Tonka Talk Community and Connection

Harnessing the Power of Connection: Lee Oden Top Rank Marketing

• Natalie Webster

Share episode

Lee Odden of Top Rank Marketing has traveled the globe helping businesses and business owners connect with their communities.

Ever wondered how cultural differences can impact your marketing efforts and business growth? We've got some invaluable insights for you. We talk about his intriguing experiences of speaking engagements across the globe and the unique appreciation of an American perspective in marketing.

Learn more at https://www.tonkatalk.com where we share more about our Lake Minnetonka community, including upcoming events and our take on local experiences.

Connect with us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TonkaTalk/
If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions of a future guests creating community and connection, email natalie@tonkatalk.com

We appreciate your support in sharing Tonka Talk Community and Connection with someone you think could benefit from our content.

Speaker 1:

My guest today is a leader in business to business marketing. His name is Lee Oden and he's going to share with us ways that you can get the word out when you're a brand or you're a business to your community, and also how you can engage and grow that community and make real connection with the people that you're working with or working for. I'm Natalie Webster and this is Tonka Talk, where we share the ways people create community and connection. Lee Oden has been recognized as a top business to business marketing professional by Forbes, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal. For over 20 years he's worked with his team at Top Rank Marketing to help elevate the business to business marketing industry. You are an impressive dude On paper, on paper, on paper. But also Lee is the author of Optimize and has published over 1.4 million words on your agency's marketing blog. That blew my mind too, because that's a lot of words.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. You know, when I was talking to the acquisition editor at Wiley to publish that book, they were like, look, it's 60,000 words and I'm thinking, god, that's a lot of words. And then I started thinking about well, I've been blogging for so many years, I wonder how many words I've written on this blog. And that's where I figured out 1.4 million, or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Wow, so you just took the word count from all the blog posts. Wow, I should do that. I should see. I wonder how much. There's definitely not that much, but it's something to strive for. You also, I read, or featured in, a book called Online Marketing Heroes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had to razz you about that. How does?

Speaker 1:

it feel to be an online marketing hero.

Speaker 2:

That was. Yeah, that was a little blip and just a small moment in time where some fellow decided well, why should he write a book when he can get 20 other people to write the book for him? Genius, yeah, Just a piece to their ego.

Speaker 1:

I like it, though you know the book I. I too am featured in the book. Yes, not to toot my own horn, it's called School Lunches and it was written by a woman out of New York, and it's the way. It's the different, the way that people experience school lunch growing up.

Speaker 2:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:

And I grew up in Hawaii and I'm a huge fan of Spam Musubi, which has got rice spam wrapped in the Nori.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I don't recall exactly how we connected, but she came out to Minnesota and I kind of thought it was. I don't even know if I knew for sure what it was, but a year later I get this book in the mail and I'm like, oh my gosh, it was a real thing.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

So I've now. What would you say? How would you describe what you do with business to business marketing?

Speaker 2:

So, you know, top-ranked marketing is the agency that I co-founded, and you know we're 21 years old and what we do for technology B2B technology companies is helping get them more customers. So you have companies like Adobe, linkedin, sap, oracle, you know, so, on and so forth. Those companies are selling very high priced things that take a long time to educate customers about, and so it's a different kind of marketing, and so what we do is we create content, we create community and connection and engagement with potential buyers and help them guide themselves through the sales journey, which could be five months, 18 months long, and ultimately help them make the right choice and buy from our customer.

Speaker 1:

You've been doing this. You've I read, you've done over 300 presentations in over 19 countries. When you go into different countries with all of these different cultures, I was wondering, how does that translate being an American coming in you?

Speaker 2:

know it's interesting and, by the way, I just hit 20. This summer. I did my first presentation in Paris and initially I think the first other country I spoke in was London, so it was easy. English, english cultures are very similar so it wasn't too different, I didn't have to modify so much. But then when I've spoken Barcelona, you know here now it's what I thought were Spanish speakers and you know I tried, I translated my whole presentation into Spanish, I'm sorry, into Catalan.

Speaker 2:

Actually Catalan is what they speak in Barcelona largely and and apparently I offended a lot of people who are from other cities visiting Barcelona that speak primarily Spanish. So Spanish and Catalan are a contentious thing in the area. So I learned quickly, not just because of that but because of other interactions, that when other countries have you come in as an expert, they're not looking for you to you know, customize to their local market so much, unless that's the context for which you are hired or engaged, because they're looking for, in my case, the American coming over with American experience and that depth of budget and you know, money that's being spent in American marketing programs. What can they learn?

Speaker 1:

That makes sense. They kind of that's exactly what they want. Is that American experience?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they want to know what's happening in the US. What can we learn from what they're doing in a place where there's so much more money being spent in different ways, and how can they gain insights and duplicate the things that are working and don't do the things that are not?

Speaker 1:

Do you think that they that when they market, that they market differently? Because when I think about different cultures, when you go and you're gonna visit a place, whether you're gonna go to Europe, you know, don't wear the white tennis shoes with the black socks. It's just, there's usually things that you, you would change in your behavior or what you do. How this excitement over how being really excited on often about an American coming and sharing that American experience, was that something that? I mean, is it really really like that?

Speaker 2:

In terms of me participating at an event. Yeah, because a lot of. I mean I've spoken in places like Latvia, bucharest, so Riga, latvia and Bucharest, romania, moscow, I mean a lot of different places, and so they're not seeing a lot of American business people very often and they're very curious to learn about what things that are unique and special.

Speaker 2:

That you bring to the table so, but I learned a lot about how they market differently there in their local markets and most often most cases I was speaking in European areas, geographies, and they'd always say almost self depreciatingly, that you know there are two, three, four, five years behind what's going on in the US. You know what I mean. So, like in the US, it's digital, as you know, hardcore digital. That's where things are happening in. Covid accelerated the transformation of marketing into digital for B2B more than anything, Whereas there they still have outside sales reps knocking on doors In some cases. There's a lot more in-person types of interactions and that sort of thing, Not as much in the digital space.

Speaker 1:

You don't see too many people going door to door these days or knocking on doors, and if they do, you read about it on the next door app.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, especially in the consumer space.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Even being in real estate. There are some realtors who do door knocking and it's worked well for them. I've not done it because I'm terrified of being chased off somebody's property.

Speaker 2:

I can't imagine. Do you want to sell your house? Do you want to list your house?

Speaker 1:

Who are you? Then there's the whole thing with the animals and everything too, so you never know who has a dog that's going to go at you. Have you in? All of you've done so much traveling. Are there any places that stand out to you where you would go back and maybe visit there, vacation there?

Speaker 2:

Well, I can say that in terms of other countries, the cities I mean I love London a lot and I've been back to London 25 times at least Sydney, australia, new Zealand were pretty, not so much Sydney, more New Zealand, the South part of the island. And New Zealand was pretty awesome In terms of being different than what I was expecting or just a different environment. It was the Eastern Bloc countries. So going to I was in college, I went to, I was going to school in Denmark and we did spring break in Leningrad, oh wow. So that was 1988, a long time ago. I was still called to Leningrad at the time and so I was able to speak in Moscow and then, I mean, on that old trip, I went to Moscow as well.

Speaker 2:

But going to somewhere like Moscow was pretty interesting. When I was there originally it was just very gray and just I don't know, it was just non-eventful. You know what I mean? Just big, monolithic buildings and expressionless people in public, no smiles or anything like that, and I was wondering what it would be like. So why did a workshop there and I presented all day and then at the end I'm like, ok, I'm going to walk to Red Square. It's a quarter mile away. I've got to see Red Square before I fall asleep because of jet lag and I walked to Red Square and I was thinking I was going to be this gray monolithic building kind of situation. What was in the corner of Red Square? You know where, you've seen videos in the past of those Russian troops and the missiles walking by. There was a Louis Vuitton bag about two stories high, like some installation, promoting the Louis Vuitton store. So currently along one side of Red Square it's a big mall called the GUM G-U-M GUM mall and Louis Vuitton is an anchor store there.

Speaker 1:

Wow, who would have thought?

Speaker 2:

I never no. And so there were pockets in Moscow that were very Las Vegas, to be honest, and then there were other areas, just like it was in 1988. Wow, so that was an interesting place. Almost like a time capsule in ways, but it's changed a lot now today, yeah, and the first time I was required that I had to have a guide. We had to have a guide everywhere we went, whereas this time it was only recommended.

Speaker 1:

Oh Well, there you go. Do you think that with marketing, and specifically you've done so much with business to business marketing, if someone is listening to this and they want to maybe start their own business and get something going, how is there a way to? It's such a broad question Because I know what you do is on such a large scale, but what would you say? What kind of advice would you give people when they're thinking about I want to build my own brand around my company, around myself? If that's the person delivering the services, are there things that you would say that would kind of encourage them or kind of give them a starting point?

Speaker 1:

Because I think that's a big part of I know what I hear from people when they talk about oh, I really want to get into this, or I would really love to open a business that does this, and I was like, well, then, go ahead, go do it. You go do it, and a lot of it is like well, but I have to have this figured out, and there is a lot to figure out ahead of time sometimes. But I think there's also some fear of putting yourself out there, and so what advice would you give someone who wanted to start their own business in terms of marketing themselves and maybe even kind of overcoming that fear, because I feel, with so much of what you do, it's the whole lead a horse to water kind of a thing as well.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's kind of an interesting thing because there's a lot of people that think about how great it would be to go start. In fact, right now there's a lot of folks in the I guess Gen Z age group where it's just don't want to follow the and I'm making a generalization but don't want to follow the traditional career route and they want to get things more quickly and there's a lot of opportunities through the internet, through digital means, to monetize right and so, whether it's that way or traditional, obviously if someone's got the idea that they want to start a business, they must have some competency or some skill or have identified an unmet need in the marketplace that they want to make money on. But it's important that the only way to turn that into a business, of course, is to connect with customers and the way for customers to understand who you are, you've got to create content. So that's my answer. It's about content creation.

Speaker 2:

I can reflect on what I did in my business and maybe I'm still an introvert, but I was very much an introverted person and started out literally just cold calling and it was just a desperate way to like, hey, we're selling marketing services and we get meetings, and my partner and I would go pitch someone in an office somewhere just the two of us and one or two of them and it was a very laborious and low close rate kind of thing. And so I got the idea of like, well, ok, I'm going to start blogging, I'm going to start writing about what it is that we do and why people need to think about this as a way to go forward and how it might be better for them. And as I started writing about this, other people would react and I would interact, and so it became very because it was published online as a blog and it could be done through social now or through video or whatever. It was easily accessible, frictionless in terms of being able to reach people. And what happened then is I got asked to speak at an event at the JJ Hill Library here or not here, but in St Paul and that sparked off me starting to give presentations about okay, here's what a thing is, here's what it means to you and here's what you should do next.

Speaker 2:

So being helpful, creating helpful content for the audience that you're trying to sell to, is probably one of the most important starting points of starting a business, I think, because you're creating value for why they will ultimately want to buy from you. You know what I mean. And if you're helpful to someone, they appreciate it. And now, if you're lucky enough to have a personality and have charisma which I don't, but lots of people do put that on camera and put that out through Instagram or Snapchat, a TikTok or whatever channel and LinkedIn, depending on what audience you're after you can really make a lot of progress efficiently at connecting with your audience and getting that business going.

Speaker 1:

That makes a ton of sense and it's interesting to me that that would work for somebody just starting out and even a larger, a much larger company. As someone who's, like you said, an introvert, which so you get your, you kind of recharge them probably more by being alone when, after you've been around like large crowds of people. I know that's how I relate to it, because I consider myself an introvert too In the way that I recharge. I love people and I love getting out and talking to people, but then often I need to be in a windowless room in my house.

Speaker 2:

The best analogy I heard was from Simon Sinek, who said you know, an introvert walks into a party and has five coins to spend and they're spending their social battery, so to speak, or spending their social currency, and then it's gone. They've got to go, but for an extrovert, they're making those coins, they're earning those coins.

Speaker 2:

They're getting energized from the social interaction and that I can relate to that. When I'm in a situation where I'm giving a presentation and I'm presented, you know, obviously, to rooms small as 10, 20 people to over a thousand. That's exciting. I can't tell you how powerful the energy is of having a huge audience leaning forward, paying attention, raising their phones, taking photos of your slides. That's exciting, right, but an hour later I need to go check out. It's very draining.

Speaker 1:

So what do you do when you check out? How do you recharge? Because it's again. You were talking about a couple decades of traveling and presenting and really connecting with people in an impactful way. That's a lot of energy.

Speaker 2:

So I'll often schedule meetings with someone I really want to spend time with a customer, one of my coworkers that has to be at the event, or just a friend in the industry, and that's often how I'll recharge Is that a one-on-one interaction after the event.

Speaker 1:

And it is possible then to be an introvert and still go out and market and do all those marketing, because that's kind of sometimes the feedback I'll hear, even from other people in real estate, where you're your own brand and you're building something, is they're like well, I don't want to do videos or I don't want to be on camera and you don't have to. It's not. It's not the. If you don't do it, you can't be successful, but it's such an easier way of getting a message out there. It's. Was it difficult for you at all? Is it something you just got used to or you just enjoyed this, being able to be in front of people and share something and get that energy back?

Speaker 2:

Initially it was a functional thing. It's just like, look, this is not productive. I'm doing two-on-one, two-on-two pitching. Let me speak to a group of people how many customers can we attract that way? And once I started to see that productivity, it became like, okay, I can deal with this. And then as time went on and I got a little better and got positive feedback and got better at creating value for people and ultimately really creating tapping into the community of marketers that are out there. Being part of something bigger than yourself and being recognized that's super motivating.

Speaker 1:

Have you ever had a time where you've ever not wanted to go out and do that?

Speaker 2:

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where, because you do it so much, Well, now I've hired a new CEO at our agency and I'm not really responsible for. So yeah, right now, in a way, I'm not really responsible for being the face of the agency anymore. I do have a couple of speaking things coming up. I've got one in Slovenia all the places.

Speaker 2:

I can't recommend Slovenia enough as a place. If you're a foodie, it's actually an incredible place Anyway, but I'm not really responsible so for that function anymore. So, yeah, I'm comfortable not going out and doing that if I don't have to.

Speaker 1:

So that's kind of a nice transition for you versus you've not had to get used to not being that person. It's more welcomed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it was a transition for me. To be honest, most people associate their identity with what they do for work, and so my work has changed quite a bit when I've hired my replacement and I'm still working with our CEO. But the nature of my work as a face of the company and doing public speaking and being out there has transitioned quite a bit, and that transition wasn't just the function of doing the work or not doing that kind of work anymore, but also mentally thinking about okay, now what am I doing? I know what I'm doing, but you reflect on that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Do you think you reevaluate that question of what do I wanna be when I grow up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's a good thing for people to reflect on actually periodically, even if they're in the middle of their career. Is this what I wanna be doing? Where do I get satisfaction? Where am I making the most contribution? I love the question of if money was no object, what would you be doing? Yeah, yeah and go find a way to go. Do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so what would you be doing if money was no object? Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a really good question. I think I love the idea. One of my favorite things that I got to do when I was CEO at our agency was do this, do interviews with other people and basically shine a light on people in the industry and elevate or lift up people and work in the industry. And that's interesting to me. The relationships I didn't think that would, the relationships that have resulted as a consequence of that. That wasn't the objective, but what has happened as a result. That has been amazing. The connections I've been able to make people who are so smart and so passionate. About 14 years ago, excuse me, I was put on a list of marketers that rock or something like that, and I was looking at this list and I was like there's no women on this list.

Speaker 2:

And I thought that was really weird and so, off the top of my head, I made a list of 25 women who were kicking ass and marketing and I published it on our blog and boom, I was like wow, that was interesting, okay. And then I started the next year. I thought I think I'm gonna do that list again, but I'm gonna go back to the people that were on it and have them nominate someone else, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so every year for the last 14 years, I've been recognizing people, meeting them, learning about what kind of work they're doing, and that has resulted in some really amazing relationships and also community in a sense, because a lot of these folks are connecting with each other and they're like oh, you were on Lee's list.

Speaker 2:

I was on Lee's list too, and at the time maybe they were a director of marketing at a mid-market company and now there's CMO at a Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000. And it's like they had to work harder to get where they are. They had the stories, the accomplishments that I've learned about from that community has really been inspiring to me. So doing that kind of thing, something in that area, is really interesting to me.

Speaker 1:

I can completely see that. I think it's such a wonderful way to be able to take what is an inherent talent and ability that you have and I know you've learned as you've gone through the process and you go through 20 years and you probably pick up a few things. But to be able to use that to, like you said, elevate another community and other people makes perfect sense as kind of the if you could do anything, what would you be doing? Yeah, I'm still in marketing, which is great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think being able to come to the situation, come to the conversation with some deep experience in the industry, but also with quite a bit of empathy and, hopefully, practical perspective on what's really out there in terms of talent, what's really out there in terms of remarkable, interesting work and innovative ideas, diversity of thought, diversity of people, which I do believe can create strength. It's not automatic, though. Just because you have a diversity of people or thoughts doesn't automatically mean it's stronger, but it can definitely become much stronger than if you're in those siloed thinking or legacy status quo trains of thought.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting to hear you talk about it in the industry, because it seems that it's like my takeaway is the way that, as you moved through it, you have found the things that work. You've found the things that are helpful. When you're working with somebody, a client, or you're writing a blog and you're talking about providing help, doing things that are helpful, is it something that you look at and go well, I think they could use this or do you have other means of finding out? What is it? Because you know what I'm saying. Sometimes you show up.

Speaker 1:

I know I've had this happen to it. I might think selling my child a house was an experience like that. My daughter is gonna buy a house. Well, of course I'm gonna help her buy a house. She did not wanna buy any of the homes I thought she should buy and I realized I would never have done that to a client that wasn't my child and I'm like whoa, what I think you need, what, how I think I'm helping you, is obviously not helping you, and I had to really kind of put the brakes on and listen to her on what it is that she and her husband felt that they needed and how I could be helpful in that really hard as a parent.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you're describing something that is super, super common marketers, brand marketers, even some agency people coming to the table with here's what I think, and not using data, and that is you asked about. Well, where do you get those ideas about how to create value, how to create connection and that sort of thing content? And you can get customer insights through data and understand what questions. What we think of it is we create what we call best answer content strategies. What is the best answer? We wanna become the best answer for what your buyers are looking for, and so you've gotta use data about what are they in our case, what are they searching on? What are they talking about on the social web? What questions are they asking in forums and special interest groups? And we capture those things. It's like they're not typing in, like in my case, they're not typing in B2B influencer marketing agency.

Speaker 2:

And they're like how to work with influencers. What are good examples of influencers in B2B technology? You know they're asking longer and longer questions, and so you can use data to understand what does the buyer actually wanna know? And then, of course, you give it to them, and you give it to them in the formats that they prefer, and there's a sort of information journey that exists within especially B2B marketing, where you have some understanding of how buyers discover content or channels right, social and ads and email and people that they are influenced by, but also what are the preferences for content consumption. So you have to understand the topics that are of interest, like I was just talking about, but also the formats.

Speaker 2:

So is it video Business buyers don't just turn off at 5 pm, they're still going to other channels. So, as Instagram makes sense, this TikTok makes sense for B2B actually turns out it does, but it's a different kind of content that would be on LinkedIn. And then the third thing that you're empathizing about is what's gonna motivate them to take action. So that means how do I get them from understanding what is a thing to well, okay, what does it mean for me? And then that, what do I do next?

Speaker 1:

So when you say finding out, like getting data using data, I guess it depends on the business. You said that sometimes people look to social media to find out what people are asking about surveys, things like that. Well, social monitoring tools.

Speaker 2:

Sprinkler is a great one and, in the past of years, tools like BuzzSumo, seo tools Google itself has some. If you're a paid advertiser, you have access to the keyword research tool, but there are SEO keyword research tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. There's a lot of.

Speaker 1:

You speak in Japanese now? Yeah, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 2:

But there are companies that collect data and, yes, you're on the internet, your data's being collected so anonymously, of course, but then that information can be used.

Speaker 2:

You can also tap into platforms that offer advertising, so LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube offer advertising and there's information you can get about demographically, firmographically, about who's there and what are they doing, and you can kind of use that insight to decide whether it makes sense, maybe for you to publish videos there about the topic at hand. So it's tools, yeah, and that you can use to answer those questions for your customers.

Speaker 1:

Makes so much sense, and I like what you said, too, about what type of platforms make sense and that the content that you share on Instagram might not be the content you share on LinkedIn, exactly.

Speaker 2:

And LinkedIn might be. Here's a new product launch. It's like very explicit, Like here's a new thing that's happening at our company. And then on Instagram it's a behind the scenes, Like here's how we made that really cool video. Or here's what's behind making the solution that we do. Or here's an interview with a customer talking about their personal journey with how our company or our product is. Their services help them.

Speaker 1:

What if I wanted to use interpretive dance? That would probably be TikTok yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm sure there's an AI platform that could construct an interpretive dance for you.

Speaker 1:

No doubt Do you think again, as someone you've done this for such a long time, that you've seen the changes with the internet and especially with social media and this might not be a simple answer or question Would you say that, with the advent of social media and the way that so many more people can have a platform and share in terms of a business, is that a? Do you think it's been a benefit for businesses in terms of marketing?

Speaker 2:

You can reach more people as the phone been you know useful for communications. Absolutely, absolutely. The companies of all sizes I mean virtually every person is connecting through some social app of some kind, and, of course, kids now and for years, have been growing up on them, and so it's their understanding of how to connect with people that are important to them, yeah, and information that is important to them. So you know, if you want to connect with your customers, you need to be where your customers are.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is, that's so true and often the case. Again, going back to like with real estate, getting in front of people on social media, and it's really neat to see people, even other business owners, kind of start out and you can tell they're a little shy about it. But then when they get comfortable, especially when they're sharing what they know I'm fortunate to be able to talk to so many business owners that are so good at doing what they do that when you get them talking about it, it's like, well, that's exactly what you just got a video and put out on social media, what you just said.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, you know we've told I mean it doesn't have to be too complicated, especially when people are starting out and just answering buyer questions, as I mentioned before. You know you find you can. Of course, I was recommending using tools and even, by the way, I didn't mention ChatGPT it's a gold mine for finding out data like that. But if you're answering questions every day, you know you're answering questions of your co-workers or of your customers. Start documenting those and then you know you can do that on video right.

Speaker 2:

Or you could sit there with a co-worker and just have a conversation and record it about what are some of the top questions that came up with your customers today. Go ahead and make a video out of that. That could be really, really useful to a potential buyer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, is that part of what your company does too, working with businesses to help them? It's to create their content.

Speaker 2:

But when you say content, you mean all content, all content Written content video yeah, video content, audio content, text content, of course, interactive Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:

Do you have people in the company then that where their job is to show them how to use these different social platforms.

Speaker 2:

Our job is to use the social platforms to execute a marketing function, as opposed to teaching the client how to use those platforms. Sure, and to be honest, we're working with mostly large enterprise companies, so they already have access to all these platforms. They already have people who know how to use these platforms, but they're very sophisticated platforms and they only have so many people to get the things done. So it makes a lot of sense, for the price of one head count, to hire an agency like us that can bring a whole team into the situation with long expertise over a portfolio of different clients solving difficult problems, to use those tools to get the job done.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And two with marketing with your company. You mentioned working with influencers of different types. That's obviously something that's changed from probably when you first started and were first in the business. Yeah, what has that been like when each of these changes occur, You're going along and then suddenly influencer marketing is definitely a thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, especially in B2B. You know, back in 2011, we were invited by Dell to help them create what they wanted to be the Forbes of the IT world called Tech Page One. Wow, we had to find influencers tech influencers who would commit to writing a monthly column, and that, plus some other things we were doing for ourselves, was really our entree into working with influencers, but in a B2B sense, and it just wasn't common at the time. It was mostly public relations. The public relations function within a company is who would engage with influencers or analysts or members of the media or something like that. Fast forward to today, and we've done I can't tell you how many influencer programs for large B2B companies. I mean LinkedIn, for example. We're running an influencer program for LinkedIn. In fact, we've been doing work for LinkedIn for nine years now and this is identifying people who have the attention and trust of the audience that you're after and partnering with them to co-create content. So it's very different than B2C, where B2C, you've got someone who's that's business to customer.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry.

Speaker 2:

yeah, business to customer so you've got someone who is a TikTok influencer and they're very charismatic and they've already got a community and a channel and the brand will hire them to make content that they publish on their channel, hopefully promoting their product In a B2B sense. Most of what happens is that the content is co-created, so the influencers contribute some insights of some kind. That content then is combined with the brand content and published on the B2B brand channel, so on their blog, on their website, on their YouTube, Instagram or whatever and then hopefully the influencer or if you pay them, they'll promote and then it reaches their audience. And anytime you pay an influencer, of course there has to be a disclaimer that this is an ad or a compensated action, or something like that.

Speaker 2:

But there's lots of opportunities to be creative. A lot of people think of B2B as standing for boring to boring, and in many cases it's a well-earned reputation, and so that's why I think that incorporating influencers who have really strong media creation skills, that are really good in front of the camera, good at creating video and audio, and those things can really be a differentiator and at least that's what we found that goes above and beyond what the brand can do on its own.

Speaker 1:

That makes so much sense. It's so fascinating. I think I could talk about this for hours, but we have to wrap it up because after this I have to ask Lee to help me write a whole marketing plan for my brokerage. What we're locking you in, okay? Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing. I think it's such a great topic and hopefully people, especially people who are thinking about doing something and getting a business going just do it.

Speaker 2:

Just do it yeah.

Speaker 1:

But find out what people need help with and provide it. It's kind of seems so simple, but true.

Speaker 2:

Create content that's useful to people. Build a community first, and then think about what you can offer them in terms of monetization.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I have so much homework to do after listening to you.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you again. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1:

And everybody else. I will talk to you later.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Natalie Webster

Host
Head Shot

Kelly Olsen

Co-host