Kaitlin heads up content marketing at BrightTALK. She has six years of content marketing, demand gen and B2B marketing experience. She’s passionate about growing businesses and has quickly risen to become a  recognized leader in the marketing technology space. You can find dozens of her webinars and videos across the internet and she’s frequently speaking on the topic of webinars and their importance to the B2B marketer at industry events.  Her marketing leadership has resulted in the rapid growth of BrightTALK, which has recently doubled their sales people.

Press play below and start listening to Kaitlin Stich share her valuable B2B marketing insights on this week’s episode of the B2B marketing podcast. The show sheet for today’s podcast is available at: http://www.triblio.com/blog/brightTalk

Beginning of Transcript

Kaitlin Stich: Thank you so much for having me.

Jeff Zelaya: So Kaitlin, for those that are new to the new BrightTALK and don’t know too much about you, can you start it off by just sharing some of your background, who you are and your role at BrightTALK? What exactly is BrightTALK?

Kaitlin Stich

Kaitlin Stich: Excellent. Well, just a little bit about me, I’m the head of content marketing here at BrightTALK. I’ve been in the digital marketing space for about six years now, so along the journey starting as a corporate marketer and refining more and more of the point that I’m doing content marketing for demand generation. BrightTALK is for people who are unfamiliar with BrightTALK, a platform for webinars and videos. We’re specifically optimized around creating demand for those webinars and videos and generating leads for our customers utilizing our technology. We’re also a platform, a destination for B to B professionals to educate on trends and best practices. So on BrightTALK, you will find of hundreds of thousands of webinars and videos on some of the latest trending topics like some of the following thought leaders on your podcast session here.

So I hope people will go and check those out too. For the last 2.5 years at BrightTALK, I’ve been given the challenge of meeting some pretty aggressive new lead and sales qualified lead metrics through my content marketing programs. As a result, we’ve been able to more than double our sales organization, which has really led a lot of our success here at BrightTALK. So I’m marketing that organization.

Jeff Zelaya: Wow. I know one of the reasons that there’s more popularity, an increasing popularity around videos and webinars is because the buyer’s journey has changed and we’re very focused on becoming educated before we spend any kind of dollars or money or even consider purchasing a product or a service. So you personally, how have you seen the buyer’s journey change over the past few years?

Kaitlin Stich: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean really the quote that a lot of us modern marketers depend on is that serious decisions quote around 30 – not 30. Seventy or sixty-seven percent of buyers are into the education process before they even reach out. I think some brands have even got more aggressive and said that it’s up to 90 percent. That’s really thanks to the growth of mobile and social technologies. People are really more connected than they’ve ever been and they are less concerned about the way brands are interacting with them through their social applications and their email inboxes. Really we’re seeing that convergence of that paid, owned and earned media through those connection points with our audience.

The result of this is a depreciation of value for contents that – or content that brands are sending to them. So brands are being challenged to send more and more quality content, but not only more quality content. Buyers are more influenced by their family and their friends and industry thought leaders than they’ve ever been before. So it’s really up to brands to figure out this magic equation between finding the right influencers to connect with, the right quality of content and then to place that content where buyers are consuming this content. So whether it’s recommendations from family and friends or in their social feeds or just through search online. They really need to diversify the way that they’re connecting with their buyers.

Jeff Zelaya: And one channel that I know a lot of B to B marketers are starting to leverage and have been leveraging out for a good while have been webinars and videos. I kind of know the answer to those questions but I want to get your answer and also maybe some examples. How important are webinars and videos to the modern B to B marketer?

Kaitlin Stich: That’s an excellent question. Of course I’m a little bit biased here, right? I mean webinars and videos are what BrightTALK does. But from my perspective and what I see as a modern marketer, webinars and videos are extremely important because they offer that mix that modern marketers are looking for. One, like I mentioned before, the quality of content is so important in the buyer’s journey that people are looking for those richer experiences and webinars and videos just provide that. You’ve got a way to influence the audience based on what they see and what they hear and how they interact with the presenter if it’s a live event. But also the data that rich media provides, so the data that webinars and videos are providing to marketing automation platforms, the things that marketers can use to help score their leads better, are more provided by webinars and videos that a text-based asset wouldn’t necessarily have.

The great thing about webinars and videos is that they can really be used at every stage of the funnel and so you’ve got thought leadership webinars that are happening on a regular basis where people are educating on those trends and best practices down to case study webinar. The same is true for videos. So really, I mean they’re a wonderful asset. They’re used in many ways and they’re providing the right data that modern marketers need to close deals faster.

Jeff Zelaya: Excellent. I know you work with many marketers. You get to observe many different tactics and strategies and have conversations with a lot of folks that are in the B to B marketing space. What have you see as a trend or maybe as a characteristic of the B to B marketers that are really good at storytelling, how important telling a story is? What are the B to B marketers that are excelling in that department? What are they doing right? How are they telling a good story? What are some tips for our audience if they’re trying to improve the story that they’re telling? What could they be doing to go down the right path?

Kaitlin Stich: Storytelling has been how humans have chosen to communicate for – since the beginning of communication. People are looking for context and that’s the biggest part of storytelling is to put some kind of context around it. It’s a way for people to relate along the way. So the best advice that I can give is tell true stories. So Forrester Research actually just released an excellent paper this month that supports the case that B to B companies are failing to engage with their website visitors and therefore they are failing to connect the content on their site and to their buyers’ journeys, which is actually a huge challenge, right? Because the people coming to their site aren’t being met with the content that they need or expect to have as part of that journey. I think content is just a part of that. So I mean starting from your website out, how are you telling your story of your brand? What’s the messaging that you want to lead with?

Technologies have gotten advanced in a way that personalization really can drive some of those conversations but the reality is, is you need to know more about where they are in that [0:07:16] [Inaudible] and that you’re telling a true story that’s more about a person listening to the story than it is you telling it. I think that’s really difficult for some brands to do in a meaningful way, absolutely.

Jeff Zelaya: Kaitlin, now you’ve been at BrightTALK I think close to three years now and you’ve climbed up the ladder and you’re getting more responsibility and are getting great results from your – a lot of the initiatives that you’re executing, I’m curious. Just this past year, looking at 2014, personally what has been the marketing success that you could point to and say, “I’m proud of this. This has made a highlight of my marketing career this year�

Kaitlin Stich: Oh man. I don’t really want to toot my own horn. Thank you for saying all those nice things. As a marketer, it has never been a more exciting time to be in a marketing role. I mean more often than not, marketers are now being asked to be stakeholders, you know, at the – the table, the revenue table. That’s exciting and marketers are now making more decisions about the basic technologies that the company is using to move itself and that is so exciting just from a career perspective.

I think that being able to be a marketer in that environment has just been so exciting and that’s my success I guess in seeing that shift, because content marketing is not so much about writing a fluffy story of blog posting more. But they’re really those marketing metrics that back up the hard work that we’re doing and we’re able, as content marketers – which maybe traditionally hasn’t been part of that stakeholdership, we’re now there. So I can be able to say at the end of the day, based on the content that I’ve created, I’ve generated this much revenue for the company at this amount of cost and this is why I need to increase my spend at the company or this is how we need to be setting our direction for next year and all those great things that content marketers haven’t been able to do previously.

I think especially also gearing up towards that gap in terms of educating around marketing automation. I mean there’s a huge gap there and I think that one of the successes would be pulling some of that information that I’ve learned about marketing automation, to make my content marketing better. Am I making that kind of art and science build on my career and how can I use that to boost myself forward? That being said, I apply it to webinars and videos and it has really allowed me to create hundreds and hundreds of assets, all of which – sometimes they aren’t successful. But at the end of the day, I’m able to refine my annual calendar and content strategy for those successes, thanks to this technology, the fact that marketing has a greater stake hold in the business.

Jeff Zelaya: Kaitlin, I’ve been very impressed by one of your influencer marketing strategy and it’s not that – I don’t know if it’s something that is done consciously. But because so many influencers and I would say celebrities at least in my industry are using BrightTALK and they’re pushing out and promoting their webinars. You guys are always getting exposure from these folks. So can you talk more about how you leverage influencers and how that helps you in reaching some of your content marketing goals?

Kaitlin Stich: Yeah, absolutely. We couldn’t have gotten as far as we have without the influencers on our space and I think it just speaks to what you’re doing here today. There are so many people telling really excellent stories that have a lot of information that they can be sharing with audiences. It’s maybe not just audiences specific to BrightTALK or your organization, but really – and we’re not sharing this information in a silo. So the information that I’m sharing here might be interesting to people on our platform or your platform.

So it’s being genuine with what your goals are in content marketing, but also inviting people to participate in that. I think the best thing that I can do when I reach out to influencers is I have a plan in mind. I know exactly what I’m asking of them and I’m OK giving those deliverables upfront. But also I tell them what I can do for them and I really lead with that. I think that there are so many people wanting to share their stories but it’s not a difficult conversation to have, all those stories together. So while you’re sharing information, inviting people to share that information as well, and finding a way to build that in to your annual content calendar. Think of it as a content pipeline. Constantly be reaching out and finding ways to work with more influencers within the business.

There are some influencers that are – as marketers, we know that they like a little cash upfront to share their thought leadership. But true influencers of the business aren’t looking so much for those selfish needs but true influencers are the ones that are really out there just to share information, engage with others, and push that conversation forward, so that everyone does a better job at their jobs at the end of the day. I think that’s what makes a true influencer. So understanding what makes a true influencer and then going back and applying it to your content marketing strategy. I think it’s a win-win for everyone.

Jeff Zelaya: From my experience, the best influencers are the – the true influencers are the ones that believe in the mantra “Givers gain.†By them giving to you, they’re going to gain some – they’re going to have a return. There’s going to be a return to their effort and to the partnership and if you set it up in a win-win, it’s a must-do I think for any marketer to have an influencer strategy and to use those smart people, very knowledgeable folks who extend your message.

Kaitlin Stich: Well, even adding on to that is that whole story of social selling, right? So marketers have owned this idea of being an influencer in a space for I don’t know how long. We’re marketers. We’re constantly having our stories to tell. We have our brand stories to tell, our own stories, our partner stories. Then suddenly, the strategy, it’s not surprising that salespeople need to get on that level. It’s not that they’re pushing their products or their services but they’re genuinely starting conversations and starting those meaningful touch points with their customers in a way that benefits their customers, because it’s not something that pays off in the next week or at the end of that sales month, which is always what salespeople are looking for, right? But it’s this idea that you’re ready to have that conversation with them if they need that trusted resource, when their next budget comes out that you’re a resource to them.

So really when you think about an influencer strategy, it’s not the short term. I think you and I can both agree on that. It’s something that’s definitely built over time and it’s definitely just about valuable conversations that you can have, either shorter form, social media, longer form, blogs or other discussions. But it’s definitely something that’s built over time and with this general idea or genuine idea of sharing true stories.

Jeff Zelaya: You nailed it. I think that’s one of the things that will not be going away anytime soon, being authentic, being genuine, making sure that you give and that you help others succeed and by doing that, the company, the brand, the individual will be successful. So I totally agree with you on those points Kaitlin. One last question and I’m very – this is probably the most important question I will ask you in this conversation today and I’m very curious to know how you feel about the future of content marketing. What do you see on the horizon? What changes? What evolution do you see for our industry, our content marketing industry? It’s a hard question to tackle because it changes so fast. But in your gut, in your – from your experience, what do you see next for us?

Kaitlin Stich: Man, I love and hate this question, one, because it opens up the opportunity to say a lot of exciting things or things that we’re particularly passionate about. But you’re right. I mean how do you predict the future when technology and marketing is such a heavy influence? But what I can say about what I’m most excited about for content marketing is that it’s going to continue to get richer regardless of whether it’s a webinar, a video. Video is going to be very popular in 2015 or some other mixed webinar video type asset or even something for virtual events. I can definitely say that content is going to continue to get richer and it’s going to be really exciting what technology offers us as part of that.

The other thing that I can tell you that will be happening in content marketing is these channels, these separate applications that we have for social media, for our platforms, for our webinars and videos, platforms for sharing our white papers. They’re going to start converging together and maybe that’s not a 2015 prediction but that’s just the future in general that in order to truly run an integrated marketing campaign, it really doesn’t matter what channel that you’re picking. It just matters that your story is connected in a way that makes sense and I think that by trying to make that story more connected, that those platforms for sharing those stories are just going to become more and more integrated. I think one of the features – if I could just speak to BrightTALK for a second – that I’m most excited about is this idea that when you register for a webinar, you can see who else is registering to attend.

I don’t know if that’s something that some of our other competitors are doing but I can say that it’s compelling to me because it’s allowing me to involve my other marketing pools, like my LinkedIns and my Twitters, with the people that I see directly, registered for that event. By tweeting at them or getting them involved via LinkedIn message or sending them an email that says, “Oh, I see you registered too. What’s going on with you?†That just becomes so much more valuable. So I’m excited to see features like that on all kinds of content marketing platforms converge. I think that’s really exciting.

End of Transcript

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