S2E4: How to communicate your brand identity ft. Dave Erickson, CEO of ScreamingBox

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Main Insight

"The most effective brand strategy focuses on differentiation and solving customer business challenges."
Dave emphasizes that a unique brand identity and an ability to clearly articulate how a product solves specific customer challenges are crucial in marketing. Content should demonstrate solutions, not just features.

Key Takeaways

Step-by-Step Marketing Strategy

1. Determine Your Business Cycle Stage:
   Understand where the business currently stands. Are you a new startup, a growing SMB, or an established enterprise? Different stages require different marketing strategies.
2. Focus on the Basics:
   Ensure that your website has strong calls-to-action and that free content like blog articles, YouTube videos, and social media posts are available.
3. Expand to Advanced Marketing:
   For mature businesses, consider investing in advertising campaigns, events, and sponsorships. SMBs with resources can leverage trade events and Google Ads campaigns.
4. Incorporate AI into Content Creation:
   Utilize AI for generating outlines, titles, and basic content structures. Refine and build upon these AI-generated drafts for faster, more effective content creation.
5. Develop a Comprehensive Content Strategy:
   • Write a detailed blog post about how your product solves specific business challenges.
   • Atomize content into multiple pieces (short videos, audio snippets, infographics).
   • Use AI tools to create faceless videos from written content.
   • Distribute across multiple social media channels in varied formats.
6. Distribution Plan and Calls to Action:
   • Share blog articles on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
   • Use smaller content pieces and videos for wider reach.
   • Align calls to action with each content type (e.g., "Contact us," "Download a whitepaper," "Try our product").

Guest Bio

Dave Erickson
Title: CEO, ScreamingBox
Bio: Dave Erickson has over 30 years of experience in eSports, gaming, software development, marketing, sales, branding, publishing, advertising, and international business. A serial entrepreneur, he has founded and managed businesses across the USA, Europe, and Asia. Prior to ScreamingBox, he played a pivotal role in building the Fatal1ty gaming brand and licensing program, and also founded an internet marketing company in 2002 that catered to high-profile clients like Gunthy-Ranker, Qualcomm, and TigerText.

Company Description

ScreamingBox
Description: ScreamingBox is a digital development company that offers web and mobile app development, along with other technology solutions. Their virtual-first approach helps clients save costs while ensuring high-quality digital solutions. They have built a strong reputation in the industry due to their distinctive branding and word-of-mouth referrals.
Website: screamingbox.net

Rainmaker Web
Description: Rainmaker Web helps startups and SMBs with marketing strategy, content creation, and digital distribution.
Website: rainmakerweb.net

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Transcript

[0:32] All right. Today, I am sitting down with Dave Erickson. He is the CEO of Screaming Box Digital Development. And also, he hosts a podcast called the Screaming Box Business and Technology Rundown. So Dave, I'm super excited to chat with you and dig into your background.

[0:52] Well, I'm happy to be here as well. Yeah. So I just usually like to kick things off just by asking, asking how did you get into doing what you're doing currently and what makes you excited and passionate about it? Well, I kind of got into it because I had a marketing company and part of marketing is to do landing pages and other types of web development. And I was working with some developers and they're just the usual kind of problems that people have. And I had some friends and we were all kind of complaining about the same thing and we decided, okay, we can do it better. let's do something different.

[1:29] And we started  Screaming Box . And at the time, this was 11 years ago, we wanted something that's completely virtual. We didn't want any of the overhead.  Screaming Box is like my 12th company. I've had offices, I've had infrastructure. And I was kind of like, okay, I want to run this really light and keep it so that we can be cost effective for people. And so that's kind of how we started. And we just started gaining clients. And for us, it's always been kind of a word of mouth promotion. But we had kind of an initial brand vision, which we kind of came up with, as you can see, and that's allowed us to be a little different.

[2:10]  Screaming Box is kind of a different name for this industry. A lot of people are like, you know, great soft and you know soft bank and you know all these kind of boring corporate development we wanted something different so we've had people compliment us and say hey i i started i want to do business i thought you're saying so uh don't underestimate that in brand identity yeah that's definitely yeah that's fun actually 

[3:38] Okay. All right. So one thing I'd like to ask is, what is a piece of advice or a marketing campaign that you would recommend that B2B marketers actually implement?

[3:53] Well, it really depends on kind of what the business goals are and what the business challenges are. Example, startups. They have a lot of problems where they spend all their energy trying to develop their technology or their product. They've done nothing in marketing. They're kind of starting from scratch as they launch their product. So their marketing tactics and strategies initially have to be filling out a lot of content that just doesn't exist, right?

[4:23] I have a second company called Rainmaker. We do a lot of marketing for startups and that's really their biggest issue. They may not even have things like bios and abouts And, you know, their website might have, you know, some sentences that they threw together versus actual, you know, content. And a lot of things that their problems are is they're trying to explain to people, you know, how do they use their product or their technology to solve a business challenge, right? And that's content that's really valuable, but they don't have time to write it, right? Right. But if they were going to spend, you know, what is the low hanging fruit? What is the first things that you need to do when you're a startup? That marketing campaign is going to be filling out a lot of this base content that you need, explaining to people why your product and service has value, what the value proposition is, that type of stuff. If you're at SMB, you've been in business a while, you're more mature, then your marketing campaigns are going to be orientated towards what are the business challenges that you're facing. So it may be that you're facing pricing challenges or you may be facing that you're not getting return customers or something like that. And that's going to dictate, you know, what is your marketing strategy? What is your marketing campaign going to be?

[5:41] And so that kind of, it depends on the situation. Obviously, enterprise companies have much broader appeal. They're going to be focusing their marketing campaigns on getting as many eyeballs as they can to see their product or their branding. So again, it really depends on what type of business you are and where you're at in the business cycle.

[6:01] Okay. Makes sense. Makes sense. So what is one aspect that you, you know, like to focus on? Like what, what kind of topic? So we had touched on a little bit prior to this conversation that AI is starting to take over a little bit and handle a lot of those mechanical processes. But what's left is the relationships that a business has with its customers and that you have to kind of communicate that. So would you like to explain a bit about that topic and kind of expand on it? Yeah, I use AI in my other company, Rainmaker, for writing content. We've played with all levels of generative AI. And the mistake, or I don't know if mistake is the right word, the thing that people don't quite get with AI is they see results and that result looks like it's conscious and thinking, when in fact it isn't. And so when you start really using it and applying it, you start seeing that it has a lot of weaknesses, right? So for writing content like, say, blog posts and longer form content, we have found we have tried it writing the whole thing. We've tried it writing just the intro. We have tried it all different variations of using generative AI.

[7:23] There's probably five different tools we've used to do it. And in the end, the most efficient thing that we have found is having it write outlines. You know, it might take us, you know, four hours to write a 2000 word article.

[7:37] If we have AI do the initial outline and titling, you know, we can cut that to two hours and I can pass that on to clients as a savings. Right. Right.

[7:48] A lot of the AI tools, we use some AI tools, robots and other things to automate some social media posting, to automate distribution of content. And again, it's productivity. But they're not thinking, they're not conscious, they're limited in what they can actually do. And it takes a lot of work to learn how these tools work and how to use them well. And so at first it was like, well, this is going to take over our jobs. And then after using it, we realized, no, it's not going to take over any jobs because now we have the job of running it. Right. But what it really did is, is make it so that we could do more for less. Right. And again, that has its benefits, whether you're doing it like we are for startups who don't have a lot of money. Now we can offer them a lot more benefit for, you know, low cost. Or if you're running an internal operation, it allows you to cut some costs internally. So you could use that money for other things like marketing or sales or something like that. So, you know, I think on the low level, AI is beneficial. And if it's used well, it will allow people to be more productive.

[9:01] On the high level, will it achieve artificial contest? Will it take over the planet? Will giant robots be running our lives? Those are much bigger questions. And I think they need some time to see where that goes.

[9:15] But I think in the short term, using AI to do work and using a lot of the AI tools that are coming out, the people who know how to use them and spend the time to learn how to use them will actually be in a position of power.

[9:31] Okay, that makes sense. So what would you generally recommend for marketers in the B2B space to actually do? Well, do the what I call the free stuff. It isn't really free, but it's low cost. And there's a lot of options. And every day there's like a new option that allows you to do some marketing without a lot of cost.

[10:01] Some of this stuff is low-hanging fruit. And I've seen a bunch of companies where they've just ignored it. And they're only in this mindset of, I'm just going to spend money to do marketing. And a lot of this stuff is really effective and costs very little. And if you're a startup, it's really critical that you do a lot of this, what I call the free stuff. And most of this free stuff involves making some content and distributing it. And nowadays, you can make a lot of content relatively cheaply and distribute it relatively cheaply. And a lot of businesses, the thing that they're trying to talk about is how does their product or technology solve business challenges for their potential clients? So in the B2B space, if you have like a SaaS product, you know, really your potential customer is asking the question, how do I use your product

[10:57] to solve one of my many business challenges? And can I use it to solve a business challenge? And you as a marketer for the SaaS product have to be thinking in your head, okay, what type of business challenges do my potential clients have? And how can they use our product slash technology to solve those challenges? And then how do I write a piece of content that tells them that? Right? Right.

[11:25] And that that's the first stuff you have to do and you have to do it in several different slices. You know, if you're in the health care market, there's probably 10 different areas of health care that you need to be able to focus on. So you have a bunch of content you have to produce for that. If you're doing health care and fintech, then you got two industries and you got to write a lot of content that is basically telling those industries. How do you apply our product to solve your business challenges?

[11:55] Because when a customer or potential customer contacts you, whether they see your website, your social media, a podcast, anything like that, the question in their head is, okay, I'm having trouble growing my sales. How can your product help me grow my sales? They're not sitting there asking, oh, you have a feature in your product that allows me to input some data this way. They're not thinking that, right? You as an engineer and a product developer, you're like, oh, our product, it has this feature. You can just enter data this way. The client doesn't care. What he's thinking about is, oh, how do I use this product to grow my sales or solve my customer complaint problem or something like that? A lot of people in companies, they make the mistake of trying to market their features or their characteristics of their product. And again, their potential customers are looking for solutions. They have a business challenge. How does your product help me solve my business problem? Right. And so I would have, that's the first thing is always focus on how does your product, you know, solve a business challenge for your potential client. Okay. Yeah. So we're focusing on, you know, selling the, the futures, not features, I think is the, the terminology.

[13:16] So do you have any insights about, you know, how to uniquely show your brand or how to stand out and like demonstrate, you know, the unique aspects of your brand or develop those relationships with your customer base so that, you know, they recognize you or that you stand out as being like interesting or particularly useful? Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, for my current company, we did that by having a brand name that is very unique in the industry, and it has its own story.

[13:55] Brand is very important depending on where you are. Definitely in the B2C space, brand is critical. In the B2B space, it's more of an identifier, especially in the beginning of a business. Later on, as that business matures, it's going to be used for other things besides identification. And that's where differentiation and other things come in. And it's really hard to set up your brand in the beginning if you're not aware of every one of your competitors and if you are not aware of your differentiation, right? And so the key to a lot of branding is to tell the story of your differentiation. What makes you different? That's one aspect, right? The other aspect is, how do you help people? meaning how do you solve your potential customers' business challenges, right? And if you can focus your brand identity on those two things, how are you different and how do you solve business challenges for your customers.

[15:06] That's going to be the most effective brand strategy that you can have. But that takes a lot of thought and a lot of research and understanding of your potential customers and your competitors right and so it's working the work right and and in the beginning part of that work is doing a market analysis where you take your top 10 competitors or competitors you think of and look at their product and their offering and see how are you different right and then the other one is to look at basically how are they, presenting themselves as a solution. You know, if you pick 10 of them, there's a very good chance that three to five of them aren't actually marketing themselves as a solution. They're marketing themselves as a set of product features, right? And then you'll probably have the other half that actually understand they need to talk about their, you know, offering is in terms of solving a challenge or solving issues for their customers. And those are the ones you want to focus on as far as marketing strategies, right?

[16:11] Okay, that makes sense. So let's go like step by step tactic wise. So if you wanted to implement this as a campaign, let's say I'm a B2B marketer and I want to do this for my company right now. Like, you know, what what strategies or like step by step tips would you give me to, you know, set up my content creation program in a way that's like setting my brand apart in a in a very unique way and building those good customer relationships?

[16:49] Well, it would start with the first question is, where are you in the business cycle? Like, have you been, are you a new business? Are you an older business? Have you just started? Have you been doing marketing for years? Do you have a lot of marketing set up? So those all affect strategy, right? So the first thing as a marketer, or let's say I'm a marketing agency. Well, technically I have a marketing agency with more content agency, but the first thing I have to find out is, is where is the client in the product at what stage of business are they? Because different strategies are needed for different stages, right? So I don't know for this example, you know, let's start with startup that's been around for a couple of years. They have a product, they've done some basic marketing, but they've really focused on the product and in the product features, right? So if that's the case, then I would say, all right, you may have some social media. Is it effective? Are you getting contact from it? Is your website set up with calls to action? And are you getting inbound leads? If the answer is no, okay, do you want inbound leads? Is that the way your sales process is set up? Do you have a sales process that can process inbound leads?

[18:11] Yeah, if your answer is yes. That's okay. Well, let's, is your inbound leads effective? No. Okay. So let's start looking at your marketing strategy. How do we get your website set up so that you have calls to action that actually convert? And once you have that kind of set up, when you can do a bunch of things with AB testing and other things to verify that, then you can say, okay, now we need traffic. So how are you doing the basics? Are you doing what I call the free stuff? Are you doing blog articles? Are you doing, you know, YouTube? Are you doing podcasts, social media? Are you putting content out there that people can access and find your site and find your business from it? If the answer is yes, okay, so the easy stuff is taken care of. Now we need to start focusing on more complex stuff.

[18:59] This could be an ad campaign, social media ads, can be other types of advertising, Google search ads and that type of stuff. You can also start looking at tactics like gamification, depending on the product and the thing that you're doing. We can kind of gamify some of it, help again, generate traffic that can convert to leads for your sales organization, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So are those like the main steps, you know, figure out where you are in the business cycle, you know, do the basics with free content like podcasts and social media, and then start are doing more complex things like ads and then gamification sort of tactics?

[19:41] Yeah. I mean, if this was a SMB that had been in business a couple of years and they had resources and, you know, $50 million in revenue, then you're talking about a more traditional marketing campaign using traditional marketing strategies that are going to cost money and that's all good. And those can be things such as building assets in the metaverse or setting up sponsorships with gaming or, you know, doing traditional advertising or trade shows, putting on events. Those are other things, you know, it's going to depend on how many resources the business has. So if the business doesn't have a lot of financial resources, it's going to be limited in what it can do. But there's a lot of things it can do, right? If the business has financial resources, has a marketing budget, then it has to look at where the customers are. So if it's a B2B business and it has resources, there's probably going to be some trade events that will be worth going to, either by sending people there to give presentations or to have a booth or other things. Those things still work, right? Those things still generate potential leads and other things. Right. If you're an enterprise company, then obviously you have a huge marketing budget, and it can include television, radio, magazines, all that kind of stuff for marketing campaigns.

[21:09] But I think the other thing is, who's your demographic, right? If your demographic is 15 to 25-year-olds, then going... And usually it's not a B2B product that's going after that demographic. That would be more B2C. But, you know, let's say you're a B2B company and your product is orientated towards startup founders. Well, then you're probably looking at an age group in that 25 to 45 range. And they, you know, they may be more that that group tends to be more Facebook oriented versus Instagram, right? Or TikTok, right? So you may want to focus on Facebook instead of the others or have 80% of your marketing budget towards that and the 20% goes to TikTok or whatever. So it's going to depend a little bit on your demographic and what you're doing. For a lot of B2B businesses, I think the pandemic put a kink in trade events and live events, but I think they're going to be coming back and I think people are going to find that's a great way to do it. But there's also a lot of inbound and outbound marketing tactics that can be used, including advertising, white paper downloads, stuff like that. They do cost a little bit of money, but they can be used for generating inbound traffic.

[22:35] Okay. So I want to dig a little bit deeper into just like one potential marketing channel. So you mentioned like content creation and how it's changed a little bit in the age of AI and how you're using it to kind of draft those content pieces. So what does your marketing program kind of look like nowadays with using AI as a support for creating content? And like, Like, how are you putting that strategy together in terms of like how much content is being produced or like what kind of trends are you seeing with like how much needs to be produced and in what like different breakdowns of areas?

[23:18] Yeah. And when I said breakdowns of areas, I guess I mean, like, you know, how much is going towards like an informative kind of top of the funnel blog versus like how much is going towards more like product demo level content? Well, again, I'm going to go back to the, it depends on this business situation, right? Yeah. Maybe I can break it apart a little bit differently and talk about what can be produced easily is in a format. And then we can talk about distribution of content because they're kind of, I look at them as two separate items, right? Right. There is the production of content and then there's the distribution of content. Right. You kind of ask the question as though they're together as one. So let me look at it this way.

[24:09] If you were to take a piece of content and again, the most valuable content is going to be content that says, hey, this is how my product is applied to solve a business challenge.

[24:22] So let's say you have developed, you have an agency or somebody like Rainmaker, you know, we develop a content strategy and a calendar. And so we develop a piece of content. How can this AI SaaS product be used in healthcare to speed diagnostics of a patient? Okay. So we're going to write an article. We're going to say, okay, what we need to do is write an article that shows how your technology is used to solve patient diagnostics issues and shorten the time from half hour to 10 minutes, right? And so we write a blog article, we use AI to put together a structure, some titles, and then we have an understanding with the client of what their voice is that they would like, what are the things of context that are really important for them. And we write this article, let's call it 1,500 words or 2,000 words.

[25:20] So with this piece of article, this content, we then look and see what other content do they have on their site that we can link to. So we get some external links or internal links. We have some external links with subjects or references that we use for the article. So the article then has this kind of SEO component in it. We check all the titles and everything, make sure there's good SEO content. So then we have a base piece of content and this is going to go on their website blog and it'll be used for getting search and some organic traffic.

[25:54] Then we take this piece of content and we can atomize it into anywhere from five to 10 pieces of content, breaking down the subject into little pieces. And the reason you want to do that is that all of a sudden gives you a bunch of content to distribute that's in smaller formats.

[26:11] Then we can take this smaller written format, and we can actually use some AI programs to convert them into faceless videos, where it's basically a video that shows different types of stock footage or even footage that's supplied by the customer that they have as well. It talks about, basically, it's the paragraph that you've written spelled out as a video, right? And you can make a bunch of those videos from this atomized content. Then you can take those videos and you can put them in different lengths, right? And different formats, vertical formats for YouTube shorts and TikTok and horizontal formats for traditional YouTube and other, you know, social media displays. So all of a sudden you've taken one article and you now have a whole bunch of pieces of content, video, audio, written, different sizes, all from one piece of content. So we basically have done it so that we use a bunch of AI tools to help process that. It's still a bunch of work, but you're taking one piece of content and using a little bit of work to make a whole bunch of pieces of content. So now you have your content library on this subject.

[27:26] Now we move over to distribution, right? And now it's a question of how are you going to distribute it and where are you going to distribute it and what

[27:33] are you going to use it for? So you've already posted it as a blog on a website. This same blog can then be posted on some LinkedIn, personal LinkedIn sites of whoever is attributed to writing the article. Then you're on social media. You're posting out the little content. You're posting out the videos. You can do some audiograms from it, which again are very easy to do from the written content. And you've now basically produced a bunch of content that can be sent out over a week or two weeks over 10 to 15 distribution channels. Thank you.

[28:05] That's an efficient way of doing content marketing, right? And if it's done right, it actually is quite cost effective and you're hitting a lot of different distribution channels. So the odds that somebody is going to see it are really good. And the strategic marketing question is going to be in all this content, what is your call to action? So probably the blog article is call to action is going to be. If you are interested in this subject, please contact us and we can do this in social media, maybe go to our website and do this or download the product or download a sample or download our white paper or a bunch of other different types of calls to action. So once you have the content and your distribution channels and your calls to action, you know, you've taken one piece of work and through a little bit of work made a whole bunch of distribution calls to actions and marketing that can be pushed out. And if you do this on a regular basis, once a week, every other week, once a month, then you're going to basically have a great marketing flow that is very cost effective, right? So what are the kind of results that you've gotten for your companies after you implemented this whole program?

[29:25] Well, most of the the results are that of traffic increases, right? And it's usually, you know, depending on where they are, beginning traffic is really the hardest for a lot of these startups that we've done this for. It takes, you know, three to four months until they go from zero traffic to, you know, a hundred to a thousand, you know, page views a month looking at the content, right? And a lot of it is also what I call validation content. So they're out talking to people and presenting their business. And the first thing people do is come to their website and say, oh, okay, well, they actually know their subject and they have some blog articles that really show they understand what's going on. And, oh, I checked out their social media. They're a real company. They're posting every week and it's, you know, they're subject matter experts. So that's a value that basically a lot of that content provides for, say, a startup, right? And then they're talking to potential investors and say, hey, look at our social media, look at this article we produced, and look at our marketing. And yes, we have these mechanisms in place, which also, again, helps them with funding. For some of the SMB businesses, it may be more about targeting or entering a new field where they didn't have a presence and all of a sudden, okay, now they start having a presence.

[30:47] It's also a basis. This content is a basis for doing other things. So example, if you're going to do a Google ads campaign or AdSense, it's usually referencing some of this content or using content to make it work.

[31:02] So I'd like to switch gears just a little bit and then talk about what are some of the things that you've seen aside from like a monetary perspective? Like what were the kind of the results after implementing this like content marketing program or, you know, really honing in on who the customers were and making sure that you're using that human touch to build those relationships? Like, what impact did it have on the people in the companies you've worked with or even like their customers?

[31:37] Well, mostly we're dealing with founders of startups. And the impact that it's having for what we're doing is it's helping them secure funding and it's helping them secure their initial clients. clients, right? Because they're using and leveraging this content to basically validate that they are a real business and that they know what they're talking about, right? They're focusing on trust. The other way is that it helps them have a conversation with people about how their product can help them. Because a lot of what happens is in this process, they come to us, they have to explain to us how their product can help people, right? Because we may not know, oh, we didn't develop the product. And in doing that, there's a back and forth where we're asking them a lot of questions and then rephrasing it. And then we start writing the blog articles and is this correct? Is this what you mean? And that back and forth helps them phrase how they're going to describe themselves.

[32:42] And usually the change that occurs is they go from talking about the product features and the technology to talking about how their product can help someone, right? Because we force that because I'm very focused on that, right? I've done lots of, I've done hardware products, software products. I can tell you I've dealt with feature set. I've dealt with all of that. And when it comes to marketing and sales of those products, which I've also dealt with, I have a lot of experience with, it really comes down to how can your product help me? And a lot of startups and founders really don't focus on that they're focused on the nuts and bolts of making their product work so they're very much into product set and feature set and in that and so by working with me and in our company i get them to focus on that and so that's the change that occurs within them is they finding it much easier to be able to talk to people about how their product can help them, right? And obviously we write content about that and their content is now talking about that, but as an impact on them, they find that's helping. And I've had them tell me, Hey, you've really helped it so that we're talking about the right thing.

[34:00] And it's especially important for investor pitches. And even though I've had it with some of the startups where they've had it, where we're just doing some blogs and social media. And, you know, after a couple of months, they come to us, hey, can you take a look at our investor pitch? And I end up having, you know, four or five phone calls with them about their investor pitch because it's too long or it's unfocused or it's focused on this or that. I've been through a bunch of accelerators and work with a lot of founders and work with startups who got founded funding. And so they've really kind of helped me focus on helping people put together a pretty reasonable founding or funding pitch. So with implementing a lot of these content marketing procedures, what are some of the falls or challenges that you've seen business leaders fall into as they try to put this together and try to start pumping out this high quality content?

[34:59] Well, one of them is overload, because they're like, okay, I don't have any money. I'm going to try to do it myself. They find some tools, they realize, okay, there's a bunch of tools that can help them do this. And what they don't realize is how much time it actually takes. And they're trying to do not just this, but they're trying to do product development and sales and funding and all kinds of stuff. And so they get themselves overwhelmed quite quickly. That's one of the issues. The other issue is that they don't get out of a bubble. They're talking to four or five people, and that's the only people they're really talking to about this. And they're not getting new viewpoints, and they're not getting other things. The other pitfall that I think businesses make with marketing content is they're not talking to their potential customers about how their potential customers see the marketing content, right? They just put out the content and assume that their potential customers are going to see it and say, this is the most wonderful thing they've ever seen, right? They don't actually talk to them, right? And they don't ask opinions. I mean, I used to go, I probably went to a trade show at least once a quarter for about 10 years, right? All kinds of trade shows all over the world.

[36:16] And whenever I was in a booth or working with people or meeting clients or anything like that, I was always asking them, hey, did you see this marketing that we did? What do you think about it? Or how do you like our booth? Or what do you think about our messaging? I'm always asking that, right? Because it's not important what I think that people think the content is. It's really important about how they see the content, right? And you may write a piece of content. You say, this is the greatest piece of content I've ever written. This is spectacular. And you may go talk to a bunch of people and they say, oh, yeah, that looked great. That was great. That was wonderful. What do you mean by this?

[37:01] If they're asking, what do you meant by it? Then you missed the mark. No matter how wonderful you think it is, if they're saying, what do you really mean by this? That means you didn't get the message across. And I've had that. You know, I've had plenty of times where I wrote something and put out some marketing and thought this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And I talk to people and they're like, well, what do you mean by this? Or how does this fit into what this is? You know, people make mistakes. That's what you do. You try new things and you have to do that. So as a marketer, you're always trying different things. It's really important that you ping the market and find out how they see it. Right. And where where are you going in order to survey people's opinions on your content marketing? Because I've run into this issue, like, as I've, you know, run my own business and worked on a marketing team prior to this, where it's just like, especially when you're a B2B, and you're just kind of like putting content out there, you may get like a very low kind of traffic volume, and you don't know who's actually like read your content. So where are you finding these people and like what method are you using to get their opinions and feedback on the content? Well, most of it is when I'm talking to potential clients of a client or customers of theirs, I'll ask them. The other one is if you're at live events, wherever they are, you can show people, hey, this is a piece of content. What do you think of it? Right.

[38:30] That's the nice thing about cell phones is they actually are good at displaying content. The other thing is there are lots of social media groups and Slack channels and Discord channels and all kinds of other things that are about technical marketing or product marketing. And you can go on them and say, here's a piece of marketing content. What do you guys think of it? And they'll totally flame you, right? They'll just destroy you, destroy your ego to an abysmal level. But you can read into that and get some feedback, right? And it could be valuable feedback. You can also go on potential customer places. So if you're in the healthcare industry, say you have a healthcare product that's dealing with, I don't know, oncology.

[39:23] Well, there's a whole bunch of oncology doctor groups, Facebook and forums and other places. And you can go there and say, Hey, here's a piece of content. What do you think of it? Right. And you may get actual feedback that say, Oh, this is a great piece of content. No, this didn't answer any questions or what is this? Or what do you mean by that? Or, you know, there's ways to get the feedback.

[39:46] It's effort. It takes effort. And so people are very focused on just putting out and their budgets only include output. They don't necessarily budget for input but you know if you're a startup venture and you have some time and you know whatever you can you can do some of these strategies or you can take an agency like us and have us do it right but it does take some time and it does take some work but it can be done right yeah so of all those different methods you mentioned you know going to trade shows talking like while you're on a phone call with potential customers all those things which which one have you found to be like the most effective method of getting feedback? Well, I'm going to say this. It, it kind of depends on.

[40:34] On the subject in the industry. Some are better than others and some are not, right? Healthcare, it's a little bit harder, but if you are doing a clothing brand for the 25-year-old demographic skateboarder, that's much easier, right? Because there's a lot more places and they're more willing to express themselves, whereas doctors tend to be very formal and not very expressive. So it kind of depends a little bit on that. I always liked live events. Now, comes with the risk of getting sick. But, you know, live events, I think, are still valid and a good place to go to talk to people and to get that kind of feedback. You know, Slack channels and Discord channels, they have validity. It takes a little bit more work because it's more virtual and written, but you can still get decent feedback from them. Again, it kind of depends on the subject matter and the demographic and other things. I don't think there's any set best. I think it really kind of depends on what you're putting out and what you're doing. You know, I've had stuff where we put out some things on YouTube and the comments actually gave us great comments. Right. And I put out other stuff on YouTube where there were no comments or the comments were basically three words. Right. So it kind of, it really varies the results you get depending on all kinds of things.

[42:00] Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much, Dave. As we are wrapping up, I would just like to shine a spotlight on you. Is there any projects you're working on, anything you'd like to promote, anywhere you'd like us to get in touch with you? Sure. Obviously, for content marketing and written content, you can get a hold of us at rainmakerweb.net. And that's our content company. If anybody needs any digital development, web, mobile app, any type of that, contact me at screamingbox.com. And basically, the projects that we're mostly working on are, again, with Rainmaker helping startups with their base content and content distribution and with  Screaming Box helping SMBs solve business challenges by using some of the web and mobile app technologies that are out there.

[42:56] I'm also doing a lot with AI and look forward to working with anybody on AI and those type of technologies. What do you mean working with them on AI, like implementing a content marketing program that utilizes AI or doing something different? Well, there's that. We also have a great AI team. So if anybody needed any AI platform built or any tools, we can do that as well. Okay. Sounds cool. Thank you so much, Dave. This is a great conversation. Well, Kira, thank you so much for having me and look forward to any conversations we have in the future. Sure. Awesome.