Demandist: Recent Episodes
Tom Whatley
Demandist is a podcast that interviews the best minds in marketing and growth. From content and SEO to SaaS growth and brand building, our job is to dissect their success.
Eden Bidani, founder of Green Light Copy, conversion copywriter, and acquisition strategist for B2B and SaaS brands.
In this chat we get into the weeds on the entire conversion copywriting process. We cover:
- How to gear your copy around what customers want
- Why a decrease in conversion rates can be a good thing for qualified leads
- The importance of fully understanding the “voice of customer”
- How to use customer interviews to uncover the “aha!” moments your customers have when discovering and using your product
- Retention strategies to keep more of your best-fit customers around for longer
Ben Sailer is Content Marketing Editor at WordPress.com. Before that, he lead all things content marketing at CoSchedule as Inbound Marketing Director, where he built SEO systems and editorial workflows to produce some of the best articles in the marketing world.
In this episode of Demandist, Ben leaves no stone unturned. We talk about:
- The attributes for high-performing and high-quality content
- Why processes are important (and how constraint can be a useful tool for creative output)
- Measuring the effectiveness of your content when attribution is difficult
- How CoSchedule ties top-of-funnel content to user sign-ups
- His goals for WordPress.com’s resource content
“Value” is a term we often throw around in content marketing. We encourage writers to create “value-driven content.” Asking them to “add more value” is a consistent request we find ourselves asking.
But what does value actually mean? How can we make a nebulous term more tangible?
These are the questions Erica and I set out to answer. In this episode of Demandist, we talk about:
- What does value look like? How is it perceived? How can we make value more tangible as content marketers?
- Why good writing is the communication medium that lets value unfold
- The importance of outlines and why they act as a roadmap for value to emerge
- Practical examples of “value bombs” to add to your content
- The concept of “Aha! Velocity” and how it can make your content more sticky
Using statistics and third-party data is common practice in content marketing. Saying “short subject lines get better open rates” is far more effective when accompanied by a study that analyzed a few hundred emails and found it to be true.
Like any practice, the over-reliance on employing stats this way has its downsides; namely inaccurate sources, misrepresentation of facts, and a chain of blog posts citing each other that obscufate original sources.
In this first edition of our new Demandist segment, Grizzle’s very own Jenna St John (Editor), Erica Schneider (Head of Content), and Tom Whatley (Founder & CEO) talk about:
- The importance of using statistics and third-party data in your content in the first place
- The problem with using data for the sake of it
- Being honest with what your data truly represents
- Why every content marketer and writer should always cite the correct source
- How to find reliable sources that represent an unbiased argument
- The ROI of strong journalistic integrity
Andy Whyte is the founder of MEDDICC, where he’s written a book, produced a course, and creates incredibly in-depth content around the sales methodology of the same name. Here, we talk about applying this methodology to build customer trust, how he self-published his book, and building a niche YouTube channel that averages 2,000 views per video.
Jason Bradwell is Senior Marketing and Communications Director at Deltatre, a technology partner for sports and entertainment brands that take care of, well, almost anything technology-related you can think of. Jason and I talk about how his background in theatre and sales contributed to his success as a marketing leader, the importance of B2B branding, and why B2B brands should be experimenting with channels like Twitch.
Kerstin Reichert is the SEO Digital Marketing Manager at Tide, a fintech company in the UK offering small business current accounts, company registration services, and much much more. Here, we talk about Kerstin’s time leading SEO at TSB, how this compares to life at a fast-paced fintech startup, and how she goes about building SEO architecture from the ground up.
Gemma Joyce is the senior content manager at Brandwatch, a digital consumer intelligence platform that helps brands understand their customers. Gemma shares her approach to data-driven content, particularly on why they focused on consumer trends early on to generate buzz, and how she goes about building out a narrative around the owned data that Brandwatch has available.
Kyle McCarthy is the Senior Content Strategist at Act-On. Here, we talk about how to communicate the value of content and manage expectations with the c-suite, why you should focus on more granular content topics, and whether or not gated content still has a place in the content marketing ecosystem.
Erin Ellis is the Content Marketing Manager at Vidyard, an online video platform. Here, we talk all about her start in the world of content marketing with a focus on sales enablement, Vidyard's approach to content production & distribution, and how she empowers other creators within the organization to get involved in marketing.
Nitsan Peled is the Director of Content at Optimove, a CRM platform for B2C brands. He also acts as editor-in-chief for a sister editorial brand Post Funnel. Here, we talk about how his experience as a sports journalist set him up for the tech world as a Content Director, and the benefits of creating a separate editorial brand to capture wider audiences.
Kameron Jenkins is the SEO & Content Lead at Shopify, where she's currently in charge of growing their retail arm through content marketing & SEO. We talk about her approach to content marketing and, most fascinatingly, her journey to becoming a marketing leader. This episode is a must for anyone looking to start or advance their career in marketing.
Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Growth at Nextiva. Gaetano and I have worked together on several occasions over the years, and I knew this conversation was going to be full of gold. We talk about demand generation made simple, an acquisition-first SEO approach, and why his team have ditched quarterly marketing plans in favour of bi-weekly sprints.
Rand Fishkin is the co-founder of SparkToro, an audience intelligence platform. Here, we dig deep into why he built SparkToro, and how he built his list of beta users ready for launch day. We also talk about his content strategy, why he creates content for conversations instead of algorithms, and why you should watch Steven Universe.
Andrew Wallace is the Managing Director and CPO at SmileBack, a SaaS product in the customer satisfaction space. Andrew shares his journey from journalism to product, stimulating growth by adding value to customers, and the ingredients to build a world-class product they love.
Erica Schneider is the Director of Editorial at Grizzle, a content marketing & SEO agency that I run. Over the last two years, Erica and I have worked with dozens writers and clients, and created a well-oiled content operations machine as a result. Here, we life the hood on our editorial systems, how to find and hire great content writers, and polish content into high-performing blog posts, ebooks and more.