Latest / Content, Briefly / Mint Studios: Araminta Robertson on measuring content marketing ROI

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Mint Studios: Araminta Robertson on measuring content marketing ROI · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  I'm a bit of a HubSpot nerd, and I know how to set up all the right reports, and it's, it's really cool to set up a report that they didn't even know was possible.
• 0:08
  So for example, in HubSpot you can set up a report where you track the deal size, so literally revenue, whatever, a hundred K, the name of the contact, you can see the first place that they...
• 0:18
  first page that they saw, you see any ads that they clicked, and then you can say, "Okay, well, this content helped bring in a hundred K," or whatever it is.
• 0:27
  So literally it's a report that allows you to see at a glance how much revenue our content helped bring in on a first touch basis, on a last touch, whatever you want to see.
• 0:35
  [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Really excited to have Araminta Robertson on the show today.
• 0:45
  She's the founder of a content agency called Mint Studios, which specializes in content for financial services and fintech companies.
• 0:52
  As you can imagine, we talk a lot about the process of niching down, why she did it, how that's been.
• 0:57
  We also talked about why and how she's recently rolled out PPC to many of her clients and how actually it's been a fantastic partner to the organic work that they do. We dive into reporting.
• 1:08
  Interestingly, and as you might imagine, these companies are very numbers focused and they care a lot about ROIs.
• 1:14
  She explains how she sets up reporting for each of her customers, even how she's able to track the ROI on each individual piece of content. So a lot to talk about there.
• 1:22
  She also agreed to do an AMA, [chuckles] so, uh, we'll be setting that up later for the Slack group, but there's a lot to unpack even beyond this conversation.
• 1:29
  As always, I really enjoyed this talk, and I hope you do too. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Animalz, the content agency that delivers growth outcomes for B2B SaaS companies.
• 1:39
  They've been in the game for a long time and have helped build household names like Amplitude, Airtable, and UiPath.
• 1:44
  What I've always loved about Animalz is their constant push to redefine what original and effective content marketing looks like, both in their client work and on their own blog.
• 1:53
  A great recent example of this is the Fraud Fighter's Manual they created with Unit twenty-one.
• 1:57
  It's a beautifully designed printed book packed with thought leadership from all the top experts in the fraud prevention industry. But it's not just an amazing piece of content.
• 2:05
  Animalz and Unit twenty-one designed a sophisticated distribution strategy that turned the manual into a sought-after asset in the fintech industry and helped generate millions in pipeline for Unit twenty-one.
• 2:14
  I highly recommend reading the full case study that they just published on their blog.
• 2:18
  It's a great read, and while you're there, you can check out lots of other valuable resources on thought leadership, enterprise content marketing, and much more.
• 2:24
  So just head over to animalz.co/jimmy, and you'll find everything there. That's Animalz with a Z.co/jimmy. Content Briefly is produced by our friends at Minutia.
• 2:34
  To learn more about their podcast production service, as well as their other adaptive content marketing services, check out minutia.com in the show notes. Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here.
• 2:46
  Very glad to be joined today by Araminta Robertson, founder of Mint Studios. We met briefly a couple years ago because you also run a Slack group for content marketers- Yeah... and I will definitely ask you about that.
• 2:57
  But first, Araminta, would you mind introducing yourself to folks who may not already know you? Tell us a little about who you are, what you do, and some of the work you've been up to for the past couple of years.
• 3:04
  Yeah, sure. I'm happy to be here. So my name is Araminta. I run Mint Studios. We're a content marketing agency focused on financial services.
• 3:12
  I'm based in Edinburgh in the UK, so that's in Scotland, but we have clients from all around the world, and our team is based mostly in the UK, but we do have some people in the US as well.
• 3:21
  In terms of what our agency does, we differentiate ourselves in three key ways. First of all, we're financial services focused, so we only work with clients in the financial services space.
• 3:32
  The second thing is that we're lead gen focused, so that means that we are held accountable by our clients to bring in MQLs, SQLs, revenue. Every single month we track and we report on that via content.
• 3:43
  And then finally, the last thing is that we take care of the whole content process.
• 3:46
  So we don't just do writing, we also do strategy, writing, interviewing, editing, publishing, and importantly every month, the reporting.
• 3:55
  So that's a little bit about our agency and happy to, to go into more detail as well. Yeah. Wow. My follow-up questions just on that one answer could- [laughs]... could easily fill an entire podcast.
• 4:05
  There's so much I wanna dig into there. Maybe first, financial services. Is your typical client like a wealth management office? Are there any fintech type companies?
• 4:14
  Or could you just kind of paint a picture of like- Sure... who your typical customer is? Yeah. So it's mostly fintech. There are some insurance companies, for example, and anyone in the UK will know confused.com.
• 4:25
  They're one of the biggest price comparison websites in the UK, so they're a client of ours, for example.
• 4:30
  But they can range from that all the way to a smaller fintech company that maybe could be a seed stage, could be Series A, Series B, even Series C.
• 4:39
  In the US, we've worked with companies like Persona, they're identity verification, so kind of fintech, and yeah. But so it's mostly fintech, and recently a lot of payment companies.
• 4:49
  So these are companies that help- Oh, interesting... tech companies basically with embedded finance and manage better their payments and other stuff like that. Okay. Very interesting.
• 4:59
  You know, most content agencies, I could probably name a dozen off the top of my head, but none are niched down. Really? Can you talk about your decision to do that? Was it deliberate?
• 5:09
  Did it sort of happen accidentally based on your own kind of background and subject matter expertise? Well, the main reason is because I kind of live and breathe fintech.
• 5:17
  [laughs] So I love this industry and, um, it's a long story and I won't go into the details, but I started my journey as a blogger. So one day at the age of eighteen, I realized I didn't know anything about money.
• 5:29
  And as m-many of us do, right? We don't get taught taxes and mortgages and how to invest in school. And at eighteen I was like, "Oh my god, I know nothing about this."
• 5:37
  And so I started a blog to kind of read a lot of books and educate myself, and that is how my journey into financial services started. I realized that I loved it.
• 5:44
  I loved writing about this, and it also got me into content marketing because when you start a blog, you start seeing that you're ranking for stuff and et cetera.
• 5:51
  Eventually, I started working in-house for a fintech company and then went freelance, and so it goes. I've always been in fintech and financial services, and there's just something about this industry that I love.
• 6:01
  I think one of the main things is it's an industry that makes impact.Right? Managing money is a huge deal.
• 6:07
  Helping someone save enough for retirement will make a big difference when they reach retirement age, or helping someone save to buy a house, or helping someone just understand, control money.
• 6:18
  And so I love this industry because you're really making an impact and you're really helping people, and especially Fintech, which is financial services and technology, is an industry that's trying to figure out how to use technology to better improve financial services and help people with the budgeting, with, uh, better understanding their customers, with, you know, retirement and all of that.
• 6:41
  So to answer your question, it was kind of by accident, but I've really enjoyed it, and I'm so far gonna stay-- we're gonna stay in financial services just 'cause it's an industry that we really enjoy, and, uh, yeah.
• 6:54
  Yeah. That's cool.
• 6:55
  And I actually find it to be very interesting that building out your portfolio of services with other things for financial services companies, rather than going after people ops or whatever the next vertical might be, right?
• 7:08
  So you mentioned PPC as you were introducing yourself. Maybe we just dive into that now.
• 7:13
  That is also, I won't call it unusual, that doesn't sound right, but most content agencies, again, they-they're heavily focused on organic.
• 7:20
  It's like all the things you can do without buying ads, you've chosen not to do that, and I'm curious about that. Yeah.
• 7:27
  I mean, this is something we've recently started doing, and the main reason is because it just makes sense. Like when you're creating content or doing SEO, you're targeting the same person as with PPC, right?
• 7:39
  Which is someone who's doing research online. It's the same person, right? Maybe the interaction is different. Yeah. Maybe even in the same place, I guess. Maybe even in the same place.
• 7:47
  And so a lot of our clients were asking us, you know, "We need help with this. Can you help us?" And so that's kind of how we started.
• 7:54
  And there's two main reasons that I think PPC complements content marketing really well. First of all is that it gets results a lot more quickly.
• 8:01
  As an agency, whether you like it or not, people are gonna calculate the ROI on, on the spend on you, right? So being able to bring in results sooner with Google Ads really helps with that.
• 8:11
  The second reason is we use Google Ads to test keywords. So say with SEO and content, I mean, if you've got a younger website, it can take a while, right, to rank. It could take weeks, it could even take months.
• 8:24
  With PPC, you're there immediately on position one. And so it's a quite a good way to test whether this keyword is even worth going after with SEO and content in the first place.
• 8:33
  So it complements really well our content marketing efforts in a way that it helps bring in results and understand better the customer or the target or the lead, and also that it helps us test keywords and therefore tweak our strategy and better target the right keywords.
• 8:48
  So that's kind of, uh, why we've been doing it. That's very interesting.
• 8:52
  I'm just sort of, as you're saying that, kind of laughing to myself a bit because I can't even tell you the hundreds of conversations I've had with various content people, and actually in my own agency days too, trying to convince people not to do paid and to- Mm.
• 9:05
  -spend their money on content marketing instead. But it's very interesting to hear you talk a little bit more about the holistic picture for your customers. Like what do your customers need?
• 9:14
  It's not that you have content, therefore they need content all the time, right? Like they need leads. How are you gonna get them, right?
• 9:20
  So you have more tools in your toolbox than just content, which I think is very interesting. But I also find it interesting that you're using the paid ads to... it's almost like an investigative process- Mm-hmm.
• 9:29
  -in a way to better understand, okay, what works. Before we spend a bunch of money tackling these keywords or doing this type of content, why don't we run a test and find out if it's worth doing?
• 9:39
  Can you talk a little bit about that? Like do you find yourself like either validating or kind of blowing up your own ideas based on things that you and the team see in the paid results?
• 9:48
  Yeah, I think and, and it's worth here kind of explaining a little bit because the key thing here is picking the right keyword, right? For both SEO content and PPC, the most important is the right keyword.
• 9:58
  If you go after the wrong keyword, then you're wasting a lot of time. And so the other thing that we realized is that we have a very thorough process for finding keywords.
• 10:06
  It can take two or three weeks or even more, and, and to be honest, it's a continuous process where we interview on our client's team a salesperson, product person, customer success.
• 10:16
  So we're doing in-depth interviews with various people on the team to understand who is their best customer, what are their pain points, why do they pick this product over another?
• 10:24
  So we're doing this really in-depth research, and we realized we've been doing it for SEO and content, but we can also use that for PPC, right?
• 10:32
  And we realized that there's quite a few PPC agencies that maybe aren't so in depth with that process.
• 10:37
  And by having that really in-depth process, we were able to focus on what's most important, which is getting the right keyword. Yeah, so we've done all this research, and we kind of have hypotheses basically, right?
• 10:49
  These are some keywords that we think will work quite well. These are others that might not work so well. And so we can use Google Ads to test those.
• 10:56
  So to answer your question, yes, it's been really interesting because we can say, okay... And it goes vice versa.
• 11:01
  So if content marketing is bringing in a good amount of leads, deals, whatever, we'll be like, "Okay, let's try that with PPC as well. Let's see what happens." And then vice versa. Oh, interesting.
• 11:11
  Also, if we see that, for example, one really interesting one, we were targeting a specific key phrase, and it was getting a lot of clicks and conversions, but the conversions were really low quality.
• 11:21
  They were all like Gmail addresses. And so we were like, "Maybe not worth going after this with content marketing," right? And I'm not saying that's not absolute, right?
• 11:28
  In some cases it might still be, because there's so much nuance in all these key phrases and keywords, especially in financial services.
• 11:34
  But that was a really interesting piece of information that if we weren't doing PPC, we wouldn't know.
• 11:40
  So it's just like the more information that you have, the more you understand your ideal customer, the keywords, and what they're searching for, the easier it is to do SEO content and PPC.
• 11:50
  So yeah, holistically, we found that, that, that's what works best. I love that. That's so interesting.
• 11:55
  You know, I'm going backwards a bit, but I did wanna ask you just at least quickly about the process of assuming you were freelancing on your own first and then decided to turn that-... overflow of demand into an agency.
• 12:07
  Is that what happened? And could you just give us a little bit of the origin story? So kind of that is what happened.
• 12:13
  What happened was I was a freelancer for a while, but I was kind of getting frustrated with the kind of content I was being asked to write.
• 12:20
  It was often this kind of thought leadership, surface level content that I just knew no one was reading, and also that I just knew...
• 12:27
  I knew deep inside that content can make such a big difference to a company, but this content that people were asking me to write, it was just not going anywhere.
• 12:34
  And so I went through a whole journey to figure out, okay, how can I help our clients use content as a tool to grow the company? And so there's a few resources, I'm sure you've heard of them.
• 12:45
  For example, Grow and Convert were incredible to help me figure out, like, a good model for this.
• 12:49
  Another book that I consider the bible of content marketing is They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, such an amazing framework for understanding how content marketing works. I've never heard of that book. Oh my God.
• 12:59
  Yeah. It's amazing. I'll have to check that out. Interesting. And I love it because it's all about content marketing, and not once does he mention SEO, which is... that's the thing, right?
• 13:06
  Content marketing is about education, building trust, and SEO is just part of that. But anyway, great book. And so based on those resources, I was like, "Okay, I think I have a model here."
• 13:17
  Because what I didn't want is to set up an agency which is basically outsourcing to other writers, right? I wanted something that actually made a difference to our clients.
• 13:25
  And so when I was like, "Okay, I think this is a model that could work," it's not something that can be done by yourself. I think any content person will know.
• 13:32
  Interviewing the expert, writing it, editing, figuring out the strategy, it's a huge job. And so it's just not something I could do by myself, and I was like, "This-- I need a team."
• 13:41
  And, uh, now I have an incredible team who all together we're able to help a client.
• 13:45
  Each client is allocated a strategist and a writer, and they're the ones working together very closely to help the client basically turn content into a channel that works really well with SEO, with paid ads.
• 13:58
  And so yeah, that's kind of, uh, the journey and where we are today. Okay. The next thing I wanted to ask you related to that is, um, this comes up actually quite a bit in the Slack community.
• 14:07
  You know, there's freelancers who say like, "Okay, what's next for me? Am I gonna be a freelancer- Mm. -for the next few years? Should I think about creating courses or e-books?
• 14:14
  Maybe I could try to build up more demand and subcontract. Maybe I wanna start an agency." The agency bit is really hard. It is. I mean, having worked at agencies, I know how hard agencies are.
• 14:25
  [laughs] In some ways you, you live and die by your standard operating procedures, you know, the relationships you build with customers, your ability to source good people to do the writing and strategy.
• 14:36
  Does that part of it come naturally to you? Because one thing I have found is that it doesn't necessarily come naturally to the kind of creative-minded folks who love to write and edit and kind of do the content part.
• 14:49
  Sometimes there's a very different skill set required to actually scale it. Yeah. No, definitely. I totally agree. And it's not for everyone, for sure.
• 14:56
  It's difficult because it will depend on each person, and there's no, like, right answer. What I will say, though, is I would not go back to freelance writing. I really enjoy having a team. I mean, it's just so...
• 15:07
  it's hard work what we're doing, especially when you're in an industry that is very numbers focused and maybe...
• 15:13
  Like, SaaS is very-- content is such a big part of SaaS and marketing, but financial services is not as intuitive, and so you have to know how to educate the client and prospects as well, and, and being able to see other people get excited about content, like people on my team, I mean, and learn about how to write in the right way.
• 15:32
  I think the most exciting part is they get so excited when I can say confidently that I've helped a company acquire customers with content. It's just such a big deal. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:43
  And, and, and they love that, and I love that as well. And so, yeah, basically, to answer your question, I don't know what the next step is. It really depends on what you like doing.
• 15:53
  But if you like working with others and if you like, I don't know, building those procedures or those SOPs, as you've said, then it could be an interesting-- can be an interesting path.
• 16:02
  But it is definitely not for everyone. There's ups and downs, a lot of them, uh, and it's all about whether you love...
• 16:08
  I think loving the work is really important, 'cause I'm still very involved in the day-to-day, and I do really enjoy doing it. I still love writing, and I still do some of the writing. So yeah, I don't know.
• 16:18
  It's a difficult question to answer because it really depends on the person, but it's good to try. You can always try and just be like, "It's not for me," and then scale back. So that is also- True...
• 16:27
  a good way to do it. True. True. I mean, once you have a single subcontractor, you're essentially an agency. Yeah, I guess. It gives you a taste of, of what that is like, even if it's at a smaller scale.
• 16:35
  I'm jumping around a bit, which I apologize for, but I'm curious, you, you know, you mentioned that your, your customers are very numbers focused. Mm.
• 16:41
  Does that also apply to the way that they scrutinize their spend with Mintz- Yes... Studios? You know, like, do they think about reporting an ROI- Mm-hmm... kinda more intensely than other SaaS companies? I would say so.
• 16:53
  Oh, definitely. I mean, that's what's interesting about fintech or financial services, is that the founder is typically a technical person.
• 17:01
  So either that means on the financial side, so they're an accountant, or maybe on the technical side, so they're a developer. And these people are naturally more numbers focused.
• 17:12
  And so I'm not gonna say every single client, but I have seen, and I have never really worked a lot in SaaS, so it's hard for me to compare, but from what I see, it's definitely, like, a, a numbers thing often, which is...
• 17:25
  it can be a good and a bad thing. Good in the sense that it forces you to be accountable for what matters, often.
• 17:31
  Bad in the sense that, of course, not everything with content can be measured, and brand does play a very big part in that. It also depends on the client that you're talking to.
• 17:37
  If they're very early stage, they're gonna care more about that ROI probably than if they're later stage and have a bigger content team. But I've definitely...
• 17:45
  I would definitely say that they are much more numbers focused than maybe another industry like, like SaaS. As you're explaining that, it's making more and more sense why PPC is actually- Mm... a perfect fit- Yeah...
• 17:55
  for what you do for your clients. What about the reporting? I mean, I'm assuming you do some kind of monthly or quarterly reporting for your clients.
• 18:02
  To whatever degree you're open to sharing, could you tell us what that looks like? Yeah, yeah, sure. So, well, first of all, it all starts with what is their objective?
• 18:10
  Is it five SQLs, for example, in a very specific vertical?Or maybe it's just one SQL, but we want a really big one, like a, a big bank or something. Or maybe it's just, like, 30. Like, it will vary.
• 18:24
  Usually it's, like, sub 100 because we're working typically with lead gen companies.
• 18:29
  So in, in PBC, you differentiate between lead gen, e-commerce, and SaaS, and we're in the lead gen world because obviously a customer for a payment company, there's a huge range. It can go from 1K a month to, like,
• 18:42
  you know, hundreds of thousands per month, right? So there's a lot of variety and, and usually a form submission is what you're tracking.
• 18:47
  And so typically what we report on is the contact, like number of contacts, number of MQLs, number of SQLs, so did this person actually express an interest in buying?
• 18:59
  And then we'll also track revenue, so that would-- I would call that business opportunity. So we won't track all the way till closed deal, not always because the sales cycles can be really long, like often a year.
• 19:11
  And so yeah, that's typically what we track on a monthly basis, and we try and keep the conversation very open.
• 19:16
  So every month we're saying, "Okay, here's what's working, here's what's not working, and then is this industry standard? Are we on the right path versus the industry and also versus our objective?"
• 19:26
  So that's kind of a bit of a, a summary. So then you're looking probably at a form fill. Are you looking at organic and paid traffic to that? Yes. And then also do you and your team get to see the form fills? Yeah.
• 19:37
  Meaning like,
• 19:38
  you know, if you get an email and it's, like, uh, someone from Morgan Stanley, you're like, "Oh, heck yeah, this is awesome," versus if it's a Gmail address, you say like, "Yeah, this is probably not that interesting."
• 19:46
  Yeah, yeah. We're in the HubSpot of every single strategy client because I just don't see how you can create compelling, relevant content without having an understanding of who you're targeting.
• 19:56
  And a big part of that is seeing. I love reading the inquiries because I think it's fascinating, right? What are the words that they're saying? What are their pain? What are they worried about?
• 20:05
  And you can see quite a lot of that, not just in the inquiry, but also in the journey that they went, right? In HubSpot, you can see the entire journey. Like what pages did they read?
• 20:12
  Maybe, like, product pages did they read? And I think ideally every content marketer should be seeing all that because it gives you a better sense of how our target market is navigating the website.
• 20:23
  And what's even more interesting is you can compare high quality to low quality. So a Gmail account, this is how this low quality, I guess, lead has interacted with the website.
• 20:35
  But this is what, I don't know, a huge bank, this is how they interacted with the website and the content that they were particularly interested in.
• 20:42
  And that's fascinating because then we can use that to direct the content strategy, and they can use it to direct their marketing strategy. It seems that big banks are really interested in X, Y, Z topic.
• 20:53
  Maybe we should create a webinar. Maybe we should do more content on this topic.
• 20:56
  So I would say it's absolutely necessary to be in the HubSpot and reading all of that and seeing the journey of the leads that you're bringing in, for sure. That's fascinating.
• 21:05
  Are you all setting up those HubSpot instances or do basically all of your customers already use HubSpot? So nearly all of them use HubSpot. If they don't use HubSpot... Yeah, actually, I'm trying to think.
• 21:17
  All of them currently use HubSpot. Some prospects do use, like, Marketo, but you can kind of do the same thing with Marketo. We don't set it up for them because typically they're, they already have it set up.
• 21:26
  But we do set up all the reporting. So I'm a bit of a HubSpot nerd, and I know how to set up all the right reports, and it's, it's really cool to set up a report that they didn't even know was possible.
• 21:37
  So for example, in HubSpot you can set up a report where you track the deal size, so literally revenue, whatever, a hundred K, the name of the contact. You can see the first page that they saw.
• 21:47
  You can see any ads that they clicked. And then you can say, "Okay, well, this content helped bring in a hundred K," or whatever it is.
• 21:55
  So literally it's a report that allows you to see at a glance how much revenue our content helped bring in on a first touch basis, on a last touch, whatever you wanna see.
• 22:03
  And they didn't even know that was possible, and that's really exciting to be able to, especially a contact person, to be able to show that to a contact person and they can finally say, "Oh yeah, my content is helping bring in X amount in deals."
• 22:14
  So- That is really cool. Yeah, HubSpot is amazing like that. You know, I'm embarrassed I've never used HubSpot, never even logged in. Oh, really? [laughs] I just never had a need.
• 22:21
  I mean, just I guess the type of work I've... I don't know, it just hasn't. It seems strange that I've worked in content for so long, and I've never used HubSpot. Um- Well, you should, you should set it up.
• 22:29
  Set it up for free for a super path even, and you'll see it's really, it's, it's amazing. I just love nerding out.
• 22:36
  You can spend hours in there if you're not careful, like just seeing how people are interacting with your content.
• 22:40
  I just feel like it, it brings me closer to the customers, to the target market, because I can understand better what they care about and what they don't care about. Yeah, yeah. That's really cool.
• 22:49
  That's really interesting.
• 22:49
  I can also imagine, I'm just imagining, like, the kind of technical founder thinking, "Okay, you know, we need to bring in an agency partner to help us with content," and then you come in and say, "Okay, well, we need your HubSpot because, like, we know how to prove ROI on our content."
• 23:04
  Mm. "And I'm gonna show you exactly how," which is probably not the conversation that they're having with other agencies. That's my guess is that reporting tends to be a weak spot in most agencies. Mm. I'm generalizing.
• 23:14
  I know that's not true everywhere, but it is sometimes difficult to get access to what you need access to, right? For sure. Or you need someone on the team who's really good at- Who's technical... building those reports.
• 23:24
  Yeah. So it doesn't just happen. You have to really make it happen, and that really puts you in a position to be a partner, not just a- Yeah... supplier of content. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, and it's a big deal.
• 23:33
  Like, if we're gonna help bring in business results, then we need to have visibility over that. And, and it benefits the client a lot because, you know, we can share our screen and show them.
• 23:42
  Like, for example, I'm doing workshops these days with clients where I... It's a one-hour workshop, and I, I just explain to them, like, "This is the kind of reports that you really wanna set up with HubSpot.
• 23:52
  This is how GA4 works. This is how, uh, Google Ads works." So it's kind of educating.
• 23:57
  A big part of what we do is not just we're not just gonna execute it for you, we also wanna help you do it yourself so that eventually you can create the content and you can set up the reports and kind of enable the client as well.
• 24:09
  And, and I will say, I don't know if we've got it all figured out for the reporting. We're currently working on it. We're, we're always working on it, on trying to improve it.
• 24:15
  One thing that-I think we all fall into the trap of this, which is just tracking or reporting too many metrics. And so a couple of months ago, me and a team member were like, "Okay, let's just dial this down a bit.
• 24:27
  Like, what matters?" And so now we start each monthly report saying, "Okay, what's working? What isn't? Are we on track?" Start with that. That's what really matters, and then we can go into the specifics.
• 24:39
  But it took-- it was a journey to get there. I'm not saying that it's perfect, and I'm sure there's still stuff that we can, we can improve. Really cool.
• 24:46
  I'm just kinda like flagging this for the listener because I think one of the easiest traps for content marketers to fall into is to live inside the content cocoon, where it's, like, warm and fuzzy, and we talk about keywords and page views and organic traffic and things like this.
• 24:58
  But having an understanding of exactly where content fits into the rest of the business, and, you know, I've never honestly really thought about it until you've described where PPC fits into this and how it can be- Yeah...
• 25:08
  such a good partner to your organic efforts. Something for content folks to think about, you know what I mean? Particularly at the moment as we record this in June 2024, like, who knows what's going on out there
• 25:22
  from an SEO perspective, like, kind of- True... rounding out your set of tools seems like a good idea kind of regardless of what direction the SEO wind is blowing. Yeah, I couldn't agree more, especially because
• 25:35
  if you think about it, Google Ads is Google's golden goose, right? They're never gonna get rid of that. So if you get good at that, then you'll always be able to eventually target a search audience.
• 25:45
  So I just think it's a good skill to know. It's also really fun. I don't know. I really enjoy it because you can learn about different strategies, and there's a whole world in there of, like... Yeah, I won't get into it.
• 25:56
  It's fun to also know that you can rank immediately on position one. [chuckles] Yeah, yeah.
• 26:01
  [chuckles] Like, as a content marketer, you're like, "Wow, I can just get a position one immediately with PPC," and so that's really exciting.
• 26:07
  But of course, as everyone knows, the problem with paid is that there is a ceiling, and you're only in position one if you're paying for it. So that's why content is still super important.
• 26:16
  That's what we tell our clients. Like, there's this kind of graph you can imagine. Paid first helps bring in the results, but then it kinda goes down, and then content starts to pick up as we get those rankings up.
• 26:26
  So they work really well, uh, together, for sure. Love it. Really cool. Great stuff. You know, I would encourage folks to go check it out. You know, go check out Mint Studios. Also, you have a Slack group. Yes.
• 26:36
  Is that specifically for content marketers who work or want to work in finance world? So it's for, uh, fintech marketers, so it's more general.
• 26:46
  I mean, fintech is already really niche, so fintech marketing is just, like, the next level.
• 26:52
  The reason I have a business partner, Annie, who-- why we set this up is because at the time, you know, I'm part of a lot of Slack groups, including yours, and I've always loved them, such a great way to learn about stuff.
• 27:02
  But back then, this is about two and a half years ago, there was a lot of groups for, for fintech and many groups for marketing, but no one was doing the two, and I think- Mm-hmm...
• 27:11
  a lot of marketers in this industry would agree with me, marketing of fintech is different. It's unique.
• 27:15
  You know, you're dealing with compliance, with regulations, and, uh, as someone I interviewed recently said, fintech is one of those few industries where marketing can tank the whole company.
• 27:25
  Like, if you do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, the regulator can tell you, "That's it. Shut down." So there's a lot of, like, pressure. There can be, anyway.
• 27:34
  And so these people-- Also, fintech is relatively new, so we wanted to create a place where people could just ask questions. And also, we're doing events a lot, which people really enjoy.
• 27:44
  So that's kind of why we started it, and it's, it's a lot of fun, and I, I really enjoy the events side of things as well. Very cool.
• 27:51
  So I always plug at this moment like, okay, now you, you've heard the story, now go check out the stuff. So we'll link to Mint. If it's okay with you, we'll link to the Slack group if people wanna check it out. Sure.
• 28:01
  Yeah. We'll link to your LinkedIn or Twitter, or is there anywhere else we should point people to follow along with you personally? Yeah, LinkedIn is probably best.
• 28:08
  Just look up Araminta Robertson, and, uh, yeah, that's where I'll be. Cool. Also, I'm gonna take this opportunity to thank you for your flexibility. I think we were supposed to get- Appreciate it...
• 28:17
  we were supposed to record this podcast when my son was born originally. Oh, wow, okay. Tricky timing. Uh, he's five months old now. [chuckles] So- Oh my God. [chuckles]...
• 28:25
  we've been trying to get this on the books for a long time, so thank you very much for your patience. I really appreciate it. No, I'm glad we made it. Yeah. Araminta, thank you so much. Great to chat.
• 28:34
  Uh, would love to do a follow-up sometime. Sure. Really, really cool to hear what you've built. [outro music]