Latest / Content, Briefly / Recart: Aaron Orendorff on low-volume, high-impact content

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Recart: Aaron Orendorff on low-volume, high-impact content · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [gentle music] Measuring volume of anything is garbage unless you're measuring the volume of value. Not all MQLs and SQLs are created equal. Not all visitors are created equal. It's the average deal size.
• 0:13
  It's how much is this person going to commit to on an ongoing monthly basis that matters. So let's start measuring that.
• 0:19
  And that meant our metric sheet got split into what's the bread and butter regular sized contracts and how do we go get two or three big ones every month?
• 0:28
  [gentle music] Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Just a quick heads-up, I didn't have my podcast set up today. I recorded this one with AirPods.
• 0:38
  I apologize that the audio quality might not be as good as you're used to. We'll be back on track for the next one. Today, I'm talking with Aaron Orendorf.
• 0:46
  He's the head of marketing at Recart and someone that I've run in the same circles with for a very long time, but never actually met.
• 0:52
  So this conversation kinda simultaneously felt like getting coffee with someone new for the very first time and also catching up with an old friend because we have a lot of shared history and shared connections.
• 1:02
  We talk a lot about his role at Recart, which is an SMS tool specifically for Shopify vendors. We talk about marketing within an ecosystem. We talk about his low volume, high impact content approach.
• 1:14
  We talk about platform native content for social. We talk about Recart's unique SaaS plus service model.
• 1:20
  We talk also about some of the lessons he learned from four years at the, quote-unquote, "mothership" AKA Shopify, which has informed a lot of the work he's done since.
• 1:29
  And then we also talk about how he landed himself a byline in The New York Times, which is a pretty cool story. I think you'll really enjoy this episode. I'll get out of the way. Take care and thanks for listening.
• 1:39
  Also, just a quick reminder to check out the new and improved Superpath Slack group. It's now twenty bucks a month. You can also get an annual discount.
• 1:46
  Your employer should probably cover it for you since it definitely counts as professional development. And I think what you'll find there is gonna be really exciting.
• 1:53
  There's some really interesting high-level strategy discussions, in-depth conversations on things like people management and career development. Honestly, it's awesome. I'm enjoying being in there more than ever.
• 2:03
  I think you will too. If you wanna check it out, just go to superpath.co/community and sign up there. [gentle music] Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here with another episode of Content Briefly.
• 2:17
  I always say this, but I really am excited today to chat with Aaron Orendorf. We've run in the same circles for a long time.
• 2:22
  Don't really know each other that well, so I'm excited to do this just because I'm excited to have some time to just chat and get to know you, and I'm really glad other people can benefit from this too. You're excited?
• 2:33
  I'm nervous. [laughs] You have nothing to be nervous about. There are few people floating around in the ether that I respect more on the topic of content that I don't have that intimate personal relationship with.
• 2:44
  Like, the Venn diagram of our worlds and the humans in our worlds is, like, ninety-nine percent overlap, and we're the only two that aren't inside that Venn diagram. And I mean that hopefully a good way.
• 2:53
  [laughs] I'm gonna try to be as honest as I can, but I... You're excited. I'm nervous and a bit excited. Well, I appreciate you saying that. Today, the Venn diagram becomes a circle [laughs] as we close the loop.
• 3:04
  One of the reasons I think that that's happened is that throughout your career, you've primarily focused on D2C/e-commerce. I've been basically all B2B. I wonder if that has been the, the reason for that. Yeah.
• 3:17
  The funny thing about that is I like to say I play an e-commerce expert on the internet, but I'm not one because I've lived in that world for probably the last eight years.
• 3:27
  I cut my teeth and came up in content at Shopify Plus right when Shopify Plus became Shopify Plus. Mm. Months after the Shopify IPO, back in the e-commerce days.
• 3:38
  But the funny thing is I don't go out there and actually run Facebook campaign, Meta campaigns for e-commerce. I've never set up a Shopify store.
• 3:47
  I'm just really good at getting to know and get in the trenches and empathy, but it's great that you think that about me. [laughs] I like that you think that's the reason.
• 3:56
  Well, that's interesting 'cause I guess at the end of the day, it's still SaaS. It's still marketing. Exactly. So much of it is the same.
• 4:01
  And I've always worked for B2B, but the B on the other side has always been D2C e-com. That's the piece of it where, like, yeah, whether at the agency level or at the SaaS tech level, that's where the sweet spot is.
• 4:13
  And actually, maybe that leads us into a conversation about Recart, which I wanna learn more about. But maybe first just to back up for a second.
• 4:19
  For people who don't know you, and I'll be surprised if there's many listening to this podcast that don't or at least aren't familiar with you and follow you on Twitter and LinkedIn and things like that, would you mind giving an intro of yourself and some of the work you've been up to over the past couple of years?
• 4:31
  And then also tell us about Recart. Like, who/what is Recart? Absolutely. I came into marketing with desperation and ignorance about ten years ago. Little over ten years ago.
• 4:42
  I had successfully burned down a previous career and basically life and found myself unemployed and unemployable in the middle of nowhere Oregon.
• 4:49
  But I knew I could write better than the average bear, and the hypothesis was I gotta eat.
• 4:54
  I bet there's people out there who can't write and/or communicate as good as me who have money that would pay me to help them communicate and write good. So I threw up a website and went off to the races, all in.
• 5:06
  Wrote like a madman for about the first two, three years of my career.
• 5:11
  My whole angle was I can reverse engineer articles from sites like Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, the mainstream marquee down to Content Marketing Institute, CXL, Unbounce, niche and mainstream both.
• 5:29
  I just attacked this guest posting world with all the vigor of a drowning man and got a ton of open doors because of that.
• 5:38
  Because I would give to editors not a homework assignment, but here's a complete article that I literally already tailored just for you.
• 5:46
  That was how I got into, sort of faked my way into a whole bunch of logos on my really crappy site, and then started working into actually other people who saw that, who picked that up and then said, "Yeah, I trust this guy enough to pay him."
• 6:00
  It was three years into doing that that I connected with a wonderful human who I'm sure you know, Tommy Walker. He had just got picked up-From ConversionXL, CXL, over at Shopify Plus.
• 6:10
  That's when I entered the e-commerce world. As I mentioned, I just fell backwards into the opportunity of Marketing Lifetime when I came into Shopify Plus.
• 6:19
  It had just become a thing, and so I was one of three or four people in the room when it came to marketing on the Plus side. Core was a machine, but Plus, it was sales driven. It was talking to people about...
• 6:32
  Like, this was so back in the day, we had to write pieces about why you should trust the cloud to large e-commerce brands. That's crazy. We were explaining SaaS. We had to explain what a SaaS was compared to on-premise.
• 6:45
  But when you're the... Y- I was, I was the only person in the room that was really good at that key click-in scheduling.
• 6:50
  Tommy left really soon after I got there, and I just stepped into the role of a lifetime, and everything else after that has just been damn near up and to the right for me.
• 7:00
  I just keep showing up, keep saying yes, figuring out how to do it after I say yes, and maybe that's one of the keys we'll, we'll harp on over and over again, too. Yeah. That's awesome, man. That's cool.
• 7:09
  Tommy Walker's a great dude. Six years ago-ish, he got me a job at QuickBooks.
• 7:15
  He was doing some consulting work for them, and part of the work he was doing was to try to find them an editor-in-chief, and we connected and I took on that job.
• 7:23
  That was my first time, like, really getting to know Tommy. I wrote for him a little bit at Shopify, too, back in the day, and just a great dude. He's always just making stuff happen.
• 7:30
  He's, like, a kind person, so that's cool. I liked it. As we talk about, like, the Venn diagram, like, Tommy's definitely like right in the middle of that. Dude, that's the wild thing.
• 7:38
  The hilarious thing is he also got me a job for a period of time, not only at Shopify, but at QuickBooks. [laughs] I was the deputy assistant global editor.
• 7:47
  [laughs] Like, right after I left Shopify, I picked that up, and he's the one that got me in. So, like, how we have not actually hung out before is wild. Yeah. [laughs] That is actually really crazy.
• 7:57
  Also, just a, a quick thought on some things you were saying about guest posting. Like, before every podcast, I Google the guest's name just to make sure, like, I'm not missing anything obvious.
• 8:05
  And when you Google your name, it's like page after page after page of articles you've written.
• 8:12
  And some of the ones you mentioned, like Forbes and Mashable and guest posting on all these sites, but also the New York Times comes up. And I wanna get back to Recart, 'cause I do wanna hear about the company.
• 8:22
  Maybe a quick rabbit hole. How did you land a byline on The New York Times? Wow. One, I love you for noticing that. That is possibly one of my top five achievements in my career. That came together...
• 8:34
  So I did this voracious attack in the early days of my career, and I tried writing for The New York Times and Harvard Business Review. Never got the door opened. I ended up ghostwriting for a CEO- Nice...
• 8:46
  for the Harvard Business Review and for Wired at one point. And I actually, I seeded a link to something that Aaron Orendorf wrote in the guest post, and it's still there, so I can actually go to it- [laughs]...
• 8:55
  and show people, like, "No, that's mine."
• 8:57
  But The New York Times came because I'd just left Shopify, and Joanna Wiebe from Copyhackers approached me to do a guest blogging course since I was known for that early in my career.
• 9:09
  And it'd been a hot second since I'd done that. It'd been three or four years. So I went back through all of my old resources, recreated them, we built out lessons, we shot the whole thing here in Portland.
• 9:18
  Then I did a bunch of beta class. I did over-the-shoulder tutorial type videos. And during that process I said, "I'm gonna put some skin in the game.
• 9:26
  I'm gonna see if I do what I am telling my students to do, can I finally crack The New York Times?" No way. Yeah. And I didn't tell anybody, 'cause I didn't know if I could actually do it.
• 9:35
  [laughs] So I didn't even tell Joanna I was working on this, I kid you not. But I did that piece of, like, this is the most popular one. I think this is where it's gonna land on there.
• 9:43
  They have, like, sort of a lifestyle, almost like a Lifehacker type thing, and I'd written for Lifehacker before. I sort of knew the editor from a different place I'd been. So I just did my, my thing of surrounding.
• 9:54
  I pitched the full article rather than just a piece of it, and he said yes. It worked. That day, I remember walking outside of my co-working space and just fist pumping, cursing in the parking lot, exuberant profanities.
• 10:08
  It was such a high. [laughs] And the fact that it wrapped up in this whole thing of, like, I'd done a course and it worked, that was the baller-est cherry on top for selling the thing that I could've ever imagined.
• 10:18
  Oh, hell yeah. That's incredible. So you, you pitched them on the piece or you wrote the piece and said, "Here, I wrote this for you"? I did that.
• 10:24
  I wrote the whole piece, and then I also did the, the feel with them where I also created literally five different article ideas that I used, like, a web editing software and Sketch to make it look like how they would fit on the homepage.
• 10:38
  Whoa. Length of headlines. The way they do a subheader below each one. So I not only pitched them the ideas and the full piece, but also actually put it into this is what it would look like if it was on the site.
• 10:48
  Like, any which way I could get their attention. That's amazing. Wow, okay. That's like highlight number one for folks, particularly, like, up and coming in your career.
• 10:56
  I can't tell you how many pitches I get for the Superpath blog, which is just, like, a, "I'll take your guest post, sure. No red tape around here."
• 11:02
  But most of the emails that I get are like, "I would love to write a piece for you about A, B, and C." I'm like, "Okay, it's hardly even worth taking the time to respond to that." Exactly.
• 11:11
  That is what in that course, and when I talk to anybody about it, 'cause I've been in that seat, too. I was editor-in-chief at Shopify Plus, VP of Marketing at Common Thread Collective, fantastic agency.
• 11:21
  After that, we came up really fast, so we ended up getting pitched a lot as well. But nothing like when I was at Shopify, the amount of pitches I would get there.
• 11:29
  And what I realized that I had done almost on accident with the full article was instead of my email being another piece of homework, piece of work on the editor's plate, what it was actually doing was taking something off their plate.
• 11:42
  Yeah. This is done. It's damn near ready. I didn't understand why I got so many yeses when really I didn't have any credibility to get those yeses.
• 11:49
  But when you're taking a piece of work off of someone's plate, you just said it, like, it's not even worth it to write back. All you've done is given me more, more work to do. [laughs] Right.
• 11:57
  The magic to yes is when it comes in with I can immediately see this is less for me to do. If that course is still up, people should go check that out. I'm gonna go check it out. There will links to it. It is, it is.
• 12:08
  Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Okay, Recart. Tell us about Recart. Who/what is it? If I understand correctly, is there a service component as well as a software component? Yeah.
• 12:16
  Recart is a text marketing SMS app for Shopify businesses built to cost less, sell more, drive real growth.
• 12:23
  And the whole idea of drive real growth is as I wandered into text message marketing, one, I totally underestimated the freaking fierceness of the competition.
• 12:31
  Between Shopify and Recart, I spent about two and a half years at Common Thread Collective as VP of Marketing. Phenomenal D2C e-com agency. My goodness. You talk about, like, a Navy SEAL level education.
• 12:42
  The folks that have come out of there, it's re-... ridiculous. And it's all around this wonderful human named Taylor Holiday, who is just an absolute charismatic beast.
• 12:49
  So I, I went back over to the SaaS side of things, thinking, "Oh, you know, SaaS, higher retention. This is gonna be easier.
• 12:56
  There's not a lot of great content," is what I thought in my head, getting put out from text message marketing.
• 13:01
  And when I got to Recart, what I realized was not only underestimating the level of competition that's out there, and we need to talk about that, it has been one of the most challenging years of my marketing life.
• 13:11
  I kid you not. I joined up there in October, November of last year, so coming right up on the one-year mark. Mm-hmm.
• 13:18
  But what I discovered was most people who get approached by text message marketing or who are shopping for text message marketing for doing their e-commerce business, there's this dual thing of like, "I'm pretty sure I'm paying too much, and I also don't trust the results."
• 13:32
  And that was just one of those pieces of empathy that I dialed into really early on. And actually, that came right out of a case study that we did, which would be super fun to talk about too.
• 13:41
  Like, what a tactic for actually getting ideas of what to write about and how to frame an idea and how to communicate, is just freaking steal the words that your ideal customers actually use.
• 13:50
  So yeah, SMS marketing, toughest year of my life, and we're coming out of it. You're catching me on a come up, come out of it sort of moment, so you're getting happy Aaron.
• 13:58
  If you'd have had me a month ago, it might have been a, a- [laughs]... more raw, real dark Aaron, but he's happier. Yeah, yeah. That's... Well, it's been a tough go for a lot of folks the last year or so.
• 14:07
  Interestingly, just speaking to the competition that you alluded to, we're on episode, I don't know exactly what episode this will be, 28, 29, something like that, and this will be the third SMS SaaS company that we've talked about.
• 14:19
  We've talked about Simple Texting and Message Desk in previous episodes. And interestingly, each of those two had completely different stories.
• 14:27
  Actually, surprisingly different from my perspective as the person interviewing them about content marketing. So I'm, I'm definitely curious to know more about the marketing you're doing for Recart.
• 14:34
  I feel like because it's specifically for Shopify customers, there's an ecosystem component to it, which Message Desk and Simple Texting are not dealing with or actually being enhanced by.
• 14:46
  I mean, I feel like it probably could go both ways. It's a leg up for me in that I came up through the mothership. True. Right.
• 14:53
  The unfair advantage that I have in any place that I go is that background, which meant I was writing case studies and talking to the Gymsharks, the Chubbies.
• 15:04
  Every once in a while, we'd bump up against Fashion Nova, Movement, these big folks that were like early D2C, early Shopify, grew up on Shopify or, or migrated to Shopify, where I got to be there, like, with them in the trenches as they were going from like 1 to 5 to 10 to 50 to 100 million-plus.
• 15:22
  So the relationships was a really big deal, but then also getting that front row seat to understand this, really understand the growing pains and the challenges that they faced.
• 15:33
  And if anything, it's only intensified more as meta, iOS, the CAC, the customer acquisition costs, the efficiency of marketing has done nothing but get even more just tougher. It's a tougher environment to be in.
• 15:47
  So that's paid off huge, that ecosystem nod that you just gave. Yeah, and that's interesting. Maybe we touch more on that, 'cause I'm curious like how you market within the ecosystem.
• 15:55
  I would imagine there's a lot of things that go into app discovery, reviews, and things like that, which maybe other SaaS companies aren't thinking about on a day-to-day basis.
• 16:04
  But I am also curious, it looks like there's a service or at least a partner component to it. Yeah. How does that work?
• 16:09
  You give people the tool, but then you either do it for them or you connect them with someone who can do it for them? Yes.
• 16:15
  So let's take it a piece at a time in the sense of like the marketing side of, of a SaaS app inside Shopify. So I, for the first time, discovered how do you do SEO inside of the Shopify app- Mm. -store- Right...
• 16:29
  is one of those pieces. And I'm really proud that we're now like the third. You go to SMS marketing, boom.
• 16:36
  And what that really came down to was honestly applying the same principles I know about SEO just to the listing of the app itself, alongside an acceleration of reviews.
• 16:47
  And the unfair advantage that Recart in particular has is Recart came up as a Facebook Messenger app, and so they had 200, 250,000 installs. I mean, it's just one of the top installed apps of all time.
• 17:00
  So the number of reviews that they collected because of that mad dash to Facebook Messenger, once we got the SEO right and just the keywords and the terminology with a little bit of persuasion sprinkled inside there, we saw a really big immediate jump.
• 17:14
  Now, the downside of that in the app ecosystem is that's not where good leads come from. I was curious about that, yeah, because it's not like all of your marketing eggs are in that one basket, right? Yeah.
• 17:23
  This has been what I've woken up to.
• 17:25
  The biggest lesson for me over the last year has been the tricks that Aaron Orndorff is really good at, organic search, some SEM, search engine marketing as well, applying those to places like the app ecosystem simply do not attract the kind of businesses that really make a difference inside of SMS marketing, and really I would say probably now I've realized even for like an agency.
• 17:51
  Just the deal size of what you get from those avenues, there's a high velocity, a high volume, but the quality and the value, the average deal size is, it's so astronomically different to get someone coming in who's got a quarter of a million subscribers already.
• 18:08
  They are rocking and rolling, and they're just looking to make a change for some reason, versus anyone who's either getting started or up to like 10K. Right. The payoff in the deal value is a factor of 10 to 20 to 30.
• 18:22
  Like it's can we close one deal this month, or do we have to go close 20 instead?
• 18:27
  So very big difference in huge lesson, understanding not only who your ideal customer is, your ICP, ideal customer profile, but where and how they make decisions.
• 18:38
  And then the marketing you make, the content you create has to match the natural way that they discover and make those decisions. I wanna ask you more about that too. Sorry. We're covering a lot of ground.
• 18:47
  This is fantastic. Going back just quickly to the service or partner component. Yes. Could you explain how that works?
• 18:52
  And the reason I'm curious is because I always wonder why more SaaS companies don't have-A service component or at least a expert directory or someone to do the thing for you, because I feel like so many SaaS tools, the primary issue they have is, okay, you've signed up, now what?
• 19:07
  It's just a cold start problem issue where it's a lot of work to get all the stuff in the app to make it work like you want to.
• 19:13
  I think in the case of Recart, this came about before I showed up, where the fundamental challenge was email and SMS are the two tools inside a retention e-commerce.
• 19:23
  There's other things you can do, but that's really what it comes down to, is once somebody converts you, you have them on your list.
• 19:28
  These are the two ways that you reach out and get them to convert and reconvert and reconvert and purchase. When you stack those two up against each other, email feels and is wildly less expensive.
• 19:39
  So most tools are built email first, and most businesses have built their retention email first. And SMS feels like one of these things that costs so much more.
• 19:51
  Every time you send, you're gonna spend whatever it is, fraction of a cent, and that adds up fast. So it costs a lot more, and it had just gotten into, like right at majority adoption of SMS.
• 20:06
  The biggest of the big have been doing it for years.
• 20:08
  But when you start getting into-- When I first showed up at Recart, even when you peeked outside of the top ten thousand Shopify stores, like the top ten thousand, there was not majority adoption of people who even had an SMS app installed on their store.
• 20:20
  Wow, that's really interesting. Which really surprised me, right? Yeah. So there was this twofold thing of it costs a lot and it feels intrusive. It still feels new.
• 20:28
  It's like back when people first put pop-ups on their site and folks were like, "Oh, I hate it," and now it's just standard fare and it works.
• 20:34
  So Recart's answer to that was, if we don't do it for them, they're not going to send at the volume that, number one, proves the value of the channel, and two, actually makes us money.
• 20:44
  So it was a response to those challenges in the market, the need to meet them, and so they developed this fully managed service side where it was, you give us your marketing calendar, we will set up the campaigns to mirror them with SMS best practices and transformation.
• 21:00
  And when people did that at a regular cadence, then they caught the vision for, oh, our customers, far from not liking this, they actually take action. They're moved by it. They interact with us. It's very engaging.
• 21:12
  People are getting more and more used to interacting with brands on their phones. It's still, like, nowhere near as good as your friend texting you, right? Let's not pretend anything.
• 21:20
  So that's the fully managed service side of things, is it was out of necessity.
• 21:23
  And so today the advantage is because we built that into the process itself, as we add more and more brands and bigger brands to it, it's baked into our margins. We understand how to do it at scale.
• 21:35
  And I think that that's one of those unfair advantages of everyone else either has to charge more or just say, "We don't do it." Right. Whereas we still only charge-- The only thing anyone ever pays for is text messages.
• 21:46
  Oh. Whoa, really? That's it. Yes. That's so interesting. I thought for sure you would say that there's an additional fee. It's like targeted towards like larger customers.
• 21:55
  And that's super interesting because I feel like, I mean, I'm, I'm not the right use case, but, like, I like to play around with new SaaS tools, and anytime I fire up a new one, I'm like, "I kinda see how this could work, but am I really gonna invest the time to get the ROI out of it?"
• 22:08
  Like, it's just, it's hard to do. I had a call just last week about moving our email platform to a tool that I believe is quite a bit better than the one we're using now.
• 22:17
  But I'm like, "If you moved it for me, I would do it." But I'm not gonna move all that stuff myself. It's too much work. Dude, and you just identified the opportunity and the challenge of my marketing life.
• 22:25
  The challenge is I sell a replacement, not an add-on. Add-on. Oh gosh, I would give anything to sell and have to market an add-on. Yeah.
• 22:33
  [laughs] A new pop-up builder, an app that you don't already have an app for, we'll build one, right? It's an addition to what you're already doing. Anything that's on-site searched for e-commerce is an addition.
• 22:43
  Ours is always a replacement. You have to leave one, re-platform, and come to another. So that replacement is really tough.
• 22:50
  And the challenge is we tell people, like I'm still trying to crack the nut of how do I say this and not be in the room in a way that they believe we actually do what I'm telling them we do. Right.
• 23:00
  The fully managed service, fully managed onboarding. Where you just identified that piece of, "If you would do it for me, sure." Awesome.
• 23:08
  People want that, and the problem is they see that and they're like, either they've been burned before by somebody telling them they were gonna do that. [laughs] Or they just like, "There's gotta be a catch to this."
• 23:17
  And so the challenge of my market is how do I communicate this? Is it customer testimonials? Is it connecting folks with quick referrals? What's the answer to that? That's a good question.
• 23:25
  I don't know the answer to that. I will say that almost all the SaaS tools that I use, I have not sought out the best tool.
• 23:32
  It's almost always because I've worked in SaaS for a long time, and I, like, know someone at the company.
• 23:37
  So before I adopt it, I shoot them a note and say, "Hey, I'm thinking about using this for email," or, "I'm thinking about using this for project management. Could I accomplish this very simple use case?"
• 23:46
  Or like, "I have this kinda like weird edge case, like, could it handle that?" And if they say yes, I'm like, "Cool." Now I have a point of contact there.
• 23:52
  If they say I can do the thing I wanna do, I'm so much more likely to use that tool than the one that G2 says is the best for this thing.
• 24:00
  Oh, if it's G2, if it's a Shopify app, if it's organic search and you're getting a guide on SMS marketing, yeah. Those are nice touch points, and they don't hurt.
• 24:08
  But yes, you've also just identified the second-biggest opportunity and challenge of my- [laughs]... of my marketing life right now.
• 24:14
  Which is the way people actually make these buying decisions is they have to know, like, and trust either you as an individual or someone in their world who uses you, the company. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:25
  That is the only way you get into the game when it comes to the whales, the not yet enterprise, the almost enterprise, or the enterprise level. Right. It, it's all relational.
• 24:35
  So all these things that Aaron was like really, really good at that fell flat, part of why this has been so rough, is those are the things that I just-- Dude, I could smash this. You want me to rank for this?
• 24:43
  Let's go do it. And it turns out that is neat, but it's also not the answer.
• 24:48
  So reorienting myself towards exactly what you described and thinking about that as the marketing strategy, as the fundamental, it's relational. It's people with people. How do I become one of those people?
• 24:59
  How do I get the people that are my people in front of the other people? Huge challenge. So different than just writing good or, or putting together a pretty picture. Yeah, yeah. Right?
• 25:07
  So how do you think about content at Recart? Because obviously you still do it. How does it work? What are the-... goals?
• 25:13
  Like, are you able to just give us kinda like a 30,000-foot view of what content looks like for you right now? Yeah.
• 25:19
  Biggest lesson I got when I was working at Shopify Plus is that content calendars, publishing for the sake of publishing, is garbage. Yeah. I would 100% agree with that. I know you do.
• 25:29
  I know this is like the Venn diagram thing. [laughs] Yeah. I know you do. I've seen enough of your stuff to know. Yeah. So jettison that. That's not even on the table.
• 25:36
  What we have to have is a backbone of a brochure website with features and case studies, features that people are looking for, and case studies that are as unimpeachable, as powerful, as accurate, as in their language as they can possibly be, knowing that it's never going to generate a critical mass of traffic, but people are gonna go look at it when they're coming through the funnel.
• 26:00
  The center is the website with the features and the case studies. Then out from that grows the things like the pricing page and the how-to guides that would normally go along the way.
• 26:11
  'Cause some people are gonna go out there and look for text message marketing examples. They're gonna be looking for templates and calendars for the holidays. So those also have to be just as powerful and high quality.
• 26:24
  So I haven't given up an inch of we create from a base quality content. On the site, features, case studies, pricing. On the blog, the guides and the how-to as well.
• 26:37
  From there, the job has just started because then the real job becomes if these resources are of such a quality, then what I need to be doing as really almost like the distribution arm and trying to build up other people in the organization to be the distribution arm, like our CEO, let's get you out, let's get you being active.
• 26:57
  You have to be able to treat these as a repository to constantly be pulling from so you have so much ammunition to go out there in the world with.
• 27:04
  That's the real power of it, and if a disconnect becomes the power of it is people are gonna naturally come and discover it via search or even through paid efforts, it's going to fall flat.
• 27:13
  What it has to be is the quality matters even more so it can be quickly pulled from and put out there into the world via our distribution arms, X, LinkedIn, little bit of Instagram, some YouTube, but it's always the personality that's putting it out.
• 27:28
  Right. Right. Something you just said reminded me of a few episodes ago, we spoke with a woman named Ashley Stewart, and she's a UX writer for Ogilvy.
• 27:35
  So she works with big brands on creating digital experiences for their prospective customers, and what was so interesting about talking to her was, like, she never has to worry about getting people to the experience, only the experience itself.
• 27:49
  And I was just sort of thinking about that, and I was like, how wonderful would it be if you could write content through that same lens where it's like, okay, just forget for a minute about the gimmicks and the algorithms you need to get people here.
• 28:02
  Once they're here, just make it really nice, make it easy, make it enjoyable, entertaining, educational. Whatever the goal of the piece is, just do that. What you've said was... made me think of that, right?
• 28:12
  Because you're saying, like, you need all the stuff.
• 28:14
  Like, it has to be there because it's, as people enter the site from the many different places that they already are gonna enter it from anyways, you have all this stuff ready for them, you know?
• 28:24
  And so if you create it with that in mind as opposed to, like, what gimmick could we employ to get them here, it just creates such a nicer experience for people. It does, but I'm also wildly jealous. Yeah, yeah. Me too.
• 28:34
  [laughs] I would love to just create the thing. Oh my gosh, if you could just lock me in a cave and let me out every two weeks with this beautiful best thing.
• 28:41
  [laughs] That's like the when Aaron grows up dream job is to actually have some situation where that's it. There's a whole army going out there doing distribution, but that's where the real fight is.
• 28:50
  The real fight is in distribution. Now, the thing you're distributing can't suck. In fact, it's gotta be really, really good. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:57
  And it's gotta pass all those instantaneous is this BS that people are gonna bring to the experience as well, which takes a lot of empathy and understanding the challenges and the language and using the language right.
• 29:10
  Absolutely.
• 29:11
  So you take it out there into the world, and then what I've also uncovered recently is I've had to get really systematic about not only a disciplined volume of output from the individual distribution channels, the humans, but also a very strategic, almost account-based marketing, which is just a glorified Google sheet of all the...
• 29:33
  I've got a hidden Twitter list. Those are synced up with people's LinkedIn pages. So I'm constantly also just in their world and looking for those opportunities of this really great thing is the base.
• 29:43
  It's put out here in this very digestible form, and then five new people, five existing people I'm sharing it with in a very intentional way every single week. I like that.
• 29:53
  You know, one thing that I have been considering adding to our list of standard questions we ask every guest on this podcast is, how much time do you spend creating platform-native content for social?
• 30:04
  Because I feel like we talk about promotion and distribution a lot, and it seems like, at least right now, and stuff changes, but it seems like right now the thing is you have to create platform-native content for LinkedIn that does the thing that LinkedIn wants to get you in front of people while also not totally selling out to the algorithm so that people actually still wanna engage with it.
• 30:24
  And then the process for that is completely different for each of the platforms. It's like to do it well, it's quite time-consuming. It is and it isn't. There is also a...
• 30:33
  Look, one of the resources I purchased recently was Erica Grizzle is where she works. Oh, I saw you post about this on LinkedIn. Her Hooked on Writing Hooks, phenomenal.
• 30:45
  And what's such a gift about that and what's been so good for me is all of the work that I would put into something is almost, like, in the body of the thing when really where the effort needs to be is in what's the opening gambit to get people to pay attention?
• 30:57
  That's it. Your stuff is gonna live or die by that, so 90% of the effort going there into the opening words, the opening image. Are you gonna do a video? What's the first three seconds of that video?
• 31:07
  That's where things live or die, and that also then means I can produce content faster when I'm focusing on the main thing for native social.
• 31:14
  And it's also worth pointing out, too, I think this is really important, I used to think the point of all those social platforms was to get people back to the site. The click, yeah, yeah.
• 31:23
  And it's not, not if you're going after high deal value.
• 31:26
  The point is to simply let the thing live and breathe on its own, them associate, humans associate with you as a human, they know I can trust you, and you're there when the moment's right.
• 31:36
  Right.So that you're top of mind when they hit that purchase mode, when they're thinking about ripping out and doing a replacement, as I said earlier. Yeah, yeah.
• 31:44
  I just took a second and Googled The Book of Hooks, Erica Schneider, is that it? Hooked on Writing Hooks is the name of it. We'll have to track it down and throw it, 'cause it, it's really good. Okay, cool.
• 31:53
  I'll make sure I track the link down and I'll put it in the show notes. Beautiful. How much content do you create? No riddle. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
• 32:00
  'Cause I agree with you that the content calendar holds people in this prison of like, "We need to publish X times per week. What should we write about? Here's a giant keyword list."
• 32:09
  Now we don't have to stress about that what do we write about question for a few months, and then it's just like next thing you know, you're writing all the stuff that no one cares about.
• 32:18
  But then there's a flip side of it. Like, I remember back in the day when I discovered James Clear's blog, I was like, "This is the greatest thing I've ever read."
• 32:24
  And his whole thing was, "I write every Monday and every Thursday, and I did that for five years, and that consistency turned me into a better writer and helped my blog grow."
• 32:32
  And I actually feel like there is some tension between those two things, which is why I'm curious, from your perspective, running marketing for a SaaS company, does the James Clear side of that spectrum matter?
• 32:42
  Or is it really just about you know what you wanna say, you know who these people are, so you can create the right amount for them? Not as a company it doesn't.
• 32:50
  And not if we're talking about, quote-unquote, blogs or articles or even pages. No. Now, you have to feed the beast when it comes to... Th-this applies to podcasts, it applies to emails.
• 33:02
  So if you're putting out something where regularity and consistency, those are two spots where you take a week off, as soon as it becomes a thing I don't have to do every week but I might do, it's like kiss your readership and your listenership goodbye.
• 33:13
  Sure. There's something about consistency there that matters so immensely, and it's similar to the, yeah, James Clear example, where when you're coming up as a personality, if that's your outlet- Mm...
• 33:25
  then yes, that's how you start getting people to show up and listen because they're listening or they're reading you. As a company, no. And I laugh because I am so good at making it look like I produce a lot of content.
• 33:36
  [laughs] Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the funny thing. People think I produce a lot of content. Tell me about that. [laughs] Recart has put out one refreshed blog post for Black Friday this year,
• 33:48
  and one guest post that we really liked somebody and they were doing it on email and SMS overlapping strategy. Anything else has just been updated here and there, tweaked.
• 34:00
  But that doesn't mean we don't have to still be really regular with the emails and really regular on the social. The other avenue that's been great for us is events and webinars.
• 34:09
  And I say events, but I really mean webinars, 'cause events sound cool. You say, "Oh, it's an event." No, it's a webinar.
• 34:12
  But what we found there, the really powerful thing is critical mass of seven to eight other non-competing SaaS or agencies.
• 34:22
  Critical mass means you have two to three bringers, signer-uppers, people with banger email lists who can drive 100 or plus signups to the thing.
• 34:32
  So you get seven in the room, and it's almost like this balance between we want three ringers who can pack the house, and then maybe that overlaps with people who do content really well, like actually deliver good information, but we better have two to three folks that really do that well, and as long as we've got those types in the room, we've done those month over month, and those have really built our email list, and then our email list pays off really big.
• 34:53
  Oh, interesting.
• 34:53
  'Cause the email list is continuous and it's new content and we're given tool recommendations, and then we come to a clutch moment, and we're gonna do a really big push as we go into October all around sending free texts on Black Friday for anybody that's in that final decision point of, "I really gotta do this before Q4 or right on top of Q4," and it's having that big email list that makes that campaign pay off.
• 35:18
  So it's like we do all the events to build the email list and not lose them, so that during big moments, we have a lot of folks we can reach out to with a very specific timely offer. Do you have a lean marketing team?
• 35:29
  And the reason I ask that is because sometimes bloated marketing teams just produce tons of content 'cause there's, like, people around to do it, and then sometimes leaner teams, like, they're just much...
• 35:37
  You know, they work smarter, not harder. Super lean. Yeah. It's myself, a growth marketer named Kat. She's out of Serbia, and she is just a wonderful human. She's the antithesis of me.
• 35:48
  She is the I'm just gonna go do things, and it scares me sometimes how much she just goes and does. Like, when we had to update... So we had to set this whole foundation for the website.
• 35:56
  So we had to produce a lot of content when I first came in. And what I realized was if Kat's on the assignment, new pages are just going to appear. [laughs] That's great. And old pages are just going to disappear.
• 36:06
  [laughs] Unless I am out there with her and editing things, like, damn near live with her, and what... You know what? I needed that.
• 36:13
  It made me so uncomfortable, but at that moment, there's a bias to action, a ferocity towards action.
• 36:19
  And she's also just a really creative thinker about the different ways we can slice and dice our big email list based on the size of the business, what we know about the business, the vertical, how engaged are they with us.
• 36:29
  She's creating this whole, what she calls the abandoned cart sequence on our website right now, where someone visited what we call a high intent page. They're gonna get outreached by her, and she just builds it.
• 36:38
  She's a growth marketer, and I love her for it. And then I've got another member of my team, Isla, who's sort of like my content soulmate, where she's the one I can really lean on for polished email.
• 36:47
  She was clutch when we were making all of these new articles that we had to set the foundation for. It's the three of us. That's it. That's fascinating.
• 36:54
  I think it's actually really cool that it looks like you produce a lot of content but actually don't.
• 36:58
  I think that's actually a fantastic strategy, because it's not like people are, like, refreshing your website waiting for new stuff, you know? Like, they see things on social, they get the emails, right?
• 37:08
  So it's like it doesn't have to be net new every single time. But that does change the things that you're measuring, I would think, right?
• 37:14
  Because if you produce a lot of content, you're almost forced to measure traffic or other kind of, like, top level metrics.
• 37:21
  The number of organic sessions, the total amount of traffic, and things like that, and I, I do wonder if you produce less of it that it refocuses you on a different set of metrics. What metrics do you really care about?
• 37:32
  It's both. Oh my gosh, that is so insightful. You're right.
• 37:36
  When you produce a lot, you're forced to measure something different that validates the fact that you're doing what you're doing is the right thing that you're doing. Right.
• 37:42
  And then you can never slow down because the numbers will drop. But the same is also true is if that's what you're told to measure, you're almost bound to create that strategy of, "Oh, traffic matters? Okay. No, do it.
• 37:53
  Okay." So- [laughs]... when I first got to Recart, I measured traffic, really disciplined channels, search engine ranking, mad SEMrush and SEMrush, Ahrefs fan, and then I measured MQLs.
• 38:05
  'Cause I wanted to know these first few to then figure out where are the marketing qualified leads coming fromAnd then we leaned into, okay, we should also probably measure sales qualified leads.
• 38:14
  Those are people that don't just book a demo and they're actually qualified of the right size, but go forth from the demo into either negotiation in progress or a trial.
• 38:22
  So that was about as far down into the funnel as I went with sales qualified leads. And then what we woke up to was measuring volume of anything is garbage unless you're measuring the volume of value.
• 38:34
  Because it's like I said about the not all MQLs and SQLs are created equal, not all visitors are created equal. It's the average deal size.
• 38:41
  It's how much is this person going to commit to on an ongoing monthly basis that matters. So let's start measuring that.
• 38:48
  And that meant our metric sheet got split into what's the bread and butter regular size contracts and how do we go get two or three big ones every month, right?
• 38:58
  So we actually had two different paths for that, that we were measuring, and now we've scrapped all of that. And literally the only thing we're measuring is closed one value followed by active deal value. That's it.
• 39:12
  Meaning like the potential amount of revenue in the pipeline. Yeah. So we use HubSpot, so it's really easy to say, okay, what's the total value that was closed this month, contractual?
• 39:21
  What's the expected value of those accounts expanding? Because they do. They expand by about a hundred fifty to sometimes two hundred percent over a twelve-month period.
• 39:29
  As the businesses grow, they send more, so they, they increase in value compared to their contractual value.
• 39:33
  But then right behind that is also looking at the pipeline for what are the percentage that are in progress, in trial and in negotiation. What's the total deal value of those three stages of the pipeline?
• 39:45
  We're just measuring money. That's all we measure. We measure money. Yeah. All good metrics have a dollar sign before them. But that means that the tactics we have to deploy have to be our best bets.
• 39:57
  Like the actual activity doesn't change. You still have to go and do things. So what do you do?
• 40:01
  Because you've got to have these, like, two extremes of like measuring the money, what do we actually close versus what am I gonna do today? It's Wednesday, what's the most important thing if I have to make a choice?
• 40:09
  Yeah. Yeah. Right. So all of the activities then are trying to triangulate against where we're seeing the most realized value.
• 40:15
  Does that mean that most of your best customers are coming in through sales, through a demo, or is there a freemium or kinda like PLG style approach also?
• 40:23
  No, they're coming through account-based marketing, which is a fancy way for Aaron and Shoma's Google sheet and referrals. And the referrals are like Shoma's side of things, our CEO. Our CEO.
• 40:35
  Great existing relationships. The big brands that we serve, we serve well, and he is in the mix with their CEOs.
• 40:41
  It really is staggering to me how for an SMS app, the level of trust and involvement he has at the C level with these businesses.
• 40:51
  So that avenue then becomes how do we use those in a systematic fashion to if what Aaron's really good at is being the distribution cannon and seeding all these relationships and our CEO side of things, and I would say our head of success is getting into this vein as well now.
• 41:08
  We're, like, catching the vision for that. I'd love to see our CTO start doing it as well of what's their superpower in the relational realm.
• 41:15
  That's what we're really going after and trying to say, what are the activities that we can do this week that lead to these outcomes? Got it. Based on where the, the person's best skills are. Got it. Got it. Makes sense.
• 41:24
  If I were running a content team right now, I would want to be driving readers to salespeople.
• 41:29
  I talk to a lot of folks whose companies have, like, wholeheartedly embraced product led growth, and it felt like it seemed really exciting at first, and now I almost feel, like, a little bit bad for them because the volume requirements are so enormous- Yeah...
• 41:44
  to get enough people on the site to convert one percent of them into a freemium version or a free trial, and then two percent of those.
• 41:51
  It's actually a tough game, whereas I would much rather-- Maybe this is just a personal thing. It's not a better or worse thing.
• 41:57
  I would so much rather work in a, a lower volume, higher contract value scenario and send folks to sales. Yes. 'Cause you're right, product led is so volume dependent.
• 42:05
  Like you gotta put more people into the top of the funnel because some are gonna Yeah.
• 42:31
  Yeah, totally.
• 42:52
  Couple kind of quick hitters for you, if that's okay. One is about AI. Initially, when we started doing this podcast, the question we asked everybody about AI is like, "How are you using it?"
• 43:00
  And I feel like that question is no longer that interesting.
• 43:02
  I feel like the new question that I'm asking people or gonna start asking people is, "Are you excited, neutral, or concerned about AI's effect on content marketing?"
• 43:11
  And then as a related follow-up to that, "What do you think you might be doing differently with content six to twelve months from now?" Those are good questions. I am optimistic. I'm excited.
• 43:21
  I don't think it's overhyped. So that's the easy one for the first. AI is not addition, it's multiplication. That is my stance towards AI.
• 43:29
  People want it to be addition, adding an extra member, making what we're doing better. It does not do that.
• 43:34
  Whatever you're doing, whatever your inputs are, if your marketing is mediocre, AI is simply going to accelerate its mediocrity, which means it's going to get worse. AI will multiply what you're currently doing.
• 43:46
  It will not add. So that's why I'm so excited about it is because most marketing is pretty crappy. Most content is pretty crappy.
• 43:52
  So I am delighted that AI is making it easier and easier to make even more crappy content, 'cause then the good stuff stands out. Yeah. [laughs] Love that.
• 44:00
  The other thing that excites me about that is it takes nothing away from that skill set. Like, outside of the marketing stuff, like, I'm still a content person at heart. I'm a words person at heart.
• 44:09
  I've seen it do nothing but make what I do more valuable. I love that.About it, selfishly. And it's accelerated the output that I can create with those skillsets.
• 44:20
  Like, the skillset of an editor and somebody who understands the audience, like a good marketer who understands their audience and the pain points, that- that's what makes it.
• 44:27
  Like, you still gotta churn out 1,000 words or Google's gonna hate it, whatever. There's still certain things you gotta do with your Hs and you gotta structure it a certain way, yes.
• 44:36
  But what makes that difference is, is the human that's behind it, which I love. It makes the humans that much more valuable. That's cool. I love that, and I totally agree with you.
• 44:44
  I feel like it is possible that the outcome of all of this disruption, at least for, it... Like, and I... When I say disruption, I mean, like, for content marketers.
• 44:51
  Like, there's been a lot of distress over all of this over the last six to 10 months or so.
• 44:57
  But I think it is possible that there is this really beautiful outcome six months, a year down the road where exactly what you said happens. It's like, oh, okay.
• 45:05
  Well, AI just totally commoditized all the stuff that sucked anyways, so now we're all just sort of free to try to create our absolute best work instead of just being so wrapped up and beholden to these algorithms that, for a long time, we've all, for better or worse, been chained to because that's how you get people on the site.
• 45:22
  Yeah. As far as we're gonna be doing in six to 12 months, if I was any sort of roped coder or designer, I'd be freaked out. Mm. That's what I see six to 12 months.
• 45:32
  Like, right now it feels so dangerous to, like, let AI into a Shopify store, let AI into Webflow, let AI into a WordPress site. To just be like, "Yeah, this is the thing I want you to do. Go do it," that scares me.
• 45:44
  Like, right now it's all the code stuff I need to do. I- I'm either outsourcing it, or I'm just asking and getting the right answer, testing it, and implementing it myself.
• 45:52
  I think the big breakthrough is gonna be once it reaches a point of credibility where you've got something native on all those sites, and you're like, "Go fix this and do this," and it says, "Is this what you wanna do?
• 46:00
  Are you sure? Yep." That I think is gonna be, in six to 12 months, a big unlock of those people that can get there first is gonna be a really...
• 46:07
  Like, if Shopify can get there first, that's a big deal for helping out their businesses. That's really interesting and very cool. Aaron, this has been awesome.
• 46:15
  I'm just, like, so appreciative that you took the time, that we were able to do this. I feel like we're friends now. You know?
• 46:21
  Like, I always like to start the show off being like, okay, I'm either talking to a friend, because they are, because I know them, or I sort of cue it up by saying, like, "Okay, I'm talking to my new friend."
• 46:29
  And I genuinely mean that.
• 46:30
  Like, it's nice to talk to people on this medium, and like, yes, we produce something that hopefully people can learn from and apply to their day-to-day job in some way, but, you know, selfishly I'm just grateful, grateful for the opportunity to, to get to know you better.
• 46:42
  I was covered in nerves when I came in, with some excitement. This has been delightful. My nerves have gone away. I feel like I'm, yeah, a friend.
• 46:50
  [laughs] I know, dear listener, I, I hope you got those warm vibes as well, and it's been... I really do hope it's been helpful.
• 46:57
  But, uh, selfishly on the back end of this, I'm really grateful to have gotten into a room with you finally. This is a big deal. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, I appreciate you, man.
• 47:06
  Where can we send folks to connect with you? Obviously we'll send them to Recart. Now that you've learned a little bit about Recart's marketing, like, go look at it. Go see what it's like. So we send people there.
• 47:13
  Anywhere else we can send folks to check out Recart stuff or your personal stuff? Then go to either @AaronOrendorf on Twitter, X, whatever we're calling it these days. I'm also Aaron Orendorf on LinkedIn.
• 47:24
  I'm super low-hanging fruit. And if you wanna get into my world, go find something wrong or off with the Recart site or some sort of piece of feedback and bring that into the DMs. That will warm my heart.
• 47:35
  I am so grateful when people take that, that level of it's not bothersome, it's really helpful, and you will instantly endear yourself to me. If for whatever reason you wanna be endeared to me, you will. [laughs] Cool.
• 47:47
  I love that. I would encourage people to definitely check that out. Go follow Aaron on his social stuff. We'll link to that in the show notes. Aaron, thanks so much, man. Right back at you, sir. Thank you. Take care.
• 47:57
  [upbeat music]