The changing tides of content marketing strategy with Steve Pockross and Ryan Sargent

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid-sized agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. We’ll show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. We want to help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want, down the road, sellable. With 25+ years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. We are going to talk content today, but from a very different and interesting perspective of some recent research. Before I get into that and tell you about our guests, I just want to remind you that we will be out in the next week or so with the 2023 Salary and Benefits Survey. So, the way this works is in the newsletter and on social media, we’ll be sharing the link so you can participate in the Salary and Benefits research if you participate and you give us your information. Obviously, it’s all anonymous and all of that. But if you give us your information, then you will get a free copy of the report when it comes out in early 2023.

So, I would love for you to participate in that. Why? If you get the newsletter, great, then you will automatically see an invitation for it. If you follow me on social particularly, probably on LinkedIn, that’s where we’ll post it. But if you do not get the newsletter, now might be a great time to do that. If you just go to the Agency Management Institute website, scroll down to the bottom and somewhere down there it says, “Sign up for the newsletter.” Grab yourself a spot and know that that comes out every Wednesday. There’s a newsletter where I write to you about some stuff and we share some other information.

And then every Sunday, there’s a video that I record for you that is a tutorial of some kind. It’s something that I know is going on in your head and it’s very short, five, six minutes the most, but just trying to give you some more information. So, go grab that if you are so inclined. We would love for you to participate in the salary survey. So, let me tell you about today’s guests. So, Steve Pockross is the CEO of Verblio, which is a company that has over a thousand subject matter expert writers who create content for their clients. So, their clients are agencies, direct clients, and all of that, but they have a really interesting content creation model. So, Steve’s going to be on the show again with us today. He’s been on before.

And then Ryan Sergant, who works with Steve, is going to be on the show. They just recently did some really interesting research where they were talking to agencies and direct clients about content creation, ROI of content, the content they create. So, I wanted to get them on the show so we could dig through the research data and see what they learned, what they think it means, what it means for us in the future. We’re probably going to talk about some things that they’re going to put into the research next time, which I think will be super interesting as well. So, without any further ado, let’s bring Steve and Ryan on the show and dig into that data. Okay, let’s do it. Steve, Ryan, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Steve Pockross:

Thanks, Drew. Great to be back.

Ryan Sergant:

Thanks for having us.

Drew McLellan:

So, give everybody a little bit of your background and then we’ll talk about the research that you did, why you did it, and what you learned. But first, just tell them a little bit about what your day job is and then we’ll go from there.

Steve Pockross:

Great. I’m Steve Pockross. I’m the CEO of Verblio. I’ve been running Verblio for about six years now. We are a content creation marketplace. Our goal is to create high quality content at scale to power the modern business. We have a network of about 1,000 home-based writers that we use to create over 100,000 pieces of unique content per year and 40 verticals. We work with a lot of agencies and so very in touch with the space. I’m based in Denver, Colorado, where I live with my wife and two kids and do lots of Colorado activities.

Ryan Sergant:

Ryan Sergant, I’m the Director of Content Marketing at Verblio, which means I have the very meta role of building the content that supports a content marketplace and promotes that content marketplace to other marketers, which is a fascinating puzzle. It reminds me of playing music for other musicians, which is my background. I come from a creative music world, and I realized that everything I loved about making music applies to building great content. I produced something that depends on my skill and expertise, and then very politely hold out the email, sign up form, and hope that someone tips me.

Drew McLellan:

I like it. So, what was your instrument of choice, Ryan?

Ryan Sergant:

I play trombone, which I also think gave me a strong sense of pragmatism. I was never destined to be a rockstar playing giant stadium concerts with a background in trombone. So, the transition to marketing was inevitable.

Drew McLellan:

There you go. So, you guys did some research, which was fascinating. Talk to us a little bit about what prompted the research and what your goal was in doing it, and then we’ll talk about some of the findings.

Steve Pockross:

Great. I’ll give the high level and then Ryan will give the details along the way of what we came up with. So, we think at Verblio, we have a really unique ringside seat, courtside seats to see what top content marketers are doing in the world. So, we work with 1,000 content marketers every month. We get the wide variety of small agencies, large agencies, larger brands, down to the smaller guys, and to see what the top trends are in what’s working. What are the top players doing? So, we’ve been doing this for… I think this is our second formal round, and we really wanted to dive a lot deeper and felt like it was not just interesting, but our responsibility to share this back with our marketing world.

Ryan Sergant:

The survey included more than 400 content marketers from all over the country and even a few in the UK. This year, we really wanted to expand both the pool and the questions and figure out, “What’s working for folks? What’s not working? What does the future look like?” We ended up with just this treasure hoard of information from folks that Verblio knows and works with.

Drew McLellan:

You talked to both clients and businesses direct who are doing content and also agencies, is that correct?

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah. We also reached out to content marketing communities, Slack groups, forums, things like that as another way to get the word out.

Drew McLellan:

So, I’m curious what you saw in terms of differences between how agencies responded versus the direct business.

Ryan Sergant:

One of the biggest differences we saw really had to do with how much content’s being created. Agencies are definitely out there trying to build as efficiently as possible, and in-house teams are often more willing to invest in something like say a white paper or an eBook, something that’s more long form. That was reflected in the answers. We asked, “What kind of content do you build?” Agencies were all about blog posts and to some extent, inhouse teams were too, but they were more willing to get out there and stretch their legs. That matches with what we see at Verblio as well. I think, Steve, you can probably speak a bit to this, that our agency partners at Verblio are often producing volume, producing efficiency, and that’s a really key priority for them.

Drew McLellan:

It’s interesting, you would think, I would’ve hoped the answer would be the other way around, right? That the agencies would be more exploratory, recognize the importance of multi-channel communication, and that it can’t all come through the blog post. So, they would be more likely to try a podcast or a white paper or a research project or something like that.

Ryan Sergant:

Speaking very selfishly, as a content marketer, my hope is that everyone wants to get outside the box and try new things, because I’m tired of blog posts, but they’re also still what makes the world go around and the best way to get on Google’s radar and on customer’s radar.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Well, I think it also depends on your macro view of why you’re doing content. So, if it’s just about ranking higher on Google, then you’re right, it’s going to be a written word on the website. But if it’s really about creating a sense of authority around a topic or a position or a niche, then you wouldn’t be the one trick pony and just have blog posts. That’s me getting on my soapbox for the day, but nonetheless. All right. So, what surprised you about the results of the research?

Ryan Sergant:

Biggest surprise for me, biggest takeaway for me was that almost everyone is outsourcing some portion of their content creation. Whether that’s through a platform like Verblio, through freelancers that they have had on retainer for years, whether you’re in-house at an agency, you’re probably outsourcing some amount of your content creation. It’s about choosing where and when and how to do that, not if.

Drew McLellan:

That surprised you?

Ryan Sergant:

It did. I figured a lot of the in-house teams would still be producing all their content in-house and that more and more agencies that are investing in content would be assembling an in-house team to really drive that. When it comes to the actual building the stuff, we need help, it’s hard.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So, did AI play a role in any of the… Did people talk about using the Jaspers of the world and things like that to start creating content?

Ryan Sergant:

That is an excellent question. So, we formulated the survey questions before Jasper was on everyone’s LinkedIn feed and stuff. We had some talk of AI and AI tools. Many of the tools that folks talked about actually weren’t machine learning. They were more like digital aids for generating topic ideas or content strategy. Not a ton of folks that we talked to are out there building all of the posts with a robot. But the answer is we did get inspired. The next survey, which we’re in the process of building now, that’s all about AI. So, we’ll have to come chat with you more about the AI stuff in the future.

Drew McLellan:

For sure. Yeah, it’s such a hot topic, and yet I think for many agencies, they don’t really know how to engage it. They don’t know how to use it. They’re worried that it’ll be generic problem content, but they don’t really know how to evaluate it. But sometimes they need filler content. So, I just think it’s an interesting landscape to watch. I think it’s just emerging in terms of what’s happening. So, it’ll be interesting to watch how the results in your survey change over time.

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Pockross:

We would respond to our own survey differently ourselves at this point, as well as we are doing a lot more AI assisted content with our writers and figuring out the right point to insert a high value, high skilled writer into the process for outline creation, tailoring, editing, and things like that to try to get the best of both worlds.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, we could talk about that for a whole hour. Let’s put a pin in that, because I would love to have that conversation. Because I think there are a few people like you guys who’ve figured out the marriage between AI and humans to get the best out of both. I would love to have that conversation because I think people could learn from it, but I think that’s a whole separate… We could do that for an hour, so we’ll get that on the schedule. But what else surprised you, Ryan, about the data?

Ryan Sergant:

One of the most exciting pieces of data for me was that the number of pieces of content that agencies are producing per client per month is going up. So, this is a thing we have year over year data for. Well over half, nearly two thirds of the agencies we talked to in 2021 were producing a few pieces of content, two or three for each client every month. That’s dropped to sub 40% of the folks we talked to in 2022. We’re up to nearly 10% of agencies that are producing 20 pieces of content or more per client per month.

Drew McLellan:

Wow.

Ryan Sergant:

Which means that I think a lot of agencies are really investing, one, in content, and two, in clients and in business processes that lead clients to content. Content’s becoming a more and more important piece of the strategy for everyone, agencies included.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, no doubt. So, I’m curious, when you talk to agencies in the research, did they only respond in terms of what they were doing for clients or did they respond also in what they were doing for themselves? We have the whole cobbler’s children.

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah, exactly. So, we asked specifically about producing content for clients, and I am literally making a note right now that next year, we need to ask about agencies producing content for themselves. I’m very fascinated by that because I have a very similar role with Verblio.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see, because again, I think while they have gotten much more proficient at producing content for others, at the end of the day, they don’t do the heavy lift of doing it for themselves very often or as often as they should. For sure. So, I’m assuming one of the things that you talked about was the profitability or the ROI of content. So, from both the direct client’s perspective and the agency’s perspective, how did that wash out in the data?

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah. We asked very straightforward, how much revenue does your agency make from content creation? Setting aside the 21% of folks who said, “I don’t know,” which was a little concerning.

Drew McLellan:

Welcome to my world.

Ryan Sergant:

An equal number said more than 75% of the agency’s revenue is coming from content. One in five agencies are making nearly all the revenue from content says a lot. On top of that, 75% of the folks we asked just said content’s profitable. Whether that’s the whole business, a core piece of the business, something we’re dabbling in, broader agreement that content is something that agencies can make money with and that’s held true now for three years of this survey.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I think that’s a shift. I think in the early days of content, clients struggled to understand how much time it took to create good content. So, agencies were always struggling with price points of having to basically give away a blog post or fill in the blank, whatever the content was. I think finally now, clients, business owners, business leaders are beginning to understand the value of that organic content on their webpage or wherever they’re using it, what it does in terms of the search engines and all of that, what it does to establish them as an authority.

So, they’re much more willing to pay for good content than they were in the early days of this. So, that’s heartening to hear, because for a lot of agencies, they couldn’t figure out how to do it profitably. So, it was always a loss leader for them, which means they’re not going to be particularly enthusiastic about it.

Ryan Sergant:

Steve, I’m wondering how that’s changed in your time at Verblio, because obviously, I’ve been at Verblio for just over a year. So, I haven’t gotten to see that shift from the front lines the way Steve has.

Steve Pockross:

Yeah, we’ve seen dramatically and I’m super interested, Drew, to see if you have the same point of view, but it feels like content has finally become an official acquisition channel, where it was a marketing necessity as far as it was more brand associated as opposed to actual marketing channel. Now, it’s actually following the trends of other marketing acquisition channels, which is you invest a certain amount. Every year, it gets harder to compete and your results get lower, but you have to keep investing in that channel. I think that transformation makes it a really different way of thinking about, and it’s an easier discussion to have. You’re not selling based on the vision of you want to have more content because it feels better.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Well, I do think as people have gotten more sophisticated in terms of the content they create, how they deploy and leverage that content and the understanding that the buyer today, I don’t care if it’s a B2B or a B2C buyer, they’re shopping online before we know they’re shopping. So, when your content draws them to the website and it allows them to see that you really know what you’re talking about. In some ways, I’ve spent all morning on the phone with prospects who have a need and they’ve consumed our content and now they want to just do that last gut check.

What used to be for many agencies or direct businesses, three or four or five sales calls now turns into you heard the podcast, you read the blog post, you downloaded the white paper, whatever the sequence was. Now, you want to have one conversation and you’re ready to buy. So, I think you’re right, Steve. I think now, you can absolutely point to content as a revenue generator as opposed to just a brand builder.

Ryan Sergant:

The stats bear that out. So, in 2021, 16% of agencies said they felt clients understood the value. Now we’re up over 40%. So, just year over year, more and more agencies are hearing that from clients as well.

Steve Pockross:

That’s incredible.

Drew McLellan:

I’m curious if you asked or in your business practices, one of the big conversations right now in agencies is attribution. So, how do we prove to a client that the thing we did got someone into the shopping cart or into the store or on the phone or bought the consulting package or whatever? So, A, did you ask about that in the research in terms of how do you know that your content is profitable or is giving you an ROI?

When you’re working with clients, whether it’s agencies or your direct clients, how are you talking to them about attribution? Because content is such a soft thing. Unless somebody walks into a sales room with the checklist downloaded and says, “Okay, I’ve done the things on the checklist. Now, I’m ready to buy the car or whatever it is,” it’s hard to prove that the content actually drove the sale.

Ryan Sergant:

It’s an incredibly tricky process. It’s something that we struggle with internally as well. We’ve built qualitative questions into our signup flow to try to get a better handle on that. Just for Verblio customers alone, we did ask agencies about this as well like, “How do you know when your content is successful?” We tried to keep it open ended. I think in part because agencies don’t have as much visibility into client business practices, agencies tended to look at engagement stats, higher level stuff that they had access to. Did this get social shares? Did this get clicks?

The in-house teams that ultimately they’re creating the content for were far more likely to look at the conversion process, use those internal digital numbers, that first-party data to say account signups, upgrades to freemium in a SaaS context, something like that. There’s a disconnect there between the in-house folks looking at conversions and the agencies working on their behalf looking at engagement. I think that the agency that can bridge that gap and find a way to either work more closely with the client and get access to the data or track conversions themselves is going to have a much easier time selling clients on the value of content.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah, it’s an ongoing struggle. So, it’ll be interesting to see how your survey respondents next go around talk about that. Is there a shift in sophistication or a solution that allows people to better connect those dots?

Ryan Sergant:

It’s also tricky, because the more people invest in this conversion based very close to the money tracking, often the worst the content gets. Some of the best content lives in this brand awareness world, like a podcast, that is among the hardest channels to track. So, keeping a balance to your content strategy where you’re still investing in the content that is fun to listen to and fun to produce and maybe harder to track and yet still making an effort to track those conversions is also a tricky thing to navigate.

Drew McLellan:

So, do you think it means the content is worse because they’re pandering to the sale or because they’re pandering to keywords? We do a transcription for all the podcasts. I have no idea what the keywords are going to be in the podcast. I don’t think about the keywords in advance. I just chat with people like you and ask smart questions to get smarts out of other people. So, I know that the podcast drives conversions for us and maybe this is me not being sophisticated. I don’t in any way, shape, or form change the content to drive to the sale. I just focus on creating content that’s useful and helpful and figure it’ll all work out.

Ryan Sergant:

I was thinking both honestly. Sometimes because it’s pandering to the sale and sometimes because it’s pandering to Google. Steve has been nodding here. So, we also happen to have now three podcast hosts all talking about this. So, the podcast example is particularly relevant.

Drew McLellan:

That’s a good point. We have a bias granted. We will acknowledge our shared bias.

Steve Pockross:

Exactly. I think it’s a natural tendency. We want to be able to measure everything so that we can prove ourselves, especially as marketers, and that we are one of the areas that is absolutely hardest to market to. The state of marketing completely changed in the 2000s with digital transformation as we started to be able to say, pay per click equals ROI. I think we all got hooked on that. And then your sales team who can say, “Hey, we have this BDR,” and the BDR can be productive in three months. They can start paying for themselves and then they have 300% profitability in the first year. We’re all jealous of that. We want that to be true of our world, but it doesn’t mean it’s the most effective approach to acquiring customers.

There are studies that show that two of the most profitable driving forces in companies is great company culture, which is impossible to measure, and a great brand, which is impossible to measure. So, content falls in this middle ground. So, I think it’s our job as marketers to prove as much as we can to know that a lot of it is intangible and there’s a lot of changing variables. Not to mention a huge lag time. You might turn out to be profitable two years from now after you discontinued the program, which is really painful. So, there is a little bit of a religion in it as well.

Drew McLellan:

Agreed. Yeah, it’s a calling.

Steve Pockross:

So, I think it’s important to really call out that we’re in a middle ground and we’ll never have perfect attribution.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I think that’s true.

Ryan Sergant:

This is where all the other marketers get jealous of me that I get to work for a CEO who gets it.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, you’re right, but the challenge is you have an internal customer who understands it. This is really the sticking point. For most agencies, more and more the clients are saying, “Okay, I give you $1. I need $3 back. Show me that I got $3.” Even though we know how powerful and important content is, it’s impossible or near impossible to really show a direct correlation $1 to $3. So, as agencies struggle to keep clients to prove their value and all of that, it’s one of the reasons why they may skew to more measurable, clickable, trackable things, even if content is the right choice in the marketing mix somewhere.

Ryan Sergant:

That can also happen with content distribution. I think that’s where $1 becoming $3, the one piece of content can become three pieces of content. If we’re able to turn this into an engagement metric on social media but also an actual revenue number via say an email, an upsell, or a cross sell, that way with the same piece of content, then now the content’s certainly paid for itself. So, even when we’re not producing something that’s outside the box, not going all in on the white paper or the podcast, taking the blog post and redistributing it becomes a reward as well.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah, that’s a really great point. I have a bunch more questions, but we need to take a quick break. So, let’s do that. Let’s pause for a quick second and then we’ll come back and dig back in.

Hey, everybody. I promise I will not keep you more than a minute, but I want to make sure that at AMI, one of the things that we offer are virtual peer groups. So, think of it as a Vistage group or an EO group, only everybody around the table, figuratively in this case, is an agency owner. So, you have to be an agency owner to belong. The virtual peer groups meet every month for 90 minutes on Zoom. This was not a COVID creation. It was pre-COVID. You see the same people in your cohort every time. So, you get to create relationships with them. It is facilitated by AMI staffer Craig Barnes, who has owned his own agency for 25 or 30 years. So, plenty of great experience both from Craig, but also learning from each other.

So, if you have any interest in learning more about how that works, head over to the AMI website. Under memberships, you will find the virtual peer group and you can get all the information there. All right. Okay, let’s get back to the show. All right. We are back with Ryan and Steve and we’re talking about the research that they did with content marketers, both agencies and direct clients around content creation, the value of content, how they’re solving problems with content.

So, I’m assuming one of the things you talked about when I talk to agency owners and I preach the gospel of creating content for their agency, what they always tell me is it’s really hard. I know, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. So, when you talk to your folks in the research, did they talk about the challenges of creating good content and what those challenges are?

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah, that was one of the major questions we asked. Over and over again, we heard two major pillars of difficulty, getting expert knowledge, industry specific expertise, subject matter experts to help create the content and then managing client expectations, which I think goes to what we were talking about a bit with measuring the success. Those two were far and away the most common answers in terms of what was the hardest part about building content.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I’m sure for agencies in particular when they’re writing subject matter content for clients that is more sophisticated, having someone with the medical background or the engineering background or whatever probably is a huge challenge.

Ryan Sergant:

It’s something I think we’re going to see more and more of in terms of folks needing to outsource their content creation in order to meet Google’s standard with EAT and all of the changes that Google’s made this fall. It’s something we’ve seen a lot of at Verblio that folks are looking for subject matter experts to assist in writing the stuff and so many of our writers are subject matter experts in one field or another. It’s been a big part of what we’ve been able to offer.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I was just going to say that has to be good news for you that they’re struggling to find subject matter experts since that’s what you do for a living.

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah, I think the sales team has gotten more requests for crypto content this year than ever before.

Drew McLellan:

Oh, yeah, I bet. That is a hot topic. I’ll bet. So, let’s talk a little bit about client expectations. Was it around turnaround time or what the content delivers or what were the expectations that were causing all the problems?

Ryan Sergant:

It wasn’t necessarily price or speed, which was what was interesting because we listed those as separate options on the survey. We said if the hardest part is just getting the content fast or getting the content cheap, tell us that. Folks tended to answer with client expectations in lieu of those other two answers. That was fascinating for me. I honestly don’t have a good gut feel on why that is. I’m wondering if it has to do with that keeping the faith that Steve referenced earlier, that we need to stay the course and believe that the content’s going to make a difference in the future as opposed to instantly put money in the piggy bank.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think one of the challenges is when you think about most agencies, unless the client is small, they’re not working with the business owner or the president. They’re working with the director of marketing or someone like that who’s under incredible pressure to deliver results for the dollar spent. So, when we say to them, “Well, the content is going to take 3, 6, 9, 12 months to really take seed, to grow, and produce some opportunity and revenue for you,” we as agency people have to recognize that’s a hard sell for the CMO to sell up to the CEO and the board of directors or whoever is driving the overarching goals of that organization.

So, again, it gets back to in some ways, how do we give them some quick wins while we allow the content to settle in and actually take root? So, I’m guessing the research didn’t talk about that per se, but I’m assuming you guys talk to your clients about that. How do we deliver some quick wins with this? Whether they’re engagement stats or whatever they are, to get the client to keep the faith as we keep saying, to just know that this will work over time and to be patient.

Ryan Sergant:

I’m going to let Steve handle this.

Steve Pockross:

So, we didn’t ask for that in the survey. I think it’s a fascinating question. What else are you doing beyond content to give content a chance? Which is a great question. One of the best things about having so many clients that are agencies that know how to do this is we’re trying to learn more from them all the time about how they have these conversations. Clearly, there are a lot of leading content agencies that have figured this out and it’s like you try not to repeat the mistakes of last time. So, next time, you’ve made into the survey, again, Drew. Congrats.

Drew McLellan:

Thank you. Well, but I wonder for the agencies that have figured it out, are they doing something different or are they attracting clients who already have the faith?

Steve Pockross:

That is a great question. I do think that just the fact that very few agencies are as concerned about cost and speed right now means that there’s been a maturation both of expectation setting in the larger community, because now they know they can pass on this price. They know what’s valuable at this price. They know what really cheap content looks like because they tried it and they tried with different partners and decided this isn’t the route.

They figured out what really high expensive, you have a JD writer on your staff with that cost as well. So, I think it really shows that the maturation of the industry and again of the marketing acquisition channel that we’re now talking about how to do it well as opposed to the table stakes. I assume that means better understanding of the marketplace where you don’t have to teach this to your clients as well.

Drew McLellan:

What would be really interesting and this may be a data point you have, but as I’m listening to you talk, I’m thinking the argument of content, at least for me, for agencies to produce content, is that it attracts people who see your expertise, your position of authority, and want to hire you to do what you’re best at doing. So, it would be interesting to see if the content agencies that are saying that it’s profitable are mostly doing outbound client acquisition or if the clients are finding them and coming to them wanting content, which would mean, A, like we talked about earlier, the sales cycle is much shorter. B, they’ve already bought into what you sell.

So, they are going to give you the time and space to build content, to let it take root, to let it do its job. So, that would be really interesting to see if there’s a correlation between how they get clients and how profitable content is for them. Because I suspect and I hope the answer is they’ve done a great job of their own content, which means they are attracting people who already believe what they believe around content marketing. So, that makes it easier for them to win the client, keep the client, keep the client happy and make money.

Steve Pockross:

Yeah, I think that is a fascinating topic. The other topic that I’m fascinated by that I’m dying to know more about is breaking down the effectiveness of content and all of our research questions by vertical and depending on how saturated your vertical is and how profitable. So, if you’re working for personal injury attorneys, those orders just keep coming in bigger and bigger as it’s a giant arms race. What can you learn from that if you’re in a different vertical? It’s along the path. That’s a key to success that you could get ahead of and not have to wait until get in the saturation zone.

Drew McLellan:

So, did you find there were certain verticals where content marketing was really crushing it versus others?

Ryan Sergant:

So, we were nervous about this question. This was actually the biggest debate we had before we released the survey was, “Do we include a section about verticals?” Our concern was that we would end up polluting the data with our own bias. Would we list the right vertical? If we made it open-ended, where we just get so many different answers, it was nonsense. We ended up cutting the question and we have since regretted it. For exactly what Steve just mentioned, it would be fascinating to see how these answers change if your vertical is saturated with content. The personal injury attorney is a perfect example. You can’t Google anything law related without four pages of stuff now.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, it would be interesting to overlay niche and the kind of content and how much content to see if vertical matters or if it’s really more of the other factors that if you’re in any vertical, if you’re only producing something once a month, it doesn’t matter. But if you’re producing 12 things a day, it’s too much. I mean, it would be just interesting to overlay all that data.

Ryan Sergant:

For what it’s worth, my opinion on that would be I would guess vertical would matter less than we think. I think that producing the right thing at the right time is more important than worrying about is my vertical saturated or not, but that’s just a gut feel from a guy who does this. So, I would love to get some answers from the industry.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think where people think things get saturated is when they think about content from a keyword point of view and they look at law or healthcare or women’s health, ridiculous keywords that of course are ridiculously expensive and/or saturated. But when you actually look at the practical application of content and who’s really doing content consistently and well, the numbers are pretty small still. So, I celebrate all of the data in your research that people are buying into it more, they value it more, they’re making more money on it, they’re producing more content.

But the reality is I still think it’s the minority of businesses out there, which is the opportunity. It’s the opportunity for agencies for themselves. It’s the opportunity for agencies, for their clients, because most people still aren’t doing content well and consistently. So, there is still room even in the most saturated vertical to be a leader in that space, I think. So, I think the sense of saturation is around the wrong data points like keyword.

Ryan Sergant:

I totally agree.

Drew McLellan:

But again, that’s just my opinion. But now next year, you guys can figure that out and you can give us data around it to prove us right. if we’re wrong, then I’m not going to have you on this show. We’re just going to skip that all together. So, looking at the data, as you look into 2023 and beyond, we all have played in the content space long enough that we’ve seen the evolution. So, what do you think is next?

For the agencies and businesses that are doing it well now, that they are consistently producing a few pieces of content on a regular basis in a cadence that makes sense that they are perhaps in more than one channel, so it’s not just blog posts, but they’re either distributing it differently or as you said, they’re building a landing page and now they’re building a white paper out of it and they’re doing some other things. So, they’re slicing and dicing that content in different ways. What’s next for people who are a little more sophisticated to be thinking about and planning for?

Ryan Sergant:

For me, it’s the content that goes beyond the keyword. Are you building something that your target audience wants to consume? There is a whole world of content out there that I want to consume because it’s timely or actionable, how to change the oil on my car, best happy hour in Denver. There’s that world of content, but there’s also this content out there and I think a lot of opportunity out there for just building the thing that people want to engage with.

What I don’t want to do is go to LinkedIn and then click to your website and then click past the popup and then click four more times and then end up at the podcast that I liked. I’m on LinkedIn to read your thoughts. So, remembering that that is the basis of really high quality engagement and lasting engagement with a dedicated audience I think is where the opportunity lies and what more and more folks are going to need to lean into in 2023. I would struggle to build that for each new client though. I think that’s a real challenge for agencies and systematizing and building great process around audience research, I think, is step one there. So, that you know what you’re building matters.

Drew McLellan:

I was just thinking that to create something that actually connects and engages and creates a relationship, you have to know who’s on the other side of the page or the microphone or the whatever, that you understand them well enough that you actually can build relationship with them.

Steve Pockross:

So, I would agree with Ryan that that’s like a quality focus is the next bigger trend. You’re going to have to find a way to stand out. You’re going to have to figure out a way to keep standing out in a more saturated market, be on the quality side. The other interesting trend is on the quantity side. So, Ryan referenced the amount of quantity that just to be in the game and get the same results keeps getting harder, which is true of every acquisition trends. We’ve seen some really interesting movement of very large brands, less from agencies, but creative marketers that are trying to infuse a channel and take over quickly with an incredible amount of quality content.

So, to the tune of multi-thousands of articles per month over a short period of time. I’m really interested to see if more brands are following this work. We’re getting this from venture funded companies that are looking at content as their only acquisition channel, especially in a recession time where your paid marketing, your salespeople are not going to get you nearly as far. So, I think this is the time that new channels get really interesting as creative marketers find new ways to use them. So, we’ll be standing by for the next round of trends.

Drew McLellan:

So, I’m curious about did you ask questions around channels and are both brands and agencies sticking to the tried and true? I think a lot of brands are dabbling in TikTok and things like that. Where are the content marketers… Where are their heads and hearts around channels right now?

Ryan Sergant:

For agencies in particular, it’s really around email newsletters and social media. Those just remain consistent ways to reach an audience. This is all of course underneath the bubble of all content is to some extent designed to be found organically as well. The hope at least is that even if a different keyword brings them to your website, they stick around. They read a recommended article or something like that. So, aside from the monster that is Google, social and email continued to be the leaders. That was maybe not the most inspiring, but also not surprising for me, particularly on the email side. I think that a really good email newsletter is something that is worth the time and effort. The beauty there is that you get to engage your prospects and your existing customers and you get to work in some retention content. It can be the same piece of content just framed differently in the email.

Drew McLellan:

Again, it all boils down to understanding who you’re talking to. I find the emails that feel personal, Beth is writing to me because she knows me, she knows my world, and I get a sense of who she is and what she’s about. Much more engaging than here’s the case study of the month and the thing and the thing and the thing. So, it’s also, again, back to knowing your audience, which is what content is all about. I mean, if you’re doing it right, 90% of the world could care less about what you just wrote, but the 10% that cares, cares a lot.

Ryan Sergant:

One of the coolest tricks I’ve learned about email newsletters is also that not every piece of content has to be yours. Don’t be afraid to send people to a different website. You’re developing the behavioral habit in the reader that what you have to say is valuable and they can trust your opinion on this. So, yeah, you’re not going to get the clicks that the website visits on this email, but three emails later, they’re going to click on every link. Again, you just have to keep the faith.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I think one of the things that an expert does obviously is they share not only what they believe and know, but they share what other people believe and know and then comment on it, which is a great way to have your voice attached to somebody else’s content.

Ryan Sergant:

For sure.

Drew McLellan:

So, I’m curious, last question, what are you guys going to do different or what are you doing different based on the data of your own research? What have you changed inside your company in how you serve clients based on what you learned?

Ryan Sergant:

Biggest change for me has been addressing our audience with the assumption that they’re outsourcing content, that some piece of content creation is outsourced. I don’t need to do any convincing or persuading on that front. I need to convince and persuade that our platform is the best way to outsource that content, but I don’t need to assume that outsourcing is a foreign concept. So, that’s affected everything from our case studies to the way we approach some bottom of funnel keywords. So, things like one keyword, we’re building some content for right now, content at scale that we want to rank really highly for that because it’s so much of our bread and butter and the use case that Verblio does well. Again, I don’t need to convince those folks that outsourcing is strange or unusual, just that we’re the best place to do it.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Well, also that you are the support system that helps them figure out how to do it, whether they do it with you or not.

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Right. I think that’s oftentimes where agencies get into trouble with their own content is it’s too focused on hire us and hire us and hire us when really it just needs to be, “I’m just going to help you with this thing today and you’ll decide on your own if you hire us.” Even though we preach content, there’s a lack of faith that content actually will do what we say it will do, right?

Ryan Sergant:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that approach is exactly what we’re looking into with AI as well.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, right. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear what you find out about AI. We definitely will come back and have that conversation. This has been fascinating you guys. Thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your content with us, your insights. It’s always great to have you guys back on the show and I’m excited for some of the future research you’re going to do. For sure, we’ll do that.

And then Steve, I do want to talk about coming back and just talking about how you guys are leveraging AI in the mix, because I think that’s something that a lot of agencies are struggling with. So, I think that can be super helpful for them. So, we’ll talk about that, but thank you for today and for sharing what you know and your insights and helping everybody think about this a little differently. I appreciate it so much.

Steve Pockross:

It’s always a pleasure.

Ryan Sergant:

Thanks for having us.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. All right. So, here’s what we’re going to do, everybody. So, this wraps up today’s episode. So, in the show notes, we will include a link actually to the data of the survey. So, you guys can go and check that out. Obviously, we’ll have Ryan and Steve’s contact information. But here’s what I’m hoping you got out of this episode. Couple things. Number one, if you are already preaching the gospel of content, the news is that people are coming on board. They are starting to see the value. For those of you that have struggled to make money selling content, the tide is shifting and it is okay for you to charge more money, the appropriate amount of money for creating good content that actually delivers what you’re trying to deliver.

That your clients are getting more discerning about the quality and willing to pay for that quality versus always trying to nickel and dime you down to X number of sense a word or whatever you’ve had to do in the past. I think the tide has shifted and this is now a value-based pricing product, as opposed to a loss leader that for many of you have spent for years. So, go check out the research. I’m sure some of it will be super helpful for you and your own content to be able to help your clients understand why content matters.

So, be sure to do that. Of course, I would suggest that you follow these guys on all the social channels, because they’re talking about this stuff every day. So, they can serve up for you some data that you can use in both sales pitches and just being better about how you deliver content for clients. I want to underline for yourself.

So, with that, I want to give a huge shout out to our friends at White Label IQ. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor for the podcast. They do white label PPC dev and design, and have been a part of AMI for, gosh, 20 some years. Great human beings, super good at what they do, and for many AMI agencies, the lifeblood partner that gets all that work done. I just wanted to say thank you for listening. I’m always happy to know that you’re on the other side of the mic. I’ll be back next week with another guest to get you thinking a little differently about your business. In the meantime, you know how to catch me. I’m drew@agencymanagement institute.com. I’ll be back with you next week. Talk to you then.

Thanks for listening. That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency Podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.