Pod Insights MarTech Podcast ™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth 11 Must-Answer Questions to Build a B2B video About this episode B2B content creators struggle to measure real impact beyond vanity metrics. Benji Block, founder of Signature Series, shares his framework for building content that drives business results. He reveals his 11-question assessment for evaluating content effectiveness, explains how to optimize YouTube thumbnails through A/B testing, and outlines three core metrics that prove content strategy success: meaningful engagement through comments, high average view duration, and improved click-through rates. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.
0:25 Speaker 01 From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.
0:36 Speaker 02 Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.
0:42 Speaker 03 Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.
0:46 Speaker 01 If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.
0:53 Speaker 00 Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.
1:15 Speaker 04 58%. 58% of B2B marketers rate their content strategy as moderately effective, according to the Content Marketing Institute. More than half of marketing teams are stuck in content mediocrity. Meanwhile, LLMs are killing traditional SEO strategies. YouTube's success requires expensive video production. And the battle for consumers' attention is split across channels like TikTok, Instagram, Netflix, everything. Marketers are falling off the hamster wheel like lemons off a cliff, struggling to create anything that grabs their prospect's attention. The barriers to entry for content success feel impossibly high. Are we just overcomplicating the process? I wonder if there's a systematic approach that actually works.
2:00 Speaker 04 With that said, I'm Benjamin Shapiro, and joining me today is Benji Block, the CEO and founder of Signature Series, which helps expert brands build Worth the video content that becomes the backbone of their marketing strategy. A former executive producer and the host of the B2B Growth Podcast that hit over 5 million downloads. Benji's launched 50 podcasts and coached 80 business leaders to become standout content creators, including myself. And today, Benji's going to reveal his framework for creating compelling B2B content that cuts through the noise and drives business results. Benji, welcome to the Martech Podcast.
2:40 Speaker 05 Ben, thanks for having me. It is awesome to be here, man.
2:43 Speaker 04 I want you to know, I tried to butter you up as much as I possibly can because we've worked together for a long time and you've helped me craft my video strategy as I hear everything and specifically the Martech Podcast was making the jump from being audio only to video. And at some point here, when you started working on content for other producers, it's like, you gotta come on the show and spill the beans on how we do what we do.
3:08 Speaker 05 Yeah.
3:10 Speaker 04 So, thank you for coming on the show.
3:12 Speaker 05 No, it's fun to work with you and fun to actually turn our cameras on and record some things because I know both of us have plenty of opinions on this topic and it's, it's always a lively discussion. So it'll be good.
3:23 Speaker 04 Better to see you than to Slack you. All right, let's jump in. Starting off at the top, how is AI reshuffling content marketing's deck and forcing B2B marketers to move beyond their traditional SEO strategies into something new?
3:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think the best way to start here is just to imagine when you have a business problem as a business leader in the last few years, if you're anything like me. I give the context now to ChatGPT and get a very hyper specific answer and I go back with it. I maybe debate what it gave to me and but it has so much more context. And so just our habits changing around content has also led to what you might call like just an ultimate high in the way that we think about. Blog content being commoditized and wondering if any blog article we come across is written by AI.
4:17 Speaker 05 And so there's kind of this disconnect where I can go get hyper personalized content anywhere on the internet. The blogs that everybody wrote for SEO are so vague and potentially feel like AI slop. So we're kind of avoiding that. And then you have this entrance into the arena of media, which is audio and video, which is kind of complicated to get into. A lot of CEOs are like, how much is that going to cost me? And you're kind of left with going like, we know video is important. It would personalize our brand, but where do we even start? And so I see a lot of brands straight up avoiding it. But AI is changing the way people think about content, especially in B two B. Because of how fast you can produce written content and everything I said.
5:00 Speaker 05 So yeah, it's changing the entire scene for sure.
5:03 Speaker 04 The buyer journey is changing, right? People are going to different places to find content and it's now personalized. We're in the age of personal software, personal content. It's the personalization age and it's all driven by L L Ms. And it's only going to increase. Now, I do think that the written content that we all produced is incredibly important because that's what feeds
5:25 Speaker 05 feeds them.
5:25 Speaker 04 The L L Ms.
5:26 Speaker 05 Yeah.
5:26 Speaker 04 The SEO strategy is going away. Your content strategy shouldn't. But you said something that I think is interesting. All the executives know, hey, I need a content strategy. And I'll be honest that we started with audio only for the, the Martech podcast because I didn't want to be on video. I'm not, you know, a supermodel. I, I, who wants to see here, sit here and watch my face ramble on for 20 to 45 minutes? That felt like a stretch. Hair and makeup, forget about it, right? Lighting, ooh, we're gonna need a lot of it.
5:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
5:59 Speaker 04 It's intimidating. So walk me through how brands should get over that sort of feeling of, I know I need video, but I don't want to do video.
6:11 Speaker 05 Yeah. A lot of this is people feel like they
6:17 Speaker 05 Have to run before they crawl or walk when it comes to video. And I think when you start to look at those that have been doing video the longest and you start to compare yourself to the size of the audience. Or even in B two B, there's a few outliers where it's like, oh, they're so successful over there. But where we currently are, I can't even imagine a future where we would be that successful in video. So again, you just see laggards that just do not jump in. In reality, that is where things are moving. And I think as people wake up to that, they're going, okay. What would be the crawl, walk, run approach? And I think there are several ways you can can crawl, walk, run.
7:00 Speaker 05 You're seeing some people try this even with with webinars or LinkedIn lives. A lot of people trying it with podcasts that did like, like you outlined, Ben, started as audio, probably during the pandemic for many businesses. And has escalated into video, but doesn't have to be, you know, what you imagine from the top, top 1% of creators on the internet today. Because if you're talking niched down enough in your specific topic, people are actually seeing a lot of success on on simple video. So I don't know if you want to go more into that, but I don't want people to think it's all or nothing.
7:36 Speaker 04 I agree with you that you can start small and iterate and get better and better. And honestly, that's the way to do it. And this is how Benji, we got together. I started doing videos, didn't feel it really feel great. We were producing them in house. I was trying to figure out myself. We met, I asked for advice, you started consulting, now you're helping us on the production side. And so you take these steps of experimentation, build a process, bring in subject matter experts, make more investments over time. It doesn't have to be all at once, all or nothing, as long as you're comfortable with continual improvements. You always have to be trying to get better.
8:16 Speaker 04 I don't want to miss the point here, though, which is executives are saying, I need video.
8:22 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:23 Speaker 04 Why? Why is video so important now?
8:27 Speaker 05 That is a great question. I, the way I would put it is if you do not personalize your brand as we head into 2026, the chances of someone just going to AI and getting that kind of answer that is to their space, it proves out no value for your company to have no faces, no expertise, no thought leadership. And I think even less on the why do you have to have it, more on the what channels are your audience already on? Places like a LinkedIn, if that's somewhere where you're trying to invest long-term, video content is going to work there, can be repurposed there into written content.
9:09 Speaker 05 The main thing I love about video, Ben, is not actually just a YouTube video. It's all the things that come off the back of that for your content strategy, to have the smartest people in your company, giving away their actual expertise, their stories, the stuff that they have in their heads. That can be repurposed in so many places if done right. And so it's more a play saying, we want to humanize and personalize our brand, and we also want to be able to scale this content across all the many channels that there are now, that are all prioritizing video. So we're thinking proactively as to what's the, the best and easiest way to get our information about our company, our
9:50 Speaker 05 business, our expertise, out into the market. And in 2025, going into 2026, the best way to do that is through video.
9:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, what I'm hearing you say is it's personalized. We're in the age of personalization. You're giving a personal touch, right? It is you, it is your expertise, it is real, and it is authentic, which is something that stands out from a robot giving you text. Omni-channel content, you can create multiple pieces of content from one recording, and then it touches multiple different channels. So there's a large output from what is a meaningful amount of work, but it should be able to put you into the places where your consumers are. But I want to talk about that sort of intimidation factor. There's this notion of the content marketing hamster wheel, right? The marketers are just trying
10:41 Speaker 04 to repeat the same thing over and over again. What's driving the content hamster wheel crisis, and what's burning out B2B marketing teams?
10:50 Speaker 05 Well, there is a pressure from the C suite to create more and more content that needs to go addressed. And then you see the number of pieces of content from the top 1% how much they are producing. And then you see AI slop get added into that. All of that creates a lot of internal conversations about how much content are we making? And then there's a second piece to that, which is many people jump on the content hamster wheel because they feel like they have to, and I get it, prove value as fast as possible. And so now they're, they're looking at certain metrics that
11:28 Speaker 05 we've, you know, even on this podcast, Ben, I know vanity metrics comes up. It's a lot of vanity metrics. It's a lot of-
11:33 Speaker 04 Just tell everybody, we argue about downloads all the time. Here's the argument between me and Benji.
11:38 Speaker 05 Of course. Are there numbers that we should be tracking? Absolutely.
11:43 Speaker 05 At the same time, there are so many people I talk to who are in conversations and with their leadership and no one knows what to actually track. They just feel like they need to produce more. And that's about where the conversation ends.
11:57 Speaker 04 Hang on, hang on, hang on. I got it. I got it. We gotta air it out, Benji. The Martech Podcast, which was an audio only podcast for like seven years. People consume on average 18 to 20 minutes of a B2B podcast. We record for an hour. We have always broken up our content into smaller chunks to publish lots of content because you automatically get the downloads for anybody that subscribes to your podcast. So we make one long piece of content and four short pieces of content and we get five pieces of content out of every interview and we get a ton of downloads. And the consumption rate is good because they're relatively short form. Now you and I have always argued about this. We're on the content marketing hamster wheel. We want lots of content. We want to pump it
12:42 Speaker 04 out because it makes the metrics look good. And I feel like other marketers are right too. You have vehemently disagreed with me privately and now let's do it publicly. Why am I wrong?
12:54 Speaker 05 Oh, Ben, I think it's a what, what are you ultimately wanting to drive towards, right? Which that in and of itself should determine what your kind of goalpost is and what the center of the target is for you. My argument has always been that the quality of your content, the substance of your content is what's going to build an audience that actually moves for you. So if the point of you doing a show is that you want to use a term often use a thousand true fans that are actually loyal to your brand. When you say jump, they jump. When you say buy, they buy. That type of loyalty only comes from
13:37 Speaker 05 super substantive content, which many people cannot produce at scale, especially when they're starting. And so to think more about the substance, instead of going, we're going to jump into video and now we're going to produce an episode, call it daily, call it weekly, call those
13:54 Speaker 04 Hourly.
13:55 Speaker 05 Hourly. The pace, I promise I've run a daily show. I know what that hamster wheel is like. And the pressure to just get out the next piece of content for many people, I've seen some succeed at it. But for many people, that's what's shooting themselves in the foot is they're going, we just have to get out the next piece of content. No time to actually learn from the last piece because we're on to the next one. And so my argument has always been more about if we get the substance right, and we get that, that momentum moving where the audience loves this, we can always dial up the number of pieces. But if you do and execute one amazing piece of content, I promise you that
14:37 Speaker 05 piece of content actually can meaningfully grow your audience more than just dumping out more and more and more and more.
14:44 Speaker 04 Here is where you're right. The quality of your content actually really matters and it what dictates fandom or followership or consumption and actual engagement.
14:58 Speaker 04 And here's where I think I'm right and I will die on this hill. And then we will move on. If you release a 45 minute podcast and you know, people are listening to 18 minutes, you're wasting your time by producing the whatever 45 minus 18 is. I'm not going to do math live on the air. So my feeling is you can actually have your cake and eat it too by producing great content. But if you have a system and a process to be able to segment that content and publish it in the right size for the audience and the channel in Tik Tok, in LinkedIn shorts, in YouTube shorts, they have to be less than one minute. It's just the nature of the format. But on YouTube, people watch 18 minutes of our episodes, whether they're good, whether
15:43 Speaker 04 they're bad. I know generally what were the good conversations and what weren't. And even the good ones, people aren't listening for more than 25 minutes. We need to shorten our content to 25 minutes to get in there. By the way, we're 16 minutes in, we gotta hurry. But the point is understand the channel. And if you're going to put the effort into creating great content, you should right size it for the channel because in general, people only have the mental capacity, mostly with B to B content, to consume so much at one time. And so I feel like right sizing the individual pieces of content allows you to have people
16:23 Speaker 04 digest the full format, which then helps you build the following, your following and your consumption. And I'm not even going to let you respond because I just want to be right on this one. So let's move on to our next question. So, all right, we've got this B to B content problem, right? We're, we're creating either enough or not enough content, depending on which side of the fence you're on. But now you have to compete, not just with who else is on LinkedIn, right? You're not just competing with what are the other blogs that people are searching for related to your keywords. You're competing with everything on Netflix and everything on YouTube and everything on Tik Tok. So now, when I think of what the martech podcast is, a B to B market.
17:07 Speaker 04 Podcast about technology, it has to be as interesting as sports and whatever YouTube garbage I watch, people cleaning their cars, all sorts of fun stuff, right? How do you make content that actually grabs the attention of your audience? When the subject matter isn't necessarily as compelling as what they're consuming with their hobbies?
17:32 Speaker 05 Well, the truth on that is that the people that are going to seek out the topics on your niched down show, for whatever reason, are actually interested in your niched down show. So you don't end up competing against all of Netflix when someone is looking for a B two B show. Now, have they seen very high quality content as they're scrolling? Absolutely. But when they're coming to your specific niched down channel, they're just hoping that you will actually have substance, not fluff. So I think that's where a lot of times we feel like we're competing with everyone. When in actuality, on certain topics, you're really just, how do I do this in the best possible way? How do I communicate this effectively?
18:15 Speaker 05 And obviously you want a production partner that can make the quality excellent. But I think we that this goes back to the last question, Ben, and we're not going to reopen the argument. But this is where the substance piece and what we agreed on truly does matter substantially. And it's a question of what can you compete with? Can you compete with data? Can you compete with stories? Do you have a counterintuitive perspective compared to the rest of your market? How you position that to not just be producing content, but to actually have substance around the topics that you are discussing does give you a leg up. I also think creating some sort of engaging introduction is something that you're going to hear talked about a lot.
18:59 Speaker 05 So let's just go to YouTube for a second. So many B2B companies were like, we need a YouTube channel. But then they don't practice YouTube best practices. And essentially what they did is they created a library for their organization. What I mean when I say a library is that if you go to most B2B companies YouTube channels, you're going to see a webinar next to a podcast episode, next to an interview with the CEO. And you don't know what the next video is going to be. And I promise you YouTube never rewards that in the algorithm because they don't know how to identify what your channel is. So if you started a YouTube channel, you should follow YouTube best practice. Get your channel in order, know why that channel exists. But then beyond that, getting into the weeds here for a second.
19:43 Speaker 05 Also, think about what is going to hook people in the first 30 seconds to a minute of the video. What's the most interesting thing that you can say? You know, Ben, in your case, you lead the MarTech podcast with a data point that you believe will be interesting to the audience. That really sets up the rest of the conversation. We do that intentionally. We put the B-roll on the screen. We're trying to tie what's happening in the first minute of the show to the title, to the thumbnail. And that's YouTube best practice. So some of these things, you can honor your audience and their time that they're giving to your show by just saying, okay, we want to lead with actual content that is, is what the title promised.
20:27 Speaker 05 Now we're talking about it in the first minute of the show. And of course, then we're going to go into this long form conversation. And all of it is going to respect people's time. It's not going to be, you know, just clickbait. So it's a long rambling way of just saying, follow YouTube best practice. And actually do what honors and respects the audience that is clicking in, trying to tune into the thing that you've created.
20:49 Speaker 04 We're creating content. You're not supposed to give long rambling answers, Benji. We're supposed to get right to the point. And if I learned that from anybody, it was from you. And the biggest thing that I learned from you was the connection between specifically talking about YouTube. And this is practical for all of the different channels. What is essentially the preview of your content? In YouTube, it is the thumbnail and the title. And then if you can create something compelling enough between that thumbnail, which is the first thing they see, the title, which is the explanation of what they're going to get when they click on. And then it's not the first minute. It's the first second that matters.
21:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's right away.
21:30 Speaker 04 It is the first word that comes out of your mouth and the first thing that they see when they're on a YouTube video is the opening hook. And it has to have resonance between the thumbnail and the title that you promised. So you're resolving whatever conflict or curiosity was created there, which is why we start with a number, right? Hey, in this podcast, we, it was, we're talking about content creation. All right, well, I need something that's going to grab people's attention in the first second about content creation. And I came up with a stat that summarizes what the problem is in the content creation. Nobody thinks their content is any good and they're right because very few people have
22:12 Speaker 04 put in the thought and process to understand making the connection between thumbnail and title and first sentence to second sentence to the rest of the intro and build up enough impulse and curiosity and honestly trust to have people hopefully get 22 minutes and 48 seconds into a podcast. So let me just drop that there and have you react to, it's not just about creating the first good minute to compete. You have to really think through that opening sequence.
22:42 Speaker 05 It's absolutely right. And it can be done numerous ways. This is why it's so fun to study because if you go to some of the most successful shows in the world, now just go outside of B2B, you are going to see that it's not to follow a formula where, okay, because this show does B-roll in the first 30 seconds, we should do B-roll or they do a data point, so we should do a data point. That's, that's studying just like what worked for one person, one time. If you look across all of it, you can do this in numerous ways. What's the most compelling question someone could ask? Chris Williamson of Modern Wisdom is great at this where he will have no B-roll, no,
23:25 Speaker 05 no extra stuff at the beginning of his episodes, but he will hit the guest with the hardest hitting question he could ask them and he's having these experts on. So you're immediately drawn into the conversation. That's a hook. It just doesn't look the same as like what the MarTech podcast does, which is also a hook, but. Even in novels, Ben, people use hooks to start in written word have been using hooks to start novels for, I don't know, go back thousands of years. So it's about just getting into this. I mean, Jake Thomas is the one that opened my eyes to it, but really it's about curiosity, fear or desire. If you can
24:05 Speaker 05 play with those emotions and your audience comes to you and you immediately trigger one of those three things in the first five seconds of a video, you're on your way. And that's where you can do that with the title. You can reinforce it with the thumbnail. And then, you know, those first few seconds are so, so important.
24:22 Speaker 04 Yep. Curiosity, fear or desire. To me, that's what the thumbnail and the titles are about. And you're building some sort of conflict or some
24:32 Speaker 05 Tension, yep.
24:33 Speaker 04 Tension. That's the, thank you. That's why you're the best in the business. Some sort of tension there that gets resolved early in the conversation, but that's not the only time you do it. You are constantly building this loop where you're opening a hook, creating that tension and closing it. So we're talking about how you make great content. It's understanding that pattern. But I think there's an underlying question about whether it's all worth it. I'm opening up a new hook here.
25:00 Speaker 04 When you think about, great, now I spent all my time creating this content. I have videos on YouTube and podcasts here and I've got social. How do you measure the ROI of your content efforts? To make sure that you're actually extracting some sort of business value out of mastering this new craft?
25:17 Speaker 05 I was on a call with a client and there were multiple stakeholders in the meeting and then myself. So I'm a third party. I've been hired to create content for a said client. And the why behind the show came up. And so now we're in this discussion. And I love talking about, why did y'all start the show in the first place? Like, can you reiterate back to me? Tell me why this is important to you. And when I tell you Ben, that the multiple stakeholders all had different reasons. And so the red flags on my side just immediately are up. There are a lot of people who will start a show and they vaguely know, well, we want this to eventually close business.
26:01 Speaker 05 Or we want this to build our brand in some way. But even those two, at many points along a journey with a video, with video content, they are going to conflict with each other. Because brand is a long-term play. You could create certain types of video content that might be really good for your immediate pipeline and bad for your long-term public brand. So you have to have a strategy that really goes after a specific end goal. And I think of this also with how people use podcasts. A lot of podcasts and B2B are specifically created to drive meaningful relationships with potential clients. So I am inviting you on a show so that we can talk and get connected.
26:45 Speaker 05 And eventually down the road, I hope that you buy from me. That is a way of doing a show that's called, in the world that I came from, content-based networking. And it's effective. But if you think that you can build a brand through content-based networking, you kind of can. But I promise it's not as effective as if you were to say, if brand is really what matters to us, we're going to have certain KPIs. We're going to have certain metrics that we really look at and go after. Retention rate would be a big one on that. You're looking at your audience size, who's meaningfully commenting, DMing you on LinkedIn. Those types of conversational things is what grows a brand. It shows that affinity is growing.
27:27 Speaker 05 So I think the end of what you're hoping to drive towards determines how you do everything in the lead up to that. And I don't know if you want me to go further down either of those roads, but I do think that that is where so many people get tripped up is not identifying what they're actually driving towards very early in the process.
27:45 Speaker 04 I think part of the problem is people don't know how to read the menu. And they think of podcasting as a one size fits all. It's going to touch all these channels. So I'll get all of the business metrics out of it if I do a good one. And the reality is you need to know what you're ordering to get what you want.
28:01 Speaker 05 Yes.
28:02 Speaker 04 So in my head, you mentioned a content based network. I think is what you call it. I'd call it an ABM strategy. We have a targeted list of people that we want to reach. And we're going to invite them to be on our podcast to build a relationship with them. And then we're going to directly sell to our guests. That's an ABM strategy. There's a brand strategy. We're going to create thought leadership and we're going to distribute it widely to our audience. And we're not going to ask them to come or buy anything. We're going to ask them to extract value out of the content because it's so useful to them. Nothing in return, but now they know us. They think of us positively. And when they're ready and in market, they'll come to us. So that's something we're going to measure over time. There's building a personal brand.
28:41 Speaker 04 I think that this is an under sort of focused on attribute where people will know you as the podcast host. In this case, they know me, right? The MarTech Podcast. I think that I personally have built up some credibility in the MarTech industry because I'm the MarTech guy.
29:00 Speaker 05 Right.
29:00 Speaker 04 At least in podcast landscape, in a very small niche of it. I think that you have to think between those three things. What doesn't work is I'm going to try to build a big audience and then hope people go to my show notes and click on what's in the show notes to get to my website. And then I'm going to track the podcast as a demand generation tool or a lead gen tool or web traffic. Like that just doesn't work. You could do audio advertising as well. You're probably better suited if you're trying to drive traffic doing audio and video ads just because you need so much tonnage to hit the right person at the right place at the right time. Not necessarily this repetitive message that gives depth.
29:42 Speaker 04 Are there any other formats that you've seen brands use or any other KPIs that they're focusing on to try to get value out of building media?
29:51 Speaker 05 Well, two that I think are undervalued. So if you are already running some sort of video strategy or you have a podcast.
30:01 Speaker 05 Please, I would make your company essentially the key sponsor of the show. So instead of an introduction saying you're
30:10 Speaker 04 Brought to you by.
30:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, brought to you by and run some sort of mid roll or post ad that is essentially giving straight up what your business does. I think that's a fine place for it versus what a lot of people do. They in their intro, start trying to talk about their brand and no one's interested because no one's gotten any value yet. So that's, that's one. There's a lot of shows that are existing. They're hoping it's brand building, but they're not even doing that. The second one is to have essentially just a lead magnet. And I've seen so many shows not even really effectively try this, but if you were to have some sort of asset that you give away on the back of your show, a template of some kind or a PDF of some kind. Some people do, you know, research reports, whatever it is, but that's an easy way to just show what sort
30:54 Speaker 05 of results the show itself is driving. And if you do like a season format where you're constantly calling back to that item, you're building a news, like an email list, that in and of itself then is more contacts, more people you can market to. And obviously they are moving essentially down your funnel. So if you don't already have those two things in place, I would absolutely be doing that. And then for every show, I do think it's good practice, not just for vanity metrics, to be looking at things like total downloads, average view duration is the, one of the most important metrics, click through rate for your thumbnails. And again, it's like, this is fairly, we're talking high level,
31:36 Speaker 05 easy to track, backend of YouTube. That's where you get started is, is those, those few.
31:43 Speaker 04 All right, Benji, we're going to turn the tables here and I want to, let's do a deep dive on you. Want to talk about what you've done. You were running the, I think, product at Sweetfish, a large podcast production agency. You went out on your own. You started working with schleppy podcasters like me, helping them fix up their game. Don't we look beautiful now? You're doing your own thing. So tell me a little bit about what you're doing. Signature series, totally different than what we're doing on the Martech podcast. What is it? How and why?
32:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, Signature Series is really helping those that want to do this crawl, walk, run thing with video content and they're going, "How am I going to effectively do this? I'm already so busy." You have a lot of thoughts up here, maybe you're a consultant or you're a CEO, a CMO. You're going, "I know video is important, but I can't just, you know, become a creator." So I have this thing, it's called the 230 model, Ben. It's essentially saying, "Give me two days every six months and then 30 minutes every month for video content." Meaning two binge-worthy days where we're just going to go deep and we're going to record content together.
32:55 Speaker 05 And then we're going to do 30 minutes a month, which anybody can do this. We're going to hop on like a Zoom call, we're going to record content and that can go straight to, become straight up thought leadership content that goes to LinkedIn. That's what a crawl, walk, run looks like is instead of saying, "All of a sudden we have to record a podcast every week," or you're like, "Where are these going to fit in?" Instead, Signature Series is saying, "We can record in two days, a whole season's worth of content." That then sets you up for an entire quarter or an entire six months, depending on how we do it. So the goal there was just seeing the need for those that are already busy to do video, but not knowing what the on-ramp looks like. And so that's who we're serving.
33:38 Speaker 05 We want people to have video content that humanizes their brand and shows off their expertise. And so that's what we're working on, simplifying the content creation process and having fun doing it.
33:49 Speaker 04 I love it and it's different than what we're doing and I hear everything. I appreciate the separate approach. We think of it as you're building an always-on marketing channel that touches video, podcast, social, blog, but you gotta be in it regularly and you can create real-time content, you're constantly building relationships. It's a longer journey. You're like, "No, we're going to do this for a little while, bring test out, see if it works and then figure out if you want to continue going." And I think it's a really smart strategy. And I wish I had thought of it myself. All right, that said, Benji, I want to jump into the lightning round. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about content creation that are relevant to the martech industry. Are you ready?
34:31 Speaker 05 Let's go.
34:32 Speaker 04 All right, here we go. If you could go back, what would you tell yourself before launching the B2B Growth Podcast?
34:39 Speaker 05 Okay, to be clear, I didn't fully launch it. I took over a daily podcast. B2B Growth was a daily show when I took it over. So what I would have told myself and tried to convince the other stakeholders of was if we can go down to even two episodes a week, we are going to go so much further faster.
35:01 Speaker 05 Daily was a monster, Ben, and to create enough micro content on the backs of those episodes, like people were coming on, saying amazing things, and it was just next one, next one, next one. So part of my passion around content now, and you know, the funny disagreements we're even having about content, comes from, you know, the fact that my eye twitches when I think about creating a daily podcast.
35:23 Speaker 04 You know, for a guy that loves making podcasts and helping people make podcasts, you sure do kill a lot of podcast content.
35:31 Speaker 05 No, I love it. But I learned a lot from being in a daily grind and doing, you know, just that much of it.
35:37 Speaker 04 It is, it is a grind to produce a daily podcast, coming from somebody who's done two of them at a time.
35:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
35:43 Speaker 04 All right, let's move on to the next question. How do you get a company executive to say something quotable in their first recording session?
35:51 Speaker 05 You have them do it multiple times. So the first take is not going to be the best take. You're going to try to find a hook in the first time they say it and say, the most interesting thing you said was that sentence. I want you to say that sentence first, and then you're going to record it again. And you're going to be encouraging the whole time through because even the best communicators will not be able to say it amazing on the very first recording. Nerves just take over. I've never seen someone be an expert the first time.
36:22 Speaker 04 All right, I'm going to ask the same question again. Benji, how do you get a company executive to say something quotable in their first recording session?
36:29 Speaker 05 No, see, Ben, it doesn't apply to me. I've done this long enough. I'm an expert now.
36:33 Speaker 04 All right.
36:35 Speaker 04 Tyler, our editor, please leave that in. All right, one more question. What's your biggest red flag that shows a company isn't ready to start a video podcast?
36:44 Speaker 05 It's competing strategies from stakeholders. You need to have a clear vision for what you're driving towards and clear KPIs to know if it's working. A secondary piece of that, Ben, that I would say is you also want a long enough runway. So you need them, whoever's agreeing that a video podcast is a strategy you're going to run. I would want to see a year commitment at minimum, to be honest. Sometimes all you're going to be able to do is get six months, but the longer, the better for that runway, because that's how you build goodwill with an audience. And you need a long enough to actually, you know, set a benchmark and then try to continue to beat it.
37:25 Speaker 04 As two guys that are creating podcasts for other people, if your idea is I'm going to evaluate your content production efforts based on demand generated in the first three months, you got to find different podcast producers. Benji, I couldn't agree with you more. Okay, last question. What are the three metrics that prove your content strategy is actually working?
37:49 Speaker 05 Well, it does depend what your strategy is. So let's say that you're trying to build a brand in this use case. I would be looking at comments on your content everywhere you post it. Is it starting meaningful conversations? I would be looking at average view duration. Is the content you're posting being consumed fully? And then I was trying to think of a third one, Ben. And if your content is working, then your thumbnail should be working. So I'm going to reiterate that your click through rate should be high. Every video you post on YouTube, you're going to have to post a thumbnail. You might as well constantly be iterating and they have A/B testing now. You can upload three thumbnails, so test that and get your click through rate up.
38:31 Speaker 04 See, I actually think the third metric is different. I kind of lumped in the beginning one. Are people viewing your content? Are they getting through the, we're using YouTube as the example, the thumbnail titled, you know, conundrum? Are they finding and getting your content? If they are, are they consuming your content? What's your consumption rate? And then the third piece is actually the backend, which is what drives the business results, which is engagement. Is there some sort of downstream effect that's compiling over time? Commenting on the content? Are they engaging? Are they visiting your website? Are you having conversations at coffee in your neighborhood? Whatever it is, are you seeing or feeling some sort of engagement from that consumption that's happening?
39:14 Speaker 04 Is it getting all the way through and hopefully back to the host of the people that are producing the content?
39:18 Speaker 05 Yep.
39:19 Speaker 04 All right, Benji, let me sing your praises one more time. I was lost. I had no idea what I was doing. I was out on an island, not even on an island. I was in a raft drowning, water coming onto the boat. Video was a nightmare for me. You came along, you were the breeze in our sails and pointed us towards the right way. YouTube is one of our primary channels now. I cannot thank you enough for all the help that you've provided us. Congratulations on the launch of Signature Series. Thanks for coming on and being my guest.
39:47 Speaker 05 Thanks, Ben. It's been a privilege. Love working with you, man. And yeah, this was great.
39:51 Speaker 04 All right, that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Benji Block, the founder and CEO of the Signature Series. If you'd like to contact Benji, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com. Or you could visit his company's website, which is signatureseries.co. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or visit us on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed every week. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.
40:52 Speaker 00 Thanks for listening to the MarTech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iHearEverything.com.
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