Lasso: Jess Cook on her 12x "content repurposing multiplier"

On episode #20, Jimmy speaks with Jess Cook from Lasso. They discuss:

- How Jess markets, upsells and cross-sells a product with a ton of features
- Why she's chosen to invest heavily in audio and video content
- Her process for getting to know the customer
- Why daily standups are the key to good team communication
- How she achieved a 12x "content repurposing multiplier"

Jess runs a podcast of her own called "That's Marketing, Baby" which you can check out here → https://www.thatsmarketingbaby.com/

👉 You can follow Jess Cook on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesscook-contentmarketing/

👉 You can learn more about Lasso here: https://www.lasso.io/

This episode is presented by our friends at The Juice. You can signup for a free account here: https://app.thejuicehq.com/

Creators & Guests

Host

Jimmy Daly

Co-founder/CEO at Superpath

What is Content, Briefly?

"Content, Briefly" is your go-to podcast for content marketing strategy. Each week, host Jimmy Daly interviews SaaS content leaders to understand all the nuances of their content programs—things like content org structure, KPIs, workflows, meeting agendas, and much more.

This podcast is presented by Superpath, the internet's best content marketing community.

Jimmy Daly (00:02):
This episode is brought to you by The Juice. As marketers, we're constantly trying to stay up to date with the latest trends, algorithm updates, new social networks, distribution tactics, email best practices, and so much more. And that's why we need the juice with over a hundred thousand resources. The Juice is the ultimate content hub, specifically built for content marketers. The Juices curator recommendations introduce you to creators, brands, communities and more who can help you learn and grow as a marketer. Plus, with the Juice's new feed and monthly email updates, you'll stay in the know without wasting time browsing through more content. You can even tailor your email digest to your preferences so you'll only see stuff you're interested in if time saved and knowledge gained. Sounds good to you. You can sign up for a free account at app dot the juice hq.com. We'll also leave a link for you in the show notes. Thanks so much to the Juice team for their supportive super path and this podcast, hope you enjoy this episode.

Jess Cook (00:57):
I'm trying to talk to customers a couple of times a month. Listen to sales call recordings so that I can hear how they talk about their current workflows and why it's not working for them, why they're actually even interested in a new solution. What about it gets them excited? So I think those are the things you have to look for when you're going and standing up a content department really is like you have to understand the motivations and the frustrations, and to do that, you have to get close to the customer however you can.

Jimmy Daly (01:27):
Hey everybody and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content briefly. I've got another good one for you. Today I spoke with Jess Cook, who runs content marketing at a company called Lasso. Lasso is a SaaS product for organizations that host events. And we're talking about things like music festivals and multi-day conferences with thousands and thousands of people. They have a world of challenges that I can't even imagine. Everything from shipping chairs and carpets and gear and stuff from one location to another to actually running live events and a number of other things. She's faced with a very unique set of challenges in that the product has a ton of features and the target persona is on the go all the time. And so a lot of this conversation focused on the ways that she has found to reach those people through different types of content, different mediums, even the structure and the roles of the people on her team.

(02:16)
I think you'll really enjoy this one. Also, just a quick reminder to check out the new and improved super path Slack group. It's now 20 bucks a month. You can also get an annual discount. Your employer should probably cover it for you since it definitely counts as professional development. And I think what you'll find there is gonna be really exciting. There's some really interesting high level strategy discussions, in-depth conversations on things like people management and career development. Honestly, it's awesome. I'm enjoying being in there more than ever. I think you will too. If you want to check it out, just go to super path.co/community and sign up there.

(02:51)
Hey everybody, Jimmy from Super Path here with another episode of Content briefly. Really excited to chat with Jess Cook today, head of content at Lasso. Bunch of questions for you Jess. Just one like quick funny thing as we get into this. I was googling your name ahead of this, which I do for everybody just to make sure I'm not missing anything. And your name comes up so much like your personal branded search is excellent. You've been interviewed a lot, you've written a lot of guest posts, you've got podcasts, YouTube videos, there's a lot of your knowledge already out there on the internet. So thank you for making my life easy to prep for this podcast. , would you mind just doing a quick intro of yourself, a little bit about your background and some of your work for folks who aren't already familiar with you?

Jess Cook (03:28):
Sure thing. Hi, I'm Jess Cook, I'm head of content at Lasso. The first maybe 15 or so years of my career, I was a copywriter and creative director on B two C brands and in advertising agencies. But in 2019 decided I kind of wanted to do something different and content marketing really just kind of stood out to me as like an area that I wanted to really give it a go. So I made the jump, I've been at a few companies now. Started out at a company called Fastly, they were a public company at the time. I joined with about a thousand people and I went from that to head of content at Mar Pipe, which was a startup that had, I think I was the 24th person hired . So went from really mega big to like super startup, was there for about a year and then got recruited over to Lasso, which is where I am now. And Lasso is vertical SaaS for the events industry. You know, you go to like a concert or a conference and there's a enormous team of people there before you getting everything set up, the audio, the visual stuff, the stage, making sure everything's working right. And even before that, right, they were kind of planning that event, getting everything ready and hiring all the crew to actually get out there and do it all. So our software platform lets people that run event companies run their business.

Jimmy Daly (04:48):
So you've stood up or taken over content programs at a few different companies and the first thing that comes to mind is each is trying to reach a very different audience with a very different product. So maybe that's a good place to start. Could you talk a little bit about how you go about one, identifying a place that you're excited to work and then two, how you go about understanding that audience, the problems they have and then how content could serve them?

Jess Cook (05:09):
Yeah, okay. I love this question. So my kind of first role as head of content was at Mar Pipe. I was really excited to make that move because Mar Pipe is creative testing software for digital ads. And so it felt like it took kind of my copywriting creative kind of advertising background and combined it with what I was doing in content marketing. So it felt like a really great fit and something that I was also just happened to be a subject matter expert in, right? So I think that's what got me very excited about wanting to go there, head up content, be the first marketing hire because I knew the audience very, very well. That did still mean that I had to get very close to our customers because while I was in the kind of advertising creative space, I was never the one running the ads, buying the media, understanding the real metrics to hand a creative and be like, Hey, this headline is doing better than another, right?

(06:08)
So I still had to get very close to our customers and I think that's really the advice is like you have to speak with customers and that's not always easy at every company. There have been other places I've been where it was very difficult for whatever reason, bureaucracy, red Tape, customer success feels very protective of customers where it's hard to get to them. And so you kind of have to figure that out. What is that path? Who's the gatekeeper? I think that's one really big thing to understand. Lasso was very different because it's not an industry I have experience in. And I think part of me wanting to go there was Mark Pipe was almost like a video game on easy mode, right? I was already a subject matter expert. So of course I'm gonna understand the content that's needed and what someone needs to hear and the tone they wanna hear it in.

(06:58)
I kind of wanted to see can I do this if I'm not a subject matter expert, can I still be a good marketer if I don't fully understand the audience? And so I think the need in this case to get close to customers is even greater, right? I don't understand their motivations, their frustrations, things like that. And so I'm trying to talk to customers a couple of times a month, listen to sales call recordings so that I can hear how they talk about their current workflows and why it's not working for them, why they're actually even interested in a new solution, what about it gets them excited? At what points during that sales call do their eyes light up? What features do they like? Oh wait, that's really cool. I've never seen that before. So I think those are the things you have to look for when you're going and standing up a content department really is like you have to understand the motivations and the frustrations and to do that you have to get close to the customer however you can. Did you

Jimmy Daly (07:50):
Start Lassos content program from scratch or were you taking over from a previous team?

Jess Cook (07:54):
They had kind of some foundations in place. I was not the first marketing hire, but I was definitely the first content strategy minded marketer there.

Jimmy Daly (08:05):
Got it. Got it. Okay. That sounds sort of familiar. I feel like I talked to a lot of folks who lead content teams who come in and somebody did something and it wasn't necessarily cohesive or right planned a ways into the future or measured Well, it was just like, you know the early team being like, Hey, we need to do some content, let's just do something until we can afford to hire somebody who can really take it over.

Jess Cook (08:25):
Exactly. And they did a fabulous job in terms of like the size of the team and what was needed and the pulls from like sales needs this and customer success needs this. Right? And that is very real tension until you bring someone on who's like, this is their sole job and I'm gonna sit down and kind of figure out a strategy first.

Jimmy Daly (08:42):
Yes, totally. Totally. It sounds like fun actually. It is. Could you talk a little bit more just briefly about the product and the customer or maybe more specifically about the buyer? Who is the person that ultimately decides whether or not their organization will adopt Lasso?

Jess Cook (08:55):
Yeah, so we serve a number of personas. The thing about Lasso is that it's something that the person that schedules crew Labor would use. It's something that the sales team would use to create some sort of proposal or quote. It's something that a warehouse manager would use to say, oh okay, we need these cameras and these cables and these microphones to go to this event on this date. It's something that the owner of the company's gonna use to kinda look at overall financials and where are we and what's going on. So there's a ton of users. Typically what we see is that the big decision makers usually sit in operations or are like the c e o owner because it is a big investment to take all of these things that you currently have, your Microsoft, your Dropbox, your project management software, some sort of warehouse management software and like decide I'm gonna take four plus systems out and put one in its place and now all these people have to get trained, right? So it's a big investment, it's a big process. And so usually who we're talking to is higher up in the organization in terms of who's gonna make that final decision.

Jimmy Daly (10:07):
Got it, got it. That makes sense. And that definitely lines up with what I see on the website. So like one thing I'm always curious about when I land on a website is, is it P L G? Is it enterprise? How sales heavy is it? I see that the main call to action on the lasso site is schedule a demo, which means I assume it goes to an account exec who runs a demo. If the user becomes a customer, there's probably a success team that helps them get set up and implemented. So backing out from that, does that mean that your content strategy has some of the characteristics that an enterprise content strategy would have?

Jess Cook (10:36):
Yes. I love that you said that because we don't see ourselves as enterprise software because a lot of our customers are kind of mid-sized. They're mom and pop owned and maybe have 10 employees, but they're doing really big events. They're doing Atlanta Jazz Fest, which is like not a small thing, but they're not an enterprise the way that Slack would serve an enterprise. So I think there's a really interesting distinction there. But the model that we have is very similar because we are talking to company owners and sometimes they do range into that huge nationwide or international event company. So it's funny, it kind of runs the gamut. One

Jimmy Daly (11:19):
Thing that's actually come up a few times recently on this podcast is the difference in marketing to a prospect that is on their computer all day versus a prospect that is not. Yeah, we talked to a marketer named Kyle Kozinski a few weeks ago. His company has an S M Ss product and their customer could be in the field all day. Yeah. They're not looking at a computer checking Twitter, looking at LinkedIn like maybe your potential customers at Mar Pipe were right. And I noticed that Lasso is a podcast and I'm wondering if that's one of the workarounds for that for people who are not high volume internet users, it's like constantly plugged into some online community, social media newsletters, et cetera. If you're finding that to be an effective way to reach someone who may not be at a computer 40 plus hours a week,

Jess Cook (12:02):
That's so interesting. So this audience is absolutely on the go. They're checking event sites, they are in the warehouse and then making sure that the carpet showed up at the right time at the event site. They're everywhere. And you're right, they're not just sitting at a desk all day long. So we do have to kind of factor that in one the product absolutely factors that in, but then like how are we thinking about that in terms of content? So email is very big for us. S m s actually has been really successful for us as well. We have a small group of very high intent folks who signed up to say, yes, I wanna know every time a new product comes out, I wanna know every time you're doing something cool. And the conversion rate on that of people who are on that S M Ss list and then like actually doing the thing we're asking 'em to do in that SS M Ss is very, very high. So that's pretty interesting as far as the podcast goes, it's funny, we have a very small subscriber base to that podcast. Small but loyal. The real opportunity in the podcast for us is repurposing and being able to just chop it up as much as possible, align ourselves with experts in the industry who have a big social following or really have an interesting point of view that also aligns with Lassos point of view in terms of how events should be run, how events should be produced, how event companies should be run.

Jimmy Daly (13:24):
I love that. I'm finding that podcasting just on a personal level, but also just in talking to a lot of SaaS content marketers, podcasting is really finding its place in the org. Yeah. You know, I feel like a lot of teams maybe started with it as a way to grow their audience or reach an existing audience in a new way, but they're finding so many other ways to use the content for repurposing. I've talked to companies who have built kind of like internal subject matter expertise libraries where like freelance writers for example, could go and search for quotes for articles they're working on. I feel like there's also kind of a social proof element. Yes. For a podcast that's interview based. You get the person's name and face and company logo on the site, even if they're not directly customers. It's sort of, it's a signal to a potential customer that like these are the type of people associated with Lasso. Yeah, there's just like so many cool things that happen here. And then also anecdotally, I find that we get for this podcast about four times the number of downloads as subscribers that we have. Yes. At least according to the transistor data that I have.

Jess Cook (14:23):
Yes. Same. We get a ton of visits to the individual pages that we then create for each podcast episode on the website. Probably five times as many as we do actual podcast subscribers.

Jimmy Daly (14:35):
So , that's really interesting.

Jess Cook (14:36):
Yeah, some people are so concerned about, you know, I don't know the subscriber's gonna be there. And it's like that to me that's like the last metric I look at. Yeah. It's the thing I care the least about because the power of the content you get out of it is so much bigger than that.

Jimmy Daly (14:49):
So true. So I wanna ask you about the email newsletter as well too because so when I was on the lasso site earlier, the popup shows up and I think it says join 60,000 subscribers. That struck me as high particularly for a company that's not fully P L G. Yeah, sometimes you land on a site and it's like a to-do list app and it's $5 a month and you can do a freemium version. And I feel like those companies sometimes tout their massive email list, but really it's a bunch of people who have opted into a trial or freemium version. And I think that because Lassos List is not that, that it's actually really impressive to build a list of 60,000 people. Yeah.

Jess Cook (15:25):
I think it just speaks to like there's no one in the event industry that is speaking for the people in it. I always use Toast as a really great example. Toast in the restaurant industry created this thing that restaurants needed. They did it in a way that no one had ever done before and in doing so, they kind of became this voice for like empowering restaurant owners and kind of speaking for them in a way. And that's really what we're trying to do at Lasso is like give event company owners a voice, be an advocate, give them value that no other company has really given them before. We just wanna be able to like give value in our content in our podcast on our blog. Because at the end of the day, that's eventually what brings someone in to become a customer. But we really just wanna be seen as the voice of the industry for the people in it.

Jimmy Daly (16:17):
I love that. I feel like that's an approach that you just can't go wrong with. No, there's probably details to be sorted out along the way, but being there for the individual always wins and you can sort out exactly how it's executed. Yes. Okay. So there's a podcast newsletter, there's a blog, obviously I see customer stories, which begs to the next question, which is how big's the team?

Jess Cook (16:35):
We are four people. .

Jimmy Daly (16:37):
That's awesome. Four high output people, I would imagine

Jess Cook (16:40):
Four high output people. We usually say four and a half. We have a rev ops leader who just took that rev ops title and had been on the marketing team as like a marketing ops lead. So she's kind of half in, half out now. Got it. But full-time marketers, we have four. So we have our VP of marketing who is Drew Rucker and he has been there for a couple of years now. Fantastic leader and also just an incredible marketer and he kind of owns the paid side of things, right? So he kind of oversees all of the ad spend and what we're doing there, how we're using that budget and what we're talking about there. Make sure we're trying to be really efficient there. He oversees, funny enough, all of our design, we don't have a designer, he has a fabulous eye for that and he's been doing some really cool things with AI in that regard. For us. One thing that's really hard to come by is stock of event production .

Jimmy Daly (17:35):
Oh that's such an interesting problem. So

Jess Cook (17:37):
He's been using Ida to create a lot of really cool stuff there and then he's just like a fabulous leader and holistic thinker of like what all needs to be done to make this a success. And then kind of making sure that he has people on his team that have the strengths to do that. That's Drew. I report to Drew, I'm head of content and then I have Rachel, Ty reports to me and she's a junior marketing manager. So she is like in the weeds every day. She writes a ton of our blog posts. She and I kind of split the responsibility of the podcast. Rachel also has done all of our case studies, customer stories, so she's just very high output. And then we have a customer marketing manager, Mindy Hansel, who we have a very large customer base and because we've come out with all these products, we have a very big upsell opportunity.

(18:27)
And so she just started in March of this year I think. Um, and so that felt like a really smart hire. Like let's continue to push how we're talking to our customers about what's new on the platform and how they can get the most out of it by using more products. And then myself, so I am head of content and I am tasked with strategy. So making sure like voice and tone and who are we talking to and all of that aligns what are we doing content-wise to hit our goals? And then just uncovering the stories within the company that feel right to tell and how are we gonna tell them and how can we repurpose that. I think something that I'm really big into is repurposing more than we create, finding the story but making sure it's meaty enough that we can create one really great thing and chunk it up and use it in a ton of different ways so we're not burning ourselves out. Do

Jimmy Daly (19:19):
You have a sense for how much of the content that is published is net new versus something that's been repurposed or refreshed?

Jess Cook (19:25):
So obviously podcast is like net new every episode that's kind of a biweekly thing, but the process we have down for that makes it pretty easy to accomplish. It's templated, right? Sure. It's really just kind of a container around an interesting story inside. So that is all net new I would say, in terms of actual written content or assets. Here's a great example. Q four of last year we took the podcast episodes and we measured, we went into HubSpot, we tagged everything that was repurposed with you know, this is repurposed podcast content. We went back, kind of looked at okay impression wise based on like who saw the full thing and then who saw kind of snippets here and there in all the different channels that they kind of appeared in. And we did the back of the napkin math kind of thing 'cause there's no real way to attribute this, but we were able to get like a 12 x repurposing, I'm calling it the repurposing multiplier on repurpose content. So 12 times more people saw the repurpose content than saw it in its original full form. And that's like a really nice little benchmark that we're trying to hit or exceed. And that's something that we're really interested in. So I don't know that I can say like exactly like okay we only produce one full piece of content for every four pieces of repurposed content, but we are trying to really hit like a benchmark in terms of a greater number of people seeing that and by how

Jimmy Daly (20:52):
Much. That's really cool. I've never heard of a repurposing multiplier but I just wrote that down 'cause I think that's really good for all the talk on this podcast and in the Slack group and other places about metrics. I feel like that's one I have never come across but actually is quite meaningful because if you could line that data up alongside with the cost of content creation, I would imagine you would find that the repurpose stuff is a lot less expensive to create but is reaching way more people, which is really cool.

Jess Cook (21:21):
Yeah. And hopefully getting them into either more of that repurposed content or into that full piece, right? So yeah, we lean very heavily into that right now we're actually working on, so Rachel who I mentioned earlier, she spent the first two quarters of this year really going hard on case studies. We didn't have any really great updated case studies and so we spent a ton of time, half of the year getting new case studies, figuring out a format that was really interesting that didn't feel like challenged solution results, right? It doesn't feel like a wall of text. We're really proud of our case studies actually if you wanna go check them out, they're pretty cool. But a lot of voice of the customers type stuff built into it. And something we've found is when we think about like, because we know we wanna hit this kind of benchmark or we wanna be really intentional about how we're repurposing is we structure our original content in a way that makes it very easy to repurpose. So we're spending as little time as possible creating repurposed assets. We're just kind of pulling the bits and pieces that we've already slated into that original content as like this will be great for repurposing. This section will be great for repurposing these three videos will be great for repurposing, right? And it makes it very easy then on the backend to go and do that. So again, the time spent is lower, the cost is lower and the impressions are exponential.

Jimmy Daly (22:39):
Wow. I love that. I love that. I think that's so cool. This episode is brought to you by our friends at minutia. The landscape of content marketing is shifting. If you're in a SaaS company, it can feel like you're navigating a storm in a high stakes game dealing with financial uncertainty, check striving for sustainable and profitable growth in a volatile market. Absolutely Working with Titan content marketing budgets yet expected to prove higher r o i for your efforts. Yep. It's a tall order. Finding yourself having more to do with fewer hands on deck. Feeling the pressure of planning for shorter timeframes, being compelled to fixate on the now. It's a tough world out there. And let's not forget AI and the upcoming changes in Google search. It's overwhelming isn't it? And that's why finding and collaborating with a trusted partner is more crucial now than ever.

(23:22)
And that's where minutia comes in. Minutia is a loyal team of experts committed to helping you navigate financial uncertainty, driving your R O I without overstretching your budget and doing so without locking you into a long-term contract. We ensure you hit your KPIs even in the most challenging times. And minutia is not about high pressure sales, they're about honesty, transparency and working alongside you to meet your content marketing goals. That's the minutia way and they're not new to super path either. We've done many great webinars and delivered tons of value to the community through the joint efforts. We've collaborated on Ready to take the next step. Visit minutia.com to request a call. That's minutia. M I N U T T I a.com. As you were talking about team structure stuff, I did wanna just touch briefly on Rachel and Mindy's roles. So maybe Rachel first marketing manager sounds like she does quite a bit of writing. Yes. Do you rely on any external sources for writing to freelancers or agencies or anyone else or does it primarily happen in-house?

Jess Cook (24:20):
We don't at the moment. It all happens in house. We have been working some AI into our workflows just 'cause we're trying to kind of figure out how that's gonna work best for us, how can we speed up the process a bit? But at this point in time we've not relied on any freelance help. I think we will want to do that moving forward more. We have been very video heavy on the content front, which we love. I think that's been really helpful in terms of allowing us to do a lot of content, a lot of content repurposing scale very quickly. But I think in the very near future we're going to want to focus more on written content, on really great guides and interesting thought leadership pieces. So I do think we're gonna need some more outside help on that front because you know, in order to scale that I'd rather keep the strategy in-house and let all that execution kind of go to a highly trusted vendor.

Jimmy Daly (25:09):
Totally, that makes sense. Just a quick follow up about the video stuff. Is that video that is part of the podcast creation webinars I would imagine, are there other places where you all are creating video?

Jess Cook (25:19):
Yeah, so a couple things. We've done podcast, obviously a very easy source of video but something we just did that I did actually last quarter was I did a series of eight or nine interviews of our internal SMEs where I came up with a list of kind of unique questions for each of them based on their role in the company and the information that I wanted to get from them, the sound bites that I was hoping to get from them. And interviewed all of them each for about 45 minutes. And what I ended up with was about 40 pieces of video content from all across the the organization talking about all types of topics, different product benefits or what makes us different or how we're, you know, talk to someone in engineering about how we're building lasso differently, right? And so I now have this really nice little library of video content about us that we can throw out an organic and kind of see how it does and test it.

(26:14)
We're using it for some retargeting which is really interesting kind of depending on the topic of the video. So that was another way. Another tool we love is called Vouch. It's like a asynchronous video testimonial capturing tool that is something that we have used as well to capture internal subject matter experts kind of opinions and customer testimonials as well. So a lot of different ways that we're using video to create content. The last way that we're doing this is we had kind of all these product launches this year and one of the things that I love to do is video storytelling to me I think is just so much fun. And so I had this idea to like launch a couple of the products with a video that kind of showed the, I don't know how best to call other than like the holy shit moment of the product, right?

(27:01)
The thing that people are like they have something that can do that. That's crazy. I've never seen that before. For instance, one of our products was we've launched something called Lasso Logistics, which is these event companies, they're shipping gear all across the country. They are producing Rihanna's concert and she's gonna be in Minneapolis right now. They needed six trailers of gear to get to Minneapolis with all her stage and her lights and her sound. And there's really no way right now for that company to know where that truck is other than to call the trucking company and be like, do you know where it is? Yeah, it'll be there in an hour. Yeah, that's

Jimmy Daly (27:39):
Such a crazy customer problem. That's so interesting. Isn't

Jess Cook (27:42):
It crazy an hour goes by, truck's still not there, right? So you can see where the problem is. Everyone's waiting around for this stuff and it's not there. And so Lasso now has the ability to, you book a truck on lasso, you can choose the route, you can choose the day it needs to be there, the day it needs to leave. And you will know in real time on your phone where the truck is. The video that we created was someone walking through the warehouse all of a sudden they get a ping on their phone, they pick up their phone, the little pop-up is like your gear is here, right? And it swings around to the bay door that opens up, the truck is there, the gear is there. And so it's really this exciting moment for someone one to like see that oh this is a reality, this is something we need in this industry. And two, to kind of get a sneak peek of like the experience of it, the notification, the real time aspect. So that's another way that we're using video is just those quick storytelling moments that are gonna get someone really excited about the product.

Jimmy Daly (28:42):
That's fantastic. I really appreciate that you're kind of covering the spectrum of video from like interviews meaning like low end production and I don't mean that in a bad way, just being like fire up zoom and hit record and you can get something really interesting. And then on the other side, almost like a commercial or documentary style where I would imagine there's like a crew. Yep. There's like a sort of scripted out like that's really cool. Yeah, I'm all over the place but I have so many things I wanted to ask you. That's okay. Going back to team structure, one last time I wanted to ask you about Mindy's role Yeah. In customer marketing. So I find that that's very interesting that there's enough of an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell customers that it becomes someone's job. And I'm curious what are the ways that Mindy is reaching those people? I mean is it primarily through content? Is it through email, is it through in-app stuff? I mean it sounds like there's almost like a product marketing role but with this really tight focus on the upsell and I'm just sort of curious if you could just talk a little bit more about what does her day-to-day work look like?

Jess Cook (29:34):
Yeah, I think without giving too much away, she works really closely with our customer success team and our implementation team. She's very focused on the journey of the customer, the experience of the customer, what does implementation look like for someone. She wants to understand that what does trainings look like for someone. She really wants to understand that because I think the better the experience with the current product and process and getting onboarded right, the more likely we are to get them onto another. That's a big part of her role. And then she and I are kind of counterparts in that we're doing a lot of the same programs. So we had all these product announcements and she's very focused on how are we messaging that to customers While I'm very focused on how are we messaging that to prospects. So she and I work really closely together in terms of what is the thing we're trying to say and then we're just kind of finagling it for our own audiences of like how do we want prospects to think about that? We have to say that a little differently for customers, you know? So she's kind of thinking about that.

Jimmy Daly (30:37):
Okay, cool. So you're doing some marketing before the sale, after the sale, multiple mediums. What data points are you looking at to track your progress with the content marketing program? I don't wanna assume too much, but I'm assuming there's probably a couple things that you're looking at that would indicate kinda the health of the department.

Jess Cook (30:55):
Yeah, I know Drew would have different things he would look at, but for me I am very much interested in like do more people know about lasso this month than they did last month this quarter than they did last quarter? That is what I am really, really concerned with because I am a big believer that if you can grow the brand, the business will do the same. So I'm very much invested in growing our social following, growing our email lists and taking a look at branded organic search, uh, specifically branded organic search clicks, making sure that what people are searching for and what we're providing them as a search result is like aligned with their expectation. So those are kind of the big ones. As a team we are gold on driving revenue essentially. And so we have kind of a whole company revenue number that we wanna hit as marketing. We have a goal of kind of new pipeline we wanna bring in. And then as individuals on the marketing team, we have goals that ladder back to the marketing goal, which ladders back to that revenue goal. So and then just engagement on content. We have a great, I mentioned her earlier, but a really awesome rev ops leader, her name's Kristen Trainor and she keeps us very well informed. We have a whole like blog dashboard and a whole podcast dashboard. Oh

Jimmy Daly (32:17):
Nice. I wanted to ask you about that.

Jess Cook (32:18):
Yeah, like which blog posts are getting the greatest engagement, right. Which is really helpful 'cause then it's like okay if that blog post is doing well, like are there others that are kind of like it? Should we start to combine them so that you know that one post is like really big and meaty? Do we wanna start thinking about maybe creating video around that topic that kind of aligns so that maybe we're, if that's kind of giving us a nice position in the SERPs, maybe we can kind of also have another position in the SERPs with a video next to it. Right. So just always trying to find ways to like build our credibility I think is top of mind for me.

Jimmy Daly (32:52):
Really. Cool. I just a quick follow up on the dashboard piece. Yeah. Is there a monthly or quarterly meeting where you and the VP of marketing and the rest of the team kind of sit down and and talk through those numbers? And if so you don't have to give too much. I'm just sort of curious if you're able to provide any insights on what are those meetings like? Because I feel like a lot of content teams are held to numbers, they have to report on them and sometimes it's not as simple as numbers going up or down. Yeah. It's often about the narrative that you wrap those numbers in. And I don't mean in some way to mislead anyone, but just like Right, the numbers alone don't tell a story.

Jess Cook (33:25):
Yeah. So when I found this out I was like, oh boy, I don't know about this. We have a daily standup marketing does daily Interesting every day at 9:30 AM and when I first saw a daily meeting on my calendar I was like how's this gonna go? That feels like a lot. And I will tell you I think it is one of the best things our team does. So we have a daily marketing standup where we just talk through like today priorities, what are we stuck on, where do we need help, are there roadblocks? Things like that. Where can we help each other with what has to happen today? And so that is really, really helpful in terms of just getting aligned of where are we at and what needs to happen. And then we have a weekly sync for an hour on Wednesdays where we do where we at in terms of our quarterly goal.

(34:12)
And okay knowing that do our individual goals still make sense? If not, how are we going to pivot and if so, what are we doing to like accomplish them? And so I think those are kind of how those meetings look. It's like everyone kind of goes around and talks through, okay, here's where I'm at, but like knowing where we are with the goal, do we wanna kind of shift our attention elsewhere that might help us push that goal up? Or if we're feeling really good about the goal, let's just double down on what we've been doing. And then once or twice a month our C R O joins that meeting as well. And that's really helpful because she's the decision maker, right? We can blow through a lot of hemming and hawing by asking her questions and getting her to be like, yes, no, do that, don't do that. So that's really helpful to have her involved as well and just kind of cut through some of the red tape.

Jimmy Daly (34:56):
That's awesome. You know, I haven't heard of a daily standup in a long time. , I feel like, you know, as we've made this shift whether we like it or not to remote work over the past couple of years we've gotten away from that type of meeting. Yeah. At least I don't hear about it very often. Frankly. I wish I had a daily standup with somebody. It's just me. And there's a lot of days where I'm like, there's a lot to do. I don't even know like what should I prioritize today? And it would be really helpful to have input from other people. Yeah. So I think that's really cool.

Jess Cook (35:23):
It's funny 'cause sometimes someone will rattle off like eight things and we'll just kind of like, okay but what are you gonna do today? You know like it's very, it's a good forcing function for getting really intentional about your priorities. So most days I go there and I'm like two things, these are my two things. Yeah. Another thing that we do that I love is on Tuesdays we all try to block all meetings.

Jimmy Daly (35:44):
Amazing.

Jess Cook (35:44):
So we are all available to have a full day of deep thinking, deep work, whatever we need. A good seven, eight hours on that week can be dedicated on on Tuesdays. So we do have a lot of really nice little systems in place.

Jimmy Daly (36:00):
Yeah, that's really cool. You know, I was assuming that you are all remote but is that true?

Jess Cook (36:03):
So Lasso has four offices and they kind of align with some of the hubs of live event activities. Oh

Jimmy Daly (36:10):
Interesting.

Jess Cook (36:10):
So Vegas, which makes sense. Lots of conferences and events out there. One in Nashville, Tennessee which is actually the headquarters. One in Charleston and one in Atlanta. And Drew and Rachel and Kristen are out of the Atlanta office. I'm in Michigan so I'm fully remote. And then Mindy is in Charleston but she doesn't go into the office often, which is not a necessity because her team's not there. So yeah, once or twice a week the folks that are in or near Atlanta are going into the office. But for the most part we're all kind of working from home and just making sure we're logging on seeing each other every day and doing the zooms and the huddles and all that.

Jimmy Daly (36:49):
Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. One last thought on the daily standup and KPIs, right? So like a team sits down, looks at their KPIs for a quarter or a year or whatever, it's really, at least in my experience, it's really difficult to forecast. And so if you allow months to go by and the team is trying to make progress towards a goal but maybe falling behind and there isn't that opportunity to check how are we doing or is this goal even the right goal or what are the activities we're doing that are not helping us get closer to it and how might we prioritize to focus more on the things that we know will help us get closer? And yes, there's a lot of balls in the air there and if you're not checking on those things regularly than the K P I is essentially useless.

Jess Cook (37:29):
Yeah and I think the other thing that has to go along with that is you have to be at an organization that gives you the flexibility to pivot. 'cause there are places where it's like nope, you said you were gonna do this to achieve this goal and you need to do that. And I think we're really lucky where we're somewhere where it's like okay, that's not moving the needle. Let's cut bait and do something else that is, or yes this is working, what else do we need to do to continue to make it work?

Jimmy Daly (37:55):
Yeah, that's fantastic. We've covered so much good stuff today. I really appreciate it. I also really appreciate your patience with our technical difficulties, which the listener will never know about but there's been a few hiccups as we've been recording this so thank you for that. No worries. You're great on a podcast. Can you tell us about your podcast because you have some experience with this.

Jess Cook (38:12):
Thank you. Yes I am co-host of a podcast called That's Marketing Baby. I co-host it with my good friend Susan we grad. She and I worked at Mar Pipe together. We were the two marketers at Mar Pipe and we just got along so, so well. We actually did the Mar Pipe podcast together and when we both left there we were like, we gotta keep doing this on our own terms 'cause it's so much fun. We love it and we would do it even if no one listened . So yeah, we, we started this podcast, we officially launched in January. We did season one from January through June. We're taking a break right now planning season two because you know summer kids are home. It's a lot easier to do with all that kind of stuff when they're not. But it has been so much fun. It's done really well so well in fact that we just launched a newsletter, we've brought on a couple of sponsors. I think the hope is like take this thing all the way, create some sort of company around it with courses and consulting and perhaps a community like you know, very much like you have done Jimmy with Super Path and like take this thing and kind of make it so that this is what Susan and I do eventually someday.

Jimmy Daly (39:24):
That's awesome. I actually can't wait to check it out myself and we'll make sure to leave a link in the notes so that other people can go check it out. Yeah,

Jess Cook (39:31):
Awesome. Thank

Jimmy Daly (39:31):
You. Yeah, can we send folks anywhere else? I mean obviously we'll send them to Lasso. It's cool I think for people to be able to hear this thing, go to the website and like see some of these things. Particularly like you mentioned case studies. Go check out the podcast, see what the videos look like as you like, see what it looks like in reality. I think that probably gives folks some inspiration of things they can do for themselves. Can we send folks to Twitter or LinkedIn or, or anywhere else to connect with you?

Jess Cook (39:52):
I'm on LinkedIn and Threads, actually. I'm having a good time on Threads if your listeners are into that kind of thing. It's a party over there. It's like Twitter, but Kinder .

Jimmy Daly (40:02):
Yeah. Yeah, . That's actually a very good call to action to go check that out. . Well cool. Jess, again, thank you so much. You just have like a wealth of knowledge. It's so great to understand kinda the thought behind all the cool work that you're doing and we really appreciate it.

Jess Cook (40:16):
Oh, thank you Jimmy. I've been a fan since the uh, content marketer Community group days. Yeah. So thank you. It, it's an honor to be here in talking to you.

Jimmy Daly (40:25):
Awesome. Really appreciate it. Hopefully we can do this again soon sometime.

Jess Cook (40:28):
Definitely. That'd be

Jimmy Daly (40:29):
Great. Cool. Take care.