Can Podcasting Build Real Relationships?

Kara Brown (00:02) there are two things that we are not going to pay for, or you should stop paying for. One is records, so email addresses themselves, they become a commodity, and two is content. we think that you should pay for the strategy behind the content and the distribution of the content, but you should no longer be paying for content itself. Ben Ard (00:49) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Kara. Kara, welcome to the show. Kara Brown (00:54) Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Ben Ard (00:56) Yeah, Kara, I'm excited. You have literally wrote the book about what we're going to talk about today. But before we dive into that, let's get to know you. If you don't mind, will you share a little bit about yourself for the audience? Kara Brown (01:07) Sure. I'm Kara Smith Brown. I am the CEO of Lead Coverage. We are a go-to-market consultancy, hyper specific to freight and supply chain. So my ideal customer are brokers, carriers, forwarders, or freight tech companies, usually over a billion dollars. Freight tech is smaller, but the rest of them are pretty big. And yeah, I literally wrote the book. It's called The Revenue Engine. You like that alliteration in the supply chain market engine, right? I wrote, it's called The Revenue Engine. It's about 250 pages. It's go to market in B2B, but we specifically use examples from supply chain. And then I was talking to a sweet freight broker in Alabama. And he said to me, Kara, I'm so proud of you. This is so great. You wrote a book. This is so great. Kiddo, it calls me kiddo. Kiddo, this is so great. But I don't read books. So could you make me like a Cliff Notes version? So was like, yeah, I will do that. So we made. the Revenue Engine companion workbook, which is 80 pages and 28 exercises of like literally color in fill in the blank. And if you do this workbook, you will basically have a full go to market strategy and approach if you finish it. So that's my challenge to anyone who gets a workbook is like, let me know how it goes when you finish it. I'm really excited. This week I spent with my team. at a retreat and we're going to add chat prompts to the end of each of these exercises because basically everything in here you start with some sort of research and so we're going to start our clients off or prospects off with this like chat piece. I'm really excited because the book was published by Forbes so I can't change it easily but the workbook we're self-publishing so we can change it and I'm pumped to add new stuff to it. Ben Ard (02:51) I love that. That's exciting. And I love the addition of AI. That's going to be so relevant and super cool. So I love it. Well, Karen, today, what we're talking about is building a repeatable revenue engine from content. You literally wrote the book on the subject. So I want to break this down a little bit. So a repeatable revenue engine from content. Now, a lot of people look at content as a brand building exercise or an awareness opportunity. Some of them look at it from demand generation. How do you kind of view content and its role in this revenue engine? Kara Brown (03:21) you're probably going to be grumpy when I say this. We don't use the Okay, okay, Ben Ard (03:25) I like being grumpy, I'm okay with that. Kara Brown (03:28) it's a little, you know, I don't know, a little dicey. We don't use the word content. I do run a go to market shop, we write content every day all day. We don't use the word content. And we believe that two things are happening in the space. That there are two things that we are not going to pay for, or you should stop paying for. One is records, so email addresses themselves, they become a commodity, you should pay for the platform where you get those email addresses, because that matters, but like the email addresses themselves are a commodity, and two is content. So we think that you should pay for the strategy behind the content and the distribution of the content, but you should no longer be paying for content itself. So maybe that is like... you know, a little bit of a dicey thing to say on this podcast, but content itself is something that we don't spend a lot of time on. The philosophy behind the book starts with one very specific point. So to build a revenue engine, a repeatable revenue engine, you must have fuel. And fuel are fresh records. So if you have, so our philosophy is if you have a total addressable market or a TAM that is finite, by the way, anyone in B2B does have a finite TAM. The only infinite tam is Coca-Cola, right? Smart water. So a finite tam, you should own the email address of every human who can buy from you inside that tam. And that's where you start. And then you start to share good news with the tam, which in your world you might call content. In our world, we call it good news. And we think that good news has three components. This is in the book. So we talk about sharing good news. It is relevant. and it has a very specific point of view. The days of blog posts on like the five reasons to change your transportation management software, they are dead. Like that is no longer what works. You have to be hyper specific, market specific and timely. And then more specifically is you're only getting in front of the folks that you know can buy from you. And if you can and you have it, you have intent data on what those people are actually buying in that given moment. Ben Ard (05:35) Okay, I love it. Let's break this down. I love that you're talking about you don't purchase content and you call it the good news. So it's still content. It's still there. You're still sharing it, but you don't want to pay for it. What do you mean by that? Do you mean internal resources, agencies, freelance? Get, let's get nitty and gritty. What do you mean by that one? Kara Brown (05:55) be above, right? We all have access to chat GPT or Jasper or Gemini or any of the rock for like any of the LLMs will generate you a first draft. So pay for the strategy behind the content. So we often say this is in the book, the who is more important than the what. So as marketers, we used to focus on the what my website has to say the perfect value proposition or if I just have the right combination of words. Every freight broker in America is going to know who I am. And it's false. That's just not how it works. And so instead of focusing on the content and the words on the page, which, by the way, no one's really reading anymore, right? Actually, there was a stat that I just read about, like pleasure reading, that we're down to 16 % of Americans read for pleasure, which isn't really connected to business. But if we're not reading for pleasure, like no one's reading anything anymore. So it's above the fold. It's super tight. It's pithy, right? How do you get your value prep across? We used to weeks and days getting just the right combination of words. And what we've realized is it doesn't matter. What you're really looking for is the 5 % moment. So Professor John Dawes talks about the rule of 95, that 95 % of your buyers are not buying at any given time. So you're looking for the 5 % moment. And here's my, like, you contentious position is it doesn't matter if you have like the best crafted email or the best crafted white paper in that 5 % moment, or you send an email that says, I can solve your problem with a giant button. If you're in the 5 % moment, you will get a buying signal, regardless of if you're sending something that's like super sexy and, you know, white paper level content or just a button, right? because that is the moment where they need to solve the pain. And so we focus so much more on the moment, the 5 % moment, than we do on the what we're putting in front of them. So I think to answer your question, our philosophy is to focus on the ideal customer profile and the who we're getting in front of. The other statistic that I learned from this new CMO at Sales Intel is that 25 to 30 % of the who's in your database, all the records in your database, are out of date every 90 days. So it doesn't matter what the content says, because if you're sending it to my mother-in-law, she's not buying freight or freight tech software or whatever else you're selling. So yeah, the content itself, the strategic nature behind the content, what are people interested in is more important than the physical execution of content itself. And now with AI, you can spit it out in five seconds and edit. And then the distribution of the content we also think is super important, which for us is all around public relations. So really turning pieces of content, to use your word, we would call it good news, into market-specific points of view on a larger market. For us, that's supply chain. Ben Ard (08:59) Okay, I love it. So for the 5 % the people and I love this statistic. I think a lot of people definitely agree with the viewpoint that only 5 % of your market is actually looking right now for something that you offer and getting in front of them at the right time is far more important than anything else you could be doing. How do you recommend people find the 5 % in the first place? Like how are they actually focusing on that segment? Kara Brown (09:23) Intent data. Intent data is materially changing the B2B world. And I'm, again, I'm in supply chain, right? So my market is historically a laggard when it comes to all things Martech. Funny story, we are today closing a deal with a $4 billion company that does not have a CRM. You are in SaaS that blows your mind. blows my friend's minds that are in. Ben Ard (09:42) Okay, that is crazy. Yeah. I'm like, is that a giant spreadsheet? What's going on here? That's incredible. Kara Brown (09:50) It is literally today a giant spreadsheet, yes. And so I am in a historically tech-laggard industry, right? And so when I talk about intent data to my prospects or to my customers, I am blowing their minds. I'm probably not going to blow the minds of most of the folks that listen to your podcast because they're like, yes, this lady is not that brilliant. Sixth Sense has been around for 10 years, right? But we believe there are four types of intent data. Primary intent, which is what's inside your HubSpot. This is also human intent. So if you own the email address of everyone who can buy from you, you have one interaction, HubSpot tells you when they come back and they're interested. Secondary intent, we actually don't recommend for our space. This is ZoomInfo, Clickagy, Fambora. It's all kind of going away with LLMs on the rise. Tertiary intent data, we're super excited about. And the most important piece for us in our space, this is big, like big company, big enterprise, is Gartner. So the connection that a tool like Sixth Sense has to the... individuals that are searching inside of Gartner are super sexy for us. And then lastly is one that I don't think people are talking about very much, but we're calling it single stream intent. And this is intent data built just for your industry. So in my world, this is carrier source, which is like the yelp of trucks. And we are now procuring the intent data from shippers and selling that intent data to brokers in my very specific space. The same thing is happening around warehouse space. But if you're in MedTech or EdTech or MarTech, think about all the intent data G2 crowd has, right? Or like the volume of intent data that exists and there might be smaller pockets inside your specific industry. In mine, it happens to be in the freight brokerage and the warehouse market and probably in the forwarder market too. But I believe that the future for us for any B2B industry is going to be these kind of micro single stream intent. But that is where we identify who is having what we're calling the 5 % moment, right? So is Nike interested in robots in their warehouse? I don't know. Is Starbucks interested in robots in their warehouse? They sure are. Look at all of those intense signals around robots in the warehouse. And if Starbucks is buying robots for their warehouses, what else are they buying? Are they buying racking? Are they buying a new warehouse? Are they looking for final model distribution? Are they looking for returns management? Like just a little buying signal. from the supply chain team at Starbucks turns into a potential 5 % moment for most of the clients in MySpace. Ben Ard (12:17) Okay, I love it. So quick question, add on there. Are you looking at employee hires as one of those intense signals and where does it fit into those four? Kara Brown (12:25) So the short answer is no. The long answer is maybe we should include it and we're not. Generally, in my world of supply chain, decisions are made from the board at the board level and they're trickled down. So the humans that are executing those board level decisions are definitely important and we want to make sure that we capture them in the ideal customer profile exercise. But the decision to change a transportation management software or buy a new warehouse or invest in robots generally comes from a decision that's made by a committee. So one human doesn't always make the change. But I like this question, and I'll bring it back to my team because maybe it does. If a 5 % moment becomes available because you have a swap of senior leader, I'm down for exploiting it. all in. Ben Ard (13:13) Okay, I love it. So with that, there's a lot of people that talk about content marketing is really geared towards the 95 % so that when they do have that 5 % moment, you make the list. What's your perspective on that? Since you're focusing so much on the 5 % moment, do you do anything for the 95 %? What is your take and what should people do? Kara Brown (13:34) I mean, the short answer is its opportunity cost. I mean, it's the short answer. The long answer involves much more nuance around educational content and a matrix and making sure you're getting in front of people. And if my VP of marketing heard me say this, I think he would probably string me up on my toes, right? Because he has a much more robust answer to the question of when do we send? educational content, when do we send closing content? Like my team is definitely in this and I don't want to like, Crawford McCarty is a thousand times a better marketer than I am and he would probably kill me for saying this. But at the end of the day, if you have a TAM that is tight, like if you sell robots to people that need robots for warehouses, there are only so many people who are buying robots for warehouses. Like it's not a big group, right? And so Are they really, when they send out the RFP, does it really matter that they saw you at the trade show? I mean, I'm sure that there is a piece of this that the top line content, you have to have a website, it would be found and all that SEO and my head of paid Courtney Herter would probably also string me up on my toes. But yes, there are definitely components of content that I think are important to just brand awareness. But if you did get a copy of the book, The Revenue Engine, I spend the entire first chapter telling you that I'm not a branding marketer. That's not my jam. I am all about finding the folks that are in the 5 % moment and abusing them to the point of send a cease and desist if you don't want to hear from me. Because I'm going to leave you alone most of the time. But when I think you're in a buying cycle, I only want you to pick me. And so I think. Ben Ard (15:12) Mm. Kara Brown (15:14) We spend, we and like historically, historically marketers spend too much time thinking about everyone in the 95 % and we don't spend enough time identifying the 5%. And you know who I think does, you know who I think identifies the 5 %? Sales. And that's why there is such tension between sales and marketing. Marketing is out there focusing on everybody all the time. And sales is like, where are my leads? Right? Give me the folks that are already in the 5 % moment. And so, you know, I don't want to diminish the value of the 95 % because eventually they will become the 5%. But with the democratization of the tools available to us today, we don't have to wait anymore. We don't have to like build this website and wait for people to like show up and then wonder where they came from. access to tools that tell us exactly how they found us, exactly what we put in front of them, and exactly how they converted. So it's no longer a mystery, which I know to some branding marketers and maybe some content writers, like that's a real bummer because part of being a marketer is like being creative and like the art of it all. And I am truly diminishing it to like the basis of the base. But I think that's where the value comes to the boardroom. I mean, if you walk into a boardroom and you talk about the value of content, they are going to walk you right out. Like there's no way. Like we are not interested in, you know, how many blog posts you wrote this month. Like that's not what they want. They want to talk about revenue. So if you can connect content to revenue, that gets you a seat at the table. And that's where I want more marketers is to be at the table. And I have this incredible team that can now connect public relations to revenue. and they can really show a board like, when you do this kind of PR, it turns into this revenue because of these 5 % moments. That's where the magic happens. Ben Ard (17:14) I love it. Okay. I love your take. I love your perspective. I think this is absolutely something people needed to hear. Kara for anyone who listened today and wants to reach out and connect with you online. How and where can they find you? Kara Brown (17:27) I am prolific on LinkedIn, so you can definitely find me on LinkedIn. I'm Kara Smith-Brown. You are talking to a supply chain influencer. So just in case you didn't know, Ben, you are lucky today. So LinkedIn is the best way to find me. The revenueengine.com or the coverage.com is where all my stuff is. Ben Ard (17:37) I love it. Very cool. And we will link to everything in the show notes. So anyone listening, scroll down and you can connect with Kara there. Kara, thank you so much for the insights today. I really do love it. Kara Brown (17:53) It was a pleasure. Thanks, Ben.