What Makes Content Strategy Truly Scalable?

Matt Hummel (00:02)
Scaling in and of itself isn't effective. Again, it has to be scaling against something that's strong and very strategic.

Benjamin Ard (00:24)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Matt. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Hummel (00:30)
Thanks, Ben. How are you today?

Benjamin Ard (00:31)
Good, good Matt, I'm excited to have you here. Before we dive into the subject and it's gonna be a lot of fun, let's get to know you. Tell us about your career, catch us up on who you are.

Matt Hummel (00:41)
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. So I have been in B2B marketing for almost 25 years, which basically means I'm old. So I have been doing this for a while and, you know, my career has really been split into two halves. Whereas the first half, I really spent time in professional services. It was really also marked with time in more brand and comms oriented roles, which was an amazing foundation. I really learned, you know, what makes great brands, which often gets overlooked.

You know, in, more of the modern marketing world that we live in today, I also learned to do relationship marketing, which ironically now we call ABM. So ABM has been around for quite a while. The second half of my career was really marked more in, the tech world and in demand gen. And so most recently I've been in marketing leadership roles that have allowed me to kind of bring all that together under one roof and get to really kind of focus on the convergence, if you will, of, brand and demand. So.

Outside of work, I've got a family. I've got twin boys who turned 12 late last year and we live in Colorado and have a blast as a family. So that's me in a nutshell.

Benjamin Ard (01:45)
I love it. That's awesome. Well, Matt, today we're going to talk about creating a content strategy that scales. And this is a subject that I'm super fascinated about. I'm excited to kind of hear your perspective, how this works, what technologies you recommend. know, AI has probably flipped this completely on its head. So I'm fascinated, but I feel like we need to do a little foundation work first. What's a content strategy to you, Matt?

You know, I think that there are times in my career and I am, you know, issue number one where I created content for the sake of creating content. It was just what I did. But what's an actual content strategy? Let's start there. What does that look like? Feel like? How do you make one?

Matt Hummel (02:27)
Yeah, I mean, in its simplest form, you know, I think the easiest way to describe it is to differentiate it from what it's not, which is content in and of itself. Right. And I think that's where marketers more often jump to is we need content that will drive demand. A content strategy says, you know, hold up, let's take a major step back and actually identify, you know, first of all,

Let's make sure we're aligning it with the direction of the business. But if you kind of, can either work tops down or bottoms up and they end up in the same place, but tops down really says, what are the core challenges that the market's facing? And it really, again, it always starts with your audience. So knowing your audience and really intimately knowing what are their core challenges and or opportunities that then ultimately that your, your products or solutions can solve. And so if you were to start bottoms down or bottoms up rather,

then you could start with your products and say, what problems do our products solve? How does that ultimately align back to our audience? And so again, either way you kind of end up in the same place, but at its core, a content strategy really just is the frame in which all of your content needs to align. It's almost your North Star, if you will, around your actual content plan.

Benjamin Ard (03:34)
I love it. What does it look like to create one? So I'm a business. Maybe we kind of have some semblance of a strategy. Maybe not. It just depends on the business and the age of it and things like that. Or I'm a new leader coming in. Where do I start when it comes to really saying, okay, here's going to be our strategy. Here's how we're going to analyze what we're doing. Here's how we're going to maybe cut out some things and know what we're going to focus on.

What does that practically and tactically look like to like pen to paper, getting a strategy written out and created?

Matt Hummel (04:05)
So tactically to create a content strategy really can be a super simple exercise. So again, it starts with your audience and it's really identifying what are the core themes that they're interested in. And really those in essence are what are the core problems that they're facing? What are the challenges? What's keeping them up at night? Now to actually understand that you have to have a true deep understanding of your audience. We can save that for a separate conversation, but it starts there.

So what are those two to three themes? Those serve as really the pillars in which the rest of the content strategy comes to fruition. And so from there, it's what are the topics aligned within those pillars that we wanna talk about? And then what are the actual pieces of content that we're going to create? And what are the distribution channels that we're gonna activate that content on? So really it starts with theme, topic, specific content, and then channels. That in a nutshell,

is a content strategy and plan.

Benjamin Ard (04:57)
I love that. And I think I love the tactical nature of that. That's not too hard for me as a business to say, here are the three areas we care the most about and where our customers care the most about. Let's really be the experts on this subject and provide as much value, whether it relates to what we do or not. know, obviously those pillars of subjects are going to relate to what your business does in some way, or form. But how do we help educate and entertain

and really advance the cause for whatever these pillars are. So that makes perfect sense. I love that. I think that's a great example. And hopefully a lot of listeners take that really to heart and actually go through that exercise. So the follow-up question, you've got your strategy, you've nailed it, you understand your audience, you know your main outlets for content, things of that nature. Now comes the scalability. How do you scale that?

Matt Hummel (05:43)
Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Ard (05:45)
and make it even better as time goes on.

Matt Hummel (05:47)
Yeah, well, not to go backwards to go forwards, but a big reason that marketers struggle to scale is because they don't actually get the strategy right. And so, you know, I'll use an example. I came from a company earlier in my career where through acquisition, they had nearly 75 products that they sold. and the worst part was most of those products were sold to the same potential buyer. And so when I joined there were

probably 75 different campaigns going out to the same buyers. And I started to meet with some customers and some potential customers and they were like, we don't know where to focus. You guys are sending us so many messages. We have so many sales reps reaching out. We don't know where to start. It sounds like you can help, but we truly don't know where to start. And so I spent a year really reorganizing those 75 products into five core campaigns.

And it really told a story and it was kind of the what's next approach to the customers. And so that that was a big part. Again, it was getting the strategy right. And that's just one example, but that's where it starts. So if you don't have an effective strategy that can scale, you really can't effectively scale. So that's sort of obvious and intuitive, but I can just tell you there's so many organizations out there who struggle to get the strategy right that actually allows for scale. So let's say that

They do have the strategy right. How do they scale then? So first and foremost, it starts with you've got to invest in high quality content at the start. So I'm actually a big fan of long form content. I know most buyers, potential buyers, whatever don't frankly aren't going to read a 10 page white paper, but you know what it does? It really does two things. One, it establishes credibility. So especially in the, if you're doing market research based content,

So it establishes credibility with your brand and association around that core topic. It says, Hey, we're experts in this area. But number two, it serves as an amazing foundation for derivative assets. Right. So you can start to create podcasts, webcasts, know, infographics, the list goes on. Right. can just pull that and extract it, if you will, from that, that corner cornerstone or pillar asset. So I think that's a great way to scale.

Scaling in and of itself isn't effective. Again, it has to be scaling against something that's strong and very strategic.

Benjamin Ard (08:02)
I that. So how has AI and some of these new technologies, have they actually made it better or are making it worse? Like what are your thoughts and does that actually help the scalability of content and actually helping out if you have a really solid strategy?

Matt Hummel (08:17)
Yeah, great question. has certainly helped and it certainly hurt. And it's funny because I think, you know, marketers thought AI is here to take my job and AI is here to make my job better. And, you know, I was talking to an AI expert recently and he said, you know, the thing about AI, gen AI in particular today is if you're a smart marketer, it'll make you a little smarter. If you're a dumb marketer, it'll make you a little less dumb.

but it's not going to come in and solve everything. And so, you know, where AI has hurt marketers and in content in particular is when you just hand it the keys and you let it drive, it's not effective. And, know, I think Forrester came out with a stat recently and said 80 % of B2B buyers are frustrated with what they perceive to be AI generated content. That's a real problem on the flip side. You know, we know marketers have resource and budget.

issues, right? They're being asked, truly being asked to do more with less. So AI is one of those things where it's like, I understand the challenges. I need it though, because I don't have the budget. I don't have the resources. And so where I've seen it work really well is in that scalability. So it's creating personalized content. It's creating translated versions, perhaps of that content, at least it's getting at 90 % of the way there to where you don't, you don't have to do all that legwork, you know, yourself through, through human.

intervention, if you will, you have to come in still on the back end for QA and sort of authenticity checks. But that's where I've seen AI really start to help with scalability.

Benjamin Ard (09:45)
I love it. So when you're looking at your strategy and scalability, obviously a lot of times it comes down to metrics. I'm looking at the success of my content, which tells me I've nailed my strategy. It's accomplishing the objectives that we've set out to do. What metrics are helping you understand if you've hit your strategy, if you're scaling the way you want to, what are some of those gates?

that you're trying to get through that you really pay attention to on the data side of things.

Matt Hummel (10:14)
Yeah, well, again, it's a great question and not to skirt the answer if you will, but it really depends on the objective of your campaigns, how are you trying to use the content? So there's, you know, I think a lot of companies wisely are moving away from gating content. There was the old saying, you know, you shouldn't gate content unless it's high quality content. The reality is if you're creating content that's not high quality, it doesn't matter if it's ungated or gated. Nobody's going to read it.

So you, at the end of the day, every piece of content is an opportunity to exchange value because you're still, whether you're gating it or not, you're still asking for their time. but if you take away the gate, then you start to take away this idea of generating leads around your content. And so I don't think that's a great metric. It can be though. So if that's, if, you are gating content, that can be really effective. I think there's so many ways Ben and again, I,

I hate to of answer without an answer, but there's so many ways to effectively measure the impact of content. I think you can look at campaigns holistically and you know, if you, if you start with an end goal of even if it's pipeline or bookings, for example, and you set a time boundary and you start to set up, whether it's leading indicators of, we seeing engagement within this core audience? And engagement could be they're clicking on the content. could be they're listening to my podcast or watching my webinar.

Ultimately, I view content as sort of the, your content working? Well, is your campaign actually performing both from a leading indicator and ultimately a lagging indicator performance as you expected? it's not the simplest answer because I think where marketers can get themselves into trouble is if they start to look at an isolated metric or even set of metrics to determine if something's working. When in reality, I think the some things are all part of a greater, you know, more holistic approach to

to ultimately driving success from a campaign.

Benjamin Ard (12:00)
I love that. And I really do like that answer. Like you don't feel bad at all that that's the answer. I think that this is one of the components that I'm really passionate about when it comes to a content strategy is figuring out what those metrics look like for your business objectives, what you're trying to accomplish with your content and including those in your strategy to say, we expect these kinds of milestones to be hit, these metrics to be hit.

These sort of things, even if it's just this is gonna indicate the audience is at least resonating with our content, that should be a core tenet of your strategy. And that's gonna give you a lot more of a runway with leadership to say business objective, here's the metrics and we can kind of show that we're getting there and we know what to scale. So I love this, this is so cool. Matt, we ran out of time. These podcasts go by so quick and I've loved this conversation. We could go on for hours.

Matt Hummel (12:30)
100%.

Benjamin Ard (12:50)
but we do have to stop. anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?

Matt Hummel (12:56)
Yeah, the best place is LinkedIn. So I think I've got a pretty easy LinkedIn handle, but that's the that's the best place to connect with you I and I'd welcome that opportunity.

Benjamin Ard (13:04)
Perfect. We will link to Matt's information and his LinkedIn profile on the show notes. So take a look at that. Matt, again, thank you so much for your time and insights today. I really appreciate it.

Matt Hummel (13:14)
Thanks for having me, Ben. I appreciate you and all you're doing for the industry at large.

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