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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 (00:21)
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Mime Geniuses podcast. I think we are now at episode 10. So we have a super special episode 10 guest, Lee Densmore. Thank you for joining us.
Lee Densmer (00:30)
Thank you. Good morning. Good afternoon. You're very far away from me.
Tom Rudnai (00:34)
We're all over the place here. You're on coffee, I presume. I'm on tea here. Okay, good, good. Well, hopefully as we go, you'll get more more caffeinated and everything will get more and more lively. Before we get into it, Lee, do want to just give us a bit of an introduction first into your background and how you got to where you are today?
Lee Densmer (00:37)
I'm in coffee, right?
You bet. Bit of a background. Let's see. I've been in content marketing for a couple of decades in marketing, different aspects of marketing, product and content marketing. My education is in professional writing. So I've been a writer and a teacher for a long time, which dives right into content marketing. I have owned my own business for the past two years after 20 plus years in a specific industry. And I opened my business a couple of years ago to serve a broader audience and have been consulting.
for two years in content marketing. So my business is building and running content marketing programs for B2Bs.
Tom Rudnai (01:23)
Nice, and what led you to make that transition then?
Lee Densmer (01:27)
It's a good question and a lot of people ask me that. So in IT, I think most of us have suffered with through layoffs or mergers. And I went through two of them. And after the second, the first one, you know, is devastating. It's very difficult to be, to be laid off regardless of the circumstance. And then the second one was liberating, you know, and I thought, I don't have to do this again. I can do my own thing. I can really challenge myself. And after about two days of thought, I decided this is, this is the way I want to go. I want to give it a go.
And it's kind of exceeded my expectations. It's been a lot of fun. So I found a freedom, freedom to grow and learn and contribute like I never had in corporate after starting my own business.
Tom Rudnai (02:08)
Yeah, that's really awesome. I like the kind of reframing of it. It's a much more liberating thing. I think it's something that comes with kind of maturity and confidence in your roles, right? Because you start to realise this stuff is about fit as much as anything. You're not the right fit. It's not a diminishing of your skills and your value.
Lee Densmer (02:12)
Sorry.
Super.
It's a really good point for people who are maybe disgruntled in corporate or not feeling like they're reaching their potential is if you decide you've got the chops to open up your own business, it really frees up, like I said, your ability to learn, your ability to contribute at your level, your ability to decline jobs that you're not good at. So I've really been able to focus on what I'm good at and where I can bring value and kind of discard or partner to do the rest.
Tom Rudnai (02:50)
one of the other things you said that was very interesting. So you have a professional writing background, which I think in content marketing is not unheard of but atypical. Like how do you think that shapes the approach that you take to content marketing, which is a slightly different discipline?
Lee Densmer (03:03)
Yeah, it is a different discipline, but foundational to content marketing and kind of part of every job description I've looked at is that you be able to write, that you be able to storytell. Storytelling is the, you know, the new way to refer to content narratives. So my background in writing is like professional writing. It's journalism, it's poetry even, it's research-based writing. So it's evolved a lot.
Tom Rudnai (03:11)
Yeah.
Lee Densmer (03:28)
But the one truth about being a content marketer is that you need to evolve the way that you tell stories for the digital world. So like nobody taught social media writing when I was getting a degree, but content marketers need to know how to do that. So my skills as a writer, they're absolutely front and center in the programs that I built for my customers.
Tom Rudnai (03:48)
And have you found that kind of best practices or what work has evolved over time? Because I think there's been a lot of changes, I'll speak for myself, in how I consume the written word, right? Social media, super short attention span.
Lee Densmer (03:59)
Yes, digital writing has changed a lot.
The fact that all writing most writing is published online anymore in marketing means that the way that people were taught how to write twenty or thirty years ago has changed shorter form now blog poster short form content social a short from content newsletters are necessarily short from content and the narrative principles still apply the narrative frameworks like P. S. and other frameworks but it's much more concise and so much more casual so twenty years ago we were taught to write.
Formally, academically, authoritatively, and the shift in tone has been the total 180. Writing with personality, writing with slang, the basic grammar conventions are out the window too. Emojis in newsletters and social media. So writing conventions have changed, the formatting has changed, but the frameworks, the principles have not changed. It's still storytelling. It's still research-based kind of stuff.
Tom Rudnai (04:55)
Yeah so the basics of a professional writing background are still perfectly transferable, just how you evolve with some of the nuances of how you kind of present that.
Lee Densmer (05:01)
relevant.
And other content marketers come from SEO. I would say the technical side of marketing. So when I meet content marketers, they're either writers who've advanced their skills or their SEOs or digital marketers who have gotten into managing content. And both of those backgrounds bring important things to the role, but neither is the full picture, right?
Tom Rudnai (05:24)
absolutely. ⁓
Let's get back a little bit talk us through a little bit about the kind of clients that you work with, the stage that you typically get involved in, how you work with them.
Lee Densmer (05:33)
You bet. Almost all of my clients already have a content program in place. Most of my clients are in the six to $60 million range of turnover. And they almost always have like a VP of marketing who believes in content and then maybe a writer or a digital marketer who is also being saddled with writing content on top of handling, know, publishing blog posts and doing email builds in HubSpot. So there's always a gap.
in these content programs about strategy. almost always tell me we're writing content, we're publishing blogs, but we don't have strategy. We don't really know our buyers. We don't really know our narrative. We don't really understand distribution. We don't have any repurposing. So there's always a handful of gaps in their strategy. So I'm able to come in and figure out what those gaps are and then figure out how to plug those gaps, whether it be with
like some extensive buyer persona research or hiring a writer who can do different content formats, bringing in a video strategist so you can start doing video, for example, building repurposing plans. I also help teams get organized, like they don't know where their content is. They don't have any process for managing reviews. So if a content program is frustrating or failing, it's often because there aren't foundations in place.
And it's often also because they have a chaotic production process.
Tom Rudnai (06:58)
how do you, that must be a really difficult thing once there's momentum built up to impose strategy retrospectively, because there's also a pressure to execute and deliver. How do you go about that?
Lee Densmer (07:08)
It's a good question. Sometimes you have to convince a team that stopping is the best strategy at that point. Looks like you're having a beer Tom. That stopping is the best strategy. Literally put a pause on it. It's not gonna hurt you if you stop publishing blog posts for a month. It's not gonna hurt you. You can promote old posts if you really need to be driving traffic back to your website. So I encourage teams to stop and go back and spend a month or six weeks on the strategic foundations.
which are the buyer, the distribution channels, the content formats and so on. So stopping is okay. It's okay to just hit a pause. It's okay to get off the hamster wheel. I will never tell somebody you got to publish two posts a week, no matter what, keep up the velocity. There's no need to do that anymore. It used to be required so that you could build authority on Google. It used to have to do with how Google boosts you.
which is less important now because of AI search at any rate. So inserting a process where you assess the foundations, take pause, put those foundations in place and start up again is gonna give you better ROI than just keep doing what you're doing. I so often find that businesses are over complicating the thing, just complete over complication. Planning in an Excel file with 16 tabs.
doing 10 different content types, running a podcast and a newsletter and webinars when they should have been thinking about or and picking the ones that were really the most strategic that they could commit
I think this is easier for me because I'm a consultant because I am hired as an expert to come in. So by the time they hire me there, they believe in my expertise and I can come in, do the assessment and say, look, you need to hit pause. And then I can report to their senior managers why I've recommended that and what I'm going to do next and what I expect the outcomes to be. And because of the way in which I've been hired, I find that that goes over well. I'm brought in to fix a problem.
Tom Rudnai (09:06)
I think there's a really good lesson in that. I've been saying for a long time, I think content is becoming a much more strategic discipline within go to market. But part of that is you need the right relationships to allow you to do that job. If you are three layers removed from the people who make decisions, then you are not in a position. So part of it is go show the value of what you're doing and use that to build bridges to the people that you need in order to make the sometimes the tougher decisions, right? Which is the benefit you get coming from outside.
Lee Densmer (09:35)
Right. And that's why I think a writer, a junior level writer or a junior digital marketer could never drive. And I want to be careful with my words because their contribution is valuable, but they may not be senior enough or broad enough or well-rounded enough as a professional to say, this is what you need to do with content. And this is why. So you do need a strategist. You do need somebody who understands content in the very broad sense, all types of content, distribution, repurposing to come in and assess a program and tell people how to.
get ROI from it, how to reach their audience with it.
Tom Rudnai (10:07)
And so you're
coming in typically 6 to 60, that kind of scale up phase. I'd imagine you've seen a whole load of mistakes that have happened during the 0 to 6 phase. I'm at like 0.5. So what are the things that you would expect someone like me to start doing? And what should I avoid?
Lee Densmer (10:11)
you
Yeah so when i will i love to discuss the mistakes because most people start nodding right away right. Weather as a consumer they've seen these mistakes a consumer of content and then it's a little bit harder to see the mistakes i think in your own program but when i start talking about the mistakes people go okay. So maybe the first one is too much top of the funnel so.
A lot of businesses when i go in are doing a lot of what is content they're trying to define a problem that's been defined a thousand times they're talking about. Topics that have been written about a thousand times and that is capable able to cover so when i do a massive assessment of the blog. Categorizing all their blog post where they sit in the final the topics they cover the traffic and it's easy to see that they've got like sixty percent top of the funnel Tom they're easy to write.
It's easy to write a what is blog post. It's much harder to write like a how to or how we it's much harder to write something that is more thought leadershipy. So you can pretty quickly see that they've been just churning out top of the funnel content. That's a mistake because it's undifferentiated. The competitors have already done it right. And now AI is doing it. So that's one of the first mistakes I see. It's easy to convince people why to not do that and to shift away from it. So
Maybe the second one I see is no newsletters. So when a business has an email list and they're not using it, that's a pretty tragic thing. So newsletters are a really great way to put out short form content to an audience who has raised their hands to hear from you. And so I see businesses with databases of 3000 contacts and like, you're not doing anything with this database, start a newsletter. And newsletters are not a big lift.
It's easy to repurpose a blog post or do a quick interview with somebody and put out a newsletter.
Tom Rudnai (12:20)
so I mean, the big ones that you see then are focused on top of the funnel content. And it sounds like that's because it's, it's the low hanging fruit a little bit.
Lee Densmer (12:28)
It's easy to write. Any writer can write it. They don't need to be an expert in your industry. It's research based. it really doesn't, it's an easy lift. So it's easy to do. So people do it.
Tom Rudnai (12:39)
Yeah, and I presume it is a component of a effective strategy or would you say like if you were going to in those early days of like 0 to 5 million revenue say what the split should be between top middle and bottom of funnel, would you be able to put a percentage on that?
Lee Densmer (12:53)
Yep, yes, if you are an established category, you need like 10 % top of the funnel. And I see 50 and 60 % top of the funnel. If you're an all new category, there might be different problems to explore. There might be different perspectives to explore. But if you're like an established category, your project management, SAS, right? You don't need top of the funnel. So I do like 10. Let me see if my math is good. 10, 45, 45.
Tom Rudnai (13:14)
Okay.
Yeah, okay, makes sense. And again, that to me is where you can build more on rented land is the top of the funnel, because that's where social is great, right? And it's middle and bottom of the funnel is where the website is starting to have more of a role to play.
Lee Densmer (13:31)
Right. Yeah. So and bottom of the funnel content isn't as hard to write as people think. It's how we content and the kind of the perfect example of bottom of the funnel content is a case study, a customer story, a success story. That is bottom of the funnel content.
Tom Rudnai (13:48)
Have you seen that change at all in recent years? guess what I'm thinking is, so one thing, we've seen a lot of changes in terms of SEO over the last
Lee Densmer (13:57)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (13:57)
Right. And AI
overviews cannibalizing the top of funnel informational search terms. So to me, what that means is like on site has shifted a lot further down. It's about capturing a much broader spectrum of high intent, very specific, low volume keywords. Has that evolved the way that you would approach producing bottom of funnel content, like case studies and comparisons, because you are now previously SEO wasn't probably such a part of that thought process or where am I wrong in that?
Lee Densmer (14:26)
Let me think that you asked like four questions in one. Okay, so I'll tell you that as a marketer in the past two years, I still focus on SEO. I still do the keyword research. I still try to pepper content with keywords. I do try to go for higher intent, longer tail keywords because those, you know, those top traffic keywords are impossible to win unless you already have massive domain authority, right? So.
Tom Rudnai (14:27)
I do that.
Lee Densmer (14:51)
As far as bottom of the content funnel goes and middle of the funnel content goes, I'm saying yes to keywords. saying less focus on keywords. saying longer tail keywords that are more specific to your niche or your product or even or even branded keywords there. So, but I would say a lot less focus on keywords in 2025 than even in 2023. That is.
Doable and I would say safe because you're distributing content more broadly if you think of SEO as a distribution channel and not as just traffic to your site so it is how you're getting eyeballs on your content and if you're expanding your distribution channels it is safe to reduce your focus on SEO. So socials and distribution channel your newsletter is a great distribution channel social not just linkedin but like YouTube and Reddit and other.
other social channels that you could be thinking about doing. so people also always ask me about what about LLMs? What about AI models that are scraping your content? How do we surface our content in that new distribution channel? Right? It's much the same as SEO. Again, something people are over complicating it. If you're writing useful thought leadership content backed by real experts, real names,
LLMs are going to find your content. It's just much the same. So again, shifting away from SEO and more into just distributing across multiple channels in multiple ways, multiple times to broaden your reach instead of worrying so much about SEO.
Tom Rudnai (16:25)
Yeah, I mean the nice thing I think about that because that's what we've seen as well, right? Distribution is a much more complex puzzle now of which SEO is one piece. But the good thing is I think it's a bit of a return to like good quality writing because the key to getting into the AIO views isn't cramming like an article full of keywords. It's answering questions that come up for users and closely matching that to what they type in the search bar. And that's what will get Google to surface your content about.
Lee Densmer (16:52)
Right. and answering customer questions is probably the best way in like five words that I can encapsulate content marketing. What are your customers asking? Answer those questions in various formats and various, various channels.
Tom Rudnai (17:06)
while we're talking about distribution, so one thing I noticed on your LinkedIn is I you do a lot of work with founders, right, to help them kind of find their model as a thought leader. ⁓ I think...
Lee Densmer (17:14)
Right there.
Tom Rudnai (17:18)
I guess
less interested in founders, but I know one issue a lot of in-house marketers will have is how do we activate more thought leaders within the business? So I guess, yeah, how do you take people and turn them into thought leaders and give them like the confidence and I guess the process that they need to be able to consistently share?
Lee Densmer (17:36)
Okay, I love that question. I work with founders and CEOs, so the CEO of a 50-year-old company wasn't the founder, but it's the same role, right? We're gonna say CEOs. And there's a number of barriers. Everybody says, yeah, we want more thought leadership. More thought leadership, but then they don't put a process in place to make it happen. So a thought leader is somebody who knows what they're doing and who likes to talk about it. That's literally it. So if you don't like to talk about it,
You're probably not a thought leader and if you don't know what you're doing or if you're too junior or if you're too broad, you're probably not a thought leader. So you need you need to find the people. It may be the CEO, right? Or it may be the CMO. It may be the chief product officer. It could be any number of people in your organization who has a spicy opinion and likes to talk about it and knows what they're talking about. The barriers I hear over and over again is that these people are busy. They don't have time.
They don't like to write, so they're thinking their thoughts. They're not writing their thoughts, and they hate to be on camera. So if they hate to be on camera, then don't make them be on camera. Somebody can interview them and pull out their thoughts and do and ghostwrite for them. They don't need to be obligated to write, and they don't need to be obligated to be on camera. So the point is to make it easy for them, but you really need to make sure that they have something to say and that you're putting the right person forward.
And that you're pulling the insights out of their brain in a way that works for them, or it's just not going to happen. You can't hand over thought leadership to the person, the thought leader. It needs to be, you know, you need a content marketer to help them with that. Writing the content in different formats, publishing it on social, writing a newsletter from their point of view, their tone of voice, et cetera. So there are ways to get over the hurdles of thought leadership, but it does, it does require a steady hand from.
from a content marketer to help do that.
Tom Rudnai (19:30)
So like you look for the core traits, right? Are they an expert and are they opinionated for one of a better term? And that's what you need in order to mould a full leader. But then it's about creating like an individual strategy for each one because for different people, they're going to... I think of myself and starting to post on LinkedIn, right? And I had certain hangups about why I didn't want to do that initially and why it was uncomfortable. But a lot of those hangups are probably going to be different for everyone, right? So you kind of have to become the therapist as well.
Lee Densmer (19:57)
That's funny. Yeah. Yeah indeed you the hangups fall into general categories for sure I'm working with one right now who? Who is a bit of a bite? This is a funny expression is a bit of a fart in a skillet Which means his brain is like all over the place and pin He's like a mosquito thinker his thinking is all over the place, but the company wants him to be the thought leader so
My job is to get him on the phone or find a way to get the thoughts out of his brain, find a way to organize them, and then find a way to synthesize them and polish them. So I am literally pinning the guy down. Smart guy, he's an expert, lots of thoughts and lots of opinions, but getting his thoughts to land is a challenge. And he knows this. He's like, good luck pinning me down. Good luck making something out of this. But I can.
with his trust. That's another thing is sometimes people who are thought leaders don't trust another person to craft their thoughts. And if you can't do it yourself, then you need to find somebody you trust who can help you with it. Another point, Tom, is that a lot of people think subject matter experts are thought leaders. But it's important to define the difference. So a SME is often somebody who's expert at their job with years of experience.
but who doesn't necessarily have opinions or like to talk. So these are kind of the quiet, smart people in the background who do really good work, but they're not necessarily happy to talk about it. They may go to conferences, they may even speak. Should you elevate those people? Absolutely. But you don't need to put them on camera. You don't need to amplify their social media profile. It's just a different.
a different type of input for content with kind of a different type of purpose. So don't conflate thought leadership with subject matter expertise. They can overlap, but they're definitely not the same thing.
Tom Rudnai (21:52)
Because an SME deals in fact with someone who has learned their pocket of the world with incredible depth and can convey that to other people. Thought leadership requires a little bit more breadth and it requires challenging the way things are, which is almost the antithesis of what an SME is, which is they deeply understand the way things are.
Lee Densmer (22:12)
Mm hmm. Yeah, I'd agree with that. And thought leaders usually already have a personality and are kind of known for it in certain circles. They're they've got an edgy personality. They like to talk. They like to provoke. They like to poke the bear a little bit. And you've got to find your people in your company who have that persona. Because if you're not that guy, then then it possibly isn't going to land with your market. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (22:40)
And is there anything that you've seen people to do? So I think everyone's dream is that we activate the entire sales force and people like that as kind of thought leaders, which I think by the definition you've given here, not gonna happen. But is there a way that you can leverage their voices still to amplify?
Lee Densmer (22:50)
Thank
Yes, totally. it's called social advocacy and it's something that I train teams how to do. So you empower customer facing people to be active on social channels, usually LinkedIn, and you empower them to do a handful of things. So they need to, they need to see it as an ecosystem that they're at the center of. it, it's, they would have to polish up their profile.
They would have to start commenting, which commenting is a really low lift. So finding the right people to comment on for their purposes, potential clients, peers. Then next level is they start writing their own content. You can repost the company's content or write your own content. And then the next next level is establishing a direct message strategy. So where you are finding people on LinkedIn who are relevant to your purpose and then.
commenting on their posts and then sending them messages in kind of a slow helpful curious way either on the platform or an email so that is the best way for employees customer-facing employees to use their voice to Affect and amplify the brand reach and maybe even bring in leads and sales
And there's different stages depending on the people's comfort. So not everybody is going to be a frequent poster, you know, like maybe 10 or 20 % of the people on your sales team are going to lean into that. But there's still ways for them to broadcast the brand to their level of comfort. But no, no one expect your whole sales team or customer services team to become thought leaders. They still can use social media to drive the brand though in very, very teachable ways.
Tom Rudnai (24:40)
Yeah, well, and I think there's something there for Marcus is about you have an understanding of how these platform works. These platforms work probably in a way that sales reps, for example, don't know every sales rep is on LinkedIn. I guarantee they're using it as part of sequences and stuff like that. It's just crap. They're not optimizing well for the algorithm and things like that. So I think there's a, I mean, I've got someone, one of our advisors who helped me with that to understand because it's not a world I don't care,
Lee Densmer (24:54)
I hope so. Yes.
gonna say it's generational, right? Like when I meet sales teams, there's always a 25 year old, right? Who understands social media. And then always somebody a couple generations older who's like, I'm happy to learn it, but it's not, it's not comfortable for me. So that's why I'm such a strong advocate for training and support. You don't just say post on LinkedIn, you've got to train people on the why and the how, and then you have to support them. I end up reviewing an awful lot of posts.
Tom Rudnai (25:20)
Hmm.
Lee Densmer (25:32)
while people are getting comfortable with how to write. So training.
Tom Rudnai (25:38)
Yeah, but I think
changing the way that you approach it.
Lee Densmer (25:41)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (25:41)
It's
great. like, so it's a question that comes up in conversations for me quite often is like, how do we get more thought leaders? But I think like you don't want thought leaders, that's not realistic. Social advocates is what you want. And that's something a lot less intimidating that you can train for. And you're going to find it a lot easier to get by in because all of these people that don't want to be a thought leader, and that's understandable, right? There's a lot of stuff that goes along with that, that goes kind of beyond the scope of a nine to five job,
Lee Densmer (25:50)
you
but you probably need both and people ask me how many thought leaders do we need? Maybe two right you need and you but you can have dozens of advocates. They're just different roles.
Tom Rudnai (26:18)
Well,
you have to deliver on their thought leadership, right? So there has to be some train of some kind of channel or link between their thought leadership and your product and your roadmap. If you've got five thought leaderships, then that kind of thread is going to be lost and you lose the enterprise value that comes out of the thought leaders.
Lee Densmer (26:36)
Yeah, I'd agree with that. It's much, it's actually harder the more you have. You're not doing yourself a favor if you try to.
foster and curate thought leadership from four people, one or two, right? Like if you've got co-founders, pick the one who has the spicier opinions, right? Or if you've got a suite of six C-level people, find the one or two who are the best at this, yeah.
Tom Rudnai (26:46)
Thanks
Yeah, okay, that's awesome. I'm gonna change the topic slightly, because there's one other thing that I wanted to make sure that we get into that I know you have a very strong perspective on, which is like the globalization of content. So I guess, wanna just talk us through a little bit about how you approach that? And I guess particularly interesting is when you say globalization of content, for me, I hear translation. Like what are the nuances that I'm missing?
Lee Densmer (27:22)
Yeah, sure. So I've got 25 years in the translation industry, 20 or so. And the companies that I worked for when I was corporate are the companies that translate for Microsoft and Facebook. So they take brands global. So what people need to know is that if you're an online business, you are global. You do have global potential global buyers. You do have attention around the world if you're online.
However, when you publish content that's home market content, that's from a UK headquarters or a US headquarters, you're publishing content for that market. You may not even realize it, but you're writing for US US or UK preferences. So the first thing companies need to do is figure out if they have a global audience. I'm telling you, do, but you need to figure out the size of it. Are a bunch of buyers in Spain interested in your product? Do you have a lot of people in China buying your
buying your SaaS product or whatever. Find out where they are. Use your data to find out where they are. And then start thinking about how you can adapt your content for that market. Yes, translation is one of the first things that you would look at doing is put your landing pages into Chinese, right? Put your top blog, translate your top blog posts into Chinese. But the truth is that, I'm gonna keep using the example of China, Chinese buyers,
Your target buyer in China has different preferences and beliefs and spending habits and customs than your target buyer in the US or the UK. Just full stop. Their preferences are different. The way that you address them may be different. Some cultures like the American culture is really casual, but Asian cultures are more formal. So when you're doing business with a culture in Asia, you may need to literally speak more formally, use less slang.
address people in a different way.
So companies can choose to translate content. You can choose to adapt it, which requires a more skilled professional. You can choose to create content specifically for that market. Like if you're creating a landing page, you might just want a whole new one for that market. You might not even want to think about translating your landing page or your home page. So I encourage every brand who's online to start thinking about how and where.
their content is being consumed outside of their home market and if they need to start considering a multilingual, multicultural approach.
Tom Rudnai (29:50)
So I have certain clusters in my head, right? So I kind of think if I'm producing content here in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, probably pretty applicable. Is that fair or is there more nuance between those?
Lee Densmer (30:01)
Yeah,
it's a lot more nuanced and it's a great question. So English is English is English. No, not just the dialect and the way that things are spelled, like the linguistic differences, the way things are spelled, the slang, the way terms are used. That's different. You can translate between dialects. I think that, you know, we all know UK, UK English and US English differences. Color is spelled two different ways. Realize is spelled two different ways. The jokes are different.
Idioms are different. Like I can tell if I'm reading a piece of writing by a UK writer, it's obvious within four sentences, right? That wasn't written for me. That wasn't written for an American buyer. So you do need to consider if your audiences are even all English speaking and how you might need to adapt your content for that particular new market. Yeah, there is a localization process across dialects of English.
Tom Rudnai (30:55)
Yeah, I mean, I can think of, had to, I could tell you some stories of very awkward starts to kind of Zoom calls and back in my end of my tail, particularly in the US where you've got a big room full of people and a little sarcastic joke does not play as well as it does here in the UK.
Lee Densmer (31:02)
you
Everybody's
like, wow, yeah.
Tom Rudnai (31:12)
There was
one that came up where I said I said to someone about their their background Oh that looks very homely which here means kind of cute and cozy and lovely there it means it's a bit shit I basically said your hair looks crap
Lee Densmer (31:25)
Yeah, homely is like not attractive at all. Homely is not good. Yeah.
So you can see behind me my travel books and my map. Travel is a passion of mine and I was born in another country. And so this is a particular interest of mine, global culture and global content. And it surprises me how little brands actually think about it.
Tom Rudnai (31:48)
what stage would you say there starts to be a real impact, right? Because, okay, at the moment I'm targeting the US, the UK, like kind of English speaking world is what I would consider our market. And okay, I could change the way that I spell colour and there's a small shift, but probably not that's gonna be tangible for me yet. At what stage would you say there is an ROI on starting to think about this to that level?
Lee Densmer (32:12)
Yeah. Probably you're missing out on sales already if you're not translating content. So it's a close effort with the sales team. Where, where, where are you getting attention and where, where do you see the next big market for your growth? And based on, you know, my speaking with a bunch of different companies, they do see foreign markets as their sources of growth. When they do see markets as their sources of growth.
then it's time to look. So predictions, projections based on data for sales in each market should influence when you start thinking about translation.
Tom Rudnai (32:49)
Yeah,
which makes a lot of sense. suspect translation is what probably gets picked up as part of that. We're going to target APAC, we need to translate content and have a content strategy for that world. I suspect what probably gets missed is the nuanced differences in how people relate to products and how they buy and how they talk to one another.
Lee Densmer (33:08)
Yeah, I'm going
to give you a really good example. So often SaaS teams talk about like saving time, like a project management platform. In maybe European or American messaging, saving time is a huge pain point for an American buyer. Just make it faster for me. I got to be more productive. In other countries, the emphasis is less on saving time and being more productive and more efficient.
but it's more on work-life balance. Like, I want a tool to enable me to finish my workday at five so I can be with my family. That's a nuance. So if you're talking with like maybe a Latin American about pump up your efficiency, hustle, do more, faster, that's not gonna land. It's not gonna land, because that's not what their ethos is. That's not the foundation of their culture. So messaging.
And when you just translate a blog post, you haven't addressed the messaging that's best for that buyer.
So if you are expanding into a Latin American or an Asian market, you need to consider the way they conceive of time, the way that they, their particular values for getting work done, the way that they see work as a part of their culture, because your messaging might be completely wrong for that second culture that you're trying to approach, that you're trying to sell into.
Tom Rudnai (34:30)
Yeah, super interesting. so, then how I can picture that even like within Europe, you have loads of these differences, right? We English people share a lot in common with kind of Scandinavian people. One difference tends to be a little bit more focus on work-life balance over there. So the way that you position something, yeah, it's going to be completely different, particularly when you, guess, get beyond what we all try and do is stop always speaking to the company, the account, but speak to the individual and their goals and what they want. That's where this extra level of
Lee Densmer (34:39)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (34:56)
What you're describing is empathy, right? Which I think we would all talk about feeding into marketing, but it's just recognizing that empathy goes beyond empathy with people like you.
Lee Densmer (35:06)
Yeah, yeah, what's the word for that myopic? Marketers can be myopic. They think about, I think about me and what's important to me. And I put that on my buyers without giving it much thought. So deep market research, deep persona research is critical to most marketers. And then you just extend that to another country and you recognize that you literally might be starting over with your understanding of that buyer. Yeah, there's still mid fifties,
golfers or whatever, right? But they do it in a different way for a different reason with different people. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (35:44)
Yeah, I mean can think of places I've been involved where they approach a new market and they look at that as where their growth is going to come from and I don't think this level of thought has ever got into it. think it's probably, there's low hanging fruit there for any larger organisation.
Lee Densmer (35:57)
Yeah, there could be, you test one market, right? You test one market with different messaging. You don't approach a new strategy for 10 markets at once. You're a UK company and you're selling a lot in Spain. Then you test that market with different messaging and maybe some translation. It's not an, not an all or nothing kind of thing at all. And it's expensive. Of course, once you start thinking about adapting all your content and translating all your content. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (36:21)
Yeah, but
the nice thing is you're replicating a playbook, right? So if you've got something that you know works well in the UK, you know the value is still there in Spain, the way that they interpret it and the way that what resonates with them is going to be slightly different, but you can shift that playbook over there.
Lee Densmer (36:35)
Yeah, I wrote a playbook. It's in my featured section. I wrote a playbook on content marketing that would get somebody started and help people learn more if they want that.
Tom Rudnai (36:45)
There we go, well we can put that in the show notes and send people there. No, I'm conscious of time, we're already getting towards when I should let you go. So what I'd like to do at the end here is a couple of quickfire questions. Do you have a few minutes and I'm gonna try for once to actually keep them quick. Okay, so first of all, guess, let me talk about this a little bit. What's the biggest change you've seen in B2B marketing since you first started out?
Lee Densmer (36:56)
OK.
The proliferation of channels, just the explosion of social for sure. I mean, I've been in marketing for a long time. think that marketers who are just getting into marketing is only ever always been social. It's a proliferation of channels, email marketing, and email marketing still has the best ROI. People don't realize there's a reason to remember that a newsletter has still has good ROI.
Tom Rudnai (37:07)
Nice.
Okay.
Lee Densmer (37:30)
Tools, the proliferation of tools that help get the jobs done, not just AI, but content management platforms, CRMs, so the proliferation of tools, the overwhelm that comes with trying to decide what tool to use, know, kind of like the mental gymnastics you go through to figure out what tool is best for your problem and then implementing one and it doesn't work. So overwhelmed with tools is a change.
Tom Rudnai (37:56)
Yeah, I mean that one's very easy for anyone listening to Seas Demand, easy problem solved. But what you're describing there is the amount of noise, right? In terms of the channel tools, think there is no, it's not difficult to find things that you can do to grow. Particularly if you're in an early stage, there's shit loads of stuff you can do and it'll all work. It's just the degrees to which it will work. So it's like finding focus and
Lee Densmer (38:01)
Right.
Thanks
Tom Rudnai (38:17)
a clear path within all of the options I think is more the challenge now rather than finding something that works.
Lee Densmer (38:22)
Sorting out the noise, right. And people creating more noise in their organizations when they try to go for tens of different channels, when they try to implement AI in random, random ways. So you really need somebody who can kind of help sort fact from fiction and busyness from strategy. ⁓
Tom Rudnai (38:40)
I like that.
It's all busyness and strategy. That's great. ⁓ next one. So for you personally, in your career, what's been the biggest, the skill or trait that has most moved the needle for you?
Lee Densmer (38:43)
Dizzying. Yep.
Willingness to learn, for sure. So I am well aware of what I'm not good at. And I think that that is something that we should all pin down, what we're not good at. And I am well aware of what I should and could go learn and what I need to partner with or outsource. It serves nobody in your organization or a business if you own it to keep trying to do things you're bad at.
So my ability to learn and then understand what I'm not good at are the things that have helped me move my career along and level up my contribution. Like I can really do a great job at this for you, but we need to bring in a partner to do this. That makes me more credible too. Like, okay, you're not going to bullshit me and say that you can do everything because nobody can.
Tom Rudnai (39:34)
Yeah, well, I mean, it's one thing. mean, I asked you at the start of this, what are the who do you work with? And you're like, well, they there between six and 60 million in revenue. You kind of rattle off your criteria, right? That's that's knowing what you're good at and knowing where you exist. That's great for credibility. Last one, and then just a couple of recommendations. So what was the biggest fuck up that you made in your career?
Lee Densmer (39:50)
Oh my God, that's. Yeah, right. A heart stopping moment. Um, well, let me tell you about the stupidest project I was involved with that I should have put a stop to. Um, it was working on a team and I was an employee, not a consultant. And we were exploring different content formats, which is great, but the team decided together to do a poster and we didn't even really know what to put on it, but it was like a.
Tom Rudnai (39:52)
I'm looking for like a heart stopping moment.
Lee Densmer (40:17)
big wall poster huge like three feet by five feet and not that big two feet by three feet and they ended up putting a workflow diagram on it and the logo of the company printing 500 copies sticking it in tubes sticking labels on it and mailing it all over the world okay so this project costs like twenty thousand dollars we have no idea who opened it we have no idea if it was just put right in the bin
Nobody thought to put a QR code on it, so maybe somebody would scan it and it would go to a landing page. It just was like ripping up money. And it's not that I'm against print, it's that I'm against untrackable efforts. So there you go. My biggest mistakes have been around just chasing shiny objects and not making sure we would be able to track the ROI behind it.
Tom Rudnai (41:02)
Yeah, I like the idea of sitting around like, what are we going to do? And instead of start with an idea or a message or something like that, it's like, no, poster. want it big. Okay. And then the last thing before I give you a chance to plug anything you're doing, like one recommendation for the listeners, whether it's a book, a podcast, a thought leader.
Lee Densmer (41:10)
But it's huge and we're gonna mail it and we're gonna mail it around the world.
Yeah, so, gosh, so many. mean, my favorite content marketing book is Content Chemistry by Andy Crestadena. I mean, he's a big name. That's a great book. Really practical. It's a good balance of tactical and strategic. I recommend Ross Simmons book also, which is about distribution. That's a good solid book with an interesting point of view about why distributing and repeating your messaging is
the best thing for your business. He and I agree that endless content creation is not the way to go. So those two books for sure. There aren't any podcasts that are rising to the top for me right now in terms of, of content. Yeah. Except this one, of course. No, I mean, yeah, absolutely. can cut that out, Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (42:03)
That hurt. Except this one.
awesome. And then just before I let you go, so anything you'd like to plug in terms of what you're doing at the moment.
Lee Densmer (42:18)
Sure, yeah, I am always happy to talk to chief marketing officers who need some help seeing where the gaps are in their content program. Within like an hour, you can identify where the gaps are and some low-hanging fruit for what to do next. It does not take long to assess a content program at a high level. I'm thrilled to do that with people if they want to reach out.
Tom Rudnai (42:40)
thank you very much for joining us. We'll pop some of those links in the show notes for people as well. And yeah, thank you for coming on,
Lee Densmer (42:46)
Thanks Tom, my pleasure. That was fun.