How to Leverage Reddit for Your Marketing Content

Ben (00:01.308) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Sarah. Sarah, welcome to the show. Sarah (00:07.756) Hey, Ben, thanks for having me. Ben (00:09.74) Appreciate you being on here and taking the time. Sarah, before we dive into the subject today, maybe catch us up a little bit on your background, just who you are, some work experience, and really what you're passionate about with marketing. I think it'll play a really big role in today's discussion in the subject and your background around it. So mind sharing a little bit about yourself? Sarah (00:30.534) Yeah, of course. Let's, let's do the Cliff Notes version. So I have worked, uh, in B2B SaaS for just over 10 years. Uh, I started my career writing Google ads and blog posts back in 2012, right? So it's like the peak of performance and content marketing. I drank all the HubSpot Kool-Aid, but inbound marketing, content marketing, and I was really passionate about it. I love writing. Um, but early in my career, I was working for a marketing agency and just churning out like 10 to 15 blog posts a week. And I got burnt out on that pretty quick. Was like, I want to know how copy monkey turns into revenue. Um, so I moved into more of digital marketing, marketing operations and lead generation. Um, and so for a while it was pretty successfully running the, you know, old school lead gen playbook of. I write a nice white paper, I get email addresses, boom, bleeds. Um, and that started to transition in the last few years, specifically here at Jupiter one, where I'm the director of demand generation and digital marketing. Where I think there's been an acknowledgement in our space that playbook doesn't work anymore. People are tired of giving away their email address for a flimsy ebook. And we have to return to. the basics of having persuasive messaging and focusing on brand awareness, brand recall, so that when buyers are in market, they come to you. So I have been leading that transition at Jupiter One since February of this year, which has been really fun. What do you do if you abandon MQLs and you stop prioritizing lead gen? And what does it look like to... turn that off and then focus on content that people actually want to consume and that actually is persuasive. So that's been the journey and it's been fun, but I think it's kind of a common story, right? Ben (02:37.64) Yeah, if you're not making that transition, it's going to be really painful in the next couple of years for you and your business. Um, you, you mentioned before we came on the show, like the days of these flashy headlines and like 10 cookie recipes. I'm not going to lie. I've gone into those posts and there's like six cookies. Like they didn't even care to finish the post because. Sarah (03:00.497) Yeah, it's like, it's like, yeah, the ebook is like the 10 best cookie recipes and then the recipes are like chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip, chocolate chip with nuts and you're like, wow, okay. Ben (03:09.82) Yeah. Oh yeah. And then half of them are like Betty Crocker, Food Isle, eh, just pop it in the oven. Like this is the best thing ever. So I love that. I think that the real intent nowadays is I have to create compelling content that's gonna be consumed and it's gonna build a relationship and trust. That's how I earn people's business. That is the top of the funnel the right way. You know, that's how we have that. But you keep using the word persuasive. And I think this is really important. Sarah (03:19.894) Uh-huh. Sarah (03:37.426) Mm-hmm. Yeah, so this is another important part of my background outside of my professional background. So in high school and college, I was a competitive debater. At one point, I coached high schoolers, but I did competitive team policy, parliamentary debate. And one of the things that they really drill into you in policy debate is how you structure Ben (03:39.508) What do you mean exactly about persuasive and how can we make our content more persuasive? Sarah (04:07.582) affirmative case. And I have used and adapted that framework ever since. I mean, in anything as short as a paragraph or an outbound email to full ebooks or even campaign planning, this framework for how I craft a persuasive message is very much in my background and something that I return to a lot. So what do I mean by a persuasive message? what they'll teach you in policy debate is when you have an affirmative case, you're supporting a specific resolution. So in our case, it may have been something like, um, the United States should reform its policy with Russia, right? Something really broad. And your job in your affirmative case is to prove that large statement by focusing on a specific plan. So the structure goes like this. First, you go over the background. So what is the problem? What is going wrong in the status quo? Then you're gonna talk about inherency, which this is the trickiest one, but inherency means why is this problem not going away on its own? Sarah (05:20.086) Then you pivot with the plan. We've talked about the problem, why it's not going away on its own. So what do we do about it? And then the next two pieces are where I think a lot of, uh, marketing messaging focuses, which is solvency and advantages. So solvency is how will your plan solve the problem and advantages are. After we've solved the problem, what additional benefits do we see? And most marketing messaging. We focus on advantages, sometimes even solvency, and that's it. Or we focus too much on the problem. But I've found when you use this framework to get a full articulation of, this is what has gone wrong, this is how we fix it, this is why this solution is the best one, all of them together make a much more compelling and persuasive message. So when I'm stuck on an outbound email, I think about these five bullet points. And sometimes you cross one off, that's fine, but just thinking that way is really useful. When I craft an overall campaign, I wanna understand those five points first. And again, not every bit of ad copy is going to have all five points of the plan, but it informs your way of thinking as you move forward. So that's what I mean when I say persuasive is like, having a clear articulation of problem and solution altogether, which is very often glossed over in lieu of, well, my headline is compelling and someone will give me their email address. That is a consequence of glossing over that fundamental way of thinking about persuasive messaging. Ben (07:13.064) I love it. I love it. So when you're looking at this, and I think this is so interesting and so helpful because I think this is really what we all aspire to do. You just built out the framework to say, this is how you do it. What's so cool is when I read content, I'm not gonna propose that I'm the greatest content writer in the world. So when I read good copy, what's really nice about it is they identify the problem that I'm actually feeling. And when you do that, It almost feels like they're putting these ideas into your head that it's your own idea. And you're right, all too often we put this problem out there as click bait, and then we don't give them a solution. We don't go through those steps to help them come to a conclusion. That's the conclusion you want them to come to. Like that's the whole point of debate. There's a problem. Here's my side. I need to convince you that my side's the right way of doing that. And that's how our problem, where our product solves the problem. So, When I look at this, it all starts with that problem statement. How do you effectively source how people are feeling the problem? Do you have any methodologies, ideas, strategies, tactics to actually go and source problem statements? Sarah (08:28.406) Yeah, it's the simplest and the hardest thing, right? And it's talking to customers. So a lot of us have gotten used to being told by our sales leadership or our product leadership, these are the problems, or the founder, these are the problems to solve. There's a big difference though, in just being told by the rest of the team, these are the problems. and actually talking to customers yourself to understand. And that takes a few forms, right? It can mean something as simple as listening to Gong calls that are already recorded in your org, or it can be as advanced as doing sort of interviews that would inform case studies, let's say. I think where... you can run into trouble is if you're to ask a customer, what is the problem you were trying to solve? They may not be thinking about it that way, right? So that's where we have to put on our journalist hats and ask more interesting questions. And that's also why I like this framework where the actual framework is, the first point is not the problem. The first point is background. And if you think of it as background and not problem, you'll get to what you're looking for, but it's a much less, um, it's a more open-minded way of thinking about it. You're just understanding the background of the story. And I think that that's less intimidating when you're interviewing somebody and trying to understand, you know, where they came to your product, what they were trying to accomplish, what they care about. Ben (10:11.404) Thanks for watching! Sarah (10:11.886) But it also broadens your own scope of what you're paying attention to is what is the background knowledge that I need to then move into the rest of this story. So I think that's a more useful way to frame it. Ben (10:24.384) That's a great insight because even when I was recapping, I went straight to problem. And I think that you're right. Yeah, I think you're right that the background is stage one and we skip it way too often. And I think it's great because it does help you find the real problems. It's almost like taking your kid to the doctor if they say, well, I hurt. It's like, well, do you hurt here? Do you hurt here? And you really have to poke and prod and say, where's the real pain? Sarah (10:29.918) It's marketing speak. Ben (10:53.128) You know, because if they just say it, often it's wrong, you know, it's not really something insightful, but as you understand the background, you know, where to poke and prod and say, well, how does this work and how does that make you feel and, and is it efficient? How could it be better? And this and that, and you say, ah, okay, here's the insight you wish you could do this and all of that kind of fun stuff. Sarah (11:11.862) Mm hmm. Yep. And I think, you know, it's important to remember in this context, of course, that in debate, there are two sides. So of course, what you're taught to do on the negative side is to attack each of those five points, like, what is misunderstood about the problem? Or why is the plan not going to solve that problem? Why are the advantages not that important? Like you're taught to really focus on each of those. So what that means is to craft an important persuasive message, you need to answer each of those five points, and then you need to return and back them up with evidence. And so as a marketer, starting with that framework so that you don't have a blank page, you kind of know what you need to prove. But then going back and asking for the quotes that support the background and inherency articulating what the solution is really effectively for understanding, you know, not just the advantages that you say your product delivers, but what your customers say, you know, backing that up with case studies and customer quotes and ROI data, it gives you a way to see, you know, if you outline it out and then you outline your points of evidence, you can pretty quickly identify where the gaps are and go, oh, these are the conversations I need to be having. This is the type of content I need to be producing, whether internal or external. It gives you a framework that it kind of accomplishes the same thing as like awareness, consideration, decision purchase, but it's, it breaks you out of that I'm doing marketing box and just puts it in another framework for you to then figure out where the gaps are in your own thinking. And I have found that it's useful to me. not only because it's my bias and my background, but because it's slightly different from the frameworks I'm already gonna do because all marketers do them. Ben (13:10.004) Yeah. Well, and this is kind of a really good point for executives. If any executives are listening that have, especially product leaders or leaders of the actual product in org. If your content team is doing this good job and you're trying to prove this specific point, kind of your take on solving the problem, that's what your company is, what you do. There might be some insights where the company may need to shift. and say, you know what, you understand the background better than I do. And the argument we've been making doesn't ring true. You know, it's not just that your content isn't persuasive enough. Your argument sucks because our product sucks because our approach is wrong. And at a certain point in time, I think we stopped listening to that and making those shifts. This is where the lean startup philosophy all came from and the mom tests and all of those things. But. It's one interesting thing I would say, especially if you're using Sarah's framework, those writers should regularly present in like executive meetings to say, hey, by the way, this is the narrative and the narrative doesn't work anymore. And it does, and this argument does and doesn't, maybe we should change our philosophy as a business because this is what resonates with people. And I think that there's something to be said there where we often don't look at that. And it would be really refreshing to have a business do that. Ben (14:42.2) Awesome. Well, Sarah, thank you so much. As promised, the time goes by really, really quickly. One thing I'd love if anyone wants to continue the conversation with you, how can they connect with you online? What's the best way to reach out? Sarah (14:57.018) Yeah, I am at Sarah Hartland on LinkedIn. That's a great place to find me. If anyone's going to be at a cyber marketing conference, I'll be there and speaking there as well. Also, you know, anything in the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, you can find me there anytime as well. Ben (15:15.324) Awesome. Perfect. We'll link to Sarah's profile on the show notes and good luck with the speech at the convention. I'm sure it'll be interesting. If you share it online, tag us. We'd love to repost it to our audience, but Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show today. Sarah (15:29.486) Thanks, Ben. It's been fun.