How does a new player like Hack the Box, how do you build credibility? Why would people trust a new solution? And if possible, tell us about the community as you explain this.

I do, let me share my screen I'm going to put this in presentation mode here. All right, so absolutely, I have some slides. Whenever I was thinking about how to present, what is marketing content and what is not marketing content, I wanted to think a little bit less of specifics, and more bringing it out of that bubble and thinking more conceptually or strategically. So when I think about marketing content, I don't think, yes, this is a sell sheet or yes, this is a webinar, or a social or whatever. When I think about content in particular, I think about how to get to that content, and where you go from there. So marketing content to me is multidisciplined, and what I mean by that is it doesn't begin and end with your marketing team. It actually begins way before that and it ends at the sale.

So what I think is important when you talk about multidiscipline, is going through different teams, and getting different inputs, and bringing people into the brainstorming process. Getting interviews with your stakeholders, going to engineering, going to different product marketers, going to different leaders within your company to really think about what your content should be and what their goals are, and that will help you develop them. And that kind of leads me to the next bullet, is purposeful. So content needs to have a purpose, and you won't get that purpose until you do your due diligence with the interviewing and the brainstorming. And then marketing content is amplified. It should never be a one-and-done. If you have some juicy piece of content that's eight page white paper, why would you just do a white paper and not do the white paper and amplify it on social, and develop some thought leadership off of bits and pieces of this great research that you've had?

And then from there, you want to see what the performance is. You want to measure it, you want to see how it's working. And then you're going to continue that in a circular pattern. So when you think about marketing content and how it fits into the buyer journey or your sales funnel, however you approach it, it should not end at the sell, it ends at never. So it's circular, and you go through the content and how it works for you all the way through purchase, through post, through renewal cycle, and then you come back around to treating that customer as a new customer.

What great content do you have to offer them now on their next signup for that product that you may be marketing? For me, that's what marketing content is, and sort of the opposite is what it is not. It's not siloed, it's not stagnant, it's not untested, and never just because. Just because it's from when you want to write a lovely note to your spouse, and that's just because you want to let them know you love them, but that's not marketing content. So marketing content has to have that purpose and has to be impactful and intent.

I love that, and thank you for this because we're going to double down so much on performance today, given what you do and the brand you're at. But collectively, you and I have more than 50 years of experience doing this. So I think it's a really good tip for those that are younger in the audience still sort of finding their way or identity, something I know you coach folks on. If you feel your job is on the right side of this slide, then brush up your resume, find somewhere where they really give you more of what you love, which is on the left side. I love that, thank you. Now, we are going to move into the next spot here. As you said, we start way early and we end much later than marketing. Maybe help us, Karen, walk us through how we get from that first point through to talking to a salesperson.

Absolutely. So that brings me to the question of, what is your end goal? We had a couple of ideas around, “Okay, should this be about measurement? Should it be about metrics?” But in all honesty, every company has a different end goal, and you may have multiple end goals. And to your point, when it comes to new marketers entering their field, or even if you've been in your field for quite a while, there's always opportunity to go back to the drawing board. And if you feel that your content is on the right side of that chart, take that as a great opportunity to reset your end goals and think about how you can innovate, and what that looks like from a strategic standpoint. So a few of the end goals that we look at... currently I have multiple products that we market to.

It's very matrix, it's a heavily regulated industry. And so there is a part of content that plays toward the end goal, but it's just a part. But I want to do that part well, I want to kick butt at that one part. So when you think about content, historically, it's been really hard to prove out the value of marketing, and marketing content and specificity. And so where do those threads go? Because we're right in the middle, and a lot of times I like to call my team “The Shared Service”, because we are shared from writers, social strategists, designers, and operations. We're right in the middle, and we get to see it all. So how can we contribute to that end goal all the way to sales and all the different teams in between? One of the easiest ways that you can measure is SEO, so what is your organic looking like?

Of course you can measure when it's paid media, because you can see a little bit more of clicks, but SEO is so important. A great example of how we're amplifying this from the last year, we've had more targeted content with specific keywords that we're measuring and tracking, as well as towards specific audiences and different goals. So using the same sort of article, for example, and writing it with different tones, and trying to create different leads and different click-throughs. And just in the past... I believe it's the past quarter, we've already hit 73% of our targeted keywords onto page one. And that's huge for us, because in our industry a lot of people are targeting the same keywords. And so we want to make sure that we're up there and we're providing value past just, "Here's what our product does." But we want content that's going to be rich, and they're going to read, and they're going to want to dig in, and they're want to give us the leads, which also brings us to pipeline fill.

Some other metrics that I have here of what your end goal could be, it could just be covering your funnel, your whole buyer journey. An exercise that I'm going through right now is looking at, “Where are the gaps? Where's the white space, and what can we offer that to the sales teams to use for their customers?” So thinking through those little metrics, now we're like, "Okay, what does sales usage look like? Where do we track that? How can we track that? And how can we validate if a piece of content is worth our time and resources?" We use a tool called Seismic, it's a content enablement tool, and it partners directly with Salesforce, which is our sales enablement tool. So those two working in harmony lets us know, “Are we covering the buyer journey? Is sales using it?”

For example, we just launched the sales part this year in Seismic. We've had it for a year, but we've been building up that platform and that engine, and developing the search within that tool. But we're now at 94% adoption with our sales teams. They're getting in there, they like to use it, but do we have what they need? And then that goes to customer engagement. So we have what they need, but does the customer like it, or are they dropping off after page one? Do they love infographics? How about a video? Do they want three minutes or 30 seconds? And then the last two really are more of sales metrics, but I believe firmly that content plays bits and pieces into it. A lot of it can be just hypotheses, but they're good hypotheses if we can track it through usage and engagement, if we have those tools. And that's the, “Are we filling the pipeline? Are we generating leads for our revenue marketing teams? Are we contributing to closed-one rates with our sales teams?”

Love it. And I need to take a pause here, a couple of things you mentioned there. So Salesforce and Seismic, clients and good friends of ours. We had the face of Seismic, Steve Watt, on with us a few months ago, wonderful. And then we're going to go deeper into revenue and demand gen. But I did want to call out here, I almost forced Karen to put this on, Newsweek has you guys ranked as the second most trusted website in your category globally. And I just want to back up and explain this to the audience. This isn't some like, "Oh, pay to get featured on Newsweek." This was 70,000 people worldwide that voted, and Wolters Kluwer came in at the second place globally. This is phenomenal, Karen, congratulations to all of you at Wolters Kluwer.

Yeah. So many people, the writing staff and the technician... I mean, the developers. You have to think about it not in just your one little piece, in your one little silo, it's really such a team effort from start to finish.

And now as a marketer, I'm going to flip this. Most of our audience doesn't have that ranking, so they don't have that strength of draw to their website. Can you help them understand what they should be doing when people haven't made it to their website yet? What's the difference between the content on your site and the content you're putting out on third party domains like social?

So I think what I kind of wanted to focus on here, is it kind of goes back to topical research. I think there are a couple of different ways that we approach content and who we're trying to target. We have a very robust and very intelligent team that focuses on audience, and persona, and research, their strategy behind what we're trying to develop. And then we have a great editorial team that focuses on pulling the data and seeing, “Who are using our products, how are they using it? Most importantly, what don't they like, what do they like?” And then that helps us focus on different types of content. It's important that the content that's on your site, of course, is indexable, is searchable. It's important to listen and have that kind of active listening, looking through your tools, whether it be an SEO type tool or whether it be what people are saying on your social channel.

But being diverse like that will really get you a lot of intent and a lot of data that will help you develop different types of content in different types of places. So in my position, I work primarily on a section of Wolters Kluwer that has a different offering of products, but we have several products. And what we really want to do now is try to figure out how we can overlap those products and cross-sell. And that will help with your organic ranking as well, and help you get up and get noticeable, but more importantly actually have great content that people want to read, that people want to pass on and link on their websites. But when I'm thinking about social strategy, this one is really unique. So UpToDate, in particular, did an overhaul. I have a social strategist on my team and a social writer, and she came on about little over a year ago, actually maybe almost two years ago. And the first approach here was just get content up, and then we started measuring.

So it's, what's the strategy behind what you're putting on your site, and how are you building that program? And how does that program lead to your core company site or your solution sites, individual sites? And then how does it all create that circular pattern? So for social, for us, it was a matter of stepping back, thinking strategically, “How this particular channel factors into the company as a whole, and then how we're going to build out that program?” And then you start testing different types of posts. What's been really fun is... Not just on LinkedIn, we're on multiple social channels. But what's been really fun is that we have so far exceeded our metrics and our goals, that now it becomes this super interesting strategic challenge of what's resonating? And then how can we really hyperfocus posts that are going to even more increase our followers, our click-through rates, our conversion? How do we keep taking it to the next level, when you're already at 150% of your goal? So how do you keep doing that?

And it's important not to be stagnant, it's important to be innovative. So a couple of posts I put here was, the first one, we noticed that polls and challenges really resonated well, and they're fun, and people love to answer them, they get a huge engagement. So let's do more. Let's get with our brains, our doctors and physicians, and our pharmacists, and have more clinical challenges. And then on the flip side, we really wanted to look at our imagery. Is our imagery really speaking to the right audience or is it alienating that audience? So digging into that, and doing testing, and seeing what works and what doesn't work.

And then lastly, the last point I want to point out with social, which is the fun bit of social versus your site, is channel development. What are different channels we can get in on that you may not normally think about? You don't normally think about healthcare on TikTok, but our medical students are of the age that are using TikTok, not necessarily Facebook. So how can we target different audiences and different generations where they are at and where they need help the most?

I love it. And you've had this thread throughout today's conversation... I know we have two more topics, but I'm going to move you quickly through them to get to some questions here. The thread has been all around engagement. It's been sort of empathy-built engagement around the audience. And you mentioned this, on social, that is the only metric that matters, is where do people engage? Do more of that. How are you handling this given how large the organization is at Wolters Kluwer and the quality of content you produce, is there an engagement or is there a contribution goal from social channels to the pipeline or to existing accounts? Is there numbers set or is it more like a guideline?

It was a guideline. This year we've actually turned those to numbers. So that has been a huge bonus for us. And each sort of month-over-month, we continue to tweak what those metrics are. So first it was, "Okay, what is the engagement and what is it providing? Is it providing dollars, is it providing leads?" And then after that point it was, "Okay, well, is it providing those things per campaign?"

So for example, we increased our campaign coverage. I think it's 50 or 60% from last year to this year. And just really putting things in the market and being very strategic about what we do. So we follow those campaigns on social as well. So now we're like, "Okay, well, did social contribute to that campaign, those dollars that are derived from there?" From there we're like, "Okay, well, within that campaign, how did we target that audience? What did social have to do with that audience, or not do?" Actually, and that's what we probably should talk about also, is negative impact is just as important as measuring the positive, and probably more important than measuring positive impact. And it kind of burns, you're kind of like, "Oh, I failed." But look at it as an opportunity to say, "I learned from this. That didn't work, let's find what does work."

Absolutely, well-documented and data-rich failure saves you millions, because you have the data to say, "It's not that we won't try this or that we didn't, we did it this way, and for our audience this isn't a good fit." Think outside the box folks, what other options do we have? Okay, Karen, I'm going to move you in. The next area is one where you can go a little quickly because this is an area of expertise for our entire audience, this is what they do, long form. But let me leave you there, go ahead.

Oh, absolutely. So when I was thinking about what to attach to the content, the overall strategy, and thinking about the full journey content pieces, it's not all long-form. I think I would for everything to be, because I love words and I love writing, but not everybody has an hour to read a white paper. So we have to diversify, and we have to think about our full journey content in several different ways. So contextual, “Is it just for that campaign, just for the audience? Or are we solving a specific pain point, is it thought leadership?” And then format.

And so you can see the full list there. Well, not even the full list. I'm sure you have more within your own companies and things that you like that really matter to your audience that you're trying to target. So thinking through video that's talking about the product versus a social cutdown of that specific campaign, and what that looks like. And then because we are a global company, I don't know how many of you are a part of global companies, really globalization. So what is for that specific market in that specific language, and how does that resonate? And not just being mindful of North America first, but really thinking globally.

Oh, super important to our audience. We do campaigns in dozens of languages, we even do... I mean, I've learned more as I've been here longer at Lead2Pipeline, but we've even been call out in multiple languages because not everybody wants to be contacted in English. Especially at that lower stage of the funnel, that's the wrong impression

And it's really hard, that's not an easy thing to do, it's something that we are continually process improvement. We've improved our timelines and content to market by 30% almost, just with small tweaks and processes. And now it's like, "What's the next tweak? Where can we go, and what can we do to serve that market well with our content?"

Perfect. So I'm going to sneak one difficult question here before the Q&A, because this is something only an expert like yourself can talk about. Everybody talks about conversion, click data, and what happens from that content. But nobody talks about timelines. How long do you give a piece of content like an ebook or white paper before you call it?

Oh, I love that. So when do you retire your asset? Absolutely. So actually, a lot of our content has been... I swear in perpetuity, it's been there for so long. I think a year is when you... Or actually let me back up. I think you should audit your content on probably a biannual basis. Quarterly may be too soon, because three months really seems like a lengthy period to us when we're looking at it every single day, but it's not necessarily a lengthy period to our customers. So when we think about that, maybe a biannual audit of your content and your dates. And what does not serve you well, what has no engagement, sales does not like, it did not go anywhere, or your facts are outdated. Your data that you put in that infographic is now outdated? You need to be doing that I would say on a six-month turnaround basis, and then retire it, or have something that's retired and bring it back. In two years you might look at something and be like, "That's really relevant again." So just this continual cycle of research and auditing.

That's right. It might just take a new coat of paint. And that's completely relevant now, maybe it was too early to begin with or too heavy at the time.

You're exactly right.

So it's such a coincidence, we won't have time to discuss it today, but I want to throw it out to the audience. Six months is exactly the timeframe that most demand gen teams are also looking at performance from events. So something's going on here between high quality content and events. So we'll come back to this. Okay, last topic you just mentioned, Karen, is what can you or can't you do for the sales team? And they're going to ask for everything. We work at large brands, we're used to this. How would you prioritize? And then we'll jump off the slides and do Q&A.

Absolutely. So you've got your content, you've got your end goal, you've got your content, and then what does that look like for sales enablement? And we pretty much have already covered it. What it looks like is your business goals. It's not marketing's business goals, but business goals. What are they trying to accomplish through sales enablement? What are their barriers, and how are we solving for that? Platform collaboration, we talked about Salesforce to Seismic, being able to use Seismic to provide engagement metrics, and time-on-page, and time-on-video, and things like that are really beneficial to the sales teams. Then they can see, “Do I need to resend that? Did my customer not even open my email?” And then they can get some of that data that is very nitty-gritty for their teams and their customers.

Active listening partnership, that's how we know what content to prioritize for sales. Talking with them, hearing what they are challenged with. I had the opportunity this year to hear from a sales. He's a sales lead, he said, "Do you want me to just give you the sales pitch?" And I was like, "Heck yeah." Because what I have is all marketing advertising speak, and it's all pretty, and it's a story, but it might not be the story that he's communicating. So be an active listener. And then finally, data, data, data. What works? You can tell by the data.

Perfect. We're going to come off slides, Karen, and I'm going to hit you with all the questions we have so far. I have three, and we might have a few more. It's funny, you've completely bucked the trend of most webinars, where after the first 10 or 15 minutes, 20, 30% of people leave. There are more people on right now than when you started, you kept them interested. And so let's get to their questions. Okay, let me do this in reverse. I'll take the question on sales, because we were just talking about it and then I'll come back to the other two. You just touched on it. When it comes to the content that you're preparing for sales enablement, is this sort of an asynchronous experience, or do you weekly or monthly, or do you record sessions for sales? How do you get sales to use your content when you know that it is resonating with customers? You didn't just come up with it. Because they don't have to use it.

That is just so relevant, I wonder if somebody from my company asked that. So it is really hard. They're busy. They are so busy. So what we're trying to do right now is a combination. So we have Seismic as a tool. Seismic has the ability to do landing pages. I've created landing pages by segment. We're going to start toward the end of this year into next year pushing net new content to their landing pages, flagging it, so they're like, "Hey, look at this thing that you can use." And then we also have newsletters. It's putting it in newsletters like, "Hey, Seismic has this new thing." As well as just constant training through our sales operations and our training teams. And really the last piece would be top down. Managers really, looking at usage data and what their sales teams are doing. And it's not all like, "I don't want to use it." Sometimes it's, "I couldn't get in, I don't have a license." So it could be a number of things, but keeping that communication open on a consistent basis is key.

Okay, perfect. And I'm going to take another question here, and then I'll flip back to a couple more. I told you this would happen, we would run out of time, it always happens. Okay, so how do you explain content syndication in your customer journey? Are you using it for awareness? Are you using it like a consideration? Or do you target middle to bottom-of-funnel? Where does it fit for you, or various places that it fits?

It absolutely various places, all along that. So thinking through a value enablement exercise, and really identifying the buyer journey. And then also, once we have those different stages of awareness, consideration, purchase, post-purchase, all of those different stages that we sort of live by as a bible of our marketing bible. And then where do those pieces fit in? And sometimes you have to realize that they can fit in in multiple places. And then what you go through, when we talked about our six-month audit, you should also be looking at, where have we over-indexed and where we under-indexed along that buyer journey? But absolutely every single space should have something for a sales team to latch onto to use.

Love it, perfect. Okay, so circling back from sales. And you're right, I love the point you made about there's only one person a salesperson listens to more than the customer, and that's their manager. If you don't have the management, you don't have the sales team. Okay, budgets. So are budgets entirely driven by campaigns, or does the product team or solution team just cough up money for content? How does the structure work?

That's a good question. So some of that I don't have line of sight to, but I will say for our company, it definitely lives within our marketing team. Some of the challenges that we have really comes down to resourcing versus content delivery. So what I mean by that is, we have all these great things we want to accomplish, we don't always have all the writers. And that's where we really need to think about... It may be a dirty word to any writers on here, but we really need to think about AI, dirty words, I should say. You really need to think about what tools are out there, what can your company develop as a sandbox even for you to use to help you sort of just amplify the content at a faster pace. It doesn't eliminate the writers, it's just a prompt taker, but it absolutely can help with resourcing and the budget constraints.

Amen. I do this day in, day out, talk to so many famous creators. And most are saying that AI has reached what we call the 70% threshold, where 70% of it is good, and your job now is to actively weed out the 30%, or you'll never get to 80 or 90%. So it's not about using or not, it's about using it right. That makes perfect sense. Okay, another... And this is a very technical question, I think you'll appreciate this. Given how large, and how structured, and how regulated the industries are where you guys thrive. You don't just participate, you thrive as Wolters Kluwer. What is your audit and compliance policy or practice for content?

Yeah. Oh, that's a good one, because you have to build in at least four weeks to go through legal. So truthfully, a lot of the work that we have, since these are established brands and established solutions, not all the content has to go through legal. When we have a new solution, or if we're in an international market and we really want to make sure that we're hitting the right words, that we're not speaking incorrectly, we absolutely lean into legal. So we really have I think a lot of authority within our marketing team to own these pieces of content, but legal's obviously there to help to make sure that we're complying to how we want to present in the market.

Love it, I love that, and I love that sort of guidance of just, you don't want to put a stick in the sand. If you don't have four weeks, you're not going to hit the date. I love it, that's experience talking. Right there with you, by the way. So I'm going to take another one, and we might go a few minutes over. I'm sorry guys, but then we will close, even if we have other questions, we'll get back to you on email. Everyone wants a piece of Karen right now, I get it. Okay. So the question is around your content calendar. How do you organize your content calendar currently? And how far in advance do you prefer to have your plans outlined or solidified versus what's the reality?

Yeah. Oh, great question. So when I came on board, we were a 100% order taker. It was just coming to us, we were fulfilling those orders. We're at McDonald's, we're like, "Do you want a quarter pounder with cheese?" So what we've done in the past year and a half, going on the second year, is really define what we need to accomplish, and what resources we need to put toward that. So we've really streamlined, we've cut out contractors, we've hired, we've built up the team across the board of marketing, not just with content and creative.

And then from there we're able to start, first it was getting a quarter ahead. Now we are looking at 2024 as a year, but on the whole the cycle typically is revolving around a quarter at a time, because things are changing, things are moving. For this 2023 content calendar, we were planning in January and February. For 2024, we're already in our planning stages and hopefully by the end of the month solidifying things. So we're getting ahead of it, and we're getting better at it. But it is a living, breathing thing, and it's never going to be perfect. You have to adapt, and you have to use tools that are available to you.

That's a really good timeframe, because it's also not too far out to where you're stuck into outdated plans and stagnant strategies that are going to fail even before you produce it.

And smart people on our team, they look at, “Okay, we have these LinkedIn ads, for example, that are in the market right now. They've been in there for 90 days, two are performing well, two aren't, let's just optimize, let's not recreate”. So we've got a lot of learnings from this year that we're implementing for next year.

Love that, we see that across client campaigns all the time, like, "Can you continue this, take this out? And I'm going to bring you two more like that, I need four weeks." Four weeks, there it is. Okay, so before we go to the last question, it's a juicy one, and it will take us over time, I already apologized. I do want to mention to the audience, if you wouldn't mind for just a minute, Karen. I heard from a little birdie that you're writing a book.

Well, I did it actually, I'm super excited. I have it right here, so I could show it off. You'll see, it's very easily digested. One of the things that I've learned throughout my career is it's not just about the work, obviously, but as a leader of teams, something I've suffered from when it comes to my work, and my career path, and my growth, are all these intangible aspects like imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear, certainty. And so I really started digging in and trying to figure out, what can I do? What small things can I do to get me through the day to make me feel like I am winning and I am worthy of where I'm at within my career in life? So I compiled all that research so you don't have to, and I put it in a little guide, and I literally call it A Little Guide About Moving Forward. And it's just about taking your incremental next step, and how you move forward in your career.

Oh, my gosh, don't we all need this? I can't wait.

Absolutely, yes.

Thank you for doing this, Karen, seriously, it's such perfect timing. Last question, and then we'll wrap up. Okay, so like Wolters Kluwer, we are very fortunate for a demand gen service that's been around just over two years, that we have so many massive brands. And the high quality of content, you guys rank number two in the world, that we work with. But there's also the flip side, which is a resistance or a hesitance to towards user-generated content, and using it for exactly that purpose. What has been your journey? This is our last question. At Wolters Kluwer what's been the journey towards bringing any of the outside perspective or outside content in, given that you work in such regulated industries?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I actually come from an agency background and my career is predominantly in ecommerce. And when you think about ecommerce, that's one of the highest metrics, is user generated content, that gets you more clicks and more purchases because people want to hear from peers. So there's no reason you can't take that mentality of ecommerce and bring it into B2C to B2B, and you should. So when I think about that within our industry, I think about testimonials, one-to-one interviews, just chitchatting with experts on a video. And really social is a great place to put that, so having quotes. We don't have necessarily an avenue for reviews per se, but we do have a testimonial, and that is our version of a review of a product. How did this work for you? How did it help your company save time? How did you stand this up within your university for the next generation of physicians? So really digging into our actual customers and seeing what they have to say is important.

I love it, because you can be in so many more conversations than you need, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think you're right, I think that is coming to B2B in a big way, and especially next year, I think we'll see a lot more around structured influencers, and just more empathetic, quick-churn content. Well, Karen, thank you so much, this has been amazing. I can't wait to dive into this and edit it for our audience. And like you said, get these little nuggets out there. Any parting thoughts? And then I will let everybody go.

I forgot to say my book is available in Barnes & Noble.

Yes, good, thank you.

So, selfish plug there, Barnes & Noble, and then it'll be coming to Amazon and other retailers soon. But let me know what you think, and I'd love to hear from anybody.

Well, I have to say, I mean, it's an easy choice for me. I don't know about the audience, but between those two, I think I'm going to Barnes & Noble to give a little bit of that revenue to a brand I love. Thank you everybody, and thank you so much, Karen. We'll see you soon.