Demand Wars Ep 5 - Unscalable Experiences
Episode 5 of Demand Wars by Bolaji O.
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Previously on "Demat Wars."
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Entering the demand from room, one will not survive.
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This is "Demat Wars."
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"Demat Wars" is sponsored by Active Campaign.
Grow real relationships with prospects, customers, and partners all under one
roof.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.
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What's up people? This is Balaji and welcome to another edition of the "Demat
Wars."
Now, he's the executive producer of B2B Grow, your favorite marketers favorite
show.
He's the fourth behind "Sweet Fish Media" where commodity content is the enemy,
with content franchises like "The Journey," "Echo Chamber," "Original Research
."
He's on a mission to make B2B cool again, or maybe for the first time.
Please help me welcome the counselor of content-based network,
the abbot of Affinity the founder of Sweet Fish Media, Jay!
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This is going to be incredible, man.
Too much, not too much.
That's just right. We had to set it up, man. We had to set it up.
Let's go. Let's go. All right. So, James, you've been helicoptered onto a
desert island.
You're given a budget of $1,000 a month only.
You've got to take a brand to market, a B2B brand to market,
with that very limited budget. How do you do it?
So, I think I would run the same playbook that I've run several times at this
point in my career,
but I would start a podcast and I would figure out who are the movers and sh
akers in the industry
that I need to know, who are my ideal buyers, that I want to build
relationships with,
who are potential referral partners that I know would be really strategic for
me to lock arms with.
I would start a show not about what I do, but I would start a show about the
industry that I'm serving,
and what is the persona of the people that I'm trying to serve,
and I would just start doing content-based networking.
I hear a lot of people say that building a media company, doing this is so
expensive,
you have to have all that. I did it for me to be growth whenever we didn't have
two pennies to rub together.
I've done it with young married Christian, I've done it with so many of our
clients,
shows at this point it's crazy, but I think for $1,000 a month, if you wanted
to get scrappy,
you could figure out how to make content-based networking work and that's how I
would go to market.
That's really interesting, you called out a distinction there, James, that I
want to highlight.
You said, "I'll start a podcast." Okay, he's a podcast guy, we expected him to
say that,
he literally has the letter P on his hat. But you said you're going to create a
show not about what you do,
but about the industry and the personas. I want to highlight, folks might not
notice,
I've got on a white shirt today, I actually have on All White, James and I were
talking right before we started recording,
about the fact that I'm going to watch the Black Panther movie right after this
So my wife is actually outside the room looking at the clock, so I've got a
hard stop, but I've got the All White on,
and pretty much everybody in the movie theater is going to have the All White
on. This is an event,
it's not just paying $10 or $11 or $12 to go to a movie, people feel like for a
certain segment,
this movie, this is us, this is our story. I mean, that's a powerful thing when
you can get people actually dressing up,
dressing alike to go to the movies. And when you create a show that's not about
your brand,
I don't, I'm not thinking about Marvel, I'm not thinking about Disney, I'm
thinking about that,
this is a show about a culture, this is for the culture.
We've got to be able to put our customers at the center of our stories and make
them the hero of our stories.
So that's what I took away from your strategy here, James.
Yeah, the story that I tell all the time, I mean what we did with B2B growth, B
2B growth just, I think,
last month it hit number one in the marketing category in the US, and there's
no way that we would have a number one rated marketing
podcast had we named the show the B2B podcasting show, which is our expertise
and what we do.
Instead, we named it B2B growth, we went after VPs of marketing, marketing
leaders at these B2B companies,
we told their stories, we learned from them, what struggles they're going
through, now we're starting to shift the show
away from being exclusively interview based, but we're still talking about B2B
growth.
And yes, do we talk about B2B podcasting from time to time? Obviously, I think
you have to at some point inject what you do into your content,
it can't just be something that you never talk about, but you can do it in
creative ways.
Like you mentioned earlier, the journey is a content franchise with him B2B
growth, where we talk about our journey to building B2B growth,
to be every marketer's favorite media brand, and in our pursuit of talking
about that,
it's really going to talk about what we do at Sweetfish. But it's not this on
the nose, buy our thing type of rallying cry that you see a lot of marketers
doing,
and that's all they're doing, is talking about their thing. They're not
creating content that is helpful outside of the context of what they
specifically do, and I think that's part of the secret sauce of creating a media brand, of
creating a show that actually resonates,
is you have to get out of the box of what you do. Yeah, I love that. I love
that, James.
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Demand Wars is sponsored by Exit 5. There's no school for B2B marketing. That's
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Round 2, point.
What's going on people? This is Blodgy and welcome to another edition of Demand
Wars.
Now, he is the CEO and founder of Proofpoint Marketing. He says, "Show me the
proof, it gets to the point.
Proofpoint helps brands acquire the right customers by building relationships
at scale."
You're about to learn how much into relationships Mike and his wife Gabby
actually are. This is more than a slogan for these folks.
Listen, Mike started as a graphic designer, but he transitioned into marketing.
He's a creative problem solver,
and amateur combat sports enthusiast. I want you to put your hands together and
help me welcome Mr. Mike Ripper.
What's up Mike?
What's going on? That's probably the best that you've ever heard. That's great.
Thank you for that. I have to live up to the name.
Hey, listen, your reputation precedes you.
So, it depends on a type of company and growth stage. So, for example, if I'm
in the B2B e-commerce game,
then I'm going to take that entire budget and I'm going to spend it on paid
searches as weird as that might sound.
Because there's got to be some existing demand. You're not getting into the e-
comm game if there's not some demand out there for the products.
So, whenever let's assume it's commercial piping equipment.
Right, like there's already people already buying these products. I'm literally
just going to spend that tiny budget on capturing whatever demand I get.
If I'm selling a complex service, then I'm probably going to spend that budget
on small niche regional conferences.
Although if I'm starting a desert island, maybe small niche virtual events.
If I'm selling software, maybe I'm investing into a product hunt campaign or
doing a lifetime deal in an absolute moment.
Right, I'm on a later stage company. I've already got a $4 billion consulting
firm or something.
I just have a small marketing team and I'm looking to do something.
I'm going to probably do something different. Maybe I will take my one marketer
in house and create my podcast at that point to build affinity.
Right, so that's my...
Very interesting and really detailed. So, V2B e-commerce differs from selling a
complex service, which differs from selling software, especially early stage.
If you're later stage of the more affinity building.
This is useful. I've heard you talk before, Mike, about the perils of taking
advice on LinkedIn at face value.
And instead, needing to go layers deeper to make sure that nuances are taken
into account.
Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's exactly it.
The thing we were just talking about, V2B, e-commerce, a lot of the stuff that
's out there.
LinkedIn just happens to be very much skewed toward VC backed tech.
A lot of those things, not that some of the concepts, and this is where mindset
skill sets, tool sets, results even come with a play too.
Some of the mindsets, I think, apply some of the concepts or frameworks might
apply.
But the actual execution probably doesn't.
It's just a very different volume.
And that becomes, you know, what's your fun? Like, this is where understanding
business is important, right?
Are you private equity backed versus VC backed? Are you bootstrapped?
All those things have played huge part in what you're actually going to do.
Because that's what's going to drive your business strategy.
That makes sense.
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Round 3.
Fight!
What's going on people? This is Balaji and welcome to another edition of Demand
Wars.
He helped help staff grow from 200 kids of $5 million ARR in four years.
He's out one side triple ARR in two years.
He's grown ARR for nine different companies, consulted with everybody from Pro
Pro to Right Sonic, Weflow, Tamiro.
His go-to growth strategy is SEO complimented by content affiliates and paid
ads.
You don't hear that combo very often in B2B, the founder of early stage
marketing, the creator of Remote Marketing Blog and Podcast.
He was almost a musician, instead of a market mother son, all the way from
Delhi, India.
Please help me welcome Maav Manj.
Welcome.
That's it and we're so happy to be here.
That was so good.
A lot of experiences, a lot of learnings that I've had of the journey.
I would just go about sharing those experiences.
That's the simplest, easiest way.
I would just like write, point and get videos and just like just share out the
story.
That's interesting, Maav.
I know you've worked with a lot of early stage companies.
I've had that opportunity as well.
A lot of times when we create software products, the temptation is to lead with
features.
Or if we're even maybe feeling pretty good features and benefits.
But you haven't necessarily started there. Why would you think of starting from
stories and experiences?
Yeah, I think that's essentially what's else.
For example, nobody's going to, let's say, following me on LinkedIn.
Nobody's going to see a post where it's like, "Hey, here's a product, here's a
feature you should probably try and everything."
Because they don't have the context, they don't have the understanding that all
of this is coming from.
With experiences, you can take them through that journey.
You can basically turn them from people who have no idea.
To this background and this story and these educated people that are now trying
to understand,
"You know what? This kind of makes sense to me."
Why don't you tell me more about it?
Those are the ones that tend to become these really good folks that could
potentially be converted into actual customers
and everything. And so that's what I think. I always believe that you should
always start with a story and your personal experiences.
Try to find that connection and then go from there perhaps.
It's really fascinating. Again, everybody has a story. It's free.
And a lot of companies that are struggling to, especially new companies,
struggling to build brand awareness,
it's really noisy out there.
But let's take Madav's story for example.
If I told you, if I simply said Madav is the founder of Remote Marketing,
okay, that might just sort of wash over you.
But the fact that Madav shared the story of his mother raising him, traveling
30 kilometers, think of how specific that is.
I've never been to Delhi before, but I can envision her traveling from the
outskirts to the city center, 30 kilometers.
I think on one show you had said a three hour daily commute.
Why in the world do I remember that?
It's his story.
That's correct. That's exactly it.
And that's the thing that also kind of drives me as well.
And you want to kind of share that particular pain with everybody.
And you want all of the people that kind of share that same pain or a similar
experience.
Think of it like this. When you look in the healthcare world, let's say you
perhaps have a disease or something.
People want to read up experiences of other people.
Hey, how big was this?
It's the same.
And those personal experiences connect those people.
And they find solutions collectively together.
Even if you look at, I mean like we're going on a different tangent here.
But even if you look at ALS, the entire community, even those guys, everybody
is kind of just so well connected.
They're all kind of talking about their shared medicine, experience and
everything.
So what I'm trying to tell is that when you're going to start with that
experience,
these are completely different and completely different emotional experiences.
But like you can kind of connect with the audience and then kind of
collectively go on that journey.
And that usually works pretty well in the mind.
Fascinating. Fascinating. That's a unique angle that nobody else has taken. I
appreciate you.
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Round 4.
Fight!
Hey folks, this is Vlogi and welcome to another edition of Demand Wars.
We've got a very special guest.
Let me set this up for you.
He's the creator of VEGMAT.
He's a writer and video coach specializing in sales and sketch comedy.
He's an alumnus of Second City Improv in Chicago.
Yes, the same place they key in sales.
Now, just improv based approach to content creation in sales.
Just like markets like a seller and sells like a content marketer.
Please help me.
Who demand Mr. Chris Cole.
That was amazing.
That was ridiculous.
Alright, it's $1000.
Okay, so first buy a stack of fake money.
It costs like nine bucks on Amazon. It always gets a lot.
Oh my gosh.
First off, I would buy a phone.
I know everybody's already got a phone.
I bought like a $150 phone.
Like my, you know, just a phone specifically for content creation and a tripod.
And that just sits out at all times.
Oh wow.
You know, an iPhone 7, you get good visuals on there.
If you're in good lighting, that is HD video.
I never have to worry about deleting footage.
I never run out of space.
Storage is important.
So I would actually say get a cheap cell phone and get an external hard drive.
Because if you're doing this, you've got to be out there a lot and you're going
to have a lot of footage.
And you would not believe how much easier it is when you're not constantly
moving around files and deleting things.
So yeah, I would say some storage and a phone that's just always ready to go.
Oh, got it.
So I got that.
I would pay for LinkedIn sales navigator.
I think it's totally worth it.
But it's very helpful for me to understand who my audience is and exactly what
they care about.
Part of working to organizations is you're not just selling to the decision
maker.
You are influencing the whole organization.
I want to see what their content team is doing.
I want to understand their values.
And like, yeah, it's expensive, but I think it's worth it.
Obviously you need to collect money.
So it's like you need a straight account, a landing page of some sort.
You can do that for free on card.
You can set up a gum road account for free.
You're going to need a scheduler of some kind.
So you've got to be out there every single day.
It is not reasonable to expect yourself to write amazing stuff every day and
shoot an amazing video every day.
You're going to need to make that a process where you're writing a bunch at a
time
where you're filming multiple videos in one batch.
So a scheduler is your friend.
It's not very expensive.
You can get one of those for 10, 20 bucks a month.
I use one up, not expensive.
Here's one that nobody does.
Stock footage.
I pay $30 a month for a Storyblocks subscription.
And I cannot tell you how much more professional it makes my stuff.
So Storyblocks has an in-program editor that they just launched.
But I have access to just millions of stock footage, stock audio, stock sound
effects, stock photography, stock motion graphics, and templates that's $30 a
month.
And I never have to worry about violating copyright.
And then, yeah, last thing I'll say that you should get is some sort of editing
program.
I use Adobe.
Adobe Premiere Pro.
It's more expensive.
There is a learning curve.
For the beginner, I would recommend using something like Descript, which is an
audio and video editing program.
It's great for podcasters.
It's great for people who don't have a lot of time, who want to put consistent
videos out there on LinkedIn with good quality captions.
Last but not honorable mention, I don't use it, but Canva Pro.
If you're not using Adobe, if you're not using Storyblocks, Canva Pro is
another way where you can easily create professional looking graphics.
A lot of the stuff I did early on got me high visibility without costing me any
money.
And the reason why I would reach out to companies, I would watch the companies
who were doing video content.
I could tell they were putting effort into the content.
And I would comment, I would engage, and then afterwards, I would just send
them a message.
Being like, "Hey, I really enjoyed that. That was a really nice job."
Now, one, this opened up the lines of communication with me and leaders in the
companies that I needed to influence.
But what it also did was it put me into their newsfeed.
If you were interacting with somebody in the DMs, you are more likely to show
up in their newsfeed as they're scrolling through social media.
And yeah, this is what I did early on. This is what I recommend content
creators to, is like, if you're just starting out and you have no brand.
Every single person who likes or comments on your stuff, send them a DM and
thank them.
And ask them if there was anything resonated with them.
And this gave me a really good idea early on of what my audience actually
values.
And what problems they would actually like me to hear about.
It boosted my performance in their newsfeed. They saw me instead of other
creators who have a zillion followers just because I was already talking to
them.
And yeah, it led to business. Early on, I did not have a giant reputation.
Early on, I lost clients because I couldn't even collect their money. I didn't
have a good way to collect their money.
I was just starting out and I didn't know what I was doing.
But I was getting inbound requests for people who wanted me to teach them video
Because I knew who my people were and I knew how to make sure that they got the
message seen.
And the bigger my following gets, the easier that is to do.
But if you're starting in the middle of the desert island and you don't have a
big reputation that's going to carry you,
again, you need to start momentum.
And, you know, it's not that hard to get.
Actually, you just talk to the people who are already rolling.
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And train the demand from room. One will not survive.
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Welcome to the Rebel Alliance Cookie Giveaway. All you had to do to enter was
vote for your favorite demand warrior in any episode of Demand Wars.
Every episode that you vote in, your name gets put onto the spin wheel again.
So, let's spin the wheel and see whom Grove Cookie Company is going to send
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Phil Dijonaro.
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at Grove Cookie Company.
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