DA: 03:17
Hey Kristen, thanks so much for joining me today on the SaaS breakthrough podcast. To say I'm excited is an understatement. I can't wait to get in this conversation with you today. Talk about Wistia, what you guys are doing with content marketing. But first off, how are you doing today?
KB: 03:33
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on the show, David.
DA: 03:36
Yeah, it's honestly such a pleasure. Something we're really excited for and, lots to learn today. But for those of our listeners who don't know about you guys yet, haven't heard of Wistia, why don't we take a step back and just kind of go through what Wistia is all about, when it was founded, who the customers are, and what you guys are doing uniquely in the marketplace right now.
KB: 03:57
Absolutely. So Wistia is a software company. We help businesses turn video viewers into brand advocates with an array of software products from video hosting all the way into developing you know a sleek and beautiful viewer audience for your videos, particularly your longer form content and shows. So Wistia was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts about, let's say, 13 years ago and now we help more than half a million businesses across 50 countries solve different problems with videos. So we have a variety of different industries that we touch on. Nothing that's a particular industry hot spot, but we really focus on small to medium size customers and we found the sweet spot between people who have between 50 and 300 employees.
DA: 04:48
Wow. Yeah, that's super helpful. And I honestly remember when you guys were first coming out and video marketing was very early on then and YouTube was kind of the big hitter and you guys coming out had a lot of work on differentiation to get through to kinda, I think caught to the noise to demonstrate why there needs to be like a business video marketing platform. But over the years you guys have been absolutely fantastic at doing that. I think with brand and content marketing stuff we'll talk about today. But I guess just for reference, when did you actually join the team?
KB: 05:19
Yeah, so I joined the team in June of 2017 so just about two and a half years ago. And I actually joined the team as a product manager for a new product that we launched just after I started called Soapbox, which is a tool that you can use to help make a video of both your webcam and your screen at the same time. So joined the launch a new product team, which is really exciting. Wistia only had, you know, their legacy video hosting software before that. And so it was a really fun time to join and to build out this second product approach and eventually I kind of ended up transitioning to the marketing team.
DA: 05:57
What was it in that kind of set you into the marketing team? Was it part of that launch that got you excited or was there an opening in the company?
KB: 06:04
Yes. So what happened, you know, if you working on a small team, you know that resources are tight. And how we work set up with Soapbox particularly is that we have this dedicated product resources, dedicated engineers and a product designer. But we didn't have any dedicated marketing resources for Soapbox at the time. So the marketing team, who you know, we are about a hundred people and the marketing team is about 10 people. They went from doing everything for one product to trying to do everything for two products. Right. And so that was a challenge in and of itself. So after about a year and a half of just doing or about a year of doing product management, I found myself in a non traditional product manager role where, not only was I helping to prioritize the work of the engineers, but also doing a lot to tell the story of the product and figure out how we can position it in the marketing and the market.
KB: 06:58
So that kind of led to me transitioning to more of a product marketing and brand marketing role for Soapbox, specifically building out content for a new audience, a different audience. Historically Wistia had really been reaching marketers and with Soapbox we had this opportunity to also reach sales people who are using video to, to make more personal connections with their prospects and customers. So I did a lot with building out that content strategy for Soapbox. And then in the last six months have actually transitioned to a role where I'm, as we brought in the marketing team out, doing more with production of our shows, particularly with Brandwagon, which I know we'll get into.
DA: 07:39
Yeah, no, that's a fantastic kind of journey. So you had a lot of that. It sounds like you had a lot of that, that kind of management background first coming in and you knew kind of how to do that stuff and then been able to bring some amazing marketing chops into that role and yeah, that's definitely started talking about kind of the evolution of the Wistia brand over the past few years. I think that you guys have always done brand really well. You knew your audience, you knew who you were talking to. Like you said, the marketing marketers in the marketplace are always the hardest people to get the attention of. You know, you have to do something that stands out. I think you guys have done a really good job of that. Recently you guys produced a Webby award winning documentary, One Ten One Hundred watched it, loved it, shared around our team.
DA: 08:22
We're all like, wow, that was fantastic. And now you guys are doing, like you said, Brandwagon, which is you're on the production team there. With your, with your CEO, Chris Savage, you guys do everything in-house, everything you've done. Obviously One Ten One Hundred you worked with Sandwich video, but you guys come up with these creative concepts. You come up with your brand, you come up with the content marketing initiatives. What I would love to do is just like get a deep dive on this stuff. I think a lot of us in the SaaS marketplace on the outside look at you guys sometimes in all like, wow, you guys, everything you do, you knocked it out of the park. But I know that on the inside of the company there's a lot that you're probably doing in the process, setting it up from ideation to creation, launching it, the ongoing promotion. And I think what you guys do really, really well is, and I saw this in a recent episode of Brandwagon with ProfitWell is that you guys bring in entertainment and story along with information and content. So this is a big question, but I guess take us through kind of the conceptual process of coming up with Brandwagon, how you come up with those ideas, what you're looking for when you're going into an initiative like this.
KB: 09:28
Yeah. Well Brandwagon, in order to talk about Brandwagon I have to start by talking a little bit more about One Ten One Hundred so One Ten One Hundred is a three part docu series that really focused on making video at three different price points. And as you mentioned, we worked very closely with Sandwich video out in LA to produce ads for Soapbox, at three different price points for $1,000 $10,000 a $100,000 dollars. And this was something that we'd never done before. And the brains behind it where our creative director, Dan Mills and our head of production, Chris Levine, who been building out the video program at Wistia for a nearly a decade at this point in time. And they were really interested in taking video to another level and kind of pursuing a brand risk for us. Right? So how we thought about One Ten One Hundred was like what if we could make this and prove to people who are always saying, Hey, I don't have a budget and that's why I'm not doing video and say to them, you know why you don't need the budget to have a creative video. You can do it in all of these different ways. And that has been kind of a core tenant of a lot of the content that we've been putting out over the past 13 years is how can you do it yourself? How can you, you know, start building a video focused culture regardless of a budget. Right? And so that was really the embodiment.
DA: 10:46
You've kind of always taken that, that pain point that people have when they, when they say it, you're hearing that painful. Now we're going to base content based on that.
KB: 10:56
Exactly. So it was very close to the Wistia brand to do a show that was, or a series that was really focused on creativity. Kind of this scrappiness, this idea of how you make a budget work. And if you watch One Ten One Hundred we're breaking down even to the point of what gear we use, what team was involved, how many people you need. The $1,000 ad was shot on an iPhone, right? And so that gave us this platform that we hadn't thought about before to not only make it brilliant and beautiful, you know, cinematic quality asset for ourselves. But then the blog content we were able to build on top of that campaign was phenomenal. Right? So we had, we were able to write stories about, how the ads actually performed, right? Because they gave us Sandwich video, gave us three different ads that we ran head to head, to see which one was to perform the best. And then we also had, you know, the behind the scenes features that we shot this whole ad on an iPhone, what does that look like? What does it take, how do you increase or how can you do a better job of making videos on an iPhone. And so from doing all of that and seeing the success from One Ten One Hundred, we were able to take a risk again with Brandwagon and we were able to learn a lot, which informed kind of where we are now in terms of our promised offering and a lot of what we're talking to different people on the space about brand affinity marketing.
KB: 12:24
So I think you know that whole inception really came from our creative leadership, particularly Jan and Chris Levine. And then we had Chris and Brendan on board as well. And so that was the start of all of these efforts here at Wistia. And I think the takeaway for other folks is if you have a perspective on some content that fields adjacent to the blog posts and things that you're already doing, think about how you can really use a longer form series as a platform to tell that message to a broader audience. And then from there you can learn a lot, right? You can learn a lot. And you can take more risks down the line. So that's kind of what the inception of One Ten One Hundred looked like. And then the creation and the creative development process from there to now has changed just based on what you've learned. But I think it's really important for people to know that you just have to put something out there and then you'll learn from that. And what you learn will inform what your next endeavor can be.
DA: 13:31
So that's a great answer. And I think, you know, the primary thing that you're saying is that you learned a ton from One Ten One Hundred the creative direction of going into that show and that, that should be, the biggest lesson for other marketers is just start these series, these shows. What did you guys specifically take away for when you sat down with Brandwagon to say, Hey, we need to set up the show like this? We want to balance and creativity, storytelling and informational part of an interview series because a lot of B2B SaaS companies are just coming into like, Hey, let's do an interview series. Hey, we're on one right now, right? This is what this podcast is. And I look at you guys how you guys set yours up? And I'm like, Oh my God, this is brilliant. How do you guys sit down and you're taking from your past blog posts and taking from One Ten to One Hundred that new creative direction to say this is what we need to accomplish now?
KB: 14:18
Yeah. So there are a couple of things that were happening across the company earlier this year. We had, we had already started doing a lot of research on brand affinity marketing and how many people around, you know, a variety of industries had started to invest in longer form content. And we thought that that was the topic that we wanted to address is how people are starting to build their brands differently. And so we kinda had the topic or the theme of the show in mind from the onset and then we started to think about what format that could come across as, as powerful as possible. The most powerful way that could come across. Right? And so we knew that we wanted Chris Savage, our CEO involved because the CEO is the face of your company, right? And that is often the person that speaks with the most authority about a perspective that your company might have.
KB: 15:11
So if you have a CEO that's good on camera and Chris is very charismatic, he's very good on camera and it's willing to do it, I would say go after it. Right? And so we had this idea, let's talk about brand marketing. Let's talk about how there are trends that are happening in the marketplace that are different and the how, how can we have this conversation with a broader group of people in a way that is entertaining. And so Brandwagon was kind of born from that and so again, our creative director, brand creative director, Dan Mills had this idea, let's make a talk show for marketers and it'll be hosted by Chris. And so we said, okay, cool, awesome, we can do that. And then kind of through a series of brainstorms internally, they landed on this idea that one of the main things with brand is if your brand was a car, what would it be?
KB: 16:01
That is like a textbook example of something that people are doing in marketing to think about all of the features and assets of their brand is put it in terms of something else. Like A car, what would it smell like? What would it taste like? What would it sound like if it was music? And so we thought that it would be a really poetic way to think about brand if we're thinking about in terms of a car. And so Brandwagon was kind of born out of that specifically when we got into the nuts and bolts. What exactly is going to be the balance of this show, was a process that Dan Mills and I went through together in terms of, okay, we have this concept with the talk show, we have this idea that there's a car involved broadly, but how do we actually put it all together? We really sat down and we started to unpack like, okay, we're going to have interviews, but what else are we going to have? Well, we're going to have this segment about the Brandwagon, but is that enough security to show all the way through? We're going to have to need other segments too. And we basically just thought about the tonight show. We thought about other interview podcasts and shows that we like, like How I Built This. And we tried to take the best of those worlds when we thought about Brandwagon. So I, take a tip away from that, which is what are the formats that you're seeing out in the space that you think might be compelling to your audience? And once you have a topic or theme you want to talk about and tackle, how can you use that format as a way, as a method to really deliver that information. And so good classic talk show, Tonight Show is kind of what we took and we tried to infuse it with a lot of this. We're talking to B2B marketers at different companies. We have a very clear understanding of our audience because that's who we've sold to for many years. Right? That's who we are making content for or more broadly. And so that's kind of how Brandwagon was born.
DA: 17:52
I love that. Wow, that's such a great, a great journey. Great story. And I definitely see what you were going for the Tonight show. You absolutely have that, that kind of flavor and flair and fun involved in the show and I love it. When you sat down with the show as well, are you guys looking at specific KPIs? Like what's the takeaway that you're trying to, to build from the marketing aspect itself? Are you just trying to gather new impressions, new leads? Is it actually trying to drive new customers? What's the key there?
KB: 18:24
So in order to talk about the metrics that we're looking at for Brandwagon, I have to kind of back up to One Ten One Hundred. So before one One Ten One Hundred most of the brand marketing that we we've been doing had been really thinking about driving awareness. So kind of your stereotypical ad campaigns that we're running, we spent a lot of money on ads and with One Ten One Hundred, we were able to kind of take some of the budget that we would have otherwise spent on advertising and make this longer form docu series. Right? And the result of that was that you saw movement in metrics that we had never really thought about to learning with ads. So before with ads you're really thinking about awareness. So just viewers, just maybe website visits alone, things that are just growing awareness of your brand, of your company and products, right?
KB: 19:15
So with brand affinity marketing metrics that we're thinking about for One Ten One Hundred it was really more focused on time spent with the brand, the level of engagement, whether or not people who watched the first episode also watched the second episode and whether or not people were willing to subscribe. So those things were totally different metrics than we were thinking about. Did people just see our name out there? Right. And so we took that and that success of One Ten One Hundred where we actually got a ton of word of mouth about, we were able to mobilize the people that saw it, I felt like we made some level on a, on a small scale, some level of cultural impact among the world of you know, SaaS marketers, by releasing this type of content. And even when I think about the fact that we won this Webby, part of, you know, one of the Webby that we won was a people's choice.
KB: 20:10
So we're going up against, we're a hundred person company who's going up against Lyft and Uber and Lego in our category for people's choice, for branded content. And we're able to actually get more people to vote for us than they are. And I think that that's really powerful, right? Because if people who worked at Uber alone or worked for Uber alone just voted for that, then we would have been completely blown away. Right? But it's the fact that people who know about us also care about us and that's what matters. And so we just thought that One Ten One Hundred was a wild success. And we brought some of those metrics into how we think about Brandwagon. So we're looking at viewership as a whole. We're looking at whether or not people are subscribing. We we're looking at how many people who have seen the trailer actually watched the first episode. And all of this kind of rolls into time spent with brand because again, we really believe that if people know and love you, then they're going to be the better customer for you down the road, even if they're not ready to buy now. So that's really the investment that we've made and that's how we measure our success.
DA: 21:24
Would you say that brand affinity is really the basis of time spent with brand? It's not a direct sale, it's not something that you're looking to see like maybe direct ROI, but it's really about getting people to know, like and trust your brand?
KB: 21:39
I agree with that. I would also say that there's a difference between, you know we're talking a lot about brand affinity and there's a difference between doing brand affinity marketing and doing performance marketing and we all have to do both and I think you know you said that you (inaudible) Change the Channel, but one thing that really stuck with me is Ben Goldman who leads the film division at Invision a software company. He talked about how it's important for SaaS marketers to think about content that is your landmark content that really sits above the rest of what you're doing on a daily basis. And that is what One Ten One Hundred enabled for us. And that's also I think what Brandwagon is for us as well. It's a totally different format, right? It's a totally different approach to doing this type of content, but it brings people are going to see that, that never really see the door to our building. Right. When you see, when you see the empire state building from afar, you see it. I've never walked into it. I've seen it a thousand times. I know about it. Right, and so I think that there's an awareness that comes when you do brand affinity marketing, but if I'm more likely to walk in the door because I've seen it, I think that that's really what the crux out of it is like you know about it, but you also are interested in, you're actually going to take a step to say that you support this, whether that's sharing it with your friends or making a referral to our product. For someone who's like, Oh, I've been thinking about putting videos on my website. Maybe you've never been a Wistia customer, but you saw One Ten One Hundred and you're like, okay, I want you to do Wistia because I want you to use Wistia because these people obviously care about creativity and simplicity and all these other things that will ensure that you have the best products. Right? So I think that it's a way for a lot of companies to lead if they actually think about people caring instead of just converting.
DA: 23:35
Well said. No, that was fantastic. And I think it's, I mean you guys definitely do this in such a great way, kind of bringing that brand affinity and that creativity forward. You have really creative people at the company, for us, when I listen to Change the Channel, I took so much away from it. And I was like, well, you know, we have our podcast, this podcast you are on right now. I'm like, that was a long term kind of content marketing play that we made a year and a half ago. But I really started to think more about the brand affinity aspect of things. And if we could do a show around video and we had a video show about four years ago called inside Demio and it was like the process of building out Demio our company, was all live on YouTube. And we're trying to go through and start brainstorming on new ideas that we could do that could bring people into the brand. But our biggest like kind of hurdle was just figuring out like what would the show be about to attract our target customer? What could we accurately do well. Obviously B2B can be sometimes a quote unquote boring space, you know, not too much exciting things to talk about. What advice would you give for people who are sitting down and brainstorming? What can we put our bet on for brand affinity for our company?
KB: 24:42
Yeah, I mean I would think about it in a couple of ways from a topics perspective and a theme perspective. I think you can start at the very top of your funnel, right? If you have an understanding of your brand and then you have, you know, whatever your standard content marketing approach is now, you've probably had a few topics that you think are interesting for people who are in your funnel. I think that you can start what, Patrick Campbell has said this to me of like bottom of the top of the funnel or I'm sorry. Yeah, the top yes. Like these, these interests that you already have validated among your audience. Right? So for us, an example of this would be we wrote a blog post, one of our top performance blog posts was about shooting video on an iPhone, right? We don't sell software that is particularly, is that an, is that an app for your iPhone to shoot videos? Right? But we have a place for you to put the videos if you shoot them over your iPhone, right? So this is in the top of the funnel content approach. If we were to take a step away from that and say, okay, well I can make content about making videos, what's a more creative expression of, of content about making videos because that's what people expect from us. Right? And so I think there's ways to think about this of like what is the content that is already performing for me on my blog and how can I just take a step a little bit further away from that content that might be interesting to this audience because it's familiar enough to me.
KB: 26:25
I don't feel like I'm out here starting to make a show for Wistia about fashion or something totally random. Right. That's not relevant to people who are marketers, but I have seen that I've maybe can kind of dip my toe into these types of conversations or I can establish some level of credibility in the space. So I think that that is a good starting point of like what are all the topics that you're covering in your blog? How can you be maybe one step removed from that? A company I think that has done this really well it's MailChimp from the standpoint of they've made software that helps people with marketing, with email marketing, right in particular, but they've expanded their product suite beyond just email now. But at the core of what all of their content is, is about the experience of being a small business leader or an entrepreneur, right? And so just by expanding in that direction and saying we need to make content that resonates with small business leaders and entrepreneurs, that opens the door to a host of challenges that they might be facing. Right? And that's what's really reflected in their longer form series and podcast and everything that they have on MailChimp presents, right? Is this tidbit of this insight that the people that we are targeting have other challenges that we can speak to. I think that that's enough to really start getting started.
DA: 27:56
I love it. And for those of us who are kind of just kind of putting together our plan for brand affinity marketing, our different video shows, maybe channels we'll build out on Wistia. What are the top things that you guys have taken away so far from Brandwagon that you'll be taking with you into maybe your next show or your next production? Are there little lessons you've kind of found along the way? Maybe things that haven't gone perfect that you're taking away from?
KB: 28:17
Absolutely. So I have so many things on this point, but to start, I would say to start, I would say, that we at Wistia, you know, we released the brand affinity marketing playbook and that playbook is at (inaudible) is a collection of a lot of the insights that we've gotten from our own show production as well as the people that we've talked to who have also made shows in this space. So I think that that is a fantastic place for people to start. It really walks you through how you think about the audience from a niche perspective, how you think about the format of shows, how you think about distribution and how you think about really growing brand affinity through this longer form content. So I would say that that's a very tactical thing that people could look at. Kind of as a workbook to take this approach, on a, on a kind of scale down level for us I think that there are a few things and they probably line up with those areas that we touch on in the playbook. And the first one is, the first one is about knowing your audience and how you want to engage with them. So if you set a clear intention about the impact that you want this content to have on your audience, that that is what you need to do. You need to set a clear intention for the impact and for us what we wanted to do for Brandwagon was both inform and educate on trends that are happening in the space of brand marketing. But we also wanted to lead by example in terms of something that was both aspirational yet attainable. So One Ten One Hundred again, we clearly spent at least $111,000 to make that and we sent a video team to LA for the better part of a month to do it.
KB: 30:11
That is maybe not feasible for a lot of our customers. However, with Brandwagon, we had this opportunity to say we built a studio inside of our office. We shot all of this inside the walls of our office with people who are our coworkers. Right? And so that was a very clear intention that we had from the start. And we wanted the people to leave with a sense of empowerment, not only because the message that was communicated, but also because the show itself is a way to empower and inspire others to do this type of marketing. So I'd say that's the first thing is be very intentional about the impact.
KB: 30:51
The second thing I would say it's like do not discount, how important a format would be to scaling it at your company. So for us, this format, again of doing it and talk, show, shooting it, shooting interviews separate from when we shoot the moments that Chris is at the desk and kind of giving the recap of the episode and that sort of thing. We shoot that separately from the segments where they're out actually building the Brandwagon. That is more of a achievable production approach for us then say it's the same people shooting all of those different segments. Right. And so you have to pick a format that's gonna work for you. I, again, we talked about this a little bit, about when your show or your podcast or live interviews, you probably know better than I do, how much effort it takes to book people. And unless you're doing that in a very full time way, it can be very resource intensive. So don't just think you can hop into an interview style show, without, you know, really putting some resources behind it. My full time job for the month of June was trying to line up the guests. We have 10 guests. I send way more than 10 emails, right?
DA: 32:09
I know it, I know it.
KB: 32:13
Yes. So prepping the guests, thinking about that, thinking that that's actually someone's full time job to both do guests recruitment. Guest prep and find the story for the interview that you want your host to have. That is a lot of work. So I would think very intentionally about that. And then the third thing I would say is think about the way that you want to release the show and the way that you want to engage your audience in a longer timeline. So for us, we got to experiment with One Ten One Hundred. We released it all at the same time, on one day in October of last year. And that, we were completely done with it when we released it. Right? So that was one approach. With Brandwagon, we are in production every single week for the next episode of Brandwagon.
KB: 33:03
You may not have the staff that is able to do that. But you know, we have our production team shooting segments, editing it, sound mixing, color correcting, all of those things from a production standpoint. And then we also have our marketing team who is really focused on distributing as in a seamless way. So, you know, prepping copy for the email, doing all the promotional assets. I'm reaching out to the partners to inform them that their appearance on Brandwagon is happening next week. Right? We have another person that's pulling the audio and publishing the podcast each week as well. So that ongoing weekly production cycle is much different than when we did all of it for One Ten One Hundred and then released it all at once. Right? So be very intentional about what your release strategy is and what the expectations are of your audience for when to expect the next episode to come out or if it's all right there when you launch.
DA: 34:01
And you definitely have to stay consistent on that schedule. And that's something that we definitely learned is that you're kind of setting expectations with that show of what to expect. And when you go into these initiatives, I think, you know, for a lot of people that are just getting started, it can be overwhelming to think of, but I don't know about you guys, but from my own experience it was just, you know, let's get through the first, you know, 10 15 and then reevaluate. But if it's going well, we just doubled down and we keep going. And if you guys were to double down and you guys are doubling down obviously on brand affinity and video marketing, would you say that should be doubling down on more unique pieces of content? So a new show or it should be just promotion of the show you already doing. So are you guys going deeper on Brandwagon or are you guys going to expand to different shows to get a wider maybe audience base?
KB: 34:49
I think we've done it both ways and it really just depends on your team and what you're, what you think is resonating with your audience. So for us, we made One Ten One Hundred, released it at all in October of last year. We promoted One Ten One Hundred for nine months. Right. We ran ads on and off. Basically up until the time that we started running the trailer and ads for Brandwagon, that was, you know, we did kind of One Ten One Hundred, but it had a very long tail. Right. And then we started promoting Brandwagon. One Ten One Hundred there's no, there's the story has been told. I think that Brandwagon is definitely something that we are considering continuing continuing to do. But we are also in production for three other shows right now. That just haven't been released yet. So we will have more shows coming out before the end of the year and then we have the opportunity at any point in time to kind of relaunch Brandwagon through a new season, which I think is again, the beauty of doing podcasts and shows, right? Like you can, if you do them in a certain way where there's not a narrative that connects throughout the whole thing, you can pick up and start again at any point in time.
KB: 36:09
I think to your point, because people have an expectation of when a new episode will come out, you have to be conscious of saying like, this is the last one for a while. Are we going to take a break? Or we're going to come back from break just to kind of meet people's expectations. But there's also ways to fill in the blanks with, you know, other content around this area. Whether that's behind the scenes photos or footage or, if you release the segments from a show kind of separately, there are lots of different ways where you can keep people engaged in the content without actually making new episodes. So we're kind of doing it in a bunch of different ways with Wistia there's new shows. There's revisiting of the content that we've already made as well.
DA: 36:53
Man, you guys are so busy. It sounds like it's so exciting that's so much creativity. Yeah. Yeah. This is a good word for it. And I guess kind of wrapping up the final quarter of the year, coming in the last two months, what are you guys most excited for releasing the new shows? Or do you guys have, you know, new opportunities that you're excited for?
KB: 37:10 Yeah. Releasing more shows, wrapping up Brandwagon, our last episode is going to go out October 29th, I believe is when it's scheduled. It features. Brian Halligan from HubSpot, which was awesome. We are excited to see kind of what's next for Brandwagon. And that's the beauty of this kind of content is you don't feel weird talking about it a year later or six, six months later, right? Compared to if you make a blog post that could be maybe you know, trends have changed. But yeah, I'm excited for new shows. We're also excited to (inaudible) and empower other people to make this feature of their content, right? So our first step in doing that, it's really the brand affinity marketing playbook. As you mentioned before, we are doing kind of Q&A's and live events throughout the rest of the year as well that people can tune into. We really just want to make sure that other people have the resources and heard kind of this story and our experience as a way to empower them to make the type of content. Because we do think that this is the best way to build brand affinity is through this longer form content and that brand affinity is the best way to grow your business. So I'm excited to talk more about that throughout the year. That's what our product is kind of reflecting as well. And I think that that's really what's going to carry us through the end of Q4.
DA: 38:32
You've gotten us excited about it and I think you've done a great job of delivering the message, talking about brand affinity and I think a lot of other SaaS companies are thinking the same thing. So like I said before, we're kind of going through our thought processes of like, how can we do this and do this really well too in our own style and our own brand. But congratulations to you guys. You guys are just such an amazing company, creative, smart, and you're always are doing, you know, great marketing initiatives. So we all appreciate seeing that kind of helps us to, push harder in doing our own creative SaaS marketing initiatives and stuff like that. So we appreciate it. But I want to do now for the sake of time is jump over to the lightning round questions I have, quick questions I have for you. You can answer with the first best thought that comes to mind. You want to get started?
KB: 39:14
Yeah, let's do it.
DA: 39:16
All right, let's do this thing. What advice do you have for early stage SaaS companies starting marketing today?
KB: 39:24
Well that's easy for me and that's in brand affinity marketing, hire a producer. Think about your brand. Don't wait until, don't rely on your product alone. I think that that is the way that a lot of people have thought about leadership and like I can just build the best product. The reality of it is there are more and more competitors and brand is, it is the best way to differentiate. So investing in brand marketing and in really start thinking about how you can build brand affinity from the start.
DA: 39:52
That was an amazing quote. Definitely gonna save that thing. That was awesome. What skill do you think is vital for marketing teams to improve and build on today?
KB: 40:01
I think storytelling, it's, it's writing at the end of, at the end of the day, all of the content that we have relies on writing and I think we have to be able to really pull out what compelling narratives are to our audience. And so I think that that is the basis for a lot of the shows that are coming out now. It's just really great writing and thinking about, Hey, what, what do people want to hear about? What is the story I can tell people that are gonna make that is gonna add value to their lives or bring them some level of delight and joy. So I think that it's really important for us to get good at storytelling.
DA: 40:35
Agreed. 100%. I love that. What about a best educational resource you'd recommend for learning about marketing video content or brand affinity?
KB: 40:44
I'd have to say the brand affinity marketing playbook. I know that sounds like a pitch, but that is definitely a resource that I think is really helpful as people start to think about how they maybe could start a show or a podcast.
DA: 41:02
Yeah. And we'll link to that in our show notes and resources as well. I went, started going through it and it was super well done. I love the video pieces like strewn throughout. It's so awesome. What about a favorite tool you can't live without?
KB: 41:15
Oh, this is so hard. Oh no. I don't want to sound, I feel like it's, I'm trying to say my iPhone. I could probably live without it. Oh, I, Oh man. I thought of a corkscrew when someone has asked me that before because I really do think it's the best way to open wine.
DA: 41:37
I agree with that. I like that one. Yeah. I'm all about the corkscrew.
KB: 41:43
I'm just saying how else are you going to open a bottle of wine, it's dangerous.
DA: 41:46
I had to use a nail and a nail and a wrench one time, and it was not a good experience.
KB: 41:51
I too have done that. It's not a good experience.
DA: 41:54
You curse all the way. That's a good one. We'll take that tool. We'll take that tool. What about a brand business or a team that you admire today?
KB: 42:02
Oh, you know, I actually thought about this yesterday. I really admire what Reese Witherspoon is doing on Hello Sunshine, and that's the media company that she launched, I think maybe a year, maybe two years ago. And I say this because we have been thinking more and more at Wistia about inspiration that SaaS marketers can take from a media company. And I think that she just does a really great job of creating content that is very clearly targeted towards a specific audience. And it's multifaceted. So there's books, there's like the (inaudible) club, there's podcasts, she does short form video series and she's also executive producing movies themselves. Right? And so I think that that's a great example of this multifaceted approach to content that media companies are doing now even, you know, not traditional media companies like broadcasting companies like NBC, right? But just even an out of the box media company that is really thoughtful about the content they put out in the space. And I think that as a marketer we can take a lot oh, away from that.
DA: 43:11
I have not heard of that one, but we'll definitely link to that in the show notes resources as well. I think it's very interesting to hear that and hear what you guys are looking at as far as your inspiration. All of us are looking to you guys. You guys are finding it from different media companies and stuff like that, so fantastic. I will definitely take a look at what she's doing over there and Kristen, what I want to do is I just want to thank you so much for jumping on this show. You've been incredible. The work you guys are doing over there has been incredible, so just know that the entire SaaS community applauds you guys and just thanks you guys for doing such great work.
KB: 43:41
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
DA: 43:44
Yes, it was such a pleasure and we will talk to you soon Kristen and thank you again.
KB: 43:48
I'm looking forward to your show.
DA: 43:51
Well thank you. Thank you. I hope it comes out this year. We're not sure on the timelines but we'll definitely be playing with it and you know, hopefully we'll have that channel up soon. We've been using you guys for at least six, seven years, so hopefully channels will be the next thing for us. All right. Thanks Kristen, thank you so much.
KB: 44:08
Thanks David.
KB: 44:10
Wow, what an incredible episode. Thanks so much for listening and joining me and Kristen on this amazing journey, kind of going through what Wistia is doing, the evolution there and why they're doubling down on brand affinity so much and we're starting on our own journey. Trying to figure out what that is for us here at Demio. Big shout out to Kristen and the entire team. You guys are amazing. Thanks for doing so much for us in SaaS. (...)
About Kristen Bryant
