Tacara Devetis: Scaling Content Syndication for Accelerated Growth

Sourabh:
‍First things first. In your experience, where has your content come from? Has it been mostly in-house? Has it been mostly, you know, with sort of selected agencies?

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TaCara:
Yeah, so a little bit of both. I've definitely enjoyed working with in-house content. You get a lot of consistency with in-house content, and it's also a good turnaround if you have a great team. Agencies will produce great content for you as well. There's always gonna be… There's a difference between investing in a whole content team in your org industry and going to an agency. So there's gonna be different solutions available, obviously. But I really like in-house content and then leveraging that with different vendor partners. That's really my favorite, but you can do it either way. Ultimately, I think really good content is gonna come from your target audience’s Frequently Asked Questions. So whether you're making it yourself or getting someone else to make it for you, you utilize whatever you would put in your Frequently Asked Questions page on your website to start because that's where you know what those pain points are. You know what your audience's interests are, and you wanna speak to those as like a catching point.

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Sourabh:
Love it. And just so you know, Takara, I didn't warn you, but that was your only easy question. They all get harder from here. Okay?

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TaCara:
Okay.

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Sourabh:
‍I'm gonna double down on what you said there, right? I love that little entry into the mindset of your target buyer, the FAQs, right? What do you need to know? Great. And that's wonderful for setting a tight, you know, content strategy around a known persona. Now I'm gonna blow that up. Okay? So let's say that works for your target audience. It works for the growth you've had as a company until now, but you want to go bigger. How do you build content for a much larger audience when you have a niche persona?

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TaCara:
‍Depending on what industry you're in, basically deciding what can you be an authoritative voice on? What are you, you know, who… What in your industry do you know better than your competitors? And if you can provide a valuable source of information a constant resource that says that is going to set you as an authoritative source in your industry that will approach not only your buyer persona, but maybe like their colleagues or peers, you know, and provide yourself as a brand recognition of a brand that knows what they're doing. I'm speaking in such vague terms because we're not speaking industry specific, but that's the idea. And I could definitely, you know, if someone had an industry specifically that they wanted an example of, we could deep dive into that. But that's what you wanna do is become a resource. Before they buy anything, be a resource of some sort of intellectual concept that positions you with brand authority.

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Sourabh:
I have three potential industries. Okay? So we have to talk about the HR buyer because it is extremely challenging right now for HR tech companies, right? The space has gotten very crowded. Budgets have crunched. HR is more stressed now than possibly even during the pandemic. This is a very bad time for our HR friends, right? So for the HR buyer, right? I'm gonna take one spin on this. I've given you an industry, right? Focusing on that persona, but beyond just how you design content for that buyer, I'd love— because not a lot of people can do this. I'd love for you to talk about the different mediums of content you use to get to that buyer. 

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TaCara:
Sorry, I lost you for a second.

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Sourabh:
Oh, she might have been frozen. Sorry about that, folks. I'll ask the question again, TaCara.

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TaCara:
Sorry about that. 

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Sourabh:
No worries. It's live. This happens. So, for the HR buyer , right, beyond just designing the campaign  that'll take them from the top through to the bottom of the funnel. Can you help the audience understand the differences when you're designing content for different mediums or channels by which you're reaching the buyer online and offline?

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TaCara:
Yeah, okay. So, basically when you're targeting this audience and you're looking for reaching them in different mediums, you're gonna have different goals as far as creating a quick and pithy billboard, or a radio ad that's going to be entertaining enough, but has a sense of urgency and some sort of action that they'll take versus having your email list that's going to provide them with a resource that maybe is going to help them with part of their daily day-to-day job and make their life and their work somehow easier or more efficient or more successful or more impressive to their manager, right? “How are we empowering them to do better work and make their job more enjoyable to do?” That's gonna be, you know, a deep, broader concept with a deeper piece of content in that medium.

Then it's gonna be in, say, digital or a pay-per-click ad or a syndicated placement for a programmatic rather than placement on audio or something over the top. Those are gonna be quicker, shorter jabs at a pain point, right, and peak curiosity versus, “How can I offer you something that is going to provide immediate value?” Whereas a lot of those shorter kinds of marketing messages don't really provide any value. They just peak curiosity. So I think that's kind of how I would differentiate content on different platforms. I think when you're doing your content syndication and providing webinars, eBooks, white papers, and infographics, your goal needs to be, “How do I give you actionable information that gives you an opportunity to enhance how you're doing your work, how you're coming across to your leadership?”

“What can I give you that’s automatic, that’s going to build brand affinity?” So you're going to think of me and say, “Oh my gosh, my job got easier because of TaCara!” “My boss is really impressed with me and I got this resource from TaCara!”. You're gonna think of me with lots of positive associations if I give you something of value upfront. And that's like initiating our relationship on the best first step, first impression.

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Sourabh:
Exactly. And I think a lot of marketers forget that positive association carries all the way through a sales motion and beyond.

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TaCara:
Absolutely.

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Sourabh:
‍Exactly, right? So, you said it, so I'm gonna build off of this, right? We've done a ton of work together, you've driven a ton of pipeline with us, and we love you, right, as one of our evangelists. So I'm gonna ask the really hard question. We know that you've been building more and more campaigns with Lead2Pipeline. We've seen your pipeline grow with us, right? But what has been your attribution methodology? How have you been measuring the success for the brands you've worked at?

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TaCara:
Yeah, so attribution is tricky with a lot of different mediums, right? We have these really great digital channels that give us a lot of fast and really granular data. And then we have channels that… I think honestly, working with you guys is really awesome because the data is great, and that's such an excellent part of content syndication is being able to use something that builds brand awareness and brand relationships that also can be a lead gen channel, which I think is what a lot of people underestimate, the value of content syndication and the potential to scale that because not everyone is categorizing this channel in lead gen. They're putting it in brand awareness and they're not really considering all the lead gen potential of it. But anything like traditional radio, you have slower data, you have less granular data, The best way I can say to assess the impact of your marketing as a whole is to have a good, healthy budget based down to what you're putting on something that you know works or that you have really clear measurements on and then putting some money into testing so that you have something that's moving that you can watch for the impact.

So, an 80/20 breakdown is something that I like to recommend for my budgeting. So, 80% of the budget is being spent in really clear, known delivery, clear measurable programs. And then 20% in testing because a lot of what we're gonna do in content syndication is not only gonna bring in the leads that we see directly, or direct attribution, either first touch, last touch, however you're measuring, that is not the only impact. You are going to also get a lift in organic and in search. And so those types of impacts are gonna be most noticeable if you are testing and looking at either year-over-year data and making sure that you're not… Account for seasonality if you can, um, if you have that data, if you've been in business long enough, or if you have comparable case studies for other businesses in your industry.

But if you don't have year-over-year data, then you can still look and see, “Hey, I ran this test for this month and I got more efficient in search and organic. Not only did I bring in these leads with this program or maybe”... Sorry, I'm losing myself a little bit here, but I really think that testing is really going to enhance your attribution, is what I wanna convey here, because not all of your attribution can be perfect if you don't have perfect data. That's the best thing that I can do.

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Sourabh:
And TaCara, you're doing fine. I'm making this harder and harder. It's almost like a little game here because I'm about to make it even more difficult for you. Okay? I'm gonna switch industries. We're gonna do the same thing, but now we're gonna look at, let's say the finance industry, okay? Because you've got deep experience there. But I'm gonna switch my question. So far, you've really helped us understand different ways at which we can test channels and also how we can double down on content syndication, right? To use it for multiple purposes. Now, I'm gonna shift the focus a little bit to something that most marketers, and especially CMOs are very aware of this year, is that their best opportunities are with existing customers or those who know their existing customers really well, where they've already got inbuilt credibility. So the question for finance, right?

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TaCara:
Okay.

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Sourabh:
How do you test, or how do you expand right into your existing pool of leads or contacts that you might have? How do you make a cold lead warm again?

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TaCara:
Yeah, nurture. I feel like nurture is something that we kind of… I see different things. I see some nurture cadences that are robust and well thought out, and unfortunately, I don't think that's the norm. I think we know we need to nurture, but we kind of phone it in a lot of times. That's an opportunity pool that you already have. If your budgets are shrinking, you should be focusing in nurture. Bring in those cold leads, warm them up again. So if they're top-of-funnel, right, we need to provide them with something of value that's going to create what I've been talking about with the authority in the industry.

When they're top-of-funnel, we wanna bring them in with something that creates value and creates a relationship. When they're sitting in mid-funnel and they're not moving, then we wanna find what their pain point is. How do we find the moment and the right message for our in-funnel leads? Then we need to dive into the pain points that they might be experiencing. And then if they're lower in the funnel, but they're not making that final move, create urgency. I mean, these are kind of standard marketing philosophies, nothing too astronomical here or out of the box. But it's focusing in on financial aid, like financial markets. So there's something that we like to, in the financial world, is say, “The money's there. You just have to go find it”. 

Going and finding that money and finding that in your current lead base in your pool there… What you wanna do is start asking questions. So with your content, try to engage a conversation that's going to let people try to start thinking about something that they maybe weren't thinking about that would be relevant to them. So, doing your research, you're gonna know what your audience's life encounters are going to be. People aren't always thinking about what they're gonna do when someone passes away and they have an inheritance. So you start talking about stuff like that, right, because they're not thinking about it. So you start getting them thinking about, “When this moment arises, we want you to think of us”. Find those moments in your customer's journey and start bringing those moments to your customer. Create the timing. So you're looking for the right timing, right message. Start making that timing be now and providing the message.

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Sourabh:
Yep. And, again, I think there's a masterclass here. I know you're saying this is all common knowledge, but you might be surprised. We work globally, right? We have clients everywhere now, right? It's not just North America, and there's still a lot of these practices that are being rolled out in certain programs that we're seeing. One of which has been a huge driver of demand over the last six to nine months, right, has been interactive campaigns. It's where the user is consciously going through either multiple pieces of content or multiple clicks intentionally as part of the design of the content. We're not trying to make it as quick and as transactional as an ad would be. We've actually designed it so that they're taking this journey, right?

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TaCara:
Yeah. We all know that customer journey maps are really important to understand for your product. Whatever your product might be, your industry, and knowing what journey you want your customer to go on is a huge advantage. Start mapping out that journey for them. You have that data as an ad hoc data from your success. Start proactively creating that journey for your targets. Be there before they are. Guide them to it, handhold them, walk them down that journey. And that's going to help move your conversion rates. You do need to balance that out with the expectation, like you said, like an ad. If you're e-commerce and you just want someone to click on an ad and say 15% today and make a purchase and check out, that's one thing. But most of us are looking for more long-term customer relationships. And so that means we have to be willing to invest in designing that relationship upfront and knowing that we can empower them to make that decision to become our customer if we also build that trust. And that's gonna take a little bit more upfront, but it's also going to build an opportunity for us to actually be more proactive and drive that transition and that conversion.

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Sourabh:
I love it. And we are B2B all day, baby. So for us, it is not transactional at all. Right? We are helping some of the world's most innovative companies sell that innovation. And it's not easy because they're generally ahead of where the customer's current use case is, right? They're selling something that's more future-proof.

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TaCara:
Absolutely.

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Sourabh:
So I'm gonna switch the industry one more time. And final reminder folks, if you have questions coming in because we only have about five minutes left. Okay? It goes really fast. Cybersecurity. Okay? So cybersecurity products: very, very technical. Very, very specialized, right?

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TaCara:
Absolutely, yeah. No room to mess up. Very confident decision making has to happen to win over those customers.

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Sourabh:
Exactly, yeah. Because the buyer is very analytical by nature and not very trusting, to be honest. It's their job. Right? To be defensive. So when you're in that situation, how can you design content and syndication programs, either yourself or with partners, that really helps your sales team for when they make that initial outbound touch? What would help bring that brand or that opportunity closer for a cybersecurity prospect?

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TaCara:
Yeah, I would say for a cybersecurity prospect, they're not gonna give you the time of day unless they know that you know what their values and their priority criteria are. So you have to have your research, right, and if we're talking cloud-based SEC security, right? I'm not a security person and I haven't particularly been close to the industry. But I am aware you're gonna have to be able to prove that you understand what the data risks are. You have to know what the weaknesses are in your field. If you're a security company, you do know these things. So if you're providing content and positioning yourself as someone who will not only talk about what you do well, but talk about what the foreseeable risks are, and how you're mitigating them. And then knowing what your buyer's gonna prioritize and having your sales team know, “Boy, you did throw me for a new industry here!” I just can't speak to what those exact pain points are.

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Sourabh:
You actually did really well, TaCara. And like I said, I made it even more difficult for you, right? Yeah. And again, this is the job, right, of a content marketer.

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TaCara:
Ultimately, if you're selling to someone really analytical, your sales team just has to know their stuff. So you have to empower your sales team. They can't be your classic solar home security sales guys. They've gotta be people who understand. So really you're creating content not only for your audience and your target audience, but creating content for your internal teams. So I think that's maybe where the content strategy really comes into play, is that you’re creating marketing materials and sales support materials. And they need to be really accurate and technical and cover the bases.

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Sourabh:
And two things there that I think are very, very timely, even if we're not in cybersecurity. Because I don't wanna make you more uncomfortable, right? You did good. You did good, right? But two things you covered there is, it's true when you're in a very technical field where the buyer is paid a lot, right, for their role because they themself are an industry expert. That's why they were hired by their company, right? It's a more conversational journey. You need to keep bringing up the pain points. You need to make sure you're expressing that risk mitigation, right, in a credible but patient manner because they're not gonna fall for any of your urgency bound tactics.

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TaCara:
Not at all.

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Sourabh:
‍You gotta build that trust and then, like you said, it transfers into the sales conversation. Your sales team needs to pick it up right from there like, “Yeah, we know this too. And ‘so-and-so client’ just did this. Are you dealing with something similar?” Right? I wanna ask— go ahead.

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TaCara:
I actually wanna share something that you clicked it for me that is really important in the cybersecurity industry, but also it's gonna be important in a lot of especially tech and any SaaS solution. Is your company secure? Are you going to be around for a while? How can you ensure that like, you know… Because if you've got a lifetime warranty on your product, but your inventory, your options of your product have gone down and your prices have gone up, you're looking sketchy. I don't care if you have a lifetime warranty. I don't know if you're gonna be around next year. So that's really important in technical and B2B industry is, “Are you, are you a reliable resource?” Because especially when we're buying software as a service, right? What is it gonna do to my business if you just disappear in two years? Are you having layoffs? There are a lot of nuances around that, around trust and reliability of an organization. So utilize anything you can to say how secure your organization is. Incorporate that into your marketing and sales. Absolutely.

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Sourabh:
I love it. Last question here, Because we're gonna run out of time here. Okay? We're gonna let folks go. But last question: This year, right, most marketers are in a really tough spot because you're selling to decision makers who are not only seeing a reduction in their team with the layoffs we've all heard about. They've seen a reduction in their budget, right? But the whole mindset is about avoiding further losses, right? Getting business back to normal. So what is your advice for those running content syndication and content marketing programs this year? How should they be thinking about approaching their buyers when there's so much negativity around what they're doing?

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TaCara:
Okay, so my philosophy on this would largely be about presenting the path forward to something more secure with a positive angle because we all want to see the light at the end of the tunnel. So it's important to acknowledge that kind of climate in our current economy. But I think a lot of the times what happens in marketing is that we'll acknowledge that with a lot of fear-driven messaging. And nobody wants to make a decision from a place of fear. People wanna make a decision from a place of confidence and optimism about what they're creating, not what they're avoiding. So even though that's something that people are feeling and that's a fear and we need to address it, creating a picture about how you are presenting a solution for them that's going to alleviate that, and focus on helping paint that picture for them of what their future is gonna look like of being less fearful, less stressful, less disoriented. Did that answer the question?

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Sourabh:
Feel well so. You're absolutely spot on, right? Is the more you can ground. Now you're getting hit with sunlight, the more you,

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TaCara:
I know! I didn't think it was gonna happen, but right on time, right?

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Sourabh:
Yeah. The more you can ground, right, your audience into that certainty, the much better higher chance that your leads will convert all the way through the funnel. And what you said is actually a masterclass in content marketing for full funnel, because fear is extraordinarily personal. What gets somebody into a funnel, because they're afraid, will rarely carry the entire buying—

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TaCara:
‍A conversion.

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Sourabh:
‍Exactly. Yeah. They're gonna die on conversion because as soon as they go to their boss or they go to IT, they're gonna be like, “What? I'm not afraid of this”. And that's it. You just lost the deal, right? So I love this, painting that future picture of, “If we do this, we all end up here together”. That is transferable. Other people can get behind that, right? So, I love it.

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