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Mark Evans: The digital marketing landscape is always changing. There are new channels, tools, and approaches. But it feels like we've entered unchartered territory for digital marketing amid a global economic slowdown. The rising tide that lifted many, if not all ships, has disappeared, and there is increasing pressure on digital marketers to perform and do marketing that converts. I couldn't think of a better person to offer insight and perspective about digital marketing than Andy Crestodina, who has been operating in the digital world since 2000.
Andy is the cofounder and chief marketing officer with Orbit Studios, which offers web design, development, digital strategy, and website optimization. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Andy. Thank you for
Andy Crestodina: having me, Mark. I'm excited to be here.
Mark Evans: There are many, many topics to discuss. Let's start by looking at the state of the b to b content marketing landscape at a time when it seems there's so much content being published. My take is marketers are struggling to figure out what's working, so many of them are leaning heavily into content to attract and engage prospects. What's your take on the landscape these days?
Andy Crestodina: There's more content and more competition, but that's such an oversimplification that we should drill down and see really where that where that impacts us. At the top of the funnel for general topics, content promoted in social and search, insanely competitive. Very difficult, very crowded, very noisy. Farther down the funnel for people that have selected a specific niche for topics that solve for a very specific use case, for articles that are sort of you know, there's some blue ocean out there still. Lots of it.
You know, people that go deeper into things that are just just more relevant to a smaller group are still finding great results, especially when they promote that content in communities or when they use kind of an ABM, account based marketing approach, or when that it's just sales marketing alignment. There's that makes competition sort of irrelevant because when you have content that the sales team can use to follow-up with their prospects, it's magical. It's both much, much more competitive, but with, still huge opportunities for people that are, very strategically focused.
Mark Evans: If you're a content marketer or the VP of marketing and you recognize that content is the way to attract and engage prospects, what are the best practices or the fundamentals when it comes to putting together a content strategy? Content for the sake of content, a lot of companies do that simply just to get content out there. But if you're gonna do it right, if you're gonna create content that aligns with what your target audiences want, where do you start?
Andy Crestodina: Well, that initial content marketing mission statement or the content strategy foundation is step zero. And when you do that well, you are just far less likely to produce content for its own sake because you're thinking about the audience. So when you niche down to a specific group, into specific industries, specific geography, specific job title, you're just much, much more likely to make something that's meaningful to your prospect or to a buyer. When you start with, like, a keyword first strategy or a real general, like, let's focus on Pinterest or some you know, start with a network or start with a a big topic, you're just far less likely to connect. So, start with the audience.
It should be audience focused. Hopefully, we've all kind of have a sense for that. And then in the topics, let's get really specific about which what is what are the true information needs of our audience? What are the things that they have to read or experience or watch or view or hear before they'll take action? What builds confidence the best with your audience?
That's another huge shortcut. And then finally, just there's certain formats that are intrinsically differentiated. Original research. If you produce original research, you just made all of your competitors irrelevant because you made a new original stat that made your site, your company, the primary source for new information, or thought leadership, which I define as strong opinion or perspective, strong POV. What do you believe that most people think is unlikely, or what's the real problem?
Like, what what can you say that's really counter to the common narrative automatically differentiated? Those aren't easier formats to do, but they're possible for anybody. It takes a little more planning and forethought and sometimes a little more just just courage and guts.
Mark Evans: It's interesting. I read a lot of the Orbit content. Obviously, as a digital marketer, it talks to me. It speaks to some of the questions that I have or some of the things that I'm interested in. So can you walk me through the content strategy that you use internally to create content that aligns with what your target audience audiences wanna read?
If I
Andy Crestodina: were starting from scratch now, I'm not sure that I would have this content strategy. Our content program is, fifteen years old. So the the initial plan was to produce something that would keep the attention and make us top of mind for marketing decision makers on the day they need a website. We're doing websites and a new website, like, once every four years. So how do I stay top of mind?
Web development topics are not gonna keep people's attention for four years. So I have to talk about marketing more generally. I had no experience in advertising because we've never done that. I've never done any paid marketing. So it had to be something that we knew and we're working and kind of could use ourselves as case studies.
So it became a a blog about content marketing analytics and web design, really focusing a lot on the content strategy and SEO side, and just built it up. Now the formats we chose were also specific to us and do also can kind of help you find a blue ocean and make others irrelevant by doing events. From the very beginning, we had a monthly in house event right over there in that conference room. That helped us take, you know, very high touch, very, connected to certain people. And that room would fill up once a month with 30 people.
Let's say 10 were friends, 10 were prospects, 10 were random people, sometimes competitors, sometimes prospects, and and clients. So that made a big difference. As it evolved, we put a bunch of the articles together into a book, which made a great leave behind powerful tools, sales and marketing alignment. So that content strategy, I'm not sure. Then also original research we've been doing for, like, ten years makes a huge, huge difference.
More recently on COVID, kind of doubled down on video because we had fewer live events. And then also always did a bunch of accepted invitations to present anywhere, tiny classes, big conferences, just say yes to all things. Today, if I were doing that again starting today, I would probably exclude some of those topics and just make it, like, more of an SEO and analytics blog or maybe a content strategy blog. Because I think it's a little bit late to do to be a the later it gets, the harder it is to be a generalist. Also, would have started account based marketing much sooner, producing industry specific things for certain audiences.
And I probably would have done these days, I would maybe make most of at least half of my articles original research, even if it meant have reduced frequency. It's just so much more effective. I just don't have the resources to do it all the time. If I were starting now, I'd maybe just create more of these sort of annual reports, things that are relevant to a the whole in a the entire category and grow our backlink profile and keep us top of mind at the same time.
Mark Evans: Bit of a softball question. When it comes to content marketing and your target audiences, how do you know the channels in which they're consuming content? Lots of people, for example, use default use Facebook or LinkedIn or YouTube as their default channels. But when it comes to producing the right content for the right people in the right places, how do you discover where that content is being consumed?
Andy Crestodina: If you if you're inspired to create something on a topic, you can look at that topic and sort of instantly try to deduce if that's gonna work better in search or work in social. The search social difference is an obsession of mine and something that becomes very useful perspective for any content strategist. So if you make a list of all these topics and ask, like, is that going to work better in search or social, the question becomes, is there someone is there demand for that? Is it is it answering your question, is this an article that meets expectations? If yes, probably there's a keyword for it, and it could work in search.
If it's not something that meets expectations but rather is a bit unexpected, that's something that's, like, gonna work in social. So, I'll give you examples. I did an article once about, I asked 27 marketing friends and virtual keynote speakers and YouTubers to send me pictures of their desks. Like, you could see the camera, the microphone. It's, like, super cool behind the scenes.
Zero people are searching for that. There's no demand at all. But it's super visual. It's unexpected. Right?
It sounds like an insider peak. You know? So that that was perfect for social. Another one, best practices for FAQ page design. Wow.
What percentage of people are looking for an FAQ page today? Like designing an FAQ page, very, very few.
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Andy Crestodina: That but if you need that, you need it. And if you search for it, you really want it, That's gonna work better in search than in social. So that's step one. Is this topic meeting expectations, or is this topic unexpected? You've got your search or social split.
Social, your question really was about social. I'm less certain in my recommendations now because sort of even if your audience even if your buyer isn't, you know, searching for tips while they're on Instagram, they're probably on Instagram at some time in their day.
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Andy Crestodina: The classic recommendation of b to c is Instagram and Facebook, and b to b is LinkedIn, and Twitter is both. I'm not as certain anymore. I think if we think about the audience as being a group of people, just humans in their lives, that peep a lot of people use a lot of networks. But, generally, I'm I just find the noise levels to be lower and engagement to be higher in LinkedIn. I can see the conversion rates from visitors to to subscribers is higher from LinkedIn.
But then again, I I know that I'm missing up by not promoting our events better in Facebook and Instagram, so we're gonna we're gonna be pivoting a little bit.
Mark Evans: You mentioned original research, and for many years, Orbit has done an annual survey. The most recent survey suggests that blogging is effective, still effective, but it's not getting easier, and that marketers are still getting value from blogs. Can you provide some highlights of the survey and maybe some of the surprising things that
Andy Crestodina: you discovered? We were all surprised and maybe a little happy, actually, to see that the average length of an article is finally topped out. This arms race to produce ever longer articles is finally curbing a little bit. Some things that I thought were unexpected, there are certain formats that seem to be getting the best results. The collaborative formats, roundups, and interviews are basically influencer marketing collaborations, organic influencer marketing.
Those are those over index on success for bloggers. The really visual formats, of course, bloggers that add more visuals and bloggers that produce more video are more likely to report success. And even though influencer marketing is correlates with success, it's on the decline. Far fewer marketers are doing influencer collaboration than they used to. Not sure why.
Why why fewer bloggers and content marketers are failing to include contributor quotes in articles. That's as easy as it gets. Just include contributor quotes in every article. I think that the long march, you can see content is getting longer. People are publishing less frequently.
Content is getting more visual. People are spending more time on it. So it's just this the big takeaway is it's just this evolution and the ongoing professionalization, I guess, of blogging and content marketing. It's just getting to be a more serious discipline practiced by people who are investing more in it than ever.
Mark Evans: Related question is how you see the role played by blogs amid competition for eyeballs on services like TikTok. You know, what are best practices for companies that wanna leverage blogs to drive marketing and sales? And and how, for example, do you write a blog post that ranks?
Andy Crestodina: Jason Miller says that you know, famous content marketer. Says that the blog, like in the big Lebowski, it's like the rug. It ties the room together. Without having that that one place, your your owned property, your place for publishing digital content. If if you lack that, then what are we doing here?
You know, your entire presence is on another company's website. You're you're making a living completely you're completely married to a social network or YouTube or something like that. I would always emphasize the power of having, your your own owning your content by putting it on your own website, and you get the SEO benefit. Because if anybody links to anything on your website, it proves your domain authority. Higher domain authority means that every page on your website is more likely to rank.
Having a site with lots and lots of links to it means you can target really valuable key phrases. We built a whole business on it. I mean, we have a million and a half visitors a year, generate 900 leads a year, never spend a dollar on advertising. Again, that may change. I'm not sure.
That's step one. Have a have a a place to publish on on your site and, publish original research, collaborate with influencers. Those are the three key ingredients. You should organically attract links from now on. After that, if you wanna write an article that ranks, you should first confirm that you have a chance of ranking for it.
Is the authority of the other pages that rank for the phrase much higher than yours? If so, you probably wanna choose a longer, more specific, less competitive key phrase. That's competition and authority. It's the check. Let's set that aside.
We could talk about that for an hour. Right. Step two is to write an article that is that meets two two criteria. One, it is literally one of the best pages on the Internet for the topic, And I'm not exaggerating. I'm not trying to be cute about it.
I mean that you're writing a page that you are that you believe in sincerely. You've gone in like, you answered all the questions. You addressed all the subtopics. You know, you you covered off on all the bay you know, you supported everything with evidence, and you never missed a chance to add a visual. And you've got contributor quotes in there for every you know, to support your messages or to provide a contrarian view.
And step two, you've indicated relevance. Use a target key use your primary key phrase in the title, the header, and the body text. And in the body text, the semantically related words and phrases. Those are the the other phrases that are suggested when you begin typing the keyword into Google. Those are the questions that are that are the people also ask box questions.
They're the phrases sometimes you can check and see what your competitors are rank are ranking for. Include those phrases in there. The related questions, all of the all the subtopics. That's basically it. Know your authority.
Check competition. Choose a phrase for which you have a chance of ranking. Write a super awesome piece that you would stand behind completely and can defend as, being one of the best pages on the web for the topic. It means it's gonna be probably a 2,000 plus word article. That's typical.
And then finally, indicate relevance. That's there's no trick to it. Just indicate relevance. If you do all those things, you've got a 80% chance of ranking right out of the gate. If you don't, it's not over.
Go back and keep improving it. Keep updating it. Keep indicating relevance. Keep adding data. Keep linking to it from other things.
That's basically SEO in the three minute version.
Mark Evans: Alright. Everything you need to know about SEO and ranking on a blog post that you were free to ask, and now you get all the answers. Related to that is, obviously, you know, you spend a lot of time focused on SEO analytics. Google has been warning us for months that, GA four is coming. One, can you explain, in layman's terms, the big difference differences between, like, normal GA and and GA four?
And what is gonna be the impact on search engine optimization?
Andy Crestodina: The so called data model is different. So we're universal, we call it, I guess. Universal analytics, the normal the the current version is a is based on page views, and a page loads and JavaScript gets triggered and it's tracking views of pages. Event tracking is something we did separately to track other things that weren't normally like new pages loading. The new version of analytics is 100% based on events.
Everything is an is an event. So rather than, like, landing page, you know, views, you're tracking session start. Everything so everything kind of has a slightly different name.
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Andy Crestodina: You know, the number of session start events is like your number of landing page visits. It's like, hey. You were really good at Italian. Now you're gonna learn Portuguese. Everything is sort of a little bit different.
It's like learning a slightly different language. It's also one a tool where instead of having, you know, account properties and views, there are no more views. We don't customize it at the level of the view. It's just its own each each thing is just its own property. And each report I think there's only, like, 10 report.
Each report, you sort of have to build and set up. So changing the order of the columns or adding comparisons or adding filters or you know, there's just a lot of little things that you're gonna do inside the report to get to the insight that you need. It's a bit of, like, a build it as you go doing your analysis. It's a bit of understanding how it's tracking things. It's a bit of knowing when to use a report and when to use a so called exploration.
We're all gonna be fine. You're gonna get there. Just start using it. And don't just use it. Don't just click around or it could be frustrating.
Go to find an answer to a question. This morning, someone sent me a testimonial. I'm thrilled by that. Thank you. Eternally grateful.
Where should we put this testimonial? I wanna put it on one of my top pages. What are my top pages? I know where to find that in Universal Analytics, but in GA four, it's under engagement, pages and page path and screen name, and then switch that. You know, you can choose, like, page title to be the primary dimension or page location, and then scroll down and find your top pages based on that.
It was just finding the same answer in a different place. Please don't expect to learn much if you're just clicking around. Use analytics as you always have to not just do reporting, but to do analysis. Go find answers. It'll build your confidence much faster.
Mark Evans: What do you think Google's motivations were to make the change? I mean, obviously, as you say, it's from speaking one language to another, and change for the sake of change, what were they driving at? Like, what are they what's the biggest difference that they're trying to make in terms of analytics, which has been the same for many years, and many years, I suspect most people have
Andy Crestodina: been pretty happy with analytics. Great question, Mark. No one knows. I suspect they are they saw themselves falling behind as the hardcore analytics users were gravitating toward products that were a bit more robust. Analytics is an old tool.
And then, honestly, when you look back on it, there's a lot of stuff in normal analytics that is very clunky and weird. How to set up goals, kinda weird. How to track video views, kinda weird. Tracking scroll tracking non, you know, non page view interactions. There's a lot of stuff that if I wanted to track it in analytics, I had to go and literally set up an event in Google Tag Manager, you know, and then go back to analytics and look for that.
If it's not a lot of that stuff is sort of native to the to the tools now. We'll look back and and and realize that, you know, universal analytics was pretty kludgy.
Mark Evans: Switching gears, why don't we turn our sites to website design and optimization? I spent a lot of time on positioning and how it unfolds on websites. And I'm always surprised and troubled that so many home pages are confusing and unclear. You read the headlines and have little clue about what the company actually does. And to make matters worse, many websites are badly designed, far from intuitive, and they make it hard for people to get the information they need or want.
Given the importance of a website, why do so many companies drop the ball when it comes to copy and design? Loaded question, but I know
Andy Crestodina: you spend a lot of time focused on this, and your company obviously designs and develops many, many websites. It's actually a great question. I mean, why do you know, if we were behavioral economists, we would try to research this and find the answer. It's like, why do smart, experienced, veteran, data driven marketers build things that are not focused on the user? Is it that we lose sight of the audience when we start focusing on brand, or is it an obsession with differentiation?
Is it a concern that if we're too specific in our in our marketing language that we're gonna exclude certain groups? People do that. So they write these headlines that are super vague, or they just do stuff that looks very clever but isn't clear at all. Regardless of the reason, it's just a disaster. If your site fails the five second test, why?
What would it cost you to just write write a specific headline that names your service? Why do people have these weird headlines that say, like, finding a better way, you know, or pioneering, you know, the difference. You know? Tomorrow's future today. Like, just what?
No one knows what you do. Why would you do that? You assume that a 100% of your visitors are already brand aware. Is your audience are you excluding all of your new potential prospects and only talking to your customers? I don't understand why people do that.
It's easy to to disabuse them of that notion, though, if you show them the the results of a five second test. By the way, you can do during a meeting, if you go to Usability Hub and upload two screenshots, a and b, one with clev one that's clever, one that's clear, in twenty minutes, you're gonna have the results, and you can show them during the meeting. And it often stops the conversation, and they stop getting overly brand focused. They start becoming more empathetic. Opinion versus opinion, the highest paid opinion wins.
So opinion versus data, the data will should win. So bring data to your meeting if you're trying to help someone make a better decision about their own positioning or copywriting.
Mark Evans: And the other question relates to navigation and making design intuitive, user friendly, accessible. I find a lot of websites, I can't I can't do what I want. There's there are CTAs peppered all over the place suggesting that I ask for a demo when I'm really not interested in a demo. Why do companies make mistakes there? And what are some of the basics they should be looking at in terms of making their site as as user friendly as possible?
Andy Crestodina: Another way to think of all this is that everything on your website is, in fact, just a a hypothesis that you're testing and go look at your analytics to see the click through rate on those calls to action and then conclude, you know, whether or not that's, you know, your new benchmark, you're happy with it, or if you wanna try something else and try to improve that click through rate. The demo one, though, Mark, you mentioned one that I'm I'm really interested in testing, and we're testing a little bit. I think requested demo is an ambiguous CTA, and, you know, specificity correlates with click through rates. We should be specific when possible. But a demo could mean you're gonna watch a video, or it could mean you're gonna talk to a rep.
I'm actually concerned about that CTA and interested in trying different things. Get started is very specific or action oriented, concise, that that we've been doing tons of testing on and and see that performing pretty well. Think about it this way. The the reason you make a navigation label, a CTA or a menu item, is to help your visitor accurately predict what they'll get if they click. So if you called it solutions, what's that about?
That's generic to millions and millions of companies. Why be it generic to millions of companies? Why not be specific to you? And if you call it health care data analytics solutions, ah, now I know if it's for me. I can accurately predict what I get if I click.
So specificity correlates with conversion. Same message about the headlines. Look at every word on every on your top pages at least and ask yourself if you've missed any opportunities to be more specific and thereby more helpful to your visitor.
Mark Evans: I wanna circle back on Get A Demo because I spent a lot of time with b to b SaaS companies, and Get A Demo is the ubiquitous CTA. But the question is, if you don't use Get A Demo, is there, like, a list of better keywords? Let's get started could be I get started with the application, get started with the product, get started with a conversation. How much testing have you done? And it sounds like it's still early days using alternatives to get a demo, which seems to be I don't know whether it's effective anymore.
People see that and go, you know what? I'm probably gonna get a slew of emails and Yeah. Exactly. Call me, and they're gonna bug me, and I'm not gonna do it.
Andy Crestodina: It's really interesting. Right? I think that that I have the same psychology. I'm a dataset of one. I try to avoid ever using myself as an example.
But you're right. It what it could mean, and it means on many websites, is that you enter an email address and you go into an automation sequence, and they're gonna start hitting you with all kinds of stuff. Not what I wanted when I clicked on get a demo. It could mean that you that you land on a page that's got a scheduling widget, and you're gonna find a time to talk to a rep. It could mean you land on a page that's got you're gonna fill out it.
You're gonna go through a gate, and then you're gonna land on a page with a bunch of videos. Get could be more specific. Watch demo now would indicate that there's a benefit basically, people click on calls to action when they've concluded that the the benefit exceeds the cost. We all do cost benefit calculations before we click or tap on anything. What is the benefit?
I'm gonna see how it works. What's the cost? Two second you know, three minutes of my time. Watch demo watch video demo now might be something that entices a greater percentage of clicks. Or if it's a demo, like, you're gonna get a walkthrough from an expert, maybe call it that.
Get a walkthrough from an expert or ask a question. Talk to an implementations pro. Part of the psychology here is you might get you might worry about writing very long CTAs because how does it look on mobile? Is the button gonna wrap? Is there room for that long button text?
Get over it. It I don't know. That's an opinion that you like it or don't. Your your preferences are nice, but not that's not science. I don't know, Mark.
If you wanna test this one together or or do a quick study or collaborate somehow to figure out what Get a Demo means to people in the world, I'd be thrilled to to work on a little piece of research together. Yeah. That would be really cool
Mark Evans: because I antagonize over Get a Demo because I'm not sure it's the it has any relevance anymore. I mean, it's easy, and it's a cheap way to write a CTA, but we can talk about that offline. Did wanna circle back a little bit on on content marketing. As a writer and a content marketer, I'm curious but still not convinced about the growing number of AI powered tools that purportedly make life easier for digital marketers. I mean, there are companies like Jasper that have attracted a lot of attention and as important investment capital.
At a high level, what's your take on these tools? Do any of them jump out as interesting or have a lot of utility? And how should digital marketers approach them and use them? Years ago, I
Andy Crestodina: heard a really interesting interview with, the the editor of Wired magazine. He said that AI is not going to replace jobs in the short term. It's gonna replace tasks. And therefore, we're all gonna get little AI helpers that help us do a better job in our day. An example might be a tool like MarketMuse that creates a brief for you.
Oh, you write an article about, you know, how to set up an FAQ page. Here's a brief. It analyzes a bunch of content on the Internet and gives you a mini outline. Now you can just write into the outline. That might be useful for some people.
Great. There's other things like, I don't know, Grammarly or these tools, you know, that will compare your content to others, the SEO writing assistant from MarketMuse or or SEMRush. I think that there is definitely a use case for AI as tools to help marketers do a better job or be more efficient. Will AI produce content just out of blue sky that gets traction? Maybe yes.
I'm not gonna say no. But here's my case against it. Will AI ever write an article that makes you laugh? Will AI ever write an article that changes your perspective or that challenges the status quo? It's the opposite of thought leadership.
It's literally follower. It's following trends. It's following, you know, other language.
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Andy Crestodina: AI is is is machine learning that's analyzing other content. It will never be super original. It's never gonna pop up with an amazing insight. We asked AI to write an article about get a demo, it's gonna just write an article about a bunch of things. It's not gonna really challenge the reader's notion about that topic.
You and I, thinking as, you know, chaotic, freewheeling humans, came up with an idea to to challenge that status quo. AI would never, never do that. If you're interested in thought leadership or being inspirational, AI is not gonna be very useful to you. If you want a shortcut to kinda do your job a little faster, it might work great. Let's turn our
Mark Evans: our focus to the social media landscape, which has become even more fascinating or troubling in the wake of Elon Musk buying Twitter. Why don't we do a rapid fire round looking at the different social media platforms? I'll give you a platform, and I'd like your hot take on them. Are ready for this? Ready.
Twitter.
Andy Crestodina: Sadly on the decline, badly disrupted, future uncertain, yet very, very relevant, useful place for networking, for conversation, for research, and for connecting with truly influential people beyond social media, such as journalists, thought leaders. Perspectives are formed on Twitter. It's a it's a globally important network even for things like democracy. TikTok. Very, very powerful.
It's an incredible innovation to pay less attention to likes and more attention to people slowing down their scroll, expanded far beyond the dance video, leveraging the power of short form video. Really a new niche that, is rewarding those who embraced it early, not too late for anyone. I don't think it's a positive for society because it leads to a lot of the self esteem issues for kids and short attention span and this giant distraction from, like you know, it's probably not a net gain for from from a sociological perspective, but, for marketers, probably should not be ignored. Take a look.
Mark Evans: The platform where I spend most of my time, LinkedIn.
Andy Crestodina: Amazing networking tool, amazing platform for publishing, extremely useful for research, almost impossible for many of us to do our jobs without LinkedIn. Hey. I'm setting up a meeting. What time zone is that person in? LinkedIn is the use cases keep growing.
I think it's I'm I'm bullish on LinkedIn. They're doing amazing. The COVID helped them with the LinkedIn learning platform. I mean, that's like a there's a lot more to it than just the for job seekers and networkers. But critical for them, I would recommend if anybody that has any interest in building a personal brand should build a very detailed LinkedIn profile page because it's probably ranking number one for your name.
Mark Evans: Facebook, the platform that people seem to
Andy Crestodina: be down on but still attracts almost 3,000,000,000 users a month? It is what it is. I don't really see it declining much. I think the the corporate vision is flawed and that their their bets are probably not gonna pay off. I think it's got it's almost like a public utility.
It needs to be carefully regulated. It's a dangerous platform, in terms of things like misinformation, but I don't see it going anywhere. If you're targeting audiences and paid social, it's gonna probably work for you. Organic reach isn't great, but still how a lot of people stay in touch with each other, and I suspect it will be, relevant for ten plus years at least. What about the stepsister Instagram?
I sort of personally, I love it a little bit even though I'm not very active there. It just feels like a pure network. It's not the content promoters don't spam it because there aren't any links. I mean, it's a great place for exhibitionists and and people who are, you know, for selfie takers. Obviously, it's super relevant for some categories, but now relevant for more or less everybody.
Also a great place to connect with people on paid social, also a great place for short form video. Again, I I don't think I think similar to its position in Facebook, it's just going to be a stable and solid tool for people to connect and a tool for marketers to connect for years.
Mark Evans: The platform that I've never used, Snapchat.
Andy Crestodina: I assume that it's also its relevance will remain, but, at a smaller level because LinkedIn because, Facebook sort of took that from them with the copying those features in Instagram and in Facebook. I I don't know much about it, but I I have not really seen I guess I'd have to look. I don't know if it's on the decline, but I won't be surprised. I mean, this the world is big. I won't be surprised if that remains relevant for for a long time.
Mark Evans: The world's biggest or second biggest search engine in YouTube.
Andy Crestodina: I think it's gonna continue to grow. I think it's gonna grow probably through subscriptions. I think there's a lot of us that are ready to pay instead of watching ads. It's an amazing place to look for information. Anything that's visual, I think you can find an answer there.
It's a function as a search engine. It functions as a social media network. It functions as a TV channel. It is a probably the targeting is very lucrative for people that have figured out how to find their audience there. YouTube videos appear in Google search results, so the reach is far greater than you might think.
Very little effort during COVID, I just started putting videos on YouTube, and it the results are breathtaking. I'm always amazed. So YouTube is probably something that most brands should be using. If you're using video at all, it's it's a a no brainer.
Mark Evans: Pinterest, the mega social media network that seems to operate very quietly, but nevertheless has a very sticky and active community.
Andy Crestodina: I think actually it's special, and I understand it better now after some recent conversations. People using Pinterest are not it's not just top of the funnel. It's sort of a middle of or bottom of the funnel place because you're using Pinterest frequently because you wanna make a change. You're planning a project. You know, you're thinking about, you know, what to do or what to wear or what to make or how to make it or what it looks like.
So people click Pinterest boards sometimes because they have commercial intent. That is very different from most social networks. Right? A lot of activity in in social networks is is just 100% top of funnel. No one there has really any intent.
People in search are busy. People in social are bored except Pinterest. Those people are actually built ready for to embark on a on a creative project. And last one, the wildcard or the one that B2B marketers would dip their toes in because they're afraid of getting penalized is Reddit. Oh, it's still going.
Right? It's I think it's probably more popular than ever. You can't really use it as a marketer without getting attacked by the Redditors. There's the spam the spam radar is way up. So I think that I've been punished where someone took one of our articles and put it on Reddit, and everyone decided it was unoriginal.
And and they they downvoted it and left a bunch of negative comments. I didn't even post it there. It wasn't me. I I never said it was a original thing. Like, I was just, it was just something short that I had written that answered a question people kept asking me.
But I think that it's it's an excellent tool to see what's getting traction. You can spot trends early. Kind of a noisy kind of a kind of a not not a we have to filter ourselves, right, when you go in there because it's it's kind of a mess. But people who use it love it, and it's how a lot of people, start their day on the Internet.
Mark Evans: Final question. Amid the dim and doom and gloom of the digital marketing landscape in 2022, what most excites you about digital marketing in 2023?
Andy Crestodina: Boy, I, I keep, I find myself more and more motivated the closer to the bottom of the funnel I get, producing content specifically for prospects. I'm ready to start producing content specifically for my current clients. Hey. Great. You signed up for a project.
Welcome to your to the first day of your new website. And, like, making videos and articles that tell people what to expect in upcoming meetings, improve the customer experience through content, CX. That's probably our best opportunity. Next level above that, create content specifically for certain prospects, stuff you can send to people right after the sales call. Next level up above that, account based marketing.
Produce content specifically for people who are your ideal client profile. Next level up, produce content that answers sales questions to whoever's on your website. So I think that's, I'm more and more motivated and excited about the bottom of funnel stuff. It makes my competitors irrelevant because it's content I'm producing specifically for very small groups. I'm gonna be doing a lot more of this 2023, and I'm I'm, I predict I'll get great results from that.
I hope so.
Mark Evans: I hope that that works for
Andy Crestodina: all of us. That's great. That's great insight. If people wanna learn more about you and Orbit, where do they go? Orbitmedia.com.
On the blog, I write an article there once every two weeks. LinkedIn, I I have a I have a newsletter on LinkedIn called digital marketing tips. I know that's a simple but specific name. Right? I'm trying to be clear, not clever, Mark.
I hope you got what we talked about.
Mark Evans: Works for me.
Andy Crestodina: And then the book is called content chemistry. It's on Amazon. It's 380 pages of very concise, actually, and filled with diagrams. Everything that I know about content marketing, everything I've learned in the last twenty two years, you can find it on Amazon.
Mark Evans: Well, thanks, Andy, for your time, and thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of marketing spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I work with b to b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO and strategic adviser and a position in a messaging consultant, email Mark@markEvans.ca, or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.
