.990 --> 00:12:52.660 perspective because it just it's it's a it's a machine, it just keeps on 152 00:12:52.660 --> 00:12:57.990 feeding with new new pieces of original content and I think original content 153 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:04.360 and original ideas, be it that you have derived those original ideas from front 154 00:13:04.360 --> 00:13:08.640 runners in the digital industry. So persons or people you interview, just 155 00:13:08.640 --> 00:13:12.740 like we're doing now, that doesn't matter, That is what counts when you're 156 00:13:12.740 --> 00:13:18.120 we're talking about for leadership. So that's also really interesting. Uh and 157 00:13:18.120 --> 00:13:25.160 we also once created a book that we did, it did the interviews in Dutch, and I 158 00:13:25.170 --> 00:13:31.810 translated the whole book to uh to english, and uh we printed it in 2.5 159 00:13:31.810 --> 00:13:37.950 1000 copies, but we also uh had it available for download in english on 160 00:13:37.950 --> 00:13:43.420 our website. So it's also created a lot of, a lot of leads, so that's also a 161 00:13:43.420 --> 00:13:48.400 way of uh of content recycling and distribution and getting it together 162 00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:54.380 and then ripping it apart again. So yeah, sometimes the smaller pieces of 163 00:13:54.380 --> 00:13:58.490 content add up to a bigger to a bigger piece of content, and it can be a white 164 00:13:58.490 --> 00:14:03.880 paper or a book or or an event or seminar man, that's fascinating idea. 165 00:14:03.890 --> 00:14:07.750 Taking smaller pieces to make a bigger piece. We usually do the opposite here 166 00:14:07.750 --> 00:14:10.770 sweet fish by taking a bigger piece, like a longer interview like this one 167 00:14:10.770 --> 00:14:13.800 and then break it up into a bunch of smaller pieces. But I can definitely 168 00:14:13.800 --> 00:14:16.940 see reverse engineering and going the other way. Yeah, that's actually 169 00:14:16.940 --> 00:14:21.250 something I'm thinking about doing this series is turning not a lot, I've done 170 00:14:21.250 --> 00:14:24.590 a lot of original research myself, but taking parts of these interviews and 171 00:14:24.590 --> 00:14:27.620 turning it into a book that we created as a sweet Fish playbook for thought 172 00:14:27.620 --> 00:14:30.610 leadership. But I'm already thinking along those lines and I think you 173 00:14:30.610 --> 00:14:34.520 shared this idea with me even last time we talked way back in the fall, they 174 00:14:34.520 --> 00:14:39.160 kind of circle back around though too, picking channels to publish your 175 00:14:39.540 --> 00:14:42.840 thought leadership in. It sounds like you're mostly going with written 176 00:14:42.840 --> 00:14:46.750 content because it's easier to like turn written content into different 177 00:14:46.750 --> 00:14:51.240 languages and then sometimes the audio content as a next next step for your, 178 00:14:51.250 --> 00:14:54.940 your channels. Um, I'd be curious to know like if you're, if you're 179 00:14:54.940 --> 00:14:58.100 translating a lot of the written content, are you also translating audio 180 00:14:58.100 --> 00:15:01.130 content? Like what language are you recording in? And then are you posting 181 00:15:01.130 --> 00:15:04.600 two episodes, one for different like or three episodes one for different 182 00:15:04.600 --> 00:15:09.060 languages? Like how are you handling language when it comes to podcast? Yeah, 183 00:15:09.070 --> 00:15:14.070 So we don't subtitle the podcast. What we do now is just recorded in english 184 00:15:14.070 --> 00:15:19.710 and that's it. We do it for the videos we published on linkedin. So when a new 185 00:15:19.710 --> 00:15:25.740 study comes out, we, we present the study findings in a, in a dashboard and 186 00:15:25.740 --> 00:15:31.990 we present the high level findings of those of those study results in a short, 187 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:36.710 uh, well a bit long at this moment, but we're trying to bring it back in in 188 00:15:36.710 --> 00:15:43.050 time, video on, on Lincoln. And we subtitled, uh, sometimes it's the, it's 189 00:15:43.050 --> 00:15:48.920 the languages in dutch and then we subtitle it in a translation in, in 190 00:15:48.920 --> 00:15:55.240 english. But what we try to do most of the times is to directly record the 191 00:15:55.250 --> 00:15:59.900 video in uh, in english and then have it subtitled also in english, so that 192 00:15:59.900 --> 00:16:06.660 people also can read uh, and don't have to plug in the any, uh, any airports or 193 00:16:06.660 --> 00:16:13.160 something. We didn't reverse the audio from english to, to touch because 194 00:16:13.540 --> 00:16:20.090 that's a lot of effort for a smaller language language area and I can, I can 195 00:16:20.090 --> 00:16:23.990 only make sense. I've had people ask me about it and I'm like, I don't have a 196 00:16:23.990 --> 00:16:28.190 good answer on that, customers asked me, I've had a few people in Lincoln like, 197 00:16:28.190 --> 00:16:31.240 how do you deal with languages? I'm like, I'm usually just doing english 198 00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:34.930 and distributing in english. That makes sense. That I would want to try to 199 00:16:34.930 --> 00:16:38.930 figure how to do it um, in different languages, I'm gonna have even wondered 200 00:16:38.930 --> 00:16:43.050 like if you're gonna distribute content via podcasting in different languages 201 00:16:43.050 --> 00:16:47.110 is better to have different episodes on the same episode or even split it out 202 00:16:47.110 --> 00:16:50.360 into different podcasts is kind of a thing. I would be interesting. It will 203 00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:54.900 be interesting to, to, I think that the spanish have not figured it out. Well, 204 00:16:54.900 --> 00:16:59.910 well, the spanish language area is of course also really, really, really big. 205 00:16:59.910 --> 00:17:04.560 So it would be, maybe it would be interesting also for you guys that beat, 206 00:17:04.560 --> 00:17:11.079 we grew up to do it in to have spanish episodes. Why not? It's huge. But then 207 00:17:11.079 --> 00:17:16.520 then you also have to have people who are who are natively or really, you got 208 00:17:16.520 --> 00:17:19.119 to think about your customer service teams and all that kind of stuff to 209 00:17:19.119 --> 00:17:22.720 work backwards and the languages, you know, that's something you guys have to 210 00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:25.599 think about and you're probably a little bit more but certainly symptom 211 00:17:25.599 --> 00:17:29.130 we're thinking more out here more. So we've kind of covered like what you 212 00:17:29.130 --> 00:17:32.580 would be doing in a smaller company if you're just getting started and what 213 00:17:32.580 --> 00:17:36.870 you're doing at your current organization. Um But I'd love to hear 214 00:17:36.870 --> 00:17:41.910 like if your boss walked in and gave you 10 X the budget to expand it, would 215 00:17:41.910 --> 00:17:44.910 you do something different or would you just scale what you're currently doing 216 00:17:44.910 --> 00:17:49.550 and make it more like tell me about what that would look like? Yeah, I I 217 00:17:49.550 --> 00:17:52.600 think I would definitely scale what we're what we're doing because when I 218 00:17:52.600 --> 00:17:58.180 started at this company I I came from uh I have a publishing and journalism 219 00:17:58.180 --> 00:18:02.420 background. So I really like the publishing part of the whole media 220 00:18:02.430 --> 00:18:08.940 media game. And I really see ourselves also really as a as a publisher of data 221 00:18:08.950 --> 00:18:14.320 and of qualitative. Really really good and professional too high professional 222 00:18:14.320 --> 00:18:20.660 standards insights on digital customer experience. So I I would definitely 223 00:18:20.670 --> 00:18:26.570 what I'd love is that everybody every company who wants to sell something 224 00:18:26.570 --> 00:18:31.870 online worked with us in the future. So I would definitely scale what we what 225 00:18:31.870 --> 00:18:37.640 we do what we do now and increase the budget for translations, increase the 226 00:18:37.640 --> 00:18:42.780 budget for editing. And I would really love to see are we now have research 227 00:18:42.780 --> 00:18:48.800 team of uh 11 digital research consultants. So there they studied 228 00:18:48.810 --> 00:18:54.600 neuropsychology or psychology or economics or or marketing and what we 229 00:18:54.600 --> 00:18:58.660 what we what I really would love is that they can only have two that, that 230 00:18:58.660 --> 00:19:04.590 they can check the content that is created by by external riders, so that 231 00:19:04.590 --> 00:19:08.790 you can scale up all the, all the things you already do and that, that 232 00:19:08.790 --> 00:19:14.450 just costs a lot of money to get professional riders who are skilled, 233 00:19:14.460 --> 00:19:20.190 who are flawless in their in their english and you also, I don't wanna 234 00:19:20.200 --> 00:19:24.600 have to check on what they've written, but you just know that it's that it's 235 00:19:24.600 --> 00:19:29.790 good from a language perspective of them, and I would I would definitely 236 00:19:29.790 --> 00:19:37.570 scale the distribution part. So, what we now do is we, we advertise a lot on 237 00:19:37.570 --> 00:19:44.330 on linkedin and we targeted on specific, specific job job groups or on people 238 00:19:44.330 --> 00:19:49.220 who are in the industry of finance, in the Netherlands, who are responsible 239 00:19:49.220 --> 00:19:54.640 for the mortgage or personal loan journey. You can easily target them on, 240 00:19:54.640 --> 00:19:59.540 on linkedin. But there are all around the planet. There are people who are 241 00:19:59.550 --> 00:20:05.470 doing that job at different banks and we want to reach them with all our 242 00:20:05.480 --> 00:20:09.240 research because really relevant for them, and if the data is not relevant 243 00:20:09.240 --> 00:20:14.640 for them, they should give us a call or drop us an email and say, hey, can you 244 00:20:14.650 --> 00:20:20.520 do this study for me in Portugal because I want to have a data of my own, 245 00:20:20.530 --> 00:20:26.610 uh, of the country I'm responsible for. So the scaling up about everything we 246 00:20:26.610 --> 00:20:34.350 did in the last year was getting the company ready to ready to skill. So 247 00:20:34.360 --> 00:20:38.570 that is the mantra of this year. And it's also for that, that's from the 248 00:20:38.570 --> 00:20:43.940 business perspective. So getting the organization ready to uh, to maximize 249 00:20:43.940 --> 00:20:48.510 the amount of studies we do in the next year, but it's also for the, for the 250 00:20:48.510 --> 00:20:56.060 fault leadership efforts and for our messages. We uh, we push to the, to the 251 00:20:56.060 --> 00:21:03.050 world, I want to have more more of what we already do because it's really, I 252 00:21:03.060 --> 00:21:10.570 think original research is the way to go to uh, to be, to be and stay 253 00:21:10.580 --> 00:21:19.010 relevant in this uh, in this era of, of info overload. So, um, and what I would 254 00:21:19.010 --> 00:21:28.570 do is because that's really also tends to be expensive in a way, uh, have more 255 00:21:28.580 --> 00:21:35.450 more on video marketing and create a Youtube channel and have it have it 256 00:21:35.460 --> 00:21:41.200 optimized for SEO purposes. And so that we can also be really that we can all 257 00:21:41.210 --> 00:21:47.280 that we get found more easily in what is the biggest, the second biggest 258 00:21:47.290 --> 00:21:52.450 search engine of the world. And we, yeah, we tend to forget that Youtube is 259 00:21:52.840 --> 00:21:57.760 that's that, that Youtube is the second biggest search engine of the world and, 260 00:21:57.760 --> 00:22:02.980 and we now don't don't do a lot of Yeah, yeah, but we we we we don't have that 261 00:22:02.990 --> 00:22:07.920 at this moment. And it's also, of course it's also priorities. But it's 262 00:22:07.920 --> 00:22:14.470 also uh, yeah, money and have an agency who helps you with that for content. We 263 00:22:14.470 --> 00:22:19.980 have already a translation and editing agency helping us with that. Its 264 00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:24.780 content to its based in the Netherlands and Amsterdam also, that's also already 265 00:22:24.780 --> 00:22:30.890 really nice in my idea of of of getting skills that you have a flexible set of 266 00:22:30.900 --> 00:22:37.510 professionals who write better than you. That that you can just ask to write 267 00:22:37.520 --> 00:22:42.080 content piece X or Y and they just do it and deliver it on time and stick to 268 00:22:42.080 --> 00:22:48.850 their deadlines. I really love that. Yeah. Hey, everybody Logan with sweet 269 00:22:48.850 --> 00:22:52.240 fish here. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know where 270 00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:56.970 big proponents of putting out original organic content on linked in. But one 271 00:22:56.970 --> 00:23:01.130 thing that's always been a struggle for a team like ours is to easily track the 272 00:23:01.130 --> 00:23:04.900 reach of that linked in content. That's why I was really excited when I heard 273 00:23:04.900 --> 00:23:08.830 about Shield the other day from a connection on, you guessed it linked in 274 00:23:08.840 --> 00:23:13.700 since our team started using Shield. I've loved how it's led us easily track 275 00:23:13.710 --> 00:23:17.630 and analyze the performance of our linkedin content without having to 276 00:23:17.630 --> 00:23:21.480 manually log it ourselves. It automatically creates reports and 277 00:23:21.480 --> 00:23:25.100 generate some dashboards that are incredibly useful to see things like 278 00:23:25.110 --> 00:23:28.570 what contents been performing the best and what days of the week are we 279 00:23:28.570 --> 00:23:32.960 getting the most engagement and our average views per post, I highly 280 00:23:32.960 --> 00:23:36.410 suggest you guys check out this tool. If you're putting out content on linked 281 00:23:36.410 --> 00:23:40.540 in and if you're not you should be. It's been a game changer for us. If you 282 00:23:40.540 --> 00:23:45.710 go to shield app dot ai and check out the 10 day free trial. You can even use 283 00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:51.980 our promo code B two B growth to get a 25% discount again. That's shield app 284 00:23:51.990 --> 00:23:58.160 dot Ai And that promo code is B the number two de growth. All one word. All 285 00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:04.800 right. Let's get back to the show. So I definitely hear you want to build a 286 00:24:04.800 --> 00:24:10.420 writing team? Maybe have an editor can like editing and kind of moderating 287 00:24:10.420 --> 00:24:15.340 that writing team. Right? Maybe a small video team if if it was 10 X the budget. 288 00:24:15.340 --> 00:24:20.360 Right, definitely. Would you add like a subject matter expert to the mix that 289 00:24:20.360 --> 00:24:25.970 could do nothing but talk or would you go and find just find external subject 290 00:24:25.970 --> 00:24:30.120 matter experts in order to get more data from Or would you just depend on 291 00:24:30.120 --> 00:24:34.930 the benchmarks you already have? I almost wonder if like 10 x the budget, 292 00:24:34.930 --> 00:24:40.880 I'd almost be hiring someone that was nothing but the idea guy or a girl, you 293 00:24:40.880 --> 00:24:45.450 know looking at the data and then just I pretty much just put a microphone in 294 00:24:45.450 --> 00:24:49.160 front of that person, just be like talk will be turned into a lot of articles 295 00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:55.750 or something like that. Well uh if you if you take a look at how Forrester 296 00:24:55.760 --> 00:25:02.060 Research company did that in the last years. They had keynote speakers all 297 00:25:02.060 --> 00:25:06.070 over the, all over the place and when those keynote speakers became 298 00:25:06.070 --> 00:25:11.330 successful they left Forrester so it's Jeremiah o yang brian solis chillingly 299 00:25:11.330 --> 00:25:16.570 just burn off to name a few. They all uh that was the strategy of first to 300 00:25:16.570 --> 00:25:21.810 get the first message across and they did nothing. They did exactly what you, 301 00:25:21.820 --> 00:25:25.620 what you said. And they also were principal consultants, of course, so 302 00:25:25.620 --> 00:25:30.200 they did the probably, I don't know, I've never worked at first and also 303 00:25:30.210 --> 00:25:35.540 didn't talk to them the last couple of years. But but what they did is is just 304 00:25:35.550 --> 00:25:43.140 get the get a really inspiring story online or digital or on well board, 305 00:25:43.140 --> 00:25:48.400 board level uh, strategic stuff that people found relevant. And they wrote 306 00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:53.210 books about it and they and they were all over the place in the last last 307 00:25:53.210 --> 00:25:59.250 decade. And that's really, really smart. But it's also of course costing a lot 308 00:25:59.250 --> 00:26:05.590 of money in a way because it's not always directly delivering dollars or, 309 00:26:05.590 --> 00:26:11.060 or bottom line euros. But that's a really interesting strategy uh, 310 00:26:11.070 --> 00:26:15.690 strategy to go. But I think that you have to have a bit of a scale in your 311 00:26:15.690 --> 00:26:21.890 organization to to adapt to that strategy. But in small, we're already 312 00:26:21.890 --> 00:26:29.300 doing that because our our our ceo is now more becoming the the guy who gets 313 00:26:29.300 --> 00:26:36.550 the uh boom message across uh talking about digital excellence at at big uh 314 00:26:36.560 --> 00:26:42.140 Fintech, uh I was ATF innovate, innovate europe in the last uh in 315 00:26:42.150 --> 00:26:46.920 november. So he's already getting the stages and in the in the in the 316 00:26:46.920 --> 00:26:51.920 Netherlands were already delivered keynotes by are researchers, 317 00:26:51.930 --> 00:26:57.280 researchers sometimes with clients in duo duo presentation. And they get on 318 00:26:57.280 --> 00:27:04.750 the on the speaking platform because uh they also love to of course they wanna 319 00:27:04.760 --> 00:27:11.500 they wanna shine with their expertise, but it's also really interesting as a 320 00:27:11.500 --> 00:27:17.230 professional to do those uh performances. Um so in small, we 321 00:27:17.230 --> 00:27:25.850 already uh we already did it, but um if you have 10 times the budget, then uh 322 00:27:25.860 --> 00:27:32.530 probably you can hire more research consultants who spend more time on 323 00:27:32.530 --> 00:27:38.250 those guest appearances and fly around the world to get the message across. If 324 00:27:38.250 --> 00:27:45.570 Covid, Covid is gone then probably uh we will again fly around the world and 325 00:27:45.580 --> 00:27:50.640 and and take some more international also create a more international 326 00:27:50.640 --> 00:27:56.820 footprint there. But to be honest that costs a lot of Yeah I definitely think 327 00:27:56.830 --> 00:27:59.970 I think you're right and that the bigger piece would be the publishing 328 00:27:59.970 --> 00:28:04.460 team, the writing and publishing team. Right? Because there's probably your 329 00:28:04.460 --> 00:28:07.370 company already has subject matter experts. The time is actually 330 00:28:07.380 --> 00:28:11.450 converting their expertise into thought leadership, converting their ideas into 331 00:28:11.450 --> 00:28:15.760 something that people can actually read and consume. Because I don't know I 332 00:28:15.760 --> 00:28:20.750 find that subject matter experts are usually not the best writing and like 333 00:28:20.750 --> 00:28:26.090 presenting. So having a so a journalist especially a team with the journalistic 334 00:28:26.100 --> 00:28:29.810 background is going to be able to take and turn a lot of those ideas into 335 00:28:29.810 --> 00:28:34.340 something they just consumed a lot more what what what what we see at our 336 00:28:34.340 --> 00:28:40.450 company is that they are rock stars in presenting and they are also uh rock 337 00:28:40.450 --> 00:28:44.390 stars in writing. But they at this moment they're not that they don't have 338 00:28:44.400 --> 00:28:47.860 most of the time, they don't have time to do it because they're working for 339 00:28:47.940 --> 00:28:54.090 demanding clients and it's totally appropriate that they are demanding 340 00:28:54.090 --> 00:28:57.860 because they just want one of the best and they can get it. But it costs a lot 341 00:28:57.860 --> 00:29:04.220 of time to serve them. So it's it's also uh and what I can't do it all, you 342 00:29:04.230 --> 00:29:08.390 better to have your expertise pushing pushing the way forward and having 343 00:29:08.390 --> 00:29:12.130 somebody else doing the thing that you can hire them out for. Yeah or or you 344 00:29:12.140 --> 00:29:17.530 you should. And that's also what I would definitely do if you uh if I if I 345 00:29:17.530 --> 00:29:21.500 would have had 10 times the budget, I would definitely push the budget 346 00:29:21.510 --> 00:29:29.350 towards the research team. And also towards uh to get maybe to come to 347 00:29:29.350 --> 00:29:36.470 agreement of 20 or 30, of your time comes in is reserved for content 348 00:29:36.470 --> 00:29:41.380 marketing purposes. And be it a podcast, be it a white paper, be it a blog 349 00:29:41.390 --> 00:29:46.940 article being the keynote speech at a big webinar, It doesn't matter. But 350 00:29:46.940 --> 00:29:52.210 that's something that that is. I'm working on that every day to get to get 351 00:29:52.210 --> 00:29:59.640 the to get that message across. And yes, it does really matter what kind of 352 00:29:59.640 --> 00:30:05.750 people what kind of D. N. A. That's you have inside you if you're an introvert 353 00:30:05.750 --> 00:30:10.280 or an extrovert. And and then what I would say is that you have to cherish 354 00:30:10.280 --> 00:30:16.290 that and and see how you can contribute instead of saying this is, this is 355 00:30:16.290 --> 00:30:20.800 nothing, this is nothing for me. And let me just do some, let me just do the 356 00:30:20.800 --> 00:30:26.410 client berg, that's a really big shift were making at the company also that 357 00:30:26.420 --> 00:30:32.550 everybody can contribute in a way and I'm facilitating, uh, that they can 358 00:30:32.560 --> 00:30:38.460 contribute so everything, everything is possible. Yeah. My last question is 359 00:30:38.460 --> 00:30:43.220 following up on video. I actually find video to be very fascinating. I do have 360 00:30:43.220 --> 00:30:46.630 in my, my like, I guess I don't even have it written down, but in my mental 361 00:30:46.630 --> 00:30:50.400 roadmap for sweet fish media to push hard into Youtube Within the next year 362 00:30:50.400 --> 00:30:54.200 or two. I think YouTube is going to get bigger, even though as big as it is 363 00:30:54.200 --> 00:30:57.120 already. I'm like, I don't know, I'm predicting that it's going to be twice 364 00:30:57.120 --> 00:31:01.630 as big in 10 years. But though I'm curious to hear like, why are you going 365 00:31:01.630 --> 00:31:04.640 into Youtube? Like what's your hypothesis in video and Youtube 366 00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:10.820 specifically? Yeah, I recently saw a presentation of video marketing agency 367 00:31:10.820 --> 00:31:18.210 and he said that the how to content is and also the uh, yeah, so how to 368 00:31:18.210 --> 00:31:24.360 content is really container is that it's a lot, but that people are just 369 00:31:24.440 --> 00:31:31.050 searching for on Youtube tube explore and to do, to do stuff themselves or 370 00:31:31.060 --> 00:31:36.070 learn, learn stuff, learned how to do stuff. And I would say that that there 371 00:31:36.070 --> 00:31:42.980 is a big chance also uh for us and that if I agree with you that youtube is 372 00:31:42.990 --> 00:31:49.930 really big and, and also I think also it's gonna gonna grow uh faster than 373 00:31:49.930 --> 00:31:57.260 they just really, really dominant. And we, we forget that people search there. 374 00:31:57.640 --> 00:32:02.670 First they go to google and second they go to go to Youtube to search for stuff 375 00:32:02.680 --> 00:32:09.060 and video is now so much more easy. It's not it's not all the internet 376 00:32:09.060 --> 00:32:15.330 connection speeds are are there five G is coming up? Everybody has a big as 377 00:32:15.340 --> 00:32:20.900 powerful uh internet internet speed in the in the in the western world. So 378 00:32:20.910 --> 00:32:24.800 that was that was in the past, that was the big problem with video. And then 379 00:32:24.940 --> 00:32:29.560 yeah, you just say oh well we can more easily do it in text and it's more uh 380 00:32:29.570 --> 00:32:34.790 it's better found in google but we're in a total different different 381 00:32:34.790 --> 00:32:40.770 landscape at this moment. So for me also it would be really more logical to 382 00:32:41.240 --> 00:32:49.680 get the message out also on on Youtube. And and I think we're also gonna start 383 00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:54.670 it somewhere this year just with all the videos that we're now publishing 384 00:32:54.670 --> 00:33:00.840 native on on on Lincoln, I'm just gonna upload them all to Youtube and get some 385 00:33:00.850 --> 00:33:08.060 advice by the video marketing guys on how to optimize it for S. E. O. 386 00:33:08.060 --> 00:33:13.960 Purposes. And then I'm gonna see what happens and it's more or less ashamed. 387 00:33:14.040 --> 00:33:19.460 But we didn't already professionalize our, our Youtube channel at this at 388 00:33:19.460 --> 00:33:25.210 this moment. So that's a note to self uh this moment. Yeah, I think you're 389 00:33:25.210 --> 00:33:29.940 good. I actually think by doing now you're early In my opinion. Like B2B 390 00:33:29.940 --> 00:33:34.010 content doesn't do that great on YouTube right now. Real estate didn't 391 00:33:34.010 --> 00:33:40.230 do well on Youtube until two years ago now, it's blowing up like, But if you 392 00:33:40.230 --> 00:33:44.560 look at the trends of Youtube, the way gen Z interacts with Youtube is very 393 00:33:44.560 --> 00:33:48.060 different from millennials, Millennials would go there and reference things all 394 00:33:48.060 --> 00:33:53.130 the time, but gen Z like subscribes the channels are like passionate about 395 00:33:53.130 --> 00:33:57.100 following every single video from certain creators. So their consumption 396 00:33:57.100 --> 00:34:00.950 levels like through the roof compared to millennials and they're just now 397 00:34:00.950 --> 00:34:04.560 graduating college, depending on where you put gen Z at. As far as your 398 00:34:04.560 --> 00:34:11.580 timeline goes, If you put it at 2000, then there what, 2020 21? So they're 21 399 00:34:11.590 --> 00:34:15.090 they're literally just like, they're in their last year of college, maybe you 400 00:34:15.090 --> 00:34:18.550 push it, push it all the way back to 95 but they're just out of college. They 401 00:34:18.550 --> 00:34:21.860 haven't yet really started searching for all the stuff that's considered me 402 00:34:21.860 --> 00:34:25.120 to be because usually getting into B two B maybe you're studying like 403 00:34:25.120 --> 00:34:27.750 marketing in general, in college and you're starting to go through those 404 00:34:28.040 --> 00:34:31.560 Crappy YouTube videos that are there. But even like marketing in general, 405 00:34:31.560 --> 00:34:35.360 entrepreneurialism is really popular on YouTube. But like B2B content isn't 406 00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:40.630 popular yet. Right? As gen Z starts to grow up and starts to do what they do 407 00:34:40.630 --> 00:34:43.300 by learning through youtube, they're gonna start looking for me to be 408 00:34:43.300 --> 00:34:46.900 content. They're gonna start looking for those deeper things beyond what 409 00:34:46.900 --> 00:34:51.650 Neil Patel's posting. So it's going to be bigger and there's going to be more 410 00:34:51.650 --> 00:34:55.460 people there and YouTube so far is the only place that like, really pays 411 00:34:55.460 --> 00:34:58.860 creators. So I expect that that's going to pan out over the next 10 years. 412 00:34:59.340 --> 00:35:03.080 Everybody else just like wants you to give them money to reach your full 413 00:35:03.080 --> 00:35:07.710 audience where youtube actually pays you. So I think more and more creators 414 00:35:07.710 --> 00:35:11.300 going to go there interesting. They, they've got a, that's my, that's my two 415 00:35:11.300 --> 00:35:15.620 cents on youtube anyway, so I think you're, you're not late to the game. 416 00:35:15.630 --> 00:35:23.000 Great. That's a, that's a relief for, at this moment. Yeah. Even now I think 417 00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:27.160 I have two years before we can still be considered early. One thing I do know 418 00:35:27.160 --> 00:35:31.640 about Youtube's, it takes a long time. Like so be prepared to like slog 419 00:35:31.640 --> 00:35:35.790 through it for like quite a few years before you start to see traction. Even 420 00:35:35.790 --> 00:35:40.310 if you're giving it your best shot, it's a long game. Everybody I've heard 421 00:35:40.310 --> 00:35:44.800 that gets successful on Youtube is like, they're like, oh yeah, we just, we knew 422 00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:48.370 we were going to make a 3 to 5 year commitment and didn't, we just just 423 00:35:48.370 --> 00:35:51.570 decided not to really like we looked at the metrics to optimize of course, but 424 00:35:51.570 --> 00:35:56.730 like we didn't let the lack of being having a million subscribers like stop 425 00:35:56.730 --> 00:36:01.550 us from producing our best content every week. So it just takes a long 426 00:36:01.550 --> 00:36:06.860 time. But those who pay it early. By the time we're getting around 2030, 427 00:36:06.870 --> 00:36:11.070 we'll be reaping the rewards. That's, that's my opinion. And I think a lot 428 00:36:11.070 --> 00:36:15.400 leadership is going to play a big role in that. Anyway, I have to wrap this up. 429 00:36:15.400 --> 00:36:19.420 This has been a fantastic time getting to know you Matthew and getting to know 430 00:36:19.420 --> 00:36:24.020 what you would be doing for companies, where they're small or who are growing 431 00:36:24.020 --> 00:36:28.730 rapidly and have lots of cash to spend. If people want to learn more and dive 432 00:36:28.730 --> 00:36:32.150 into what you've, all the insights you've learned about thought leadership 433 00:36:32.150 --> 00:36:35.610 after doing this for over five years. Um where can they go to learn more 434 00:36:35.610 --> 00:36:42.320 about you? And your company will uh well best is uh just visit the website 435 00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:47.340 and then you can do a global dot com and you get, if you are a new visitor 436 00:36:47.340 --> 00:36:52.240 you get you get a pop up with subscribe subscription to our newsletter monthly. 437 00:36:52.330 --> 00:37:00.040 And all our data and fresh research is published on our linkedin linkedin page. 438 00:37:00.330 --> 00:37:06.130 And that's uh easily found fire fire of a global in in the Lincoln search and 439 00:37:06.130 --> 00:37:11.130 in the company a company section. Uh yeah, that would that would be best to 440 00:37:11.140 --> 00:37:17.460 say they updated and you can connect with me on linkedin also with otitis 441 00:37:17.460 --> 00:37:22.460 funding book. Fantastic again. Thank you for joining me. I'm GDP Growth. 442 00:37:23.030 --> 00:37:24.050 Thanks for having me dan 443 00:37:26.430 --> 00:37:31.070 Is your buyer at BDB Marketer. If so, you should think about sponsoring this 444 00:37:31.070 --> 00:37:36.020 podcast. BTB growth gets downloaded over 130 1000 times each month and our 445 00:37:36.020 --> 00:37:39.840 listeners are marketing decision makers. If it sounds interesting, send Logan 446 00:37:39.840 --> 00:37:44.250 and email Logan at sweet fish Media dot com.