Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

Rainmaker.FM

The Digital Commerce and Content Marketing Podcast Network

  • Home
  • Shows
  • Hosts
  • About
  • Home
  • Shows
  • Hosts
  • About
  • Member Area
  • Log In
Menu
  • Log In
  • Free Training
7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
Members Only
Rainmaker.FM Elsewhere
Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
StudioPress FM
Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
The Missing Link
The Showrunner
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
The Digital Entrepreneur
hosted by Sean Jackson and Katy Katz

6 Steps to Building an Audience That Builds a Business

  • Social:
  • Link:
  • Embed:
https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/rainmaker-052.mp3
Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes
Previous Episode:How the Integration of Content and Commerce Creates a Winning Difference More Episodes Next Episode:How to Create Legendary Content That Builds Your Business

All Episodes:

May 17, 2018

Stop Being Afraid and Start Building Your Business

May 10, 2018

Crazy Creative Ideas for Content Repurposing

May 3, 2018

The Creative Way to Use Video Marketing on LinkedIn

April 19, 2018

Is Blogging a Waste of Time?

April 12, 2018

The Smart Way to Grow Your Service Business Using Content Marketing

March 29, 2018

Rand Fishkin’s rise to fame…and fortune?

March 8, 2018

The Psychology Required to Successfully Grow Your Business

March 1, 2018

The Secret to Guest Blogging on Your Favorite Website

February 22, 2018

How to Make Money from Podcasting

February 15, 2018

Is Facebook Marketing Dead?

February 8, 2018

How to Build Meaningful Membership Communities

February 1, 2018

What Every Online Marketer Must Know about Google Analytics

January 25, 2018

Is Google AMP a Waste of Time?

January 18, 2018

The Ultimate Framework to Help You Achieve Your Goals in 2018

December 20, 2017

The 6 Top Online Marketing Trends for 2018

December 14, 2017

Why You Should Start a Digital Marketing Agency

December 7, 2017

Does Traditional PR Really Matter Anymore?

November 30, 2017

The Current State of Search, Social, and the Open Web in 2017

November 22, 2017

How to Protect Your Online Reputation When Disaster Strikes

November 7, 2017

Does Online Marketing Suck for Women?

October 26, 2017

Can Social Media Drive Sales, or Is It a Waste of Time?

October 19, 2017

How (and Why) You Should Sell Your Online Business

October 12, 2017

The 5 Things Your Customers Actually Want to Buy

September 28, 2017

The Essential Chatbot Resource for Online Entrepreneurs

September 21, 2017

The Smart Way to Build and Grow a Profitable Podcast

September 14, 2017

How to Build and Profit from a Hyperlocal Community Site

September 7, 2017

How to Handle Negative Online Reviews

August 24, 2017

The Biggest Challenge to Running an Online Business

August 17, 2017

The Secret to Becoming an Online Expert

August 10, 2017

Does Your Online Business Fill Your Life with Purpose?

August 3, 2017

How to Deal with the Stress of Running an Online Business

June 1, 2017

Emerging Online Marketing Trends for 2017

May 25, 2017

The Biggest Mistakes Online Entrepreneurs Make and How to Fix Them

May 18, 2017

Should Online Entrepreneurs Write a Book?

May 11, 2017

A Different Way to Think About Your Online Competition

May 4, 2017

How to Recruit the Best Talent for Your Online Business

April 27, 2017

How to Hire the Right Contractor or Employee for Your Online Business

April 20, 2017

The Essential Guide to Hacking the Growth of Your Online Business

April 13, 2017

How to Do Simple PPC Advertising for Your Online Business

April 6, 2017

A Simple Framework for Pricing Digital Goods

March 30, 2017

How to Use Amazon Publishing to Grow Your Online Audience

March 16, 2017

What Online Entrepreneurs Need to Know about Affiliate Marketing

March 9, 2017

Does Email Marketing Still Work?

March 2, 2017

Does SEO Still Matter?

February 23, 2017

Is WordPress the Right Solution for Building Your Online Business?

February 16, 2017

6 Business Insights that Could Radically Increase Your Online Engagement in 2017

February 9, 2017

Can Customer Insights Really Drive Innovation for Your Online Business?

December 15, 2016

Laura Roeder on Building a Business that Supports the Lifestyle You Love

December 8, 2016

Lessons on Business and Life from the ‘Zen Master of Marketing’

December 1, 2016

Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should (Plus Other Life Lessons from Seth Spears)

November 17, 2016

How Becoming a Digital Entrepreneur Helped Jarmar Dupas Get His Life Right

November 10, 2016

Why Trusting Your Instincts Can Lead You to Your Passion

November 3, 2016

The Power of Not Being Stubborn

October 27, 2016

How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

October 20, 2016

How to Create Impact That Endures (Instead of Ending Up in a Landfill)

October 13, 2016

How Will Falconer Stopped Trading Dollars for Hours and Found His Calling

October 6, 2016

Are One-on-One Connections the Key to Jumpstarting Your Online Business?

September 29, 2016

How Jay Baer is Navigating New Waters With His Latest Digital Product

September 22, 2016

The Upside of Setting Outrageous Goals

September 15, 2016

Sean McCabe’s Tried-and-True Techniques for Getting More Meaningful Work Done

July 28, 2016

Why You Should Build a Business That Shines a Light on Your Talents

July 21, 2016

How to Market Like a Magnet and Build Your Personal Brand

July 14, 2016

The Two Biggest Keys to Consistently Doing Work That Matters

July 7, 2016

How Joanna Penn Designed the Lifestyle (and Career) of Her Dreams

June 30, 2016

Is Your Email Marketing Leaving Money on the Table?

June 23, 2016

3 Simple Hacks for Better Copy and More Conversions in Less Time

June 16, 2016

Practical Advice on Turning the Challenges of Building Membership Communities Into Opportunities

June 9, 2016

Brian Clark is Doing … What?

June 2, 2016

Sonia Simone’s Secret to Starting the 1,000-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle of Building a Successful Business

May 26, 2016

Does Your Social Media Strategy Need a Mindset Shift?

May 19, 2016

Brian Clark’s Lessons From a Decade of Developing Successful WordPress Products

May 12, 2016

How Virtual Reality May Shape the Future of Digital Commerce

May 5, 2016

WordPress Product Development: Start with the Business Problem

April 28, 2016

The Myth of Set-it-and-Forget-It Marketing

April 21, 2016

Making This Common Mistake Could Kill the Profitability of Your Online Course

April 14, 2016

Why You (Still) Don’t Need a Mobile App That is Separate From Your Website

April 7, 2016

5 Key Concepts to Understand About Tracking, Testing, and Making Decisions

March 31, 2016

5 Compelling Reasons Why You Should Use Free Online Courses as Lead Magnets

March 24, 2016

A Rainmaker Case Study on Using the Access Approach to Drive Business Results

March 17, 2016

5 Benefits of the ‘Access’ Approach to Online Marketing

March 10, 2016

How Adaptive Websites Deliver an Exceptional Experience While Accelerating Profit

March 3, 2016

How Email (Still) Creates the Profit Engine of Your Digital Business

February 25, 2016

Secrets of a Six-Figure Online Course Builder

February 18, 2016

The 5 Elements of the Modern Marketing Website

February 11, 2016

Who Is a Digital Entrepreneur?

October 22, 2015

What is Digital Commerce?

October 15, 2015

Behind the Scenes: The Rebranding of Copyblogger Media

September 3, 2015

How to Create Legendary Content That Builds Your Business

August 20, 2015

6 Steps to Building an Audience That Builds a Business

August 13, 2015

How the Integration of Content and Commerce Creates a Winning Difference

August 6, 2015

Native Commerce: Media That Makes Real Money

July 30, 2015

Behind the Scenes: The Reimagining of Copyblogger.com

July 16, 2015

The Membership Imperative and the Persistence of Audio Content

July 2, 2015

Darren Rowse on the Intersection of Blogging and Digital Commerce

June 18, 2015

Three Subscription Revenue Models for Digital Content and Services

June 11, 2015

The Two Components of The Perfect Online Business Model

June 4, 2015

Is Creating Online Training Programs a Viable Business Model?

May 28, 2015

How to Succeed in Online Education (On Your Own Terms)

May 21, 2015

Behind the Scenes: Authority Rainmaker, the Next Wave of Rainmaker.FM Shows, and the Departure of Robert Bruce

May 14, 2015

Will Millennials Kill Email Marketing?

May 7, 2015

Does Audio Create Authority Faster Than Text?

April 30, 2015

A Much Better Revenue Model for Podcasting

April 23, 2015

How Online Courses Accelerate Any Business Model

April 16, 2015

How to Escape the Social Media Swindle

April 9, 2015

Why Every Great Website is a Membership Site

April 2, 2015

How to Become a Digital Media Showrunner

March 26, 2015

How to Start a Podcast Network

March 19, 2015

How to Build a Profitable Email List With Social Media Advertising

March 11, 2015

Why Copyblogger Media is Betting Big on Podcasting

March 2, 2015

Henry Rollins on the Art and Business of DIY Media

February 25, 2015

Three Misconceptions About Modern SEO That Confuse Content Marketers

February 16, 2015

How an Email Newsletter Publisher Built an Audience of 223,991 Subscribers

February 9, 2015

Has Social Media Killed Consumer Trust?

February 3, 2015

Split-Testing 101: How to Know Which Words Work

January 27, 2015

5 Traffic Strategies That Build Your Curation Audience

January 19, 2015

3 Ways to Grow Your Curated Email Newsletter Faster

January 14, 2015

Position Your Content Curation for Success With These 5 Essential Elements

January 7, 2015

Behind the Scenes: 2014 in Review and the Road Ahead

December 16, 2014

Seth Godin on Stepping Up and Making it Happen

December 11, 2014

Michael Hyatt on Building a Media Platform and Becoming a 10-Year Overnight Success

December 9, 2014

David Siteman Garland on the Infinite Scalability of Online Courses

December 1, 2014

Pat Flynn on Entrepreneurial Inspiration and His Profitable Content Strategy

November 25, 2014

Jay Baer on “Generosity Marketing” and the Power of Business Podcasting

November 19, 2014

How to Use Content Curation to Create a Recurring Revenue Business

November 12, 2014

7 Ways to Find a Topical Market that Will Fuel Your Digital Commerce Business

November 5, 2014

The Crucial Starting Point for Building a Digital Commerce Business

October 8, 2014

Behind the Scenes: The Launch, Membership Sites, and What Punk Rock has to do with Content Marketing

September 25, 2014

Keep Them Fascinated: How to Discover Your Winning Difference as a Content Marketer

September 2, 2014

The Key Element of 21st Century Persuasion

April 3, 2014

The New Rainmaker as Magical Mentor on the Buyer’s Journey

March 24, 2014

Behind the Scenes: How the New Rainmaker Strategy Evolves in Plain Sight

March 11, 2014

The Critical Thing You Need to Earn Targeted Traffic – Today, and into the Future

March 5, 2014

8 Ways a Digital Media Platform is More Influential than “Marketing”

February 19, 2014

Why the New Rainmaker is a Digital Media Producer

February 11, 2014

Behind the Scenes: How (and Why) New Rainmaker is Produced

February 4, 2014

How to Build a Lucrative Asset While You Make it Rain

January 28, 2014

Why a Personal Media Brand Beats “Marketing” Every Time

January 21, 2014

Why the Key to Business Success is Media, Not Marketing

August 20, 2015

6 Steps to Building an Audience That Builds a Business

It’s taken a while, but the startup world is starting to recognize the power of building an audience before building a product. That’s music to our ears.

Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

That’s the way our company grew out of a one-man blog. Back in 2012, while chronicling how that happened, I coined the term minimum viable audience, effectively tying content marketing to the lean startup movement.

A case study on Copyblogger Media in The Lean Entrepreneur brought the message to a wider audience of entrepreneurial hopefuls. Now, my friend Joe Pulizzi is dedicating an entire book to the subject, which may well provide the tipping point.

It’s called Content Inc., and today Joe joins us to provide the methodology that many, many companies have used to turn an audience into successful products and services. Plus, Joe shares several examples of companies you may have never heard of that have used content as the catalyst for a startup business.

In this episode Joe Pulizzi and I discuss:

  • Why startups are more innovative than large companies at content
  • The coming exodus of talent leaving the enterprise for startups
  • Multiple examples of successful companies that were “audience first”
  • When Content Inc. is available for purchase
  • The inspiration behind the Content Inc. Summit

Listen to The Digital Entrepreneur below ...

6 Steps to Building an Audience That Builds a BusinessBrian Clark
  • Social:
  • Link:
  • Embed:
https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/rainmaker-052.mp3
Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

  • Content Inc.
  • The Content Inc. Summit
  • Joe Pulizzi on Twitter
  • Brian Clark on Twitter

The Transcript


 

6 Steps to Building an Audience That Builds a Business

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Brian Clark: Hey there, everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Rainmaker. I’m your host, founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media.

Today, we have yet another very special guest, Joe Pulizzi, or as I refer to him, the guy who I can’t outrank for the term ‘content marketing.’ I’ve been trying, Joe. You know I’ve been trying. Did you make up that word? Did you make up the term ‘content marketing?’ Was you it?

Joe Pulizzi: And I love you. It excites me that you tried so hard to get down first. I really dig that about you, actually.

Brian Clark: I do have a competitive streak. I can’t help it.

Joe Pulizzi: Did I make up the term? I started using it when I was running custom media at Penton Media in 2001. Actually, the backstory about that is, we were in the custom publishing industry, and we were called ‘Penton Custom Media,’ two very boring terms. You go with ‘custom publishing at Custom Media,’ nobody wants to buy anything from you.

So I was like, “How can I get these chief marketing officers at least interested in what I’m talking about?” I tried everything. I tried ‘branded content,’ ‘custom content,’ and I’m throwing it all at them, and then I started using ‘content marketing’ in the pitch, and I could see the reaction change. Like they were, “Oh, hey. I’m a marketer. We do content-y type stuff. Maybe that’s what we’re doing.”

If you’re targeting marketers in every way — and you know this, because you and I both work with a lot of marketers — they’re very simple people. You have to keep things simple, and things resonate with them around the term ‘marketing.’ I saw that, and I said, “Hey, look. This thing that we’re doing, this building audiences thing through relevant, valuable content on a consistent basis — we better call it something like ‘content marketing’ because that’s what’s resonating with these folks.”

Yeah. I can’t prove it. I can’t prove that I was the first one, probably as much as you were responsible for popularizing it, because you didn’t like the term, but then you started using it. I said, “Thank Jesus for that.” It helped us.

Brian Clark: Well, maybe I just didn’t like it because I didn’t come up with it. I don’t know. So yeah, I talk about now, “In 1999, I started doing this thing we now call ‘content marketing,’ and then in 2006, I started a blog talking about this thing we now call ‘content marketing.’”

But it was you who convinced me, and grudgingly, I guess, and I don’t know what my issue was with it. I don’t even think it occurred to me that it needed to be called something. But for those of you who don’t know who Joe is — you probably do — he is the founder of Content Marketing Institute, the world’s leading enterprise solution provider. No, I’m trying to come up with a tagline for you.

Joe Pulizzi: “Leading training and education company for enterprise marketers,” something like that.

Brian Clark: Exactly. According to Google.

Joe Pulizzi: Hey. If Google said it, it must be true.

Brian Clark: It must be true.

Joe Pulizzi: Absolutely.

Brian Clark: Also, more impressively, is that Content Marketing World, without doubt, is the largest and the finest content marketing conference out there. It’s something I’ve been involved with every year since the beginning.

Joe Pulizzi: Every year, that’s right.

Brian Clark: It’s so aimed at the enterprise. Why am I there every year?

Joe Pulizzi: Because everybody aspires to be a big company. It’s interesting. You know this, because I think we’ve had some conversations on when you target the enterprise, you can’t target the mid market. You actually have to say ‘enterprise,’ and you get the mid market.

Then you get small companies that actually want to aspire to be big, so then we got a lot of really high-growth small businesses. That’s what we target. So you get mostly marketers at large businesses, and because of that you get the mid market, and then you get the small businesses that want to be big.

It’s just interesting. That’s why you fit in. You probably target what, the growing small business, mid-market audience? Would you say that that’s your target?

Brian Clark: I think a lot of our customers fall into the biggest group of the small business market, which is the very small business, but it does move up from there.

Joe Pulizzi: Yeah.

Brian Clark: I think, again, a lot of the work you have done has made what we talk about relevant to even larger companies. I think our hearts are with the small companies, because that’s our affinity. But the information percolates all over the place, which is fascinating to me.

Let’s get to the issue here, because historically, an enterprise-focused institute and conference, and now you’ve written Content Inc., which is squarely aimed at the startup and small business world, the whole audience-first theme that we’ve been talking about for years. I was fortunate enough that you allowed me to write the foreword to the book. As long as I get in somewhere.

Joe Pulizzi: ‘Allowed’ is a good way to put it. It defaulted to you. You had to write that because it’s your story. Thank you for that, by the way.

Brian Clark: Yeah. It’s a great book. It’s going to be out in just a few weeks here. It’s available for pre-order, called Content Inc. There’s also an excellent podcast that Joe’s been running called Content Inc. also.

How do you like that? Let’s talk about podcasting. Everyone is doing podcasting now. You’ve taken to it. I love your show with Robert, This Old Marketing. How has it been reaching out to this new audience with a podcast? Because it seems like that’s your primary engine.

Joe Pulizzi: This is all a big experiment. Actually, everything is, even writing the book to this audience. Because as you said, we’ve never targeted the small business, startup, entrepreneurial audience, so to start with that was completely selfish on my part, because I wanted to write this book.

I literally said, “This book needs to be written. What we’ve done at CMI, what Brian’s done at Copyblogger Media, and dozens and dozens of other examples, they need to be told, because we have to get away from this idea that you have to be a big company to do this thing called content marketing.

I think there’s actually a better way to launch a business, and it’s the way that you and I launched the business. I said, “Okay, I’m going to do this book, but I’m not going to make it about me. We’re going to talk about some examples, but let’s talk about what all these companies did and how they went audience-first and then built products and services on the back of that.” I said, “Okay, well, what’s the best way to do this?”

With Epic Content Marketing, which I wrote in 2013 and is squarely for enterprises, I started to release blog posts ahead of time. That was the thing: “Okay. I want to tease it out. We’re going to give pieces of the book out ahead of time.” I said, “Let’s do something different with Content Inc.,” and I said “Whoa. Let’s just share everything ahead of time but do it in a podcast form.”

So far, it’s seemed to work. Every week, we get more subscribers, more listeners to the show. People have started to talk about it more, and honestly, we haven’t really marketed that much at all. It’s just sort of there. It just sort of happened, and we’re letting people know about it. I like the fact that it’s almost like we had the blog-to-book idea. I would say “Hey, if I’m going to write a book, do a blog-the-book. Just plan out six months of content, write your chapter outline, start blogging, and then in six months, you’ve got 80 percent of a book, and you’re done.”

I started to do the same thing with podcasting. So I started to write episodes of the podcast, which became chapters of the book. I started to release those, edited them down, and then we’ve got part of the book done. As I’ve been going through and doing this podcasts — two a week, and they’re really short, like five to seven minutes long — then okay, I’ve got more content for the book.

It seemed to have worked out well, and it just takes a lot of the burden off me from a content production standpoint. At the same time, I can build an audience. I think that that’s a smarter thing to do than everybody just saying, “Wait. We’re not going to send any content out. Here comes the book, and now it’s ready.”

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Joe Pulizzi: I think you just give it all out as much as possible. Build some anticipation over it. Build your audience so that when you release the book, it’s already there. The audience is basically your customer list for buying the book or the audio book. It’s all ready to go.

Brian Clark: You’re demonstrating the principle of the book in a way that you’re building an audience to sell the book. I like that. You’re getting very meta, Joe. That’s been our thing for years.

Joe Pulizzi: My life is meta.

Brian Clark: Exactly, right.

Joe Pulizzi: We’ll see if it works out. So far, it looks like … We’ll know right away. September 8th, the book comes out. It comes out at Content Marketing World. I think we’ll know within the first two weeks if that strategy has paid off. Fingers crossed, it looks like it will work.

Brian Clark: Well, I’m certainly going to help, because again, my foreword cannot be unseen. I mean, I must have spent 20 or 30 minutes on that Joe, and you had to write the whole rest of the book.

Joe Pulizzi: It could go down as the greatest foreword in business history.

Why Startups Are More Innovative Than Large Companies at Content

Brian Clark: Let me ask you this: I had your partner in crime, Robert Rose, on last week. We were kind of dancing around this thing, but I’m not sure we ever just came right out and said it, but I almost came out and said, “Don’t you think the real innovation in content marketing really comes from the startups who build the audience first and all that?”

I never came out and said it, and then right after I asked you to be on the show, I see you’ve written an article saying ‘Why Startups Basically Beat the Pants off the Enterprise at Content Marketing.’ I mean, the headline was something to that effect. Tell me what you think about that.

Joe Pulizzi: I totally agree with that. It’s the premise of the book. I’ve spent too long — 16 years now — working with these large companies. There are so many politics, red tape, fiefdoms that you have to deal with, meeting after meeting to get something done.

Culture change has to happen of some nature, or you have to have a content champion that’s so strong that it’s actually willing to risk their job, at least doing it the way that it’s been done, to make some of these decisions to say, “Look, we’re not going to market the way we’ve always marketed. We’re going to go out and build an audience that knows, likes, and trusts us, and if we do that, we believe in our heart of hearts that it’s going to help our business, and here’s how.” Basically, that’s the approach.

There are very, very few large businesses that can do that, because they’re so set in, “We have these products to sell. That’s what marketing’s for. Get the darn brochure done, set it, and make sure the sales people have what they need. Marketing, get out of my way, and I’ll sell.” Especially in large B2B companies.

Now what we notice is, if you have a belief structure around the practice of content marketing, that you really believe that this is the way that you can go to market, you have one person that could make that decision. And you have such other focus on a content niche, which is also another issue with large companies. They want to target every one of their buyer personas, audience personas, and in a B2B company, that could be seven to nine people, and then their content becomes so irrelevant, it doesn’t do anything.

But if you’re a startup, you’re focusing on that audience — building that audience, focusing on that person and that audience that you’re building — that becomes your future customer database.

It takes time, and it takes patience. Large companies have no patience. Large companies — usually the ones that we work with — are public companies. They’re on some kind of a quarterly fiscal financial release schedule. Nobody has patience for anything.

If you go in to a chief marketer’s office and say, “Hey. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to target this audience, which is not a large audience but it’s a particular audience that we could be the leading informational expert for, and we’re going to distribute content to them. We’re going to build them. They’re going to know us more, like us. It’s going to lead to this. We’re going to build subscribers. We think this is going to happen — that’s the hypothesis, but we don’t know for sure. We might have to change it. And I need 15 to 17 months to make that happen.”

The next two words are — with a contraction in there — “You’re fired.” That’s basically what it is. “Get out of here. Let’s do some advertising. Let’s drop some demand right now.”

Brian Clark: It’s amazing, the short-term thinking at the largest institutions on the planet, because it’s this quarterly mentality. I know there’s so much money at the enterprise level, but I’ve never wanted to deal with what you described, that mire of entrenched silos and infighting and the inability to move quickly.

That’s also why I refer to myself as ‘unemployable.’ Could you imagine me in that environment? I’m on the evening news at some point.

Joe Pulizzi: Yeah. I wouldn’t even start to imagine that crisis. I don’t think any large company would imagine that. “Let’s go and get that Brian Clark. He’s going to really disrupt … “

Brian Clark: No one’s in the history of the world have ever said, “I wonder if we could get Clark to come on board.”

Joe Pulizzi: We just had our team meeting, and we were talking about it being a noble effort. This is a mission that we can really get behind, because who’s going to do this? Who really cares about this? There’s a lot of really good people and marketers in these large companies that are struggling, and that’s our job to support them and to give them the air cover so they can go in and make change happen.

If you can make change happen — a good example is Julie Fleisher of Kraft. The change that she’s made happen in Kraft has been phenomenal. I don’t even know how much they respect it inside Kraft, but she’s so respected outside, and she’s an inspiration for marketers at large companies all over the place. Because we know it can be done, and we know that that is a real asset inside that organization that’s valued.

We need more of that, because it’s the large companies that have large access to these large audiences that can actually help the world communicate better. Because we all know that we don’t need another ad. Do we need more advertising campaigns? For that matter, do we need more content campaigns?

I hate that term. I hate ‘content campaigns.’

Brian Clark: No, it’s not a campaign. It’s a shift in thinking.

Joe Pulizzi: What is a content campaign? I didn’t even know what that is. Is that a short-term content viral burst?

Brian Clark: Do magazine publishers have ‘magazine campaigns?’ No, they produce a magazines. It’s more that type of thinking than it is a campaign.

Joe Pulizzi: Well, yeah. “We’re going to go do a blog.” What the hell? What does that mean? We need, “Oh. Somebody get content for the blog today. Today we have to do a post.” What?

The Coming Exodus of Talent Leaving the Enterprise for Startups

Brian Clark: You know what occurred to me, when I heard you were writing a book and thinking about the audience you have? A lot of the enterprise people will send certain designated people from the marketing department or corporate communications or what have you to events like Content Marketing World. They’re in charge of figuring out this content thing.

Then these people come back, and they’re inspired. They’re fired up. They know what to do, and they know what will work if they can get internal buy-in, and it doesn’t come.

Has it occurred to you that some of those people in the existing audience may be looking at Content Inc. and thinking, “You know what? I know how to do this. I’m going out on my own.” To me, that would be fantastic. Some of the enterprise companies out there may not think that’s so great, but have you thought about that?

Joe Pulizzi: The dirty little secret that’s going on in our industry right now is you have a lot of really smart people in big companies that understand how to build audiences, that don’t get quite the respect they deserve or need or even support.

And yes, frankly, I’ve never seen — and I’m not saying any names, because we won’t do that, no names please — there are a lot of people that you and I know right now that are dissatisfied at their corporate job, and they want to do something for the greater good. They want to do something for themselves, and they want to do something for their families. And they know that they can go build an audience if they have the level of patience and determination and passion. They’re going to get there.

To answer you, that’s a long answer to your question, but yes, absolutely yes.

Brian Clark: But I mean, how could it not be?

Joe Pulizzi: This is our future entrepreneurs. And they are going to Content Marketing World. That’s why Robert Rose and I, we’ve kicked around, “Hey. You know what, are we going to do like this startup thing around, because we see so many of these possibilities of companies launching from these corporate marketers that really want to be entrepreneurial.” Because they’re already entrepreneurial. If you’re a content marketer, you probably have that entrepreneurial spirit already, because you have to in order to survive in a large company atmosphere.

Brian Clark: Yeah. That’s why my new project is aimed at the power of the small, the power that a media producer mindset could bring to a startup or even a production-style environment.

And you hear all the things that are threatening or radically changing the future of work, including automation, robotics, computerization. But it’s also just the dissatisfaction with how large companies work, and I think there’s a big movement coming. I think content may be the catalyst in a lot of ways, because the light bulb has gone off, as you’ve mentioned, for a lot of these people that are like, “Wait. I can do something here without a lot of money, with all these tools that are out there and just the freedom to do it correctly.” I think that’s awesome.

Joe Pulizzi: It’s the golden age for entrepreneurship. Right now. And I think that the whole content movement and the ‘no barriers to entry’ in the technology area and ‘we’re all publishers.’ It’s all the same thing. We can all do it.

Just a quick story, because I think it’s interesting. I was speaking at a startup event, a bunch of venture capitalists in the audience — it was around the Cleveland area — and they were all talking, “We need more investment. We’ve got some group. We got this great momentum going on with these companies that are launching, and they’re creating these differentiated products and going to market.” I heard the same old spiel or whatever: “You created a great, unique product. Put a lot of money behind it. Get that investment. Get your series A. Blah blah blah.”

Of course, there’s me, the content guy, I’m like, “I don’t even know why I’m on this panel, but hey, I’ll answer your question.” I basically said, “You know what? We’re all doing it wrong. We are all launching businesses the wrong way thinking that our idea is so good that we’ll be able to figure out our audience’s needs right now — that we’ve got it. That doesn’t work that way, even if you look at maybe the most famous accelerator on the planet. Y-Combinator has a 10 percent success rate. That’s pitiful.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to say, ‘You know what? Let’s go out and build an audience first. Let’s understand them better than anyone else in the world, and then we will know’ — just like you did. ‘You’ll inherently start to figure out what products and services they need and when we’re ready to sell, we will have our buyers, because they’re going to buy anything we offer them because they trust us.’ I just think that’s a better way for startups to go today but nobody does this.”

Everybody talked — even Peter Thiel in Zero to One, the book. Even though I love what he’s done: investor in Facebook, co-founder of PayPal, and he wrote a great book called Zero to One. But it starts the same as every other startup book. “You have to create a product that’s different than anyone else …” You know how hard that is to do?

Brian Clark: I know, and what we were talking about last week with Robert was that content, media, is the last way to truly differentiate. I can manufacture anything I want in China. I can copy any service model. It’s this unicorn thinking that drives me crazy.

Joe Pulizzi: It’s not a new concept either. I mean, Don Schultz, who is one of my heroes, the father of integrated marketing. I read an article that he wrote in 2003 in B2B Magazine. B2B is no longer around – well, it’s part of Ad Age, but the magazine’s gone now.

He wrote and said, “Look. Everything that you are creating as a business, as a commerce-backed business, can be duplicated except for how you communicate.” He said it, and here we are. You’re talking about it. I’m talking, Robert — we talk about that all the time. But now, the difference is that you actually have more power to make change happen through content, because you can communicate directly. You don’t have that power 20 years ago. You had to have some kind of budget behind you. You don’t have to have that today.

Brian Clark: Yup. Preach, brother. This is the choir over here. Amen.

Joe Pulizzi: Preach it. Amen.

Multiple Examples of Successful Companies That Were ‘Audience First’

Brian Clark: All right. Let’s talk about some examples of companies who have done this. Now, there are a lot of companies that are really well-known to my audience. I think we do owe them acknowledgement here, because a lot of our peers have done what you’ve done and what I’ve done. We all have different businesses, and maybe we ended up with a different answer about, “What problem or desire am I going to solve?” and yet fundamentally, the mechanism that you lay out in Content Inc. is the same.

Joe Pulizzi: It’s the same thing. It’s basically, focus on who that audience is going to be. Figure out what your passion area is, mixed with what is something that you actually have authority — you like to use the word ‘authority’ — to communicate on? What’s that content differentiation area? We call that the ‘content tilt.’ Then build that base. Build that audience over time.

Some of the examples, of course we use the Copyblogger Media example throughout the book. We use the Content Marketing Institute example. We basically did the same thing, but we monetized it through different ways. You monetize that through the products that you sell. We monetize that through mostly our events, like Content Marketing World.

You’ve got Moz, Rand Fishkin, who did the same thing. He built 100,000 email subscribers and made the pivot from the consulting business to selling products. We know the folks at Social Media Examiner have done the same type of model, where he monetizes his through mostly online products and services.

So there’s the ones I think we know about. The ones that we talk about in the book that we don’t know about, which I think are so interesting. If you look at somebody like Michelle Phan, who was a designer online, started a blog in 2005, started to build an audience, launched her books in 2010, launched her Pinterest page in 2011. She has now something like 13 million followers on Pinterest when it comes to all the designs she shares. I actually get her email newsletter, believe it or not. Now she’s got licensing, merchandising deals with Target, with Microsoft — a multi-millionaire. It’s just amazing what has happened by building an audience.

One that you may not have heard of that I think is good for the people listening to this who are trying to figure out, “Hey, I want to sell products,” is Trish Witkowski over at Fold Factory. Basically, what she’s selling is direct mail templates. Like “If you want to put a mailing together, here’s some templates you could use.”

So she created — and Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping, tipped me off to this one — a video show, a regular video show, called ‘The 60-Second Super-cool Fold of the Week.’ Just to think that you don’t have to have a lot of audience or subscribers to do this, she built her subscribership up to 3,100. So you might be thinking, “That’s not that much.” For a B2B audience, that’s a good, solid audience. She’s been able to get about a million views of her videos over that time, and she’s been able to rack up well over $500,000 in direct revenue because of the videos.

By the way, that was an existing business, so she’s trying to figure, “Okay. How do I take an existing business concept and add in what we know as the Content Inc. model to that?” And that’s worked really well for her. I’ve got a lot of good ones.

I love what Ann Reardon’s done, the baking queen of Sydney, Australia. Basically, in 2012, she was up late at night. She had a baby, and she was doing night feedings. She got bored. She was a qualified dietitian at the same time, and she created a blog called How to Cook That, and she did regular videos. But her content niche, or her content tilt, was around impossible food creations.

I don’t know if you remember, did you see the video of the Instagram cake? Brian, did you see this?

Brian Clark: No. I didn’t see that.

Joe Pulizzi: You are the only one that didn’t see it.

Brian Clark: You know me. I have to work for a living.

Joe Pulizzi: Basically, the outside looks like a chocolate cake, and you cut into it, and it was a replica of the Instagram logo. She did that inside the cake. It got millions and millions of views, so she went from 100 subscribers in 2012, to now, she’s got 1.7 million or something like that subscribers. Sixteen million views. I think her monthly view level is 16 million. It’s unbelievable, and Ann has been able to transform her business. She’s got licensing deals going on, promotional deals, merchandising deals. It’s just amazing.

The other thing you don’t think about when we talk about the examples — and you’re probably the best example of this, but I do a little bit on this as well — is the number of different ways you can monetize the platform. The average is like five to six different ways that people do.

It’s like “Oh hey, I’m selling this product.” Well if you have a Content Inc. model, and you create a platform and an audience that knows and loves you, you could sell lots of different stuff. That’s what we see on all the examples we cover in the book. It’s like an average of four or five or six different ways. Like at Content Marketing Institute, we monetize in like 10, 11 different ways with different products we have. I think you guys probably have what? Four or five?

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Joe Pulizzi: When you look at it with the event, and the sponsorship, and the products that you sell, and the affiliate stuff. I mean, you’ve got a little bit of everything going on.

Brian Clark: Yeah. We actually built the Rainmaker Platform by building each part and selling it, the classic bootstrapping strategy. Then we end up with, “Wow. We’ve got a lot of stuff here.”

You almost think about consolidation at some point, but as long as this thing is something that satisfies the problem or desire of the audience, they’re going to be inclined to work for us hosting. We got into that really to build the hosting component of the Rainmaker Platform, but that was the hosting that Copyblogger uses for its own site. Some people are like, “Sign me up.” You know, we didn’t even push it hard, so yeah. It’s amazing.

Joe Pulizzi: It really is. The most amazing thing, just to kind of wrap up all examples … and I think there’s a total of well over 50 examples in the book, and I love them, because most of them started with nothing. They started to create amazing content consistently over a platform.

But the one thing that we did, is when we did the interviews for the book and we look at each of the models, every one — and I’m not kidding you – every one followed the same six steps. They did it in different time frames, but basically, the same six steps.

What’s the passion area? Define that first. What’s the content tilt? How are we going to build the base over time? How do we then harvest the audience? Then we move in to the diversification of, once the minimum viable audience is attained, we diversify into books or events or into social media channels or whatever. Then monetization.

The same thing. And that’s why I believe that if somebody reads the book, they could take this model and actually replicate it. Learn from you and I and everyone else and do this if you follow these steps. It just blew me away.

Actually, the most exciting for me is the simplicity of the model. It’s actually not complex at all. Like, if you go to building the base, it’s ‘pick one main content type in one main content channel. Consistently distribute content over time.’ That’s like mind-blowing. But that’s what it is. That’s what everybody did. It just blows me away.

When Content Inc. Is Available for Purchase

Brian Clark: Yeah, I know. We’ve both been talking this for so long. I think sometimes, “What’s not to get?” But I will say that the way you boiled it down in Content Inc., over time, you find ways to explain things slightly differently, and you’ll see the light bulb go up.

So Content Inc. is released on September 8th. It is available for pre-order right now on Amazon. I think everyone who listens to this show needs a copy of this on their shelf. Other than my foreword, it’s a really good book. I’ve got to do the false humility here.

The Inspiration behind the Content Inc. Summit

Brian Clark: Let’s talk a little bit about the Content Inc. Summit. So we’ve got the big enterprise event, and companies big and small show up to Content Marketing World. But on the following day, September 11th, will be the Content Inc. Summit.

I want to talk about an example, and this is a guy who’s going to be there along with me and you, John Lee Dumas, the podcasting mad man. I mean, literally, this guy’s story amazes me. Not because of where he’s at, necessarily, although that’s impressive, but just how he attacked the world of podcasting as his content channel. Maybe you can run through a little bit of how John exemplifies some of these six steps or maybe the early ones.

Joe Pulizzi: Basically, he said, “We’re going to focus on the entrepreneur, and we are going to solve entrepreneur’s problems and help them build their businesses. Specifically, we’re going to do this through this channel called podcasting, and we’re going to consistently deliver that message over time.” He basically built that audience. He didn’t really have a revenue line or an idea of, “How do we consistently build revenue?”

I think what I love about John more than everyone else is that he does those monthly podcasts where he shares all of his financials. I dig that. Talk about some pure authenticity. It’s giving everything up.

Brian Clark: Yeah. At Moz, Rand was the first one I remember who had that kind of ultra-transparency. We try to do it to a certain degree, but it’s hard. I think we’re a little more old-school. Buffer does that really well. But John, yeah. He just lays it all out there.

Joe Pulizzi: Basically, he built an audience, and then once he built that minimum viable audience, he was able to sell.

The root for Content Inc., for the summit, it’s the same thing, right? I had the last book — Epic Content Marketing — great for enterprise marketers. I wanted to have something for that small business, that entrepreneur, to say, “Hey. Here. This is for you. Just do this.” Like they would say, “Hey, Joe, can I hire you for consulting?” I’m like, “No. Save your money. Just read this, and then do it, and you’ll be fine.”

And then we’re going after the same thing at Content Marketing World. I mean, we’ve got 11 concurrent sessions at Content Marketing World, mostly really shaped for — there are some SMB sessions, but most of them are shaped for the big boys. So we’re like, “Okay. Well, I want that same thing for small businesses. Hey. This is for you.”

You’re going to be talking. I’m talking. We’ve got Matthew Patrick coming in, who — I don’t know if you’re familiar with his work on Game Theorists. He’s got 4.8 million subscribers and has built an amazing business. He’s like YouTube’s number-one go-to guy or go-to to figure out analytics for YouTube. He’s going to be on there.

John Lee Dumas is going to be there. Andrew Davis, of course, is going to be kicking it off. It’s going to be fantastic, and I love it. You can be a small business startup entrepreneur in that room, and you will get nothing but six hours of value. You will come out of there inspired, but you will have enough that you will be able to say, “Look, I can do this for my business,” or “I can add this on to my existing business.”

That was the hope. We’ll see. I think we’re going to get a really good crowd for it, but again, it’s a different audience that we’ve targeted. It’s on the back of Content Marketing World on Friday, 9 to 3.

Brian Clark: Yes. I’m attending both, but tell us how this works. If you want to go to the Content Inc. Summit alone, is that possible?

Joe Pulizzi: Yes. If you want to go to the Content Inc. Summit alone, actually, the easiest way to do it is just to go to the book site. Go to Content-Inc.com, and that’ll take you to the book site, and there’s a link right at the top for Content Inc. Summit. Just click there, and you’ll just go to the Summit site instead of having to go to Content Marketing World and go through all the other hoops. You don’t have to do that. Just go to Content-Inc.com, and you’ll go directly to that page, and it’s going to be a blast.

Right now, of course, that’s where my passion is at, because I love to see these smaller businesses or entrepreneurs actually feel like they have a chance, and you and I both saying the same thing. You actually have a better chance in some cases that the one with all the budget money, because it’s so much more difficult in a large enterprise to do this.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Okay, we’re going to link that up in the show notes as well for easy access. Joe, my friend, you know, every year, I give you a hard time about Cleveland, which you love. You love your city.

Joe Pulizzi: I do.

Brian Clark: I’m looking forward to being there, and I’m really excited. I don’t know, after all these years, I still get fired up, and that’s a good sign, because if I don’t, I need to retire.

Joe Pulizzi: Hey, man, you’ve been along for this ride. It’s hard to believe. Remember the first year, we were just hoping for a couple hundred, and I said, “Brian, would you please speak? I need your help,” and we had 600 show up that year. Now we’re going to be over 3,000 this year.

Brian Clark: I know. That’s amazing.

Joe Pulizzi: It’s hard to believe.

Brian Clark: You put on amazing show. Every year I’m just like, “This is huge,” and yet — no names on this side either — I’ve been to a few shows where they were just horrible. I mean, everything was wrong. The speakers are not treated well. But you really put on a class show. It’s amazing. I know you work hard to do it, but you make it look effortless while wearing orange, I should mention.

Joe Pulizzi: You know what, if you wore a little bit more orange, I think the world would be a better place as well.

Brian Clark: I’m a Broncos fan now. Can I wear just a Broncos jersey, or is that going to offend your Browns sensibility?

Joe Pulizzi: You know what, you’re fine in the convention center, but if you wear it around downtown Cleveland, you may be ‘lost.’

Brian Clark: I don’t mess around in downtown Cleveland. I just keep eyes forward.

Joe Pulizzi: We still remember the drive and the fumble.

Brian Clark: I know. You never get over that stuff.

Joe Pulizzi: Oh no. We can’t get over it because we haven’t won a championship in over 50 years.

Brian Clark: If LeBron could bring it home, I think it might ease some pain, but …

Joe Pulizzi: It will ease all the pain. It’ll all be forgotten. So hopefully soon, because people are dying here.

Brian Clark: I was going for the Cavs. God, I just want you guys to win something. Anything.

Joe Pulizzi: It’ll happen. It’s certainly not going to be the Browns this year. But it could be the Cavs.

Brian Clark: All right, my friend, thank you again. I will see you shortly. Everyone out there, seriously, for the price of the book, I think you’re going to be over-delivered with inspiration but also methodology, and I think that’s important. So Content Inc. Check it out. Joe, take care.

Joe Pulizzi: See you soon, bro. Thanks for all your support.

Never Miss New Shows and Episodes on Rainmaker.FM

Get the best of the Rainmaker.FM network in a single weekly email, along with two weeks
of free training that will change the way you think about online marketing ...

Free Registration

You might also like...

Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites

[48] 3Q for Making Your Opt-In Incentive Irresistible

Listen to episode
The Digital Entrepreneur

Henry Rollins on the Art and Business of DIY Media

Listen to episode
Hit Publish

Clean Up Your Sidebar!

Listen to episode
The Digital Entrepreneur

How to Use Amazon Publishing to Grow Your Online Audience

Listen to episode
7-Figure Small with Brian Clark

Creatively Breaking the Rules of the Art Business, with Hugh MacLeod

Listen to episode
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

How ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse Writes

Listen to episode

Comments

  1. Hashim Warren says

    August 25, 2015 at 12:58 AM

    Brian, I still like “tutorial marketing”

    https://www.copyblogger.com/what-to-do-when-your-idea-sucks/

    I wish it stuck, but it’s more descriptive than content marketing.

    Reply
  2. Val says

    February 12, 2016 at 10:43 PM

    I read the whole article but for some reason I still don’t understand the term content marketing Brian… Can you elaborate on that term for me a little please sir???

    Reply
    • Brian Clark says

      February 13, 2016 at 10:31 AM

      Here’s some info on that: https://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing/

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

Copyright © 2023 Rainmaker Digital, LLC. Powered by the Rainmaker Platform.

Privacy Policy  ·  Refund Policy  ·  Cookie Policy  ·  Terms of Service  ·  Contact