Aaron Conant  0:18  

Happy Tuesday everybody, my name is Aaron Conant. I'm the co founder Managing Director here at BWG Connect. We’re a networking knowledge sharing group of 1000s of brands, been around just shy of six years. Now since I kicked this off, I was on the brand side and was just struggling to find other people to talk to on a routine basis that could help me out with eCommerce as a whole, just to, you know, thought leadership, but also just a networking and knowledge sharing point of view as well. So we kicked this off, we're on pace to probably do close to 85 dinners this year, we're trimming that down a little bit from the 100 we did last year. But if you're in a tier one city, and you'd like to be on the list, those are super fun, just, you know, an hour and a half guided conversation over dinner bracketed by cocktail hour and networking and knowledge sharing, would love to meet anybody on the call today. We don't sell anything here at BWG Connect, we just networking knowledge share. So if you want to know more, just reach out my name is Aaron Aaron@BWGconnect.com. I spend the majority of my days talking to brands, just advising them on eCommerce strategy as a whole. That's Amazon to direct consumer that's content to fulfillment, I have the same topics come up over and over again. That's how we get the ideas for our calls. But it's also where we get our resident experts, I'm asking everybody who's working for you and who's not who's doing the most innovative things out there and who's really crushing it. And most importantly, who's really, really nice. When the same people come up over and over again, we invite them on to, you know, answer a bunch of questions that we've gotten that over the course of you know, a few months here, but also any that you have. So encourage you drop them in the chat as we go drop into the q&a, or email them to me, Aaron Aaron@BWGconnect.com. And we'll get as many of those questions answered as possible. The last thing is, you know, we're starting about five minutes after the hour, and we're gonna try to wrap up with at least five minutes to go as well. So about I don't know, 1225 will probably be the latest week, I'm sorry, 225. Eastern time is probably the latest, we'll go with that. This idea around content. And you know, Tom, you and I have talked a tonne about content and the cost of content and producing content and what to do with it. And and but before we get into that, you know, I'll kind of kick it over to you. You know, you guys are great. You guys are great friends, partners, supporters and network for years now. I don't mind you taking a couple of minutes and just kind of, you know, background in yourself and Cohley. And once you guys do and then we'll kind of jump into the conversation.

Tom Logan  2:38  

So I'm good. Sounds perfect. Yeah. And Aaron, always a pleasure to be on with, with you. I forget every single time even though we've done a few of these now. Just how crisp you are as a moderator and how good of a conversation you're flushing you always seem to facilitate. Yeah, I was also just thinking about how much steak you much You must eat every single year into an 85 client dinners. But yeah, so a little bit about myself. I'm Tom Logan, co founder and CEO here at New York City based Cohley. I'm originally from Santa Barbara, California. So even though I've been in New York for five years, I'm still a little bit of a fish out of water. Just had my wife and I just had our daughter, Maggie, but five months ago, we're very much in the stage where we're curating her month over month progression with with a variety of stage photos. So prepping for the fifth month here in a few days. My background is very much in advertising and social media. And what brought me to call a founding Cohley with with my co founder, Eric was my time or our time at a company called Piqora. At Piqora. We were focused on the early days of user generated content. And back then, it was all about finding Photos Videos predominantly that normal people were taking on a brand's behalf, helping them find those assets, get rights to them, and then use them either in social in a paid capacity or right on their website to build trust. And Cohley very much was born out of a lot of the struggles that we had. Within that that play that company basically saw the rise of influencer marketing and influencer strategies become a table stakes for marketing teams. And with that UGC perspective, very much were like, Oh, my gosh, this group of creators of influencers of trusted third parties was really the answer to all of our prayer. So we went about building a network that would enable brands to meet their content demands had on us content as a real catalyst for growth. And obviously, like we couldn't have foreseen the developments of of the rise of TikTok of the need to test more content personalized content more than ever. So we're gonna get into all of that when we when we start talking about the case for not cutting content. But that's just a little bit about me.

Aaron Conant  5:12  

Awesome. So just reminders, a few more people joined you have questions, comments along the way, drop into the chat the q&a or email them to me, Aaron Aaron@BWGconnect.com. So I just want to go from the investment standpoint, I know you guys are working with a tonne of brands and that this comes up over and over again. You know, and I'd love to know, like, how are your most successful brand partners, thinking about their investment in content, there's some money is now doing divided up 100 different ways. And all of a sudden retail media pops up. And that's yanking money from me the overall pool, it's being pulled away from content, and yet you need content fun. Anyways, we'd love to hear most successful brand partners, how are they thinking about investment in content right now?

Tom Logan  5:57  

Yeah, great question. So let me get a couple of baseline terms for for the audience. Because content I've realized over the years is, is maybe the most flexible term in the world. So when we talk about content, we're talking specifically about videos, predominantly short form videos, photos, and product reviews. So very much like digital marketing mediums. And you know, that can be for specific platforms ranging from tick tock all the way to YouTube, shorts, Facebook, and of course, product reviews live on site and are then syndicated to retailer. So that's what I mean by content. And then also, as just in terms of just setting a baseline want to realize it like or want to just acknowledge that I, I obviously do have a bias towards content in general, like I, and there is, there is a incentive for me to advocate for our clients for the space in general not cutting content costs. But I'm going to I'm going to make sure to explain why. Why position it that way. And, and also what we learned from all the leading brands that we work with within the space, how they're thinking about content, particularly as we enter into an uncertain macroeconomic climate, we don't necessarily know what's going to happen, but we know that it's not 2021 anymore. Right. Now there's consolidation, people are trying to stretch dollars further. So again, that's

Aaron Conant  7:23  

yeah, that's another clarification just to make on on my side for the title here. The case or not cutting content is focused around the the expense side, if you're in a cut something don't cut new, fresh content. That's exactly

Tom Logan  7:40  

right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And we're gonna get into to why those, how that we can actually define that and why continuing to invest in content creation is really critical to you know, not only maintain but but even accelerate growth, regardless of economic climate.

Aaron Conant  7:59  

I think you'd also have been funny if we would have had like a PowerPoint that's editable. So we could email it out to everybody. And they could use that they could use that as their, their case internally, to go get

Tom Logan  8:12  

more, I'm happy to do that as a follow up. Absolutely.

Aaron Conant  8:15  

But so anyways, so your most successful, you know, Brand Partners. Yeah. How do they? How are they? How are they thinking about their investment in content? How are you kind of talking,

Tom Logan  8:24  

huh? Yeah, well, one we can get, we can go into some specific categories, and then two, we can actually define what that investment level might look like relative to the total paid marketing spend, what percentage of that pie should you actually be spending on net new content creation? Historically, that number has been right around 5% actually think that's starting to creep up closer to 10%. Of again, and that's the percentage of total spend with both net new content and with with, with paid digital advertising. So we'll talk more about that. But in terms of in terms of the case, in terms of making the case, let's go back to like content as a catalyst for growth. So there's a few different things that we could kind of dig into here categorically. And what I would like to talk about the importance of introducing net new creative in paid ads, and ensuring that you're always testing you're always trying to find new winning assets to drive down customer acquisition costs. And just to make your your ads go further, right, so we can dig into that. The second category that I want to delve into is establishing net new like viable acquisition channels like TikTok. As a part of that we can also talk about expanding brand reach brand resonance brand success within net new demographics. And then we can talk about you know, how that you know how that plays into, you know, customer LTV, etc. And then the final piece that we'll touch on just Given that, again, a nice baseline here is to talk about pivoting the storytelling a little bit this year from, from the nice to have the need to have, which means we're thinking about the funnel, strategically, we're thinking about how content feeds each stage of that funnel, that customer journey. And how we have to make sure that our products and services are being positioned as nice to haves versus nice to haves 2021, I think a lot of us were on our phones, because we didn't have anything else to do scrolling, making impulse decisions left and right. Now we're we're all kind of collectively taking an extra second to think about, you know, whether it's worth it, you know, buy this trinket or whatever, whatever the heck it might be for an extra $50, we need to make sure that our messaging reflects that. So those are our those are our three categories today. Awesome. So let's tackle.

Aaron Conant  10:58  

You know, the first one,

Tom Logan  11:01  

let's go, let's do it.

Aaron Conant  11:03  

So I want to talk about like that percentage piece. And then I'm barely and a half, and I'm gonna probably turn the three into like 16. But the percentage piece, like how should people be thinking about and how is it broken down between different types of content. And again, for everybody we're talking about, I'd say more visual content as a whole, not necessarily writing bullet points. Not necessarily, yeah, white papers and everything else. But the visual contracts. Yeah, the category is

Tom Logan  11:35  

really about having success with your paid channels, with Facebook, with Instagram with TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube shorts will will soon be a thing. And when we talk about having success on those channels, it's so critical to be introducing that new creative to try to find that new winning ad, it's going to have a higher click through rate, right, that's going to bring people to the website that's going to introduce them to your brand. And kind of the in line with the theme of this, like not cutting content costs. If you're not introducing that new, you're at the risk of experiencing like very real ad fatigue, you're at the risk of seeing your cost per clicks, your CPMs rise, and you're very much in and you're kind of struggling to, to stay afloat there, as opposed to introducing that new creative, that's channel specific. That's demographic specific, and learning from all that data. So a couple couple things that I could say statistically, Facebook did a study a few years ago, they wanted to know, what was the difference between the real core differences between their top performing advertisers and like their median kind of advert? The average advertiser, the only difference I could find was top performers tested 11 times more creative. Right? And then left was more 11 times more creative than the average. Right? Exactly. Everybody

Aaron Conant  13:11  

is hoping you'd say 311? Yeah,

Tom Logan  13:14  

I know. It's it's very, very challenging. It's not even promised as the date. Yeah. It's very, very difficult, for sure. And you add to that, the fact that even really sophisticated marketers don't necessarily know which creative is going to win. Right? If you just, yeah, there's a, I saw survey recently where you know, was basically going through like, which, which ad creative one, this one, A or B, A, or B, A or B. And, you know, on average had the Devo people are under 50%, you don't know what creative is going to perform. You just know that you need to be testing more, you need to be testing different hooks. If it's on TikTok, you need to be testing different value propositions. You need a hell of a lot of content to on this overall like journey of lower lowering customer acquisition costs. You know, it's very, very difficult to, to come up with 1111 times more. And it's tough to be optimizing these things. I think another piece here is that a lot of the software that people are using to actually like do their ad buying to optimize their creative, they're becoming a lot more kind of run of the mill, like basically everyone has access to the same ad tech tools. So again, like what is the only differentiator there? It's the creative that you put into these machines, these operative optimization tools. So I'll pause there for a second because I always get too excited talking about lowering tax and testing more content, but I think it's absolutely critical for success this year. Yeah, I mean

Aaron Conant  15:02  

that where where do you see the most of the creative being creative? You've seen a massive swing towards TikTok. I mean, I'm all over the place on Facebook just right. You know, I talked to everybody from fashion to CPG to food have and start up the fortune 100 And some people are winning on meta, some people are losing on meta. Everybody's trying to figure out TikTok. But where do you see people? You know, pouring into creative today? How should they be thinking about that mix? Yeah,

Tom Logan  15:37  

I think more than anything, what's important to me when I'm talking to our clients or prospective clients, it's that they don't get overly reliant on one acquisition channel. So I talked about the importance of establishing TikTok as a viable acquisition channel. I'm not advocating for people to shift 100% of their ad dollars to tick tock I think that would be irresponsible, I think men overall is still an awesome acquisition channel, the targeting is insane. Despite the the iOS challenges, it's still an incredible acquisition channel. But, you know, being solely reliant on one digital ad channel, isn't isn't long isn't long term viable. That's why like I t's things like YouTube shorts becoming more relevant. And even Snapchat Pinterest becoming more relevant, just don't want to see people reliant on just Facebook ads. And I think it's difficult from a behavioral standpoint, because for a lot of marketers coming up a lot of brands coming up. And actually were solely reliant on on Facebook, as an acquisition channel, you know, their, their, you know, their their return on adspend was three to 5x, they could continue to dump more and more spending. And it didn't matter, they could just continue to scale it. And it was working great. But as the return on adspend goes down and down and down. Now we're looking at more of a one act type of scenario and a lot of cases, I just want to see brands diversify, I want to see them play some some eggs and some new baskets and try to establish viable new acquisition channels, which of course does open up the opportunity for reaching new demographics, taking advantage of of CPMs that are roughly 50% of the cost of Facebook on TikTok so I think people get me wrong sometimes. And I'm like this huge, obsessed fan of TikTok or that I'm trying to shift all ad budget of our clients over there. That's not the case, I just don't want to see them overly reliant on one channel. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  17:48  

Love is a question that comes in just reminder, others drop questions in the chat or the q&a or email them to me, and we'll get them like, so. So the question that comes in is around videos versus images. What should I be focusing on? And I think that's a huge trend. Right? If you go back like three years, it was all the written content, it was the the reviews, the ratings, the reviews, the bullet points, and SEO and you know, everything that we're driving to the top for conversion. And then we've seen this massive shift over into images where people don't want to read anymore, they just want to look at it or see how many you know, what the what the star rating is. But then all of a sudden videos are just you know, the, you know, rollout of TikTok.

Tom Logan  18:35  

Everybody's going to short form snappy. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Conant  18:38  

So I mean, we chatted about this, this question before, you know, you know, should I invest more in videos or, or images?

Tom Logan  18:45  

Well, a lot of times, the way that we'll break this down is, of course, we're working off of the brand's like historical context around what's been successful, but we'll actually frame it in the context of the marketing funnel. So if we go up to the very top that, that top of the funnel, we're looking at the awareness stage, we're looking at introducing our products, our services, the things that we believe deeply in, in terms of the utility it can bring to people, we're looking at how we're introducing ourselves to those individuals. So in general, and again, this this could be this could be specific or different from brand to brand. I really like short form video in the awareness stage. Now, as you start to move through the funnel, people are coming back. It's a retargeting ad, you know, maybe they've already been hit with five to 10 Different, different impressions on the brand. Maybe it's from an influencer, maybe it's a product review that they read. Maybe it was offline, maybe they just maybe texted Aaron Conant and asked for his recommendation. Then you might then you might be able to introduce things that are a little bit more product specific. A little bit more. Hey, Like this is your this is your final objections. These are popular objections that people have in their buyer journey. Let me make sure that I can answer those down funnel. So, again, this really varies branded very industry to industry and I would always say like consultant, your data, look at what's working well for you, depending on the desired outcome of that ad. But one sort of playbook that sort of taken shape and materialized for a lot of our clients has been to perform video, oftentimes introducing the product in a way that's not in your face. Not like oh my god, I just unbox this, it's so amazing. It's like, here's how this product fits into my morning. Here's how this product fits into my day. This is why I really like it brings me joy, by the way, like, I am going to the gym now like, yeah, you know, it's not in your face advertising, it's incorporating the product in a really authentic way. Again, in a in the capacity of our in the context of introducing a product for the first time to a potential consumer. What are you seeing that? Aaron, you obviously talked to a zillion advertisers? How might they think about a mix of content, the mix of content that they're putting out in in a paid capacity?

Aaron Conant  21:25  

You know, it's just, everything's changed so much. So don't want to dodge the question. But I'll give you what I'm getting from marketers right now is you've seen over the past two and a half years, everything flipped on its end, right, like we talked about what was important before was the copywriting, the SEO value of the text, the pandemic hits, they get bunches of money thrown at them, they said goconvert was really easy to convert for a while, then they start running out of content. So now they gotta go generate a tonne of content, but they don't really know what kind but it didn't matter. Because there was so much conversion, it didn't matter. Exactly, no, they're getting their feet held to the fire to justify the budgets that they have. And work. Now you throw in Is there a recession? Is there not a recession? Is it a soft landing? Is it a hard landing? You know, are people gonna buy? And they're like, Okay, well, what number are you going to commit to next year?

Tom Logan  22:20  

Right, right,

Aaron Conant  22:21  

no idea what number to come and do. So I think I really add. And I think it's because why there's a lot of questions coming in around this is, you know, we're entering the time and digital commerce right now, where the I think there's going to be real definition between the winners and the losers. 1,000% know what that looks like, as far as the content piece goes, Do I over invest in videos, I mean, tic tock jumps on the scene during the pandemic at a perfect time when all these like, you know, college kids are moving home and exposing it to their parents. And now that completely changed the game for not just anything I want to pick your brain on. It's not just like, you know, product discovery, but product reviews. They used to be the people go to Amazon and just read them. Yeah, now they're looking for a video review kind of what you were describing a little bit of, hey, this is what it is. You know,

Tom Logan  23:20  

I'm really glad you're bringing this up. Yeah, yeah. So that is what you're touching on there with TikTok, kind of within the consideration stage. I'm going on TikTok to again, like, just to clarify right here, the context of we're talking about right now, is is not even, it's not even necessarily paid, could just be videos of page jeans. Now their new line of jeans could just be a variety of organic content living on TikTok, that's a tag with that specific product that's specific, like bootcut of jeans. And its people going on there to basically see short form visual reviews. Rather than read an Amazon review, or even read the text reviews on their website, they want to see it brought to life, they want to see it stylize they want to see people who generally speaking like have similar, you know, body shapes and sizes to them, versus just seeing it on, you know, a size zero model. I think that's a very positive thing from a consumer journey standpoint, from a good of humanity standpoint, frankly,

Aaron Conant  24:25  

I've been disappointed. Yeah, I'm that a little bit, even to the point that this actually it's a person and they're relevant. They actually have the product and I can see them reviewing it, as opposed to, you know, the rampant misuse of reviews on Amazon.

Tom Logan  24:40  

Right. Exactly. And I think what you're what you're getting at there, Aaron is this concept of authenticity, which is like the hardest word to define, almost as hard as content, but it's very difficult. It's kind of like a you know it when you see it type of thing. But I think if you ask A lot of consumers today about their, their buying journey. You could stop someone on the street and say, Hey, cool sweater like talk me through it. How is where were you introduced to the brand? How did you? How did you kind of validate this purchase and ultimately pull the trigger? And a lot of people are are going to tic toc as a part of that consideration stage. And that's what's flipping the script or flipping their buying decision from and maybe two. Okay, yeah, Greenlight. Let's do this. So yeah, yeah. Awesome. For the consideration stage.

Aaron Conant  25:36  

Yeah, you have other questions or comments, drop them in the chat or the q&a. We'll keep tackling them as we go. So yeah,

Tom Logan  25:42  

yeah, yeah. So you know, authenticity. Generally speaking, third, party creators are very good at harnessing that authenticity. Especially if brands are willing to give them the the creative freedom, the leeway to come up with their own fresh interpretations of the product. Sure, you might want to give them specific talking points, like, Hey, don't talk about the brand, and XYZ way, but like, their creators are incredibly talented individuals who have grown up with smartphones in their pockets, are incredibly well versed in creating engaging stuff. So you know, give them the freedom to take your products and take your service and, and come up with fresh ideas. And, you know, we talked about testing 11x creatives than then the sort of median performer. The the idea isn't that all 11 11x creatives are the exact same. They're different. And he touched on different value propositions they, you know, they have humor, they have serious perspectives, they have commentary on that on the product services real like real life, application and utility for them. It's tough, I think it's tough. I have a lot of a lot of empathy for marketers today. Who might, who might be frustrated, lack of clarity around what's performing exactly what type of content that you need? It's kind of what you're talking about earlier, Aaron. And the best we can come up with here is, and you know, our business is obviously in content generation. The best we can come up with is Hey, create a tonne of content, scale it up. Use data as your Northstar constantly be looking for new opportunities to test to learn and refine those learnings. Continue to test see what's working, have creative input have creative direction, by all means stay within those, those bowling lanes, those bumpers. Use data as a Northstar.

Aaron Conant  27:50  

So a couple questions come in here. What about reviews on YouTube? And what percent do you think of consumers are going to TikTok versus YouTube? And the last one was, you mentioned you do content creative? What

Tom Logan  28:03  

does that look like? Yeah, sure. YouTube versus TikTok? I don't know for sure. I'm not sure if I have a total total clarity. I also think there could be a lot of overlap. So I was mentioning YouTube shorts earlier, is actually about a one to one match in terms of the content that lives on TikTok, in terms of the content that also lives on on YouTube shorts, the same way that I'm advocating for car clients for brands to not have all of their eggs in one basket. creators think the exact same way. Many of them have been burned by their lack of reach their diminishing engagement on Yeah, insert channel here. They've gotten smart enough to know that they don't own their audience the way that they thought they did. Right? So email list can help contribute to that. That's probably the most reliable only channel at this point. But they also can't have all their eggs in one basket. So I don't necessarily think it's a it's an either or type of thing with with YouTube versus TikTok, I would kind of put it in the same consideration bucket, the same third party authentic validation bucket. And the other question was about how we go about generating content. Yeah, it was just in regards to,

Aaron Conant  29:19  

you'd mentioned that. So the question is, he mentioned the speaker mentioned that they create content?

Tom Logan  29:26  

Yeah. Yeah. So we don't actually create the content. We have a software platform that is packed with over 100,000 really talented creators. Many of them have professional photography skills, many of them are incredibly well versed in creating short form video, and a lot of them are just very good at reviewing products in a text capacity might accompany that text review with some imagery, but that can then live on the product page on your website. And then also be syndicated through our partners that might be the power of views or Bizarre Voice or our Yapa can be syndicated out to major retailers where you also sell product as well. So what we're very good at is helping our clients generate lots of diverse content at scale for low costs, that ultimately enables them to use content as a catalyst for growth, improve ad performance, improve on site conversions, open up new channels, reach new demographics, those types of die, props,

Aaron Conant  30:36  

man, awesome. Quick follow up, what platform is this in? Who owns the content created? So it's Cohley book, then who at the end owns the content,

Tom Logan  30:48  

you own the content in perpetuity. So you can do whatever you would like with it, you can incorporate it into ads, you can slap it on a billboard in Times Square, you can use it in pitch decks, we've had that. We've had that use case a few times. That was something that was very important to us from the beginning that rights, our usage rights weren't something that our clients would have to jump through hoops for and navigate within the platform.

Aaron Conant  31:20  

Awesome. So yes, your company does not make the content. That's kind of what you said. But you're the you'll connect them. The platform is the connector to those who create it. And you Oh, yeah. Content at the end.

Tom Logan  31:31  

Yeah, Brandon's all the content. And in terms of the actual creator base, I mean, they have they're very well organised by record competency, other interests that they might have location. And we also do a lot of things to ensure that we have a really high quality of of applicant to a specific brief. Typically, there's like 200 applicants in a specific brief. And on average, a brief will include between 10 and 20 creators. But you can ask like gated questions within a brief. So if you're going to apply? Do you have kids between the ages of zero and five? Are you traveling anytime soon? Do you have? I don't know fair skin just depends on on what you're looking for. But that also allows you to narrow down and you can ask them for content submissions content samples to essentially say that, hey, I read your brief, I understand what you're looking for. from a content standpoint, I am more than capable of delivering on that. Yeah. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  32:34  

And I just dropped the website and the chat there, if anybody wants to thank you. Yeah, for sure. You know, so the next one that comes in, is around, you know, the ROI piece. I mean, it's, it's not tangible. Right. That's the tough thing is you can see at the end when a creative performs, but again, you might have to do 11 pieces before you get one to perform. And then it wasn't really that was it something out? So, you know, how do you convince leadership to maintain content budgets, when it's easy to cut? Right? And, you know, ROI is not directly tangible. We'd love to hear, you know what it's like?

Tom Logan  33:19  

Yeah, the ROI conversation is an interesting one. I mean, I think finding, you know, when you find a new winning creative, and you drive your cost per click down, and you're bringing more people to the website, you're ultimately gathering more conversions, you have a higher return on adspend. That, you know, to me qualifies as, as higher ROI. If we're talking about content that's just living in an evergreen capacity within Tik Tok. Yeah, that might be a little bit more difficult to really pin down, you know, we actually are focused on doing this on on our sales team. And I know that many consumer brands have emphasized this a lot too. But post purchase surveys, like how did you hear about us? What was your buying journey? All those types of questions, getting close with your customer, understand where they're learning about you why they're buying, like those are, those are also more important questions in 2023, than they were in 2021. Because you know, on the subject of it being more expensive and being harder to win new customers. You also your economics are looking a lot better as a consumer brand, when you can bring people back again, to make a second purchase a third purchase, and doesn't necessarily have to be in a subscription model. But you know, what are you doing from a loyalty standpoint, from a reengagement standpoint to have those people come back? Obviously, you need to have a great product, you have a great set of products, I mean, need to be ethical as a business. But that becomes significantly more important understanding your customers, what is driving them, what are the problems that your product is at actually solving, not the ones that you think you're solving. Sometimes those aren't the same thing. I'm actually shocked at how often they're not the same thing. So get close to your customers this year, I think that can apply to literally any business in 2023.

Aaron Conant  35:18  

Yeah, so if I want to flip the question just a little bit. So yeah, there's the front end, which is, hey, I need to go into fight to maintain my budget. The flip side is my budget was cut. Right? Like, any thoughts on generating more content, or content more cost effectively, however, yeah,

Tom Logan  35:41  

for sure. So depending on the company, they might have, the content budget could be split into a variety things could be a quarterly photoshoot, where they hire a bunch of models and rent out of set up lighting professionals, etc. Bigger companies, of course, I like television commercials, high production costs there. And then, you know, some very, very limited budgets when it comes to content. And if they're just starting out, maybe they're even just asking their friends to generate content, or they have their own employees generating content, all those things are fine. So just wanted to caveat that by like saying we are, we work with companies that have a variety of different levels of budget, some in the billions, some that barely go over a million, and that's fine. Point being I just want to be clarify that it can dig and change is very relative. But in terms of like, you know, crafty or cost effective ways that you can generate content, like I said, I think a lot of employees are very capable, especially within the marketing team, probably pretty well versed in this world of TikTok of reels of YouTube, you can turn to them, you can have internal competitions, like Equinox has done a phenomenal job of leveraging their own trainers, orange theory does similar type of thing. Those are just I just read an article on fitness and turning to your own employee. So that's talking behind, you can also look to identify some of your particularly passionate consumers and ask them can build Ambassador programs that are relatively easy to see product to and gather, you know, content and return that way, you have people that really love the product, and you can give them sneak peeks other sort of perks that make them feel special. And that can work really, really well. And yeah, I mean, I think, you know, relative to traditional means of generating content Cohley is incredibly cost effective. And one of the things we talked about all the time over here is that through traditional means of generating content are not coming close to meeting the content needs that the modern day marketer has, right? Like the the old ways of generating content are really like pay your agency a bunch of money, do a big expensive photo shoot, but like, those types of assets, or even that type of cadence for content generation doesn't line up at all with best practices for the modern day consumer brand. Like the quarterly photoshoot is not exactly designed to take advantage of TikTok right. So the content machine brands content needs overall, it's completely shifted in the last, I would say even last three years. But of course, it's like the introduction of, of Facebook of Instagram of digital acquisition as a whole, which, historically speaking, is extremely recent. So I don't need to go into the history of marketing, but that's kind of where my mind just went.

Aaron Conant  38:55  

Live. I've missed one. I've missed a couple here. Just the chat filled up with a bunch of stuff. You know, are you concerned about TikTok being banned? In the US?

Tom Logan  39:04  

Yes. And no. One I think like, if you look at the actual Yeah, app behaviors, the usage, that's I mean, they're astronomical, but like what I was saying earlier around YouTube shorts, for example, having essentially like a one to one map, or like, I'm older, I still use Instagram more than TikTok. Occasionally, I'll send like a video I see on reels to one of my like young cousins or something and they'll be like, you're such a loser. This is big on TikTok like three weeks ago, I'll be like, yeah, damn, cool anymore. sure everyone's but that's it's ever a separate question. So my point is, I don't think that short form video content is reliant on TikTok necessarily and like you should be again, lessening your reliance on just one single channel. to I think Is that TikTok will will, will get banned? I think they'll find some sort of resolution. I think that politicians kids like TikTok too. I do think that the concerns around the sort of geopolitical concerns around entanglements with the Chinese Communist Party are very legitimate. So I certainly don't want to minimize those risks in any way. But I have a feeling they'll figure it out. If it's down for a while, they'll find a way to force the sale to US company. But the the data that they're gathering isn't any different than what schlub Mehta gathers. That's kind of a different ethical question. Is there an easier target from a political standpoint? Because they're owned by what you'd call a foreign adversary?

Aaron Conant  40:53  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree that there will be a resolution even if it is the sale to a US entity. Number one that I missed that to the point of email list of notice an increase in content and email marketing. Do you think that's something we should be looking into? Include in our marketing roadmaps?

Tom Logan  41:12  

Content in email? Specifically? It was the question. Yes. Good. Yeah. I mean, email is a massive, massive medium for just about every consumer brand. I think there are so many more opportunities to be testing different creative, whether it be a product review, different imagery. And within those emails, I think I've told you about this product, Darren, it's still in its relative, nascent see for us, but it's our Klaviyo integration, which works hand in hand with Shopify basically introduces the ability to dynamically test different, different creative within browse and cart abandonment emails, with the goal of finding the sort of assets that are driving the highest click through rate and ultimately the highest conversion rate. So knowing that 70% of carts are abandoned, knowing that that is like those browse and cart abandonment are the like the revenue generating flows, because there's so bottom funnel, so frustrating for marketers to lose that revenue. And people have gotten to the point where they've literally added to their carts, where we're introducing testing, that we're able to introduce testing where it hasn't existed before. And testing beats less testing, more testing beats less testing every single time. Like I will, I'll die on that hill. But, you know, obviously, that's very corridor philosophy.

Aaron Conant  42:33  

Yeah. Can you elaborate on what you mean by content needs are now higher than ever?

Tom Logan  42:40  

Oh, my gosh, where to start? I mean, our part of it is just like the different the rise of different channels that require different types of content, right? TikTok requires different content than Facebook, for example, there are some overlaps, you can certainly repurpose certain TikTok content on reels, but it can it can vary. Another part of why brands see more content than ever before is what I was talking about around more testing being less testing, the highest performing advertisers tests 11 times more creative than the average. So, you know, just using the transitive property, we're going to need more more content there. And you know, content is very much lifted from our advertising is very much shifted from like a one to many think like, Jon Hamm, Mad Men era, I just came up with this brilliant idea for a hula hoop. But that's not the way that brands communicate with consumers, it now they wanted to be as one to one as possible, they want to feel they want to build a real connection with a specific pocket of consumers. It's sometimes extremely niche. And in order to meet those consumers where they are, build relationships with those consumers, you have to you have to bring content to them, you have to introduce your product to them with content that's created by people who are within their demographic who speak like them who have shared life experiences. You know, we talked to brands all the time. We're like, listen, we got to get in Gen Z, but we have no idea how to do it. We've tried, it hasn't worked. And then the first thing we'll ask is, okay, great. Like, what types of content? Are you serving to Gen Z? And they'll be like, Oh, it's this stuff that we've that we've used successfully? For our 40 and up audience on Facebook, it's like, you look at it and you're like, are you not able to put together like, you think this is gonna perform for for, you know, super, super cool. 22 year old straight out of college, like, it's a different demographic. So I mean, those are two things that that have contributed to it are three things, I guess, including the ad testing. So I don't I think very, very rarely do I talk to a marketer who's like, plenty of content can use anymore but I think is Really

Aaron Conant  45:00  

interesting too, is there's like, platforms out there for measuring content directly. And when you have the content in the, the mindset is, I know, my target demographic it is, you know, you know, early career women, you know, 23 or 29. And then they actually tested and it's actually like, you know, 40 and up. Yeah, the another thing around content is, you know, when you're talking about testing and learning, think about your audience and just have an open mind to who your audience actually is who your customer actually is. Because there's been multiple cases. And they identify, and as soon as they switch their content to market to 40, and up, the brand explodes,

Tom Logan  45:42  

start crushing it. Yeah, I think the reason that that's really difficult for a lot of early founders is that they probably developed their products or product, out of a need or want that they had in their own lives, though their target buyer is immediately themselves. I mean, like people who are exactly like me, who must have the same set of challenges. But so often, they find that that's not the case. And they might, they might be confused or frazzled at first. And then, like you said, they started seeing the revenue roll in the ability to hire people to build the scale, create more products create more value, they all of a sudden, don't care as much about who they're selling to.

Aaron Conant  46:29  

Or you just have them start to brand at a certain age where they're Yeah, and they're growing. And by the time, they are still what they like, they've aged out of that demographic, but they have the perfect product for a new one, but they're still totally send marketing.

Tom Logan  46:44  

But that's, that's great, you can usher them along, and that goes back to the lifetime value of a customer. And maybe it's okay, that you're paying a little more to acquire them, because they're gonna spend 10x more with you over their lifetime. Right. So yeah.

Aaron Conant  46:59  

Are there other like, like things that you thought we will get to today that we that we didn't get to? And others? If you have questions, drop them in the chat or the q&a? We'll get them? We'll get them answered.

Tom Logan  47:10  

No, I think, you know, on the subject of content as a catalyst for growth and reaching new demographics, I do think like, a lot of times, like you said, it's an unexpected demographic that takes off and helps the brand explode. But I do think that you can reach new demographics, new audiences, if you generate content that can speak to them. So I'm not saying I'm not advocating for like doing a 15 person focus group in Modesto and buying everyone pizza. But what I am saying is like, if you're looking for ways to grow in, in 2023, you're looking for ways to, to take the business to the next level and create real separation. And at a time when lots of other companies are just treading water. Can you look at other sort of neighboring demographics that maybe you haven't had a tonne of success with in the past? And can you can you take a fresh look at the content, you're serving those audiences and really, down to its core, understand that, you know, maybe the content that you've been serving them or testing with them, like, isn't necessarily in line with the ways that they might use the product or the way they might see value in the product. I think that's worth a fresh look in any year. Like the one that we're in where, you know, every dollar counts, and, and, you know, finding success isn't, isn't as easy as just turning on Facebook ads and dumping money into it. And regardless of creative, you know, a 5x row is like it was never going to be that easy. So, in a lot of ways, I think I'm aligned with with some of the smartest marketers that I follow and interact with, like 2023 is kind of the year that great marketing teams, great marketers, great brands, actually create separation for themselves and, and, you know, really take it to the next level and leave some of their competitors who've been subsisting on the lazy marketing techniques, for lack of a better word, can really leave them in the dust. And I hope everyone on this call is in a position to do that.

Aaron Conant  49:29  

I've got one other like unique question for you. So I titled this one the case for not cutting content, so not cutting the content budget, then what if I've got a hard budget? Are there budget items you'd recommend cutting so I can make my content? And I wouldn't say you know, the the sales team's Annual Meeting budget, I mean, things that we can actually affect, you know,

Tom Logan  49:55  

you can cut your creative director that's afraid of using data to make decisions I'm just kidding. Yeah, in terms of in terms of other cost cutting measures, I'm not sure you know, I need to look at the full, your full p&l Your full tech stack. I do think that in the same way that that, you know, we're we're very much encouraging brands to, to incorporate more like need to have messaging into their own advertising or their own value props, like b2b companies like Cohley, you have to do the same thing. Like we realise that we've taken austerity measures, we know, a lot of our clients are taking austerity measures. So like, how can we ensure that, that we're providing them with the tools they need to grow and that we're not, and that we're not on the chopping block. And frankly, that's, that's not the easiest thing to do for any company. So we're constantly trying to innovate, trying to stay as close to customers and, you know, help them help them thrive in areas that maybe other vendors aren't helping them. But, you know, none of this stuff is easy. And, you know, it's a step by step process. And the good news is, you know, we, we get to work with fantastic clients who are driven, motivated, open minded, always learning. In the team at Cohley very much reflects those those values to

Aaron Conant  51:21  

know you guys are awesome, and just come highly recommended, you know, throughout the network. So I'd encourage anybody, if you're on the call today, you want to understand more, they're really crushing it in this space, and, you know, helping brands create the amount of content they need. And I will be interviewing Tom, an upcoming podcast, I just dropped it in there really focused on education. So go through the podcast, there's just, you know, leaders across the industry that I come across on a weekly basis that I just asked to jump on a quick call and do a deep dive on different things. And that's everything from digital organization and change mat management, to Amazon to direct import to supply chain management, anything you're probably dealing with in the digital space. Just encourage people use that as a resource. We don't monetize it at all. We just We tried so there's no commercials or anything like that. And it's just a straight up educational webinar for people in digital space. Again, you know, Tom, you're awesome. I do appreciate your friend

Tom Logan  52:16  

the same way about you Aaron. Yeah, thanks for all you do man you are a you are a serious force and certainly helped create a lot of value for for a lot of people who need help direction and a lot of admiration for you in the b2b Gee, thanks, my

Aaron Conant  52:32  

friend. I'm addicted to people in eCommerce and so I'm blessed to have a role when

Tom Logan  52:35  

you're right. Yeah, it's almost like you created that for yourself. We're almost like

Aaron Conant  52:41  

a friend. I'm going to jump thanks again for jumping on thanks again everybody who dialed in look, I follow people thanks everyone conversation with you. Learn about your your needs any pain points, and that's how we get the topics recall. So with that, John's going team you guys are awesome. Keep crushing it. We'll see you.

Tom Logan  52:57  

Thanks, everyone. Alright, buddy. Thanks.