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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)
Mark, hello, welcome to the podcast.
Mark Rogers (00:23)
Hey, Tom. Yeah, great to be here.
Tom Rudnai (00:26)
Nice to have you with us. Look, I want to get straight into it because we've got about 45 minutes here and I've got a long list of questions that I want to ask you. But maybe before we get going, do you want to just give me and all of the listeners a little bit of an intro into you, your background,
Mark Rogers (00:40)
Yeah, yeah. So my name is Mark, obviously. I'm the director of content marketing at FreshPaint, which is a SaaS company that helps health care organizations essentially get more performance out of their marketing. It's a cool place to be, cool space to work in right now, because in the US at least, health care marketing is difficult, because health care marketers don't have access to data that they need to like.
do their job effectively because of like HIPAA and privacy regulations. So FreshPaint helps solve some of those problems, is, which is, it's it's a fun area to work in honestly, even though, even though you throw out the word healthcare marketing and most people just get bored immediately. So I enjoy it, but so it's a good, good spot to be now. Prior to this, I was agency side for about six years. I worked at a content marketing agency called animals for just over four years. And then prior to that I was there with,
another agency in Pittsburgh, which is where I'm located, working on content marketing there and then also advertising as well and copywriting. So, then prior to that, it was in a whole bunch of other roles, but you know, eventually stumbled my way here. So that's the 30,000 foot overview of myself.
Tom Rudnai (01:49)
Nice, so talk to me about the transition from agency world into kind of in-house at a SaaS company. Was that a deliberate step and how have you found the transition?
Mark Rogers (01:57)
Yeah, it was definitely a deliberate step. knew agencies are really cool. I loved the fact that I got to work on client after client after client after client, figuring out different problems and solving different problems for clients. It's really cool. It's really fun. But it also becomes a bit of a treadmill after a while. A lot of times I notice when you've solved the main six problems that most companies come to you for,
It gets a little repetitive and a little boring and I missed the opportunity to really go deep into one brand and like spend hours talking to like one customer about how this brand solves the problem. Like I didn't have that ability at agencies because everything is like, you know, you're, you're timed or you're always on hourly work. So you're timed on like how, how long you can spend on one thing. So, I was looking for, I was looking for the right in-house,
role at a SaaS company and it just so happened that my current boss was a client at my last agency and we just had a really good rapport. And so when he was looking to hire for this role that I'm in now, he just reached out to me was like, you interested in this? And I was like, timing's great because I'm actually looking for this role exactly. So it worked perfectly. was a great fit, great transition and a great jump, honestly.
Tom Rudnai (03:11)
It's a really interesting point though, this is probably the quickest that I've ever gone away from my agenda and my plan for questioning. But I've never thought about that. A content agency is one of the hardest things to do on an agency basis, because content is a mixture of strategy and creativity, right? And both of those things are things you cannot put on a time clock.
Mark Rogers (03:16)
I'll take it.
Yeah, you can't at all, but in the agency world you have to. There's no other way to do it because agencies are just the nature of the way they drive revenue. You have to put time blocks on things.
Tom Rudnai (03:39)
Was it restrictive? did it make it harder to do good work for customers?
Mark Rogers (03:43)
I don't want to say, mean like...
It made it, it didn't, like, I think we did really good work for customers. So I don't want to say it made it harder to do good work for customers. think what it, what makes it hard is just the ability to like, so I think you can do like really good high level work. think when you were like, want to go into that deeper, that next step, it makes it hard to, to, do that. Cause you don't always have access to the resources you need to do that. Like
Now when I'm in house, if I need to like go deeper in one area of the product, I can easily get on a call with the product manager and talk through like this aspect, or I can get on a call with a customer and talk through this aspect or whatever it is. It's just much easier to get access to the things you need to execute. Agency side, it's a little bit tougher to do that because like I would have to contact my point of contact at the client and say like, hey,
Can I talk to a product manager? They would have to coordinate with that product manager, see if that person had time. It's just like, it's like multi-steps. And by the time you circled back to have that conversation with that person, three, four weeks may have passed and, you know, now you're on a completely different topic, different conversation. So it's, it's difficult to just get that, that level of depth when you're agency side.
Tom Rudnai (04:59)
Yeah, and I think it's gonna become more more restrictive. One of my beliefs is that content is becoming so much more strategically valuable. As buyers don't engage with sales reps nearly as much as they do, the role of content has shifted further down funnel. It's a lot closer to revenue, but that also means you need to be a lot closer to customers, you need to be a lot closer to your product folks. The input you need into your roadmap from the front lines of your product and of your customers is so much more, and that makes that roadblock even greater, right?
Mark Rogers (05:07)
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly that's that's that's a really great point. That's something we talk about a lot at at FreshPan is like that concept of like, you know, people do so much research before they even come to you, they probably have two to three companies picked out that they're going to talk to. And of those two to three companies, they're going to bring on one as their solution. So like, how do you get to the point where you are one of those two to three companies that that people choose from before they even contact you? Because like, we have a great sales team, they're really, really good at their job. But if we're not
getting them to the point where they are one, where we are one of those two to three companies, then like their job becomes way, way more difficult.
Tom Rudnai (06:05)
Yeah, and I mean that's where I think the role of content has changed a little bit in the, it's such a hard thing. My background is as a recovering sales rep myself. And people just don't want to talk to you in the same way that you used to. So you're under this pressure from your boss who typically has quite an outdated view of what sales looks like. Because the sales leader is just the person who used to be good at sales in most
Mark Rogers (06:26)
Yep.
Tom Rudnai (06:28)
But you're under pressure to have these almost weekly check-ins and if you're not doing that with your champion on a weekly basis then you're not doing your job. that just ignores the fact that it's not how they want to engage with you. So that's where I think there's a huge role that content needs to play. Particularly when there's a longer, more complex buying cycle in staying front of mind even after the point of an MQL.
Mark Rogers (06:47)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. It's much longer cycle. It's also like, I mean, you think personally, I'm sure you get a zillion cold emails from a zillion sales reps. Like if I've never heard of the company, I'm certainly not opening your email. Even if I have heard of the company, I maybe open your email. Probably not though. And it's just, it's just so much harder for sales to have traction now. So that definitely makes the role of content more important where we can influence perception and brand preference and all those things. So, um,
Yeah, it's a good time to be in content, I think.
Tom Rudnai (07:20)
Yeah, it's a bad time to be a startup founder. It's not funny, because if you don't have brand equity like that hustling to your first 10, 20 customers, nightmare. But every obstacle you face becomes a moat over time. Okay, I want to take a little bit of a step back because I'd love to get more into how you see your role within the broader go-to market and things like that. But before, I just want to give the audience a little bit more context on what content marketing means at FreshPaint. What's the...
Mark Rogers (07:22)
Yeah.
⁓ Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (07:46)
Context we need to understand the uniqueness and the challenges of marketing where you are
Mark Rogers (07:52)
So we're obviously selling healthcare marketers. Like I said, at the outset, one of the core problem we solve is helping healthcare marketers do more with their data. So healthcare marketers themselves are extremely smart, really good at their jobs.
but they're used to not having all the tools they need. they're, they're, they're, not even that they're used to being, they're used to being told no a lot when they need to bring on a new tool. Cause they have to go through legal review. They have to go through compliance review. They have to go through IT review. It's like all these layers that could tell them, no, I'm bringing a new tool in. So, they're extremely careful and slow to, to, to buy. that, that slowness like is more result of just like the red tape they all have to go through. So,
we've built our, marketing around that concept of like, we need a big push around like one specific customer to really bring them on board. So whether that's, you know, we start the very early days from like just building brand preference, brand awareness with, with a specific company and like slowly just nurture them along the way. So content fits in with that where content is basically the foundation for a lot of the stuff we do to
to make somebody aware of our company, bring somebody into the fresh paint world. So like a good example of this is like we do a lot of virtual events and we do a lot of in-person events as well. And content is obviously integral to making those events valuable. So me and my team work on like the presentation that we're giving at a conference to make sure that it gets, you know, catches the right attention. We have a huge conference coming up next week that we've been working for months on this presentation for.
Um, so in addition to that, we do, um, a lot of work to help the demand gen team get their, message out there better. So create a lot of content for them that fits in different places. Um, and then we were, we were working with partners a lot because partners have access to a lot of our, our, um, ICP. So we do a lot of like co-marketing with partners, webinars, eBooks, things of that nature. Um, we're just really try to truly be, I know a lot of people talk about like content is the foundation for.
everything marketing and I really try to make sure that that is felt at Fresh Paint where it's like if you're doing something marketing it's probably gonna start with content because there's so much education that needs to happen and that's kind of where we fit in.
Tom Rudnai (10:07)
Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's interesting. What I was thinking of when you first started talking is that that's that of 95 % of buyers aren't in market, right? So a lot of content marketers are like the demand and approach I feel like is we're to be front of mind so that buyers come to us when they enter the 5%. But then what you kind of also described is we're using content as almost as an ABM tool of we're focusing in on one or two accounts. And I almost think of that demand gen approach is almost contradictory to ABM because it's
One is putting lots out there and letting people come to us. The other is no, we're hyper-focused on this. How do you think about that? And is there a clash there or am I wrong
Mark Rogers (10:45)
No, you're actually right. So we do both at FreshPaint. We do have an ABM team. We also have the DemandGen team, which is focused on like, let's cast the bigger net to our ICP. Because like I said before, there's a lot of education that needs to happen before someone is even aware that FreshPaint exists to solve a problem that they have. There's problem awareness with what we do. There's also solution awareness. like,
If people are aware of the problem, they don't even know that a solution exists for it. So demand gen focuses on a lot of that of like, let's, you know, um, you know, let's, let's make the, let's make people problem aware. Let's make them solution aware. Um, at the same time, ABM is in there doing, doing their work as well to target like specific accounts with, with, um, you know, our message. So I kind of think of it like demand gen is air cover and ABM is kind of like people that are coming in being, um, I don't want to say.
more strategic isn't the right word because our demand gen team is also very strategic in how they operate. But, but, but yeah, ABM comes in and, and like picks the exact like tier one targets. These are the people we need to go after and here's how we get them. So it's definitely like a joint cooperation between the two groups. And then like I mentioned before, the, the other, the other pieces of marketing events, partners, they all fit in really well into that also.
Tom Rudnai (12:03)
Yeah, okay. So one thing I'm hearing in this then is, because I presume these things are operating in different segments a little bit, but it seems like your team is quite split in terms of your focus. You've got to support a lot of different functions around the business, which I think is what good content can do. One thing that's come up on past episodes of this is like content, it's very easy for marketing and particularly content to slip into becoming a support function rather than like a proactive strategic function.
Mark Rogers (12:27)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (12:30)
How do you blend that? do you blend like your job being to support these functions but not becoming a support function?
Mark Rogers (12:37)
Yeah, honestly, this is, I mean, it's the biggest struggle in content marketing because it is very easy to just be like, yep, I'm going to be the order taker. I'm going to like, you tell me what you need. I'm going to put that out there. And I think in any content strategy, there is the role for that. I think you have to do that to some degree because like, there's always going to be stuff that'll come up that like, you know, the events team wants to do.
webinar for this audience and it's like alright I couldn't plan ahead for that so you know we need to jump on and solve that problem for them and help them put out the best content we can so I always make space for that in in the content we do but then like the flip side of it there is also like the proactive side where you if you're if you're only focused on like taking orders and being reactive in your content then you're gonna miss that opportunity to build up like
brand preference, brand awareness, because that's like getting your message out there. That's like pushing things. So we've, and like I said, it's, it's hard to balance those two between being proactive and reactive. And a lot of times I think we've been too reactive. So I'm currently like on this journey to be more proactive and push our message messaging further. so I'm working on a new strategy to help do that. but you know, it's, it's a journey. It's always like,
Because the downside of being more proactive is like then all of sudden you have to tell a lot of people no on things that they need because you just don't have the capacity to do it all. So it's a balancing act and figuring out it out. don't know if any content team has it exactly nailed. I would love to hear from somebody that does have it nailed and it's always something I'm trying to nail too.
Tom Rudnai (14:07)
Yeah, I I talked to a decent number of them. They don't, don't worry. It's not something anyone's got completely figured out at all. I talk a lot about like adopting more of a product manager mindset. think one thing, bad product managers basically take feature requests and build them for people. And that's what a lot of kind of organizations evolve into eventually. Good ones are laser focused on the end point where we want to get to our product vision that's taking input from kind of
Mark Rogers (14:10)
Yeah, that's good.
Tom Rudnai (14:34)
C levels in terms of our strategy, what we need to do commercially. But then they're really good at absorbing into their roadmap, which is how they get their loads and loads of input. And they have a clear framework that allows them to weigh every bit of input against that vision and that strategy without dissuading the input, which I think is the trick, right? You do have to say no, but you need to have a framework that allows you to say no with a good reason and backed up by data as to why that's.
Mark Rogers (14:49)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (14:59)
Maybe a very good idea, but not what we're gonna do.
Mark Rogers (15:02)
Yep. Yeah. And that's, mean, that's, that's, that's where the value of like a, a strategy that everybody's bought into comes in. Because like, if I have a strat, a content strategy that I presented to the marketing team that says like, here's our goal. Here's the, you know, we're going to reposition this about our messaging or here we're going to do X, Y, Then it makes it easier when somebody comes later and is like, Hey, I need this piece of content. And it makes it easier to say like, Hey, this doesn't quite fit into the strategy. It doesn't quite fit into the content roadmap right now. Can we table this till next quarter?
or six months from now or whenever it is. And like once, like I said, once you have, once you've agreed, once everyone's agreed on that content strategy, it becomes easier to push back on people like that. So, yeah, it's an important balancing act. hopefully I can figure it out eventually.
Tom Rudnai (15:48)
Yeah, I don't think you will, but you'll get closer.
I want to get into more about how you communicate and how you kind of measure your content strategy. But I'm also interested in one of the nice things about interviewing content marketers is they've put their beliefs and their views out there into the world. And so I get to ambush them on a podcast with things that they've written about in the past. Idea-centric content frameworks.
Mark Rogers (16:06)
love it.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (16:10)
I noticed a lot of stuff in your article with animals on that. Talk us through a little bit about what that is and how you use that framework to define your of content IP almost.
Mark Rogers (16:21)
Yeah, so this is one of the things that I saw a lot coming from the agency world where like People focus on the need for a piece of content rather than focusing on the idea that drives that piece of content. like.
Easiest way to explain this is through SEO. like somebody will do, you you might do keyword research for your company and come up with like, all right, we want to write a piece of content about customer data platforms. And so you start writing that content without realizing like, what's the idea behind that? Like, what are we, what are we, what's our point of view? What are we actually putting out here? And I think a lot of times you end up with like a pretty generic piece of content when you go that route.
versus the flip side of it, when you center around like the actual idea, the core of what you want your company to say, then it becomes easier
So, one idea that, that we're working on pushing out there at FreshPaint right now is like this concept of like built for healthcare and ready for scale. So, basically by that, it's like we build, we build products for healthcare marketers that help them scale their marketing. so with that idea, it makes it easier to like tie that into, into a piece of content. So if you want to write a piece about customer data platforms,
Most customer data platforms aren't built for healthcare and they're not good at scaling with healthcare. So it makes it easier to, to center your topic around an idea when you, when you actually have that, that idea. And then even backing up a little bit further, like any of those ideas you have, they got to come from somewhere. So what I usually recommend from somebody is like, start with your product roadmap, figure out what's on that roadmap, look at the jobs to be done that the product roadmap, the products on that product roadmap will solve.
And then from there, once you have an understanding of those jobs to be done, that's where your ideas come from. That's where you can start to build the content from. And then after you've got all that sorted out, then you can start to figure out, like, all right, what keywords do we actually want to target here if you want to go an SEO route?
Tom Rudnai (18:10)
What I like about that is we talk about aligning across different teams and building a content strategy that fits in with the direction the organization wants to head in. By taking that kind of thematic approach to what is our idea at the moment, what's the thematic push that we want to make from the product roadmap, you're kind of building that in, right? Everything then comes down like a hierarchy from that.
core theme and it means that all the little decisions you make are naturally going to fit in with the direction of the organisation and with the commercial goals which is ultimately to sell that thing on the road map.
Mark Rogers (18:45)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. this is one of the areas I hear a lot of content marketers being like, oh, we want to do product led content. And like, my view on that is like, you should have been doing product led content all along. I feel like that's the whole point of content marketing. If you're not connecting it to the product, the product roadmap and helping to get that message out there, then you've kind of missed the point of content marketing. You're just doing content. So I think it's, I think it's definitely important to look at it through that lens.
Tom Rudnai (19:12)
Yeah, it's the difference between like a personal blog and a content marketer, right? And that's where chucking vanity metrics leads you astray because there a load of things that I could go and put out there tomorrow. They're gonna get me shitload of likes on LinkedIn and I'll get dopamine all day and I'll feel wonderful about myself. But at the end of the day, I'll have no more customers because of it. ⁓ okay, so we've built this strategy. What's your process in terms of then communicating that to...
Mark Rogers (19:23)
Yeah.
and
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Tom Rudnai (19:38)
to all the teams on the front lines that ultimately are one of the best distribution channels you have for your content.
Mark Rogers (19:44)
Yeah, I think the best thing you can do is obviously like have alignment with your marketing team. So like just pitch them your strategy, make them aware of what you're doing. And then as you like step outside from your marketing team, you obviously have to change how you pitch your, your strategy a little bit. Like if you're sitting down with product and telling them, like if you're telling them the same, you know, if you're pitching the same strategy, the same way that you just pitched to marketing, they're going to tune out a little bit. So you need to like,
tweak to say how it's relevant to them. So like, if I'm pitching the product and telling them, here's the content strategy I'm doing, I'm going to focus around like the product roadmap aspect that I just talked about. If I'm talking about the strategy to sales, I need them to understand like, all right, here's how this actually helps prospects. Here's how this changes brand awareness, changes perception. So it really depends on like the team you're talking to, what the goal is. And then keeping in mind that like,
All those other teams, they have really short attention spans, not because they hate content or anything like that, but they have 10,000 other things they're working on. For them, content feels like, you know, something you're working on over here. It's not like a high priority for them. So like, keep your pitch to them tight, and then make it easy for them to understand once the piece is produced, here's what this piece is, here's how to find it, here's how to access it, here's what to do with it. Just so they can get more out of it from that perspective as well. Because it really like...
I've noticed with content especially, you can talk a great strategy, you can get people excited about it, but it actually matters in the execution if it's going to come to life or not. So that's when it matters to those other teams a lot.
Tom Rudnai (21:14)
Yeah, no, that makes sense. guess once I'm always particularly interested in the relationship between content and sales, I guess partly because of my background and because of what we do at Demon Genius. How proactive are you in kind of maintaining that relationship and in leveraging them as a distribution channel? Because what you've described is a fairly slow moving market with a long complex sales process. That means there's a lot of time after an MQL where content needs to support sales.
Mark Rogers (21:32)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (21:37)
And I always think that that's where there's a massive white space of opportunity to do a lot more, particularly as we're all looking to grow more efficiently.
Mark Rogers (21:43)
there's a couple different ways I work with sales. A, I try not to ask too much time from them because like, you know, they're super busy. They have clear revenue directives that they have to meet. So for me, it's not like I'm not taking two hours a week and going through calls with each of them. So what I do instead is make it as easy as possible to have content that solves every question that a prospect.
might ask or answer to every question that a prospect might ask. And then I make it really easy for sales to find that content and use that content. So I think probably the most useful thing from a sales perspective I've ever done at FreshPaint is I built a content inventory through ChatGPT where salespeople can chat with it, say like, I had this conversation with this prospect. What piece of content should I send to them as a follow up?
the chat bot returns like, here's a piece of content that fits that narrative that, and here's how to, here's how to send it to them via email. and that just makes it really easy for, for sales to keep that conversation going. it also makes it easier for me cause I don't always have to do like a big show around like an internal show around a new piece of content that I published because like, you know, a lot of times people aren't going to read those Slack messages where I'm like, Hey, we have this great new piece of content. I can just put it in the content inventory. If that topic comes up.
Sales will know about it through that process. I think that's the best way to approach sales is just like make it as easy as possible to use your content in their work.
Tom Rudnai (23:10)
Nice, that's so cool. Probably selfishly we're just building something pretty similar into our product. But I think that's important thing. If you just do it as a digest of the new white paper when it comes out, that sits in an inbox, it gets ignored you've gotta put the information they need into their workflow in the moment that they need it. That's just how sales reps tend to operate, for better or for worse.
Mark Rogers (23:15)
nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, just make it as easy as you possibly can for them. Because I mean, I started my career in sales too. So I've been, I've been there. It's like, you're, yeah, we're here like flying around. You need something to send to somebody, but you only have 10 seconds before your next meeting to do it. So you just like, you grab the last thing you sent to the last prospect, copy paste that email, send it off. And it's like, that's the way it's done a lot. So I'm like, all right, how can I make that?
Tom Rudnai (23:38)
Alright, another one.
Mark Rogers (23:55)
easier to surface better content per person and I think like the advent of AI made that incredibly easy which is cool.
Tom Rudnai (24:03)
the blank page problem doesn't get talked about as much with sales reps as it does with content marketers, but it is such a thing, because you know, I've got to an email to this person. I don't want to say any update.
Mark Rogers (24:08)
That's great.
Tom Rudnai (24:14)
I also don't want to write them an essay. It's like, what can I do? think anything content teams can help them get over that problem so they can follow up quickly and add value by leveraging content work. So, so valuable.
The other thing I want to get into then a little bit is how you report on success. Do you have a North Star as a content team and what is it?
Mark Rogers (24:34)
This is actually a fun one because I don't report on success. I'm maybe the only content marketer in the world that doesn't report metrics. Like I don't look at page views. I don't even have a clue what our most viewed blog... Well, I know what our most viewed blog post is, but like when I publish a new ebook, for example, I don't have a clue how many people view the landing page because like view... Like high view counts don't really matter to me. What I'm more looking for is like...
who downloaded this thing. like, you know, if only six people downloaded it, but four of them are chief marketing officers at enterprise healthcare, that's all I care about. So I'm really looking at like those more, those more qualitative numbers, like, you know, who was this person that downloaded this piece or like how often is sales using this? Are they finding it as a valuable piece? Cause like you said, the sales cycle is longer. So, you know, we have to make sure that we're creating content that engages people through that sales cycle.
So that's another thing I look at and then I also just look at like another good one we have a a weekly newsletter that that I write that goes out to Roughly, I think it's like 20,000 people in our in our email marketing system And I look at like who responds to that because I read it in a way that it's engaging. It's interesting. It's fun So a lot of times like people will respond to it and say like hey those that was really cool I didn't expect to open a marketing email this week and
and hear about the latest news in pop punk or something bizarre like that that I threw in there. So I just look at those sort of engagement metrics, like how are people reacting to stuff. And that for me and for my boss is the most important things that matter right now. Because we're trying to build this brand, we're trying to make people more aware of Fresh Paint and make people more preferential toward Fresh Paint. So if we focused on view count or
organic page views or anything like that, it kind of misses the mark. Those tend to be vanity metrics, like you mentioned earlier a lot of times. we just don't look at them. We don't report on them. And like I said, I'm very lucky in that aspect, and it gives me lot of freedom to do cool things. But it works really well.
Tom Rudnai (26:38)
Yeah, that is cool. You're telling me you don't even every so often at the end of a tough day go and find a vanity metric that you like and just look at it for a little bit.
Mark Rogers (26:46)
I honestly don't.
It's just, I don't. Like the coolest thing for me is like when, people respond to that, that email newsletter that I mentioned, like I save a lot of those responses. So if I'm having a bad day, it's like, all right, somebody, somebody likes my work somewhere. So yeah, there's one person out there. I'm doing okay.
Tom Rudnai (27:02)
There's one out there, yeah.
No, but I like that. It's focusing on the few outcomes that really matter rather than just viewing everything. I always think if you're a content marketer now building the business case for your own existence around traffic and engagement, well, that's not a very good idea. Because one thing we know is AI is destroying traffic at the top of the funnel and that's where all the volume sits. So it's not a good position to be in if that's what you rely on to justify your function and your role.
Mark Rogers (27:32)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. think a lot of, I think a lot of content marketers, like we were, we have this, like this measurement challenge in some of the wrong ways. Like, because everything is so measurable now, people feel like they should hold content to
a specific metric like page views or something like that. And I think that creates just sending people down the wrong path versus like if you're focused on building brand awareness for a company or brand preference or any of those other things that content is really good at, then you need to be a little more, a little less connected to specific page views or something like that. So.
Tom Rudnai (28:06)
One thing that's got to store which is quite interesting though, you're trying to, let's say you're trying to just get to five people and that's a successful white paper if it gets to those five people. you're still relying on distribution channels to do that and for that you have paid, have search, you have sales reps. Have you noticed any differences in how those five people come to that article or that white paper?
the search algorithms have changed and things like that has it impacted the way you approach distribution and the way people find you
Mark Rogers (28:33)
I'm sure it does impact the way people come to us or the way people think about us. But typically, I never focus on organic search as a distribution mechanism. When I'm creating a piece of content, I never focus on... Are people going to click an ad through LinkedIn to come to this article or ebook or white paper, whatever it is?
What I'm more focused on is like the topic, the idea itself. Is it something good? Is it something that resonates with people? So that's more the way I think about it rather than like tailoring a specific message to a specific distribution method.
I know there's value in that, but for me, think the idea itself is more important than how you tailor your message for LinkedIn versus email versus another platform. Because a good idea across any of those is going to catch attention.
Tom Rudnai (29:19)
If something resonates with a pain point, then it resonates with a pain point, right? But it's just, it's how you get that message in front of people that I think is a lot more complicated these days, but probably has shifted a lot in the last six, 12 months.
Mark Rogers (29:34)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. think like, and one thing I definitely do is if I publish an ebook, then I'll do like some LinkedIn specific content built out of that ebook that fits there. like LinkedIn carousels work really well for us. So like I usually spin up something like that.
video content can work really well, we do some of that as well. But it's like, everything's built around that ebook, which is built around that one idea. So it all spins out from there. And that's kind of like sort of how we repurpose things.
Tom Rudnai (30:00)
Yeah, okay, well come on, we've gone 33 minutes and 55 seconds and no one's mentioned AI, but I feel like that's, which is a personal best, but that's the point at which we have to. What role does AI play in that and how has it changed the way that you operate on a kind of day-to-day, week-to-week basis?
Mark Rogers (30:06)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm a big advocate of AI. I'll definitely say that right off the bat. It's something that me and my content team will use pretty much every day in our workflow. I don't use it, I don't think it's a great writer at all. What I think it's really good at is like parsing through a whole bunch of source material to figure out like what's the core concept here that I need to build around. So like...
You know, if I've had conversations with 8, 10, 12 healthcare marketers about a topic, I'll upload the transcripts to all of those into, into Chad GPT or Notebook LM or anything like that. And, and figure out like, all right, what are the core concepts here that were talked about? What do I need to build around from there? So I find it really helpful in just like parsing through a huge amount of information to help me figure out what matters. And then from there, like I'll go, you know, write the piece. I might work back and forth with AI a little bit to be like,
having trouble wording this paragraph, like is there a smoother way to do it, and like get some ideas from AI on that. And then once I've got the piece finalized and it's gone through copy edits and it's ready to go, what I'll do a lot of times is like throw it back in AI and be like, all right, I need to repurpose this into email copy, can you help me do that? Or I need to repurpose this into a LinkedIn carousel, like I mentioned, can you help me do that? I think it does better with those things. Those still need, you know, they need the personal touch because you always get that like.
that sort of AI speak when it produces something. like, it's been a big accelerant in like the amount of work we can get done in a day and a week just because like it is able to give you that. It's able to get you away from that blank page of like, I don't know what to write for this carousel. It's like, all right, here's a crappy idea from AI. It's like, all right, I can work with that. We can make that better. So yeah, a big proponent of it. think anybody that's in content marketing that's not on board with AI is...
missing a big opportunity so I just advocate advocate for it so much honestly.
Tom Rudnai (32:06)
Yeah, I mean it still baffles me when you have people kind of this debate of do I like it, don't I like it? I don't care, it doesn't matter, it's here. It's such a waste of time.
Mark Rogers (32:11)
Yeah. Yeah. It's here. You got to figure out how to use
it. It's so, it's so useful. Like just, and like I said, don't, you know, you don't have to have it right for you. There's other ways you can use it. So figure it out and start using it.
Tom Rudnai (32:25)
Yeah, I mean, to me, what I see is to the people that are successful at the moment seem to fall into one of two camps. One is we're going to lean into AI, we're going to produce a load of crap, but it's going to be everywhere. And sooner or later, someone's going to bite. It's not my favorite approach, but I think it probably does yield some success. At the end of the day, volume is a factor, but also people who lean into, okay, we're going to use it to enhance quality. And that's what it sounds like is more your approach. It's kind of a personal tool.
Mark Rogers (32:38)
Yeah, I think it works. Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's 100 % at using. I like that framing of using it to enhance quality because that's that's what I think it does really good at enhance this quality in a faster way than I'm able to do myself because like, like I said, if I have if I've had those 8, 10, 12 conversations with healthcare marketers before AI, I would spend like 8, 10, 12 hours just parsing through all that content and writing notes and it would, you know, it would it would end in a really good piece of content. But it took me
8, 10, 12 hours before I even started thinking about writing. Now with AI, I can have those conversations, get those transcripts into the tool, and then figure out the concepts within the next 20, 30 minutes, which is pretty wild, just the time savings there.
Tom Rudnai (33:37)
Yeah, and how do you approach it with the team and with writers? Because I think there's a, it increases the expectations of output, right? But then we are still dealing with something which is creative and then inevitably it's hard to, it's not always gonna define. So it's a tough time because you're expected to produce content quick and how and that's reasonable because you have this. But there's still gonna be times when you get a bit of a block and you're just not happy with the output and it doesn't get you as far forward. How do you approach it with managing the team and giving them leeway while still,
adjusting expectations to the new context.
Mark Rogers (34:08)
Yeah, I mean, I think it comes back to the quality of the output. I don't think our expectations of volume output have changed at all because of AI. I still make sure there's space to focus on like having the highest quality piece you can have regardless of if AI exists or not. So I really try to avoid
increasing like the quotas per week because of AI. It's just like content still takes time. You still need to give it the space. Even though you're able to speed up your research or your planning, like I just mentioned,
You still need the space to write a quality piece and execute on it. So I think it depends on that last piece of like, is the output high quality? That's what it comes down to me more than like production of a number of assets.
Tom Rudnai (34:54)
Yeah, okay, Look, we're of coming towards the end of our time, so I'll do, I've got a few quickfire questions that we like to ask at the end, so I'll get into those. What's the biggest change that you've noticed in B2B marketing since you first started in it?
Mark Rogers (35:06)
I would say, mean, talking about what I just talked about a little bit is like the quality of content has just gotten really good across the board. Like I started when I, back in 2012 when I launched my company's blog that I was working at at the time, like the quality of the content was basically like me doing my own research, being like a not.
classically trained writer just writing stuff and it was like it was okay and like at the time that style of content actually did really well for that company because like nobody else in industry was like writing content that was like even half researched or half opinionated. I think like just even in the past few years you've seen every single company you go across
so many SaaS companies look at their content they're putting out. It's all really good. It's all really high quality, heavily researched. SMEs are included. It's just been like that. And it's especially happened in just the last few years, feel like more than even so before, of like the quality of the work across the board is so good. It's awesome. I'd love to see it.
Tom Rudnai (36:07)
Yeah, I it's interesting you mentioned the word opinionated because I think that's something like B2B content used to be really bland, boring, not ever opinionated. Now I think one thing that's changed a little bit is the rise of the founder brand as a mechanism has meant that content's opinionated. That's not a problem anymore.
Mark Rogers (36:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it's been cool to see like content mature in that in that way that like the founder does want to do more with content and trust content to do more with their voice. It's cool to see that like maturity of things. So that's fun.
Tom Rudnai (36:36)
Yeah,
no for sure. Next one, for you personally in your career, what skill or trait has kind of moved the needle for you in your own progression?
Mark Rogers (36:45)
It's easy to say like the writing skills you know, being a content marketer, I feel like that's the most important skill you need to have. And that's one that like I constantly work on to get better at. I'm, you know, I still don't think I'm a great writer, but I'm good enough. But I would say like probably the most important skill is like your interviewing skills. Cause like, if you're, you know, like I said, you're researching content, you're probably talking to SMEs to include their insights into content.
you need to be good at interviewing people, need to be good at asking questions, you need to be okay with asking the dumb question that gets an interesting response. And that was like earlier in my career, right before I joined animals, right when I joined animals, that was something I was just not good at at all. And I think like my ability to get better there has made the content that I produce a lot better. So yeah, I would say it comes down to that interviewing skills, one of the more important things.
Tom Rudnai (37:35)
I saw you can give me some tips after this then. I didn't realize this whole time you're just judging me.
Mark Rogers (37:37)
Thanks.
No, no, no, this has been great, honestly. You've been great at
this. I think like, yeah, so no notes at all.
Tom Rudnai (37:46)
So if I was to approve your like plan A budget request tomorrow, the way I think of it is like the one that no one would be stupid enough to actually approve, what would you go and do with it?
Mark Rogers (37:56)
I've got a couple of it. So I've got this like crazy podcast idea that that I hopefully I can get approved one day but like I want to give a healthcare organization like $100,000 to like do whatever they want with marketing.
but with the caveat that like, you have to invite me along for every decision you make. You have to include me in like all the meetings that happen with this money. Like I want behind the scenes on like what's actually happening here. What are you going to do with things? How are you going to use it? I think you can create some really fascinating behind the scenes content out of that. And that's not something that's done really in healthcare is like that behind the scenes content. So that's like, that's like.
the idea that I've had and I've talked to my boss about it a few times and like we all think it's a cool idea it's just like it's a big budget ask because obviously like I gotta give somebody a hundred thousand dollars and then I actually have to produce a really high quality podcast out of that so that might be another fifty thousand dollars it's a big budget ask for for a piece of content so you know
Tom Rudnai (38:57)
It's cool though,
I've never heard of anyone thinking about doing that before. If you ever want to do it with a SaaS company, I'll take your $100,000.
Mark Rogers (39:00)
Yeah.
Yeah,
I'll keep you posted. I think I got to stick to health care, but I'll let you know.
Tom Rudnai (39:07)
⁓ You'll be disappointed,
it's mainly just me stood here and then sometimes going to play darts. No it's not, I'm very bad. And then last question before we let you go, what's the biggest fuck up in your career that you've ever made? Everyone here is going to be thinking Mark seems really smart and I want them to realise you're not.
Mark Rogers (39:15)
Maybe it could be interesting, you never know.
All right.
I've got a lot of dumb fuck ups in my career. think the one that comes to mind actually isn't necessarily marketing related comes from my sales days. But I think it's still a still a funny story. So we
first company I worked in sales at was like an HR consulting firm. We created like HR software to help companies hire better. And we had this like really cool new product on the roadmap. It was like eight, 10, 12 months away. And I was on a call with Fortune 500 and like, for some reason just got in my head to pitch this product now to them to see what happened. Cause like part of me was like, they're never going to buy, buy into this. They're not going to like it. It'll go nowhere. And like,
Immediately on that call, they were like, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. We want that. And I was like, I was like, yeah, shit, essentially. Because like, you know, I never expected an instant yes like that. And I was like, all right, cool. Yeah. I'll follow up with next steps on that. Got off the call and I was like, all right, I think this will still work. Cause like it's fortune 500 is going to take months to get through procurement with them. Like we'll probably be okay on the, on the product roadmap. They followed up with me like the next day of like, we were ready to sign. We got executive approval on this. Like.
Tom Rudnai (40:14)
Shit.
Mark Rogers (40:38)
We are good to go. And was like, I don't even, we didn't even have like legal terms figured out for this product. We didn't have pricing figure. We had nothing figured out for this product. Cause it was like an idea that the product managers had that was so far down the road. so I tried to like professionally ghost them essentially. ⁓ like I essentially kept kicking the can down the, down the road. Like I was like, yeah, we're working on the contract now. We'll get you pricing soon. And like every week they were following up because they were like,
Tom Rudnai (40:54)
You
Mark Rogers (41:05)
put my neck on the line, like you told me you could do this, like where's the contract, what's going on? And it got like more and more heated and I just like, rather than solving the problem, I just kept trying to like delay, delay, delay. And it created a point eventually, like the guy called me up on like a Friday at like 5 p.m. and he's like, where the hell is this contract? Like what are you doing? And I was like, I was like, ah, ah, I don't know. And he's like, I'm gonna talk to your boss right now. So I had to like connect him with my boss.
with no context, just like threw him over to my boss because I was hiding this from my boss too. ⁓ Yeah, that's the funny, that's, that's like my boss was like, yeah, honestly, that's kind of where it led to. But my boss was able to smooth it over. And surprisingly, that company still signed a contract with us with the caveat that they never work with me again, which I kind of at this, like at the time of my career was just like the worst feeling ever. But now it's like kind of funny to laugh about like, so it's,
Tom Rudnai (41:39)
Hahaha
And now I'm not in sales.
They tell me they put that
in the contract.
Mark Rogers (42:03)
Yeah, it's a
good, it's a, it's yeah, it was, was a disaster. So, but it's a good lesson and like, you know, don't, don't over promise, don't oversell it. And, it all worked out good in the end, but, luckily I'm not in sales anymore. So.
Tom Rudnai (42:17)
Yeah,
that's brutal. wouldn't move the roadmap for you if it's like a Fortune 500 company.
Mark Rogers (42:24)
It was one of those products that was like such a big undertaking you couldn't move the roadmap. Like all these things had to happen before then and I was just like, it was a really dumb mistake early in my career that like could have been detrimental but somehow the only downside was like they told my boss that they never wanted to hear from me again and I was like, okay, that's easy enough so.
Tom Rudnai (42:28)
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, that's the nice thing about working at a really early startup is I can call my co-founder and be like, yeah, you know that roadmap we agreed yesterday? Yeah, yeah, that has changed. Yeah, crash it. It's this now. Cool. Look, I'll let you go in a second. Before you do, any recommendations for the listeners in terms of like a book or a podcast or a thought leader that you love that they should check out?
Mark Rogers (43:07)
That's such a good question. really like a couple of newsletters that I like a lot. Kevin Lee, was formerly from Buffer. He started a company called Bonfire. He's a really good just marketing newsletter that I really enjoy. I read it every single week. And then there's another one. Trying to remember her last name, Theo. Last name is blanking. I'm blanking on right now, but she is an excellent.
content newsletter. It's like roughly monthly that she puts it out, that's definitely one worth tuning into. Yeah, yeah, Fio. I'll send you the link over after this so you don't have to go on a wild goose chase for somebody named Fio with a newsletter. Yeah, Yeah, she's absolutely excellent, has really good thoughts.
Tom Rudnai (43:36)
Nice, we'll find it after and put it in the show notes. Theo something. Check the show notes if you're listening.
Yeah, I need some help on that please.
perfect. And then lastly, anything you'd like to plug, anything you're doing that you think is cool.
Mark Rogers (43:57)
I mean, I just, I just plug everything fresh paint. got some really cool producing, some really cool content. have this big, big video series coming out that, was one of those like big budget things that I, that I pitched and got approved. it'll be cool to see that come to life. So, you know, keep an eye on our LinkedIn and our, our, our, our social channels for that. Cause it's, it'll be hopefully a different shift in how, B2B does, marketing. So especially content marketing. So.
I think it'll be cool, so keeping out for that. then feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always down to chat.
Tom Rudnai (44:29)
That's how we first met, he's
not lying, everyone. Awesome, Mark, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for joining us and everyone at home. Thank you for listening.
Mark Rogers (44:35)
Yeah.
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Tom. Appreciate the time.