In this episode, Todd Clouser and Tom Hunt discuss the rise of B2B creators as influential promoters. They emphasize blending informative and entertaining content, connecting with the audience, and intelligently promoting products. Todd shares expertise in team management and successful content series. Tune in for valuable insights on B2B influencer marketing.
In today’s digital world, businesses are constantly looking to create content that resonates with their target audience. This is especially true in B2B marketing, where the stakes are high and the competition is tough.
However, with so much content being produced, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of your target audience. Balancing creativity with product integration is a complex task that requires a deep understanding of your audience and the ability to create content that is both engaging and informative.
Todd Clouser, a renowned creative consultant and thought leader, has spent years working with businesses to help them strike the perfect balance between creativity and product integration in their content creation efforts.
In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the insights he has shared on this topic and how they can be applied to your B2B content creation strategy. Understanding the Importance of Creativity in B2B Content Creation Creativity is an essential element of any successful B2B content creation strategy. It is the key to capturing the attention of your target audience and differentiating your brand from your competitors.
A creative approach can help you to create content that is memorable, impactful, and relevant to your target audience. Todd Clouser emphasizes the importance of taking a creative approach to B2B content creation. He believes that businesses that prioritize creativity in their content creation efforts are more likely to succeed in the long run. According to Clouser, “Creativity is the fuel that drives successful B2B content creation.
It’s what sets you apart from your competitors and what makes your content stand out in a crowded marketplace.” Integrating Your Product into Your Content While creativity is essential, it is equally important to integrate your product into your content.
After all, the ultimate goal of B2B content creation is to generate leads and drive sales.
Therefore, your content must showcase your product or service in a way that is informative and persuasive. Todd Clouser believes that product integration is a delicate balance that requires careful planning and execution. He suggests that businesses should focus on creating content that is both informative and engaging while also showcasing their product or service. According to Clouser, “The key to successful product integration is to make it seamless and natural.
Your product should be an integral part of your content, not an afterthought.”
Tips for Balancing Creativity and Product Integration in Your B2B Content Creation Now that we’ve discussed the importance of creativity and product integration in B2B content creation, let’s explore some practical tips for balancing these two elements.
1. Understand Your Audience The first step in balancing creativity and product integration is to understand your audience.
You need to know who they are, what they’re looking for, and what motivates them. This information will help you to create content that resonates with your target audience while also showcasing your product or service.
2. Define Your Goal Before you start creating content, it’s essential to define your goal.
Are you trying to generate leads, drive sales, or build brand awareness?
Your goal will influence the type of content you create and how you integrate your product into it.
3. Brainstorm Creative Ideas Once you understand your audience and define your goal, it’s time to brainstorm creative ideas. Think outside the box and consider different formats, such as videos, infographics, and podcasts. Get creative with your storytelling and find ways to make your content engaging and memorable.
4. Plan Your Product Integration As you’re brainstorming creative ideas, it’s important to plan your product integration.
How will you showcase your product or service in your content?
What features or benefits will you highlight?
Make sure your product integration is seamless and natural, and avoid coming across as too salesy.
5. Test and Iterate Finally, it’s essential to test and iterate your content creation strategy. Analyze your results, track your metrics, and make adjustments as needed.
Continuously improve your content creation efforts to ensure that you are striking the right balance between creativity and product integration.
Balancing creativity and product integration is a complex task that requires a deep understanding of your audience and the ability to create content that is both engaging and informative.
By following the tips and insights shared by Todd Clouser, you can create B2B content that stands out from the crowd and drives results for your business. Remember to prioritize creativity, plan your product integration carefully, and continuously test and iterate your content creation strategy to achieve success in the long run.
Thanks for listening and hit me up if you have any questions!
I didn't get hired because I already had this huge following. I got hired because when I went through the interview process, my whole pitch was like, Listen, my strength is that I'm actually really good at making other people into influencers. Hello and welcome to this episode of Confessions of a B2B Market. It's a big one. We have arguably the funniest guy in marketing on the show, Todd Klauser.
He works in marketing at Lavender, but his actual role is more of a creator manager.
Yes, that's right. Lavender. Snapping up B2B creators is Todd's job to make them famous. So in this episode, we're gonna jump into exactly what his role is, how he's doing that and getting like, really specific about the future of creators in B2B massive episode. Before that, we have to give a big shoutout to our sponsors. Do USA is happening very soon.
May the 31st to June, the second in Austin, Texas.
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A. It has the highest concentration of sass decision makers of any SAS event in the world B. There's human connections, not just meetings. The whole thing is set up to enable you to create connections with your fellow SAS enthusiasts. And then finally, we have actionable content for companies at every stage. That is where you should go. We'll have a link below or you can just google sass dot USA.
But no, actually, don't do that because we're gonna have a link below. That's gonna give you a significant discount. So go and check that out. Right now. Let's jump into the episode. Todd. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
So if I was to call you the funniest guy in B2B marketing, what would you say?
I think Will Aiken might have something to say about that. But I I don't know if I've consumed any of his stuff, but I don't think he's as funny as you.
So what?
We'll do anyone listening?
If you don't know who Todd is, we link below. But I think your tiktok is probably the best place for people to find your funniest stuff.
Would you agree?
Yeah. Tik tok or LinkedIn. LinkedIn typically has a little more education thrown in there, but yeah, either one OK to check out the Tik Tok because literally, absolutely hilarious. And so what we're going to dig into today is, I guess, what kind of what you do, which is B2B influencers or you are an influencer.
And so we've got a whole road of questions we're going to go through to understand why this shift is happening, what your thoughts are on it and more tactical stuff. If there's a B2B leader listening that wants to embrace this wave of creators.
Yeah, let's do it.
So first on a set stage like Why do we think creators are now moving into B2B?
Obviously, it's been a thing in B to C for a while.
Yeah, I think that's kind of it. The exact same thing is happening now in B2B. That's been going on in B2B or in B to C for so long. And it's because I think with the emergence of, like specifically LinkedIn becoming more of a content platform than what it used to be, you kind of started to see this slow emergence of creators.
So people were kind of sick of companies, just like feature dumping and all that kind of stuff with, like, their typical ads and all that.
So, like you started to see people sharing stories of like how they use things and how they manage teams using different products and blah blah, blah. And then you started seeing like people taking advantage of that and coming out with, like, the fake stories.
And then you saw people like me who kind of me merge those two together and, like, tried to base some things and insights but also use, like these outrageous stories to ground those insights. And like as we started building audiences, I think leaders within these companies, same thing that they didn't b to see a decade ago was like, OK, we can take advantage of these people. They're these influencers, so to speak.
But they're talking about like software like this has never happened before.
Like, how do we leverage this?
And I think that's what we're starting to see now with, like influencers starting to pop for sure like you had. I think you still have the worst master in the World Series.
Yeah, so that was an interesting one and how it started because, like if you followed my stuff from like a year ago when I first started doing B2B entertainment, the series were, for the most part very involved. I had several different series and they would take me like 3 to 4 hours to shoot, edit, release, do the whole thing. And that was on top of like, my regular job.
So, like it started to, like, pile up like I could only do maybe one, maybe two a week, But I wanted to do more.
So I was like, OK, like, how do I figure out?
How do I make this as low effort as possible, but still create something that resonates?
Still have it like decently high quality, and I kind of leaned into, If you remember those old dose's most interesting man in the world campaigns, that's what it's based in. And I just did the worst marker in the world because at the time I was working at Refine Labs and, like our whole narrative was like there's a bunch of these outdated tactics like Here's how we view the world.
So, like I personified myself as the worst marketer in the world, doing all these outdated tactics, and I did it in the same format as the commercial. So it resonated with people and it still got our message across.
So, like it was again a blend of, like, the insights with, like, the entertainment.
So, yeah, I feel like we're gonna get into this later. But the key here is like getting that attention, but ensuring you're, I guess, ideally influencing people as well at the same time to come and buy the software. But we're gonna get into that later.
So if a B2B leader is now looking to leverage somebody that has the skills to build an audience, and I guess the audience like, how would they go about doing this?
I think there's a couple ways you can do this. You can actually build out like an internal team, which is like you hire creators to be on the team, which is the route that we went with lavender, and I can dive into that a little bit. Or you can outsource the creators.
So your typical influencer model, where, like you pay per post or you pay like a retainer and they owe you X amount per month, whatever. But the way that I think about it. And there's also a blend too, right the way I think about it is when you're building out a team. So let's say like at lavender, we built the marketing team from scratch.
So when we built out the team, we found people that filled the role that we needed, but they were also creators. Like that was a huge bonus because of the mindset of the company. Like we're very content first company. So we didn't hire Like, for instance, I didn't get hired because I already had this huge following.
I got hired because when I went through the interview process, my whole pitch was like, Listen, my strength is that I'm actually really good at making other people into influencers like my whole background YouTube. Like all these other things. Before I got into B2B, Sasse was taking other people and making them into influencers. So that was kind of my pitch.
I was like, Listen, I wanna be what I call like the creator manager, and I'm gonna come in and we're gonna make our sales guy an influencer. We're gonna make different people on the marketing influencers we're gonna make.
I mean, will all Red was already an influencer, but like my pitch was like, I'm gonna make all these people influencers And that's the reason I got hired. My audience was just kind of proof that, like, you could do it, I can do it for myself. I can do it for other people.
So, like when we're looking at roles, it's like, OK, so that was how I got hired. And then let's say we're hiring an S d r like for me. I'm going to. And if I was in charge of S d r hiring and I would say like, OK, we need an S d r.
Obviously the S D R has to be good at their primary role, But like a secondary I'm looking at, Can this person and are they willing to create?
Because I understand in my role, selfishly, I'm trying to influence other people as they're hiring, too. My goal is to make everybody on this team an influencer. I want them to hire people that will help me achieve that goal. But then once we fill those slots, let's say we hire an s d r their creator.
We want more S T r s more S d r creators, but we don't necessarily have budget or a need for all these new S D. R s. That's when I'm gonna start outsourcing. And that's when I'm gonna start building like this external team. So my entire internal team is kind of what I want.
I don't need any more sales people in that role, but I want more sales people in that creation role because we sell sales software. So now I'm gonna go out, and I'm gonna start looking for, like, the traditional B to C style influencer where, like, I'm paying them per post or like, per series, and we're not doing that yet, But like that's where I see most companies going.
And then we can talk about how to do that.
Yeah, Yeah.
I wanted to dig in because actually, before you're in B2Bs, you're in welding, right?
And so did you make other people famous in the welding space?
I did YouTube in the welding and fabrication space for 10 years, and I showed up on camera one time in a 10 year YouTube career. So I was the everything other than the face on camera.
So, like I managed the community, I managed sales and marketing. I was filming, editing, engaging with people on the back end. Everything that wasn't happening in front of the camera was me. But the goal was to make people on the other end think that they were engaging with the face of the series.
So, like I had to learn all the information that they were talking about.
I had to learn, like what the community would agree with or disagree with because, like in that space similar to B2B sas, like there's 100 ways you can skin a cat right?
And people are very like set in their ways on how they think about certain things.
So, like, if we're recording a video and my subject matter expert says like X is how you do this, I would often say, like, Hey, man, like you're gonna get trolled really hard if you say that because I've been doing this for 10 years, I know what people respond to what they don't like.
Maybe we reword that like this, and then we would do that so, like, the goal for me was to not know the information better than my subject matter expert, but know the community better than my subject matter expert. So I could kind of guide them in how to speak to them.
Got it?
And how many people did you make famous on YouTube in the welding space?
So in my career, in the welding space directly, that worked on, like, my team, my channel. We had three posts, but then we also after that we were the largest YouTube channel in that space.
So, like we worked with a lot of other channels to do collaborations and kind of build partnerships and things like that, but directly working day in and day out with, it was three people got it. So I just wanna break these roles down. You're saying there's the creative manager. There should be a role in a B2B company now, presumably be sitting within the marketing function.
Their job is to help the other creators in the business build their audiences.
Yeah, so the role of the creator manager and this is tough sometimes because unless you're and even if you are a marketing software. You're still gonna probably be utilising like your sales team and customer success team because they know the product really well. So it's tough because the creator manager is gonna sit on the marketing team.
But the people that they're managing, it's not like a typical manager where it's like, OK, I sit here and I have four people beneath me and like they report up to me and the creator manager role, it's like, OK, I'm a creator manager probably like a team of one in the sense that nobody reports directly to me.
But I'm managing with air quotes like someone on the sales team and someone on the customer success team and someone on the marketing team from a content perspective. So like it's difficult because those people are all really busy.
So like, for instance, as a marketer think about trying to get like a sales person or someone in customer success to help you with one piece of content, let alone like do it every single week is difficult because it's like I don't have time. I have my actual job that I have to do, so you have to kind of make it as low lift as possible.
So, like as an example, a series that I do with my a E. We meet once well, now twice a week because the series has taken off. But initially we met once a week for 20 minutes. All he had to do was come and like it's an email rewrite show.
So, like I would get the email, I would kind of send him the bullet points. Like all this, all he had to do was show up, rewrite the email. It was a 20 minute meeting once a week and like the show has done so well that we're actually like in Season two, scratching the whole like let's record this over zoom and just kind of like make it like the low effort edit.
And now, like we're actually like we got an Air B N B. We're going to shoot it in person. We're bringing in a camera crew, and that happened over the course of 20 episodes. We do two episodes a week.
So, like in over the course of 10 weeks, we've seen people come in on self reported attribution from the show like Convert From the Show What's the name of the show?
It's called three Minute sales School.
All right, guys, the host is Mike Wonder Mike Wan. We can find that on LinkedIn.
Yes, we'll link to it below.
Is there like a landing page on the lavender site, or is it just on LinkedIn?
There's not right now, but as sometime in June, we're launching. I'll tease it out. We're launching our own streaming service type of platform where we're creating all of these very high production series style shows that you might see on, like a Netflix or prime, but specific to B2B. So you'll be able to binge all the episodes there.
Sick?
Yeah.
Yeah, I've seen Paddle do this.
Have you seen their version of this?
Yeah, it's pretty cool. I have seen theirs.
Yeah, they did a really good job at it. So much to dig into here, but I actually wanted to because you mentioned it. This show sounds very appealing, so But just from the context of the creator, Right. So you're the creator manager. You're supporting the creator, which is the A E. And so you're just doing all the production of the show.
He jumps on does his magic and you just that's a zoom call.
And then are you both posting that, or is it just he posting that right now?
It's just him again. My goal is I put out my own type of series, but in on the same note. I've built my audience over the past couple of years as a marketing audience. Lavender.
Right now, primary target is sales people.
So, like, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm a sales influencer and can, like, speak on the same level as, like, really high level sales people. So we create the content, he puts it out. Some of it goes out through the company page, but again, my goal is to make them look really good.
So, like, we can talk about this if you want. I promote them a little differently. So instead of me actually sharing the show like the final episode, what I do and you may have seen some of this I put out one today is I've essentially built like a old school like W W e style beef with Mike, who's my host.
And the whole point of that is I talk about this a lot in content that you should embrace your trolls and you should embrace your detractors, so to speak. And a lot of people one, they don't do that very well from like an external standpoint, but nobody does it from an internal standpoint.
So, like what I I'm doing when I troll Mike every episode, I tell him to do better because he could have done better. So I'm like, Oh, yeah, you won, but you could have done better. So essentially what I'm doing is I'm activating my audience, which is marketing because you've already got that sales and marketing like beef a little bit.
So I'm activating my audience to go troll mic and tell him to do better.
So now, like my audience of markers may not actually buy the product, but people on their team might, and them actually engaging with it is allowing his content to get out to their team's sales people that might be in their audience.
So like finding ways like that to get your audience to engage with their content without just reposting or doing something like that is super key to boosting it in like an actual organic way So it seems like a very advanced creative manager skill but very intelligent because sales, marketing beef is just it goes on and on and on and on.
Anyway, One more clarification question on this series. Before we move on, you mentioned like it was popping off or it working. But you just measuring that by LinkedIn engagement. So yes and no, my a creator manager standpoint, because the series is so new. My initial like measurements are what most people would call vanity metrics.
I don't consider them vanity metrics because I'm looking to see if they are like the people within our IC. P and I'm creating a series that one. It showcases the product without pitching the product. I know we're gonna talk about that in a little bit.
So, like it's not vanity to me, because and from comments like, I know that these people are asking what the product is like. We use the product to judge the two emails that are rewritten to pick the winner so, like people will be like, Oh, what's that tool gives us an opportunity to talk about it and then Mike getting tagged in things.
The series getting tagged in things him going on shows like those are all metrics that I look at. But at the end of the day, we want to see people coming in inbound and actually requesting demos and sign for the product. And those are the things that we've started seeing that said, OK, now it's time to level up this series and, like, go big.
I can't wait to see the production value on season two when they're going live Season two should go live. Second week of June. Got it.
All right, Post streaming platform.
OK, awesome. Now you touched upon a point which I think is super crucial in like any content, which is how you can demonstrate or show without pay or how you can weave like the ethos or anything about the product into content.
Do you have, like, a framework for doing that?
Because I assume if you were creating the idea for this the three minute email rewrite show this was in mind.
Like, do you have any tips for people on how they can do this, uh, framework I don't have for me Anyway, it's just kind of like a mindset and something that I do when I'm thinking about a series and this is I don't wanna say this is different from, like, one off content.
But it is different from one off content in the sense that like when I'm creating a series, I know this is going to get repeated over and over and over and, like, my audience is gonna see it over and over and over.
So I want to make sure 100% that there is some association with my product because, like a one-off piece of content, I can put out a piece of content that's funny and just like for no reason and like I can get away with it.
But if I'm one spending money on a series and two repeating it to the point where, like people are gonna reference it, I wanna make sure that the product is getting some benefit out of that.
So to me, it's about showcasing it without pitching it. And I think the best way that I can explain that is by giving a couple of examples because I don't really have like, a framework for it, but like for the example that we're talking about right now with three minute sales school. The way that it works is we'll get cold out, but we all get tonnes of cold outbound.
So we originally started with just taking real emails that we got, and then Mike would rewrite them. And then eventually, as the series picked up, we got people that actually submitted them so like they could go back and use those emails and their actual outbound.
But so, like, people submit these emails that they need help with because they're not getting replies or whatever. And then Mike rewrites it. We score it in lavender. We score the original one in lavender because lavender will give you like an email score. That's what the tool does. It'll score it, and then Mike will do his own rewrite. Score that, And then we choose a winner based off that score.
So like he's never pitching the product. He's never like. We spend maybe 10 seconds out of the entire show, just like scoring. He's never talking about like All right, look, I'm gonna go over to Lavender. Let's see what it tells us like he just does it. It shows up, it pops up. Maybe it sparks some interest. Maybe it doesn't That's it like we don't go into product.
So like it's this subtle thing and then like because the value is so high because he's rewriting these emails so well. He's really good at his job over the course, and we get people telling us all the time like I've just binge watched 20 of these episodes.
How often on LinkedIn on a scrolling platform do you get people telling you that they binge watched episodes like Not often so people will binge watch these episodes and then after 5, 10, 15, 20 episodes. Now they're subtly like in the back of their mind, subconsciously linking lavender with a better email because the tool scored his email better.
So now, like we're associating the product with better email. That's how you use the tool to associate with the tool without pitching the tool. And it's worked extremely well because, like I said, after 20 episodes, to take us 20 minutes to record has been super successful, so he loses against the original.
Sometimes he hasn't yet, and we need one of the reasons I tell him to do better is because I have to like, keep his ego in check.
Right now, he's 20 and oh, yeah.
So So, like, I need someone I've tried like I've sent him really good emails, and he's like, Oh, man, this one's gonna give me a run for my money But hopefully, the way we're shooting Season two is actually gonna have the right now it's just him and like we shoot it and it's done in Season two, there's gonna be like a reveal at the end where, like, the person who originally sent it is gonna be there, and it's gonna be like, which one's gonna win?
And then it's like pop up who won?
So I'm really hoping in season two, someone beats him so we can get the reaction live on camera. So that's gonna be a magic, a magical moment.
OK, so circling back now.
So we've just discussed how you, the Creator manager, have been working with a creator and the team to create a show but circling back to the hiring of creators because your example was that let's say we're gonna hire F D R I this that the other we hired to be an influencer at what stage would then a business just hire someone not to do a role instead of just using audience or audience creating skills as something they hire against.
And they're hiring someone who's gonna do a role that they need in the business to just hiring someone whose pure role is just to create. I think you do need that, like for us, like we do have that role in our team that was one of our first marketing hires in Will Aiken.
So, like he is that role. But my answer to that question is like for me. I would maximise what I have first and then, like once I'm big enough once the budget's there like I can hire for a full-time role.
But to me, there is so much missed opportunity on every team out there right now that I would fill all those gaps first. Got it. So looking at the internal team because it's kind of almost let's say leadership isn't like, really behind this, I'm sure lavender, it seems like they are like super support of all of you guys.
But so what we're saying is, if leadership are not like super behind it, we're gonna first try. And maybe so you're just a marketing manager right now You're not creative manager. You would first maybe pick up people internally within the business that either have the potential or a small audience already and then get that working.
And then maybe you can feed into the hiring process that actually we wanna, especially in the commercial roles, want people with an audience. You get that working, and then you can get some results pitched to leadership that you need to hire a or it may be a good idea to hire a pure creator.
Yeah, So, like you said, we're lucky in the sense that, like the leadership at Lavender, was fully bought into creators and content and all that kind of stuff. So one of the first hires on our marketing team was a full-time creator. That's what will does all day, every day, Like he manages all the lavender accounts on all these different channels. He creates YouTube content, all of this stuff.
And then my role is to get all these other people firing on all cylinders. So I guess my answer to that is, if you have leadership that already is bought into that like yes, absolutely. Hire that person. So you have just something going all the time and then But if you don't prove to them with the people that you already have on your team, this is how, like, impactful this is.
Imagine if we had someone doing it full time, and then once you do have that person like best of both worlds is what we're doing, where he's doing it full time. And I'm helping all these other people do it, too. Got it. The next question I'm hiring is about whether you hire someone just for their audience or for their skills of building the audience. Or presumably, I think you'd want both.
But if they're a different way, you would look at those two things.
Yeah, so I think if you're just hiring for well, it depends on the role.
OK, so let's say I'm hiring for that creator position, right?
The person that's gonna be creating full time, like in that situation, like obviously, I'm gonna hire someone who has proven to me that they can build an audience like they're an influencer like that. Is that ideal person for that role but any other role in the organisation. Like again, I wasn't hired because I had an audience. I was hired because of the things that I was able to.
The information that I put out there and the content that I created that was able to build that audience was the information that I needed to succeed in the role that I was being hired for. If that makes sense, so like it goes in, it's not just for content creators, too.
If a sales person talks about everything they do in a sales role, it's probably and they've built an audience because of that. It's probably because they know what they're doing. And if they don't know what they're doing and they're just like a really good speaker, you're probably gonna uncover that in the interview process.
But like most likely it's because they're a good seller, right?
So, like they just happen to talk about it. And people love what they talk about because they were successful in doing it, got it.
So I was just scrolling link in to find out what your what that says your job title at At Lavender is it just says marketing are we gonna update that to create a manager?
Not any time soon.
So, like one of the beauties of working at lavender is we're a very flat team.
So, like everybody, right now, we're still a small company. But like everybody on the marketing team reports directly to will balance.
Who's our CEO?
And obviously as we grow, that's gonna change. But right now it's like I'm marketing. Will is social. Chelsea is content, which is like written content. Jen is community, so, like we all have very generic titles, and that's just because we're a very flat team. It's a very collaborative environment, so, like no one to report indirectly to anyone else.
Got it?
And could you just share a couple of the other content series you guys have at the moment?
And just explain, if possible, how lavender is being like inserted but not pissed?
Yeah, for sure. So we talked about three minutes sales school, another one that we haven't released yet, but it will be The first episode will be released within the next week or two is called Pardon the outbound. So if you're familiar with pardon the interruption on ESPN, it's basically like the same format as that. And if you're not familiar with the format, I'm gonna try to describe it.
But like, think of your typical news debate type of show.
So, like you've got two hosts and then on the side, you've got in that show maybe 10 topics of like the sports news from the day and then, like each topic gets two minutes and they have two minutes to go back and forth and, like, debate it and then move on to the next one. And that's the whole show. We took that format, and we made it into an email show.
So, like we take an email, we break down the email into four different parts.
So, like we have four different topics, and then we have each host do a rewrite. So we have two minutes to talk about each one, and then they both do a rewrite going back and forth. We don't talk about the product in this show at all. From the host standpoint, there's no grading. There's none of that.
But if you think about any news outlet show channel that you ever watch, there's a little news ticker at the bottom in this show. Lavender has. We have data from millions of emails being sent out.
So, like we have all these different data points like what helps you get better reply rates And on that little news ticker in the bottom, it'll say, like if you do X in your subject line, you'll get X percent more reply rates and, like we've got just these little like stats that kind of scroll on the bottom that show you like what's happening in the back end of lavender.
So again, we're not mentioning it. We don't talk about the product a single time from a host standpoint, but like on the bottom, you see, like these stats just kind of flying by. So that's another example, not necessarily incorporating the product. But another series that people know us really well for is Lavender Joe. So we use the product name in the character's name.
So, like lavender, Joe is basically this personified salesperson that does all these outdated tactics, and what he does is like we'll put him out in the wild, and he'll try to use like these cold email tropes on people in the wild. So like I hope this finds you well. He'll walk up to someone and be like, Hey, I hope this finds you well, whatever.
We use these outdated tactics on people in the wild and just like capture their reactions. And people have come to love that character. But we call him Lavender Joe.
So again, like people associate it with lavender, they come see what it does so a little less. That's like a pure entertainment play. So it's a little less in the forefront.
But like, that's another example. I think the key thing I'm gonna take away from this conversation is the real focus you have to have on this person who you're trying to educate or entertain and what they're interested in and delivering that. But then also in a subtle way or subtle or clever way, ensuring that we put the product in which essentially means that we can pay to create the content.
If it was just if we weren't creating the product, then we're not gonna get a budget. We can't do it. And so I think it's the balance of those two in your work specifically for you. It seems like you're very like on it.
With those two factors, would you agree?
Yeah, I think one of the we I like to call series like I like to categorise them in two ways. So like low effort, high payoff and high effort high payoff.
So, with the exception of maybe Lavender Joe, because that was like created originally very high production. But like every series that I create, we create it as low effort as humanly possible. Try to maximise those results, and then once it gets to a point where I can go to my CEO and say, like, Hey, here's what's been happening with this series like it's worth the investment.
Then we go into a high production so, like proof of concept as cheaply and efficiently as possible. And then the second that you get hit, that tipping point like you need to go all in because one people are gonna copy you or or do it better.
Well, that's like do it before someone else does so Got it.
Well, Todd, this has been a deep dive into a lot of B P creators, and I think it's such an important space like lavender are definitely very ahead of the curve. But I think in, like, 3 to 5 years, everyone's gonna be doing what you guys are doing. So it's super awesome to get your insights now.
Obviously, people can find you on LinkedIn.
Also, easy mode is the podcast, right?
Yeah. So me and my partner, Obed Durani, we have a consulting company called Easy Mode. We do a podcast called Cheat Codes where we talk about all this stuff and yeah, we can find more there and then obviously linked in tiktok, as we said earlier. And then obviously we'll link to Lambda because you guys are killing it. Anything else we should mention I'll link to I think that's it.
Todd, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, right. Big episode. I hope you enjoyed that.
I think, as I mentioned at the end, the key thing here is that how can you create content that really is gonna entertain or educate the audience like unusual or interesting format?
That's the first thing. And the second thing is, as you're doing that and you have to get the right advice, you're gonna get no attention. How can you weave in the product In a way that doesn't take away from that experience for the user, in an intelligent way, is you not pitching.
And so those are the two most important things to think about as you're looking to create any type of B2B content, but especially if you're gonna look to do this creator led flow that Todd was discussing so again.
Thanks, Todd. Thanks so much for coming on. Everything regarding Todd that we mentioned today will be linked below. And then also thank you so much to S O USA. If you want to attend or if you want to sponsor, that will be linked below.
And of course, Thank you for listening.