The marketing movement by Refine Labs. Well, welcome to the marketing movement, everyone. This is Angelica Taylor. I'm a senior brand marketing manager at Refine Labs.
And I'm joined today by my friend Mason Koski. He is a marketing director at Mojo Media Labs. We talked a few weeks ago about podcasting. I thought it'd be awesome to have another conversation and record it this time.
So welcome back. I'd love to have you go through a quick little intro about yourself and introduce yourself. That would be awesome. Yeah, so I run the marketing of a marketing agency.
So Angelica and I really relate a lot on how to market to marketers. And the thing that I'm becoming most known for is one, yes, for sure, Mojo Media Labs. We're putting out a ton of very practical content around account-based marketing. We are hosting a conference in the next couple of weeks called ABM-a-Thon.
So we're becoming much more known in the ADM space. But I as an individual have started to gain some awareness around marketing careers because I interview marketing leaders on how they build their career and implement roles that they're hiring for. So that's just a little bit about some of the things that I'm doing right now that are, I think, of interest to the audience. Definitely.
Yeah, that's super helpful. I'd love to hear more about the podcast. We kind of talked about that last time. But I remember you mentioned getting executive buy-in and the way that you did that was unique.
And I don't see a lot of people doing that. You started your own podcast and saw a lot of success that way. And I think coming from refine labs and working with Chris Walker, he's very bought-in to podcasting. Me talking about, oh, just go start a podcast or ask your CMO to start a podcast.
It's not quite realistic. So I'd love to hear about how you got executive buy-in, why you started your podcast, et cetera. So Mojo had a podcast that was called Made You Click. And there's some really, really good content in that podcast.
But when I was looking at it, there just wasn't continued growth in the listenership. We weren't really seeing anybody talk about our podcast. There wasn't really any clarity around the purpose of the podcast and overall marketing strategy. We had two of our leaders on that show.
But it was really just the two of them having conversations. There wasn't a great promotion around it. There wasn't really anything to propel it forward. And it didn't have really any kind of a central structure.
So we reached episode 100 with that. I helped kind of produce that from episode 7 to 100. So it was really my introduction to podcasting. And just seeing that there wasn't really a unified mission and goal around the podcast.
I think we just had a podcast because we knew that would probably be a good thing to have. I actually sunset our podcast and said, this is not necessarily the direction we're going to go with this podcast moving forward. And the other thing is, as much as I love you along with that show and they were VPs and directors of our company, they are in a way, she performed tethered to the business. So what I think a podcast needs to have is one of two things.
I think the marketing movement is a fantastic example of a rotating set of hosts. So that even if it's an leisure company, the podcast has just immediately died. Exactly. Or it needs to be a podcast that is with the host of the business so that they are tethered to the business.
It becomes synonymous with their name and with the business in and of itself. So the goal of sunsetting our previous podcast was to then immediately ramp up a new podcast with the owner of our agency, who is Nicole Rhodes. And I'll just be candid. I mean, it was she was like, yeah, I know we need to do this.
But here are all these other things that are going on. And we're running a business. I mean, there are just so many things that I personally have not experienced because I have not run an agency of 30 people. But obviously there are other priorities that come up, especially around like cash flow and finances and making sure we're hiring the right people.
Like there's so many other things that are on the forefront of a business. And there's mine that the idea of like, let's start a podcast kind of fell lower and lower on the priority list. So eventually after trying to get it started, you know, I'd become more active on LinkedIn that connected with a couple of people. Someone got LinkedIn live and said, hey, I should do a live show.
And I said, hey, I'd love to do a live show with you. And a couple of people commented on it and said, hey, we'd love to do a live show. That person ended up not being able to commit to it, but we then had some guests lined up for the concept of a live show that had no topic. So I ended up saying, I'm really passionate about careers.
Like it's long term where I think I could go with my own career path of wherever I ended up marketing someone will need help building their career or hiring. We're just, it's a good topic. I didn't see any podcasts out there around it. So ended up lining up a bunch of guests and launched in November.
I've recorded 70 episodes at this point. We got about 50 out. So that is the long story short of how I started my own podcast and kind of the struggles with executive buy-in and brings my give all that context is about episodes 30. My boss was like, oh, there's a lot of value in this.
I said, people come in that were guests on my podcast. I wanted to work with Mojo. That was an unintended product for sure. So through that, it was, okay, there's value in this.
I see what you're doing Mason. Like let's start for, let's start one for Mojo as a business. And we've now done 10 episodes. We've got another 10 lined up.
So it's just now sort of a weekly release on that podcast. We're already seeing people really responding well to that. Our clients love it. And it's helping them recognize the overall mission and vision and thought process to Mojo as an organization.
So couldn't recommend it more highly. Nice. I have a question about the first podcast that you sent. So you said that it wasn't getting the traction or growth that you were looking for.
Do you think it was because of the content that was being recorded? Or was it because of the distribution or lack of distribution? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. One, it makes you click was the title.
And I think the title is really important. I think it was supposed to be a funny catchy title. It was made before I was there. But no one is searching as you click.
Nobody is. That's just there's no SEO in that at all. So I think that was one thing. It's just really difficult to actually discover unless you were intentionally seeking it out.
Until really the past six months, Mojo has not taken LinkedIn or really there's not been an emphasis on building a personal brand presence on social. So there wasn't any necessarily following that good trail off of these other platforms into a podcast. And the third thing is there wasn't really any uniformity to what the actual podcast was about. It was about B2B marketing in the most general sense.
And I mean, the people that we had, it wasn't their dedicated job. They were doing it as something else on additional responsibility. So there'd be weeks where we didn't get to a podcast. So it was just like week to week trying to get episodes recorded.
We have to skip weeks. Like, so there's just a lack of consistency sometimes, a lack of clarity on the topic. And then there was really no effective distribution method to actually raise awareness for the podcast. Got it.
And how have you taken those learnings and applied them not only towards your own podcast, but the new one that Mojo has started? Yeah. So the biggest thing is transitioning it to be more of an interview based podcast. You know, Chris Walker is a content machine and he can pump out a lot of content on his own.
He's created pillars in which and really the refinance team is created pillars in which people are aware of the podcast in and of itself at this point. But for those that don't necessarily have those pillars in place quite yet to do an interview based podcast, you are raising awareness because you invite guests on that then talk through the things that are passionate about their network because they're excited to be on a podcast. So it ends up creating a network through which you can start to actually create some organic social media buzz around the podcast. People are excited to talk about the things that they're passionate about.
Mm hmm. Definitely. Cool. Well, that's super insightful.
I think it's unique to have a situation like yours where you saw so much success from your own personal podcast that the leaders at your company were like, oh my gosh, like we need to be doing this too. I think that's definitely a unique angle and I don't see that happening too often. So I think that's awesome to share. And if I may just add one thing to it of, I think people, I only $6,000.
I'm not this massive LinkedIn influencer of any form of fashion, but what we started to see is after about three to four months of dedicated work on my own podcast, plus being active on LinkedIn every day. I mean, we were seeing that anywhere on a given week that 25 to 50% of the schedule call meetings that were booked, at least mentioned my name or my podcast. And it may not have even been the reason that they even said it'll call in the first place. But the fact that those data points are to come up of again, this is something that the employee was doing on the side, the fact that my name was even in conversations at all showed.
Okay, there's something happening here. And it was enough movement to justify, okay, we need to really invest in this from a business perspective, not just like encourage Mason to build a personal brand, but like this is this is valid and a great way to grow and scale our business long term. Definitely. What is your like pre process look like from like a content planning perspective is like for state of demand, Jen, Chris is such a visionary like dynamic speaker that he doesn't need really any pre planning, he might jot down some notes on his own, but he's just so good on the fly, but I realize it's not common throughout like planning and strategizing for the marketing movement.
I realized that everyone's a bit different and how they like to prep and plan for an episode, even if it is framed as like more informal or casual, like there's still is some more prep work involved. So I'm curious what that looks like on your end. Yeah, I mean, for us, we do a 15 minute quick planning call for the express purpose of again, especially because I now am helping set up two different podcasts. Like there are questions for some people of cases for your podcast is for modus podcast.
I also don't know that the marketing ladder, which is my own personal podcast is actually separate from Mojo. Like, so there's there's questions around that is kind of the same audience or guest pool. So there's there's questions around, you know, what is the topic. And then second just to help frame it.
I mean, especially right now with my boss podcast, which is lovingly titled, broger bb business, I guess you can know what that's about. There's so many ways that that that idea could go. So what we're what we use that for is an opportunity to kind of express the idea of there's just a lot of noise right now on how to functionally grow a business. So we're just interviewing practitioners on what they're actually doing today that is growing their business and saying that's the whole podcast topic.
So however you want to take that, like this is your platform to share what you've seen works today. So you can help other marketers or sales leaders or customer success leaders learn what they can do to drive growth in a business. So having that opportunity. And then the other thing is, again, like we are really intentional, we asked to come on the show.
There are people that we see value and potentially working with there are people that are influential individuals in the space. So the opportunity to have just an additional 15 minutes to get to know one another and build that report. You know, for the guests that have been on my show and my boss's show, they ended up spending over the course of two planning meetings and two podcast episodes, about two and a half hours just kind of hanging out with members of the mojo team and especially in a services business. You're not buying a product or buying the opportunity to work with people.
The more face to face time you can have the more you build trust and the more likely they're actually to work with you. That makes sense. I like the idea of the 15 minute call. Although I will say we have got to push back at times with like some executives are there like I really only have time for the podcast or like Chris Chris Walker for instance like good luck getting 15 minutes with him but again like I feel like he's one of those people who is just on the fly very dynamic but I like that a lot.
We've done like the Google Docs situation for certain episodes kind of like just mapping out like the high level points we want to cover. I'd love to try the 15 minute like prep call though my only concern is like I don't I never want to like pigeonhole someone into certain topics. So I'm curious like how do you like even structure that that call you just have like the overarching topics that you want to talk about and don't really like dive into them too deep because I would fear that it would then like create some sort of like script like a conversation for someone who is in such a dynamic speaker maybe. Absolutely and before we dive into that I would also like to throw out like I recently interviewed Chris on my podcast and we didn't do a 15 minute planning call so like I found out that idea and I was told hey he's probably not going to do a 15 minute planning call but I said totally fine so like you just like I always like to throw it out and if people don't want to do it that's totally fine but what I found is the podcast episodes excluding with Chris because he is such a dynamic podcaster like the episodes where I haven't in the planning meeting have typically not been as good.
I'm curious that again I think that report is so critical. Yeah. I've been on podcast for the last few like a bunch of got your questions and when you get to have that 15 minute unrecorded opportunity like you get to understand essentially like what is the purpose like why are we doing this podcast. I feel it creates a more genuine environment so I still always encourage people do the 15 minute call if they get pushed back no worries just like hey completely understand you're super busy hey here's a link where we can go at the hour if that works for you and then you still you get both.
And then as far as I'm so sorry what was the other question I just wanted to dive in that real quick. I was starting to think about like a question. Someone who would benefit from a 15 minute prep session instead of it was around a holding into topics. Oh yeah like how do you not like in that 15 minute session like not that you and I had a prep session by any means but I feel like our last conversation like really did tee up the topics that I wanted to talk about today but I suppose my worry would be like in that 15 minutes would be of such a great report that you start having a conversation that should you know should have been recorded or maybe you try to replicate later on.
Yeah so there's a couple things that really help with that one starting call I say like so thankfully you're going to come on cash really excited for this quick call it's like I do have a hard stop unfortunately so the nature of like starting with like this is a quick call people typically get too deep. The other thing is again high level topic so for the marketing matter I just expressed it's really difficult to build a career in marketing everybody's got a different background and really what I want to understand is your background how you build your career and then the roles that you're hiring for so with that like to give me a just a high level understanding of the career that you made and like not the stuff I can find on LinkedIn but like the stories behind some of the scrimmets and again 10 minutes I get a high level over you we've got the hour scheduled they're happy they're excited to talk with me and they know that it's going to be a pretty easy talk after like work is just talking through their life. And then what my boss is we just saying you know it's really difficult to know who to trust because there's just so much noise in the space so the goal is to have a 30 to 45 minute session where we can talk through the practical things you're doing to grow business so what are you doing right now that you think it really helps people grow. And again that's so broad that people can still have the freedom to run with it however they want but it's it's it's given them.
I think enough of a framework that they can then say oh this is what I want to talk about and however they want to take it we run with it and some people throw out like two or three ideas and they were like oh no one's such on this yet can we go into that and like yeah I love that so you again broad enough of a topic that they are intrigued and they get that little bit of guidance but then they get to speak about what they're really passionate about. Awesome that's for helpful. Well this is great I'm curious do you have any like last like Larry tips or anything that you think you've done differently than other people that we haven't really mentioned yet that may help others who are trying to build out either an organic content strategy as a whole. Or start a podcast or running into Roblox whether it be executive buy in or content planning etc.
I've got two thoughts for starters building podcast is way simpler than people make it out today I spent $30 a month between a tool called StreamYard where I used to live stream my podcast LinkedIn so even the podcast recordings are live stream so it's it's it's building a public so that that's one way to raise more awareness but you could use a free zoom license we're recording this in zoom like it's you can do this next to nothing and the other thing that I spend it's $32 a month to $25 on tool call stream or to my podcast and then $7 a month on a tool called squeaker that does the podcast distribution and I get 100 hours of content that's $7 a month so if you can have a conversation and you can identify some kind of a topic. Again there's there's tons of podcasts but if you look at that compared to the number of blogs like you find way more ability to break through the noise of the podcast and you would log so I just I'm really encouraging people to start a podcast and if you're like man I don't know if my work would consider it I consider the marketing letter a hobby like I went to my wife and said hey can I spend $30 a month on a hobby. She's like yeah like that seems like it's reasonable within our budget and I said it may pay them in my career and I'm like I just I'm kind of passionate about building careers and I want to help people do it so can I have a hobby. And it's a way better way to frame it because there's no stress there's no expectation of results it's just a great way that you can learn what's been unfortunate is there's been lots of results but that wasn't intended I just wanted to tell people build their career.
So that's the first thing and the second thing is I think the only reason the marketing letter is on any level of success at this point because we've been doing it for three or four months is I don't have a business objectives. I don't have an agenda I don't have a message I'm trying to push. I am 100% present with our guests and I ask questions that are genuinely based on what I'm intrigued by like they say something like that's really interesting. Can you go deeper on that I just I'm having a conversation with people because I'm also fairly young in my career like I'm gonna understand how to grow a career and what I found is when you start when you stop trying to insert your own opinions and you just let people have the freedom and the flexibility to speak their best answers come out and by the nature that you are sitting in the room next to them people will associate them with you and it's a way that you can start building your own personal brand because if you go and listen my podcast I've got nearly 60 episodes down.
I've inserted my opinion twice and I know the two times because I was like this feels different and out of 60 episodes I've only inserted my opinion twice I got a conversation and I help people understand how to build a career. It's very different than anything else that I've seen anyone else do but the constant message that I get is that I'm a really good interviewer because I ask really good questions and that's all I do. You are a good interviewer I'll give you that. It's because I want I want to help the guests look really really good so I ask good questions and that's about it.
Yeah you do a great job of that. Thank you. So not having an agenda like it's purely value based and that's something that we also do here at Refine Labs with both of our podcasts and all of our other content the live event strategies the LinkedIn content it's all about delivering value. Of course that's grown our business exponentially but really like there's no ask in any of the content it's just purely value based which I think is why it does so well.
Yeah couldn't agree more. Awesome well thanks Mason this has been a great conversation I appreciate you coming on. Yeah thank you so much for having me on always let's talk about guests. Thank you.