Ben Ard (00:27)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by April. April, welcome to the show.
April Grudier (00:32)
I'm very excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Ben.
Ben Ard (00:35)
Yeah, April, this is going to be fun. I've enjoyed the conversation so far before we've gone recording. I'm excited for the audience to get to know you. So before we dive into the material today, April, if you could just share your background, work history, all that fun stuff, we'd love for the audience to get to know you.
April Grudier (00:52)
Sure, I'll keep it brief, but I have been in marketing for a number of years. I was saying to you earlier, I stumbled upon it. I actually went to college to be a high school English teacher, but found myself in marketing and worked in B2C marketing for a very long time for companies such as Staples, BJ's Wholesale Club, which I think I had every job that you could probably possibly have in marketing.
And it was, was great fun. I loved it. And about 10 years ago, decided to make a switch to B2B. I felt like I always wanted to learn and challenge myself. And so I got into B2B marketing and it's been such an incredible, challenging experience. I feel like while there's a lot of principles from B2C marketing, I can apply.
It's definitely a different animal and a challenge that I have enjoyed. So, yeah.
Ben Ard (01:51)
I love it. Well, April, for today's subject, we're gonna hit obviously on content, but we've kind of got three different areas we're gonna touch in that I'm excited for all of them. Usually right at the beginning of an episode, I kind of give it a title or a subject. We're gonna skip that. We're gonna dive right into the meat of the content. And I think this is just gonna be a fascinating conversation. I think it's gonna be really powerful. So the first subject for the episode,
April Grudier (01:54)
you
Ben Ard (02:19)
knowing your audience at a belief level, not just the demographics. I love where we're going with this point, but what are your thoughts on this when you're talking about the belief level? What does that actually mean and how are you actually pulling this off when it comes to content?
April Grudier (02:34)
Yeah, so this is a hill I will die on that in my experience, I believe that target insights are really the most important part of any marketing plan because the best content really connects what people believe and not just who they are. So
It's really easy to know the basics, titles, industries, company size, age, where they live, but that really only scratches the surface. It doesn't tell you why your audience is going to care about your product or your service. And so the real magic happens when you look at your target audience or your ICP and understand their beliefs, values, motivations.
really dig into what they're trying to achieve or prove or protect. One of the things that I always start doing when I'm creating a marketing plan is asking myself again from the perspective of the target or the ICP, what do they believe is true about their role or their business? Everybody thinks that they have a unique perspective or their business is unique.
I try to think about what are the problems that are keeping them up at night? What are opportunities that really excite them? And when you can tap into those beliefs and understand if they're motivated or they're hoping to achieve more control or growth or innovation or efficiencies, you can really create messaging that connects on a personal level.
So again, in my experience, without understanding those psychographics, you really just end up talking to yourself. Your content becomes just this echo chamber of brand first versus audience first. And great content should sound like something your audience would say to themselves, not something that sounds corporate marketing speak. So yeah.
Ben Ard (04:38)
I love it. And I think that's so true. Connecting with the audience makes such a big difference. To double click on that, how are you finding those insights? How are you getting inside of the head of your consumers to understand their beliefs, to understand how they emotionally connect with this content, what their needs are, what their why is? How are you figuring that out in the first place?
April Grudier (04:38)
Yeah.
So as I said, when I worked for a big corporation, it was super easy. We had a whole research department that you could go and they would help you get all that information. Working for smaller companies, you have to get a little little scrappier. And some of the places that I start with is obviously interviewing people in your customer base. If you have a long time customer sitting down and having a conversation,
with them. But I think it's important to understand how you phrase those questions that you're asking them. So I'm in payments and you don't necessarily want to start off with, how do you think about payments or how do you plan your payments or things like that? You want to start by talking to them or interviewing them about, what's your typical day look like? What are some of your challenges? Why do people come to you for
requests or things like that. So I think tapping into your current customers, especially if you have a really good relationship is a great place to start. Another place that I have found a wealth of information is from being on some of the sales or prospecting calls and listening to how prospects leads or talking about some of the
problems or the issues that they have. What are some of the things that they're looking for? I think that even if you win or you don't win, it could really help you understand again what they're looking for, how they're asking questions, how they're positioning the problems that they have in a much better way. Another place that I have looked at is I have taken
reviews. So if your company has reviews, quotes, you whether it's from G2 or TrustPilot or anything like that. I did an exercise earlier this year where I took all of those reviews, again, pros, cons, positives and negatives, and actually put them through AI because what I wanted was a really objective summary of what was important to
our customers or prospects or where they were having issues or difficulties. I didn't want my own biased in that. And so I felt like AI was a really good place to help for that. And so the fourth place, and this will be my last one, is in part of knowing who your target audience is and what's important to them is also understanding where do they get, where do they consume media? So
Are they, you know, is it, you know, on a CFO forum, are they going to, you know, show, industry shows, things like that? And, you know, are they subscribing to certain newsletters that again might not be about, you know, for us payments, but it's talking to, let's say, a CFO about planning, strategy, growth drivers, know, reconciliation, and going to those kind of media publications and
reading the articles that are being published for them. So those would be my scrappy recommendations.
Ben Ard (08:06)
I love it. That's amazing. That's so cool. All right, April, we're gonna move on to the next subject. Shifting gears just a little bit. How to decide what content belongs in a campaign. I think this is a fascinating subject and I'm curious to get your thoughts on what your process looks like here.
April Grudier (08:11)
Sure.
Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. before the podcast, when we were doing intros, we were talking about content for the sake of content. I think in my, I really believe that every piece of content should have a clear purpose. And again, going back to being coupled with what you know about your target audience. So for me,
planning content ⁓ strategy or a plan really starts with the objective. So what are you trying to achieve? Is it awareness, engagement, conversion, and where you might have gaps in that content plan? And then I think when you map out that content to a buyer's journey,
you understand that awareness content really needs to educate. Consideration content really needs to help differentiate you. Decision phase content really needs to highlight your value. And I think when you start looking at bucketing those phases, you then need to start to pressure test your content based on
again, what you know about your target insights. So is this piece of content gonna answer a real question or solve a real problem for your audience? Or if not, it's just filler. It's just, again, you talking to you. And I think every piece of content needs to be extremely intentional and offer value or knowledge to your audience. And when...
When your content clicks with your audience, and it's presented in a way that speaks to them, it's a really powerful way to engage. And I've been asked to create content because, we think we need it. But again, if you're always putting the filter on of, my target audience need this? Is it going to help them, again, bring more awareness, engagement, or help them convert?
than having that lens. And then I think another really important thing that people need to consider as they're planning their content is remembering that people consume content differently. Some people prefer really quick stats or visuals. Some people do prefer more long-form thought leadership. Some people like a short video.
And I think that the best content meets people in their moment. I think it's also important to consider where you're publishing your content and where, what people might be doing at that moment. So I think about LinkedIn a lot. And I know I've been pushed in my career to put a lot of, you know, heavy sales stuff, content into LinkedIn. And, you know, I've had to
bring a moment of pause to say, okay, when I'm on LinkedIn, when our target audience is on LinkedIn, are they looking to be sold to? No, they're looking to connect with peers. They're looking probably to gain knowledge. And you have to make sure that the content aligns in that way. So, you know, I think it's important to offer variety, but also making sure that every piece plays a very integral part in helping
your audience to move forward with purchase and consideration.
Ben Ard (11:41)
I love that. Sorry, my browser just freaked out. Can you still hear me? Okay, awesome. Give me one second. Sorry, it's the same. If I leave for a second, probably, no, we're good now. Okay. All right.
April Grudier (11:45)
I can.
Sure.
Okay. It was like, this
is not part of the podcast.
Ben Ard (12:00)
No, no,
no, we throw you, yeah, we try to make you feel awkward by having things break, but yeah, for some reason Google Chrome is giving me weird errors. No, we're good. Okay. Love it. All right. We'll just jump back in again. The power of editing is amazing, right?
April Grudier (12:05)
It's fine.
Ben Ard (12:15)
April, I love that. I love the idea that you are focusing on where they're going to be at when they're consuming the content. I also really like how you talked about like what's going to educate, what's going to entertain, like what's actually going to impact their life as opposed to just having content for the sake of content. I think that's super cool. We are almost out of time, so we're going to go on to the final subject. This one I'm excited about because I think this one.
April Grudier (12:33)
Right.
I'm excited to.
Ben Ard (12:40)
think this is going to be a cool take and I think a lot of marketers need to hear this. Why PR deserves a comeback in the age of AI? Now, why do you think that's the case?
April Grudier (12:51)
Okay, so I am a big fan of PR. I believe it is key to any business strategy and it's making a big comeback. PR is more than just press releases. It's a strategy that gives your brand credibility and a human story. But now more than ever,
It's visibility, it's providing visibility in an AI world now. So PR is often underestimated because people think it's still about just getting interviews or issuing press releases, but good PR is strategic. It starts with a why, what are we trying to accomplish? Is it to build authority? it to ship?
perception, you're launching a product line, you're trying to influence search. So without clarity, even the best coverage gets lost. And what's changed now is that PR doesn't just shape public perception, it's shaping discoverability. So the content you earn through PR, articles, mentions, quotes,
That's feeding the large language models that power AI searches. basically, your PR strategy, your PR content is literally teaching the internet who you are. And so I think that PR is having a huge comeback, especially as AI tools become a major gateway for information, for building brand credibility.
⁓ we've even seen it on our side as people are searching to differentiate, you know, one product from another, prospects are using it to say, okay, here's what I'm looking for. Give me the top five, you know, products that solve this problem. ⁓ so well-placed PR it's the, it's creating a model that's helping for your business to get recognized and really surface trust.
trustworthy information. instead of thinking of PR as a, last step, let's get a press release out about this, it needs to be part of your content engine. Because again, it's fueling everything from brand reputation to SEO and like I said, now AI visibility and discoverability.
Ben Ard (15:16)
I love that. So that makes perfect sense. And LLMs are leaning more on the different sources. Here's the question that I have for you. When I hear PR, most people in business think, great, now you're gonna go spend 20 grand a month on a PR agency or something like that. What are your recommendations for actually tactically improving your PR? Now, obviously there comes a time.
We're working with PR agencies, things like that makes perfect sense. But do have any advice for anyone, you know, maybe that doesn't have the budget or needs to prove that the PR is going to work before they spend the budget? Anything that you've seen particularly well that people can start doing not necessarily today, but in the near future to kind of improve their PR efforts.
April Grudier (16:03)
Yeah, so I think that, I'm trying to think. you know, if, totally understand, people don't necessarily have a PR budget or they think it's, you know, I had one CEO once call PR fluff until I proved him very wrong. I think that you can start with,
You know, obviously press releases. Yes, I just went through this whole diatribe of like, let's just put out a press release. But I think that you can start with, you know, signing up for a Cision account and you can absolutely do press releases. I think when you do them, you need to think about what is important or what a potential LLM could be looking for. and
and really structuring your press release for it to be easily picked up. So for an example, one of the things that we have been working on is, and this is across all of our content, whether it's on our own properties or through our partner channels, is how is our content structured? So think about when you've worked in AI, you're usually asking a question or you're proposing a prompt.
So if you're structuring a press release or, some of your content that is a little bit more question answer, what's the difference between, explain what xyz is, and then giving a clear explanation, sometimes even putting it in bullet points, you can do that on a press release, that definitely helps to fuel some of your discoverability.
I'm trying to think of really scrappy things. think the other way is having good partners. So that's been an enormous help to us. So basically our business model is we work with a lot of partners such as BigCommerce or NetSuite, ChargeBee, Zora, Sage Intact. And we really make sure that our presence on their
you know, whether it's their site, their blog, is structured in a way to help discoverability not only for AI, but for SEO. So if you have really strong content on these third party platforms, again, offering differentiation or offering question answer model, you're definitely going to get picked up more. And I think that that's at least a good start to
Again, you're building your public reputation. I don't know if that answered the question. What do you think?
Ben Ard (18:35)
No, I think that's great. I
love that. So from your perspective, and this will be the final question before we have to call it quits today. Maybe we'll do a follow-up episode. But with you and working specifically, I'm correct that you work with agencies for a good portion of your PR efforts, correct?
April Grudier (18:50)
Yes, we do have a fabulous agency that we work with who helps manage our PR.
Ben Ard (18:55)
How did you vet that agency and find them? And then on top of that, how do you best work with a group like that to kind of get the best results from your PR efforts?
April Grudier (19:05)
So great question. My journey for my current PR firm was quite a journey. my agency that I use is actually out of London. we retained them because we had a US agency, but they didn't cover Europe. part of our business strategy was to build our presence in Europe.
So we found this great agency. They were young, they were scrappy and really hardworking, great partners. Not only were they, you you don't want them to just be tactical, but they really spent time understanding our business and what we were trying to achieve. So we made a lot of great headway with our brand recognition in the EU and UK and
really at one point I was managing three PR agencies. We're a global company. I had a PR agency in Israel. I had one EU UK. I had one in the US and it just became, it became a lot. It became a full-time job. Um, in PR was just one pillar that I managed. And, uh, I, you know, I, I spoke to my agency and they said, you know, they, they, they were willing or they wanted to move into a more global market. And, uh, we had built up
trust and rapport and now they handle all our global PR. But I think for me, the biggest thing was again, we work together, my agency and I, and once I knew what my business objectives were for my executives is really collaborating with my PR team to say, okay, what is the needle that we're trying to move?
how do we influence either a brand perception or they've helped everything from we acquired a company in 2019 just on the cusp of COVID that was a AR automation company. And so was just that perfect timing and they really helped us build out a plan and.
what was our perception in the market and what we needed to do to gain credibility. So I think if you don't have a PR agency that's really diving into what your product is, again, who your target audience is, then that's not building a good foundation. And I will say that when AI started to really gain momentum,
I think that people were really looking at AI as, oh, how do I take a blog and create more content or how do I use it to just pump out content? And one of the things that myself and my team were talking about was, no, no, no, no, how do you influence AI? And so I went to the founder of the PR agency that I work with and I said, what have you all been doing? You know, what have you been talking about? What have you been hearing?
And they actually said, ⁓ we're starting to do more investigation. We're starting to do more work in that area. And so we've collaborated together. OK, neither one of us really know too, too much. But you have contacts and tools to help figure out how we use AI better to meet some of our objectives.
and working together. But I will say my last thing is that if anybody tells you they're an AI expert right now, they are lying. It's just changing so much. There's not one tool. There's not one way to think about it. I think right now we're all in this pool of figuring things out. It feels very much like when Twitter, now X, or Facebook came out,
2009 and we were like, okay, there's this social media thing. How do we use it? How does it apply to my business? And everybody was just kind of floundering a little. So I feel like we're in a very similar position with AI, but it's accelerating really, really fast.
Ben Ard (22:59)
I love it. That's amazing.
April, we did combine three really cool subjects into one episode. I think the audience is going to love this. I'm guessing there are going to be people listening that want to reach out and connect with you online. How and where can they find you?
April Grudier (23:15)
So people can reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. That would be the easiest way. April Grudier, GRU, D-I-E-R. I currently work for Blue Snap, which was recently acquired by Payrock. So I'm easy to find on there. And I'd love to chat with anybody who has any questions or needs advice or wants to offer a counter perspective.
Ben Ard (23:39)
love it very cool for anyone listening we will have April's LinkedIn profile linked in the show notes below April thank you so much for the time insights today really do appreciate it
April Grudier (23:49)
Thank you very much, Ben, and I hope that we can chat again about another very interesting marketing topic.
