Latest / Content, Briefly / OGM: Nigel Stevens on what SaaS buyers really want

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OGM: Nigel Stevens on what SaaS buyers really want · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
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• 0:36
  [gentle music] Everybody is running a different version of the same playbook. That's sort of what it feels like. And this stuff works to a certain extent.
• 0:46
  But is it possible that if we went out and asked people about it, that actually some of this stuff isn't working as effectively as we thought? So that was sort of the basis for it.
• 0:58
  [gentle music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Today, I'm talking with Nigel Stevens, who's the CEO and founder of a agency called OGM, stands for Organic Growth Marketing.
• 1:10
  He recently partnered up with John Collins, who previously led content marketing at Intercom and Ramp, to run a survey and then produce a report gathering data from software buyers and how SEO and content influence their purchasing decisions.
• 1:24
  So if you work in content marketing, these are people that you're trying to sell to. There's a lot of interesting stuff in here. For example, a lot of these respondents prefer video over long-form content.
• 1:34
  Many of them do not use podcasts as part of their purchasing decisions.
• 1:38
  All of them basically find Google to be the single most useful source of good information, but almost none of them trust B2B SaaS companies to produce content. So there's a couple different things going on in there.
• 1:49
  Nigel and I go through all of that, and we unpack some of the nuance behind that. Pretty interesting conversation.
• 1:55
  I would definitely recommend going and checking out the report, which will be linked in the show notes, so you can see some of this data for yourself. Hope you enjoy this episode and take care.
• 2:04
  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.
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  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.
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  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.
• 2:28
  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.
• 2:38
  Jimmy from Superpath here today with Nigel Stevens, founder and CEO of OGM, which stands for Organic Growth Marketing, right? It does. I love it. I appreciate how direct and simple that is.
• 2:49
  We have a whole bunch of stuff to talk about, including a survey that you just conducted and reported on that reveals some really, really interesting stuff about kind of the state of SaaS, SEO, and content marketing.
• 2:59
  So we'll get into all that. But maybe first, Nigel, could you just introduce yourself to the listeners? Yep. As you said, Nigel, I run Organic Growth Marketing. I think been doing it since about 2018.
• 3:10
  I ran SEO at BigCommerce in-house and then basically had a quarter-life crisis, left, started freelancing, and turned into OGM.
• 3:17
  Worked with a bunch of SaaS companies like Segment, Hotjar, Intercom, and focus on how do you grow organic revenue via SEO to SaaS companies when everybody's out there doing the same thing, and I think that's gonna be one of the topics of our conversation today, if I had to guess.
• 3:32
  [laughs] Yeah. So some of the data around kind of the blandness of B2B content is really interesting. What does your suite of services look like at OGM? Yeah.
• 3:40
  So basically, we partner pretty deeply with SaaS companies where they say, "Okay, we know SEO is an opportunity.
• 3:45
  We don't know how big it is, and we have a good brand, and we wanna do this right and not screw it up and be good to our brand and represent the product well."
• 3:53
  So we'll just partner really deeply with companies on SEO, work deeply with their content teams, and help them with all the weird stuff around SEO to make the magic work.
• 4:02
  Hopefully, that isn't too, uh, obfuscated of an answer. [laughs] No, no, that's good. I like it. So you partnered up with John Collins, formerly of Ramp and Intercom, recently to run this survey.
• 4:14
  The survey essentially is trying to understand, like, it's from the buyer's perspective, like how are people relying on search and content to make buying decisions in the SaaS world.
• 4:24
  I actually just went through it this morning.
• 4:26
  I pulled out a couple bullet points of just, like, some of the data I found to be particularly interesting, but maybe before we dive into some of the nitty-gritty of it, could you talk about the survey itself?
• 4:35
  Like, this came on my radar. It was kind of like everywhere.
• 4:37
  You know, we follow each other on social and stuff, so I see your stuff from time to time, but then, you know, all of a sudden, it's like this survey's all over the place.
• 4:43
  There's lots of cool data in there, and I'd be curious about some of the backstory, like why did you do it? And then any of the methodology behind it would be good, like who did you survey?
• 4:52
  Any other, like, behind-the-scenes type stuff that kind of sets the stage for the actual data. Yeah.
• 4:56
  So since ChatGPT came out, started thinking a little more deeply and existentially about search, content, what's the point of all this? And I was talking to people like John Collins, who you mentioned before.
• 5:05
  We were starting to kick around a hypothesis. Everybody's running a different version of the same playbook. That's sort of what it feels like.
• 5:12
  And this stuff works to a certain extent, but is it possible that if we went out and asked people about it, that actually some of this stuff isn't working as effectively as we thought?
• 5:21
  So that was sort of the basis for it, and to be honest, one of the questions we asked in the survey was, "Are you happy with Google search results?" And going into it, we were kind of expecting a bloodbath.
• 5:32
  I was personally expecting that people would say, "Oh my God, I hate the Google search results.
• 5:36
  All this content in here sucks," blah, blah, because that's what I'm always hearing from people on LinkedIn, from people in content, from people on places like Hacker News.
• 5:45
  And then one of the shocking things was the data came back, and it's like, well, Google is the number one place people go when they're looking for information early in the buying process, and eighty percent of people are satisfied or really satisfied.
• 5:57
  And that sort of seems like, oh, an SEO guy went out and got people to say that they love Google search. That's not what I was expecting at all, and the...
• 6:04
  I think the data later on, which you'll get to, kind of help provide color to that, but that's kind of the background and the hypothesis going in.
• 6:11
  That's so interesting because, so we ran this state of content survey right around the same time, and kind of for some of the same reasons, like I am hearing a lot, and I wanna put some data behind some of this anecdotal stuff I'm hearing, particularly about SEO.
• 6:24
  You know, one of the questions we asked, for example, was like, "Has SEO become more or less important to your content strategy over the last twelve months?"And we found that the answer is overwhelmingly it's become more important, which really surprised me.
• 6:35
  And we [chuckles] actually had a lot of people commenting afterwards being like, "This data's wrong." [laughs] And I, I was like, "It's not. Like, this is what people are saying."
• 6:42
  And I think there's kind of a vocal minority of people who are, I think, trying to... Maybe it's, like, sending off warning signals, like, hey, it's time to diversify. We can't all keep doing the same things, you know?
• 6:51
  But most people are still relying on SEO, even if it's, or hopefully if it's not, like, the only thing they're still doing. Yeah, for sure.
• 6:58
  And I think I would also relate it to when you talk to people who are super bullish on AI stuff, they're like, "Wait, you use Google and not Claude? Me and all my friends are using Claude."
• 7:07
  Like, when you're sort of in a community where people are talking about things a certain way, and you falsely start to extrapolate that onto the population.
• 7:14
  And what the survey data made me look at, and when you look at some of the underlying data, this was not a survey of people that work in B2B SaaS. This was a survey of buyers.
• 7:23
  And I think it's easy to conflate those two, because a lot of the time, some of the martech and stuff is for all these other B2B SaaS companies, but there's a lot of regular people outside the kind of tech bubble that we're in that are out there buying this stuff.
• 7:35
  And when you see some of their open-ended responses, it's a reminder of, oh, yeah, the world is diverse, and the people that you hear from in the tech world do not represent the average person whatsoever. Yeah.
• 7:46
  That's really interesting. I think the stat that I had pulled out related to this where that 80% of people said they're satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of search results, that's pretty darn high.
• 7:57
  Interestingly, though, one of the other questions that y'all asked was related to how much people trust B2B content specifically, and basically no one trusts [laughs] B2B content.
• 8:06
  And which struck me as interesting because, say you're initiating a search for a new piece of software.
• 8:12
  Obviously, a bunch of SaaS companies are gonna have content trying to get you to click and get on their product, but there's also a lot of other stuff that shows up in search results from review style sites, probably forums where people are discussing this stuff, subreddits or, you know, there's a lot of other stuff baked into the search results.
• 8:28
  So, like, we as content marketers, I think, sometimes miss that there's a lot else happening as people are doing research and trying to educate themselves on SaaS products and best practices and things like that.
• 8:39
  Yeah, for sure. And you used a term called banner blindness, which actually [chuckles] I hadn't heard before, but I really like that term.
• 8:44
  It's like it's kinda easy to ignore all these SaaS companies talking about how great their SaaS products are. [laughs] Yeah, I mean, I think in general, people get pattern recognition, right?
• 8:52
  And that's what banner blindness is, it's people got used to seeing banner ads at the top, and then their subconscious brain starts to tune it out 'cause they say, "Okay, that's a banner.
• 9:00
  It's trying to sell me something. How do I get to the content?" And this was one of the hypotheses going in.
• 9:05
  It was Google is sort of like a self-reinforcing mechanism where it rewards certain things, and then everybody copies each other, and then everybody then says, "Well, if Google is ranking this stuff, therefore, that's what people want."
• 9:17
  And I think that's kind of a false equivocation. Mm. That's very interesting.
• 9:22
  You know, one other question that's only tangentially related to content, but I had just jotted some notes down about was I found or I noticed some tension maybe around the topic of product-led growth, where quite a few respondents said the trial is the most important thing to them, but also that same group said they wanna talk to a salesperson.
• 9:42
  Do you have any thoughts on that?
• 9:43
  I mean, again, it's not directly related to the content and SEO bit of this, but I just find that when a company adopts a product-led growth motion, it puts a lot of pressure on content to deliver.
• 9:54
  Uh, but then to find out that, like, oh, these people actually wanna talk to sales too, I j- it, it's just sort of like how committed should these businesses be to PLG if at the end of the day, buyers actually do want some level of involvement from sales?
• 10:06
  Yeah, I mean, I think there's different ways to interpret this. Mine is different strokes for different folks. And it also depends on what are you buying and who's buying it.
• 10:14
  So I think there's some people who, when they want customer service, they call...
• 10:18
  I talked to a customer service leader at a company I used to work with, and he said, "Yeah, people are always talking about which form is better, but what I've learned after X many years of doing this is some people wanna call, some people wanna chat, some people wanna email, so the thing to do is give them different options."
• 10:32
  Now, that doesn't mean every business has to, you know, provide every single option, 'cause there's trade-offs and pros and cons to everything.
• 10:37
  But my own takeaway is, you know, we live in a world where everyone makes absolute black and white statements like, "This is the best. This is the worst." Mm.
• 10:45
  And for some products and for some people, the thing is, like, let me talk to someone who can help me understand and make me feel better. And then other people are like, "Kill me before I talk to a salesperson.
• 10:54
  I never wanna talk to a salesperson. I just wanna interact with stuff and learn on my own."
• 10:58
  So I guess when you adopt only one or only the other, it could work well, but you're always gonna be excluding somebody, so it's just that cost-benefit analysis of is that worth it for you?
• 11:07
  'Cause, you know, there's pros and cons to everything. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:10
  Going back to something you said a few minutes ago about how Google rewards people for certain behavior, and then everybody does it, there was for years and years, there's been this idea floating around in the content marketing world about the skyscraper technique, and, uh, you know, basically it's just, like, longer is better.
• 11:25
  You know, if someone's got 17 best things, you've got 20 best things, that type of stuff.
• 11:30
  And you all actually asked about that, whether or not buyers actually wanted long-form content, and it seemed actually that 51% of respondents said they [chuckles] think that most B2B content is too long and too difficult to navigate.
• 11:42
  Did you have it-- Was that surprising to you? No, not at all. I mean, I expected that.
• 11:47
  'Cause again, like, people make this false equivocation, in my opinion, where they say, "Because stuff is ranking a certain way, Google is this omnipotent power that knows exactly what everyone wants, and therefore, that's what people want."
• 11:58
  And then marketers have this fascinating ability to take their own life and interaction with the internet and information, compartmentalize it, and then go to work.
• 12:07
  And, like, I'm very guilty of this as well, but a lot of this stuff, when it's just big blocks of long text, like, what people should ask is, would you read that?
• 12:14
  Unless you were super interested and super motivated, and it was the best content in the world, like, some people actually read all the way through, but it's not the majority of people, in my experience.
• 12:22
  It's they're jumping all around, they're looking for stuff.
• 12:24
  So when me and John talked about this, one of our takeaways was it's not necessarily that long-form content doesn't have a time and a place, but it's especially the accessibility part.
• 12:34
  So one of the takeaways that I'm actioning from this is that it's our job as content people, SEO people, marketers, whatever, not just to publish the content, but to think really deeply and thoughtfully about the experience around it.
• 12:46
  Because if you have a big piece of content, even if it has the answers to people's questions, if they can't easily find it, think about how you interact with anything. I'm bouncing around, I'm looking at stuff.
• 12:55
  If I open up a video, if I'm five seconds in, and I'm not getting the answer that I want, I'm fast-forwarding, I'm looking for it. And I think marketers need to apply their own impatience and- Yeah. [chuckles]...
• 13:05
  whether diagnosed or not, ADHD from their own life into their marketing to think, I need to earn someone's attention. They're not just gonna sit here and read this by default.
• 13:13
  Something I've certainly noticed about content marketers, but I'm sure is true in every discipline, is that we sometimes find ourselves getting very comfortable in, like, this cocoon of content marketing, where we really, like, care about the craft of it, and we love the process of writing.
• 13:30
  Anyways, you can get-Sometimes a little too comfortable with that, and it could potentially kinda blind you from this larger experience that your hopeful end reader is in the middle of having.
• 13:40
  I'm sure that's true for designers, and developers, and salespeople as well, but I feel like every now and then everyone needs a, a little bit of a wake-up call.
• 13:47
  Like, and actually I think that, just as a kind of a side note, like Gong has been like the best thing that's ever happened to content marketers.
• 13:52
  [laughs] Like to have like direct access to people in a way that you just never did before, just like a small thing that has opened up just like such an interesting dialogue amongst content marketers.
• 14:01
  So anyways, going down a little bit of a rabbit hole there, but I have a couple more stats I wanted to ask you about, but maybe just to quickly break from that, is there anything, any data from this report that is already affecting the way that you're handling the accounts that you work with?
• 14:16
  Like are you changing any strategies or tweaking things based on what you've learned from this?
• 14:21
  I mean, one thing like I said is we're focusing on design, and this is one of those things that people like to talk about, like, you need a good design or user experience. It's easy to talk about and not do it.
• 14:29
  Like we've hired a designer, and we're actively integrating that into the way that we start projects, continue them, revisit them, all of that. So that's one thing.
• 14:39
  Another thing is we had this stat that maybe you were gonna ask about around video. Yeah. I don't have it in front of me, but it was something like 66% of people like prefer video clips to articles.
• 14:49
  And again, going back to the different strokes for different folks, I don't think that means video is 100% the right thing for everything, but it makes sense that a lot of people at least want it to get warmed up or something.
• 14:59
  So that's something that we're actively working with companies in our 2024 plans to, not as a nice to have, but we think it's going to become table stakes.
• 15:07
  And not only that, that as AI makes content easier and easier and easier to create, and the barrier to entry goes down, that you're gonna have to do stuff that's harder to recreate.
• 15:17
  Now, obviously you can do that with content, and people have to keep doing that, but another thing is every company I talk to is, "Oh, we wanna do more video, but we just haven't."
• 15:24
  That to me is an opportunity because it means- Yeah...
• 15:26
  there's still enough of a barrier to entry that you can do it and it's harder to replicate, versus you know that if you publish content, people are gonna go out and try to copy it.
• 15:36
  They might not do as good of a job, but they could still rank just as high as you and get traffic for it. Yeah, I love that.
• 15:42
  We had Greg Ciotti, who runs growth for a company called Kapwing, on recently, and kinda the theme of that conversation was video is the future of content marketing, but for real this time.
• 15:52
  [laughs] I feel like we've been saying that for a while. And one of the things he pointed out which I thought was very interesting is that video, you can't fake it. Actually, a lot of content marketing you can fake.
• 16:01
  Yeah. You could hire a ghostwriter. Not that there's something wrong with that, or like you can outsource and get hundreds of articles.
• 16:07
  And video just sort of forces you to present information in a very specific way, which generally actually is more focused on the viewer than I think the way that we often approach written content.
• 16:19
  Anyways, it has me thinking quite a bit actually about how we ought to be using video, 'cause we're not really doing anything. That's a good way to put it. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah.
• 16:26
  Because it is tr- like, that's the thing, like the barrier to entry with text is low. So there's a whole bunch of ways for a company to just, eh, like you like vomit out content, and it's there. Yeah.
• 16:34
  I mean, to be fair, with AI, there will be ways to do, do that with video, and then people will start ignoring those, and we'll be having this conversation about video in however long.
• 16:42
  But we're not there yet, so that's a good way to put it. Totally. You know, one thing I noticed, Nigel, when I was on the OGM website earlier today is that I don't think you have a blog, or if you do, I didn't see one.
• 16:53
  It looks like you have one piece of content, and it's this report. Is that true? This is true. I am not following my own advice. I think that's okay.
• 17:00
  I feel like most professional services you don't, 'cause it's just different business. I feel like there's a lesson there too, which is like low volume, high impact. It still works, you know?
• 17:09
  But going back to the video thing we were just talking about, I was quite surprised actually at how many buyers seem to favor video but don't necessarily think of podcasts in the same way.
• 17:22
  And I'm curious your thoughts on that. Like is it simply a matter of the medium? Like, no one subscribes to a podcast to learn about a SaaS tool. At least I don't think they do.
• 17:30
  Like, they sort of serve a different purpose, whereas video can be a little bit more on demand. Is it that simple, or is there more nuance to the responses related to video and audio?
• 17:39
  I mean, that's more or less my thought. I mean, the thing with a podcast is it feels like more of a commitment. It's like a short podcast is, what? 25 minutes or something.
• 17:47
  And the question we asked specifically was, or the statement that you could agree or disagree with is, "I find short video clips to be more engaging than text articles."
• 17:54
  And then there was a couple other things around video. But my own interpretation of that is it comes down to that attention thing.
• 17:59
  It's I can watch something and in two minutes figure out if I like this, if I wanna learn more, if I wanna go deeper, all of that, versus a podcast is like, you know, you're listening to a conversation.
• 18:09
  Even really engaging conversations, there's a lot of filler stuff, whereas short videos are kind of optimized for I'm gonna cram as much information down your throat as I can in a very short period of time, and the whole point is to engage you for a further action.
• 18:24
  So- Yeah... I interpret it as a continuation of just attention spans. People are bombarded with information. They have all these different options, whether in their personal life, business life, or whatever.
• 18:33
  For a podcast, if I'm gonna listen to a business podcast, I'm not gonna listen to this fantasy football one or this one about politics or something else.
• 18:40
  But if I just watch a quick video, that's not necessarily replacing anything. I can just figure out if I wanna do more. That's my own interpretation of it. Yeah, totally. That makes sense.
• 18:48
  Just purely anecdotally, I am in the process of adopting a few new SaaS tools myself as we speak, and video has been extremely important in that process.
• 18:56
  So one is a tool called Motion, which is a project management and kind of time blocking/productivity tool. And like video's the only thing I really cared about.
• 19:04
  Like, I just wanna see what it looks like and see how it works. Then there's another. We're getting set up with a, an affiliate SaaS tool so that Superpath members can become affiliates.
• 19:13
  And same thing, it's like I just need to know how this works.
• 19:15
  Like, of course I'm gonna compare some of the features versus some competitors, but, like, I need to see it before I put in the credit card number and start actually using it.
• 19:24
  I mean, it's about the visual part, I would guess, and then also about the time to value. Like, I can quickly understand this and I can see it versus, you know, listening to something, reading a long thing.
• 19:33
  Like just tell me what I need to know. Yeah, totally.There was another thing I wanted to ask you about, which was down-funnel content. I thought this was really interesting.
• 19:41
  I think that for a long time, content marketing has primarily served the top of the funnel. It's like the way you kind of initially get people's attention.
• 19:50
  I'm oversimplifying it, but I think that's how a lot of companies have treated it. But in the survey, you actually found that quite a few people want down-funnel content.
• 19:57
  Like, as an example, they wanna understand how the software integrates with other software in their tech stack, things like that.
• 20:04
  Was there anything kinda beyond the, I guess, somewhat obvious discovery, like, people want this, that you found to be interesting, or that you found that companies are not doing a very good job of serving these buyers with?
• 20:16
  Yeah, I've thought a lot about this, and one thought I have is that it partially comes down to incentives.
• 20:21
  And when you look at how are content marketing people goaled, I'm sure you've talked about this on podcasts, had different people on or whatnot, but a lot of the time it's traffic, right?
• 20:29
  It's like we have some type of traffic goal. And that's sort of... It's not a good alignment of incentives.
• 20:34
  Like, it makes sense as one goal that you should want to do, but I think that's part of the reason why everyone is trended towards, when you look up any kind of top-of-funnel term in SaaS, it's just every company is going after it.
• 20:45
  It's like every company in the vertical and then HubSpot and a bunch of... And Zapier and a bunch of other big companies, they're all writing about it.
• 20:51
  And I think part of it is, like, the way executives often think about it is, you know, it's a little bit outdated, and they say, "Okay. Well, we need this much traffic, and then we're gonna convert this much of it."
• 20:59
  Yeah. Not really necessarily thinking about the funnel and how not all traffic is created equal. And I don't mean that to bash people.
• 21:05
  I mean, there's people that are much smarter than me doing a whole bunch of other things, so you have to kind of simplify every channel to try to do something.
• 21:11
  But yeah, I think a lot of it is just incentives, and content marketers are incentivized on traffic, and then people are pushed towards creating things that are gonna create all this traffic, but then simultaneously they might have some sort of lead gen number, and then these two different goals end up being in conflict.
• 21:26
  So that's not exactly the question you asked, but that's sort of one thing I was thinking about in response to it. Yeah, that's interesting.
• 21:33
  I'm curious, breaking from the data for a moment, what has the last 12-ish months been like for you and OGM, and how are you feeling about the coming 12 months?
• 21:43
  And I ask that just because, so w- like I said, we recently ran this survey to try to put some data behind the way people are feeling, which is, like, there's been a lot of disruption, chaos, uncertainty, pessimism in some cases.
• 21:55
  Like, it's been kind of a crazy year. So I'm just curious, like, how has it been for you? Like, and how are you feeling about the next year? Yeah, for sure.
• 22:02
  So I mean, luckily for us, like, we've been fine in a good spot, I think largely because we have, like, a core customer base that we've worked with- with a while.
• 22:09
  And fortunately, we, you know, we've had some wins over the years, and we've kept getting stuff in the door.
• 22:14
  I know some people have had a tough year, but my whole feeling this whole year has been that, like, the world, not that it stopped, but you sort of had COVID, and then 2021 was gangbusters.
• 22:25
  2022, it started to turn a little bit. 2023 seems to be not just for content or SEO or marketing, but just in general, everyone has been nervous, not knowing what's gonna happen.
• 22:34
  There's gonna be a recession that starts in five minutes that hasn't started, but some people feel like it has. And I don't know. I don't pretend to be smart enough to understand these things.
• 22:43
  But it seems like the last year has sort of been like we've been in a holding pattern, where, like, okay, companies are doing stuff, but not moving a lot. Everyone within companies is kind of nervous.
• 22:53
  Now, going into next year, it feels like people are sort of cautiously creeping towards, okay, I think things might be normal, but then, you know, again, well outside of marketing there's a lot of weird things going on with the world.
• 23:04
  So I'd say I'm personally cautiously optimistic, but ready for the world to get weird and then adjust as need be. But- Yeah. [laughs]... I'm not naturally an optimistic person, so we'll see what happens with the world.
• 23:17
  Yeah, yeah. Totally. I feel like cautiously optimistic is kind of the vibe we pulled from our survey as well. Mm-hmm. We asked people, like, "On a scale of one to 10, how excited are you about the future of content?"
• 23:25
  And the median response was seven, which was, like, actually a little bit better than I thought.
• 23:31
  But then, like, kind of in talking to more people and sharing that data around, people have a sort of a similar sentiment as you. Like, "Well, it's not as bad as it was six months ago.
• 23:39
  You know, things do seem to be settling down," all of which is great.
• 23:42
  I am curious, as you're talking to your clients and just, like, peers in the industry about what their growth plans are gonna look like next year, like, the thing that everyone seems to be saying is, like, diversification.
• 23:54
  Don't rely too heavily on any one thing, partially as a way to just hedge your bets 'cause we don't really know, and I feel like some of us have just been caught depending too heavily on algorithms, whether it's social, whether it's Google, or probably for some companies even, like, email.
• 24:09
  But it's kind of, or at least personally for me, I find it overwhelming to think about, like, okay, diversification. Does this mean we just have to do everything? Like, do we need to have video?
• 24:18
  Do we need to have a podcast, some SEO, some thought leadership, case studies, whatever, fill in a dozen other marketing channels?
• 24:25
  Or is there kind of a lens we can look at this through that kinda helps simplify and clarify it for the people responsible for making these decisions?
• 24:33
  Anyway, a really long question, but I guess is diversification the thing heading into next year? I'd say yes and no.
• 24:39
  Basically, I'll explain the way I'm thinking about it, which especially from a search perspective, like, I could see a wide variety of outcomes next year.
• 24:46
  I don't know if you saw, like, yesterday Google announced all these new features. They're like, "We're gonna have notes in the SERP."
• 24:51
  That seems like a disaster waiting to happen to me, a bunch of randos on the internet annotating search results. Good luck figuring that out, Google. But they're gonna put authors in there. There's SGE.
• 25:02
  It seems to me like Google is kind of acting from a place of, like, they've never felt an existential threat like this before with LLMs, OpenAI, all this stuff, and they are trying to get ahead of it, and they might be willing to risk a little bit of their core business.
• 25:15
  So in that way, in a year, SEO could look a lot different, and it wouldn't surprise me. It also wouldn't surprise me if things move super slow and things aren't that different.
• 25:24
  So the way we're trying to think about it is, okay, what's gonna be true now, and what's gonna be true if all the most accelerated hypotheses come true, and search is changing, people aren't going to Google as much or whatever.
• 25:36
  So one thing is depending less on top-of-funnel content. One mantra we have going into this next year is, with no exceptions, content has to serve one of two purposes.
• 25:45
  It has to show the value of the product, or it has to leave an impression and build credibility.
• 25:51
  And that sounds like obvious fluffy marketing stuff, but in reality-A lot of content falls in between that, where it's not really showing the value of the product, and is just sort of regurgitating commoditized information.
• 26:03
  So we wanna do that, and then if it turns out that you can still get a bunch of traffic, I still think that's the smart, right strategy, because I do think that a lot of this sort of broad traffic is probably not driving a bunch of business results, and not worth the effort.
• 26:18
  And at the end of the day, if attention is the number one hardest thing to get, then you wanna be trying to get that. And then the same thing with video.
• 26:24
  If it turns out in a year or two years that search has really changed a lot, it's hard to imagine a world where video isn't valuable.
• 26:32
  And once you have video assets, you can chop them up, put them on different platforms, then you're subject to those algorithms, but that's a whole different thing. At least you're diversifying your risk.
• 26:41
  So I think in a way, maybe my answer is yes, but I, I'm not quite thinking about it as far as diversification. It's just what makes sense now and in the future as much as we can guess now.
• 26:52
  But don't do things that we think could become outdated quickly, or that probably aren't even the smartest thing to do now. Yeah. I think that makes a ton of sense.
• 27:00
  I am curious how all these changes are going to affect not just the way content teams kind of roll out their strategy for next year, but what demands it puts on the people responsible for that work.
• 27:11
  So like in the content marketing space, there was this huge wave of layoffs in the spring and kinda into the summer. Luckily, that has calmed down quite a bit.
• 27:18
  But I do think that as some of these companies start hiring, I think the roles potentially look quite a bit different than they did prior to all this.
• 27:24
  Like, as companies pursue, in some cases, new things, in some cases, kind of back-to-basics style marketing, there's a silver lining here, which is I think content marketing has the potential, not guarantee, but has the potential to be a lot more interesting a year from now than it is today.
• 27:39
  Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think there will be a lot more not interesting content marketing due to all the reasons. Yeah. But there will also be more interesting content marketing that will rise to the top.
• 27:52
  That would be my guess as well. Yeah. Love it. Cool. I think that's probably actually kind of a good place to wrap up. We're gonna send people to the report.
• 27:59
  We'll put a link, obviously, in the show notes so they can go check it out themselves.
• 28:02
  I would highly recommend if you are trying to sell a SaaS product, that you go read this because these are your buyers, and there's a lot of really useful data in there.
• 28:10
  So thank you for doing it, Nigel, and thanks for coming on to talk about it too. I really appreciate it. Yeah, for sure. This was fun, Jimmy. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Can we send folks...
• 28:17
  We'll obviously send them to OGM. Can we send them to LinkedIn, Twitter, personal website, or anywhere else? Yeah. I guess, yeah, to, to your point about my thin website, I'm also not a very good marketer.
• 28:27
  I just have a personal LinkedIn, company LinkedIn. Come find me there, and yeah, feel free to reach out. Okay, cool. Awesome. We'll leave links to all that stuff. Nigel, thanks again. Yep. Take care. Take care.
• 28:36
  [outro music]