#326: How to Use AI for Content Without Creating Slop with Eoin Clancy (VP Growth at Airops)

#326 | Dave is joined by Eoin Clancy, VP of Growth at Airops, to break down what it takes to create great content without pumping out AI slop. They talk about the rise of the content engineer role and why more teams are hiring for it and three dead-giveaway signs content is low-quality AI generated. Eoin also shares why webinars are Airops’ best growth channel right now, including how they choose topics, source guests, why the sessions are ungated, and how to follow up in a way that drives revenue. A tactical episode for marketers trying to move faster with AI while keeping quality high.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - Why AI content, content engineers, and webinars matter right now
  
• (03:44) - What Airops does and the AI search problem they’re solving
  
• (04:39) - What a “content engineer” actually is
  
• (16:19) - How to use AI without creating AI slop
  
• (19:35) - The 3 signals content is AI slop
  
• (34:23) - Why webinars are Airops’ best growth channel
  
• (36:48) - How they choose webinar topics and guests
  
• (53:00) - Other channels working (enablement, community, events)
  
• (56:00) - Final takeaways and wrap-up

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Dave [0:00:01]: You're listening to the Dave Gerhardt.

Dave [0:00:02]: Hey, on this episode of my podcast, I had on Eoin Clancy, he's Vp growth at Airops.

Dave [0:00:23]: They a really cool company in the Ai search content, visibility space.

Dave [0:00:27]: I know this is the hottest topic in marketing right now.

Dave [0:00:29]: Anything about Ai content.

Dave [0:00:30]: Seo.

Dave [0:00:31]: But we had a great conversation.

Dave [0:00:33]: We talk about the rise of the role of content engineer and why you might need one.

Dave [0:00:38]: We talk about the three ways to know if something is Ai s.

Dave [0:00:42]: So we actually put a definition on this and talked about.

Dave [0:00:45]: This is Ai slot this Is not and how to create ten x content while using Ai tools.

Dave [0:00:52]: So it's not just that you can't use Ai tools to make content because it's gonna be Ai slot you can.

Dave [0:00:56]: And you just need to know the rules of the game and the right way to do it, plus does We talked about Airops best growth channel right now, which I was happy to hear it's webinars.

Dave [0:01:05]: That's right.

Dave [0:01:06]: In web in q1 of twenty twenty six, the best channel right now for this company is webinars.

Dave [0:01:12]: I love webinars.

Dave [0:01:13]: We dive into their webinar funnel how they come up with topics, how they source guests, how the follow up works and why it's actually leading to revenue despite the fact that they don't gate any of these webinars at all.

Dave [0:01:25]: Is a great conversation really tactical and specific for those of you wanna hear from a marketing person.

Dave [0:01:30]: Actually doing the marketing right now, you're gonna get a lot out of my conversation with Eoin Clan, he's Vp growth at Air.

Dave [0:01:36]: Eoin good to have you on the pod.

Eoin [0:01:39]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:01:39]: Glad to be here, Dave.

Dave [0:01:41]: Perfect We were joking because we've done a bunch of stuff together, and Dan always messages me.

Dave [0:01:46]: Like, we should have Eoin on the pod and, like, for six months, and I'm like, yeah, dude, we have it.

Dave [0:01:50]: It's scheduled that's happening.

Dave [0:01:51]: And it's happening right now and I took a screenshot to throw it into Slack to prove it.

Dave [0:01:55]: So we're gonna get into a bunch of Airops is a cool company in a cool space, and we're gonna talk about, a bunch of stuff that you're doing and marketing.

Dave [0:02:03]: That's working, what's not working, opinions on marketing.

Dave [0:02:05]: People have been really liking the, like, Let's talk about what marketers are actually doing.

Dave [0:02:10]: Let's get away from the like, oh.

Dave [0:02:11]: So would you do before this?

Dave [0:02:12]: And before that, Like, they wanna talk about right now, I want this to be a podcast that people listen to and take stuff away from.

Dave [0:02:18]: But before we do that, briefly tell me about Airops, what does the company do?

Dave [0:02:23]: Why is it interesting and what's it been like, doing marketing in this Ai and Seo slash content space, which is really hot right now?

Eoin [0:02:32]: It's so fun.

Eoin [0:02:32]: I come from having marketed or doing growth?

Eoin [0:02:36]: In in a different space towards software engineers for the last six years, and that my now is tough.

Eoin [0:02:42]: That, like, that drains you.

Eoin [0:02:44]: It's an audience like, hard to get in front of.

Eoin [0:02:46]: So Airops is kind engineering platform.

Eoin [0:02:48]: We're in a super hot space at the moment.

Eoin [0:02:51]: Everyone is trying to, generate content to get their brand seen in Ai search, and also seen in Seo.

Eoin [0:02:57]: So we help leaving companies like Character, chime, and a lot more, like, basically increase their brand visibility.

Eoin [0:03:04]: So we can get into, later, Dave, like, what's the difference between Ai sla and what you guys do.

Eoin [0:03:10]: I know that's, like, definitely top of mind for everyone, but we're there to help and team basically increase our brand visibility in organic search.

Dave [0:03:18]: Okay.

Dave [0:03:18]: So you mentioned Airops is helping to solve the problem of getting found in Ai search, which is something everyone's asking about right now.

Dave [0:03:26]: You also mentioned something about content engineering.

Dave [0:03:29]: Explain that term to me.

Eoin [0:03:32]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:03:32]: That is a term that we'd like to say that we've, like, championed ourselves and Hubspot had their version of, like, the the growth marketer.

Eoin [0:03:40]: You've play who do, like, the Gta engineer for us.

Eoin [0:03:43]: It was very hard to find who is, like, the person that, like, owns or runs, Airops internally.

Eoin [0:03:50]: So we actually, like, played around the the word choice or, like, the title for a long time, but I a content engineer today, given we have twelve months of lots of learnings and probably, I think in the last six months, we've seen, like, eighty people hired into content engineering roles at arrange to our customers and prospects, but a common engineer someone who really starts to manage your context internally, and also builds and maintains your workflows.

Eoin [0:04:17]: So when we talk it as well about, like, avoiding Ai sla, it all comes down to what you're feeding a model with or, like, what you're educating yourself on in terms of the context that feeds into your content, So content engineer helps gather and make that data available?

Eoin [0:04:33]: And they're also building the workflows that help you produce the content?

Dave [0:04:38]: And does the content would the content engineer be responsible for the website content or is it like, the blog, like, content marketing efforts.

Dave [0:04:46]: Because Yeah.

Dave [0:04:47]: This has been coming up.

Dave [0:04:48]: It's, like, now that I need to have my website content formatted in a different way and there needs to be specific files and this and ad, I need to make sure my content is readable for L and humans, just product marketing owns a website or demand gen, where does it fit with content engineer.

Eoin [0:05:02]: I think it very much depends on, like, the size of an organization.

Eoin [0:05:05]: So the larger you go, your product marketers is probably gonna maintain your product.

Eoin [0:05:10]: Solutions, use case pages because their lower amounts of copy.

Eoin [0:05:15]: They're higher density in terms of just, like, speaking to the user, and we're starting to see more content engineers progress from the more strategic performance focused content up towards that.

Eoin [0:05:28]: So I think like, Kurt is a good example.

Eoin [0:05:30]: So Lucy Oils.

Eoin [0:05:31]: She's like, our time Being over there.

Eoin [0:05:32]: She started off on managing their blog content.

Eoin [0:05:35]: Now she's moved in

Dave [0:05:37]: it's her title, like, content engineer.

Dave [0:05:38]: She's a content engineer

Eoin [0:05:40]: at correct.

Eoin [0:05:41]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:05:41]: She moved from, like, a content strategist into...

Eoin [0:05:44]: I think now she's, like, a senior content engineer.

Eoin [0:05:46]: So it's good to see people get promoted in the role as well.

Eoin [0:05:49]: But, yeah, she's moved from a lot of the performance related content.

Eoin [0:05:53]: So as you said Dave, like, on the blog or larger programmatic hubs, and she's now focused on a lot of the strategic content.

Eoin [0:06:01]: So she is now starting to craft workflows, that go into taught leadership content, and I think starting to touch some of the product pages.

Eoin [0:06:09]: And again, as you think about the higher quality content, whether it is a landing page, which has far fewer words than a longer blog post you're still generally trying to solve the same problem?

Eoin [0:06:19]: You're trying to find what is it that is unique to your business?

Eoin [0:06:22]: Like, how does your product like, situate situated itself in the market?

Eoin [0:06:27]: And then how do you describe that best.

Eoin [0:06:29]: To a human or an agent that is like visiting this asset that lives on your website.

Dave [0:06:36]: I'd like that distinction because I still feel like I I think Ai Seo stuff is cool.

Dave [0:06:41]: There's a lot of changes the more, and I'm not certainly not an expert as you know, I'm just a thought leader.

Dave [0:06:46]: I just interview people for a living.

Dave [0:06:49]: But almost everybody that I've talked to, like, if I were, like, make...

Dave [0:06:53]: It sounds a lot like what what it was, you know, ten years ago, like, hey, Let's make sure this content is like, searchable and index and is useful for Google.

Dave [0:07:00]: It's kind of the same thing now, but it's for M's and they have a different way of of doing that.

Dave [0:07:04]: That might be my layman's in terms of explain that.

Dave [0:07:06]: But is that any beef with that?

Eoin [0:07:10]: None and whatsoever, There's one book I come back to every twelve months by Eli Schwartz.

Eoin [0:07:15]: It's called product led Seo.

Eoin [0:07:17]: And I think Eli wrote that in about twenty sixteen.

Eoin [0:07:20]: So you're talking, way pre shot Gp.

Eoin [0:07:23]: You're talking.

Eoin [0:07:23]: Before even, like, people also answer elements in Google search.

Eoin [0:07:28]: But a lot of the court principles talks about as to how to invest in a strong, like Seo motion,

Dave [0:07:35]: Mo eli Schwartz by the way.

Eoin [0:07:36]: Eli Schwartz led Seo big companies like toast and, like, many other big B companies where their whole growth motion was Seo.

Eoin [0:07:47]: So his his kind of like mo is like, answer users questions with the content that you produce.

Eoin [0:07:55]: So all of the companies he's worked with will say greater than thirty percent of their acquisitions will come from organic, but his core principle in the book, again, written decade ago, I guess, at this point, was the search engines, their whole motivation is to surface the best content for any given query.

Eoin [0:08:13]: And whether that search like engine is like bing or Google or Chat Or per complexity They're trying to get to ground truth.

Eoin [0:08:22]: They're trying to like, answer the question they get in with the best piece of content or now I it's was like, a larger answer.

Eoin [0:08:28]: So the...

Eoin [0:08:29]: Like, no matter if what sort of content you're trying to create.

Eoin [0:08:32]: Like you always need to draw back to, like, what user's focused on.

Eoin [0:08:36]: And then all of the questions that they have that might be unanswered.

Eoin [0:08:40]: That's largely a like career your opportunity is.

Eoin [0:08:42]: So I think given this space is like changing the whole time.

Eoin [0:08:45]: It it comes back to you a human who needs to find an answer, and you need to provide that answer.

Dave [0:08:51]: I love when you can find something like that in the c of like, like, god, I I saw a tweet from Brian Hall this morning.

Dave [0:08:57]: Who's a former Ceo and founder of Hubspot.

Dave [0:08:59]: And he's, like...

Dave [0:08:59]: And he's, you know, at Sequoia, top investor in the space, looking at the hottest Ai companies he's, like, Anyone...

Dave [0:09:06]: It was something like does anyone else feel like overwhelmed.

Dave [0:09:08]: Like, they can't keep up, and I'm like, oh, that made me feel better because I have had this insane feeling of, like, I am just a mug who uses Chat Gb.

Dave [0:09:17]: You know, and it's like, my feed is like, just these insane workflows and all these things and I'm like, god.

Dave [0:09:25]: I feel so far behind.

Dave [0:09:26]: I I just love when you hear something like that, a book that came out, you know, ten years ago where the principles remain nice.

Eoin [0:09:34]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:09:34]: I I think the...

Eoin [0:09:35]: One of the things I do when I try and, like, select a book is it's the Lin effect it's called, but a book becomes more valuable, the longer it's been around.

Eoin [0:09:44]: So you should always return to, like, the classics because they're a classic for a given reason.

Eoin [0:09:49]: Like, they're not gonna keep coming up in conversations or being mentioned unless they're good.

Eoin [0:09:54]: So basically, the longer something is around more authoritative and likely long lasting than it is.

Dave [0:10:01]: Okay.

Dave [0:10:01]: So you're in this space at Air.

Dave [0:10:04]: You're going after this persona of content engineer, which there are a lot of we do marketers.

Dave [0:10:11]: We do like to make up names and terms.

Dave [0:10:14]: And I I love when people roll their on this because, like, no Don't nobody, that's like, actually the job it's like, you you should make these things up.

Dave [0:10:20]: That's that's part of the marketing job.

Dave [0:10:21]: Like if you're you're getting paid to be a marketer or a company like, yeah.

Dave [0:10:24]: We're gonna try to call it content engineer, but it turns out, like, this is working.

Dave [0:10:28]: It sticks.

Dave [0:10:29]: And it...

Dave [0:10:29]: It's one of the things that makes sense to me.

Dave [0:10:31]: Like, this role makes sense.

Dave [0:10:32]: I, a couple marketing teams ago, like, we would wanna be hiring, like, a growth person in marketing,

Eoin [0:10:39]: or a...

Dave [0:10:40]: We called it.

Dave [0:10:40]: We hired someone who was like, a former Pm, and we called her like, marketing engineer.

Dave [0:10:44]: There has always been our, you know, Clay has the Gt engineer.

Dave [0:10:48]: What you're talking about is applying this specifically to content.

Dave [0:10:52]: And I've long believed that out of all the things in marketing content is arguably the most important thing in marketing, So why not apply an engineer to to that and learn a lot about Ai and what it's gonna take to rank for Seo.

Dave [0:11:05]: I I think it's it's an interesting play.

Dave [0:11:07]: But we don't wanna just talk all about content engineers.

Dave [0:11:10]: We're gonna talk about a bunch of the specific things you all have done at Airops that seemed to be working.

Dave [0:11:14]: Can you just set the stage by the way, before we talk about, hey, here's all these great marketing plays that you run.

Dave [0:11:18]: Can you just can you give me some receipts credibility?

Dave [0:11:20]: You don't have to...

Dave [0:11:22]: You're a private company.

Dave [0:11:23]: So probably you're not gonna tell me Airops revenue on air, but Give me some sense.

Dave [0:11:27]: Let's tell people that, like, hey, this this is working and the company growing, and then we'll talk about the marketing stuff that you've done.

Eoin [0:11:34]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:11:34]: Hundred percent.

Eoin [0:11:34]: So when I joined the company about eighteen months ago, I came in as a former customer.

Eoin [0:11:40]: I'd like you a customer for twelve months.

Eoin [0:11:42]: So I joined what was then, like, a fifteen person company, Solo marketer.

Eoin [0:11:47]: We were very much like, P focused, trying to go like, bottoms up, like self serve because, like, while it was, content automation platform.

Eoin [0:11:56]: It was generalized automation as well.

Eoin [0:11:58]: You could use Airops and still.

Eoin [0:11:59]: That was your

Dave [0:12:00]: that was your the company you're at for people who might know.

Dave [0:12:02]: That was a company you're at before this, while?

Eoin [0:12:04]: Well, I I joined Airops when we were more, like, a P.

Eoin [0:12:07]: Like we were self...

Eoin [0:12:08]: Sort wall

Dave [0:12:10]: it was a P gotta go.

Eoin [0:12:11]: Yes.

Eoin [0:12:11]: Correct.

Eoin [0:12:11]: And then, yeah.

Eoin [0:12:13]: It was a solo marketer, which means you do everything for about, like, five or six months.

Eoin [0:12:18]: And then as we started to, like, think about...

Eoin [0:12:21]: My job was like, head growth.

Eoin [0:12:23]: Just to figure out the channels and the tactics that can drive basically pipeline or acquisition for us.

Eoin [0:12:29]: So basically, we started to see a lot more value with dealing with, bigger companies.

Eoin [0:12:35]: It gave us better product direction.

Eoin [0:12:37]: It gave us just better signal because these people are, like, knee deep in the problems than we wanted to go solve.

Eoin [0:12:43]: So taking the first six months of, like, finding our feet setting up some channels.

Eoin [0:12:48]: The last twelve months so that was twenty twenty five.

Eoin [0:12:51]: We've basically, like, ten our revenue, and then like ten our customer count as well.

Eoin [0:12:57]: And in that time, we've gone from Smb focused to really like enterprise.

Eoin [0:13:02]: So again, it it's been

Dave [0:13:05]: tail us all this time.

Dave [0:13:06]: Yeah.

Dave [0:13:07]: Literally, every company ever Dan I were just talking about this because we're filling it in our business.

Dave [0:13:12]: It's like, it it always happens this way.

Eoin [0:13:15]: It's it's incredible.

Eoin [0:13:16]: All the money.

Eoin [0:13:17]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:13:17]: Like, along the way, though, it is the same set of problems that marketers are facing.

Eoin [0:13:24]: And people are at different stages of their journey of, like, understanding and adoption.

Eoin [0:13:29]: So, like, you were, like, being negative to yourself dave of, like, you just use chad Gb, but I think you're still ahead of probably, like, fifty percent of marketers.

Eoin [0:13:38]: Like.

Eoin [0:13:39]: Hold on.

Eoin [0:13:40]: Hold on.

Eoin [0:13:40]: Hold on.

Eoin [0:13:40]: Go for it.

Dave [0:13:41]: I use Claude c Mother motherfucker.

Eoin [0:13:43]: Okay.

Eoin [0:13:43]: You're out of the curves.

Dave [0:13:46]: I am a growth.

Dave [0:13:46]: I'm a vibe engineer myself.

Dave [0:13:48]: So, yeah, I said Chat Because I didn't I wanna make anybody feel inadequate, but I'm using Gemini.

Dave [0:13:53]: I'm using chad Eb.

Dave [0:13:55]: I'm using Claude c like, take that inside thirty.

Eoin [0:14:00]: So you're your top ten percent ben.

Eoin [0:14:01]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:14:02]: And I think I'm generally, like, as people move in move into that early doctor phase or now, I guess it's, like, middle the median person or media, like, content marketer, is starting to like, realize that this is something they need to move with.

Eoin [0:14:16]: That's where we've kind of like, found our sweet spot within organizations where they're getting hit by, like, Seo not being as important, but also just like the essence of brand being incredibly important as you get into an banana or, like, calms or P just how you can leverage the tools to move fast or move faster, but keep your quality really high.

Eoin [0:14:40]: Dots like, the main challenge that the america is facing today?

Eoin [0:14:43]: Everyone's asking to move faster.

Eoin [0:14:44]: Hey.

Eoin [0:14:44]: You've all these tools.

Eoin [0:14:45]: Why can't we launch faster?

Eoin [0:14:47]: Why can't we do more content, but they need to keep the balance of, like, quality very, very high?

Eoin [0:14:53]: I think that...

Eoin [0:14:54]: That's where we're really trying to address their their situation.

Dave [0:14:58]: Yeah.

Dave [0:14:58]: So I have...

Dave [0:14:59]: So one of the topics was gonna be fighting Ai slot.

Dave [0:15:01]: This is a natural transition in there.

Dave [0:15:03]: So maybe, we'll talk...

Dave [0:15:04]: We'll talk about webinars talk about some other stuff in, but maybe let's let's talk about this.

Dave [0:15:08]: Is it is this kinda what what you're getting at, which is, like, we wanna use the Ai tools to create our content.

Dave [0:15:14]: However, that v one, the uniqueness, the the utility...

Dave [0:15:19]: The cool factor of it has kinda gone away, and it's, like, you can't just use it to create, you know, silly little memes are just kinda, like, hey, Wow.

Dave [0:15:26]: Like, I I remember three years ago goes was like, wow.

Dave [0:15:28]: Like, Chat Wrote me this, you know, email that would have taken me, you know, twenty minutes before.

Dave [0:15:32]: But how do you articulate the...

Dave [0:15:34]: We don't do Ai slot?

Dave [0:15:36]: But we use Ai?

Dave [0:15:37]: What why do you think that why do think those two things get get mixed together?

Dave [0:15:40]: Why do people say, like, oh, you fair using it.

Dave [0:15:42]: You'd be using Ai to create your content.

Dave [0:15:44]: You know, that's easy.

Eoin [0:15:46]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:15:46]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:15:47]: I think it's...

Eoin [0:15:48]: We've been on, like a journey.

Eoin [0:15:49]: I think like, as as a marketing group where when this tool came out, like you said, it just, like, gave you instant access to, like, content generation.

Eoin [0:15:59]: So be it an email or a memo or a blog post.

Eoin [0:16:03]: You could like, give it literally like, a sentence of, like, write me a blog on x.

Eoin [0:16:09]: And it could come out with as many words as you want which is like the best thing and also the worst thing.

Eoin [0:16:14]: So Google was like, kinda caught flat footage with some of, like, Touch Bts releases, so you could put out that on differentiated content.

Eoin [0:16:23]: And you actually get quite good results, I think between Coming out maybe the next six months.

Eoin [0:16:28]: People are, like, how do I throw more gas on this fire because you could create hundreds of pages and actually get results.

Eoin [0:16:36]: But again, the thing I love about Eli Schwartz book is like, those pages were not serving user intent.

Eoin [0:16:43]: Like, they were just s.

Eoin [0:16:45]: And I think there's some people today where they're still on that practice, and it's not driving results, and then they're very vocal where they're like, hey, I'm using Ai.

Eoin [0:16:54]: I'm like seemingly like, producing output, but it's not driving results, like, it doesn't work.

Eoin [0:17:01]: And I think sometimes they get to dominate the conversation, but it all comes back to, like, it's why you're producing.

Eoin [0:17:07]: Actually useful?

Eoin [0:17:08]: Does anyone want to go read it?

Eoin [0:17:10]: And is it really I think what we believe in is it pushing the conversation forward.

Dave [0:17:15]: The reason I like this topic because it's like, that's the fun part about marketing to me.

Dave [0:17:19]: I'm not an engineer so the fun part is not like, how do I produce a hundred pages?

Dave [0:17:24]: How hundred landing pages of the snap of my fingers?

Dave [0:17:27]: Or my bias is more like, how do we tell a story that stands out?

Dave [0:17:32]: How do we get attention?

Dave [0:17:34]: Right?

Dave [0:17:34]: How do we create something worth reading and then ultimately if someone reads something and it's good and helpful.

Dave [0:17:40]: I don't get to the end of that article And I'm like, oh, this was totally written by Ai.

Dave [0:17:44]: I'm like, oh cool.

Dave [0:17:45]: I got the answer that I was looking for.

Eoin [0:17:47]: Like,

Dave [0:17:47]: you know, like,

Eoin [0:17:48]: totally,

Dave [0:17:49]: is the post...

Dave [0:17:50]: I need to go the post office after after this.

Dave [0:17:51]: Like, this is a silly Consumer example, like, is the post office open at four o'clock.

Dave [0:17:55]: Like, yeah I got the answer.

Dave [0:17:57]: Am I, like, Damn at Ai gave me the answer s.

Dave [0:17:59]: You know, Yeah.

Dave [0:18:01]: Doesn't matter.

Eoin [0:18:02]: I think I'm one of things I've been, like, stew on is, please.

Eoin [0:18:05]: All of the three biggest indicators of something being Ai swap.

Eoin [0:18:09]: Oh if if you if if you what

Dave [0:18:11]: you got?

Dave [0:18:11]: Give me what swap is.

Eoin [0:18:13]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:18:13]: Can avoid it.

Eoin [0:18:14]: Okay.

Eoin [0:18:14]: I think number one.

Dave [0:18:16]: Here's a clip.

Dave [0:18:16]: This producer Aaron, let's make the let's make this a clip.

Dave [0:18:19]: Here.

Dave [0:18:19]: There are three ways.

Dave [0:18:20]: Three ways to know if the content is Ai s.

Eoin [0:18:24]: Number one, I think not unique.

Eoin [0:18:26]: It's not pushing the conversation forward, like, in our term, it's not, like, information gain.

Eoin [0:18:33]: Like, it's not using your internal experts.

Eoin [0:18:36]: It's not going into, like at reddit questions or, like, questions are coming up on, like, your gong calls.

Eoin [0:18:42]: Like, you're not leveraging that really unique information that you have.

Eoin [0:18:47]: You're instead, just, like, scraping lots on the top two page of Google, repurposing it and churning it back out again.

Eoin [0:18:53]: So I think where you're not unique.

Eoin [0:18:55]: That's Ai swap.

Eoin [0:18:57]: And number two, and this matters more on, like, a per brand level.

Eoin [0:19:01]: But, like, the content doesn't sound like you.

Eoin [0:19:04]: I think it's also near the sla side as well.

Eoin [0:19:07]: And the certain brands that always stand out to me there, like edgy.

Eoin [0:19:10]: So, like, intercom or clay.

Eoin [0:19:12]: Plays great example.

Eoin [0:19:13]: It's always it's like a fun brand.

Eoin [0:19:14]: Like, their social persona, should actually come through when you're like, reading a customer story or a piece of content from them.

Eoin [0:19:21]: You want, like, day as, like a marketing team want it to sound like them, but you also enjoy reading clay content because Like, it it has, like, a certain vibe.

Eoin [0:19:30]: So if it doesn't match that, if it doesn't sound like you, I think as well.

Eoin [0:19:34]: It's in the lower quality book, and then there's the smaller telltale, and this is like what will come up in a linkedin post or, like, a Youtube video or college professor it's probably, like, out and up their students every day, but, like, the m dash just like the...

Eoin [0:19:48]: Does other words, like, utilize instead of use just these phrases that we actually don't use in every everyday vocabulary.

Eoin [0:19:55]: I think that That as well It's just, like, there are, like, telltale signs there, but it's not that that is a significant indicator of low quality.

Eoin [0:20:04]: Some people do use those words, but it's not in, like, your daily vocabulary, and one of the most important things actually create performant content is like the readability of it.

Eoin [0:20:15]: Like, the L so that's to, like, digest all of this.

Eoin [0:20:18]: Human has to engage with it.

Eoin [0:20:20]: Like, it needs to be, like, easy to read eat.

Eoin [0:20:22]: So right for a a fifth grader or, like, right for your elementary school like audience, and it actually performs better.

Dave [0:20:31]: So, I was just...

Dave [0:20:31]: Before this, I had a doctor's appointment in, I was asking something, Obviously just sharing all my, you know, private information with Gemini because, like, who cares whatever.

Dave [0:20:39]: Right hey.

Dave [0:20:40]: I think, I'm dying.

Dave [0:20:41]: How do you fix it?

Dave [0:20:42]: And it...

Dave [0:20:43]: Exactly the the the headline.

Dave [0:20:44]: That one of the tails is, like, the way they do, like, the sub heads and kinda like, recap things, and so it's, like, the conflict.

Dave [0:20:50]: Why one isn't another and then they explain one section.

Dave [0:20:53]: The hack to stop the frustration.

Dave [0:20:55]: Then the third one was, like, the last paragraph re...

Dave [0:20:57]: It's like, recap at all.

Dave [0:20:58]: The reality check.

Dave [0:20:59]: Like, it's almost like, it's too, like, robotic, and it is one of those weird things.

Dave [0:21:04]: I also think there's something with humans Those were great by the way.

Dave [0:21:07]: I love the list of three.

Dave [0:21:07]: I wanna get back to the the the tone of voice thing in a second.

Dave [0:21:11]: But I think there's something I'm noticing this in my kids now who are young.

Dave [0:21:15]: They know.

Dave [0:21:16]: When they...

Dave [0:21:17]: When I show them a video, they're like, oh, that's Ai.

Dave [0:21:19]: I'm like, how do you know?

Dave [0:21:20]: It just feels just has a way.

Dave [0:21:22]: And I know people love the, like, Ai voice recorders.

Dave [0:21:28]: We we have one We have we have a Dave bot, which is trained on my voice.

Dave [0:21:31]: It doesn't trick me a hundred percent.

Dave [0:21:32]: Maybe we're gonna, you know, pass this.

Dave [0:21:34]: Someone's someone listening in their car right now who's, like, super deep in Ai and this like just wait Dave, six months.

Dave [0:21:39]: You know, the fraud is the spam and the fraud is gonna be through the roof, but they're definitely something there.

Dave [0:21:44]: On the field, and it's like, I know this is people love the the term taste.

Dave [0:21:48]: But it's kinda like, I don't know.

Dave [0:21:49]: It's like, how do you know when something is handmade.

Dave [0:21:51]: Right?

Dave [0:21:51]: Like, the difference between, like, a a local restaurant, you're in Chicago, amazing food.

Dave [0:21:56]: The difference between a pizza in Chicago.

Dave [0:21:59]: Right?

Dave [0:22:00]: From a proper place first going to say, California pizza kitchen, more like a, a big chain.

Dave [0:22:06]: It's it's gonna be noticeable.

Dave [0:22:07]: You mentioned tone of voice.

Dave [0:22:08]: I wanna talk about that because how does someone...

Dave [0:22:11]: This is a thing.

Dave [0:22:12]: I've been feeling this, but how do you define that?

Dave [0:22:15]: It a lot of companies it just kinda happens.

Dave [0:22:17]: There's a writer who's there early in that kinda has their voice.

Dave [0:22:20]: Are you seeing customers or or even you all, like, trying to have a tone of voice so that then you can use Ai within that framework and it works first if you let Ai dictate your tone of voice, any any advice there?

Eoin [0:22:31]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:22:31]: This is like one of the toughest parts and like, almost taking a step back to answer the question.

Eoin [0:22:36]: People often ask, like, is Ai gonna replace a marketer.

Eoin [0:22:39]: And like, the answer is like, undoubtedly in my head no because that is like a key question that is like so hard to evaluate.

Eoin [0:22:47]: And, like, we try to create, like, frameworks that can help companies they need to determine if the end output is similar to their tone of voice input.

Eoin [0:22:56]: I like a hard problem to solve.

Eoin [0:22:57]: Like, as long as if you can do an engineering sprint and, like, go and solve it, but taking, like, two or three examples of, like, customers, I think the the big thing that comes out when we like, nail a workflow with them is that from their content marketer or they're, like, head of product marketing.

Eoin [0:23:14]: They just come to us with the recurring sentence of this just sounds like us.

Eoin [0:23:18]: I was like a super hard thing to go and measure, but it it really comes from, like, the hybrid situation.

Eoin [0:23:24]: Like, if you just try and use, like, Ai out of the box and you mentioned cloud code dave.

Eoin [0:23:29]: I my entire weekend in it.

Eoin [0:23:30]: So Was trying to, like, hack it it all the way, see, like, how far I could push it.

Eoin [0:23:34]: Like, the hybrid situation is really where you end up with, like, higher quality.

Eoin [0:23:37]: Well there are some important inputs.

Eoin [0:23:39]: The inputs are gonna be your product context and then you have, like, brand style guides, and then you you do have, like, a tone of voice that really, like, you can probably put into a one pager.

Eoin [0:23:50]: And I think that does need to be a key asset.

Eoin [0:23:53]: They spend a lot of time on.

Eoin [0:23:55]: But the interesting thing, a lot of a lot of our customers do or when prospects come to us, they've actually done this themselves.

Eoin [0:24:01]: They use Ai to help generate that for them.

Eoin [0:24:04]: So like, they're gonna have not been using a Ai for the last three for, however many years they're in business, But they've created a lot of content that they're proud of.

Eoin [0:24:12]: It performs really well, it's reflective of, maybe they're, like, leadership team voice or maybe they're, like, brand team I, like, a different quirk to them.

Eoin [0:24:20]: So with these tools that are available.

Eoin [0:24:23]: You can almost like capture the essence by s simplifying the content you have out there into these key documents and then not just give you a much better foundation to go and build on.

Eoin [0:24:33]: But it's almost like the human element to answer your question of.

Eoin [0:24:35]: It's really hard to figure out what is tone of voice?

Eoin [0:24:38]: But there are ways that you can, create these assets and that gives you just a better starting point, but you do need to continue to refine your systems over time because, like, product set, your tone of voice is gonna change, depending on your state of the company, the state of the market and wider things.

Eoin [0:24:57]: So it's an evolving ass, so you wanna make sure that humans are very much like kept in that loop.

Dave [0:25:02]: I also like...

Dave [0:25:03]: You've talked about this, but basically how important subject matter expertise and your content, and It's challenging because they're gonna be people that listen to this and not everyone at every point in your career or even right now is gonna be at a company where you're like, man, we have so much unique Ip.

Dave [0:25:20]: Like, there are a lot of marketers, like, who gotta just be real.

Dave [0:25:22]: We're just, like, doing marketing at a company and the company kinda like.

Dave [0:25:25]: You know?

Dave [0:25:26]: But I think this is important to still state because this this shows what it takes to be great, and especially if you're looking for a new company...

Dave [0:25:32]: You know, looking for a new job looking at a new company, can I go do marketing where I feel like this is why he wrote the book founder brand as an example, my point was, like, that's the best ingredient for me as a marketer is like, if I find out that the founder of this company has a super interesting backstory and, like, started this company because they had some deep pain or problem before, which is usually the case most founders are like, you what I wanna do I wanna get super rich and so gonna start a company?

Dave [0:25:57]: It's like, oh, no.

Dave [0:25:58]: From tech companies down to, like, the snacks in my pantry, you know, you open the pantry.

Dave [0:26:01]: It's like, I was tired of feeding my kids, you know, sugary drinks.

Dave [0:26:04]: So I created blank.

Dave [0:26:06]: And it's like, everyone has a story.

Dave [0:26:07]: And so the more, it seems like especially in this era, the more subject matter expertise and Ip around the problem that you're solving for your customer.

Dave [0:26:17]: That's also gonna be a key ingredient of how successful you can be with content.

Eoin [0:26:21]: Indeed.

Eoin [0:26:21]: What I'll say is with all of the tools we've access to, even if maybe you're, like, founding team isn't the most, like, extroverted or it's, like, hard to pull those, like, key stories out.

Eoin [0:26:32]: There's, like, many other places you can go to, knowing what I know now, how I would have approached content differently up my last company is, like, interview like, engineers every day of the week because they're like, the ones after solving the problems that, like, one Am two Am and they, like, realize the the actual...

Eoin [0:26:50]: Thing the life of, like, our customer, and they're, like, such nuance there and again, we always used to do the end the quarter, like, content analysis at the last company.

Eoin [0:27:00]: Everything that, like, stood out with, like, traffic numbers or on on on time page engagement were the most technical pieces we created, and they were like a struggle to do.

Eoin [0:27:10]: It was like super hard to, like, sit down with an engineer for, like, an hour ask them like, informed questions, and then afterwards, use your best, kinda like, understanding of the problem to write it up.

Eoin [0:27:22]: Now that can turn into, like, hey, Dave.

Eoin [0:27:25]: Like, use your phone when you're out in a walk, record this voice note, send it to me.

Eoin [0:27:29]: I'll, like, use Ai to enrich it, come back to you at the draft.

Eoin [0:27:32]: We can, like, like, improve the whole process, that hole and, like work stream is much easier now, but you can often find people inside of the building who can give you that key context.

Eoin [0:27:43]: And even if still that's not available, ask your customers or better still listen to the conversations they had with your sales team.

Eoin [0:27:51]: And again, that is the richest golden context you could be using for developing your content or just, like, honing in want if you're trying to find product market fit, honing in on how you should position yourselves to these people.

Dave [0:28:07]: I also think that it being easy should not be the, like, benchmark for like, hey, we're I think the good content actually does take time.

Dave [0:28:17]: It's almost...

Dave [0:28:18]: That is what makes it good.

Dave [0:28:19]: It's because you had to Mh interview subject matter experts and really dig to find a point of view or I've used this example a bunch, but, like, Emily Kramer from Mk t one.

Dave [0:28:30]: You...

Dave [0:28:30]: Do you know hershey she is using her subs.

Dave [0:28:32]: Yep.

Dave [0:28:32]: So she's, like, I talked to her a couple weeks ago, and she's like, yeah.

Dave [0:28:35]: I'm right, like, twice a month once a month, and it's because I'm doing a ton of research, and a ton of data and I'm like, Perfect.

Dave [0:28:41]: Like, I don't know if that work...

Dave [0:28:42]: Like, for her that works, that's amazing, but I like it because it's, like, she's gonna go super deep and win on, like, depth and data and sources first, like, I'm gonna just publish a million times in a month and and hope something good happens.

Dave [0:28:55]: And so I think we...

Dave [0:28:56]: We're always under pressure by, like, management and others to, like, find the easy button for marketing.

Dave [0:29:02]: And it's, like, just create more content.

Dave [0:29:04]: It's actually, like, I don't know.

Dave [0:29:05]: I I Always I love that concept of more so people are talking about, like, five years ago by, like, pillar content.

Dave [0:29:10]: Ten x content.

Dave [0:29:11]: Right?

Dave [0:29:11]: Instead of blog posts every day, what if once a month, we published, like, some some piece of original research that was actually worth sharing.

Eoin [0:29:19]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:29:19]: Bm.

Eoin [0:29:20]: The example I'll give you from like, in house here was one that Josh, who's our webinar lead and our content lead, he created back in...

Eoin [0:29:29]: Probably this time last year, February twenty twenty five around the ten x content engineer and kinda like we were going through there.

Eoin [0:29:36]: He interviewed a ton of subject matter experts internally talked to a ton of our customers.

Eoin [0:29:41]: So that, gave him like, a lot of key context, but Josh did, like, toil over this piece for, like, a week.

Eoin [0:29:48]: It wasn't as if we try to like, make it keyword optimized.

Eoin [0:29:51]: I'm, like, absolutely pristine structured so those gonna work incredibly well in an agent, but it was well written.

Eoin [0:30:01]: It was written to, like a problem that existed and does exist in the America.

Eoin [0:30:06]: And it is, like, by firing and away the outstanding piece of content from whatever angle we wanna measure it.

Eoin [0:30:13]: And, like, again, content engineering was not a high search like, it didn't have high keyword value.

Eoin [0:30:18]: It wasn't something that anything existed on Youtube about, but it very much kick started our own initiative of, like, making this, like the craft to go and invest it.

Eoin [0:30:27]: So a lot of the the best content as you said comes from, someone putting in the work.

Eoin [0:30:32]: I, like, wrecking their brain.

Eoin [0:30:34]: But I think now we can start to use at least like, tools to help you get there.

Dave [0:30:38]: I think in the past, a lot of people would say, you know, like, how do...

Dave [0:30:41]: Well, how do I find a great writer, and I don't wanna take anything away from the craft of writing and being a great writer, but from a marketing standpoint in a business growth standpoint, Maybe what's cool about the role of content engineers I actually think, We have more tools than ever.

Dave [0:30:54]: If you're if you're not an amazing copy or amazing pro that doesn't mean you can't create amazing content.

Dave [0:30:59]: Look at social media Right?

Dave [0:31:00]: Imagining, like, the only people that could go viral and Tiktok are professional videographer.

Dave [0:31:04]: And it's like, no.

Dave [0:31:05]: We you could be...

Dave [0:31:06]: What what if you're...

Dave [0:31:07]: What if your angle on being a great content marketer is, like, you're really great at coming up with hooks and you're great at doing the research.

Dave [0:31:13]: And then you can use the tools to like, help you create the content.

Dave [0:31:16]: I think it doesn't have to be, I've always struggle with like, well, who's gonna write the sync two thousand word article.

Dave [0:31:21]: Well, we have more of the tools at our disposal to to be able to do that.

Dave [0:31:24]: Alright.

Dave [0:31:24]: We're gonna shift over to webinar.

Dave [0:31:26]: So Tl on this one is Airops loves webinars, webinars are crushing for you all.

Dave [0:31:33]: You did fourteen webinars in q four in twenty twenty five, and you've applied your kinda of analytical growth mindset to your webinar funnel.

Dave [0:31:42]: I thought webinars were dead.

Dave [0:31:44]: I know they're not because I love them.

Dave [0:31:46]: But wait a second.

Dave [0:31:48]: Is twenty twenty six.

Dave [0:31:49]: I got a Vp growth at, like, a hot you know, Ai company telling me that his growth hack is webinars.

Dave [0:31:55]: Please.

Dave [0:31:56]: Enlighten me.

Dave [0:31:57]: What is your webinar playbook sir?

Eoin [0:31:59]: Oh, man.

Eoin [0:31:59]: I don't...

Eoin [0:32:00]: I won't reveal all of it, but, like, webinars are back.

Eoin [0:32:02]: That that was like the story for twenty twenty six, at least for us.

Eoin [0:32:06]: And I think like to to explain why they're so good.

Eoin [0:32:10]: It's kinda where it's taking a step back to why we started them.

Eoin [0:32:13]: So initially when I came in, again, it was, like, very different company, very different space.

Eoin [0:32:18]: But what I wanted to do was we had these amazing builders.

Eoin [0:32:23]: We had, like, now today, we'll call them content engineers.

Eoin [0:32:25]: We had amazing builders on the platform.

Eoin [0:32:27]: Just doing wild and crazy stuff.

Eoin [0:32:29]: And like, having amazing results with it.

Eoin [0:32:31]: And I was like, the best way for us to get more users are get our names out there is like, help tell the story of these amazing people.

Eoin [0:32:39]: And A lot of them were not content focused.

Eoin [0:32:41]: We had like Sean Lin, he runs like an executive coaching firm.

Eoin [0:32:46]: We had Matteo who now is a content engineer, but back then he was doing kinda like product marketing work.

Eoin [0:32:53]: And I just started with, like, let's...

Eoin [0:32:54]: Unlock these stories.

Eoin [0:32:55]: I'm not just gives us ideas and then give the american ideas.

Eoin [0:32:59]: And then...

Dave [0:33:00]: Okay.

Dave [0:33:00]: So let's just, like geek out on the tactics a little bit.

Dave [0:33:02]: So...

Dave [0:33:03]: Yeah.

Dave [0:33:03]: The number one thing was, like, really finding good stories to tell on a.

Dave [0:33:08]: Okay.

Eoin [0:33:10]: Correct.

Eoin [0:33:10]: And like, we also have the benefit of being in a super influx market.

Eoin [0:33:15]: So search changes a ton.

Eoin [0:33:16]: So what we really care about is connecting the leading practitioners.

Eoin [0:33:21]: To the leading, like experts.

Eoin [0:33:24]: So we will start off when we plan out a quarter with, like, a skeleton.

Eoin [0:33:28]: And we're, like, we need to speak to the content engineer.

Eoin [0:33:32]: We wanna try and speak to the Cmo and we'll have, like, two or three tracks and we will generally say, these are, like, two or three hot subjects.

Eoin [0:33:40]: So, like, right now, it might be query fan out or cloud code and we're gonna say, like, we need to hit on these, like, two or three things across two or three different tracks.

Eoin [0:33:49]: And then it was not easy twelve months ago?

Eoin [0:33:52]: But now we have the luxury of we will try and match.

Eoin [0:33:55]: Who is the best person in the market for this problem?

Eoin [0:33:58]: And how how do we like, find our way to meet them.

Eoin [0:34:01]: So there's kinda like try to identify What's hot, what people wanna learn about and who can help us kind of, like, who's the industry expert that can, like, tell that story.

Eoin [0:34:10]: But we also need to be very flexible with that plan.

Eoin [0:34:13]: So one of the the highest performing webinars we ran and actually was in q four.

Eoin [0:34:17]: Was with Mark Williams Cook.

Eoin [0:34:19]: Huge Seo agency guy out of the Uk.

Eoin [0:34:23]: I forget what we had Mark committed to originally, but two weeks out, he's like guys.

Eoin [0:34:27]: Like, we did, like, throw our original agenda out the window after going Super Deep in Google Ai mode, which was relatively new.

Eoin [0:34:35]: And he was like, I a ton of research, like, let's cover that.

Eoin [0:34:38]: We're, like, fantastic.

Eoin [0:34:39]: Great.

Eoin [0:34:40]: Because we had been receiving on sales calls, we had been getting questions in from previous webinars of, like, Google Ai mode being a key thing people wanted to dig into.

Eoin [0:34:49]: So there's definitely from a tactical standpoint, money little growth things that we do, but we try and create a skeleton, match ourselves and our audience with the best people who know Their topics and go deep.

Dave [0:35:01]: Timeless principle number forty seven.

Dave [0:35:03]: Right?

Dave [0:35:03]: Begin with the end in mind, which is, like, I think a lot of times we see, you know, I'll see people in our community markers.

Dave [0:35:10]: It almost seems like that's just an existing channel that marketing does and so it's like, we we gotta do webinars We're gonna do three webinars a month because we need each one of them to produce five Q, and Yeah.

Dave [0:35:22]: We need to find a way to turn it into sales Roi, and so we need to make it, like, very product focused.

Dave [0:35:28]: And so it's, like, join us for the Salesforce blah blah blah webinar, and it's like, well, who's gonna go to that where what you did is, like, this is what I love about marketing.

Dave [0:35:36]: Right?

Dave [0:35:37]: It's like, here's a trend in the...

Dave [0:35:38]: Like, it is so obvious to me in our marketing sphere that, like, everyone is talking about cloud code, in the last thirty days.

Dave [0:35:45]: That's the work one if I had to do a personal life one, it would be like Sauna.

Dave [0:35:50]: Everyone's talking about the benefits of Sauna right now.

Dave [0:35:53]: Right?

Dave [0:35:54]: It says, like, I could do.

Dave [0:35:55]: I bet if I did a webinar on Sauna And if I did a webinar on the health benefits for men and women in their late thirties of Sauna.

Dave [0:36:03]: Like, that would crush.

Dave [0:36:04]: Just because you're you're out there part of being good at content is just, like, having a feel for the market.

Dave [0:36:10]: And so it's like, instead of doing instead of instantly being like, well, how are we gonna make this in Airops product webinar where we show them product?

Dave [0:36:18]: It's like, no.

Dave [0:36:18]: No.

Dave [0:36:19]: These are people who care about these types of things, the thing they care about right now That actually has nothing to do with Air.

Dave [0:36:24]: Yep.

Dave [0:36:25]: Is cloud code Let's do a killer webinar on cloud code.

Dave [0:36:28]: During that webinar, we get them to know, like and trust us, and then we can, you know, run the the place from that.

Eoin [0:36:34]: Right?

Eoin [0:36:34]: A hundred percent.

Eoin [0:36:34]: And someone asked me the velocity they were like.

Eoin [0:36:36]: So like, how much do you care about Sql.

Eoin [0:36:38]: Much do you care about, like, getting the sales pitch in there, and I'm like, honestly, that's the last thing that is on our minds when we're creating this content.

Eoin [0:36:47]: Like...

Dave [0:36:48]: Let's get to that.

Dave [0:36:48]: I do wanna answer that because I, sometimes people give me a hard time when I say something this because it's like yeah.

Dave [0:36:53]: Yeah.

Dave [0:36:53]: Ra.

Dave [0:36:53]: Great topic, but ultimately, like, the end of the day, the way someone measures...

Dave [0:36:57]: The oftentimes, like the person whose responsible were managing the webinar our webinar program.

Dave [0:37:01]: Right?

Dave [0:37:01]: Her job is to book some there needs to be some measurable outcome, and I know you care about this.

Dave [0:37:06]: So let's get to that, but I wanted, like, talk to the the webinar stack.

Dave [0:37:09]: So first, like, What do you run the...

Dave [0:37:11]: What tool People love tools?

Dave [0:37:13]: What tools do you use to do use a webinar platform?

Dave [0:37:15]: Any of the exact stuff you can share.

Eoin [0:37:18]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:37:18]: We're gonna change it in the next while, but right now, we use Luma for managing the event, and communications with people who register, then we use, like, hubspot for all of our eat.

Eoin [0:37:31]: What are you gonna change to?

Eoin [0:37:32]: We're currently looking at a few different tools.

Eoin [0:37:34]: If if anyone who's selling is interesting giving us a discount.

Eoin [0:37:38]: I'd be more than happy, but we'd love to bring everything into, like, one platform.

Eoin [0:37:41]: There's just nuances as we get to like, a bigger scale of trying to segment our audience that, like, Luma doesn't do a great job on.

Eoin [0:37:49]: So that's some some tool we need to find by the end of, like this.

Eoin [0:37:52]: Quarter.

Dave [0:37:53]: Okay.

Dave [0:37:53]: Hubspot.

Dave [0:37:54]: You mentioned Hubspot for what?

Dave [0:37:55]: For emails.

Dave [0:37:56]: Okay.

Dave [0:37:56]: So the webinar thing, the webinar platform has to connect to Hubspot so you can send emails.

Dave [0:38:02]: Correct.

Eoin [0:38:04]: Thought Have a story on it as well as in a minute.

Eoin [0:38:06]: But Zoom.

Eoin [0:38:07]: We just have, like, scaled from internal meetings to, like Zoom webinars, and then we do pretty sophisticated personalized follow ups with clay, trigger and smart lead in the backgrounds and then like Zapier.

Eoin [0:38:23]: So we've money small little signals we monitor.

Eoin [0:38:26]: They come into, like, clay or Airops to kinda get condensed, personalized, and then we send out emails via, mixture of hubspot and smartly.

Eoin [0:38:34]: So there's a a core set of tools, but also, like, many other small ones in there.

Dave [0:38:40]: Can you share anything about the follow ups strategy because I think this is where Okay.

Dave [0:38:45]: Well, we're gonna just have sales follow up with everyone attended in an attempt.

Dave [0:38:49]: Like, there's different strategies for, like, who attended?

Dave [0:38:51]: Who didn't attend?

Dave [0:38:52]: Yeah.

Dave [0:38:52]: What's the offer?

Dave [0:38:53]: You know, if I get an email after the webinar that I went to, but it's, like, hey, book a, hey, Airops is the shit.

Dave [0:38:58]: Book a meeting with us tomorrow.

Dave [0:38:59]: I'm not gonna do that.

Dave [0:39:00]: I'm curious if, you know, what are some of the signals?

Dave [0:39:02]: What might be a good outreach, you know, that cloud code webinar as an example?

Dave [0:39:06]: How do you book a Airops demo from that?

Eoin [0:39:09]: The booking, the demo was not the thing that we care about, which is like...

Eoin [0:39:12]: Okay.

Dave [0:39:13]: So what is the metric that you care about then?

Dave [0:39:14]: Whatever that is?

Eoin [0:39:15]: We care about, like, engagement with the content that we put in front of someone.

Eoin [0:39:20]: So again, answering your your previous question for doing follow ups, the context that we care about is is this your first event to come to?

Eoin [0:39:29]: That requires something very different to a person who's a customer that's calling to their fifteenth event.

Eoin [0:39:35]: So it's like, where in your journey?

Eoin [0:39:38]: Where along your journey in terms of attending our webinars, Are you.

Eoin [0:39:41]: We also look back at what context do we know about this person from questions they've asked or pages they've been on.

Eoin [0:39:49]: And then we also...

Eoin [0:39:51]: We do a lot of pre work before a webinar to get personalized questions from our audience.

Eoin [0:39:56]: So those three sets of how many webinars have they attended?

Eoin [0:40:00]: What do we know about them from, like, what is available?

Eoin [0:40:03]: Like, have they done a sign up, but nothing else?

Eoin [0:40:05]: Have they view different pages?

Eoin [0:40:07]: And then the most recent context gathered from them?

Eoin [0:40:10]: All of that comes in together within, like, an Airops workflow?

Eoin [0:40:14]: And from there, we basically have three or four assets that we can share with someone after the fact.

Eoin [0:40:20]: One might just be a recap.

Eoin [0:40:22]: If people didn't show up.

Eoin [0:40:23]: And we can't really like push them too much further down the funnel or their education journey, without just giving them, like, a recap of, like, what event they missed out on?

Eoin [0:40:33]: If someone is, like, very far down and they're attending their tenth webinar, that's gonna be more of, like, can we enable them, like, deeper in the product?

Eoin [0:40:42]: Can we give them, like, a demo of our latest feature, again, like all a sync so that they can avail themselves, and if someone is far more top of funnel, they have come to an event to educate themselves.

Eoin [0:40:53]: So they probably wanna do more work there, So we spend ton a time internally on our own research.

Eoin [0:41:00]: So we're very much like research driven in our follow up to say, hey.

Eoin [0:41:04]: Like, this is a trend.

Eoin [0:41:05]: We've noticed on your website.

Eoin [0:41:07]: This correlates with this piece of research.

Eoin [0:41:09]: We have done.

Eoin [0:41:10]: We think this is how we should interpret it and like, action on it yourself.

Eoin [0:41:14]: So it's very value driven.

Eoin [0:41:16]: We're never gonna go to Dave and say, like, hey, Dave, you on this.

Eoin [0:41:20]: Now you're educated, come talk

Dave [0:41:22]: to us.

Dave [0:41:22]: And how do you do that?

Eoin [0:41:25]: That's where the magic lives.

Eoin [0:41:25]: Okay.

Eoin [0:41:26]: That is, like workflows that we have...

Eoin [0:41:29]: We must have done forty webinars at least last year.

Eoin [0:41:32]: And in each one, our aim is to, like, continue to get the the open rate up, the click through write up and the conversion rate.

Eoin [0:41:39]: And then major some of that stuff is very difficult because for each person, they're kind of being left with a different call to action, but it's really like tight refinements on money different parts of the system, done compound over time.

Dave [0:41:54]: And are you able to, like, look out in the future, and then you know that webinars influence those deals, you know, like, ninety days from now, you see close one deal.

Dave [0:42:05]: Everyone's excited, and you're like, up.

Dave [0:42:08]: Yep.

Dave [0:42:08]: They went to two webinars, and then you, like, kind of reverse look at First like, alright.

Dave [0:42:12]: We did this webinar where the deals, where the deals?

Eoin [0:42:15]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:42:15]: We do not look at, like...

Eoin [0:42:16]: Trailing fourteen days.

Eoin [0:42:19]: It is like a thirty day or, like, ninety day lag, thirty day on maybe like, demo booked, ninety days more so on, like, closed one or, like, qualified business.

Eoin [0:42:30]: So there is like a nice pop when we do a webinar, people who are just like, oh, like, I see these guys are experts.

Eoin [0:42:37]: They're talking about something I need to, like, go deeper on.

Eoin [0:42:39]: I wanna actually talk to a human.

Eoin [0:42:41]: We will see like, a pop in demos booked.

Eoin [0:42:43]: But very much it has, like, a long tail effect.

Eoin [0:42:46]: And, like, that's what we're trying to go for.

Eoin [0:42:48]: Like, we'd much rather win the long term game than, like, optimize the crap out of the short term game because you're just gonna burn relationships.

Eoin [0:42:57]: So I have definitely evolved over time from the, like, let's get everything.

Eoin [0:43:01]: Let's, like, make sure that we squeeze every email of everyone as often as we can to just be how do we create the best content, give it away for free, And then when someone has their problem or needs a solution in the future where the first name top of mind.

Eoin [0:43:17]: And I think you asked me the question on, like, what webinar software are we gonna go with.

Eoin [0:43:22]: I don't know.

Eoin [0:43:24]: Like, Noah one's like, always in my face saying, like, we're the best for this reason or more so, like, offer me value of how I can better engage with my community or, like, audience.

Eoin [0:43:35]: No one's doing that to me from, like, the webinar site.

Eoin [0:43:38]: So I actually don't have a top of mind name right now.

Dave [0:43:42]: Alright.

Dave [0:43:42]: Don't worry.

Dave [0:43:44]: Depending on when this podcast comes out, you'll get.

Eoin [0:43:47]: I'll get a lot of coal outbound.

Eoin [0:43:48]: Yeah.

Dave [0:43:51]: No.

Dave [0:43:51]: It's good.

Dave [0:43:51]: I And then how do you how have you earn the right to do this?

Dave [0:43:55]: Right?

Dave [0:43:55]: I think someone's listening, they get it, my friend P from Para would say, like, don't treat people like morons.

Dave [0:44:01]: Right?

Dave [0:44:02]: If you do something good, and then over time, they're gonna come back and tell you that they heard about you or whatever.

Dave [0:44:08]: We've been doing this podcast for three years.

Dave [0:44:11]: I don't try to drive Exit Five members from this, but, like, literally, every single week, People say, oh I heard about you on the podcast.

Dave [0:44:18]: It's just because we...

Dave [0:44:19]: We've been doing it.

Eoin [0:44:21]: Do you

Dave [0:44:21]: have a tight relationship with with the management team?

Dave [0:44:23]: Like, do you have to you have to get permission?

Dave [0:44:26]: Is it...

Dave [0:44:26]: Do they believe in your marketing strategy?

Dave [0:44:28]: Because if anyway, if if anybody else like hey, here's the deal.

Dave [0:44:31]: We're gonna do all these webinars.

Dave [0:44:32]: We're not gonna gate any of them.

Dave [0:44:34]: The follow ups kinda gonna all be different, but, like, this is gonna lead to deals somehow just trust me.

Dave [0:44:40]: Right?

Dave [0:44:40]: Like, on the outside it's like, no.

Dave [0:44:41]: This doesn't work me that works for you, but how did you make that work?

Eoin [0:44:45]: It's a good question.

Eoin [0:44:45]: It's kinda going back.

Eoin [0:44:47]: It is the question age old of, like, attribution.

Eoin [0:44:49]: Like, no one has solved it.

Eoin [0:44:51]: No one ever will solve it.

Eoin [0:44:52]: So like, it is a matter of storytelling.

Eoin [0:44:54]: And I think it comes back to Don't wanna say, like, I'm a great storyteller, but I can find the data that can help back my point of view that I've high conviction in.

Eoin [0:45:05]: So early on, it was like, damn.

Eoin [0:45:07]: Like, oh, and you're investing in a cropped on a time in this, like, webinar thing.

Eoin [0:45:11]: It hasn't really taken off yet.

Eoin [0:45:12]: Like, maybe we should put our focus elsewhere.

Eoin [0:45:14]: But basically, I talked to like, some of my advisers, my mentors, and they were like, no.

Eoin [0:45:19]: You like need to get into a rhythm here before you completely, it rule out.

Eoin [0:45:24]: So it was great advice.

Eoin [0:45:26]: I got at that point.

Eoin [0:45:26]: We had done, like, three or five hadn't seen results, but it was starting to show up in sales conversations, which is quite qualitative, like, data point, And then we did, like, number six and seven, and we started to, like, refine our call to action started to refine, like, what we did and follow, just tried to, like, sell less on the call, and then just like, the hamster wheels started to move.

Eoin [0:45:52]: I wanna starts to move you're more easily finding proof points, you're better equipped to, like, tell a story internally, and then you get to this point of, perpetual motion versus just, like, hey.

Eoin [0:46:04]: This is the thing that we do.

Eoin [0:46:05]: And Like, our c founders or the rest of our team, even as new people join, they're like, oh, like digital pure.

Eoin [0:46:12]: Like, I know this amazing person.

Eoin [0:46:13]: So we're originally, it was really tough to get it off the ground.

Eoin [0:46:17]: Now we're in a like, a privileged position of...

Eoin [0:46:21]: We have to turn down own guests right now, which is tough.

Eoin [0:46:24]: So we're always looking to scale, but it I think it comes back to...

Eoin [0:46:27]: If you're trying to repeat this motion elsewhere, it comes back to having high conviction, finding some data points to back up your point of view on where along the journey you are, and then, like, storytelling it, like, internally and keeping your market informed as well.

Dave [0:46:43]: It's like, I don't know if you play golf, but there's a common analogy to a lot of things which is like, You have to find the right balance of, like, not trying too hard, but you need to try a little bit, and it's almost like the same is true with, like, with marketing.

Dave [0:46:55]: It's like, yeah.

Dave [0:46:56]: If we try to do these webinars and we're, like, are, we're doing this webinar and we need five, you know, meet M q from it, then it's like, too much pressure, but if you're two la fair with it.

Dave [0:47:05]: Like, you don't get the right thing.

Dave [0:47:06]: And so...

Dave [0:47:06]: Yeah.

Dave [0:47:06]: I like what you said.

Dave [0:47:07]: We often use internally say, like, momentum creates clarity.

Dave [0:47:10]: And so it's, like, you've...

Dave [0:47:11]: Did a couple.

Dave [0:47:11]: I love the feedback loop from sales.

Dave [0:47:13]: That's obviously the ultimate one If bunch people start saying, like, yeah, we've been going to the.

Dave [0:47:16]: I go, shoot Okay.

Dave [0:47:17]: Let's go do more of those.

Dave [0:47:18]: Somehow we chewed up a lot of this time, but I'm gonna keep you for a couple more minutes.

Dave [0:47:22]: Webinar is good enough.

Dave [0:47:23]: You left enough there to be desired.

Dave [0:47:26]: I I do have two quick follow ups.

Dave [0:47:27]: One, You mentioned, like, are there some type of signals?

Dave [0:47:30]: Like, you know, someone that goes to the webinar.

Dave [0:47:32]: Are you ingesting, like, data from, you know, web...

Dave [0:47:35]: Your your websites, Crm, other sources and then kinda scoring them in some way?

Dave [0:47:40]: You have to feel like you mentioned something like that?

Dave [0:47:41]: Yeah.

Dave [0:47:42]: And what are you doing that with?

Eoin [0:47:44]: We've a bunch of signal tracking tools so, like, or B2B  for, like, person level enrichment.

Eoin [0:47:49]: We use like hockey stock to get a better feel of when we have performance odds is someone at a company getting a ton of ads or no ads.

Eoin [0:47:58]: And again, it is so interesting in that perspective.

Eoin [0:48:01]: We do a a customer deep dive every week.

Eoin [0:48:03]: How many people come in and say that they found us through personal research.

Eoin [0:48:08]: And if you're listening, I'm doing, like, Airops quotes.

Eoin [0:48:10]: The people who come in a personal research have received a crap ton of ads.

Eoin [0:48:14]: So we we use, like, hockey stock or B2B, tri and, like, what Hubspot?

Eoin [0:48:20]: Hubspot tracks out of the box to figure out what has their journey been over time?

Eoin [0:48:24]: How long do they know about us?

Eoin [0:48:26]: And then kinda of like their most recent activity as well.

Dave [0:48:29]: Okay.

Dave [0:48:29]: Cool.

Dave [0:48:29]: Because that that seems like such a useful.

Dave [0:48:31]: It's not just about that webinar in a vacuum.

Dave [0:48:34]: It's, like, they...

Dave [0:48:34]: Maybe they also did this and and they did that.

Dave [0:48:36]: And then how do you get butts and seats?

Dave [0:48:39]: Right?

Dave [0:48:39]: Somebody's like, yeah, Well, whatever.

Dave [0:48:40]: You air.

Dave [0:48:40]: Like, you you you raise money?

Dave [0:48:42]: You made an announcement.

Dave [0:48:43]: You got a lot of hot buzz.

Dave [0:48:44]: You gotta a list?

Dave [0:48:44]: Like, how how are you getting butts and seats to these things?

Dave [0:48:47]: Any secrets

Eoin [0:48:49]: There's a few secrets I'll keep in my back pockets.

Eoin [0:48:50]: So I wanna make sure...

Eoin [0:48:51]: Okay.

Dave [0:48:52]: So, I respect that.

Dave [0:48:53]: As you should,

Eoin [0:48:54]: I do think eighty twenty rule applies.

Eoin [0:48:56]: I'll keep the twenty percent.

Eoin [0:48:57]: The eighty percent is just...

Eoin [0:48:59]: And again, this is you need to develop towards it of, like, the storytelling, but give away the value.

Eoin [0:49:05]: Like, I have learned that so much in the last eighteen months.

Eoin [0:49:08]: Like, don't gauge, and that will feel so hard to, like, go up in certain organizations because you're targeted against, like, an Go or, like, a sales qualified goal, but give away the value.

Eoin [0:49:19]: And what how I look it and how we look at it is we win when our, like, audience wins.

Eoin [0:49:26]: And our audience even in the last thirty days, I've never seen as much public love on Linkedin about our webinars where...

Eoin [0:49:34]: They're, like, screen recording in the background because they don't wanna wait six hours for us to send out the email, and they're sharing out snippets on Linkedin.

Eoin [0:49:41]: They're doing their own U Of on amazingly Tiktok, but also Youtube.

Eoin [0:49:46]: So the whole thing is, like, basically give as much value as possible, like, find their pain points, and democrat access to thought leaders or the, like, best insights, and then your users will do the distribution for you.

Eoin [0:50:01]: Pick a hot topic also helps.

Dave [0:50:04]: Okay.

Dave [0:50:04]: Couple two quick hit.

Dave [0:50:05]: Give me give me two things, two other channels or two things that are working besides webinars.

Dave [0:50:10]: Well we...

Dave [0:50:11]: You're doing content.

Dave [0:50:12]: You got a content engineer that that whole thing is working.

Dave [0:50:14]: You're using your own product to do that.

Dave [0:50:16]: Webinar program, one or two other channels that are, like, promising and in a part of the the mix moving forward for Air.

Eoin [0:50:24]: Yeah.

Eoin [0:50:24]: Just like, one bit of sage advice for the audience as well.

Eoin [0:50:27]: I'm I'm a young guy, so take my use of sage with a pinch salt.

Eoin [0:50:31]: And I think Think the channel's marketing team should focus on should be ones that establish trust and an agent visibility.

Eoin [0:50:40]: They're they're very different, but I think they all come back to, like, authenticity.

Eoin [0:50:43]: So from our side, like webinars, our own content.

Eoin [0:50:48]: They actually fall a lot into both buckets, but also agent visibility.

Eoin [0:50:53]: Trust is reading where we're trying to hone in on.

Eoin [0:50:56]: So we do a ton of enable it.

Eoin [0:50:58]: And we we probably spend more time enabling people who are not customers, then actually customers, but the whole goal is to educate people on how to use these tools, like we've mentioned cloud code a ton of times running an upcoming webinar on that.

Eoin [0:51:13]: Something that, like, we've product, but we're, like, if we can move the market further, like, again, they'll know about us around these hot topics.

Eoin [0:51:19]: So enable is huge.

Eoin [0:51:22]: It's establishing a real strong base of U and referral and, like, word out for us and an event We actually...

Eoin [0:51:30]: Webinars, we keep coming which is funny, but we ran them for, like, ten months before we actually did any in person first party event, and it was amazing.

Eoin [0:51:40]: We had these people.

Eoin [0:51:41]: Who met up in New York at like a Hack, and they were like, Lucy Vivian and Paul and like Mary.

Eoin [0:51:48]: And they'd all been engaging on our webinar chats before, and then they met in person, and they they just created little pods and lots different cities all over the Us and actually abroad too, and they're kind of like, almost grounds up creating their own events, and we're trying to meet the tops down with larger ones too.

Eoin [0:52:05]: So events community, they're all kind of together but bundling up to trust I think I a core bucket of channels.

Dave [0:52:14]: Anything that you're not invented.

Dave [0:52:16]: Did anything get the ax in the twenty twenty six budget?

Dave [0:52:19]: Come on.

Dave [0:52:21]: Give me something.

Dave [0:52:22]: I know something you've hired a P agency or something like that.

Dave [0:52:26]: I don't know.

Eoin [0:52:27]: No.

Eoin [0:52:27]: It like we've been privileged of...

Eoin [0:52:29]: I don't think anything got cut what.

Eoin [0:52:32]: I I I don't feel I'm hesitating because if feel like nothing has been cut on us because we're very quick to experiment.

Eoin [0:52:40]: And experiments to us are, like, how do we short circuit our learning time?

Eoin [0:52:44]: How do we, like, des scope to, like, the smallest possible Mvp and but make sure that it drives a learning or a signal out the fire.

Eoin [0:52:52]: So We've got multiple bets that just, like, haven't paid off on existing channels, but we'll always start to invest or over invest in the ones that work.

Eoin [0:53:01]: So there's nothing that when I got, like, a leadership meeting.

Eoin [0:53:04]: I'm like, guys, Like, you've denied me four times on this.

Eoin [0:53:07]: I can't see that honestly, there is anything that falls into that book, but we definitely get support investment and resources to move fast the ones that are working for us.

Dave [0:53:20]: Okay.

Dave [0:53:20]: Alright.

Dave [0:53:20]: Fair.

Dave [0:53:21]: Whatever.

Dave [0:53:21]: That it...

Dave [0:53:22]: You...

Dave [0:53:22]: Rahul whole pot plus.

Dave [0:53:24]: So I was a, I'll give you a you, but so.

Dave [0:53:26]: Enjoy your weekends with cloud code because my friend, that time is gonna go away quickly.

Eoin [0:53:33]: So you better get sharp.

Dave [0:53:35]: You get it get sharp now.

Dave [0:53:35]: Okay.

Dave [0:53:36]: Eoin Clancy.

Dave [0:53:37]: This was an awesome.

Dave [0:53:37]: Awesome episode, Smart guy.

Dave [0:53:39]: You came off great.

Dave [0:53:41]: You did...

Dave [0:53:41]: You did a great job.

Dave [0:53:42]: We got some...

Dave [0:53:42]: We got some specific stuff in there.

Dave [0:53:44]: If you sell webinar software.

Dave [0:53:46]: Go find o, on Linkedin.

Dave [0:53:48]: It...

Dave [0:53:49]: No.

Dave [0:53:49]: Sentiment sentiment mail.

Dave [0:53:51]: You'll find him on on Linkedin and you can follow Airops, see what they're putting out a lot of useful stuff.

Dave [0:53:57]: And, you know, winning by by being helpful, which which is awesome.

Dave [0:54:00]: Great to have you on the pod.

Dave [0:54:01]: Lots of people have said really nice things about you, and I agree.

Dave [0:54:03]: Did nice job on the pod, and I'll continue to follow you.

Dave [0:54:06]: And we'll check you on the next episode Thanks everybody for those listening, Dave Gerhardt, and I'm out

Eoin [0:54:12]: of here.

Eoin [0:54:12]: Eoin and see.

Eoin [0:54:12]: See.

Dave [0:54:17]: Hey.

Dave [0:54:17]: Thanks for listening to this podcast.

Dave [0:54:19]: If you like this episode.

Dave [0:54:20]: Do you know what?

Dave [0:54:21]: I'm not even gonna ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that.

Dave [0:54:25]: I have something better for you.

Dave [0:54:26]: So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit Five, and you can go and check that out instead of leaving a rating a review.

Dave [0:54:34]: Go check it out right now.

Dave [0:54:36]: On our website, exitfive.com.

Dave [0:54:38]: Our mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing, and there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five.

Dave [0:54:45]: There's nearly five thousand members now in our community.

Dave [0:54:48]: People are in the posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers, building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group or or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest.

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Dave [0:55:15]: Go check it out, learn more exitfive.com, and I will see you over there in the community.

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