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Demand-Geniuses is the podcast for revenue-focused B2B Marketers. We bring you the latest insights and expert tips, interviewing geniuses of the B2B Marketing world to bring you actionable advice that you can implement to accelerate growth and progress you career. The role of Marketing in B2B go-to-market strategy has changed drastically. It's more important to revenue generation than ever as buyer engagement becomes more digital. We equip you with the information you need to thrive in this new, revenue-critical role.
Tom Rudnai (00:14)
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Demand Geniuses. I'm gonna get straight into it and introduce our guest for this week, which is the director of content marketing at Vizio. And actually, well, according to LinkedIn, and this is one of the questions that I wanna ask you, Chloe, content first marketing leader is the way you style yourself, which I love. But first of all, Chloe, hello, welcome to the pod.
Chloe Thompson (00:34)
Hey Tom, happy to be here.
Tom Rudnai (00:36)
Nice to have you on. A lot of our relationship actually has developed over podcasts, hasn't it? As both being guests on various different ones, so seems only fitting, but it's nice that I get to interview this time instead of the other way around. Yeah, for sure. Well, I guess by way of introduction to those listeners that don't know you, do want to just give us a little bit of a background on who you are, what you're doing, and where you've been, I guess?
Chloe Thompson (00:42)
Yeah.
Put me on the hot seat, yes.
Yeah, so I started my career at a content marketing agency before I even knew what content marketing was. So I've been in content marketing my whole career, first on the editorial side and then over to marketing. So I've been in the B2B SaaS world and HR tech specifically for close to a decade now in between that B2C worlds. And yeah, right now a director of content marketing at Vizier, which is a people analytics software.
Tom Rudnai (01:16)
Thank you.
Chloe Thompson (01:30)
workforce intelligence platform. joined there almost three months ago. So still very fresh, learning a lot, but yeah, it's a little bit about me. I'm based in Boston, passionate dog mom with the best, he's got the best underbite in the world. So probably make an appearance on this.
Tom Rudnai (01:48)
Yes, I know when we doing the prep show I got to meet your dog so maybe the viewers will as well. There's a reason to check in on YouTube instead of Apple. I'm always curious to ask, there, because I think for most people there's a pretty strong answer that really stands out. Is there a point in your career that really stands out as the most formative step where things really started to click into place and what was it?
Chloe Thompson (02:11)
There probably a few moments, but I think the one that really stands out was when I decided to make the switch from editorial over to marketing. I was a digital project coordinator as part of like, you know, assistant editor in an agency, you wear 17 trillion hats. So I got pulled into this project working on their first ever all digital strategies. So that's totally aging me right now. But I was the project coordinator on that. So was just soaking in everything.
And I was working with this super smart marketing consultant named Anne, and just asking a ton of questions, probably being the most annoying person in the room, following people around, taking notes. And then she pulls me aside one day and she's like, you know, I know you're an editorial, I know you love writing, I know you love the stories and you like talking to people and that's what you like, but I really think you're a marketer. And she's like, you just think beyond
the words on the page. And she's like, I want you to take that and run with it. And she really kind of took me under her wing a little bit and was like, here's how you can position yourself. And it really just got me thinking. And then when I moved back to Boston after being in DC for four years, I started applying to more marketing centric roles and really just kind of shifting my narrative to still focus on, you know, the words on the page, but just expanding.
that and I think that was probably one of like the biggest moments.
Tom Rudnai (03:43)
Yeah, well that makes me think of what you've got on your LinkedIn, which is what I like, like content first marketing. I just think it's, it's the way that I always encourage anyone that I speak to in content, like you are in content marketing and the marketing part is often like treated as a, almost like a dirty word or like it's put down. That's the science that goes with the art, but both are part of it.
Chloe Thompson (03:57)
Yes, yes.
It is, like at the end
of the day, you are, you are working toward business goals. And like, I find that part of it so interesting. And so, yeah, I feel like I think you're right. It can be a bad word when it's like, you're trying to sell and you're trying to market. it's, I mean, at the end of the day, yes, you have to.
Tom Rudnai (04:23)
Yeah, and tell us a bit then about your role of Vizier. So obviously Vizier, I think you started more mature companies than where you were before. How like, have enjoying that?
Chloe Thompson (04:33)
It's been great. Yeah, so I started in late October, so I'm not even three months in. It's Vizier is about a 500 person global organization headquartered in Canada, but a lot of the marketing team is in the States. So this is the first sort of director of content marketing after the creative and content team split. They were under one umbrella before. So I am
building a lot of the foundational pieces that we need, looking at processes, looking at how content is getting created, who are the stakeholders involved, a lot of things like, know, racy models, building playbooks, and then also just having one source of truth for our content planning. Those are kind of the big focus areas. And it's really interesting because I've worked at different size companies over the years and just getting the foundations and like the basics right before you can really
try to flex, experiment, and be creative is still just so critically important. And that's what I love building. So that's part of the main reason that I was brought on here.
Tom Rudnai (05:42)
Nice. like that. It's the same as I always think with Demand Genius, we put a lot more work a lot earlier than I think startups typically do into defining and really like writing down our ICP and our personas and our brand narratives and all of that kind of stuff. Because I think the creation of content is something that AI can play role in. But if you nail that brain and that just makes everything go smoothly from there. And I will talk about AI lots as we go. I'm curious, I guess, so that's what you do when you start a, I think you said it's like a series E company.
Chloe Thompson (06:06)
you
Tom Rudnai (06:13)
billion-dollar revenue or something like that. But you've also joined as a kind of series A stage as a director of content. How does what you do in the first three months change in each of those phases?
Chloe Thompson (06:25)
I think you need to think about the content formats and the scale that you're going to be developing at either organization to try to get the foundation right. I think at the Series A, for example, I think that there was a few different specific content types that they were really focused on that we needed to figure out how to operationalize because there wasn't as large of a team to support.
different types of demand gen efforts. That meant that you didn't necessarily need to have a lot of different types of content formats. I think what I'm excited about with Vizier is that because we do have a larger team and there's more resources, there's more room to expand into different formats, different styles. And with that, you're gonna need like a strong foundation and a process for each of those types of content formats moving forward. So it's all about kind of like the volume.
thinking about that play and then how you build the foundation to be able to kind of scale that and grow that as you go.
Tom Rudnai (07:28)
What has
to change about the foundation if you're going to operate at higher volume or higher scale?
Chloe Thompson (07:33)
I think with larger companies, it's a lot more, with smaller companies, you can move fast. And there aren't as many people in the room. With larger companies, even at mid-sized companies, there's a lot more stakeholder management. There's a lot more understanding, like how does something get from point A to point Z and then understanding the steps that are involved. And at a series A, there's not gonna be as many steps. And so you might be able to get to market faster with certain things.
Whereas I think with larger companies, really have to anticipate like that buffer time and where your blockers might be, where I don't think you're going to encounter that as much in a faster moving startup.
Tom Rudnai (08:11)
Yeah, okay. there's a lot of working with other teams and kind of, guess you have to get a bit of a feel for the pace of the company and there's a little bit more like you have to plot out a roadmap and it's probably a little bit more relationship driven as well. Anything that you want to get done. that fair?
Chloe Thompson (08:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's very fair to say,
Tom Rudnai (08:29)
Nice. So talk to me a little bit like, I guess, in terms of within Vizier specifically, because I guess a big part of that, like stakeholder management is kind of communicating the role that content plays for Vizier, could play for Vizier and kind of how you're going to bridge the gap between those two things. What role does content play within the overall marketing or go to market of Vizier? And what's your kind of vision for how you'd like to take that?
Chloe Thompson (08:57)
Still in the process of documenting it. But I think that overall, I think that there's a move from, again, just kind of getting some of the basics right, thinking about how do we operationalize? How do we move from a bit of more of like a ad hoc content creation? I think like the phrase everyone uses right is like,
random acts of content. I think that that is 100 % the phase that I'm seeing right now. And so it's trying to understand, again, like the steps and tactics that we can move from being more chaotic to more focused is kind of the through line that I'm seeing. And then once we get to more of that focused state and we start thinking about how content can actually be more of like a strategic growth lever for the company, rather than just
here's a blog here, here's an ebook here, here's this, and we need to figure out how we actually really connect the dots and create a through line for how content is impacting overall revenue versus just isolated moments within the company. And I think that that's going to come with more of a cohesive brand voice and overall narrative, which I mean, I think is important for all companies, but I think that in a company like Vizier, that's kind of moving from
I would say like a teenager to an adult company. I think that's what you see in a lot of mid-size companies because some of them are still stuck in some of the startup ways, but it's time to evolve. It's time to get to a different stage. And I think content can really help them on that.
Tom Rudnai (10:44)
Vizier is essentially going through puberty right now is what you're saying. We'll leave that metaphor there. And how do you look at like the outcomes for content then? Because I suppose there's always an element of like what you think it should be, but you also probably given given goals and kind of targets from from above. What do you what do you track as like the North Star for content? And is that evolving at all in like an AI led world?
Chloe Thompson (10:47)
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, I mean, I think that the North Star for content always just has to be how is content driving revenue? I'm big on, you you have to understand all of the, you know, the leading and lagging indicators, but if you're really focusing your content team on things like traffic or impressions, then you're looking at the wrong thing. You need to be looking at your content more thematically in terms of what...
formats and types of content and then what messaging throughout that content is actually driving business. So looking at like how content is affecting your sales cycle, are you seeing things that are quicker to close? You know, what content, again, formats and what content pieces are actually driving sales as opposed to what's getting like the most hits and the most visibility in your website. think our like revenue has to be your North Star.
Tom Rudnai (12:07)
You're getting asked them all.
Chloe Thompson (12:08)
And I think that that's
a shared goal. And we've talked about this before, right? Like it can't be on one person or one team within marketing or really within sales to drive that number. And that's why it's so important for everyone to just have alignment across like what are the actual goals that they're trying to achieve. And everyone needs to be working toward that.
Tom Rudnai (12:31)
Does that make, I think content must be a lot.
Does it make it a lot harder now in a large organization than historically? think historically large organization meant more resources, more budget. You can create better content, right? I think now what seems to create good content marketing programs is that through line that you mentioned. was thinking like in our world from an AI optimization standpoint, one thing that is becoming clear is really powerful when you're trying to optimize for model to recommend you and to incorporate your narrative into their narrative around the market and how they
frame problems and things like that. You want to create the closest possible alignment between three things, which is positioning, content and reputation. If you can condense it so that there's a straight line between all of those things, then everything is telling the AI exactly who you are, you're for, how to recommend you. For most brands, those three things have kind of diverged over the course of pivots. I think creating that through line in a...
organisation that is large enough to be specialised must be really difficult because you are by necessity a little bit further away from the people who are dictating the positioning and managing the reputation. How do you navigate that? That's more of a thought than a question I guess.
Chloe Thompson (13:43)
Yeah,
I think that's fair. And I think that, you know, still early on in my journey, but I think that building bridges with the right stakeholders is really, really critical. understanding, I guess it's a little bit of like understanding what your role is and understanding what your role isn't, right? Like in my role as the director of content marketing, and this is true in larger organizations, I'm not,
as close to the brand narrative and the positioning as I would be in a smaller org where there's not like that levels of hierarchy. And so for me, it's really like our VP is the, you know, is the main communicator and stakeholder and that we have a senior director of brand experience. And then of course we have the rest of like the marketing, like the marketing leadership team, the CMO, et cetera. So when you're in a business that has those hierarchies,
I think it's just really important to just have alignment and transparency with who's in that room. And that's what I'm trying to build with my boss and with other people on more of the executive team. And I think it's actually been a little refreshing not having to be in that room because it's not like we're waiting around for directives, but I more am at the level where I'm saying, okay, here are the...
three things that I need to know to be able to do my job really efficiently and really well right now. If this is gonna change in six months and I don't have to care about it today, then that's okay. And it's a bit of a sense of relief, to be honest, to just be able to focus on that area that's kind of right in front of me.
Tom Rudnai (15:29)
Yeah, well, I think it's the challenge of everything is people are getting more dispersed, right? We're not all sat in a room in quite the same way as we used to. So there's a little bit more of an emphasis on like this information needs to get there. This needs to get there. But it's trying to keep some level of general awareness as well. I guess a question for like, for people who are listening to this, maybe about to start a new
role in a similar situation to you or something like that, I think it's always difficult going in as the new person and building those relationships because you want to be very proactive but everyone else is a little bit heads down and they've like, are there practical ways that you found really work well to go and improve and maintain relationships with all of these different people that you kind of rely on? Is it as simple as just reach out on Slack? Are there systems that have helped you?
Chloe Thompson (16:17)
Yeah, I was about to say, mean, the easiest thing to do is just set up a conversation. I always like to have my first conversation with people that I know I'm gonna be working closely with. There are two things, there are people that you're gonna be working closely with day to day. And it's really important to understand how they operate, what their processes are, how you can...
help mold the conversation and help see like a future way of working together that suits both your needs and their needs. So that's understanding like their world at a more detailed level. Do they communicate via email? Do they like Slack messages? Do they like weekly meetings? that, you know, like those pieces, like how do you receive information and how do you give information, right? How do you like to collaborate? How do you like to work together? Those are like your people, your day to day.
those need to be your besties because you need them to essentially get shit done. But then there's also more of the, the step up where those are the ones where if you are going to be bringing in a big project that might be like kind of risky and you know that you're going to need some sign off or you're going to need some, some clout, right? Like behind your ask. Those are the people that you want to understand again.
It's not in the weeds of how they operate, but more so what are their priorities? What are their biggest business priorities? And that's why I always say like content needs to ladder into like your business goals, your product, your sales goals, marketing goals, and then it's content. like choosing, picking and choosing people from each of those different layers to understand like what are your wider team goals and then understanding how content can fit into those pieces, I think is the biggest thing. And just like.
beating that drum once you figure out what that cohesive message is and that content strategy that you want to articulate to the company using that opportunity to talk about it so that they understand like why you're doing what you're doing, how you can help them and eventually how they can help you.
Tom Rudnai (18:25)
I really like that with like what you're describing is an account map, right? And I think it's a very deliberate approach to like, that that's what a sales rep will do when they're trying to get shit done in an external organization. go and they go back Sorry.
Chloe Thompson (18:38)
You call it spidering, Like
you call it like spidering, right? Like through an organization where you, maybe that's just our US team that used to say that.
Tom Rudnai (18:45)
you
I've not heard that before. That naturally makes my skin crawl a little bit.
But I know, yeah, kind of networking, that's a bit of, but like, yeah, you map out the account and you say, okay, these the decision makers, these are for what we're trying to do in that organisation, this is who I need on board. But I've always said, marketers are brilliant at marketing and, you know, storytelling externally, they're really bad at doing it internally. And I think it's quite a useful exercise when you go into an organisation to, where do you do it? Kind of mentally or on a piece of paper, depends on what kind of person you are, but kind of build that map of how different things
Chloe Thompson (19:15)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (19:25)
that you might want to get done, get done. I think more people just kind of bang their head against a brick wall, they ask their boss, they ask their boss, and they never go in proactively.
Chloe Thompson (19:34)
Yeah, I think you're right. And I've been really fortunate. Like Julie, one of my former bosses and mentor, she was incredible, Julie Zadow, in helping me understand how to be more visible and giving me more of a platform and a voice so that I could bring ideas to her. And she'd be like, that'd be great. Why don't you go pitch it? Go do this. And it's scary. Scary as all hell.
but you have to develop that voice. And even if, you know, I am pretty extroverted, but even if you are extroverted, there are still ways to speak up and be heard in organizations. If you're confident in what you're delivering. Right. And I think that's the biggest thing is that marketers in general, but particularly content, we're so like laser focus on the tactical pieces.
well, we need to get this out. And once like, for example, that blog publishes or that ebook publishes, we're so excited about it because we've seen something go from A to Z. And that's awesome. You should take that second to celebrate those wins. But at the end of the day, no one else in the company is going to care unless they understand how it affects them. And like, to me, that is ultimately your job as, as a content leader is to help connect those dots.
as to why people should care. And then eventually you start to create this like community of like content evangelists where finally they're excited about what you're doing and it's gonna take time. It's not gonna happen overnight, but you just have to keep at it.
Tom Rudnai (21:04)
Thanks
And I think you have to look at that as part of your job because A, it's your job to kind of, until you get to VP or really C level, it's your job to kind of fight your functions corner, right? think at higher level, it becomes a little bit more, you know, you work for the business, not for the marketing department. But until that point, that is part of your role, but also more than ever, more than anywhere else in content, because they're your best distribution channel, right? Sales, like you spend a fortune on six cents a month.
Chloe Thompson (21:24)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Tom Rudnai (21:42)
whatever to get intent signals and then you have no relationship with the people that have the best intent signals out there which is they actually fucking talk to the people. You want them distributed it's a part of your it's your best free distribution channel.
Chloe Thompson (21:51)
That's it.
Completely agree. And I think if they don't understand why you're publishing what you're publishing, like that's a disconnect. Like that's a problem. know, again, less than three months in, like I'm starting to build those relationships. I'm talking with sales leaders about how does your team absorb content? How are they using content? And part of it is also just, is your content good enough? Right? Like, and that's why, like, I've always had just a really high bar for
quality content and sometimes I'm not gonna beat the drum on you sharing and evangelizing our content until I think it's at a good place, right? Like so being really proud of what you put out and understanding like why you're doing what you're doing and why it matters, I think is just at the heart of everything that you should be thinking about in content. And that's internally and externally for your audience as well, of course.
Tom Rudnai (22:53)
Yeah, how do you communicate the why behind what you're doing? Because you're not going to sit down and take all your sales notes through your content roadmap or anything like that, right? Or are you? What level of detail are you going into and how often?
Chloe Thompson (23:06)
Definitely the leadership within each of those teams, yes. So like I plan on taking our regional sales leaders through our, through the documented content strategy, which is a work in progress. I've got about 12 slides, so I'm not ready to share that publicly yet. And then our marketing leadership. I mean, I've already circulated some of it up with my boss and gotten some.
some buy-in there and there's some refinement on the marketing operation side too, so that they can understand like what kind of attribution model I would eventually like to see because this is how I want to evaluate success. And then from there, it's really like customer success leads potentially. There might be a couple of people that I wanna walk them through, but again, it's gonna be tailoring the presentation for them. So it's not just.
Tom Rudnai (23:46)
Hmm.
Chloe Thompson (24:00)
here's a bunch of slides and I'm gonna say the same thing each time. It's going to be, here's like my bucket of slides that maybe there's like five that I want again to beat that drama and I want everyone that has some sort of voice or influence in the company to understand eventually, right? That's ambitious for less than three months in, but maybe in a year or so we'll be there. But then really connecting it back to them. Like here's why this matters for your team.
so do I expect our, you know, our sales leadership to be like, well, our content strategy is ABCD. Like, no, of course not. Like that's not their job, but I do want them to be like, Hey, you mentioned this while you were walking through that deck. I have a BDR that is really excited about like learning and growing. And maybe they even want to be a blog contributor or something. Like, can I set you, you two up?
for a conversation. Like I want them to understand how they're all a part of our content process.
Tom Rudnai (25:01)
Yeah, okay, I love that. And I know one of the other things, I'll be talking a lot about a lot about Vizier here, but
One of the things that you said you benefit from there in our kind of prequel, which I thought was really interesting and really pertinent at the moment was you have an actual like internal research department, which I'm sure, particularly at the moment, a lot of with a lot of emphasis being put on original research. And there's a lot of content marketers and marketers in general that would listen to this and be insanely jealous of that. Talk to me a little bit about what it's like having that as a resource and how that opens up the different kind of possibilities for you.
Chloe Thompson (25:18)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, think that, so Andrea on the content and comms team is brilliant. Like she grew up in like the Deloitte space and the consultancy space. So she has an incredible background in this. And what we're trying to figure out is we have access to so many benchmarks and so many touch points across our customer base.
and trying to figure out how we distill that into different stories for our audience. And so a couple of things that they look at, they look at their annual kind of benchmarking trends report that looks at different pieces across the different industries and like retention, turnover, DEI statistics, all the things that you can kind of from the Vizier platform.
I think that where we need to direct that is again, mapping it back to more of the business goals and the imperatives for our audience. So there's a difference between an interesting story versus an interesting story that's gonna drive our business forward. And I think that's where we need to get to with the strategy behind that. But having that kind of at your...
fingertips, I'm still learning about all the capabilities that we have within the thousands and thousands of touch points and data points that we have in the Vizier platform that we can essentially pull and anonymize or generalize as much as we need to really paint an accurate story of what is happening across thousands of different businesses.
Tom Rudnai (27:16)
fine. Talk to me a little bit about how you want, going forward, to be able to kind of mine and leverage all of that research, because you must be swimming with possibilities of all the different formats you can create and all the different stuff that you can do off the back of that. How's that going to take shape?
Chloe Thompson (27:34)
Yeah, think first of all, I think it's really important to ask the question like, just because we can, should we? So I think that it's gonna be a lot of testing different pieces and seeing again, like what is actually driving that visibility and what's driving the impact with our audience. Because yes, we have AI capabilities and all of that, but like we still.
moving from the random acts of content to a more like strategic play, I want there to be more of like a scalable like playbook for what we're doing with our research. So right now it's really living in a PDF like document, right? Like a, know, gated research report. And then we've got some social pieces, but we haven't really connected the dots between how research fits into like the wider content strategy and the, the
what makes Vizier different in the market because we, again, we have all of this at our fingertips. So I really want to bring in more of the human side of things where we have more of like the SME insights that are attached to the research. Maybe we even bring in some customers to talk about how they're, like what they think of the research and how it affects their day-to-day work. I think that we can, there's a lot of really great like graphics and creatives that we could do like these like.
cool videos with. Andrea herself speaks at a lot of different events, on podcast, she's a bit of a figurehead herself, so I think that there are ways that we can absolutely just elevate her profile more and really make it so that people know Vizier for the authoritative pieces that they put out into the market.
Tom Rudnai (29:20)
I really like a couple of things that you said there. One was like, just because we can, should we? Which I think is just a good phrase to live by. At the moment, there's so much that is opening up that I think the challenge, like it's so easy to come up with good ideas that that's never going to be a problem anymore. You can go onto LinkedIn and you'll find 10 idiots telling you everything that you should be doing. But like, should we is the difficult part and actually prioritizing what's right for us and applying all those to your specific context. It's one of the reasons why I always try and open this conversation up quite specifically with
like, okay, let's understand the specific context you operate in because I think then listeners can kind of take bits from that be like, okay, that actually doesn't apply back to us for this reason. The other thing I really liked was the way that you're thinking about, it felt very journalistic the way that you're thinking about how to mine that.
Chloe Thompson (30:00)
100%.
Tom Rudnai (30:08)
that central pillar piece and you're not thinking that's great we get five blog posts each of which can hit on these keywords you're thinking about the stories that sit around it and can we kind of feature the people and I think that's really cool
Chloe Thompson (30:22)
Yeah,
blame my J-School background for that. I went to the University of Rhode Island for journalism. And I think that that has carried on throughout my entire career. And like, if you follow me on LinkedIn, I talk about this a lot. Like I grew up on stories, not SEO. So while there are the tactics and the playbooks and the best practice, I think at the end of the day,
what's compelling, what's relevant to your humans. And the way that you can really bring that to life is by putting the humans into your content, like get them to react to it, get them to offer more insights that you, it's like a VIP kind of behind the scenes exclusive. And then look at that and how you can layer that in with practical applications for their day to day, make your content relevant, useful, helpful for your audience. And then you can optimize it against like that keyword. But
Once you've optimized it against that keyword, all of a sudden now you're creating content that other people can't replicate because you're marrying like those insights, that foundation, that story with, okay, here are the things you can go now do in your day to day. And people will find it more credible because you've got the chops to back it up. It's not just some generic five ways to improve X.
Tom Rudnai (31:42)
Yeah, it's a lot more compelling and when it's so difficult to capture people's attention, like you say, you come from a kind of story background, everyone does, right? That's what naturally resonates with human beings. It's interesting. makes me think. So we did a big kind of benchmark data study about a month ago and it's something we're going to keep doing because I think we did a really good job of it. I was really proud for us for a small team of what we were able to produce. And I thought it was a really good example. We used AI to capture loads of data. We used AI to help us extract really great like
stories
from that in terms of how this movie we were looking at AI optimization in the FinTech sector and how we can look at content, have our AI agents analyze it over the course of 20 years and kind of plot the progression of an industry. So that was...
fantastic like narrative but what we didn't do because we're a bunch of techies trying to do content is pull out like human stories and I think that's it's a really good learning for me that actually what would have elevated it so much more is having quotes and things like that dropped in throughout that are the human reaction other than me writing it to what we're seeing from people who are very similar to the people who are going to be reading it.
Chloe Thompson (32:48)
Yeah.
So one thing that we did that was super low lift. And again, this is about integrating your processes and your future hopes and desires for content and what you're already seeing in the business is our customer marketing, our growth team. They do this thing every year where they have their top 50 global HR leaders and they go and they gather quotes from all of these really incredible HR leaders around the world and like APAC, UK.
know, AMIA US, et cetera. And I think they got about 30 something quotes from 50 something asks, which is a really, really great ratio. So we have like this stockpile of all of these leaders saying brilliant things about the future of people analytics, what their key focus areas are, what superpowers they would want to give to managers so that they could, again, act on the analysis that they're seeing within organizations.
And it just was like sitting on a page. I think there maybe was planned one blog post around it, but instead I was like, do we have permission to use these quotes? And, the answer was as long as we cite it correctly, as long as we say like, this is where it came from. So we're not misleading anyone. can. So I said, awesome. We have this new, remix of a trends report that I'm working on that is specifically for a particular persona. I grabbed.
seven quotes from that batch that aligned with the different trends that we were kind of talking about within those. And I said to design, hey, layer these in. And all of a sudden now you've got like a credible piece of content that has credible voices in it. And that's just something super simple you can do. what I would, I would say to others, like what kind of customer quotes do you have that could maybe support that or where have your subject matter experts been quoted?
in like a podcast or in editorial narratives that you can like then weave back in because these are all things that are approved. These are all things that people have said. So as long as the context is right, like it's fair game.
Tom Rudnai (35:05)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, the, the, the AEO geek in me is screaming like, Ooh, third party credibility. LLMs will love me. But it's also, it's, it's, for humans. It's, it's, it's, it's what I really like about the current content landscape or the one that I can kind of see evolving it, which I think most people are very doom and gloom about. But at the end of the day, an LLM reads content a lot like a human. So I think they're, what, what helps content be discoverable is increasingly aligned with what helps content be persuasive.
Chloe Thompson (35:11)
Exactly.
Tom Rudnai (35:35)
compelling and I think that's a really good example of that, right, bringing those kind of things in.
Chloe Thompson (35:40)
I
so. And I mean, that's what I'll try to hang my hat on for as long as I can. I will say I hate having to add, you know, the FAQs and the TLDRs to every single blog post because I just, again, I think it interrupts the reading experience. But I think there are certain things that you're going to just have to do because they're going to become part of the fabric of creating content.
And I think I've said this before, but it's almost like we're in this cycle where when SEO first became a thing and people were like, write keywords in white text and have like keyword stuff and do all these things. And it was the black hat SEO. And then all of a sudden white hat SEO emerged. I think that we're in this same cycle now with the LLMs, which is like, here are the hacks you can do. Here are the...
Tom Rudnai (36:12)
Yeah.
Chloe Thompson (36:31)
the ways to get rich quick. But at the end of the day, what won out on SEO as Google kept on penalizing companies was credible, good content, content that actually helped the reader. So I still think that if you're trying to get rich quick and game the system, you're still not thinking about why are you actually creating this content.
Tom Rudnai (36:52)
Yeah, I completely agree. it's funny, I quite like the FAQs. find them quite helpful. think that's a nice addition to pages, actually.
that gives me scannable answers. But in general, I'm completely with you and these people using there's this concept of like GPT pages or AI specific pages, which we don't even put kind of accessible on the website, or we try and bury but they're specifically for like, we've got 140 competitor comparisons against all of our competitors, that kind of thing. And it's, it's fine if you do it consciously knowing it's a short term benefit that we're going to have to unpick later because it's eventually going to be penalised. I think that's fine. But there's a lot of people that
doing it, being blindly led, but in doubt, thinking that that's the right thing to be doing at the moment and there's going to be a cost to pay, I think.
Chloe Thompson (37:38)
Yeah,
and I think that that is when it comes back to defining your strategy. Like what are you actually really trying to do? And if you are, again, if you're really, really focused on the visibility of the traffic and not necessarily the downstream impact of that content, then your strategy and your tactics are gonna be wildly different. I don't think that companies shouldn't do all of those things, but again, it's what you are saying yes to and what you're saying no to.
Tom Rudnai (37:46)
Yeah.
Chloe Thompson (38:08)
And that's exactly what building a strategy and building those tactical plans are all about.
Tom Rudnai (38:14)
And to your point earlier, kind of have the connect the dotted line further up the organisation. Cause again, if you're, if your CEO is thinking, I want to sell this business in six months, churn the content out, hit, hit those buzzwords, do all of that. Cause it's like, have short-term goals. need to understand the business is on that. I can see your dog is now going mental. I can hear him in the background. He didn't like that one.
Chloe Thompson (38:27)
Exactly.
He's like, don't churn out content. I don't know. I'm sure
the mailman is here.
Tom Rudnai (38:44)
So
you've got your household that well trained that AI slop content is that. That's exactly what I would expect from you Don Chloe. Cool, on that note, maybe let's start, let's wrap up there and get into a couple of quick first before I let you go because we're coming towards the end of our time.
Chloe Thompson (38:51)
It brings out the fierceness in my 25 pound guard dog.
Tom Rudnai (39:09)
So I've got a few and I have to give you a quick sneak preview of these before. guess first one, an AI use case or tool that you just absolutely love that's kind of blowing your mind.
Chloe Thompson (39:20)
that I love.
I am using AI more and more in my day to day. I think honestly though the best use case for it that I've found is when my brain is completely shut off at four o'clock and I still am in editing mode because that's just how my day went. And just using it to help me through as like an extension of my brain and thinking in how do I help shape this headline? How do I...
cut 12 words from this where I just don't want to be thinking anymore and I just want it to be doing for me. Probably not the most revolutionary way to use it, but that's where it's been like a lifesaver for
Tom Rudnai (40:06)
Yeah, just like personal efficiency, which I think is very, very fair. And then I guess for you a little bit more personally then, like thinking back through your career, is there a skill or a trait that you have that has stood out as being something that's really moved the needle for you or really helped?
Chloe Thompson (40:23)
I I referenced it earlier, but I've heard this echoed from a lot of people that I have worked with. And it is that listening to other people's needs and reflecting that in my own work. I think that building bridges and trying to figure out how you can play nice in the sandbox and collaborate with others is a highly, highly, highly underrated skill. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (40:48)
I think
it's one that I could probably develop a little bit. And then a bit more of a fun one that I always like to ask, is if, and I'll frame this in the way that I usually do, which is let's say that you had unlimited budget for one campaign. And the way that I always think of it is like the kind of thing that your CEO would never be actually stupid enough to sign off. It can be that ambitious. What would you do and why?
Chloe Thompson (41:15)
man, these magic wand questions always get to me because I always think of the, again, the like, well, why wouldn't we do this? And like, well, this doesn't make sense. I think it would be really, really cool to do some sort of documentary style, like a Netflix series or something. Like, I don't know, like not The Office, obviously, even though that's an amazing show, but I would love to.
do more of that video scripting documentary style stuff and see how that could take off. I think I also would love to just do a full on commercial. I don't know, really like Mad Men advertising style. Haven't done that either and those cost a ton of money. So that'd be kind of cool.
Tom Rudnai (41:55)
Yeah.
That's interesting. They're like, yeah, I've asked that question. don't know what episode we're on now, but probably like 35 times at this point. I've had the Super Bowl ad a couple of times. You and Sarah Cameron, who was just the person I had on just before this, have both said you want to do like the Netflix style documentary for the first time. So that's come up. So it's obviously fun of mine at the moment, but like she wanted to do like the hour long feature length Netflix style documentary, which I think is a cool idea.
Chloe Thompson (42:17)
interesting.
Tom Rudnai (42:30)
You see.
Chloe Thompson (42:30)
Yeah, I mean, how
it would apply for our audience. Again, this is where my mind goes. People are like, if you could have everything and then the practicality kicks in.
Tom Rudnai (42:40)
Never give a pragmatist a magic wand.
And then another one that I always think is nice to hear. Is there a time that stands out in your career where you've had a hard stopping fuck up? What's the biggest screw up in your career?
Chloe Thompson (43:02)
I don't know if I've had like a heart-stopping fuck up. I, I think my answer is going to be really lame. It's going to be like not reading the room. and I, you know, I don't know if I really want to get into specifics, but it's more about, like, yeah, like that, the lessons learned is just putting my own
thoughts and priorities above others and doing it at an executive level before I was seasoned enough to know better. Like being the eager beaver in the room without understanding why what I was saying mattered. Because it didn't.
Tom Rudnai (43:48)
think a lot of people can probably relate to that. It's the anxiety inducing thing where you said something, you're feeling a little bit confident, a little bit ballsy one day or something like that, and you kind of said it like, oh God, I wish I hadn't done that.
Chloe Thompson (43:50)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (44:02)
Nice.
Cool. then just before I let you go, I always like to finish off by just asking for one recommendation, whether it's a book, podcast, a thought leader that you really enjoy for the listeners.
Chloe Thompson (44:14)
I'm a total Jess Cook fan girl, the new VP of Marketing at Vector. love their, this could have been a pod, or what is it? This could have been a podcast where they basically like live stream their, the CEO and VP of Marketing meetings. I think there's a lot of really great tips in there. I like the format and just the vibe, the overall vibe is great. Erin Balsa is someone that I also follow, love her.
I started binge watching some of Devin Reed's podcasts on YouTube and love the format and just think it's kind of an edgy, edgy vibe. I'm also late to the game in podcasts, so I am still kind of finding my groove.
Tom Rudnai (45:04)
Nice, I've not heard of a lot of people binge watching marketing podcasts in the past, so that's...
Chloe Thompson (45:09)
I mean, binge watching
like, you know, I think I watched like two or three at once, which I would consider like a a good binge. And then I mean, my favorite book is Anne Hanley though. Everybody writes, like everyone should read that book and follow.
Tom Rudnai (45:14)
Okay, that's a bit, yeah, that's a bit.
Awesome, I've not got that. that's one that can go on my list. Anyway, well look, Chloe, thank you for joining. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I hope you have too. And I hope that anyone listening to this at home who's got something from it as well. So yeah, thank you.
Chloe Thompson (45:36)
awesome. Thanks so much,