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This show is made for B2B marketers who are tired of the same old advice. Ugi Djuric, CEO of ContentMonk and B2B Vault, sits down with some of the best minds in B2B to talk about what’s really working, what’s broken, and what nobody tells you about growing a company. This is the show where people share their deepest insights and secret knowledge they wouldn't otherwise share on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (00:00.076)
That's the million dollar question. Do we need to be viral to succeed?
The only way to learn what stories to tell and how to tell them today, especially if we're talking about social media, is to try and fail. If you're not Coca-Cola or Red Bull, you might not strive to do those things. When it comes to grabbing attention, it's the oldest tricks in the book once again. Numbers, quotes, faces, cool animations, cool assets. If I needed to choose one channel to start with.
I would start on Nathan. You can blame the algorithm, can blame the audience, you can blame the world, but something has changed and then you have to change with it. You can't just start banging it and hope that it'll start working again. I think the only way you can win in life is to be kind to yourself.
you
Speaker 2 (00:55.064)
Hello guys. Today's episode is a real masterclass on the storytelling and video. I had the pleasure of speaking with Jona Ekman, is the marketing director at StoryKit. We talked a lot about storytelling, what are the different storytelling frameworks that marketers can use, how to use storytelling in different stages of the final, and most importantly, how to create videos that really stand out, get attention, keep attention and
potentially make viewers take action. So sit tight and enjoy because to be honest with you, video is becoming more and more popular each day and knowing the foundations of storytelling and video and how to use this video in different funnel stages in different strategies might be the really big differentiator between marketeers that are really killing it and the ones that are not. So sit tight.
And enjoy. Because like AI turned everything in a commodity right now, right? Everyone is creating videos. Everyone is writing LinkedIn posts. Everyone is, you know, writing a lot of blog posts and so on. How can brands stand out?
that's the million dollar question. Well, mean, marketing today is more or less back to basics. Know your customer and know your audience, know what they need, know what you need to tell them. Because sometimes I think in the climate we're seeing today, the communication climate today, think people are, money organizations are just
They don't know what to say because they think that they need to say something in a special way. They have to be funny or they have to be dancing or they have to do something that they think social media is. So they're just trying to do everything. and in my opinion, this is the time where you have to back up and think really hard about what you actually need to say, what you actually want to say.
Speaker 1 (03:10.508)
what's unique for you and in your messaging. So that I think that's the only way to stand out. And the second part of that is to do this all the time, to be seen, be heard all the time and never hesitate when it comes to just repeating yourself.
Being out there, showing yourself, saying the same things in a thousand different ways. So I think a lot of it has to do with Back to Basics.
How do you start with storytelling? How do you create that narrative around your brand? So that's the first part of the question. But the second part of the question is how do you create department specific storytelling? For example, the marketing storytelling, something that we will use to get awareness or whatever, may not necessarily close deals. we also have April Dunford had...
this amazing article like sales first storytelling. So how do create or HR storytelling as well. So how do we approach the storytelling game from A to Z?
Well, once again, you have to start with the basics. Who is the audience? Who is your customer? What do they need to know? Where are they in their journey? All of those things that marketers have done forever. And when it comes to the company storytelling, there needs to be one story to start with, because even if the departments would do department specific storytelling, it all
Speaker 1 (04:56.192)
always needs to boil down to this one very clear, specific message that everyone's on board with and everyone knows why we're saying this and everyone knows how the story goes. So you have to start there. What is our story? What is the common story? And how you find that? Well, you need to start with your vision and your mission.
Of course. mean, it's completely different if you're a big company that has existed for 150 years, or if you're a new startup that started yesterday. mean, in, in one, in, if you're a, a company with a, with a whole lot of story going on, then you need to tap into that. need to, to find ways to package it in new ways and in old ways and in different ways and try out new things. But if you're a new company, well, I mean,
You need to start to talk with the founders. You need to start with the people who know stuff and with your audience, of course, where are they? What do they need to know? And then when it comes to team specific or department specific storytelling, if you have that basic common denominator story that just flows throughout the whole company, I think it will be so much easier.
for every department to craft their own version of it. And when it comes to sales, I, when it comes to all departments, think marketing should have a part in being present in, present in the, crafting those stories. But, but I also think that the people who work at the departments need to do a lot of that work themselves because as a marketer,
I can know a whole lot about our audience and the customer and the company and the story, but the salespeople will always be better at knowing exactly what they need to say and when they need to say it to a person that they're selling to right now, right here. So start with that basic story, craft it and just make it, just make it seen and heard throughout the company.
Speaker 1 (07:19.82)
And I think all the other messaging will come much more naturally. At least that's what I've seen, I've been in.
Yep, makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that thing. That makes perfect sense. Are there any let's call them like a storytelling frameworks that you see in work consistently from one brand to another? For example, I know I remember reading a lot about this kind of I think it's Hero's Journey. Right. So I kind of, you know.
Lord of the Rings style or however it is, know, when you have a hero who has some really low moment in his life and now he needs to embrace a journey and there are challenges and that kind of stuff. Is there something like that or that, like that you see consistently work for B2B brands?
The answer is no. I wouldn't say that there's one storytelling framework that works for everyone. Not even a storytelling framework that works for one brand all the time. There is so much you can learn from these frameworks. I mean, I've read them all, I've used them all and they're really, really nice to have as a starting point, as an idea.
Speaker 1 (08:47.66)
The only way to learn what stories to tell and how to tell them today, especially if we're talking about social media, is to try and try again and fail and try again like a thousand times. Not only because that's the only way to learn what your audience wants. It's also the only way to learn what your audience wants right now because the story I told last week might not work this week. And the only way to find that out.
I find out what story to tell this week is to try and realize, it didn't work this week. need to something differently. So once again, the repetition I was talking about, you need to be ready to be consistent and repetitive. not just because that's the only way to make your messaging stick, but also because it's the only way to learn what your audience wants right now. I mean, I mean, just as a side note.
How could
Speaker 1 (09:44.512)
I think it was Aristotle or one of the old philosophers who said that every story needs the beginning and middle and the end. Yeah. And I mean, that's a nice little framework to start with regardless of what you're doing. You need clarity.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. do you make sure that everything you do marketing-wise or across the entire organization, how do you make sure that everything keeps consistent with the main story, main message that you want to share with the world?
Have you seen something like that? Are there some kind of internal documents that people can consult when they need to publish something? What's your take on that?
Well, first of all, I think it's a bit impossible. And the hardest thing with keeping that story telling 100 % consistent is when you make your colleagues afraid of telling stories because they're more afraid of doing the wrong thing than doing anything. And once again, in the world we're in right now, the worst thing you can do is nothing. can rather do a couple of bad shots and then, wow.
All of a sudden it all came together. But anyways, what I can do, I mean, I've worked with all the internal documents and we have a whole drive, a whole drive folder with different documents on how to tell the stories and what the most important things are. And I am not sure people are reading them. I really am. So one thing that you can do is once again.
Speaker 1 (11:36.054)
Repeat yourself and always cling to the same stories internally too, to your colleagues. mean, having small keynotes in every chance you have, just keep on reminding the most important things. And another thing that we do and we've started doing a lot more recently is
Instead it's telling our colleagues that instead of making your own LinkedIn posts up or just coming up with your own stories, just use what you are, what we already have. mean, we have an abundance of blog posts and eBooks and case studies and keynotes and whatnot. Just take that and use that for your storytelling because that's the best way to know that the things that our colleagues are saying.
will be the right things because that's produced by us. And I mean, we're working with a video automation tool. That's what we're selling. So if they just pop in our latest blog post into the tool and get stuff out, we know that it'll be okay. So that's also a way of just making sure. And I think that companies are pretty bad today. Or they're not bad. They're losing out on a chance.
to using stuff that they already have. I've met so many marketers that are thinking so hard about what to do on social or what to do when they start creating videos. And they forget about all the good things that they already have. I mean, they have what we call the goldmine of content just sitting there, usually on their homepage. Maybe not the smallest, most newly started company, but even those always have some kind of...
They have a vision, they have a mission, they have some interviews with some colleagues, maybe they have a little first case study and so forth. And instead of just starting stressing out about creating new things, why not go back to that and just use that and spread that to the world time and time again? Because even if you just have five blog posts, you could probably use them for a hundred of LinkedIn posts. So that's my biggest tip. Just go back to.
Speaker 1 (13:56.65)
what you already have and use that and then it's going to be fine.
Yeah, I mean like repurposing is definitely like I would say becomes a very important part of marketing content marketing in general. Yeah, and you know that there is For example like success stories, right? you can for example tell one success story like a ten different ways You know ten different pieces of content from one success story. It can go like something like very like a direct
Here is how we helped company X get Y results, but you can also take, you know, repurpose it into other content pieces from different angles. Like here is how we are helping X category get these results. Here is how to do X. Here is how to get Y results, you know, and all of these, you know, different variations. But when it comes to repurposing, where is that, you know, line?
between getting a lot of content, but high quality content. where is that line from that? And the other side, here we are pumping a lot of content, but our content is like basic, full of fluff. You get what I'm trying to say. What's the golden middle of repurposing it?
would say spend time and effort in creating a couple of key pieces and then use them forever. mean, if I would, if you say 10 stories from a case study, say 25 or 50. mean, even especially, mean, my, from my point of view, I think of everything in video. So I have a case study. I have three great quotes from the person I've interviewed. Well, that's three videos at least just there.
Speaker 1 (15:53.962)
have a great headline. That could be a video. You don't need much more than that for video. could be a 10 second video. could be a summary, a little longer, maybe like, whoo, 60 seconds. God. and then you have like, as you said, you have the results, have the challenges, you have the industry of angle, you have the, just goes on and on and on. So I think if you want to save time and resources today.
You really should put your effort into creating a couple of key pieces that are actually good and consist of quality things that are important for your company to say. And then just as Ross Simmons always says, just distribute them forever because yeah, you can do that. And when you've done those 25 pieces from your case studies and you've distributed them over five weeks, you can just redistribute them once again without changing a thing or you change an image.
or you change your color or you change the music or you so you can just reuse and use and reuse so much. But it's not in our in the marketers like in our blood, we just want to hunt the new shiny thing because we're always like on the hunt for new cool stuff. And it's a blessing, but it's also a curse because we don't have time for that anymore. We do not have time for that anymore.
We have less resources. We have more to do. We have more channels. have more formats. We really need to like focus on what's really, really important and prioritize that.
So I would say one thing for companies to stand out right now is to really be the pioneers in their categories, in their markets with original content, original insights and secret knowledge that they're sharing with the world. Not just to recycle the same stuff over and over again that everyone else is talking about.
Speaker 2 (18:02.99)
three ways how can companies get that kind of original content out of the door. The first one would be their own secret knowledge that they have, personal experiences, personal stories, whatever. The second one would be running some kind of original surveys, creating market reports, whatever. But the third thing is research and
Just like doing good old research on how other companies are doing X, know, and then getting the takeaways from that, you know, and sharing it with the world and so on. And the most crucial part of that research is basically, I would say, getting that journalistic mindset, you know. So how can everyone become a journalist in like the, when it comes to creating content?
because I think that's something that's very underrated and it's something that I'm trying to teach my writers and my team, you know, on how to be a good journalist.
I am an old journalist and that is how...
I think the most important thing and I think many marketers have that in their blood is to be curious.
Speaker 2 (19:26.638)
Hey guys, just a real quick story for interrupting the episode. Did you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of low quality and crappy content that you find on Google and LinkedIn? Well, B2B Vault, the producers of this episode, solved that problem. B2B Vault is a database of hundreds and hundreds of expert level
insights and articles written by 300 plus B2B marketing experts. And B2B World monitors hundreds of websites every single week to uncover new trends and new articles so you are the first to learn the new trends, insights and playbooks from the best B2B marketing minds. And every Monday morning we send out a newsletter with
few most important reads every B2B marketeer should read at the start of their week to make sure that you hit your quota and get more deals in the pipeline. just very quickly, if you're interested in this, go to theb2bworld.com slash newsletter and join thousands of other B2B marketeers in our Monday newsletter. See you there.
So a journalist would prioritize digging for the real story more than telling the right story. I mean, as a marketer, we're always obsessed of like, how should I do this? What's going to bring the best results? How are we going to find the things that we are trying to find and so forth and so forth. So we're not always really open to
the things that's just lying there in front of us. We're trying to push things to fit into a narrative. trying to, you know, we're trying to create things because they're in our strategy. We planned to do this. That's why we're doing it. A journalist, I would say, is always more open to other things.
Speaker 1 (21:31.822)
In the small sense and in a big sense, just going in and see what's going to come out of it. And having that curiosity and that freedom to be that curious oftentimes helps for me, at least. mean, if I would do a webinar or an interview or whatnot, of course I have some kind of plan. But if I see that this is heading down some new interesting path, I cannot.
not follow it because I know that that's where I'm going to find the most interesting things. So I think that I listened to a keynote once. mean, this is a tip that you've heard in a lot of places, but she was so this woman who did this Kuno was so clear about it. She was like, I always ask the question why. And not just once I ask it again. Okay. So we did this. Why? Uh, because of this. Okay. Why?
I did this and that's that was the way for her to get really deep into the layers of what we're actually talking about. I don't use that personally because I think I get there anyway in a thousand different ways but for people who maybe hasn't really done that before it's a good way to start. Just dig a little deeper.
Yeah. Besides constantly asking why, you know, different things and creating your story from that, back in your day when you were the journalist, how did your process look like, you know, when writing new stories? I mean, I don't know what kind of journalist you were. Was it more like something daily news or something or more like investigative, you know, journalism or something like that? But
from your experience and your peers, know, how you usually people, you know, approach researching a specific topic, where do they start? How did you do that?
Speaker 1 (23:33.134)
Well most of my journalistic experience comes from interviewing people. And when I started writing out interviews, or when I, that's still how I do it, I start with just writing it down. I mean today I would transcribe it through some AI service, but back in the days I just wrote it down, all of it. Every single quote, everything.
And started from there. And then you start to puzzle your story from there. What, what are we actually saying here? What, what fits together? And so forth. I mean, if, I mean, if you're doing the kind of journalism that needs a lot of research, then you'll probably start somewhere completely different. You will of course talk to people because that's the best research you can do. But when it comes to just finding out things.
by talking to people. I always love that because it's, it's the funniest and most fulfilling way to get into something that you don't had once upon a time I had as a, as a rule in my marketing team that if we could do it in an interview or tell the story through an interview, then we did it. Didn't matter what we were going to talk about it. If it was a really
really like a square type of product release. I still wanted to do that by interviewing the people who had released it or by people who had used it or by people who might love it. Instead of just today, we are releasing this very not funny tech thing.
Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Before we go to the video, let's talk about something that I would say it's, you know, connected to both like storytelling, journalism, journalism content video, like everything. And I would say that's something that 99.9 % of B2B brands don't have. that is creativity. So.
Speaker 2 (25:52.75)
What's your process for and your team's process for doing something creative, and having some, you know, boring blog post or a video or a LinkedIn post, whatever, become funny, written, recorded from like a different, more engaging angle. How do you approach creativity in content and B2B marketing in general?
One of the best ways is to sit down with another funny creative person and then just bounce ideas. What's this going to be? How can we make this more interesting? But once again, I think one of the biggest mistakes that marketers do is to stare so much on what the others are doing as you're saying everything looks the same and so forth.
That's the first mistake. And the second mistake is to not trust what you're actually are doing. I mean, so one of my best examples is I often do workshops with companies and they say, company is so boring. We have nothing interesting to tell. Okay. Fine. I hear you. So then I give them an assignment. want them to go out on the most boring homepage they can think of and come up with.
five video ideas and they go out to the most boring pages you can ever think of and they come back with five super interesting video ideas because it's so easy to look at someone else's content and say, that's interesting. mean, it might not be Coca-Cola ad funny or Red Bull cool, but I mean, if you're not Coca-Cola or Red Bull, you might not.
strive to do those things. So if they, then go back to your own page, own homepage and try to look at your own content in that sense and see that, okay, this might not be TikTok viral video material, but is that what we're striving to do? Do we need to be viral to succeed or do we need to tell people about what we do and why we love it?
Speaker 1 (28:13.846)
and why it's important for them. I think that's much more important than a lot of things that people are trying to do. And I think people fall into the trap where they're stuck between that, like the things that they need to say and the things that they think they need to say. So I think the first thing you need to do is just to like, to really go back to what you
are what you need to say, what your messaging is, what your job to communicate is. And really just immerse yourself in that and become, become creative from that and not try to, to squeeze what you need to say into some kind of framework that you think you need because someone on LinkedIn told you to, that's what frustrates me the most.
I mean, I've seen a bunch of interesting and cool lists and frameworks on LinkedIn that you're like, I should probably do that. And then you try to squeeze your own reality into it. And you're like, okay, it's not going to work. and then just let it go. Just look at what you have, look at what you need to say, look at what your audience needs to hear and wants to hear. That's also a pet peeve for me. people are like, we need to do something different because.
Our company is so boring. And I'm like, you have 50,000 followers on LinkedIn. They're not following you because they want you to dance or they want you to be funny. They're following you because they're interested in you. So please, I mean, it's like being a person that tries to be someone else. Like just try to be you. That's what's going to work for you.
I really love that take. So tell me now moving to the video part. you have any internal data points from your customers or insights from your own experiments that you use to run or the customer's experiments? What type of video performs the best in terms of
Speaker 2 (30:35.662)
not like the format video, is it short or whatever, but in terms of like, is it just a talking head video? Is it talking head plus animations or full animations or like a slideshow with the text or do they have some data data on that?
Speaker 1 (31:01.002)
As always, it depends on what your goals are. It depends on what type of company you are. Depends on what story you need to tell. mean, your video for your bottom of funnel ad will be and should be super different from the organic ad that you post on your company LinkedIn page.
Trying to create some kind of awareness. And that's why I always come back to do a lot of things. Post a lot. Post much more than you ever thought that you needed. If you think you're posting a lot, you're probably not. Just post more. Our CEO often says that if I could give one advice to any company, regardless of what they do,
of who they are and what they've done before when it comes to being successful in social media, it would be post more. But shouldn't we post more? Just post more. But the quality, you don't know what quality is until you've posted more and so forth. And this also means that we have seen
I mean, I can't talk for my clients because I don't dig into their video numbers in that sense, because when they distribute their videos, I can't really see their numbers. But when it comes to our own video efforts, I mean, we have seen the shortest, snappiest, funniest videos where we've filmed someone talking head work really, really well, of course.
If you have a charismatic, funny person in your company that wants to do stuff, super. But we've also seen like 60 second long, totally text driven, totally automated videos work super, super well too. For different things, for different occasions with different stories. And I 100 % think that you need both.
Speaker 1 (33:19.222)
And that's also something that we often talk about the fact that people strive to create like the talking heads and the film stuff so much. problem with that is that it, first of all, you need to find a person who loves to do it because if the person doesn't love to do it, won't be any good. And I work in a super young, cool sauce company and no one wants to be on video. Everyone hates to be filmed. so that's the first reality check.
Like, do we even have someone like that? The second thing is, can we tell our stories in that way? I'm not sure. And then if I want to publish like three video posts on LinkedIn every day, which I probably should, or 300 as some company does, then I probably won't have time to do all those talking and videos anyways. So I will need to do a combination of things.
short, snappy ones, text-driven ones, talking heads, quotes, stats, anything.
Can you guide us through the process of creating videos for different funnel stages? Like for the awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, whatever, however you define the funnel stages.
Yeah, I mean, we do it quite easily. I, I hundred percent agree with a lot of the things that LinkedIn are saying right now about how to create different videos for different, stages of the journey. I mean, if you're a top of funnel, they need to be a bit less connected to the actual thing you're selling the bit more storytelling driven. And they can be a bit longer and so forth. And the further down your funnel, come.
Speaker 1 (35:11.82)
The more you need to be short, clear, and also just in the end, you need to be like, Hey, this is where you buy contact us here. You don't start with that. Of course, we know the, what is it? 90, 10 rules, like 90 % aren't ready to buy yet. So you need to do a lot of talking to them. But when you get to the 10%, you need to be super clear and super fast. One thing that LinkedIn.
said quite recently is that they have super clear data that regardless of where you are in the funnel, you should always show your brand. There was a point like a couple of years ago when people was talking so much about, we can't show our logo too early in the video. People won't like it. And they're saying the complete opposite. Like they have much better engagement, much better conversions when you are showing your logo like.
at least not later than two seconds into the video because in today's like scrolling climate you want to know what you're looking at immediately and if you don't feel like you know what you're looking at you'll just whatever so never be afraid of showing your brown like the logo the colors if you have any specific animations whatnot just get them in straight away
What will be the differences between the videos for top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, awareness, acquisition stage, whatever, besides mentioning your brand and the call to action? I mean, of course, this depends from company to company, the product, the solution that you sell, everything, ICP. are there any differences video production
script wise, story wise, then just content wise.
Speaker 1 (37:11.722)
Yeah, as I said, think, I mean, the further up in the, the higher up in the funnel you are, the more you need to tell a story, an actual story. And you also need to, to grab the attention of the viewer in a way that has probably not that much to do with your brand, but the challenges that they are facing and the reality that they're in.
And to find that out, you need to know your customer really well or your audience or your customer base. And the further down you're in the funnel, you can be much clearer, say things much quicker, shorter, be much more about your company or your product. You can get closer to the product. So I think that's when it comes to, I mean, that's...
And that applies to all types of content. It's not just video. mean, the first thing you want someone to meet from your company is not like the, our product costs X amount of dollars. Buy it here. If that's the first thing they meet from you, they probably not buy it. So you first want to, you want them to find out about you in a way that is soft and nice. And then you push them through the funnel. And then in the end, can be like, Hey, bye now.
Yep. Definitely. Hopefully.
But we need to remember that no one moves through the funnel in that sense. No one moves straight through the funnel. So you need to, you need to add value wherever they are.
Speaker 2 (38:48.578)
wherever they are. Exactly. Exactly. Try to the point. Tell me what are your unique takes or the secret knowledge on grabbing the attention of the user inside feed. So like in those first one, two, three seconds, like how do you grab their attention with the video? What are the hooks, how to create great hooks and how do you keep that attention from beginning till the end?
And when it comes to grabbing attention, it's the oldest tricks in the book. Once again, numbers, quotes, faces, cool animations, cool assets. mean, something that really makes you, huh. And, or a really, and I'm saying a really good headline, like a first, the first text you meet is just like, Whoa, that applies to me. So.
Thinking about those first seconds or milliseconds of your video is super, super, super important. And that's pretty much it. If you nail that, it's going to work out. And then when it comes to retention, I love the old copywriter trick that people have talked about for years now, like...
The job of the first sentence in your text is to get people to read the next sentence, which has the job to make them read the third sentence and so forth. And that applies to video too. So the first frame of your video, the job of that is to make them see the next and then the next and then the next, especially if you're doing like a, I don't know, 20 second video. Just you have to have their attention all the time. There is no space for.
rest and peace. just needs to happen and be very clear. And I don't mean that everything needs to be cool and, and the swishy and swishy and fast. It just needs to be interesting all the time because as soon as it's not interesting anymore, they will drop.
Speaker 2 (40:51.256)
Tell me for StoryKit, what are the best marketing and sales channels or strategies that are driving you the most SQLs down the pipeline?
Well, traditionally it's, it's really been LinkedIn. we S we saw the opportunity on LinkedIn straight from the beginning and realized this is the place to be for us. So we have driven so, so much business opportunity creation and sales through LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is still a big, important piece of that. I would say it's one of the still one of the most important pieces of that. So if.
I would still today if I needed to choose one channel to start with I would start on LinkedIn.
Is it just the LinkedIn organic or?
I don't know. Definitely they're paid ads too. saw, I mean, LinkedIn as a platform has become much more crowded during the years we've been working on it and we can see that it's harder to drive attention. It's harder to drive results. And of course, because there more people there, more people throwing money on it and so forth. But I mean, then it's our job to find ways to shine through that.
Speaker 1 (42:13.666)
But I mean, we have worked very much with paid ads on LinkedIn and seen success in.
And then if you can, of course, share your insights. What's the kind of ads that you're running? it image-based, video-based, text-based, total leadership ad, whatever? Where that ad leads? Is it straight to the book a demo? Is it some lead magnet, caterly magnet, ebook, report, whatever? And is it just retargeting or you're targeting the new audience, basically?
Once again, it's pretty much all of them. mean, we have video ads, we have image ads, we have carousels, have document ads, we have a bunch of different, and we've tried them all and we're trying, we have thought leader ads. We're maybe not running all of them right now, but we have definitely tried them all and are still trying all of them in different phases and ways and all of that. So one thing that I can say that we're completely stopped doing is,
is putting ebooks behind a page where you have to sign up to get it. we did that, we had a couple of years ago, we did that so much. We were so good at spreading our ebooks. We had like thousands of downloads on an ebook and got so many leads. None of them were any good.
And so we realized that this is not the way to do it. all the, all that type of content and eBooks and keynotes, and we try not to get them at all anymore.
Speaker 2 (44:00.79)
Don't scream now or just don't get up.
are we create them, but we don't want to gate them. Because if people want to read about us, why would we stop them? Why would we create friction? So what we've been driving mostly is demo bookings. And we've done that through click-throughs. We've done that through Legion ads, where you can register straight on LinkedIn. We've done it through all the ways that we can. And sometimes, I mean,
That's why it's saying once again, you need to try again and try again and you fail and you try again is because something can work for a couple of months really, really well. And then it stops working. And you ask your LinkedIn contact, like what's happening? And they don't have an answer. Something has happened. You can blame the algorithm. You can blame the audience. You can blame the world, but something has changed and then you have to change with it. You can't just start banging it and hope that it'll start working again. You just have to change.
so that's why it's so hard to say we have done this and this was very successful because we have probably done this and it was very successful, but then it stopped working and we started doing something else to be successful. And that's how you will be successful in this day.
What about other forms of marketing like Google Ads, Content, SEO? Do they work for you?
Speaker 1 (45:26.254)
Define work. mean, yeah, in a sense. mean, the best lead we can get is as for any other company almost is the person who's Googled us and come to our page and signed up. And that's not because Google works so good. It's because they have read about us for months. And then all of a sudden they're like, Oh, StoryKit, that video tool, need to, now is the time.
So that's why it works good. And that's probably the only thing right now that we've seen true success with. mean, we have through efforts managed to increase our organic traffic with a gazillion present. And it meant nothing more than it was fun to show the graphs and the numbers for the boss, but it didn't bring any results. okay. Should we do that? Well.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:25.376)
In some sense, but we need to prioritize. So, so we're of course, like we have SEM, we have, work with SEO. We're trying to create a homepage that converts. course, I mean, these things are important. Yeah. especially creating a homepage that actually converts. But, I would, a world of prioritization, I still think that social media, will bring in a lot more.
than anything else right now.
Now, when you just said that, me before we wrap up, where do you see our industry? I mean, B2B marketing in general in the next, with all the constant changes that we have, where do you see, you know, our B2B marketing in the next five years?
I think we're coming into a time right now where you will have to be super productive. Being a good strategist, being able to create the plans is important, but if you can't do the work, I think there will be less and less space for you as a marketer. And the people who are productive needs to become even more productive because AI will help us be that.
And if you're not on board on with that, you're going to be the slow person in a couple of years or just in a couple of months or already. so I think moving fast and not being afraid of breaking things will be more more important. and being able to, to try new things and not being afraid is going to be so, so important. And I don't think that just applies to B2B marketing. I think it.
Speaker 1 (48:11.086)
applies to all types of communication and all types of industries. yeah, marketing will probably have even less resources and being forced to produce even more. And we just need to be ready for it.
Jona, tell me the last question that I have for you and we'll wrap up this episode has nothing to do with marketing. yeah, but it's probably my favorite question that I like to ask people ever, everywhere. How do you win at the game called life and what does that really mean for you? What is winning for you?
I and I'm pretty bad at that, I think the only way you can win in life is to be kind to yourself. Because you won't always end up where you want to and you will fall and you will get hurt and you will make mistakes and you will also have success. And if you're not kind to yourself,
both when you've made mistakes, but also when you've succeeded. If you don't stand still for a second and tell yourself, you're really good, you actually succeeded now. I mean, my problem often is that I, okay, so now I've done this, now I'm gonna go for the next thing. Which means that you're never satisfied, you're never really, you don't give yourself time to just enjoy and be happy. I'm trying to get better at that, I'm gonna try.
really hard this summer to just sit for a while and be nice to myself. And I think it's the only way. Because life will probably not always turn out the way you thought, both in a good and bad way. But if you're not nice to yourself, it will never feel good.
Speaker 2 (50:14.35)
Yep. You know, really, thank you very much for being here. Thank you. was a blast. had a lot of fun. Thank you very much. Okay guys, that's a wrap. What an amazing episode that was. Before you go, just let me ask you a very quick question. Do you know that your B2B company might be in a great danger of AI commoditization and
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:41.934)
If your company out there is not standing out, if you're not fighting for the attention, which is the most important currency right now, then you are slowly becoming a commodity. And when you're a commodity, no one is going to buy from you organically on their own. So Contentmonk, the agency that I run is a full funnel content marketing agency that works with fast growing B2B software companies and helps them become
category leaders, the main winners in the field with original content that stands out, so reports, lead magnets, articles, AI content optimization for LLM search, massive content distribution. And the another thing that you're doing is we are monitoring different intent social signals across social networks to see what people are engaging with your content all the time and
who online is a sales ready lead for you, but they just didn't subscribe yet. So that's how we help fast growing B2B software companies grow. We offer a free consultation for everyone. So don't hesitate to go to contentmonk.io and book a free strategy session with us where you will get a free strategy and a battle plan without hard strings attached. See you there and see you in the next episode as well.
Have the great rest of the day.