Engaging Multimedia Content: Making a Human Connection

Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):
Okay. B2B DM gang. I have somebody who I’ve actually met a few years back. And when I saw him on my list to be interviewed for this particular podcast, I got excited and I had to go reminisce a little bit and we had a little bit, and so we kind of vaguely remembered one another, but definitely quickly found some things that we can mutually connect upon. And A. Lee judge has been a, really a content creator since he was in high school and has been doing that ever since even I had a short stint, which you may find about being a DJ that’s when we both had hair. Exactly. But now he actually has a couple of different roles. He runs marketing for an organization. We may or may not talk that about, uh, talk about that a little bit, but he also is part of the founding group for content monster.

Jim Rembach (00:48):
Uh, and so I had the opportunity to track and you may see him, um, you know, doing some presentations and sharing his knowledge and wisdom on the internet. Um, but, but Lee’s focused on B to B, specifically B to B type of marketing and digital marketing and content creation. So we’re going to get some very unique perspectives from somebody who’s been doing this a very long time and being able to note the shifts in regards to what we were doing and what is working and what we have to do going forward. Lee, thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me glad to be here. Oh man. I’ve you know, I’ve given my, um, my listeners. I’d love just a little bit about you though. So if you can just share a bit more about passion, uh, in B2B digital marketing and how it all fits.

A. Lee Judge (01:29):
Okay. Well, bit of quick history, my formal education is in communications. Um, however, I’ve always been a content creator, as you mentioned, you know, since high school, before things were digital. Um, and I began my career in marketing the late nineties, uh, and I found myself then, you know, developing software and systems that enabled better understanding of customer data and how to better market to customers. Um, around 2012, I found myself actually at a customer experience software company, uh, where I’d never used the term digital marketer, but I found myself in a position where I was able to combine my creative marketing skills with my more data oriented analytic skills. And that’s where I found myself in a, in a career of a digital market.

Jim Rembach (02:14):
Well, and, and you and I have talked off Mike and I wanted to definitely bring some of that discussion to this particular interview. And you talked, or we both talked about just having one funnel. And so even when you started talking about marketing content creation, digital sales marketing, I mean, we’re all, we’re all talking about really just, you know, moving people down a, a single funnel that we can convert. Yeah.

A. Lee Judge (02:40):
I think when I first started being more passionate about it being one funnel was when I was in a position to, I was asked by the CEO to show me what the leads created by sales were versus the leads created by marketing. And that made sense at first, until you realize, you know, we’re in a multitouch, especially with a long sales cycle, there’s no, even if sales found them first or marketing found them first, it took the whole team to push them through the funnel. So really there’s only one funnel. Now marketing may own the top of the funnel. Sales may own the bottom of the funnel, but it’s still just one funnel. And when you have a long sales cycle, you also expect to recycle those customers and have them as customers again. So they come out of the funnel back into the top of the funnel and it’s marketing and sales job there to, to nurture, educate, and push them back through to another sales cycle. So it’s just one funnel.

Jim Rembach (03:34):
Well, and I liked the way that you said that. I mean, we always have ones that are exiting and moving back up and some that are exiting and never to return. I mean, all of that continues to happen. And so, you know, the whole consistency piece and, uh, you know, the relevancy piece, but ultimately one of the things that I think holds true in what you were talking about is your use and understanding of data and how that fits into that entire one funnel strategy.

A. Lee Judge (03:59):
Yeah. I mean, without, without the data, basically, you’re, you’re going back to old school marketing, you know, where you’re just, um, you know, you’re, you’re making pans at trade shows and you’re sending out flyers and you just spray and pray and you don’t look back. In fact, some marketers today are still kind of stuck in that they tend to do their marketing job and say, Hey, I, uh, produced a trade show. Um, I produced a web webpage, or I send an email out their job. They think their job is done. They turn away and go into the next campaign. That’s theirs. That’s a fallacy in that, because if you don’t know how well that campaign did or what leads it brought in how it affected sales, then you don’t know if you did a good job or not. You know, if sales can’t see an impact on the marketing effort, then you don’t know if the marketing effort was a waste or not. So that’s where again, the single funnel comes into play. Because if you can’t do your marketing to move your prospects down the funnel, then you’re not marketing. And that’s, that’s where your data comes in. You have to analyze what you’re doing, who you’re engaging with, how they’re reacting to your marketing content, how it moves the needle, really can’t separate sales and marketing and the data is what draws them together.

Jim Rembach (05:12):
Well, I didn’t even, you know, a few of the things that you were saying there, I think the whole trade show type of thing, and shows type of thing, that’s caused a forced shift, right? So I can’t do some of the traditional stuff anymore. I just can’t, it’s not available. And then the other thing is the whole campaign of doing a campaign and then forgetting about the campaign. It’s like, Oh, that’s what we did last week. Right? Um, when, if you, from a content perspective, and what I see is that a lot of people are essentially dropping a whole lot of golden nuggets on the road.

A. Lee Judge (05:46):
Yeah. And the question is the sales know what marketing is doing. I mean, if marketing is dropping those nuggets out there, there, there could be someone I’ve seen cases where you have a person out working, uh, working on a client, a customer potential customer. And that potential customer has a question, or there’s a sticking point. That’s keeping the deal from moving forward. Meanwhile, the marketer is doing a webinar or a white paper or something that answers that question. But those two aren’t communicating. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a major place. You know, where a lot of companies fail is that the communication between sales and marketing marketing is creating content to answer questions. Sales is actually on the frontline, find out what those questions are. And it goes both ways because not only does marketing need to let sales know, Hey, we have content that answers these questions that will help, um, remove the friction from your sales process.

A. Lee Judge (06:39):
And at the same time, they need to talk to sales. So sales can say, Hey, I was out in the field this past month, quarter year. These are the things that are stopping us. These are the questions that our prospects are asking us. We want to get ahead of our competition, answer those questions first with content. So, Hey, marketing, help us get past the sticking point. You know, if you’re watching the data in your funnel, you may see where your prospects are piling up at. You know, you have top of the funnel, you might get down to sales, qualified situation, and you can’t figure out why they’re getting clogged, why they’re not getting past that point. And it could be that your competitor is educating that prospect better than you are, so that content needs to come from your marketing department, but it has to be directed by what sales gives them feedback on.

Jim Rembach (07:27):
Even as you’re saying that, I started thinking about the, the saying that coming from contact center, operation background, you know, we would always ask the question, have you called into your own contact center? So you might have to have salespeople, have you attended your own webinar?

A. Lee Judge (07:41):
Exactly, exactly. And you know, and often, you know, those things seem, uh, administrative for sales to say, well, why do I need to go to our webinar? Um, or what do I need to check this box in Salesforce to give data back to marketing? Um, but all those things matter. And those things matter, especially with come fourth quarter, when they’re trying to close deals, um, it may not feel good. It may not seem necessarily Q1, but those things matter for sales that are primarily, that may seem like marketing, um, activities, but, uh, those things happen months, months before those sales activities. So it’s important for sales to be in tune with marketing and understand that what marketing does today affects what they do tomorrow.

Jim Rembach (08:25):
Well, and talking about, uh, you know, focus and what marketing is doing. You know, you have a couple of different roles and I start, you know, thinking about, you know, what is a Lee judge passionate about right now with content marketing? Or just let me say, you know, digital B to B marketing?

A. Lee Judge (08:43):
Well, my current passion would be in creating engagement and engaging multimedia content because from multimedia content, every other type of content can be created and now more ever, we want to see and hear each other because there’s so much distance because of COVID. We want to make a human connection. We long for human connection. So as a marketer, I’m very passionate about creating video and audio content, like, like pie cast and what we’re doing right now, it’s educating with faces with personalities to create a human connection.

Jim Rembach (09:15):
So, but if I think about that, we, we ultimately have to talk about that whole one funnel thing. Right. So if I’m talking about pieces of content and, um, you, you had, we had talked about campaigns and I mean, how do you take it from content to campaign to conversion? Well, so

A. Lee Judge (09:35):
Feeding back into the, the personal part that I think works so well right now, um, a lot of companies and they’ve, I said to some of them are kind of late at it, but they’re, they’re showing their frontline workers more. Uh, some of it ends up being a little cheesy because like, why now? Why do you wait to a pandemic to show your frontline workers? But the result of that is, and their goal, the ultimate goal is to show a personality of the company, to bring their customers closer to them and understand that company and to personify the company, to an extent that we feel the company’s personality we’ve become closer to them. Um, so right now, you know, a lot of companies are tightening up their purse strings, or they may not be spending. So now’s a good time to fill top of the funnel, you know, to make sure that those prospects are learning, who you are learning, why you offer learning to like you, because people do business with people and they do business with people.

A. Lee Judge (10:28):
They like. So right now it’s a time to fill that top of that funnel. Now, every industry isn’t seeing a decline right now. So, you know, whether you’re seeing the decline or not, now’s a great time because of our lack of personal connection. Now’s a great time to use that, to fill the top of the funnel, talk to your customers, whether it be, you know, through, through zoom or through a webinar or through live video, through video you created, um, also regarding video creation. The reason why podcasts I think are working right now is because it’s, it tends to be less scripted and it’s conversational, which makes it easier to digest and easier to trust actually, if it’s not scripted. So I think even video that aspect video, that’s less scripted. That’s more conversational, tends to show more of a personality and build greater trust.

A. Lee Judge (11:16):
And there’s no better time than right now to do that. When perhaps even though the pressure is to see a decent Q4 still, it still doesn’t mean you should let off the gas of connecting with your prospects. And I think now prospects are probably more open to being connected with and they want to hear from people and learn about people. And they may actually be watching more video in podcasts. The numbers are showing that they’re actually because they’re home and because their schedule is a little more flexible that they are spending as much or more time online. And some of that is still with work related activities. And they’re watching those videos and learning about companies and doing their research more so than ever. So it definitely impacts bottom line. What’s going on right now from a positive aspect in regards to content creation and content marketing.

Jim Rembach (12:05):
Well, I, but there’s one issue with that in regards to everybody doing it. Right? So if I end up talking about, you know, I’m late to the game, I’m late to the game and I’m forced to do something I’m just trying to get it done. Right. And so what, what is the worry? What is the opportunity or where’s the issue, or how can, let’s just put it in this way, somebody, regardless of late to the game or not with all of, you know, everybody, all people focusing on creating more content of all types. I mean, webinars, virtual conferences and trade shows. I mean, it could just goes on and on how do I actually stand out and disrupt and make a difference.

A. Lee Judge (12:47):
So I’m glad you mentioned it as an issue and an opportunity because that’s exactly what it is. Um, the reason why I’m passionate about multimedia content is because the bar is higher and it isn’t necessarily a technical bar, but it’s more of a, an anxiety bar. People are more afraid to get in front of a camera. They’re more afraid to talk off script in a podcast. If you can do that, then you’re already getting above the noise quite a bit. Now, right now in the past few months, because my company, we also produce podcasts for companies. And in video, obviously we’re seeing companies now raising their head going, you know what, a year ago we were told we should do video, but we weren’t really ready to do it yet. We didn’t really want to do it, but now we’re hearing that we almost must do it.

A. Lee Judge (13:33):
But even amongst those who realize they need to do it, there’s still hesitation. And for those who have the guts to go ahead and do it and not worry so much about the production quality or, you know, having to go through 10 approval cycles to just get it out there, the ones who have the guts to just record it, hit the record button and get it out there and talk to their prospects. They’re going to win. They’re already showing that they’re winning. So that that’s, that’s the difference right now. That’s how you get above the noise is just do it, do the things that are easier. If you’re, you know, where the flood right now is, is, you know, plain social posts, white papers, trade shows are trying to scramble to redo into virtual. That’s where the flood is. But still the bar of, like I said, not so much technical difficulty, but the guts difficulty to do video and audio, that bar is still pretty high. And that’s how you get above the noise.

Jim Rembach (14:28):
Well, I mean, that’s very interesting that you say that cause so, you know, I I’ve, I’ve been podcasting for over five years. This is one of my three podcasts that I’m doing for the B2B digital marketer. And, uh, just the other day I had somebody reach out to me and say, it said that they want to purchase one of my podcasts. And I’m like, well, what I mean, that was just an odd request. But it’s one of those things like you’re saying is that everybody’s coming around and saying, Oh, and then, then there may be thinking, well, I don’t know if we can do it and turn it well, let’s just go buy one. That’s an option.

Jim Rembach (15:01):
So I think with all of the shifts and changes that are happening, we’re meeting to think differently many. And I think there’s going to be some significant distro disruption because of some of the things you even talked about, you have all these former face-to-face companies that, you know, Hey, they’ve got to figure it out some way in order to be able to stay afloat. And I, I still, I still don’t think that face to face was going to come back. Like it was, that’s going to be, that’s not going to be a bounce in the economy. That’s not going to be a V shape return. It’s going to take awhile.

A. Lee Judge (15:34):
Well, here’s the interesting thing I’ve noticed is that, um, years ago, when I say years, I mean just three or four, when I’m pushing to sales to say, Hey, sales, turn on the camera. You talk to your customer, do a thought leadership video, record your knowledge. So you can use that over and over and over to those, to new prospects and not have to re pitch it every time, our reach out and do a video, you know, video, LinkedIn video, or do something to communicate with them three, four years ago. They weren’t trying to hear it because they’d say, you know what, I’m more comfortable spending company money, get them a plane and flying across the country and shaking hands and having breakfast with somebody. That’s what they’ve been doing for years is what’s comfortable to them. And even though they saw that it wasn’t working as well.

A. Lee Judge (16:17):
They even might have seen that their competitors who have more content and who was communicating to them were getting to their customers faster. In fact, they knew this there’s many, many hard numbers that show how much today’s customer researches before they even call a sales person. But even with that information sales wasn’t ready to do anything. They weren’t, they weren’t ready to get past that, that gut bar I mentioned earlier, but now as of March, April, may, they’ve been forced to. So now they’re saying, you know what, let me figure this thing out. Let me figure out how to become that media, that my prospect is consuming because one of your competitors will figure it out. One of your competitors will be that media, that your competitors consuming content monster we’ve been doing. We were doing more video before pandemic that we’re doing more podcast.

A. Lee Judge (17:08):
And we’re also bringing more live video now, too, because companies realize that, um, they need to be a media company. Um, there was a company that you SCA bank, I think in Denmark, they said a few years back that they’re going to be the only media company that has a bank. So they were a bank, but they said, we’re going to be the only media company has a bank because they built TV studios. And they put out so much content and media that they owned their area of the industry because they were known and heard from so much. And so I think sales sells staff, sells members, persons are learning. Now they have to be more, they have to be the content. They have to be more visual. Um, and that, you know, they’re going to have to approach that very, at some point very soon.

Jim Rembach (17:52):
Well, and, but there’s also some risks in that, meaning that, Hey, I, I, wasn’t doing this. I need, I must make a shift and it’s not that I need. I must. Uh, and then therefore, I’m going to be trying to educate myself rather rapidly. And I’m going to see things that are possibly overrated and, you know, just full of a bunch of hype. So is there something that BDM that you think is kind of overrated at the moment?

A. Lee Judge (18:18):
Well, the things I think are overrated aren’t necessarily new. Um, in fact, I think that, you know, things like white papers, for example, uh, analysts, white papers. I think those are, those are very overrated because first of all, when you consider that analyst papers or white papers, that companies are still pushing right now from a digital standpoint, that’s based on, there’s two reasons why I think it’s overrated for one, there’s so much information available today that the value of that paper is only equal to the value of the time you have to research it. So, you know, the $10,000 white paper from my analyst firm may not be worth it. If you have time to research it yourself because the data isn’t so hidden anymore. Uh, the second thing is in terms of that endless information, that information is based on either what has happened or what they predict will happen in the future.

A. Lee Judge (19:08):
Now imagine the value of data from 2019, trying to predict what 2020 is, we’re going to be like that that data is no longer any good. So for now, I mean maybe in a couple of years, they’re, they’re doing research right now to try to figure out what’s going on in the next few years. But, uh, right now, anything I think, related to historical data and predictions that were done last year, if that’s your, if you had some big push and you spent a big budget on, in January, on a white paper on research that money’s probably wasted right about now. So that’s, that’s overrated.

Jim Rembach (19:40):
That’s a very good point. And, uh, I would dare to say, when you were starting to think about that perspective, it’s kind of like fashion and we always talk about just hold onto it, it’ll come and fashion again, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and, and, and so there’s also maybe some modification, a little bit of adjusting, a little bit of tweaking, but you know, what is old can be new again and potentially updated, right? Well,

A. Lee Judge (20:04):
Yes, but to the extent of we’re talking about technology here, um, it may not come back. You know, the, the human behavior may come back around, but the way we do it is forever changed. So if you’re in the technology industry, if you’re selling technology, if you’re, I mean, who isn’t affected by technology, some of these things are not going to go back to where they were before. They’re not going to make their 20 year cycle. They’re going to be different forever. So, um, I think there are things you can learn from what was mined and analyzed last year and earlier this year, even, but only from a human perspective. And I’m sure every industry is different, of course, but there’s some things that you will have to just throw out from last year’s analysis.

Jim Rembach (20:48):
Well, with that being said, uh, you know, are there certain situations right now where we’re going to see a contraction in just B to B digital marketers or B to B marketers, I should say because they’re unable to do some of the shifts that are necessary towards digital.

A. Lee Judge (21:02):
I think it’s just the opposite. Um, I personally saw an extreme uptake. Every marketer I taught to, I actually asked the question of marketers, uh, friends of mine from around the world. Are you guys getting as much tension? All of a sudden as I am. I mean, everybody, all of a sudden wants to talk to digital because for a couple of months, their company said, Hey, our sales guys are on the ground. What’s digital doing. And all of a sudden the spotlight got turned back on the marketing department. And for a while there digital marketing, in fact, digital sales was only thing that could be done. Um, you know, now we’re getting to a point we’re realizing that we can’t wait until we get back to the normal sales cause that’s, that’s done now. What is the new sales? And the new sales is sales has to learn more about what marketing has been doing. Cause marketing has been, you know, working on that single funnel in essence, selling from a distance that’s, that’s what we do. We sell from a distance. And so now sales who has been forced to remove their, their distance selling is now going to have to learn how to sell from a distance as well. So there’s a lot to learn, I think, from marketers right now from a, from a sales standpoint.

Jim Rembach (22:09):
Well, and with that being said, we have to look at what we’ve been using from a budgetary perspective. And, you know, I would dare to say that there’s probably not a whole lot of new money that’s getting created. So we have to reallocate, you know, we have to move. Where would you potentially move some budget in place budget in the marketing budget?

A. Lee Judge (22:28):
Well, obviously a lot of these trade show budgets just got opened up so that money’s there. Um, so if you have that big, that big, large in-person marketing event or that your marketing, department’s been a lot of money on, not only can we expect lower turnout, if they do happen in person, um, even post COVID, we can expect additional costs that we didn’t previously expect to have. Um, everything’s gonna be re refigured now from, you know, what is the, how do we measure? Is it per square foot for a booth when you got to be six feet apart and the booth is 10 feet, you know, what’s going to happen. There’s going to be so much that has to be redone right now. Um, from a virtual standpoint, how do we, what are our new KPIs? If our boosts are virtual, so many things are gonna change. So, um, I think what you’ll see, even with the additional understanding and learning we have to do for virtual events, I think the, the calls were probably come down in which case that budget can be reallocated to two other more digital marketing efforts. And in fact, you know, this year, what companies are still trying to figure out how to do virtual, they just pretty much just pulled out of the impersonal events, which means that budget for 2020 is still there and can be poured into more digital marketing app aspects.

A. Lee Judge (23:48):
So if I was to look at, um, you know, taking off some of the constraints, if I’m not having to allocate in, and I was saying, okay, I am going to give you more resources. I am going to give you whatever you want. Where would you be investing right now as a B2B digital marker? Well, sort of, like I mentioned earlier about what yous CoBank did, you know, I would turn my company no matter what the industry was. I would turn the company into a media company. I would command the attention of all the prospects in the industry to an extent that we control the perception of not just our brand, but also the entire industry. Um, that’s what that bank I mentioned did, um, use CoBank and plus, you know, they, along with many other organizations, even Marriott, for example, realize that they could own the media around their brand and in their industry.

A. Lee Judge (24:42):
Um, this was only a few years ago and then they had to build an entire TV studio to accomplish that kind of task. But now that’s no longer true. You can do that with a few remote vendors like content master and even cell phones backed up by proper content marketing campaigns. Um, you know, I joked last week to someone that there’s more technology in your phone right now, there’s more media production in your phone than a 1990s television studio. So there’s no excuse for company not to take advantage of that and own the perception on the information on the education that the prospects in their industry are receiving well. And you may set me up for my next question, but you know, a lot of times we have to go through that, you know, self check and self discovery process. And, um, you know, I started thinking about questions that I asked myself in order to get grounded and get refocused.

A. Lee Judge (25:33):
So what is a question that a B to B digital marketer needs to be asking themselves right now? A question that a B to B marketers should be asking themselves right now. Well, marketing right now is it’s no longer a soft scale and it’s not just a creative field. So I would say every B2B digital marketers should be asking themselves, am I using the data and the tools available to me to deliver content with the right message to the right people at the right time in order to drive business forward and close deals and definitely focus on one funnel, right? One funnel. Yeah. It’s one, one funnel. That’s why, you know, even when I just said, I went from creating content to closing deals, that’s one funnel. It isn’t create content and check. They actually attended your campaign. You know, when they’re, when there’s two funnels, what you, what you used to see the past was marketing funnel.

A. Lee Judge (26:27):
They come into the top of the funnel, but get their email address. We email blast from the death and they respond to us and they respond enough to say, Hey, sales that come out of our funnel, put them in the top of yours. And we won’t look back and see what happens. And when that happens, you don’t know if you even sent somebody who was worthy of sales to the other funnel, but when it’s one funnel marketing operations or marketing a digital marketer, digital marketer period, just to keep an eye on that whole funnel to see that campaign from beginning to end sales should know the campaign marketing should know the campaign, and they should watch that prospect through the whole funnel to see if that marketing content, that message hit the right person at the right time, push that deal forward. And it drove business. Otherwise marketing can’t prove their worth if they can’t prove how they affected the bottom of the funnel.

Jim Rembach (27:19):
Definitely Lee, I had fun with you today. How can the B2B DM gang getting in touch with you?

A. Lee Judge (27:28):
All right. Well, they can find me of course, through my website, content monsta, M O N S T A contentmonsta.com. And my favorite place to hang out from a social standpoint is LinkedIn. So everything is A. Lee Judge, A L E E J U D G E, uh, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, it’s all A. Lee Judge. So let’s connect. Find me on LinkedIn. Let’s connect and talk, talk business, talk, marketing, talk content. Yeah,

Jim Rembach (27:51):
Most definitely. And go to Apple podcast to make sure that you are also rating and reviewing and subscribing to the B2B digital marketer podcast. A. Lee Judge, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, and we wish you the very best. Thank you.