Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, welcome. In this podcast we talk B2B marketing and what it takes to know your customer innovate and profit. We're glad you made it. This is the campaign by 97th floor.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello and happy Friday. I am Paxton Gray and this is The Campaign, a B2B podcast about understanding your audience, innovating beyond best practice and producing outsized profit. I'm joined today by Jonathan Reamer, director of Global Content Experience and senior writer at ServiceNow, an AI platform that delivers IT operations, field service management and app engine solutions, producing AI agents to work for people. Jonathan leads the global Demand Content experience team at ServiceNow and has been an integrated marketing, demand gen and content strategy powerhouse for high growth B2B SaaS and tech companies including DocuSign, Sprinklr and Emerson Network Power.
So Jonathan started at ServiceNow in 2019 and in 2021, CEO Bill McDermott was talking about his plan to take ServiceNow to become a $10 billion enterprise company by 2024. And he said, quote, our organic growth machine is full, is in full flight, and our pipeline is stronger than ever. All this now is really making ServiceNow one of those real standard platforms for well run companies in the 21st century. Well cut to the end of 2024 and ServiceNow is now worth over $216 billion. So they far surpassed that goal.
And I'm sure in no small part to Jonathan and what his team is doing to grow those organic channels. So with that, thank you for joining us today, Jonathan.
[00:01:46] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you so much for that kind introduction. I would say that this is the, you know, within our, all of our marketing careers, this has been a unique situation for me because I'm working in a company. Not that the companies I've worked with before have had problems, but the company I'm working with now, ServiceNow, the products are phenomenally fantastic. And I know some people would say, well, what do you need marketing for? Oh, no, you still need marketing because you've got to cut through the clutter and get over the perceived parody that's out there. But oh my gosh, such a blessing to work with a company that is at the forefront of how things are being done and thus at the forefront of how we market to people as well. So I'm just excited by that whole opportunity.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Well, we're super excited to have you here talking with us. I hope to have you back many times because there's a million things that we could talk about and that you could.
[00:02:42] Speaker C: Oh yes.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: But today we're going to be diving into a fairly polarizing strategy in the B2B marketing world, which is gated content. So love it or hate it, gating ebooks, white papers and webinars remains a cornerstone of lead gen for most B2B enterprises, but is still the right. Is it still the right approach in 2025? Critics would say it stifles organic engagement and alienates prospects, while proponents praise its role in building robust pipelines. Our goal today is to dissect this debate, explore its evolution, and examine whether gated content is a relic of the past or is it a key to unlocking high value leads moving forward. So right off the bat, Jonathan, what's your take on the great debate of gated versus ungated content?
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Okay. Wow. What a topic. First of all, so I'm going to make sure that I'm remembering the new copyright things that have come into play in the last year.
It is amazing the amount of interest that Steamboat Willie has for demand gen content out there. So one of the biggest problems of course is people filling out forms incorrectly, right? Because they just want to get to the goods.
From a standpoint of my history and where I come from, I think that all of my friends out there in marketing world realize the, the yin and yang of demand generation and KPIs and metrics for showing success and influence and everything. And it is so easy to grab onto that pendulum and let it swing over into I'm just delivering leads and that means that I'm going to gate everything and I'm going to, I'm going to set up channels which require gating of everything because my KPI is just delivering X number of form fills.
On the other side of things, you go to people going we're not going to get anything and we're going to just organically lead people to purchase. And while that may be sustainable in the world of retail and even for some smaller B2B that have item, you know, have price, you know, prices of their, of their, their products and solutions that are at a, at a rate where someone can purchase instantly online. That way you, I mean in those situations you can associate. Well, people looked at these things and they went right over and they filled a cart. I mean so that's, that's not easy. But it's easier than the enterprise world that a lot of your customers live in Paxton and where we live, as far as ServiceNow is concerned, I so I know that I'm kind of going all over the place on an answer for this, but it's something that we're Looking into and we're exploring the. I, you know, you know, I will admit that, you know, as most companies over the last, over the last decade have depended on form fill as being an indication of success.
It is a gut check time to figure out what is needed by people right now or accepted by people right now when they're engaging with a company leading to purchase. And so my view on to gate or not is, I don't know, we gotta figure it out. Because I think that there's so many variables involved in things that means that we have to first understand what our audiences want and when they're willing to give us information. That's the only commerce that we really have right now on, on sites and properties that do not have, you know, that cart I was talking about.
And so one of the examples that I always use and people in my work were going to say, oh my God, Jonathan's going to talk about this again is if somebody has their kitchen sink spewing water everywhere, they've got to turn that water off. And so do they want some kind of meaningful 3D experience on how to turn off the water or they just friggin want the water turned off? They probably just want the water turned off and they need a quick explanation of how to go do that.
Great. So we figured that out.
But if they're desperate enough, can we put a form in front of that?
I don't think so. I think that when you're trying to solve a real basic problem that someone has, you don't, don't form it. And if someone wants to dig into further information to belabor this analogy, if they want to, hey, would you like act now that you've turned off the water? Because we gave you these three steps. If you want contacts that are great plumbers in your area, go to here. We can put a form in front of that. Or if you would like to learn how to perhaps doing your own plumbing, we've got some great videos that are ready to help you fix it yourself. If, if you're a do it yourself kind of person, we can put a form in front of that. But you still have solved that initial problem that they had, which could be something as esoteric as I'm just trying to figure out should I form content or not? Or as you know, as dire as. If I don't figure out this security risk answer, I've got to shut down my entire IT department. So I mean, it depends on where it is. So it's kind of one of those things where I Think it's up to us as marketers to really understand where our audiences are and what's driving them. And that's the real answer between forming and not forming. So I'll let you talk. I just babbled a bunch, so it's fascinating.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: There is a client that we've worked with in the AI deck generation space, so building out slide decks.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: And talk about, like, sometimes they have a very immediate need. And one. One thing that we learned as we were building out their marketing is that kind of idea of desperation. And so they. Their model is based off of demo.
And often when you need AI to build something, you're either playing around with it and you just want to see how it works, or you're like, I need to do something really fast here. And so the demo can serve both of those. But sure. So it was that same idea in the sense that it kind of scratches that itch. But then if you want to go further now, you. You need to enter our ecosystem and. And create an account.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. But I would say, Paxton, you said that there's the. The risks that someone has or they're feeling threat, and I know that I use that. The. The analogy of the water spewing everywhere, and we can all identify with that. But what if the. The need or the. Or the anxiety is positive and it's around. I want to be the most innovative, whatever, cio, you know, CHR or whatever out there. And that means I need to stay ahead of the competition. And I've got three months to figure this out so that I don't lose market share. Because we're a laggard. Right?
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:38] Speaker C: There's still threat there, but it's not based on. There's a. An emergency right now. I've got to figure it out. So I think that we also have to identify the positive anxieties that drive people. And. And we always have to remember is like, are people willing to give information at this point?
And we'll get into the other part of that, which is, do we really need their information?
You know, and what once the right thing? Because as you and I have talked about, there's. We've all experienced on, you know, news sites and things like that, where we say, that's a really interesting story, and you start reading it, and then that thing pops up and you go, oh, my gosh, I don't want to subscribe, because, first of all, I don't want. I've already got enough subscriptions I can't keep track of. And the other Thing is, is just give me this information. You're already serving ads to me and so why am I having to. To give more information that. But hats off to them because I think that in this grand scheme of things that news organizations, whether, whether or not they're surviving the headwinds of the economy right now are not. They are the ones probably at the more at the forefront of figuring out how to create that content that is digital still, but feels special enough to warrant someone giving information and so they can do that subscription thing and that thing. So shame on us from a B2B standpoint not to consider that as well. Some things should be free, some things are. No, if you want to find this out, you're going to have to give me something for it, right?
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I do think there's something to be said for the showmanship.
I mean, it's been played out in pricing models that we've seen.
Same product, one is much more expensive and the perceived value is higher simply because it's more expensive. And in the attention economy, the idea of our attention, our time as a resource rather than simply dollars, I think has merit here, where the simple nature of saying, I'm not going to give you this unless you give me some information and join that can increase the likelihood that that content will then be consumed and will be perceived as more valuable because they're not just going to give this away for free versus saying it's here. So how do we balance that if we're going into more of an ungated philosophy?
[00:12:08] Speaker C: Okay, so it depends on again, what the intention or desire or need is of the audience. And I'm going to keep sticking audience out there.
We are guilty as marketers to make presumptions and to design stuff which looks neat on a PowerPoint slide, but actually doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of how people are experiencing the world. And so at the top of the funnel and stuff like that, when you think about what is someone willing to give information for, it's probably research and data that they don't have ready access to and may surprise them. And so like research reports and stuff like that, people love to do those and they're very valuable, especially if they're done well. I do think, however, you still have to show people what they could expect.
It's kind of like the movie preview so that they go and it kind of gives them two or three or four data points where they go, holy, you know what? I, I didn't know that. And I want to take advantage of it. Not Now I'm willing to give stuff they have never that they're not even considering you to purchase yet, or they, or, you know, or maybe far in the back of their head they're just trying to figure out something that has to do with their industry or their profession or where things are going. So from that side, I think it gets easier, if that's a good word, to gate things as you get further down that aging funnel that we talk about.
When people have learned why they need something and they have said, I've got to get the information that shows how I can apply that what's out there to fulfill that need. And that doesn't mean that you just suddenly gate everything that's at the consideration stage using arcane terms and stuff. It means that you, if you're offering something which is like, you know, a true return on investment, report on why if you don't invest in this, you're at risk. People probably would be willing if they believe that they're going to get meat to it behind it, they'll willing to give information again. It's one of those things. I know that. I know there's always this great dance between demand content producers in my world and the digital realm of search and stuff like that. They're going, no, everyone wants to just find things and get information and if they're truly interested in you, they will gravitate towards talking to one of your salespeople. And I agree with that. But from a demand content standpoint, there's so much investment in really valuable things like the New York Times will not give away a subscription. At some point you've got to say you've got to give me something to give you this information.
I don't know if I'm answering your question, but it's kind of like we've got to figure out when the audience is ready to do that. And that gets me into a whole other topic, which is that means that you've got to respect the audience to provide them the highest value for what you're asking them to exchange currency for. And currency being information. And that means that if that audience only wants to watch videos or podcasts, you better not be gating a long form piece of content for them because that's not what's interesting to them, that's not what they need and vice versa, if there's someone who wants know the hard copy they can highlight and stuff like that, don't be serving them up 30 second videos and 50 second videos because they're not going to offer information for that. That to them is just the intro or the hint is what is going to be in this thing that they know that they've got to commit to reading.
And again, it's all going to be based on, it's all based on data. It's going to be based on intent data. When reports looking back on who is involved and at what point and what they looked at and why.
And then empowering the marketing departments to create the content that fits those things based on the, in, you know, the intent data that they're showing. And I don't know where you want to talk about that, but that's. We get into AI because there's so much crazy stuff on AI that could help with that, which is amazing. So let me know when you're ready to get into that topic and we can delve into that. But, but I'll let you take.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah, tell me how, how are you using AI?
[00:16:32] Speaker C: All right, so I mean we're, we're dabbling in it. I mean, I'll be honest. I mean, of course, you know, the writers and stuff like that use, you know, writer AI, but then we'll use an AI product that will help them, you know, do some of the mundane stuff around. Summarize this long form content into an abstract for me for content syndication. Give me V1s. I'll always point that out of some emails that could help promote this. Give me a V1 of some social content that could help promote this so that I can take it and go, yeah, that's pretty right? And the trick on that is as the team really focuses on prompts, maybe after six months, nine months of refining the prompts, you can start thinking of those as maybe V1.5. You know, I don't have to do as much changes on them. So that's like the nitty gritty boring stuff. It's like, well, duh, people have been doing that for five years. But let's think about content experiences that could be delivered for exactly how you paxton want to get something and you're willing to give me your information for I heard from a friend of mine yesterday that they had seen a, A, a demo from Gemini, which is Google. Right. And the. There had been, there was a thing on here, it wasn't 100% fantastic, but it was like nearing it where they took a long form piece of content, a long article and said we want that to be a podcast. Here are the two voices that we're, that we're going to give you to use for that Podcast and it created a podcast like you and I are doing right now based on that article. Now that's scary for podcast producers, but it doesn't have to be from a content strategy and experiential standpoint. If I don't know how you prefer to engage with me and get information from me. The power of being able to say, hey Paxton, tell us how you would prefer to. We've got this fantastic information about the power of, of AI agents for your HR department. How do you want to get this?
And you go, I would love to hear a podcast for it because I have to commute every day and I or audiobook. Right. I don't want to see the 40 page report and I don't want to see a video that there would be base information that is very good, well researched owned and powerful. And you could use AI to create exactly the format that you want, which would be a podcast of two good voices. And it, you know, and it doesn't sound like it's canned or some kind of like artificial intelligence doing it. Where you go, this is fascinating. And now I want to find out more. I will give you information for this. Or you could say, I really would just like to read the report. I like to skim through stuff while I'm, you know, doing whatever. That's the way I engage. That's where AI is going to be so amazing and incredible for demand generation is to respect our audiences better respect our audiences and better provide them the information that they want in the formats that they want. Now it's going to take a whole different skill set of writing and design and all those things, but hey, designers and writers, isn't that exciting? Your jobs again are not going to be replaced. You're still the base and root source of information that's got to be out there. The kind of the rodeo, you know, person, not the rodeo clown, the rodeo person. Keeping track of everything and making sure that no one gets hurt. There's so much potential there and it's so exciting. And that's where I think it's going to be interesting from the demand side of things. And I know that you're supposed to be talking to me and I have not let you talk at all. So one thing I will add to that is that all of this stuff adds greater responsibility as marketers in the next five years because the power of auto created content is amazing. But it is going to allow for lazy promotion and lazy marketing, which means that there's going to be exponentially more noise.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: And I Look, I look forward to seeing what happens. Maybe there's going to be, at some point, there's going to be a time when there's actually a legally required watermark that says human produced.
Oh yeah. Or 50 human produced or whatever. And then by law you could just ignore all the stuff that you know is being auto generated for you with no thought as to what the resources are. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Something that I see brands do a lot that fight for gated content. Now kind of mixing these two is they will put everything behind these forms in the name of saying, well, we're going to nurture them. But then they have a really terrible nurture process or none at all in some cases. And they say, well, I'm just going to, someday I will. So I'm going to gather this information now. But it seems to me silly to decrease the amount of people seeing this content that is potentially beneficial to your brand without having a solid nurture pathway.
Something that you said that I thought sparked an idea is agent or agentic content.
So the idea of like agentic AI is that you'll set up AI specific to do a certain thing. Almost like. Do you want to say what you're saying earlier about as members of the team, how AI might like the form?
[00:21:55] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah, I saw, but I saw a presentation from HubSpot that was done before the end of the year. I just watched the video where they were talking about they view for marketing inbound agents, you know, AI agents as being people and people in, you know, if you want to make it italic or lowercase or in quotes or whatever. And then actually they were proposing that, you know, these people will be part of your team and perhaps they, they even warrant, because of their talents, LinkedIn type profiles. And if you think about it, if I was putting a team together that had to solve X problem, I would need this person, this person, this person and maybe these two AI agents that do these things. And I will interview them, whatever, and I will include them as part of my effort. It's just fascinating to me. And it doesn't represent a scary thing about replacement. It just, it's kind of like we're getting into the crazy world of Star Trek and, and Star wars and stuff like that where you've got these sentient robots and things like that that are there to assist you and they're part of your team, but they're not equal to you, which is, it's just fascinating. So that's, that was, that was what I saw. I have never thought about that way. And that's so interesting because if you think about, even for AI agents for marketing and the example I gave around the podcast thing, you could tie in several AI efforts, one around compilation of information. The other AI thing that you would have would be transference from that information into format X. So it could be video, audio, whatever.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: And then the third one would be maybe fact checking or whatever as an AI function. And the agent would be the thing that would pull those things together.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Right?
[00:23:42] Speaker C: Yeah. And so that's how that works, is that agents is just the things that organize and bring in AI, AI functionality into a singular need or. Or function or thing. I'm sorry, I'm using function anyway. And I, you know, I don't know who's there. Maybe someone out there, you know, putting it together. You know, our skunk works at. At ServiceNow, maybe working on it.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: But anyway, it. That's where it's kind of like, yeah, I think that's the expectation that, that people that are being sold to out there are going to have, which gets. It gets us back again to this whole gating or ungating thing.
One of the things that I, that I think is a very interesting exploration, at least from me personally, you know, I came from. I will admit that I'm, I'm not the latest two generations coming up to. So, you know, I'll own my age.
I am used to, God forbid, for physical materials, but Also, you know, PDFs and things like that is a thing and that, you know, new generations coming in, there's an expectation for other formats and things like that. But one thing that I, that I am really strongly promoting with my team as we try to figure this all out is the, the one advantage. And hear me out for all of you people who are PDF haters, because I'm not promoting those. The one thing that PDF said is an advantage is they felt like something. Yeah, it still felt like something physical, like if I got a book at the bookstore or whatever. So I think that that's part of the. That's why Kindle and E Readers and everything are still very popular, because it feels like you've downloaded something, you've got something. Okay. It is up to us to make sure that if we adopt a digital first view of things that we're not just creating additional web pages that someone could say, I just found that on your web page. It becomes an experience or a thing or information that is sequestered that I go, I would never have gotten this in this way or with this experience unless I had not given you information. And what does that mean for a non PDF? Because a PDF I can always say, Paxton, you gave me information. Here's your file. You can do with what you can print it off if you want to that we've got to somehow create that same file feeling. And I know that's a very wishy washy word, but that's kind of how I'm viewing things. And yeah, I don't know the answer yet. I feel like again, as I was talking before, some of the, the more reputable news sites have kind of got it figured out. There's like beautiful special reports from New Yorker and New York Times and stuff like that where you go, this feels special, right?
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:27] Speaker C: But it's still part of their website presence. Right Spot part of their properties. So how do we do that?
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
[00:26:34] Speaker C: Me and all of your listeners out there, you tell us because we're ready to do it. So we're figuring it out.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: There's two things I'd like to see brands do. One, I think you could lean more into that idea of it being a book. Like what I want sometimes is when I will download an ebook, by the way, just for those listening. Ebooks are three to five times more likely to be requested compared to guides and white papers. So whether it's a white paper or a guide, call it an ebook and it's going to be more attractive. But I want. This is where I do most of my reading, right here on this iPad.
[00:27:06] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: I want an ebook to go right into my books app or into my Kindle app. And there's really no reason why you couldn't publish your ebooks on the Kindle store. Yeah, a discount code. Right.
[00:27:19] Speaker C: So they can. And I, I will admit, even like, oh my God, I'm floored. I never even thought of making PDF versions of things part of the Kindle experience. Wow. That's. Especially if you think about stuff that's accepted in, in that that would be like meaningful research. And if there is thought leadership or there is information that you had, you had not dreamt of or you want to really dig into something. Like if Bill, our CEO was talking, really getting into talking about what our view on AI agents is over the next 10 years, that may be something that you would want to read on Internet Kindle thing. Right. That'd be cool, right?
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Yep. The other maybe completely opposite direction I would love to see someone go is going back to this idea of agent would be What I'm just going to coin right now agentic content.
The idea being, you know, sometimes when I'm getting a report as a lead gen thing, they'll say give us your email, we're going to work on this report and we're going to send it to you. The logic is I'm not trying to gather your information, I just need your email so that I can send it to you once it's done. And I think that is much more acceptable than I have this here and I could just give it to you, but I'm not going to until I give you this, until you give me your email to take that further. This idea of agentic content you could theoretically have and it'd have to be the right kind of content but if it's longer, it's more meaty, more research based. Maybe I don't want to read 60 pages of this white paper but I am interested in the topic and how, what this research, how that impacts me. I think the case could be made to where you can say tell me information about you. Tell me your information about your business, your situation, what your problems are and then what I'm going to do is give you your own two page summary of what this 60 page piece is. But it's going to be based off of you and what you need to know.
Now the, I'm not giving you my information because you want it. I'm giving you my information because it's going to make this content better for me.
[00:29:23] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Agentic AI opens the doors for that and so you're creating a new piece of content for every single person that walks through the door.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: Well, what's more powerful too is that the agent part of it is that it create brings together multiple things. So it's not only the summary but again when I talk about it could be, give me, give me the summary of this. As the head of HR for a major medical institution, but I need it to be a PowerPoint slide. PowerPoint tech.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Oh yeah, the format. Yep.
[00:29:58] Speaker C: Yeah. So you let that. So not only is the summary part of it, the other part is the format and how it's delivered. Right. And so we have that, you know, that's in Copilot and other things they're already, they're already starting to do that. But, but maybe it's because I'm just ignorant of where things are going but it feels like there's so much opportunity from a marketing standpoint to do that and it's not hokey and it's not supposed to trick or fool or, or be all bright and shiny for the audiences. It gets back to again, what is it that our audience needs so that we are the least disruptive for their experience but provide the most value? And if that HR person over a major medical institution has got to throw some slides together the next day showing the power of X, then we've provided him or her or them a incredible amount of resourcing and value right there. And the other thing too is on, on. As we get into to. To forming and, and asking for information, I do think that there is a interesting discussion and exploration that we need to continue about how many times are you going to give. Is, is an audience going to give you a buy? In other words, do we offer them something really fantastically valuable first and then the next time we form them or do you, or do you do forms from the beginning? Because if you offer a form from the beginning and the content that they download end not what they expected and that's up to us to market it correctly.
They're not going to, they're not going to download something again. Unless of course we've captured their information and says we've already got this filled out for you.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:39] Speaker C: The other thing too is the, that we have to, we have to. This is something we talked about before with the nurture and the follow up. We have to understand that right now when people fill out a form in the B2B world they are admitting that they're ready. They're. They're getting ready to have someone, a door to door salesman come to them and interrupt them. And I'm sorry, inside salespeople, I don't mean to, to put you down but you know, they know they're going to be reached out to and they're going to be getting some communications and things. And it's one of those. That's why people put false information or we never put our phone number. Oh my gosh, we wouldn't want that because you're going to get text for people.
Not that I do that, but anyway, how do you make it so that you enable the marketing function to deliver to you Paxton more information based on what you had already downloaded that could still be controlled by an inside sales group or its sales team, but it does not involve them yet.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: And that could be handled by AI as well. That's that person who was on Facebook, that's the AI agent that is part of that sales team. Your job is to keep feeding stuff to Paxton that is about this topic without bothering him on the phone yet. Yeah, yeah. And then, then it becomes interesting because the nurture is, hey, you were interested. It's kind of like retail. It's like, you bought this, you probably want this too. Did. And sometimes it's like you were gonna cover up plants and stuff like that. Why didn't you think you needed to have plastic? You know? Anyway, sometimes it's like duh. But other times it's like, you know, I didn't know I needed that. And thank you. I'll keep looking at it so it's okay. And then that gets us away from the whole problem of, of the challenge of when we are premature to follow up on things.
And you know, the least last thing that someone who's an inside salesperson wants is to call someone and them to go. I don't remember downloading or looking at anything you're talking about. Oh my gosh.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: It wasn't impactful.
[00:33:39] Speaker C: Yeah. What was an impactful or they may have downloaded something without really thinking about it was coming from this source. It may have been from a search on a topic and they didn't care who published it. They just downloaded it and forgot to look at the logo that was in the corner. So it's got to understand again, that's where you go, what is the value? What are we trying to produce and what is the reaction we're trying to get and making sure that we are always the most valuable for our customers, period.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: Right. Well, on that note, to wrap up, Jonathan, I think it'd be great if you could share with our listeners one or two tips for somebody who is currently looking at their mid funnel and considering gating or not getting their content. What would be one or two things you'd have them look at?
[00:34:22] Speaker C: Okay, that's a, that's a good one.
I would say. Well, mid funnel is interesting too because that would, you know, historically that's been discovery, right? Not awareness. So that means that the person has identified the fact that there is something that is important to them, whether it's inspirational or fear based. You know, I've got to get this solved or oh my gosh, we should be doing that. That's so cool. I've been in, I've been moved by brand or moved by some thought leadership. You know, I would say that make sure that whatever it is that is that inspirational or threatening thing, you have clearly communicated that there are answers and next steps for it and not something wishy washy and that in order for you to take advantage of what is going on, that those Next steps are hinted at clearly before you ask for a form. Because the next step would be, all right, you're inspired by this thing around AI agents. We're going to give you the three things that you need to be considering to see if you're mature enough to actually use these. It's still not selling any products or talking about. It's just like, here's the next thing. So I think the biggest tip I would say is make sure it is a natural progression.
And that sometimes is, you know, is a challenge when you've got different groups creating things. But that requires a really good collaborative, centralized view of what that experience is and journey is. So that's one thing. Be, be really forceful in making sure that you, you demand that, that, that there be that thread.
Another tip would be, let me think.
It's okay to tease people. You're not giving, you're not giving away the whole farm if you give your, your most important data up front. Because often it is the surprise and wow data. Like you said, I saw some of the stuff in the prep for this that said that ebooks actually had inform fills that actually increased in their, you know, people in filling out forms. That's a huge piece of data. They're going, oh my gosh, that's interesting. Give that to people. Where you ask for the information is like, let's now explore why.
Yeah, so don't be afraid to give out stuff which is going to inspire and it's not gimmicky and it's not clickbait or anything. It's like, hey, we got this stuff.
The other thing I would say is a third as a freebie here, as we get better and better at tracking people and what they do and things like that, know that if someone is truly interested in finding out more about your products and solutions, they will be. And you've done a good job of getting to that point.
They will not be afraid to give you information.
And so it is up to you not to have anyone ever do that they put a form up thing. Okay. Because that's not what you want to happen. And that sometimes may mean not forming anything until that scary consideration stage where you're going, I don't know who's looking at this. And if it's got pipeline associated with it and all that. Well, that's if you've got a long sales cycle, doesn't matter. It shouldn't as long as you had some way to equate activity and engagement back to impact because that helps you justify what you're doing, but also better plan, budget and stuff. So I hope that's helpful. There you go. Easier said than done though, right?
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, much easier said than done. Great takeaways. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope to have you back because you're just a wealth of knowledge and there's so many things we could talk about. Particularly, I'd love to do an AI focused episode.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: Oh, I would love to. And I would want to bring in some other people because I want to learn too. I am like a baby in this and I want to figure it out. Yeah.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: So much to learn. Thank you for joining us. Thank you everybody for listening. Stay tuned. Next week we're going to have SEO extraordinaire Nick Leroy join. So that's going to be great. And thank you for listening to the campaign.
[00:38:31] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Take care.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. The campaign is produced by 97th Floor, a 20 year old marketing agency that helps companies like McKinsey, Pluralsight and Check Point know their customers execute innovative campaigns and drive profitable growth. If you have an allocated growth budget and product market fit, we'd love to do research and build a proposal for you. Visit us at 97th Floor.com. and if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe. See you next time.
