I am STOKED for you to meet today’s guest, Devin Reed.
Devin is a LEGEND in creating content strategies that build trust AND revenue.
Currently the Head of Content at Clari, Devin is attacking the common misconceptions of content as being a “nice-to-have” and turning it into a MUST HAVE.
Here’s what Devin had to say about content marketing on The Marketing Millennials Podcast, in his own liiightly edited words.
1. How to handle starting a new content marketing role:
“Spend the first 2-4 weeks on a listening tour.
The first 30 days is where you need to go to the sales leaders, marketing leaders, executives, and individual contributors in the marketing department.
You have to dive into what their take on the content is today? What’s their take on the brand today? What’s working, what’s not working? This is so you can really hear the voice of the company.
What will happen is you start to hear the same things in multiple places, and those lead to larger opportunities.
One of the questions to ask is, what do you love and what do you hate about content here?
This gets a really emotional response out of folks (#inmyfeels)
Your main goal is not to come in super hot and start trying to solve all the problems, but to diagnose initial friction with the content.
2. How to create top of funnel content:
Most companies are really light on top of funnel in terms of the quality and the quantity, but really heavy on bottom funnel, with their case studies.
What you need to do is to win mind share before you can win market share. That means you need to capture attention, get people to know and trust you.
Then you’ll pull them down your funnel with thought leadership content.
Do a 3 to 1 ratio of thought leadership. 1 top of funnel, 1 middle funnel, and 1 bottom of the funnel.
You have to be really intentional about making sure there’s a connection between each piece of the funnel, so the topic resonates with your audience.
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With this top of funnel thought leadership content, your goal should be building an owned audience. You’re going to get a ton of trust and credibility at scale.
Then when you go to make your ask, let them know, “Here’s more about us.”
You’re going to get a lot more engagement and move people through the funnel faster because you spent that time up front building that trust.
3. First thing to do for your content strategy:
The first thing to start with for any content strategy is the CEO.
The CEO will identify the three to five strategic company initiatives that the company has to do to be successful that year.
The first one is usually revenue. Second one could be something like creating or dominating a product category. The third is often times the new verticals, new products, or whatever the new big growth initiative is.
Then what you need to do is look at the editorial calendar and start with the CEO slide.
Which of these initiatives can your content support directly and then indirectly?
Those are the people you have to keep happy. It’s going to keep the lights on for the company, help you grow.
If you deliver on that, it’s also going to help you get resources, trust, and headcount to continue to grow your team. All because you’re actually helping move the needle.
4. How to view channel distribution:
Social and email are publication channels and promotional channels.
Specifically for a B2B company’s LinkedIn there is a split. You need to have a very intentional content calendar that leans top of funnel heavy awareness content.
Educational, inspiring, informational, and entertaining content.
But it’s also part of your job to make sure that the market knows you have new products, here’s how to use those products, and that there are customers that are happy with you.
(Marketing your content is 50% of what content creation is)
Build a smaller section of content that promotes those narratives to support your community, customer marketing, and product teams.
Overall your goal is to convert the attention that you have on non-owned social media channels into owned email.
5. What B2B marketers should double down on vs experiment with:
B2B marketers absolutely need to double down on podcasting. There’s a reason radio has been around forever and people still listen to it.
Audio content is phenomenal (1,000% agree).
You have the ability to take a 30 minute video interview into 12 or more pieces of micro content, whether it’s video snippets or just the written content from the conversation (just like this – LOL).
Now, where B2B marketers need to experiment is TikTok.
Marketers are always looking at which channels are gonna give the best reach. Right now you need to think of it as which social media channels are mature versus immature.
Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are mature. Whereas LinkedIn and TikTok are immature.
(We’re just starting to hit a tipping point of creators being on LinkedIn)
Look at those green spaces on the less mature platforms, to see if you can get your flag in the ground and differentiate quickly.
So when your competitors begin to take that platform seriously, they’re years behind. They’re months behind, because you’ve already been there building that audience.”