Content, Briefly

In this episode of Content Briefly, we've interviewed Kasey Fleisher Hickey, Senior Director, Brand and Content at Attentive, and discussed the product, prioritizing daily tasks, creating impactful content, how content and brand overlaps, and more.

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Shelf (https://shelf-made.com/heavyweight-b2b-content-marketers/).


************************

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
02:56 Who is Kasey Fleisher Hickey?
03:17 Kasey’s background.
04:13 What is Attentive?
04:58 Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing campaigns.
06:14 Experience leading content at Attentive for 4 years.
08:08 Content as a program vs. content as a service.
11:03 Content team structure at Attentive.
12:10 Setting boundaries between other teams.
17:40 Content prioritization and being disciplined.
20:03 How brand and content overlap. 
21:49 Brand team at Attentive.
23:23 Brand as a differentiator.
25:20 Building a consistent experience for customers.
27:45 Doing more with less.
29:56 Learn more about Kasey and Attentive and get in touch. 
30:34 Outro

************************

Useful Links:

************************

Stay Tuned:

► Website: https://www.superpath.co/
► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath
► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco

************************

Don’t forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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.

Kasey Hickey:

We are entering this, like, totally new world of, like, AI on the one hand, but then, like, of course, on just the industry side on the other hand is, like, search and discoverability and, like, brand just being so critical and and being so opinionated and thoughtful and not just sort of, like, the old way, I guess.

Jimmy Daly:

Hey. And thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Really excited to be talking with Kasey Hickey today. She's the senior director of brand and content at a company called Attentive. If you're not familiar with Attentive, they've been around for quite a while.

Jimmy Daly:

They're a series a or sorry, series e, excuse me, startup. I don't say that very often. They've raised more than $800,000,000. They're in the SMS and email space, primarily helping retailers and d to c companies reach their customers. We talked a little bit about the product to get a sense of who exactly they're targeting, but what we really dive into is the way that Kasey distinguishes between supporting other teams and focusing on her content team's goals.

Jimmy Daly:

That's kind of an evergreen content marketing challenge, and I really liked her perspective on it. We also talked about how disciplined she and the team are about prioritizing the work that they do. While they are very well resourced, she does not wanna be just creating content for content sake. She wants every single thing they work on to be as impactful as possible, and it was awesome to hear her describe that. And then we do get into a little bit of the brand stuff.

Jimmy Daly:

So she's, like I mentioned now, the director of brand and content. So we talk about what that means, kind of like the Venn diagram of brand and content, what's unique, where do they overlap, that kind of stuff. Overall, a conversation that I really enjoyed, and I hope you do too. This episode of Content Briefly is brought to you by our friends at Shelf. Shelf is the go to b to b content agency for niche industries, like really niche industries.

Jimmy Daly:

Take Reinhardt, one of Shelf's talented writers, as an example. He has a glorious beard and knows more about the US sales tax nexus obligations than just about anyone, minus the CEOs of the tax compliance companies he writes for, and even that is debatable. Strategy, words, distribution. Shelf takes care of everything. Use Shelf's earned experience to your advantage across these niche industries.

Jimmy Daly:

Supply chain, like freight logistics, customs compliance, 3PL and 4PL. Regulations and compliance, like SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, ESG, and ITGC. Cloud, like DevOps, FinOps, DRAS, IS, BS, and other asses. And finance, revolving finance, AR, AP, tax, and VAT compliance. Any other business that worries no writer will ever understand you, Shelf will.

Jimmy Daly:

Want a live demo of Shelf's refined deep research methodology? Use the link in the show notes to book a call with Shelf's founder, Hila. She'll ask you so many questions your eyes will bleep. Thanks so much to Shelf for supporting Superpad. Content Briefly is produced by our friends at Minutia.

Jimmy Daly:

To learn more about their podcast production service, as well as their other adaptive content marketing services, check out minutia.com in the show notes. Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Super Path here today with another episode of Content Briefly. Very excited to be chatting with Kasey Hickey, senior director of brand and content. That's gonna be one of my first questions at Attentive.

Jimmy Daly:

Kasey, thank you so much for being here. Would you mind introducing yourself? Tell us a little bit about who you are and some of the work you've been up to over the past couple of years.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. It's so great to be on this podcast, Jimmy, and finally talk in real life. Super stoked to be here. Like you mentioned, I'm senior director of brand and content. It's actually a newer expanded role that I'm taking on.

Kasey Hickey:

I've been actually leading content marketing at Attentive for almost 4 years now, which, if you've worked at a start up, feels like forever. And it's been a real fun ride. Of course, never a dull day, you know, came in here to develop, grow, and mentor a content team, really help establish, like, what content does at Attentive, content not just as a service, but as a program, and, you know, been a key driver of many of our campaigns, some of the most impactful business, you know, oriented campaigns, our holiday marketing campaigns, you know, research and reports, of course, a lot of sales enablement, and our kind of ongoing day to day editorial calendar.

Jimmy Daly:

Okay. So many questions based on what you just said. Maybe first, though, would you just give us a brief overview of Attentive? Kind of what's the product? Who's your customer?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. So Attentive started as an SMS marketing platform. And a couple years ago, we've expanded into email. And now we've really leaned into AI as a key differentiator. So we say that we are an AI powered mobile marketing platform that delivers really highly personalized experiences to consumers.

Kasey Hickey:

So our customers are primarily retail brands, also d two c mid market brands. But, ultimately, we are in the business of helping businesses better communicate, engage, and convert their customers.

Jimmy Daly:

Got it. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I was curious about the d to c thing because I saw, when I was on the site this morning, the, Black Friday, Cyber Monday stuff going on.

Jimmy Daly:

We're recording, say, September 10th. So I'm guessing, like, that's probably a big focus for the next two and a half months for you. Right?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. Black Friday, Cyber Monday is our Super Bowl, you know, the biggest business moment for many of our customers. You know, I said that retail is a big category for us, but we work with a lot of different types of brands. We're also in the travel and hospitality space, media and entertainment. So we also you know, we have a a vertical focused business as well.

Kasey Hickey:

But, yes, we work with a ton of massive, massive retailers, and

Jimmy Daly:

this

Kasey Hickey:

is their huge moment. I will say that my team spends our summer working on our holiday campaign. And so that launched. Thank goodness. We are all very relieved.

Kasey Hickey:

And now we're continuing, obviously, to drip out content that's super relevant, both for our existing customers. We work really closely with our customer success team to make sure that all of our guidance and recommendations and best practices are aligned. And then, of course, with prospects who some of them are looking to make a switch, and we really wanna highlight how we can help them really ramp up quickly and drive a massive business impact.

Jimmy Daly:

I love that. Okay. You mentioned you've been leading content there for 4 years. Could you give us I mean, I know it's probably difficult to sum up 4 years and a minute or 2, but could you give us a taste of, okay, you arrive at Attentive, what's going on with content, and then give us kind of an overview of what's happening now?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. Totally. So when I first joined Attentive, there was an existing team in place, and I was really hired to help the team really, like, uplevel how they operate. So I would say that, like at a lot of companies, probably, content starts out as a service provider. Like, sales needs a case study.

Kasey Hickey:

Events needs a deck. You know, somebody needs to write some website copy. And so the team was really, really reactive. Like, everything was just like, somebody asked me for something, so I'm gonna do it because they told me. So a lot of what I've done is actually shift that perception of content just being, like, a service provider and more of a partner and a thought leader.

Kasey Hickey:

Content to me is obviously a really powerful lever, and you can use it in so many different ways. But I think at the end of the day, the biggest hurdle for us was to get to that point where we developed really strong cross functional relationships where instead of coming to us and saying, like, well, we just need another white paper, you know, people would come to us and say, like, hey, we're having this problem or this challenge, and let's figure out how do we solve this problem with content. And then I will say when I first started, we were using WordPress, and we were taking on a replatform. And as part of that, just, like, reimagining, like, our website presence. So a huge, huge part of my role was also really figuring out how do we build more of our presence on the Internet and use SEO as really a really powerful lever.

Kasey Hickey:

So building out that function was also a big part of of my role as well.

Jimmy Daly:

Okay. Okay. That's so interesting. You know, when you were introducing yourself, I had written down a note that I wanted to ask you about, content as a program versus content as a service. Which you just started getting into.

Jimmy Daly:

And I would love to dive a little bit deeper into that because this comes up all the time, like in the slack group, for example, like this is a common theme that comes up every now and then where a content person feels like they or their team is just being stretched a little thin and they have their own goals, but it's hard to work towards those when there's all these requests coming in. But there's this balance to strike where if content is needed across the org, that's great. It's great to support other teams because they are also working in general towards the same goals that you are, like try to get more customers through the door. Can you talk a little bit about how you maintain that balance? I mean, I could imagine like a really strict like, a measure, like, a spreadsheet.

Jimmy Daly:

It's like, how many how much of a resource goes to the service? How much goes to our own programs? I'm sure it's probably not quite that clean and simple, but how do you think about kind of maintaining that balance?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. Totally. And that's a great question. And I hired a principal copywriter who has been a phenomenal leader and partner on the service end. One of the things that I really care deeply about is not calling it service, but calling it support.

Kasey Hickey:

And so, again, kind of like positioning her as a partner as opposed to a service provider, I think, is really important. I know that's, like, internal branding, but I think it's been really critical for us to really create an intake process that isn't just like, here's the deadline. Here's what I need. Do it. And more like Yeah.

Kasey Hickey:

Here's what I'm looking for. Here's what I'm thinking about. I've started maybe, like, a rough draft or a skeleton. I need to, you know, like, up level this, or this is the goal that we're trying to hit. And the part of our intake process is actually, like, working with the requester to understand their request and then to figure out the right, you know, content solution.

Kasey Hickey:

And I think there's also a balance too of something that takes a lot of thought, a lot of flow time, and is really, really critical to the business versus something where we can actually and I'm sure you'll ask me questions about this, but where we can rely on, like, an AI partner to help the person get as close as possible to what they're looking for and where we're coming in as polished. I think a lot of our work has also been to create guidelines and standards and, you know, establish the tools that other people can use where, again, if something's not gonna be seen by every single customer or if we're not publishing it on our website, we can give people, like, templates and guidelines and empower them to do some of that work as well. We can make it easier for them. But at the end of the day, it's we haven't figured it all out. I don't think anybody has because we are still the people who everyone comes to when they need a piece of content.

Kasey Hickey:

And sometimes they don't come to us, and we wish they did. So, yeah, there's that too.

Jimmy Daly:

That's interesting. How is the company structured? Like, are all the content folks centralized on your team? In some companies, there might be content people spread out across different parts of the org, and there's sort of, like, a matrix thing happening. What what does that look like at Attentive?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. So we do have a tech writing team, and we have a customer education team, and they sit within the customer success org. So that content, like our help center, for example, is owned by them. But everything that we create from a marketing perspective does live within my team. That doesn't mean that we're the only people writing content.

Kasey Hickey:

You know, like, our growth marketing folks are writing nurture emails. Product marketing creates content. But we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out the right processes and frameworks for people where, you know, for example, like, we have a web copy process that's been established in the last 2 years, I would say, where, you know, there was a time where, like, product marketing would just write web copy, and then we'd publish it. And now, you know, we have a framework and a process for that. We do have product marketers who are writing case studies.

Kasey Hickey:

So there it's not all on my team, but I would say a good chunk of all marketing content goes through my team.

Jimmy Daly:

Got it. Got it. That makes sense. Yeah. Is it fair to say that creating a little bit of healthy friction is actually good for your role in supporting other parts of the org, right?

Jimmy Daly:

Like, you kind of mentioned helping them flesh out their own ideas. Because I could imagine, like, you know, what if sales comes to you and says, Hey, we need some sales enablement, and you say, Okay, we'll do it. And then they're like, Oh, that was easy. We'll just do that more often. You know?

Jimmy Daly:

So it sounds like you've like maybe healthy friction isn't the right word, but creating some good process around that feels like a key part of creating a boundary for your own team, but then also like helping the other teams understand that you have other things to do besides support them.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. For sure. I love hearing from sales and trying to figure out, like, where there are gaps. To be honest with you, we have created so much content. And one of our biggest challenges has been making sure that it's packaged and distributed in the most effective way and that people realize that it even exists.

Kasey Hickey:

So we launched a resource center, I think it was about a year ago. And so we basically, like, we have a blog. We have, like, a guides and reports section of our website, and then we created this resource hub that was, like, another way to package content up. And we worked really closely with sales and CS to really understand, like, what are the types of questions they get most often? Like, what are kind of, like, the core themes of their conversations?

Kasey Hickey:

And then, like, how can we basically cross pollinate a lot of the content that already exists? Like, we have, you know, case studies and videos and reports and guides and checklists and blog posts that are, like, all on the theme of why SMS as an example. And, obviously, for, you know, conversations that sales is having with prospects that are, like, much newer to that channel, like, it's great to have all that in one place. Then we need to make sure that that's reflected in Highspot as well. And so I think that, yes, like, it's good to have a healthy friction in the sense that, like, sometimes we say no, but so many times we're like, oh, you're asking me for this.

Kasey Hickey:

We have, like, these four things that are very similar. And then in that back and forth, it also helps us uncover, like, okay, but they're looking for something really specific that might be missing, and then we either can optimize an existing piece of content. We get an idea for how we can, like, better distribute this content and frame it up for them. Or we're like, oh, actually, like, this is an opportunity. We need to create something that's new.

Kasey Hickey:

We sync up with our product marketing team because, like, maybe there's a way that we're, like, not telling the product story that we should be. So I think a lot of it comes from these conversations too. I never wanna just, like, straight up say no to people. I always wanna get down to, like, the nuts and bolts of, like, what is it you're really asking for? And sometimes it's like a discoverability problem.

Kasey Hickey:

Sometimes it's a gap. And sometimes it's just like how they're say talking about something and how we're talking about something, and we need to, like, bridge those things together.

Jimmy Daly:

Yeah. That's so interesting. I feel like what you're describing sounds to me like a challenge that larger companies probably have more so than smaller companies. I don't know exactly how big attentive is, but as I was doing my pre podcast research, I saw that the company's like series E history is like 800 something $1,000,000. I mean, there's like, well, one that company's been around for a long time, you know, to well resourced, but then as the company grows that, you know, there's more people, there's more opportunities for communication to either strengthen the business or create gaps.

Jimmy Daly:

So it's just interesting. I'm just just an observation, just like those challenges may only appear at a certain stage in the company's life cycle. And for younger companies, those gaps may not have appeared yet.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. I will say, you mentioned well resourced, and I do feel like we are a bigger company. But that said, our content team is pretty small, and we are ruthless prioritizers. Prioritizers. Like, when I look at a piece of content or an opportunity, a project, whatever it is, I'm always like, what is the potential impact of this?

Kasey Hickey:

What's the risk in not doing this? And how resource intensive will it be? And I am constantly, like, reshuffling those things. And, of course, like, as content marketers, like, we have to be really agile. You know?

Kasey Hickey:

Something's happening in the industry. Our customers need to know about it. We need to make sure that our customers know that we're on top of it. And so I can't just be like, well, we're working on this thing, so, like, we don't have time. But some of these projects, you know, like our holiday campaign, we can't just say, no, we're not gonna do a holiday campaign this

Jimmy Daly:

year. Right. Right.

Kasey Hickey:

And there's so many, of course, moving parts with design, you know, with our growth marketing team. So I think my team and I think that this was one of the questions you had mentioned, but my team is only 2 full time content marketers.

Jimmy Daly:

Oh, okay. That's quite a bit smaller than I was expecting.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. Well, so there's 2 full time content marketers, senior content marketing managers. We have a senior content marketing manager. Her whole job is SEO, and she works across the entire website. So not just content, but our entire web presence.

Kasey Hickey:

We work with an SEO agency. I'm a principal copywriter, one single copywriter for all. She's amazing. So we're quite small and we have to prioritize a lot. We can simply not say yes to everything that we're asked to do.

Jimmy Daly:

Yeah. Okay. That's so interesting. You know, actually, I wrote a blog post that I just published on the Super Path blog yesterday.

Kasey Hickey:

And I just read it. I know which one you're talking about.

Jimmy Daly:

Yeah. I just find it interesting, like, more money does not necessarily equal better content. And in fact, well resourced is a challenge of its own, you know? So actually having a small team that forces you to prioritize. 1, it just reinforces the discipline, right.

Jimmy Daly:

To like, make sure everyone's working on like the most impactful things, but to probably saves some headaches down the road, you know, like if you do too much net new, just because you have the ability to do it, you know, like 2 years from now, like, do you have technical SEO problems and site architecture problems and does everything need to be refreshed? Does the rankings have dropped? And, like, it just creates this whole new discussion that could potentially be avoided by just being more disciplined with your prioritization, which is really cool.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. For sure. I mean, I feel like there's, like, this quote that I've seen heard in the past of, like, you know, creativity needs boundaries and, like, creativity really thrives in boundaries. And I do think there's something to that of knowing that we I always tell my team, like, we can do anything, but we can't do everything. And so knowing which things are gonna drive the biggest impact is so critical.

Kasey Hickey:

And we've seen this because, you know, there were times that we were publishing more. And what we were seeing was like, hey, like, this piece of content, we spent this much time writing it. We had, like, 7 people review it. We published it. And then, like, a 100 people read it.

Kasey Hickey:

You know?

Jimmy Daly:

And then

Kasey Hickey:

so I'm trying we've just been getting better and better at attuning to, like, what is the most important content that we could be creating? And, like, let's not waste our time on anything that doesn't meet this threshold. And I think over time, we've gotten better at kind of sussing that out and asking all the right questions in the brief process where we've shut things down, where we're like, you know what? There's nothing interesting here. This has already been said before.

Kasey Hickey:

We don't have anything unique to offer here. And then we just say no. We just don't do it. So

Jimmy Daly:

That's so cool. It's so rare. At least in my own personal experience, it's so rare to come across a project and then just say, no. I'm not gonna do it. You know, like, just removing something from your to do list is so incredibly refreshing, especially if you've come into it and assess, like, do I really need to do this?

Jimmy Daly:

Is it just another task on my list? Probably something we could all companies and individuals, I'll, like, learn from there. I am curious about the brand component of your job. I'm imagining a Venn diagram with brand on one side, content on the other. There's some overlap, and then there's, you know, quite a bit that's not.

Jimmy Daly:

You know, brand is its own thing also. Could you talk a little bit about what brand means in the context of your role?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. Totally. So I'm super excited. This is a totally new role, new transition for me. And so we're bringing our content and brand design teams together.

Kasey Hickey:

The thing that's interesting to me is that brand has always been such a critical differentiator for companies. But increasingly, I think it's becoming even more so. So to me, it's that overlap between the company narrative and the storytelling and how you show up. But it's not just words and design. It really is a reflection of your entire team's interactions, your company's, and, you know, touch points.

Kasey Hickey:

So I think it's an interesting question because I think, to a certain extent, everybody at the company owns brand. But we are just the ones that help, like, shepherd and shape it along and give it sort of, like, the feel. And we do that through visuals, through words, obviously. But I don't think brand is like, oh, it lives over here with this one team. But I think that way about content too is, like, content is not just, you know, like the posts that you publish.

Kasey Hickey:

It's so much a reflection of who you are as a company and how you think about the world and the industry around you. So, yeah, it's really exciting, and I'm super new to it. And it's something I've done before in other roles, but I'm really excited to get more closer to that area.

Jimmy Daly:

Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. So are there brand or are there people on your team, I guess, way to phrase it, that are thinking more about visuals, design, other kind of brand things, not just text content is what I was gonna say. That sounds demeaning.

Jimmy Daly:

I've been, like, thinking about things besides the content itself.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. So we have a full brand design team, and I'll plug that I'm actually hiring for a director of brand design and creative. So super excited to find somebody awesome there. But, yeah, one of the things that I love about Attentive is that we have a really strong brand, and it's something that we're really known for in the b two b space. Like, we do things in a really creative kind of consumer way, and we also are very intentional about our brand.

Kasey Hickey:

You know, in a sea of sort of, like, purple and blue tech companies, we're yellow, and we're very intentional about it. And our tone and our ethos is, like, very friendly, very conversational. And that comes through, like, all of the things that we do both online and in person. We do a ton of in person events. And so I'm super excited to be hiring somebody at this point in time because we are entering this, like, totally new world of, like, AI on the one hand, but then, like, of course, on just the industry side on the other hand is, like, search and discoverability and, like, brand just being so critical and and being so opinionated and thoughtful and not just sort of like the old way, I guess.

Jimmy Daly:

Yeah. Okay. I'm really glad you mentioned that, actually, because one of the things I was going to ask you about was competition in your space. This is not a world I know well. I'm assuming there's other companies who offer products that do roughly similar things.

Jimmy Daly:

There's only, you know, so many keywords. There's only so many spots on a SERP. Brand feels like the differentiator. Like, that can be the way that attentive or other companies too, in different spaces can set themselves apart. Like make sure that their potential customers remember them when it comes time to make that decision or kind of stay in the orbit.

Jimmy Daly:

And maybe it takes a long time. It could take years, Stay in the orbit and attentive through content events, social, freemium products, or, you know, whatever else until the time comes.

Kasey Hickey:

Totally. Yeah. I mean, of course, like, you know, when I think about content and what the things that kind of like are our secret sauce, obviously, like, unique insights, like, our subject matter expertise, like, our data, all of those things are, like, original to us. But beyond that, exactly what you said, like, we differentiate as a brand, and it's such a mushy thing. It's like how how we make people feel, the campaigns that they remember, the interactions that they've had with their customer success manager.

Kasey Hickey:

All of those things definitely play into it. And I'm a big believer in, like, you're not gonna win in a feature war, like, alone. Right? Like, everyone's just gonna keep building and building and building, and we're in such a dynamic tech environment where those innovations are happening really, really quickly. And, like, by the time you're working on something, like, someone else is definitely already working on something similar trying to figure it out.

Kasey Hickey:

So it's like, where can you pull a big lever? Brand. Well, you know, like, those two things have to lock together. It's like you have to have the innovation and the technology and those differentiators. But without brand, then you're just in a feature war with, like, other people.

Jimmy Daly:

Right. That's so interesting. To be honest, brand is not something I've really no experience at, you know, like, and it always has always felt kind of like you said, like a little squishy, but then when you see it, it's like, Oh, that's it. You know what I mean? Like they, this company has done it.

Jimmy Daly:

And, but then behind the scenes, I'm guessing it's like a lot of thought and effort has gone into creating that experience for the person on the other end. So, like, from your perspective, is that brand guidelines, style guide, like, that Yep. Type of stuff, is that kinda does that make up kinda the backbone of what brand ultimately becomes when it's public facing?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. For sure. I mean, it it means that, like, a customer who interact with their customer as a path manager comes to our website, goes to an event from us, attends a webinar. When they're having all these engagements with us, like, they come away feeling like, one, it's, like, a consistent experience and, like, we are different facets of the same person. Right?

Kasey Hickey:

I guess it's tone. Right? It's, like, our brand voice, you know, like, how we show up is, like, always consistent, But, like, we shift a little bit depending on the context. Right? Like, there's a different tone on our social media.

Kasey Hickey:

If you attend one of our events, you know, like, you get, like, a slightly different flavor. But at the end of the day, like, everything should feel, like, attentive. And I do feel like you know, people don't come up to me at conferences and say, like, I read that one blog post you did about, like, you know, how to better use segmentation. But they do come up to me, and they they say, like, oh my god. This one campaign that you guys did, like, I still remember.

Kasey Hickey:

It was so cool. And it's like that experience that they remember, and it's like the feeling that they're left with that's really powerful and why we keep investing the resources and doing things like that because they are so meaningful and because they leave that, you know, to your point, lasting impression.

Jimmy Daly:

That's so interesting. I guess I hadn't really considered this, but you'll probably make an impression either way. There's the sort of accidental way, and then there's the deliberate way. And maybe the deliberate way is the that's the brand.

Kasey Hickey:

Yes. Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's like we think about all the copy and all the visuals and how they work together. And if we're doing a report online, we're thinking about, like, how does this show up in an in person experience?

Kasey Hickey:

And how, you know, this swag at our events is reflective of our brand, you know, as an example. So I think it's all those little bits that add up.

Jimmy Daly:

I love it. That's so cool. We've covered a lot. I feel like we could cover another hour's worth of stuff. If you're open to a case, maybe we do a part 2 sometime where we dive into some of the the metrics, the reporting, all of that good stuff.

Jimmy Daly:

Because I feel like that's probably a whole another world of stuff that we could dive into.

Kasey Hickey:

It's a whole world of stuff. Yeah. We don't do things unless we're measuring them in one way or another.

Jimmy Daly:

Okay. Well, if you're open to it, one thing we've been doing is I record a podcast and then I set a reminder for 1 year and then I reached back out and then I started to check-in with people now that we've been doing this for a while so that we can continue conversations and then, like, kind of check-in on things we talked about last week.

Kasey Hickey:

I love it. And I love your last post, the whole doing more with less super resonates with me. Like, this idea that we're just, like, these hamsters in a wheel just, like, churning, churning, churning, churning, I think about myself, and I'm like, I do not check a company's website every day to see what their new blog post is. Right. And, like, 80% of what they publish is probably not being read.

Kasey Hickey:

And so, like, it's about that differentiation and, like, I'd rather spend, you know, 3 weeks working on a piece of really phenomenal content than just, like, churn something out just to say we did it.

Jimmy Daly:

Totally. Yeah. The content landscape has just changed so much. Like, it wasn't that long ago that there was a lot of grumbling about do more with less. And now I kind of feel like, actually, do more with less is kind of an opportunity.

Jimmy Daly:

I mean, there's there are casualties to it. Like, the layoffs, the budget cuts, like, that stuff is really tough. But the do more with less thing is sort of an opportunity to let people, you know, kind of have more ownership over the projects that they work on. Think kind of like you described earlier, like really hard about what is worth my time. Like, what should we be, should we be doing?

Jimmy Daly:

Not just like, oh, we've got budget and a list of keywords. Let's go. You know?

Kasey Hickey:

And think about the recipient of all this content. Like, they're getting, like, 50,000 emails from me that all sound the same. They're seeing your you know, it's like, just put yourself in their shoes. I think being, like, really buyer oriented and customer focused is so critical. It's like, read this piece of content.

Kasey Hickey:

Like, would you care?

Jimmy Daly:

Right. Right. If it

Kasey Hickey:

doesn't resonate with you, like, why should somebody else care?

Jimmy Daly:

Totally. Totally. Kasey, where can we send people to connect with you? We'll obviously link to Attentive. Would encourage people to check out the content, see what it's like now that you kinda heard the behind the scenes.

Jimmy Daly:

We'll link to your job opening too if it's still open.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.

Jimmy Daly:

We'll put that in there. And then for you personally, LinkedIn, Twitter, personal website, or anywhere else we can send folks?

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. LinkedIn is great. I'm not much of a Twitter user these days, but it still still lives in the archives.

Jimmy Daly:

I've always asked people, like, where should we link? And everyone used to say Twitter, and now nobody says Twitter. So I guess we should just ask people what's your, like, dead handle.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. LinkedIn is great. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn.

Jimmy Daly:

Cool. We'll make sure there's a link, in the show notes to your to your LinkedIn. And, Kasey, thank you so much. Seriously, amazing to meet you. You've been very generous with your time and your wisdom, so we really appreciate it.

Kasey Hickey:

Yeah. Thanks so much, Jimmy. It was great to connect.

Jimmy Daly:

Awesome. Take care.

Kasey Hickey:

You too. Bye.