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Randy and Anna’s Content Experience Lightning Round Edition
Randy Frisch (Uberflip’s Co-Founder, CMO, and President) and Anna Hrach (Convince & Convert Strategist) discuss the biggest questions plaguing marketers.
In This Episode:
Uberflip
Convince & Convert
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Full Episode Details
Lightning Round!
The Content Experience Show exists to move past the surface and dig deep into the many facets of the world of content. Usually, this involves hosts Randy and Anna sitting down with a content pro to discuss their particular field of expertise.
In this special lightning round edition of the Content Experience Show, however, Randy and Anna rely on their substantial personal expertise. They’ll discuss a multitude of topics many content pros find themselves pondering, including things like IGTV, gating, influencers, and much more.
Join Randy and Anna as they take on the Content Experience Lightning Round!
In This Episode
- Will IGTV change the way video is viewed online forever?
- Should you gate your content?
- What is better: a blog, content hub, or a resource center?
- Is there real value in Instagram influencers?
- Should companies have an Experience Manager position?
- How do you approach marketing to millennials?
- Are Super Bowl commercials valuable?
- Should marketers focus more on inbound or account-based marketing?
- How is storytelling evolving?
- Is voice search the next big thing?
Quotes From This Episode
“You can’t ask for someone’s email address if the content you’re going to provide isn’t worth it to them.” — @annabananahrach
“Instagram influencers are valuable, but the question is going to be of quality over the long term.” — @randyfrisch
When we market to millennials, we have to think about what type of experience they expect. Click To TweetResources
See you next week!
Episode Transcript
Randy: Hey everyone, welcome to The Content Experience Podcast. This is ConX, but this is an episode that you'll tune into and they'll be like, all right, what are Randy and Anna actually up to? So we don't like to lie to you. What happened was we were scheduled to record our podcasts. Our guests couldn't make it. So what do you do? You make? What is it? What do we make Anna? Like something, lemons out of, lemonade out of lemons. There we go, we're making lemonade out of lemons on this episode.
Anna: We don't want to reverse engineer lemonade into lemons.
Randy: No, we do not, although that would be interesting. So. So we're trying to think of an idea and what we came up with for anyone who watches, there's a show called Pardon the Interruption. And you don't have to know sports to know, but it's basically quick fire topics that have a timer and there's only so much time you can discuss that topic. So Anna and I went back and forth to come up with our 10 topics.
Anna: Yeah.
Randy: I don't have the topics.
Anna: It's okay, we don't need to have the topics because we are going to talk about them in this episode.
Randy: Right? Oh, so we're going to create suspense.
Anna: Yes, right.
Randy: Okay. I like it. Okay.
Anna: It's a curiosity gap.
Randy: Curiosity gap. I lost my notes when we refreshed our podcast to record this intro, but the 10 phrases that we came up with are a ton of fun. We hit on topics like Instagram. We hit on topics like content marketing, inbound, ABM. There's so many cool ideas that come up and we even somehow talk about Super Bowl commercials amongst all that.
Anna: Yeah, it's awesome. We basically just throw out 10 buzzwords over the course of the next 20 minutes and Randy and I just go back and forth on our thoughts on them and definitely if you guys out there have any buzzwords you want us to take on next, just ping them our way. We're happy to do this again.
Randy: Okay, so here's how the format works. We line up a topic and then there's a timer that goes for two minutes. So even if you're bored of the topic that we're going to hit on, you only have to put up with us for two minutes and then you've got an another amazing topic to follow. All right, so we're gonna roll it right from here. This is ConX PTI experience.
Anna: All right, Randy, start the timer because here is topic number one.
Randy: All right, I'm ready.
Anna: Instagram TV. Is it going to change the way that we view video online again forever?
Randy: Oh Man. I mean the first question is where is there room on the Instagram app for Instagram TV. I mean I used to love the purity of Instagram, right? Just all of our latest photos and then we introduced stories and had to figure out where to find those buttons. And now we have this other button called TV. So that's the first challenge.
Randy: But the bigger challenge to me is does it belong there? Right? As a brand, do I want people staying on Instagram for 20 minutes to watch a video? Which is really what Instagram TV is, it's these longer form pieces of content, like a webinar that we can post there like a how to video. Or do we want to use shorter snippet content on our Instagram feed, on our stories to draw people to our site? I don't know. What do you think Anna?
Anna: You know what, I kind of agree. The jury still out on this one for me, I'm not quite sure. I still need to look around at a little bit more. I still need to play around with it a bit, but you know what I wish they would've done instead of IGTV first Randy? Is a way to share content easily. Why is it literally the only network where it's just impossible to share things within the app natively? That is what's frustrating,
Randy: You're right. You have to like, you have to add someone to get them to see it. And to be honest, the other day Jay actually added me on a story that I'm pretty sure it was tied to the Top Triggers book, but I had such a busy day by the time I got to it, the next day it had disappeared. It's just like Jay sent you a story. The story was gone.
Anna: Yeah. I'm just curious sort of like what their product roadmap looks like because everything I'm hearing from everybody was like, wait, we still can't share.
Randy: To me, I'm really tempted. I'm tempted for us to take some of the content that we have, put it on Instagram TV and see if we can actually start to get some engagement there. But the real key there is going to be, as I said earlier, how do we actually bring people back to our site if they engage in that one piece? Otherwise they're just going to someone else's content next.
Anna: True. I guess on the flip side, was that the timer?
Randy: That's the timer. I don't know, we've got to get a louder timer going here. But that was timer number one. So let's jump to the second topic. All right. The timer's on. The second topic is to gate or not to gate your content. You're on Anna.
Anna: Oh God. I'd hate to go with a wishy washy answer here, but it depends. It depends on how valuable that piece of content is, right? You can't be asking for somebody's email address their information if the content you're going to provide isn't worth it to them. So I think this is a more of a measure of worth in terms of the content to the person who wants to give up their information. I don't know. Randy, what do you think?
Randy: Yeah, I think it depends on stage of the funnel. So again, another it depends. But even within that, I know that there's people who have different perspectives in HubSpot is really taking this approach. If you go to their resource center, I think they call it, it's called their free marketing resource center, which in theory suggests it is free content.
Randy: You know, to me what we try and do is we make sure that we don't lock someone into give us your information or you're gone. I think the average conversion rate on a landing page last I checked 2.35%. So if we're saying to someone, okay, fill out my form or leave me, that means we're chasing away like 97%+ of people. That to me is pretty scary and not something that a lot of us as marketers can afford to do, given how much we're spending to pull people in.
Anna: Yeah, totally agree. And you know what? I'm just going to say it right now and put a stake in the ground. Way too much non valuable content is gated in my opinion. There's just way too much that we think is valuable that our users don't think is valuable back.
Randy: I couldn't agree more. I mean this, this is really something that we aim to solve here at Uberflip and as a result we use more of like a passive gate that someone can opt in or opt out of doing. But we also give them that selection of other pieces of content that they can opt into on the fly. So kind of tricky there. But here comes our timer. There we go. I got it louder this time. And now we are on timer yet again for another two minutes. You want to hit me this time?
Anna: Sure. All right, let's do it. So here is topic number three. Randy, this is right up your alley with Uberflip. Get that timer ready. This is for nomenclature and terminology. So blog versus content hub versus resource center. What are your thoughts?
Randy: I hate this debate. I actually hate this debate because I don't know the right answer and we are struggling with this ourselves. I think the first question there is where are we sending people to and is this something that someone's going to search on our site or is it something that we're linking people to from our marketing campaigns? One of the things, and I know you hit this Anna, is when someone just calls it their blog I think a lot of us from our old school mentalities just associate a blog is going to be long form content. Or we segment our blog with long form content from all of our other really valuable assets like webinars or podcasts like this one.
Anna: Yeah, no, I agree actually. I think just going with the generic default blog is kind of a big pet peeve of mine because I think it has a tendency, at least from my experience and working with clients, it has a tendency to just sort of become this massive junk drawer of long form content and I think that, you know, part of naming a resource center or naming a content hub or naming a blog even is part of the strategy and it really helps you set this as sort of the goal. This is what the expectations are being set from the name before people even click and this is what they know they can expect. Like I don't know what I'm going to get when I click on a blog.
Randy: Right? But the question then is should you pick a name like you're saying, like something really cute and clever perhaps even. Companies, I can't remember what Intercom calls theirs but they have a great name for their learning resource center location. Or do we want something that someone's going to know this is where I go on your website to learn more, right? Like, this is where I go to do. So it's kind of that question like, is this an internal name or is this an external name if you will?
Anna: I love cute and clever all day long, but I will always default to clarity.
Randy: And I believe that's our timer. So let's hit it again for two more minutes. I'm going to hit you this time with Instagram influencers. We keep going back to Instagram here.
Anna: I know. Poor Instagram. They're getting beat up today.
Randy: Alright. What do you think? Do you think that there's value first of all in an Instagram influencer and maybe you can make sure we understand what that actually means?
Anna: Sure. So typically when we talk about Instagram influencers it's people who leveraged their popularity on Instagram or any social network really, let's just take influencers in general, but I think Instagram is really the key here because it's this rise of, you know, Instagram influencers happening right now, but it's people who leverage sort of their following to promote products and services and things like that. And I think yes, to a certain extent it's really valuable. I think when it's done in genuine and authentic ways, it's great. But then sometimes you see things that are just sort of like blatant ads and it's kind of creepy. It's kind of smarmy and that to me is just the wrong direction to go. And that's kind of, you know, I think this rise has kind of a bubble to it and I think it's that direction that's going to burst that bubble.
Randy: So I'm going to speak as a parent on this one. Okay. I've got three kids as some people know, 11, nine and seven, and they literally sit there and watch these influencers unpackage toys and things like that. Now I'm shifting off Instagram to YouTube. It's so weird and they are so into it. They'll watch, like there's this kid called Ryan, I have a kid named Ryan ironically, but not my kid. I think it's called Ryan's Toy Room. Anyone who has a kid you, you may have watched. As I say to my kids, this is making us stupider. Like this is not helping you in any way. And my wife sometimes challenges me on it because she's like, what's the difference in them watching a TV show? And I'm like a TV shows teaches us storytelling, it teaches us story arc, you know, there's value in my mind in learning to tell stories versus sitting there and watching a kid unpack something.
Randy: But to your point that's influencing my kids in terms of what they buy. So they're valuable. I think the question is ultimately going to be quality longer term.
Anna: There you go. There's that timer again.
Randy: Oh, that's our timer. Got Time for one more before we take a break here. I gotta reset the timer here. Okay, here we go. And the last one. Yeah, he hit me. Hit me.
Anna: Okay. So get that timer ready because here again, right up your alley. What are your thoughts on content experienced managers as an actual title and a position within a company?
Randy: I'm hugely biased here. Let's start with that. Let me get that out of the way by say I think that the role is really important because here's, and let me explain why. The problem that a lot of us have is that we look to a content marketer to do more than is reasonable, right? And that's not to take anything away from how great a content marketer is. I think are the content marketers in organizations or some of the most undervalued people in those organizations, but it's because they get the finger pointed at them for aspects that we shouldn't expect them to be able to do or you know, both from a skill set and from a capacity that they can undertake at any one time.
Randy: A lot of people who are in content marketing rules are there because they're great writers, they're great storytellers. They know how to build a bond with the personas that we're trying to connect with. To me, content experience goes in terms of what do we do with all that content that those people can create, how do we put in front of people in a way that tells more of a flow. So it's, the people who are helping to build the buyer journey that really need to be content experience managers. What do you think?
Anna: Yeah. You know, I oftentimes look at the content experience manager role, even the way you're describing it as sort of the content side of user experience and it's really looking at connections and it's looking at the holistic picture and it's not so much focused on just the words, but how is this entire thing fitting together and what is this path and this journey through content because that is something that we really don't talk about enough.
Randy: It's true. It's true. I mean, a lot of us are just kind of looking throughout our org and hoping people will step up, hoping Demand Gen step up, helping digital marketers will step up, hoping the content marketer does more than they actually can. Oh, there we go. That's the timer. The only thing I've learned so far in this first half is that Apple's timer kind of sucks. It's really not intuitive. Like all of the alarm functions in this app could use a major upgrade in iOS 13, I guess. I hope.
Anna: Do you think maybe their content experience manager should take a look at that and work at their UX and UI to maybe make that better?
Randy: Exactly. Anyways, we've got five more up Anna but we're going to take a quick break, hear from our sponsors and we'll keep digging in to Pardon the Interruption marketing stuff.
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Randy: Okay, we're back here on the ConX podcast. Bit of a different format this week. We'd love to hear if you're enjoying it, you know, let us know. Give us some feedback and we have time for our next five two minutes drills. I'm going to hit you with the next one. Anna, are you ready? I'm going to start the timer, here we go. Okay, we are on the timer and the topic here is marketing to millennials.
Anna: Nothing really makes me angrier than the entire topic of millennials and the stereotypes and the categories that they fit into or that people are trying to place them in. It's really frustrating if you literally have identified millennials as your target audience you have identified literally every adult from the age of about 35, 36 down to about 22. Again, going back to the adage that you can't be everything to everyone, don't just target millennials. And also, it's not like millennials are this weird lab grown creature that nobody knows what to do with. We kind of treat them like that. I'm probably fashion about this because I fit into the millennial category. And I can just say like, don't target an entire generation of people. Like it's just not the way to go in general. I don't know though Randy, but you know, I mean there could be a different perspective.
Randy: You're definitely winning over a large part of the team at Uberflip with what you're saying. I mean I feel like I'm walking on eggshells on this topic because we have a lot of millennials who work here. And then for sure if I say something, you know, that's interpreted the wrong way someone will quit, God forbid. But I think that's also some of the mindset for some of us who aren't part of millennials is trying to figure out what's important to them and what's not right. Because there are a lot of stereotypes out there. But as you said, there's a lot of things that we do see eye to eye on.
Randy: As far as marketing goes, I think when you get into the execution of marketing, I think we all understand that it's about delivering, you know, a more personalized experience. And as a result millennials buy into that too. They understand the importance of personalization. They're growing, they've grown up in a very different era than the rest of us in terms of, you know, solutions like Netflix and Spotify that we use, that personalized our experience. So when we market to millennials, I think more than ever, we have to think about what type of experience do they expect.
Anna: And as individuals as well. Oh, I got it in before the timer.
Randy: Just in time. Just in time. All right. We got the next one. I'm starting the timer. I think it's your turn to hit me.
Anna: All right Randy, you ready for this? This is kind of a big one.
Randy: All right, let's do it.
Anna: This is good. Okay. All right, let's do it. Alright. Your thoughts on Super Bowl commercials.
Randy: Okay. So this was actually funny, so first of all when I was a kid I wanted to do Super Bowl commercials. That's what marketing meant to me. I've come a long way because now I'm in the B2B world. But here's my question to you, we'll go back and forth on this one. So I was with a marketer recently there in the B2B space, but it crosses into the B2C so I'm not going to say who they are, but they said they're goal on their marketing team is to grow and to scale to the point where a Super Bowl commercial makes sense and.
Randy: And the answer was like yes, it's a lot of money but it's only a million dollars or so. I don't know what the actual number is. Maybe it's five, but I think it was good in terms of like we want to be so big that we can justify reaching that audience. But it comes back to our other conversation. Like is there more personalized ways that we can interact with people these days versus just this generic message that's going to go to the whole world?
Anna: Yeah. No, I don't disagree with that later sentiment. I think it's, you know, Super Bowl commercials are fun and funny and people like to watch them, but do they actually result in action? So for example, like the big Super Bowl commercial this year was Tide Pods, right? Or being like Tide clean, like it was all this parody ones where it would start as something and end up as a Tide commercial. I thought it was hilarious. I watched it a couple times. I didn't go out and buy Tide. So it's like what ultimately at the end of the day is that Super Bowl commercial serving you? Is it just for branding? Then fantastic. If you want people to actually take action, I don't know.
Randy: Yeah, I agree. I mean building a brand is still really important. And that's the question though. Should we be striving to the point where we can do a Super Bowl commercial because we're so big that our brand transcends? Or should we embrace staying more lean longer and more personalized and meaningful? Well, we're not going to get the answer because the timer just hit us. All right, up next, this would be you. I'm going to hit you with a debate that I live in in my world all day long. Should marketers be focused more on inbound marketing or account based marketing?
Anna: Let me ask you a question, Randy. What would you prefer? Because I'm really curious because we talk about this a lot on the podcast and I know that you are for both of them, which one do you do? I'm going to do the same thing back to you, your question with a question.
Randy: That's fair. That's fair. I'll take this one on. So, so first off, I think it's a little risky to think of one existing without the other, right? Yeah. The idea that we don't need inbound if we have a strong ABM approach, that's a really tricky mindset because as we just came off the Super Bowl commercial it's this idea that we have to build a brand out there. Now we don't have to do a Super Bowl commercial to do so, but it's going to be a lot easier for you to go outbound and to engage with these accounts if there's some awareness and intrigue in the space that you're in or the offering that you have as a whole.
Randy: So I what I like to think, and to answer you, what do we do here? We try and take more of an aggressive ABM approach with accounts that have had a bit of an inbound interest. So say say someone from, you know, Dell contacts us and signs up for a webinar. We'll look at that and we'll now start to take more of an account based approach. Even if they haven't necessarily hit the traditional lead scoring metrics that we need, we'll start to be more aggressive to get them there on more of a personalized account type of approach.
Anna: I could see that. I like that. I think also too, there's still a lot of confusion about what ABM really does and what sort of the benefits are of doing that sort of wider net as opposed to very individual style marketing. But ABM can still be a semi individual.
Randy: It's true. It's true. Okay, and that is the timer but instead of you hitting me again, because you kind of threw that one back at me, I'm going to throw this one at you because I know you're passionate about this, which is storytelling. So you've got two minutes to tell me how is storytelling evolving? Like is it any different now than, I don't know, Cinderella?
Anna: Ooh, I like that parallel. I think it depends on sort of the purpose of your storytelling. Again, going back to sort of, are we telling a story just to tell a story from a branding perspective or are we telling a story because we want something to happen with it? I think no matter what, storytelling is always valuable, but I think the key to it is really making sure it's a compelling story. A lot of times, you know, you'll see some things out there that it's an attempt to tell a story, but maybe it's just not a differentiator.
Anna: And I think it depends on what term it's sort of used in. Storytelling is such a broad, wide, jargony term now. What I really love about storytelling is it's not just sort of, I don't consider it to be that ultimate big picture like branding story. I feel like it should be involved in every single thing you do. Like even a blog post should have a beautiful story to it and something that people flow through and read and has a beautiful beginning, middle and end. Like I think it's everything. But I don't know what about you, Randy?
Randy: You know, I'll kind of use someone else's thoughts here, which I think it was before I saw him present in person that we had Andrew Davis, on the podcast and he talked a little bit about the curiosity gap. And I was kind of understanding his point there but then I actually saw him do his keynote. I saw him do it twice, one at ConX. And then I saw him do it again at CMI. And he's just so good. You can watch that episode over and over.
Randy: But the way he talks about telling that story and he compares it to, to creating more interest, more intrigued, you know, it's that anticipation of American Idol at the end or you know, The Voice or whatever it is. It's like, let me take you to commercial until you know. And I think more than ever we need to build suspense. That's always been part of story arc, but more than ever, we've got to build that. There we go, look at that. I may have visibility of the timer where you don't so I've got a bit of an advantage to you. But you're really well on your times.
Randy: I think we have time for one more on the clock here.
Anna: I'm going to throw this one to you then.
Randy: All right, hit me.
Anna: All right, get that ready because I still hear it.
Randy: Sorry, that was the old one. We're already 1:52 and counting.
Anna: Oh no, okay. Voice search. What do you think? It's the next big thing apparently, right?
Randy: Voice search is an interesting one. I actually wrote a blog post on this not so long ago and my point with this with voice search, there used to be a really funny joke, mildly funny. I don't want to build up expectation, but it was like, where's the best place to hide something? And the answer was page two of Google results, right? As in like, no one goes to page two. If it's not on that first page, then no one's going to see it. Now though, I think that it's result two. And it's because of voice search. We ever now getting to the point where we just expect that first result that we asked for to be the truth. We've basically gotten to the point with Google where we say, I'm feeling lucky. Do you remember that button on Google? Like I'm feeling. That's basically what we're doing every time, right? We're saying like, I'm feeling lucky. Tell me how long it takes to poach eggs, which is about four minutes if you want to do it well.
Randy: Yeah, have you turned to voice search yourself?
Anna: You know what, on occasion when I'm driving I'll ask Siri to get me something or to text somebody. But I haven't adopted it as fully as I could. I think it just, I don't have like many use cases for it yet because I always have my phone on me and I'm, you know, it's just right there. But I do see, I think the behaviors are interesting, especially the way it's so different to your point about how we search with voice versus how we search within Google versus how we ask people for information. Like those three processes are completely different and even just the style is just drastically different. It's insane the behavior patterns behind it.
Randy: I think it's also going to be a matter of time and trust, right? Like I trust my Google home in terms of the accuracy, whereas I don't trust my car to find the phone number of the person I want to reach. All right, there we go.
Anna: Look at that.
Randy: We are out of time.That's like a hard final note there. This was a ton of fun Anna. I don't know, full disclosure to everyone listening, our scheduled guest just didn't show and Anna and I were like we've got time now. We might as well record something and have some fun with it. So we came up with this idea. We'd love to know what people thought about it. So great ways to let us know, ping us on LinkedIn, ping us on Twitter. Let us know if this episode's more unique, more fun or just a waste of your time either way.
Anna: Yeah, and if you have jargony words you'd like us to attack next, feel free to send them our way.
Randy: Absolutely. This is actually something fun even to think about doing with your own marketing team. Grab 10 words, that's literally what Anna and I did over a two minute period. And throw them out and do a brainstorm and just get people thinking creatively, get opinions, get people to share. It's a great way to just get your creative juices flowing.
Randy: Until next time, this has been another interesting ConX podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Wherever you can find the podcast, leave us feedback and thank you for tuning in and making this part of your day.
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