#268: The Solo Marketer’s Guide to Full-Stack B2B Marketing with Sara Lattanzio

#268 Solo Marketing | In this episode, Matt is joined by , Head of Marketing at Stryber, a venture-building consultancy that helps corporates launch new startups. Sara runs the entire marketing function solo, from strategy and content to outbound and brand, and has built a powerful personal brand along the way with 40,000+ LinkedIn followers and partnerships with tools like Semrush.

Matt and Sara cover:

• What it really looks like to run full-stack B2B marketing without a team
• How to scale content and campaigns using AI (while keeping your voice)
• Why outbound should roll up to marketing and how to build campaigns that aren’t ignored

You’ll leave this episode with practical ideas for scaling content, running smarter outbound, and staying strategic, no matter your team size.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro and Sara’s role at Stryber
  
• (03:54) - – What full-stack marketing looks like for a solo marketer
  
• (05:44) - – Why generalist marketers are thriving right now
  
• (08:14) - – Using AI to speed up execution (without losing strategy)
  
• (10:04) - – How Sara manages freelancers and internal resources
  
• (12:19) - – Taking ownership of outbound as a marketer
  
• (14:34) - – Why cold outreach is failing and what works better
  
• (17:14) - – How she uses AI to write, edit, and shape short-form content
  
• (19:34) - – Voice note workflows and turning them into posts
  
• (21:34) - – Strategic planning and vertical-based positioning
  
• (27:55) - – The future of content marketing and newsletter cadence
  
• (31:50) - – Why people connect with creators more than brands
  
• (34:32) - – How Sara built a trusted, high-engagement personal brand
  
• (40:05) - – Turning sponsored content into actual demand
  
• (46:20) - – Final advice for solo marketers and closing thoughts

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:
You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

Matt Carnevale [00:00:17]:
On this episode of the Exit Five podcast. I spoke with Sarah Lattanzio, who's the head of marketing at Stryver, and we got into what it's like to be a marketing leader, specifically a solo marketing leader in today's marketing environment. And. But where I really think we got into the meat of the episode is in the last 20 minutes. That's where we talked about things like her personal content creation strategy on LinkedIn. Sarah has over 40,000 followers. She has brand deals with companies like Semrush, and that's where I think we really tease out a lot of great lessons on creating content that stands out in noisy channels like LinkedIn. So we highly recommend you stay all the way to the end, and I hope you enjoy this one.

Matt Carnevale [00:00:57]:
All right, I'm here with Sarah. Sarah, how's it going?

Sara Lattanzio [00:01:01]:
I'm great. And you?

Matt Carnevale [00:01:02]:
Doing great. Doing great. Nice to finally put a face to a name. We've been going back and forth on LinkedIn a lot, so it's great to finally meet you and have you here in the flesh. Somewhat.

Sara Lattanzio [00:01:12]:
True.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:14]:
Cool. So let's start with kind of big picture. What does your role look like today at Striver? What are you working on? Give us the picture of who Sarah is.

Sara Lattanzio [00:01:22]:
So right now I'm head of marketing at Stryver, which is a venture building and management consulting company for corporates. So right now, one woman's show. So really running everything from positioning to content to messaging, literally everything on the side. I also have some sort of LinkedIn influencerism or whatever you want to call it. So I have my personal brand on LinkedIn, working with several brands and that's it.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:52]:
Cool. Love it. Yes. So I feel like that sets the stage nicely for the type of stuff I want to talk about today. I want to talk about your role as a solo marketing leader, the things you're learning, the ups, the downs, all of that. And then I want to talk about also your personal brand and how you built that up and what that looks like today. So I guess, like, on the topic of being like a solo marketing leader, there's obviously this trend that's emerged recently which is like a full stack marketer. Right.

Matt Carnevale [00:02:20]:
It's like you have to be able to do a bit of everything and use a bunch of tools to be able to achieve what you want to achieve. What does that look like in your day to day? Like, how does that translate to what you do? Do you consider yourself a Full stack marketer.

Sara Lattanzio [00:02:32]:
Well, who would say no if you ask like that? But I said it when it was not cool and I think I said it when it was actually something bad to be ashamed of. Because you were not like head of CEO, you were not head of performance marketing, you know, and I think it is actually so important to understand marketing on a broad picture to make it really work now more than ever. I mean, we really see where, you know, Google is going, AI is going, and I think all the signals tells you, you know, it's about the message and it's about the distribution, but it's not just like channel distribution. Right? So I think for me, I have done so many things in my career. I started in sales, you know, and so I think working in sales makes you test the power of messaging on people and makes you understand. I was working for Tesla, so a company that I would say didn't need an introduction when I was doing cold calls. And this was the first time when I understood, wow, it's so different when people are already bought in on the brand and then basically being in house later I went back to marketing because obviously I didn't want, I mean, I knew I was a marketer at heart and so I did everything from performance marketing to something more like content, brand, email, all of these things. And I think now it's also a reason why you can be a solo person.

Sara Lattanzio [00:03:59]:
I mean, obviously when you say solo person, you're never doing everything, you know, like it's clear I'm not a designer, I'm not like an SEO specialist, but I think you know how the pieces fit together and you are able to create great briefings and so that freelancers don't need to suck up all your time and come 20,000 times to ask you, oh, but I'm missing this. Or you have unrealistic expectations, you know, of how long things are going to take. And in this way it can work. Obviously with AI, a lot of the things are simplified and you can easily create mock ups, you know, of things that you need and to create better briefings, as I, as I said. And then I'm going to stop rambling. But I think another important thing is really obviously when, when you're kind of in a senior role like me, head of marketing, C level, BP level, whatever that is. You know, I think a healthy company wants you to also challenge the business strategy and educate on how to translate business strategy into marketing goals. But you also need to be able to say if the business strategy doesn't make any sense at all in, in your opinion? Right.

Sara Lattanzio [00:05:12]:
So.

Matt Carnevale [00:05:13]:
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great answer. Yeah, yeah. Part of me just feels like a full stack marketer is just like another word for marketing generalists. You just get shit done. It's like, I mean, I've been a marketing generalist my whole career. Not by design like you. I've just have always been dabbling. I never really specialized.

Matt Carnevale [00:05:34]:
I know you had like a stint where maybe you're more specialized in content, but like, I just never had that same experience. And I'm really grateful. But for five years, the first five years of my career, I beat myself up over it because, you know, at that time it was like the cool thing was to be the specialist. Right? It was, you were on LinkedIn talking about a specific thing or you were inside of a company and you're just crushing it with one specific channel. And you know, companies paid, paid good money for that expertise too. So I always beat myself up over it. But now I'm at a point where it's so much easier to know where to place the chips and where to press the gas. Even with AI, Like I notice when I'm interacting with it, it's like the only reason I'm able to do and interact with it the way I am is because I understand all the pieces.

Matt Carnevale [00:06:21]:
So when I ask it to do certain things or ask it to fill in gaps, it's because I know where the gaps are that like, maybe I would have had to go to a specialist to fill, but now I can just ask AI to fill those gaps. So I definitely feel you both the importance of having broad perspective. And then the other piece I brought up, which or you brought up, which I really liked, is just the being able to challenge the business strategy and connect what you're doing to goals. It's obviously like AI and everything makes it easier to like move faster. But like you still need to understand why you're moving as fast as you are. You still need to understand the goals, the business. You still have to be creative with your ideas. Right.

Matt Carnevale [00:06:56]:
It's just kind of the accelerant to what we're doing, but it's not actually like coming up with the recipe also.

Sara Lattanzio [00:07:02]:
And you need to be able to understand if you can actually go to market with this business strategy.

Matt Carnevale [00:07:07]:
Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So I want to double click on your life as a solo marketing leader. You talked a bit about like, obviously, you know, sole marketing leader. Just because you're solo marketing leader, it doesn't mean you're doing Everything, per se. So today are you working with like contractors, freelancers? Tell me about that. And then like also the, obviously you're using AI and technology, but like tell us, you know, exactly what you're using and what you're getting done with that stuff.

Sara Lattanzio [00:07:36]:
So yeah, I mean we have a creative outsource team, so we have copywriter, designers, video person, Very good video person. A perk of my company is that since they are in the venture building business, you know, I don't know how familiar you are with that, but it means basically building startups for corporates, right? And so it means on those projects we have designers, UX people, growth marketers. So obviously they are on external project, but they can support me as well. Right. So a lot of internal resources can support internal marketing as well. We have an agency that helps us, for example, with LinkedIn ads and we don't have anyone for the strategic parts. You know, that's kind of on me obviously. And I mean even, you know, short copy and all of these things, it's on me.

Sara Lattanzio [00:08:28]:
You know, I try always to write as much as I can just because I love it. And another channel that we're really, really banking on also because I'm biased is obviously LinkedIn personal branding. So I'm trying to push everyone to, you know, create their personal brand on LinkedIn, stay on track. And obviously I cannot do it all the time, but I've also, you know, ghost written and provided I would say at least a structure for posts because I think I always say make it yours, you know, and I think it really works because people are like, oh my God, blank screen dilemma, what am I going to do? And then this already gives them the safety that it's easier, I would say. And then something that I have done recently that was so to say not really in my job description is also cupping a bit my feet into the whole outbound topic. Because if you think about it, I started understanding what it means, this debate that a lot of people lately are talking about that sdr, bdrs, whatever should report to marketing. And I was always like that makes zero sense. But then actually you think it makes a lot of sense because.

Sara Lattanzio [00:09:31]:
Because if you are the head of the messaging and outbound is just another channel, right? So who better can control it than the marketing leader who actually does the ads, does the landing pages, the content. And so lately I've kind of steered several outbound campaigns and yeah, I think that's pretty much the picture of Striber. But obviously, as I said, it's a service business. So I think obviously if we would be like a product business, there would be and this layer of complexity and other type of tools and agencies.

Matt Carnevale [00:10:06]:
Yeah, the outbound piece is interesting. Is that like cold calling or cold emailing? A bit of both.

Sara Lattanzio [00:10:11]:
No, no, no, no. Cold emailing. Cold DMing on LinkedIn. But I really think that cold, cold is going to work less and less. I mean, we already see the diminishing returns, you know, I mean, I don't even open when I see like emails from an address that I don't know. Even if sometimes I open and the copy is great, I would never reply. You know, we are at a point where it's too saturated, I think. And I mean, we also have now the tools to at least go a bit deeper into the signals and at least having something like warm, you know, like connecting with people at least before.

Sara Lattanzio [00:10:49]:
Don't try to pitch them. Maybe cultivate a relationship, ask for intros. Yeah, so I tend more to go that direction.

Matt Carnevale [00:10:57]:
Yeah, I feel you. Like, I'm the same if somebody, if I get a random cold email, like, I'm there. A lot of times I'm not even going to read the pitch. If I don't, if I don't know who's emailing me. I'm just so allergic to it. And maybe that's my, I don't know, skeptical brain. But I feel like you and I are the same in that sense. Like, and this comes back to the original thing you were talking about.

Matt Carnevale [00:11:17]:
I don't know if we were recording. I think we were. When you talked about your time at Tesla doing cold calls and obviously you didn't need to introduce Tesla probably to at least like 99% of people. So that's the piece too of like where marketing plays into outbound too. It's like when you have the brand, it's so much easier to do outbound, whereas if you don't, it's a slog. And I know because I've done cold calling before and I remember having to explain what we do the company does all the time in every single call. And it's another hurdle. And it makes.

Matt Carnevale [00:11:47]:
The trust factor is already so low when the person picks up the phone that you're kind of just fighting uphill until maybe they give you some like flat Runway. So I feel you would you say, like, that's also a struggle with your outbound? Like it's just like brand awareness in your space or are you guys like pretty well known and it's not that much of an issue.

Sara Lattanzio [00:12:06]:
As I said, I really try not to go cold too much. And if we go cold, it's always for a very specific ask. You know, it's really. For example, we have a LinkedIn live or we want to organize a round table with those people with social proof. So if we, we are not known the situation or connections, people that will be there or maybe the place where the event is hosted gives that social proof that, okay, oh, they're actually here and I don't know them. Right. So I think that's what makes the factor that, that difference because I really believe there is no chance otherwise, you know, when, if you go completely cold.

Matt Carnevale [00:12:48]:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. So. So you're not like just going asking for a 30 minute demo type thing. Like it's, it's more of a. Yeah, okay, cool. I like that. Nice.

Sara Lattanzio [00:12:56]:
And especially with services, you know, it's even worse so to say, because I would say, I think now by now also with products because the amount of pitches I get now, since basically there are AI tools for everything, like it's almost out of decency, but especially with services, there is no coffee chat. I mean, the coffee chat is already the pitch, so to say, right?

Matt Carnevale [00:13:16]:
Yeah, yeah.

Sara Lattanzio [00:13:17]:
So who would jump on a coffee chat, especially if they don't want it themselves, you know?

Matt Carnevale [00:13:22]:
Totally, Absolutely. Another piece I wanted to touch upon that you talked about is like you still are the writer for Short Copy and you said you still try to write as much as possible. So when you say that, does that mean just Sarah and a piece of digital paper? Or is that with AI, like with. Because you're, you know, I like your writing. I like your writing on LinkedIn. So I'm curious how you're keeping up that skill and keeping it sharp.

Sara Lattanzio [00:13:46]:
Well, in general, I think AI for me has been great at. I mean, I'm not a native English person. Right. So I do a lot of typos. I do maybe some wording that is weird. And I think when you're writing on your LinkedIn profile, I think that's part of the brand. That's totally fine. I think people also like that I'm Italian and have this accent.

Sara Lattanzio [00:14:06]:
Right. But when you're writing for a brand should be a bit different. So definitely I would say correcting, making sure you don't make typos and also maybe some wording that I would have not used has been super, super helpful, you know. Or maybe another thing that's really, really cool is that sometimes I just, I use, for example, auto dictate voice dictation. And then you know, you have kind of this blurb of words and then you're like, okay, can you, can you make, can you structure now a post out of this? And then you know, maybe make sure that in the heading, the hook there is this and make sure that the closing is about this. But you can literally void vomit and it means that you have all the authenticity. I mean, obviously you need to have a strong idea. It's not that you just ramble endlessly without any connection and then, hey, make me a post out of this.

Sara Lattanzio [00:14:55]:
Right? But let's say you have the structure of the post in mind and you want to have a storyline and know, make it concise, then actually it is better. The more information you give, the better the thing can consolidate and make a good post out of it. And then I always fine tune, I always polish, I always remove the EM dashes, you know. Very sorry. People are having this argument on LinkedIn about the M dashes. Yes, it is a sign of AI by now. So, you know, but yeah, it saves a lot of time, definitely. And then also, I mean, I'm using, I mean through all my sponsors on LinkedIn, I also, I'm always testing AI tools and whatever.

Sara Lattanzio [00:15:34]:
And for example, there is a tool and it's not sponsored like tofu. I mean, I'm sure there are alternatives, but it's really fantastic how it can really repurpose a long form content in a lot of different ways.

Matt Carnevale [00:15:48]:
Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's funny. The piece about the EM dash is funny. I used to use them sometimes in my writing because I had like an old boss who was like, this is like my first year in marketing. She was like, yeah, like you should add some of these like EM dashes. I'm like, what's an EM dash? She showed me and I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, like at that point I thought I was okay.

Matt Carnevale [00:16:10]:
Like I'm a, I'm a top marketer now that know M dashes and I use them, I know how to use them. And then when AI started using it, like not like I did a lot, but I was like, now I just have to remove it because I feel like people are going to think it's AI, even if it is or isn't. It's just like I don't want them in my copy anymore because I'm scared. Scared of being called out.

Sara Lattanzio [00:16:27]:
Yeah, but sometimes they also don't make any sense. I think sometimes it uses it instead of commas, you know, and so, yeah.

Matt Carnevale [00:16:35]:
It'S funny because I've always used Grammarly. I've always liked to just like to pick up on, like, maybe we're to add a comma. Or sometimes I have weird. Like, I write a sentence, like, super weird, and then, like, it just, like, rephrases it so nicely. So I've always used Grammarly since, like, my university days. And whenever I, like, use AI to write the first draft and I put it in a Google Doc, Grammarly always comes in and, like, cleans up every em dash with a comma. So that's when I know it's like none of these are in the right place. Like, if we're talking grammatically.

Sara Lattanzio [00:17:07]:
Same, same.

Matt Carnevale [00:17:08]:
Okay. Love it, love it. And yeah, the piece about the voice notes, I do that too. Like, if my brain is kind of mushy or sometimes I could just talk about my ideas better than I could, like, type them out. I just. Yesterday I literally talked like eight minutes and I was like, at the end of it, I was. I don't even know if it was still recording, but it was. And then it helped me, like, structure, like a big slide deck.

Matt Carnevale [00:17:30]:
And I was like, wow, this is like, incredible. So I definitely have used that hack too. Okay, cool. One other thing I want to talk about is strategy. Setting strategy as a solo marketing leader, that's something that nothing is going to replace. As of right now. It's a big part of your role and any solo marketer's role. Talk me through how you're setting strategy, whether it's on a yearly or quarterly, monthly basis.

Matt Carnevale [00:17:53]:
Like, who are you coordinating with? Are you syncing the strategy with the product roadmap? What does that look like?

Sara Lattanzio [00:17:59]:
As I said, we don't have a product, so it's a service business. But I think the planning side for us is more on the verticals. So as a service business, we focus on specific verticals. And this can change quarterly or half a year. Every half a year, for example. And so I think for us, we plan mostly in 6 months print because, I mean, honestly, you need time to let also the positioning sink in and reach the people. So we have a business development team with the bdrs and the kind of. We don't have sales people, so we have instead of account executives, we have the partners and biz dev, then the CEO, and then we have also somebody who is responsible, my boss now for both sales and marketing.

Sara Lattanzio [00:18:47]:
And so, yeah, I think we coordinate mainly outbound campaigns with the marketing roadmap, which is, you know, content. And then I Always start really from the perceptions, in a sense, what is the business offering for every vertical that we tackle, what do we offer? Who are those people? So kind of the positioning, but industry specific. Right. So because in the end, when you work for a company that targets different verticals, you need to have, I think even more than the overall positioning of the company. It is really like almost the product positioning and the vertical positioning, so to say. And then I think once this is done, we can really activate it across pretty much both sales and marketing. We have weekly syncs where we, you know, share feedback on how the marketing activities are going, know if it's an event, we see how the signups are going. If it's a, I don't know, gated assets, we see how many qualified leads are coming in.

Sara Lattanzio [00:19:49]:
Don't even get me started with the mql, is that or not? But obviously, you know, if you have sales cycles of years or months, you cannot be like, how much pipeline did marketing bring this month? Doesn't work like that. Right. So, but I think it's very important to still don't put every downloadable, like every person who puts an email address into a bucket. Right. So if honestly all the people who download something worth downloading are your potential clients, that's a great sign. Right? That's definitely something that then biz dev can take and invite roundtables, invite to events, connect on LinkedIn. That's really how a business like ours works. And on the other side, they share, for example, feedback from outreach, from outbound campaigns, from prospect conversations, which I feed back into the content and marketing strategy.

Matt Carnevale [00:20:45]:
Got it. Okay, cool, cool. Makes sense. Sweet. All right, I want to shift gears a bit. I want to talk about just high level, I want to talk about content. I feel like. Are you previous head of content? Is it your last role or am I imagining things?

Sara Lattanzio [00:20:58]:
No, I was always also doing this, but I was also freelancing at some point, only with content doing content strategy. So cool.

Matt Carnevale [00:21:09]:
Okay, so it's definitely like you would say one of your strong suits from a marketing perspective.

Sara Lattanzio [00:21:16]:
Oh, 100% cool.

Matt Carnevale [00:21:18]:
So content is obviously a specialty of yours. High level, where do you see content going with the role that AI is playing?

Sara Lattanzio [00:21:26]:
I don't know. I mean, I really don't know. At the moment it's super hard to predict. So I have a few ideas. One is that it tends to go in the direction of outbound. What we said before, you know, kind of it's so saturated that by default it gets ignored. And I think that's Already happening, unfortunately. On the other hand, I also think that contrary to outbound, I mean, nobody wants to be sold in their email or in their DMs, you know, never.

Sara Lattanzio [00:21:59]:
I don't think there was ever a time where somebody really wanted this. You know, while content, obviously people consume content all day, every day. The majority of people are consumers, and this trend is not going to fade. And also while outbound, everyone can literally create, copy and blast it to the entire world. Not many people can execute content marketing. Actually, I would say just maybe what 10% of companies, if at all, can execute content marketing the way it should be executed in a way that it's omnichannel and it's worth consuming. So I think there will be saturation, but there will be also opportunity for people using AI just to scale it to the right point though, because I also believe that all this scale thing is gonna hit a massive cap and people then will be like, you know what, maybe sending a newsletter every day annoys people. And maybe a person who really likes our newsletter is really waiting.

Sara Lattanzio [00:23:08]:
Like we used to wait for the season two of our favorite series and we were like, I need to wait another year. I can't believe it. Maybe once a month is really, really better. Also not to exhaust people.

Matt Carnevale [00:23:20]:
I like that point. Like just reducing the cadence.

Sara Lattanzio [00:23:24]:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, whenever I see an email every day in my inbox, I immediately. I just cannot.

Matt Carnevale [00:23:30]:
Yeah, you kind of start to disassociate over time. It's like there's just too much now that I can't. You almost feel like you can't really get caught up with what they're saying and it's easier to just ignore them. And it's like if they come back to me, then it was meant to be. It was fake.

Sara Lattanzio [00:23:43]:
You got it.

Matt Carnevale [00:23:44]:
Yeah, I feel you. I feel like the playbook of, like, What a good B2B content strategy was created. I mean, I started seeing companies doing it around, I want to say 2019, 2020, it definitely was there before that. But this rise of like creating a long form piece of content like a podcast, and repurposing the clips to LinkedIn and talking about a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and that still works today. But it's just like there was this gold rush to it and now that's like the play for everybody. And it just feels like as a consumer of content, it's becoming harder and harder to even keep up with a lot of the stuff that people are saying. And you almost by default just have to pick like your 3 to 5, if even whether it's companies or people, and those are the only people you listen to. So if you're a company or individual, like, it's so competitive if you're playing this same game, which it's hard to play a different game, but it's just so competitive and, and it's so hard to like just be in the mix, in somebody's mix.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:43]:
And if you're new to things, like, even if your content is really good, it's still difficult because there's already companies and people that have been playing there for so long and have that trust.

Sara Lattanzio [00:24:52]:
I agree, I agree. And I think because everyone is like, oh, every channel is dead. But I mean, it's a bit like saying you're tired of something that is just existed all the time. Are you tired of people? Because it's people. They exist. They are people, you know, people. So it's about being, I think, mixing the ingredients differently. So, for example, influencer marketing combined with company content.

Sara Lattanzio [00:25:18]:
You know, I mean, I saw today a friend of mine that launched YouTube channel with a brand and they're doing it together, so that's definitely different. And also then the brand benefits from basically a double marketing channel that brings attention to their content, you know, and it gives also a level of authenticity that by default will avoid to be in this company propaganda mode. And people are not feeling like they're following a brand channel. They feel like they're following a community up here mostly.

Matt Carnevale [00:25:49]:
Yeah, yeah, that's a good take. This has been talked about for the last couple of years now, but people are so, so much more likely to want to pay attention to a person. And even if somebody's producing content on the company page, I still think there needs to be that human face as part of it. When it's just your company, you're saying words to your audience, but it's coming from your logo. It just doesn't hit the same. Even me, like on YouTube, for example, I'm a big YouTube person and like, I obviously follow people, but if I did follow like a company page, I still want to see like the same person as the spokesperson and the one always talking to me like, that's only going to happen more and more. So I think that's like a really big piece of all this too.

Sara Lattanzio [00:26:31]:
Looks like we share a lot of ideas.

Matt Carnevale [00:26:33]:
Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. And YouTube is another one where I think there's a really big opportunity, especially for B2B. I'm biased because I watch YouTube all the time, but like it's just the thing I like about it is sure there's like the shorts where you can just keep on scrolling through and like companies can easily get some mind share through shorts, but in the event where you as a company or individual come out with like a really good 20, 30 minute video, now you have someone's attention for like a very long period of time. You know, it's almost like a Netflix show. And I just think on LinkedIn, like it's almost impossible to replicate that because you could be reading a post, but it's so easy to just scroll to the next thing or for like the next post to have already caught your attention. Whereas like YouTube, like it does a good job of like, if somebody really is interested in going deep, they can. Whereas LinkedIn is just, it's harder to do.

Matt Carnevale [00:27:26]:
Like they almost have to go off platform to your newsletter or company website.

Sara Lattanzio [00:27:31]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah.

Matt Carnevale [00:27:33]:
Okay, cool. So this kind of brings me to one of the last themes I want to talk about, which is the content you create. Person, I've seen you on LinkedIn for a while and I think one thing that I've really appreciated about your content is just how much effort you seem to put into every post. Now I don't know what's in the mix. I don't know if you're doing all that. I don't know if you have help doing it. I don't know if you want to share your secrets, but I've always, always appreciated how much effort goes into each post. Specifically, do these carousels that are like just really, really detailed, they have not only a lot of like good written and words on it, but just like a good visual, creative visual aspect to it that I just haven't seen a lot of people do well.

Matt Carnevale [00:28:15]:
So yeah, I want to talk about like, where did it all start? When did you start with LinkedIn and what was the initial? Was it like you were doing visual stuff from the job, or was it more of like you just typing, sharing your work?

Sara Lattanzio [00:28:27]:
Well, the beginning was, first of all my background was that I had a very famous blog on Tumblr. So kind of this online thing was not completely new to me. Kind of, I did it once, let's see if I can do it twice. But since basically it was an art blog where I never shared my name or it was also very new, this whole monetizing blogs, blah, blah, Tumblr kind of went under at some point or was not so relevant anymore. And so I kind of lost all of it, you know, kind Of I missed the moment. And so for me, the combination with LinkedIn, where it's really me and it's also, I think LinkedIn, contrary to other platforms, has a value despite the content that you produce, you know, because it just, I would say the connection part, which is. I would say how every mortal uses it, is equally valuable as the content part. And this honestly why I love it so much, you know, because I don't have an ambition to be an influencer.

Sara Lattanzio [00:29:28]:
So I was kind of a solo marketer another time, and I was like, yeah, you know, I'm learning so much. It's the first time that I'm like, you know, in this position and I think, wow, seems like people are really doing this LinkedIn with content. Maybe let's give it a shot if it's a fit. Right. I tried before on Instagram, but it was not a channel fit for me, you know? Yeah. And so, I don't know, at the beginning, I threw just spaghetti at the wall. I remember my first post was literally, oh, we just rebranded, you know, and then I started talking about productivity and best advertising examples, literally all the the world and whatever, marketing, you know, and at the beginning, it was also very hard, I think. I mean, very.

Sara Lattanzio [00:30:13]:
There was. So there was not much competition on LinkedIn posting original content. So even just being somebody who posts about marketing was already a niche in a way. And then what happened is just that I kept doing this. I took it very seriously. So I knew that since I've done before, the consistency is the most important ingredient. And you see the audience is growing, people start noticing, you know, podcast here, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

Sara Lattanzio [00:30:42]:
And then I just kept doing it. I think I evolved. I, you know, at some point I niched down into content. I started, you know, having requests for freelancing about content marketing. And so I think this niche was really, at the moment where content marketing became a thing, because content marketing in 2010 was nothing, you know, it was corporate communications, communications, SEO, whatever. You know, there was not content marketing. And I really found myself a lot in this niche because I think content marketing is a lot of things. It's strategy, it's communication, it's writing, it's graphic, it's performance, It's a bit of everything.

Sara Lattanzio [00:31:25]:
Right? And so I was like, yeah, that's literally me. That's my niche, you know, And I didn't even know there was a name for it. And I think just when I started owning this niche, this thing with being just a lot more focused, plus picking a trendy topic, I Kind of hit the jackpot in the right moment because it was also a moment where there were not many people talking about content marketing. And another thing is that I want to share is that I think there are a lot of bad wolves on LinkedIn in general, right? I mean, I think also you earn the audience that you deserve. I mean, especially now with AI, we see that a lot, you know, like this get rich quick and hacks and message this, I'll give you that. And people who obviously with this tactics make, I don't know, 3,000 followers overnight. But I really think that people who are serious about business in whatever way that means they know this is BS, right? And I think I have definitely not 100,000 followers, but I think the people who follow me trust me a lot, trust that what I say is unbiased, that even if I take, I don't know, money from sponsorships, I'm not pushing down a product that people that I would never use. And I think that's also where you understand, okay, the retention and the engagement is a lot more valuable than the numbers of growth themselves.

Matt Carnevale [00:32:47]:
A couple things there, but one is I like that you talked about. Well, I feel like your personality specifically comes through in your content, which I think is really interesting and not always easy to do. How have you let that shine through? Like, how did you make that happen? I know it's not an easy answer, but I think that's something that a lot of people like. When I'm scanning the feed, you know, I just noticed that you can tell when people are like trying to be that influencer type and it's kind of always like gives you the ick a little bit. But in your case, it's like you're just you on this platform that, you know, has good distribution attached to it. So I don't know, how did you, how do you do that?

Sara Lattanzio [00:33:24]:
That's very nice. That's a very nice compliment. But the reality is that I never tried. So it's very simple. And I feel now that you talk with me the first time you notice that it's just me. And I think I'm just a very opinionated person. I think I know how to communicate a concept. In a sense, you can say the same thing in 20 different ways.

Sara Lattanzio [00:33:46]:
And I think I try always to strike this balance between sassiness and honesty, but also being very fact based. You know, I don't bash stuff or I don't, don't talk bad about stuff, just to rack up likes. You know, I always have some arguments for it. And I think that's what resonates with people.

Matt Carnevale [00:34:07]:
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I agree. And by the way, I think this is an important topic for BB marketers overall. Not so much just like how to go viral on LinkedIn or how to grow LinkedIn following. It's back in the theme of what we talked about where it's like, I just think humans, individuals will have a much better chance in 2025 and forward of building brands than company logos and faceless brands. So I think even if you are a baby marketer in house, I think that you will need to understand how to bring someone in your company to the limelight, whether that's you, whether that's a CEO. So I think this is an important topic for that reason. Just an aside, but getting back to your strategy specifically, like, do you have a calendar of stuff that you're going to share LinkedIn, like, how far out are you scheduling your stuff? Like what? Talk me through a bit of that part.

Sara Lattanzio [00:35:00]:
So I don't post more than three times a week in general, and carousels are my format. I really like doing them. And no, I don't have anyone who helps me. It's all me. It's me, my personality designer. So I have nine personalities. One is a designer, apparently. And I think that's the thing, you know, so many people are like, why don't you make it more scalable? And I'm like, what do I have to scale? The moment that I scale, I'm just selling up slots, you know, or I'm selling, I'm filling in gaps just to have another content piece going out.

Sara Lattanzio [00:35:31]:
And I think that's exactly the point of not doing it, you know. So I spent basically my Saturdays, Saturday morning writing. So, you know, even afternoon, let's be honest. So it really means that it's a big sacrifice because it means, especially in summer when everybody's like, having fun, you're there writing. Because I, I've always worked 100%, right? And then I schedule more or less. I mean, I don't scale. I know more or less what I'm going to post one week in advance. Obviously, when I work with sponsors, it's a bit more rigid in a sense that you have a specific date where you need to let you know, some posts out, et cetera.

Sara Lattanzio [00:36:09]:
But also there, I mean, I have, you know, for example, Semrush. I've been working with them for over a year, so kind of we have regular collaboration, but there is just an amount of sponsor posts in my Books. I don't want to be an advertising billboard. And so I also pick up just a few brands I really like working with where it's literally I would produce the same content tool agnostic. But okay, then I'm going to use your tool because I think it's a great tool. Right. So that's for me how I pick the sponsors. Yeah.

Sara Lattanzio [00:36:41]:
And that's pretty much it. So it's definitely not, I would say, what somebody. It's not a strategy that's overly complicated. I have a Google Docs where dump ideas and sometimes I have an idea just write it. But it works for me. And honestly I think I wouldn't change it.

Matt Carnevale [00:36:58]:
No. Yeah, I love it. I feel like to prep for this interview, I just went to your LinkedIn profile and was just like reading through more of your posts and one thing I had to always double check is like is this a sponsored post or not? Like I couldn't always tell which is really, really great. I mean that's that you're doing exactly what you're supposed to do. Like I even find for me on LinkedIn if I talked about Exit Five in a way that is like a clear promotion of it or like not even a clear promotion, like maybe I'm just like, we're doing this crazy live event on X, Y and Z and you all should be there. Even that itself will not perform well if I don't bury the fact that it is related to our event so deeply inside of it. And I think that's something we do really well. I think that's a good again, a good meta marketing lesson of you can create really good content that is related to a brand or tool without making it so obvious.

Matt Carnevale [00:37:54]:
So yeah, I guess, like what's your strategy there? Like you're working with a brand like Semrush and they want you to promote a specific feature or something, you know, new product they launch. What's next from there? Like how are you making that into something that is interesting to consume while suddenly plugging tool?

Sara Lattanzio [00:38:11]:
Well, I mean, first of all, I think what you said is very important. I think I never did. Yeah, I mean I did product marketing when I was working at a startup, but I think this is a very big product marketing experience for me because that's exactly what a product marketer does. Right. Use the product, you test the product. And I mean it's not always like that that companies tell me we have this feature, push it out. You know, I mean sometimes they have a product launch and I support, but sometimes There is a lot of flexibility, I think probably also because they understand that they don't need to hold my hands, that I'm kind of literally your icp. I can find my way and tell you what's good about the product myself.

Sara Lattanzio [00:38:54]:
And I'm not talking about Semrush in specific, I'm just talking about brands in general. So I would say I pick a use case that I'm familiar with and then literally I ask myself how I would use it, how I navigate this use case. For example, if the whole point is like, I don't know, how do we get better visibility on LLMs? We're all pretty scared of what's going on. So I poke my own pains, so to say. I also don't put any logos because what is the point of putting your logo on my carousel? Very sorry, I have your cta. Obviously I'm driving the traffic. And it's much more important to show you the interface paired with what you can do with this product, right? With how you can go from this pain point at the beginning to solving it and really the end product. For me, it's also always important to close the loop, you know, and not to start by defaulting into click this button.

Sara Lattanzio [00:39:58]:
There is this feature, by the way. No, it's not the time and place here. It's really like to. To give you a very practical solution to a problem and you can execute it yourself. You can even execute it with another product for what I am concerned, you know, And I think that is what works. And that's in a nutshell. I know, it was mind blowing for me too. But how good marketing works down the line, you know, And I mean, I also know how much demos my posts bring to the companies I work with.

Sara Lattanzio [00:40:28]:
So it really means that people want something they can run with. And also if you provide value, they will get hooked on your brand.

Matt Carnevale [00:40:41]:
Yeah, that's a great point. I find it too, like in the Exit Five community, you know, we obviously put out a lot of content and whenever we're sharing like those specific tactical examples, that's when people are really like, whoa, like I love this. Or like give me more of this. It's. It's always that stuff that stands out the most. It's not to say like those more theoretical, high level posts don't have a time and place. They do, obviously. But it's like you can almost guarantee, you can almost bank on if you're giving something to the audience that they can just like kind of pick up and drop into their own company, more or less like those are always winners.

Sara Lattanzio [00:41:18]:
I think with topics that maybe are more abstract, you need to follow the same logic. You know, you cannot just pick be like inspirational things, but really more. I don't know, if you're giving advice on marketing careers then, you know, I don't know, give a list of questions to ask when you, when you apply for a job. You know, stuff like this.

Matt Carnevale [00:41:38]:
Yeah, totally. Yeah. It doesn't always need to be that linear of a product use case. It's just like something useful. And then, yeah, the very last piece is, I think a big part of it too is you just know the audience. You're a marketer, you understand you're in the game, you're in the space. That's something that if you're going to work for a company that is nothing related to what you know, makes it more difficult and you need to somehow extract that out of it. Right?

Sara Lattanzio [00:41:59]:
Yeah.

Matt Carnevale [00:42:01]:
Well, Sarah, this has been great. I been following you for a while. I always interact with your stuff. I think you're one of the best content marketers on LinkedIn. I really, really appreciate what you put out. I think it's so different and unique and I think that's rare today. This conversation is great. I felt like I could have, could have kept going especially on the content and LinkedIn and uniqueness.

Matt Carnevale [00:42:21]:
Rabbit hole. That's really interesting angle that you have for all that, but that's it. I really appreciate it and you know, I appreciate you giving the time and all this great information to our audience.

Sara Lattanzio [00:42:30]:
Thanks to you. Really love the combo. And we can always make a second round instead of a two hour podcast.

Matt Carnevale [00:42:36]:
That's it. That's it. Sounds good. We'll do a one year recap. All right, sir, take it easy.

Sara Lattanzio [00:42:41]:
Thanks bye.

Dave Gerhardt [00:42:47]:
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode. You know what, I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. 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 or review, go check it out right now on our website, exitfive.com Our mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. There's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five.

Dave Gerhardt [00:43:15]:
There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there 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 maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more. exitfive.com and I will see you over there in the community.

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