Building a scalable rapport engine with Vidyard’s Tyler Lessard

00:00:02:13 - 00:00:30:07

Ben Hillman

Picture a cobblestone street bathed in twilight, a lone street performer clad in worn out garments, dances with bigger to a tune no longer in style. There's a crowd around them, but as the camera moves closer, you notice their faces passing by without meeting the gaze of our performer. Despite the dancers passionate performance with sweat pouring down their brow, not a single soul stops to watch the performers eyes well up.

00:00:30:12 - 00:00:53:21

Ben Hillman

Blending with the rain that begins to fall on their face, the old fashioned tune fades away and the performer begins to slow down. They fall to their knees and weep. Sorry to begin on, such as sorrow and melodramatic note, but I do this to illustrate a point. If you can feel emotion, there's most likely tugged a heartstrings. But at no point did I tell you to be sad.

00:00:54:05 - 00:01:18:02

Ben Hillman

I merely used images of despair to show you examples of how I wanted you to feel. And if you can understand this tool, then you're well equipped to stand out in the B2B SaaS landscape. Let's imagine this scene playing out in the tech world. It's an industry that is as saturated and competitive as that bustling marketplace. Companies are like street performers vying for the attention of passers by.

00:01:18:08 - 00:01:36:14

Ben Hillman

You may have the most innovative product with all the flair and all the excitement. But if you merely shout from the rooftops about its features, you may find your audience as responsive as our crowd on that cobblestone street to engage your audience. You must show them the depth, the soul of your product and make them feel its impact.

00:01:38:07 - 00:01:58:17

Ben Hillman

And who better to guide us through the shadows and into the spotlight than Tyler Lessard, the VP of marketing and chief video strategist at Vidyard. Tyler is the virtuoso who understands the intricacies of showing over telling in content marketing. Like a film director, he knows how to capture the audience's heart by creating content that resonates on a deeper level.

00:01:58:23 - 00:02:23:07

Ben Hillman

With Tyler's artistic flair and strategic genius. He crafts tales that break through the clutter and touch the audience. In today's episode, join us as we explore the somber alleys and illuminated boulevards of content marketing with Tyler Lessard. Discover how to craft content that resonates. How to dance through the marketplace. And how to make sure your product doesn't go unnoticed in the craft.

00:02:25:08 - 00:02:49:12

Ben Hillman

From Paddle, it's Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator. On today's episode, Tyler Lessard spoke to Andrew Davies at the beginning of 2023 about understanding the idea of show don't tell in content marketing. They talk about showing instead of telling the three pillars of Sales Feed success using humor and content without crossing the line.

00:02:49:18 - 00:03:05:04

Ben Hillman

Building a scalable rapport engine and looking inside and outside of tech for content inspiration. After you finish the episode, check out the show notes for a look into Tyler's secret sauce. Then, while you're leaving your five star review of the podcast, tell us what resonated most about Tyler's advice.

00:03:12:09 - 00:03:14:19

Ben Hillman

First up, showing instead of telling.

00:03:18:09 - 00:03:28:01

Andrew Davies

So, Tyler, tell me a little bit about your current role, where you came to from it in order to come out of what you're doing now, Just just go from the top. Give me a few minutes and then I'll dive in with some questions.

00:03:28:09 - 00:04:12:14

Tyler Lessard

Terrific. Well, my name is Tyler Lazard. I am the VP marketing at Vidyard and self-proclaimed chief Feeder at Sales Feed, which is our brand extension media network in my life here at Video. And I've actually been here for just over eight years, if you can believe it, which is like 160 years in SaaS. And it's been a wild ride because we sit at this intersection of the use of video in sales and marketing and technology, and we think about every day how can be to be go to market teams, unlock potential and value in the use of video for everything from their online communications and go to market programs right into how their sales team

00:04:12:14 - 00:04:38:18

Tyler Lessard

reaches out and connects with buyers and build relationships in this digital only world. So over the last number of years, I've had a great opportunity to really learn the ins and outs of how businesses can and are using video. I've got a chance to become a video creator myself, which, you know, I honestly never thought would happen, and most recently launched our media network called Sales Feed, which leverages a lot of short form video content as well as other formats to engage audiences across a myriad of channels.

00:04:38:18 - 00:04:43:09

Tyler Lessard

So it's been a wild ride and really excited to bring some perspectives to today's listeners.

00:04:43:12 - 00:05:02:10

Andrew Davies

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Well, when I was thinking about you and I was trying to explain to my wife, she was asked who I'm talking to, you know, today in my meetings and stuff. And I said, Oh, speaking to Tyler and I was thinking, he's he's definitely not stale. He's not boring. Exactly. Not bland, but he's all over my LinkedIn feed, rapping and dressing up as Star Wars characters.

00:05:02:18 - 00:05:23:01

Andrew Davies

So, you know, I definitely want to dig into some of the more the more interesting videos that popped up on my limited feed over the last few months. Feels like, you know, character development is taking on a new world and Sales Feed, but let's just kind of maybe start at the very top. So not only are you doing this as your day job as a lead of marketing video ads, you also, as you say, your chief feeder.

00:05:23:01 - 00:05:39:10

Andrew Davies

I think you said that ad Sales Feed, you're creating video. You've written a book called The Visuals Sale. And I was also going back to that, and that was a couple of years out, I think, now. And I was going back to it and you stressing that the importance of showing instead of telling, and that's a fundamental principle of screenwriting, right?

00:05:39:11 - 00:05:49:00

Andrew Davies

So talk to me a bit more about that as we start off. How are all the things you're doing? You're making sure that you are showing a set of telling when it comes to marketing and all of the different videos you're publishing.

00:05:49:00 - 00:06:11:12

Tyler Lessard

Well, this concept show don't tell, among a few others I think are of prominent importance right now as we have moved into this digital first and often digital only business world. Right. Like you rewind a number of years and we used to have opportunities to actually meet clients in person, to walk them through ideas, to present to them, to have coffee, to build relationships.

00:06:12:01 - 00:06:34:15

Tyler Lessard

Even from a marketing perspective, we had, you know, sort of physical media and things we did to build our brands and and relied on our sales teams to show how things worked. But that's a totally different world from where we are today. Everything is online and the opportunities for customers and prospects to learn with us comes all about using digital media and content to do that.

00:06:35:05 - 00:07:03:19

Tyler Lessard

And in this world where we're no longer showing up in their office walking through things, we have to equip ourselves to show rather than just tell our prospects how it is that we can help, how to solve certain problems, how others have done it, and to be able to do those things on demand online. Right. And one of the big fundamentals I talk about in the visual sale in the book that I wrote on I'm using video is it goes back to for me what I call the for ease of video.

00:07:04:10 - 00:07:27:02

Tyler Lessard

And these are the four kind of unique characteristics that I think make a video kind of like their superpowers compared to other forms of content, right. Compared to text or static images and so on. And the four E's are educational. It's more educational to watch a video than to read static content. And this is backed by how our brains actually process visual and audible information.

00:07:27:06 - 00:07:46:07

Tyler Lessard

Right. We can learn much more from a two minute video than we can from reading for ten plus minutes. The second is engaging Video has the opportunity to create more engaging content for our audiences because of our abilities to use visuals, audio, body language, personalities, all of these kinds of things, as well as really enhance the storytelling narrative.

00:07:46:08 - 00:08:16:20

Tyler Lessard

Emotional is the 30, which is again about our ability to strike an emotional chord with our viewers through the use of various techniques. And then the last one, which I think is a real hidden superpower of video, is empathy. And it gives us the ability to put our real people out there into the world to create this level of transparency with our audience where they can get to know us as peers, not just as faceless brands, and can start to trust us right when they can actually see us delivering a message, when they can see our eyes.

00:08:16:20 - 00:08:37:11

Tyler Lessard

Right? Like the again, the human brain is drawn to faces because that's how we evolved as a species to learn how to trust people. So there's all these interesting things when you think about those for ease and you say, Yeah, you know, right? Video Absolutely. It's more educational, engaging, emotional, empathetic. Why don't I do more of it? And that's the crux for a lot of businesses right now.

00:08:37:15 - 00:08:54:09

Andrew Davies

Super interesting. So we'll come back to each of those for ease, I'm sure, over the course of the next 20 minutes, 30 minutes or so. Just before we started chatting on this podcast, you mentioned that your video is a secret weapon, and I wrote it down immediately because I thought, how is it still a secret weapon? You know, do you really believe there are all these companies that are not using it?

00:08:54:09 - 00:09:02:04

Andrew Davies

It feels like everyone on LinkedIn that I'm seeing, everyone of my contacts are investing in it in some form. So talk to me a bit more about what's so secret still about video.

00:09:02:05 - 00:09:27:05

Tyler Lessard

I think you're right. It's a fair point that it is not a secret. That video is a very effective medium and absolutely more and more people are using it. But if you think about for most businesses, the scale and efficiency that they're using video at is very much in its infancy. And if you think about most content teams today, so you think about like where does video creation come from?

00:09:27:05 - 00:09:52:19

Tyler Lessard

In most businesses today, it's typically coming out of content marketing teams. It might be coming out of brand and comms if you're using it for higher level brand programs and such. But most of those teams today are still very much built around the written word. Most content teams are heavy, loaded with writers, journalists, folks who can create great blogs, e-books and so on, which is completely fair because those play a really key role in things like SEO and others.

00:09:53:14 - 00:10:18:11

Tyler Lessard

But most teams have not been rethought in this new world. Multimedia First of video, audio. The need to then create personalities, Right? Because the interesting thing, the really interesting thing when you think about it, like making video a core part of how you start to communicate in your marketing and sales programs is that it is different, materially different from static text based content.

00:10:18:11 - 00:10:41:09

Tyler Lessard

You need new skill sets, but you also need personalities. That's actually the biggest crutch and challenge that I see a lot of businesses face. And I feel like it's still a secret weapon because most companies don't feel like they're ready to really unlock video, like in the way where they're like every day they're writing emails, they're posting on social.

00:10:41:12 - 00:10:56:04

Tyler Lessard

They might be making a blog a week, right? But then when you say, like, how often are you making videos? It's like, oh, like once a month maybe. And you're like, Why are you making a video every day? Just like you're writing an email every day? And they say, Well, that's too hard and I don't have the right people and it's too expensive.

00:10:56:19 - 00:11:24:17

Tyler Lessard

And all of those are only valid excuses if you're thinking about video in a traditional way. Right? And my eight year old daughter makes videos every day and they're damn good. She does them using simple modern tools, but the opportunity is there for us to really unlock it. And I think that's the secret, is figuring out how to tap into it in a way that's effective, efficient and just becomes a part of how we deliver our messages on an ongoing basis.

00:11:28:08 - 00:11:31:14

Ben Hillman

Next, the three R's of Sales Feed success.

00:11:35:08 - 00:11:47:13

Andrew Davies

So let's dig into Sales Feed and perhaps even tell a bit of the story behind the why you created it and what it is for listeners who will then surely go and have a look after this if they haven't already. And then we can dig back into some of these frameworks as a result of that context.

00:11:47:14 - 00:12:15:06

Tyler Lessard

So Sales Feed is our media network extension as part of the yard. And going back just over a year now, when we launched, we were thinking about new ways to engage our audience, in this case, sales professionals. So Vidyarthi has a free and then of course paid and enterprise video messaging solution for sales teams. So it makes it really easy for any sales rep to record and send video messages directly via email and others.

00:12:15:06 - 00:12:40:05

Tyler Lessard

And we knew we had built out a very strong and reputable brand for that specific category. So if a sales rep is looking for a video messaging solution, we're confident they're going to find Liddiard and we're going to come out as the top solution. But we also know that probably less than 1% of the global community of salespeople are actually aware of or looking for a video messaging solution actively.

00:12:40:05 - 00:12:56:12

Tyler Lessard

And so we said, you know what? We just we have to increase awareness of these capabilities. We have to reach a broader community of salespeople, and we have to build this audience proactively unless we want to be here ten years from now, kind of wait, playing the patience game. So we thought about what does this how do we reach a broader community of sales professionals?

00:12:56:12 - 00:13:25:22

Tyler Lessard

And we landed on launching what we call this media network Sales Feed, where we are producing content across a variety of channels that is built for the sales audience. It's not to talk about video art or video is to talk about all the things that we feel sales reps are interested in. And what was interesting as we looked at that audience of sales reps, individual sellers, we found a few areas that they were underserved that they also had a strong preference for.

00:13:26:11 - 00:13:57:05

Tyler Lessard

One, you know, was short form video. So we found there's a lot of long form content for sales leaders. There's a lot of podcasts, actually for sales leaders and sales reps. There are some great YouTube channels that are more longer form content, but most reps want shorter content and they wanted it pushed to them on social channels. So we really leaned into creating short form video content that was built for TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram reels, and we took it seriously.

00:13:57:05 - 00:14:16:23

Tyler Lessard

We said, If we're going to invest in these channels, we need to create content for those channels, not just create a great video and push it down across all of them. So that was a really important piece of it. And then in the last piece I'll comment on and we can dive a bit deeper. If you'd like, is we also found as a media network there was great demand from our audience for both education and entertainment.

00:14:17:11 - 00:14:47:18

Tyler Lessard

When we think about media networks, we think they could be news, education or entertainment. And we decided education, entertainment were really important to our audience and things we could deliver to them that they were lacking in on the entertainment side, as you alluded to earlier, we you know, in addition to creating short form educational content, we also create a ton of entertainment content, comedy things to make people laugh on a daily basis, everything from static memes to fun skit videos to Tiktoks and others.

00:14:48:08 - 00:15:11:19

Tyler Lessard

And this has been incredible, highly successful for us. We've found that our audience has just absolutely gravitated towards this content, but we've done it well because we brought in the right people who we were confident could deliver on things like short form video and humor and develop personalities with it, rather than trying to take the existing talent we had and said, Hey, can you figure out how to do this?

00:15:11:22 - 00:15:31:10

Andrew Davies

So this is really, you know, a direct articulation bringing to life that, you know, that principle you described in the book around showing, not telling, you know, so telling people to use video and how they should use video, you're showing them all of these different creative ways of educating and entertaining. So before we dive in, yeah, let's go a level deeper on some of those frameworks and action there.

00:15:31:10 - 00:15:40:17

Andrew Davies

You know, what have been the results of that? You mentioned it's been successful. You know, can you talk about any numbers in terms of audience size or how it's impacted the company or number of videos you've produced?

00:15:40:18 - 00:16:04:23

Tyler Lessard

Yeah, So we have three main goals as part of this media brand extension reach resonance and conversion. And so REACH is of course about our audience building. And over the last just over 12 months, we've built following across our channels just over 100 and we're now just over 110,000 across our TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn channels, which I'm really excited about.

00:16:04:23 - 00:16:32:16

Tyler Lessard

So when we crossed over 100,000 followers, that was a really big milestone to be able to do that in one year. But what I'm equally proud of is resonance, which, you know, another term for that is it manifest through engagement, right? It's like, is our content resonating? And to understand that we measure engagement and that I'm even more proud of when we look at our various channels, our YouTube channel, for example, where we just crossed over three and a half thousand subscribers, which for one year is is pretty strong.

00:16:33:01 - 00:16:57:00

Tyler Lessard

But our engagement level is just through the roof on, you know, every month we're seeing thousands of hours content consumed, which is a great indication that our audience is getting value. They're coming back for more and we're building these trusted relationships with them. We see the same things on LinkedIn where, again, our, you know, our content just continues to get a significant number of comments and shares and reposts and reactions.

00:16:57:14 - 00:17:20:11

Tyler Lessard

And those are better indicators of success for me than just the reach and follower numbers. And in the last piece, which is interesting, is we also think about, of course, how do we take this audience that we're building, that we're investing in, Right? We're spending a lot of resources creating content for this community. Are we converting them into being aware of video hard, being aware of video messaging, and then ultimately, you know, hopefully adopting our free tools.

00:17:21:00 - 00:17:45:14

Tyler Lessard

And so that's been a great focus area and we've started to see some really great success recently giving opportunities for that sales community to lean in on video related topics. And the way I think about it is now, you know, one in every 20 piece of content, let's say we create talks about using video in some way. And so now that we've got this audience who is continuously engaging with us, every once in a while, they're learning about how to use video in their sales process.

00:17:46:05 - 00:17:55:14

Tyler Lessard

And our bet is that as they learn the value of that and they look for a tool, VTR will be their tool of choice. And thankfully we are starting to see some good indications of that.

00:17:55:14 - 00:18:21:14

Andrew Davies

So they're definitely playing the long game. They're super interesting. So let's talk about, you know, education, engaging emotion and empathy and your two parts, but that you articulated there, which is education in entertainment, which I guess speaks to some of the emotion and the engagement you and your previous bull ese. So when you're deciding, you know, what you're going to publish you, what's the process of ideation Was the process of feedback before you get to what's a pretty high volume publishing team?

00:18:21:18 - 00:18:46:16

Tyler Lessard

Yeah, this has become really interesting and it's changed a lot over the last, you know, 1 to 2 years. So I would start this by saying we still have a core part of what we do as what I would consider a traditional content strategy, right? There's still some very important hero topics that we identify that we want to talk about, that we want to own as a leader from a mindshare and also an SEO perspective.

00:18:47:01 - 00:19:13:21

Tyler Lessard

And so we invest in creating long form content for those topics. And traditionally where we may have only written a blog post or created an e-book, we now start with a longer form heavy hitting video on that topic, and then we use what comes out of that in terms of the script and the story arc to then create the blog post that surrounds it and we leverage the video within that.

00:19:14:07 - 00:19:33:12

Tyler Lessard

So the blog posts manifest out of the narrative that gets built from the video, and we now have multiple assets. We have the blog post for SEO and we have the heavy hitting video to be an SEO magnet on YouTube. And then we also use it in various other places. So that's one piece where we are thinking about every quarter.

00:19:33:12 - 00:19:53:23

Tyler Lessard

We're like, we've got three new big topics that those are things we're going to go after. But to your point, in addition to that, literally every day, you know, we're putting out new videos on Tik Tok and or LinkedIn channels and much of that is very, very agile. I'd be lying if I said that I know what's going to go on our TikTok channel later this afternoon.

00:19:54:15 - 00:20:16:17

Tyler Lessard

Right? I don't. I don't because we've empowered people and the team with the ability to do that. And so will Etkin, who runs our TikTok channel. I have no doubt he's at home right now looking at the latest trend on Tik Tok and going, how can I turn that into a sales related sales video that our audience will go, Oh, I totally relate to that.

00:20:16:17 - 00:20:42:20

Tyler Lessard

Right? And, you know, it could be anything but, you know, so there's a high velocity, high agility that goes into some of this. And there's a lot of things that sit in the middle, right? We also think about, okay, there's some of these other things that we want to do. We've got a great format called RFQ Videos, where we will use Riverside or Zoom to record short, you know, Q&A with different experts in our community will ask them all the same, five or six different questions.

00:20:43:05 - 00:21:01:13

Tyler Lessard

And that will create mash up videos for each question. And we'll say, okay, in our world, for example, one of our most successful is on cold call openers, right? Sales reps love their cold call openers. So we said, Great, let's go out and ask a dozen different people what their favorite cold call opener is, and then we smash it together into a video.

00:21:02:04 - 00:21:34:01

Tyler Lessard

And what's interesting is, again, it's easy to do. Like the editing is really simple. We're not getting drone footage here. We're not adding motion graphics. It's just like real people giving real advice when you get yourself in this mindset, these things can become so valuable again, so impactful, but you can do them at high velocity. So we've got this interesting mix, but when you've got a team that's kind of built on it, literally of our team of four people who run Sales Feed, any of us could edit a video shoot, edit and ship a video on any given day and a lot of it is about the talent or.

00:21:36:20 - 00:21:40:05

Ben Hillman

And now using humor and content without crossing the line.

00:21:43:20 - 00:22:01:04

Andrew Davies

And we'll come back to the talent in a minute. And you mentioned personalities as being a key part of company strategy towards video earlier. Before we do that, what I love about the volume that you are putting out, particularly of short form near zero, click on Tik Tok and insta reels, etc. is how much you must be learning.

00:22:01:04 - 00:22:06:13

Andrew Davies

So what are the lessons you're learning from the volume of engagement and interactions you're seeing? What works, what doesn't?

00:22:06:16 - 00:22:32:17

Tyler Lessard

It's been really, really interesting and you're absolutely right. Like this consistency in what we're doing every week we get better. And one of the the most important things I've learned is that building for each individual channel matters so much. What works on TikTok is different from what works on YouTube is different. When works on reels is different from what works on LinkedIn and is different from it works on our website.

00:22:32:17 - 00:22:46:02

Tyler Lessard

And the shortcut is to try to say, Well, you know what? I'm just going to like make one or two and I will ship them across all channels. And in some cases that's okay. But the reality is to unlock the potential, you've got to be mindful of that and be able to deliver on that. So that's a really big one.

00:22:46:13 - 00:23:11:08

Tyler Lessard

And our team has gotten very good at that at creating videos intentionally for TikTok, intentionally for YouTube, intentionally for LinkedIn and so on. So that's big lesson number one. Lesson number two, which is something I've always been horrible myself at in retrospect, and I'm always embarrassed when I look at the videos I used to create. Is that getting right into the content and the message and the value is so important.

00:23:12:02 - 00:23:35:13

Tyler Lessard

You know, when I used to make videos and then sometimes I still do it, my team raises me about and I love it. I'm like, Hey, everybody, it's Tyler here and in this video we're going to talk about ABC and then and you're like, Okay, Tyler, stop there now. Just start again. And it's like, okay, you're right. Like the title of the video, we're going to add some like visual elements that are going to explain what the title is, what the topic is, the thumbnail.

00:23:35:16 - 00:23:57:02

Tyler Lessard

All of that is going to set expectations, get right into it. That first 5 seconds, 10 seconds, so important. And if you're using it, introduce yourself to introduce the topic. You're missing an opportunity. So beginnings of your videos counts so much today building for those different channels. Those are the two biggest things that have popped for me over the last year.

00:23:57:02 - 00:24:03:07

Andrew Davies

Are there any examples or lessons that come to mind on, you know, what you need to do for each of those channels that could be helpful?

00:24:03:07 - 00:24:24:00

Tyler Lessard

So for us, what we found is, I mean, Tik is its own beast. And again, people listening right now are probably like, I'm not even on we're not even on Tik Tok. So like, fast forward, Tyler to that. I will say you may be missing an interesting opportunity. We have found our TikTok channel is over 70,000 followers and all we post is sales content, right?

00:24:24:00 - 00:24:51:16

Tyler Lessard

That's it. So I'm very confident that the majority of those people are actually salespeople and are valuing our content. And we do a mix of education, entertainment. And one of the things to that point on our TikTok channel that we've learned is that this right balance of helpful and entertaining content has worked really well for us. So if you go to our TikTok channel, if you go on TikTok and you search for sales, feed yourself, we find us and you'll find as you scroll through our our legacy content.

00:24:51:16 - 00:25:14:17

Tyler Lessard

Yeah, there's a lot of fun stuff that's like just silly trends and like little jokes and things like that. But there's also a tremendous amount of short educational content and our community really loves us for that. They're like, on any given day, they know we're going to make them laugh, but there's also an opportunity where they're going to learn a quick tip, and there's a lot you can do in under a minute, right in under 30 seconds to providing tips and ideas.

00:25:14:17 - 00:25:37:01

Tyler Lessard

So that's been a big one for us. Is that comedy and of education and entertainment to build the community but then also create value. The second thing I'll share is we've learned a lot on YouTube what's worked and what hasn't. And we've for us, we are now actually modeling a lot of our creation style on things we've learned from YouTubers like Mr. Beast.

00:25:37:07 - 00:26:00:00

Tyler Lessard

He's actually one of our greatest inspirations and we used to create video for our YouTube channel. More like a Netflix, right? We'd we were doing like episodic series based higher production content. And then we found as we moved more towards like personality centric, you know, fast cut. Edit interesting storyline coupled with you know, some helpful ideas became really, really successful for us.

00:26:00:00 - 00:26:09:18

Tyler Lessard

So again, you can go to our Sales Feed channel on YouTube and check out how we've kind of the formats that we're now leaning into now working really, really well for us.

00:26:09:23 - 00:26:25:14

Andrew Davies

So you, you've mentioned humor and know that comes across on all of your different channels. You know, clearly a lot of thought goes into or maybe just comes out of the personalities, the style of humor. How do you use it to help communicators? Any thought process around the boundaries, around the humor that you use?

00:26:25:14 - 00:26:46:18

Tyler Lessard

It's an interesting one when you know, humor is tough. Humor is tough to pull off. Well, And when it doesn't land, you know, it can sometimes do more harm than good. Frankly. And so, yeah, first and foremost, when we build the Sales Feed team in particular, we knew we wanted to lean into humor and entertainment. And so the talent that I brought in that was part and parcel of it, right?

00:26:46:18 - 00:27:12:23

Tyler Lessard

I wanted folks who I felt like had the right type of sense of humor, who had proven their ability to do that. And that's been a really big win for us because it is very, very tricky. But I'll tell you, one of the reasons we do lean into humor is that, I mean, not only does that when it lands, it's like the most shareable and viral content, but what it does for us is it creates an amazing level of relatability with our audience.

00:27:13:11 - 00:27:43:03

Tyler Lessard

The humor content is the stuff where people comment and go, You get me like, you absolutely get me. And you know, it's when we do, I mean, one of our our like most successful videos were like an on our team did for the sales audience right so you have self inside the head of a salesperson and you know one of the gripes they have is like, well it's sales is the only team in the business where we are like heavily commission based and if like quarter to quarter, right, like it's like, okay, reset.

00:27:43:03 - 00:28:00:23

Tyler Lessard

I don't care what you did last quarter if you don't hit it this quarter and like there's all these like challenges that they have that no other teams face. And so we did a video Will did a video called if other departments were treated like sales. And so it was like a leader going into like and it was these fast cuts and it was like, hey, it's our team.

00:28:00:23 - 00:28:18:17

Tyler Lessard

Yeah. By the way, if you don't actually hit your recruitment quota this month, you're fired, right? It's just like and it's this fun and fast clips. And the point of it was, was to create this bond with our audience. Right. And and of course, again, people are like, oh my goodness, this is so true. I like I didn't know how to articulate it.

00:28:18:18 - 00:28:41:05

Tyler Lessard

You get me. This is amazing. And it creates this level of of connection and it goes back to those for ease. It's like that humor. It's not only entertaining and emotional, but it creates that empathetic bond. And it's when you can have people doing it. And it's so different from writing a joke in a blog post to having somebody create this fun skit on camera where their personalities are also attached to it.

00:28:41:05 - 00:28:59:21

Tyler Lessard

So that is kind of why I get so excited about using humor and levity with our audience. But it is difficult to do, and there are certainly times where I you have to question, you know, are we there are times when people say like, that was inappropriate. Right. And you didn't need to drop the F-bomb in this video or that offended me.

00:28:59:21 - 00:29:19:10

Tyler Lessard

And we always try to be very sensitive to that. If we feel there's anything that could inappropriately offend people. That's where we often think we're going to cross a line because there's no need to write. That's lazy humor, I think lazy humor is when you rely on tropes and things like that. And so we we focus on some our humor that we feel doesn't offend our audience.

00:29:19:16 - 00:29:25:09

Tyler Lessard

It may have found others. We make fun of legal procurement or marketing all the time, but intentionally, in a tongue in cheek way.

00:29:29:07 - 00:29:32:00

Ben Hillman

Next, building a scalable rapport engine.

00:29:35:17 - 00:29:55:04

Andrew Davies

It's super interesting because I think there's a there's a parallel here between the trust, the relationships, the relate to ability that field salespeople used to build with their target prospects over a, you know, steak dinner and going out for drinks together. Because a lot of that conversation wasn't about the ROI, it wasn't about the deal. It was about building trust person to person.

00:29:55:04 - 00:30:11:10

Andrew Davies

And it makes it it's really interesting to me that all you're doing is just doing that a global scale. It must be very tough to make sure that that works in a one to many world versus a 1 to 1 world where there's the ability to. You really judge that based on the person who's sitting in front of you.

00:30:11:10 - 00:30:29:18

Tyler Lessard

Yeah, well, that's a wonderful point. And actually, I'm going to steal that. I think I'm going to use part of my strategy with Sales Feed is a is a scalable rapport engine. It's like building rapport with this audience because you're absolutely right. When we don't you know, when what is it now? Like over 80% of the buying journey happens online self-serve before they ever talk to sales.

00:30:29:18 - 00:30:46:14

Tyler Lessard

You know we're missing those opportunities to build that rapport. And we're not talking about the weather or the local sports team or their kids and family. And so this is an amazing way to do that. But you're right, it is not an easy thing to do it at scale, to do it in a way where it feels personal, even though it isn't necessarily.

00:30:47:05 - 00:31:13:03

Tyler Lessard

And what I can tell you is that the one thing that I believe really changed the game for us was that I hired somebody into the team that came from that community of our audience. So our lead personality and content creator for Sales Feed I hired from being a sales rep, they weren't a marketer, they were a personal content creator on the side.

00:31:13:03 - 00:31:34:16

Tyler Lessard

But I found someone who had lived in the sales community who I said, I trust that you can relate to this audience because if I had hired a marketer or a video producer to lead creation of this stuff, it wouldn't have landed in the same way. And so having people who have like genuine, like hyper empathy for your audience, who knows what it's like to walk a day in their shoes and it was done.

00:31:34:16 - 00:31:39:22

Tyler Lessard

It is so important for like all of this, for all of our content strategies today.

00:31:40:17 - 00:32:01:13

Andrew Davies

And I find that really interesting in that I've shown some of the sales videos to non salespeople and often they don't get it. It comes across as extremely fringy or they don't get the humor or borders on offensive or they find the lack of, you know, it being high production a problem. Perhaps if they're in marketing, for example, and I think that's really interesting.

00:32:01:14 - 00:32:19:02

Andrew Davies

You've gone really hard off to the persona you're trying to reach and what you're trying to do is resonate to them. And even if it puts off other people, that's totally fine with you. So is that something not only that you've gone after yourself, but you advise other people to do as well, to go after a really specific target persona and everyone else be damned?

00:32:19:04 - 00:32:44:00

Tyler Lessard

Absolutely. I mean that everyone else be damned. Take that with a grain of salt. I'm not suggesting you should offend others and in serious ways, but having that really disciplined focus on a very specific audience and getting as like niche as you can in that persona, what it allows you to do is to I mean, actually it allows you to be more creative in what you do, right?

00:32:44:00 - 00:33:02:17

Tyler Lessard

Like constraints breed creativity. And that's a very, very true adage. And so when we were thinking about, okay, we want to create like this, like interesting thing for like, you know, anybody in the world of sales, we actually struggled. We're like, well, sales enablement people are going to feel this way. Sales reps will feel this way. A VP of sales would like this.

00:33:02:17 - 00:33:20:20

Tyler Lessard

And we're like, You know what? When we create more constraints on what we're creating, then all of a sudden we're like, Oh, if it's just for the sales rep, we could do this and that and here's the joke and this. And like all of a sudden our best content started to come out. And so I think that there's an opportunity to do that that allows you to then be more creative, be more interesting in your content.

00:33:21:08 - 00:33:39:01

Tyler Lessard

But what it then also does is it creates that consistent trust with that audience because they know when you put out a new video on your channel, when they get your next newsletter or whatever it happens to be, that the content has a high likelihood of being relevant to them, being helpful to them, being interesting to them, being relatable to them.

00:33:39:16 - 00:33:50:07

Tyler Lessard

Because if they watch one video and then the next video is like, Oh, that one's about marketing. I'm not even in marketing, then you lose them and if they don't come back right, you're gone. And so I really think there's a high value in that kind of mindset.

00:33:50:12 - 00:34:05:12

Andrew Davies

So you've talked about talent and choosing talent and you mentioned wealth. Who's done a great job for you for Sales Feed and the need for that personality. So in the context of wanting to show, not tell, how do you advise people to choose the talent from their team or when they're hiring somebody?

00:34:05:12 - 00:34:29:00

Tyler Lessard

The most important thing is to get ahead and understand where you want to get to when you are hiring or bringing in this talent. And so what I mean by that is, you know, I actually did for sales field as an example, you know, myself and some members of our team had done a material amount of research planning ahead of time to land on what do we think we want to do?

00:34:29:00 - 00:34:51:11

Tyler Lessard

Like where where do we want to be a year or two from now? And we had you know, we had decided on things like, well, we want to focus on tick tock as a channel because there's a huge opportunity there, but nobody's capitalizing. We want to do humor in addition to education. And so we had made some of those decisions before for thinking about the talent because it changed the people that we thought we wanted to bring in.

00:34:51:21 - 00:35:06:20

Tyler Lessard

And we said, Well, if we're going to do this and we're going to do this, we need people who can, you know, be top tier in these areas as opposed to, again, hiring, okay, a producer and a content marketer and a writer, and then going, okay, now we're going to do all this stuff. And they're like, okay, I'll have to figure that out.

00:35:06:20 - 00:35:27:08

Tyler Lessard

And they're not necessarily the right folks. The other thing, too, as we decided we were going to really lean in on video is that we also knew we needed on camera personalities and folks who could be those faces and bring the energy and the empathy and the the excitement and be comfortable and confident on camera. And so that also went into the hiring plan.

00:35:27:08 - 00:35:49:00

Tyler Lessard

And a really interesting thing, if you do look to do more of this, the way I think about it now, which in hindsight I, I don't think I really realized at the time, but I will take in as a specific example I hired a creator. And a creator is a lot of different ways to interpret that term. But when I think about somebody who is like a tick tock YouTube creator, right?

00:35:49:00 - 00:36:08:07

Tyler Lessard

What's unique about them is that they are equally comfortable behind and in front of the camera. They almost thrive on like getting out there, making something interesting, telling a great story, cracking a joke, and they are hyper confident on camera, but they also are the ones who can go, Yep, I'm going to record this, I'm going to make it.

00:36:08:07 - 00:36:23:11

Tyler Lessard

I'm going to do some quick edits and we're good to go. And so that's been really interesting and making sure you've got people if you're going to do video, making sure you've got the talent that you feel is going to gravitate towards it, sometimes you can develop it internally. Sometimes you might have the right folks. Sometimes you going to need to bring it in.

00:36:23:14 - 00:36:43:18

Andrew Davies

So there's a clear drive to short form video. You're encapsulating that with the Sales Feeds, you know, tick tock and and insta reels, etc.. What does this end up going if people don't have enough attention and if everybody is producing more, more content, what's around the corner as we create shorter and shorter, you know, five second clips to engage people?

00:36:43:23 - 00:37:03:12

Tyler Lessard

Yeah, I mean, I think the trend here is no different from the general trends we've always seen in the world of content and digital media, right? There is no shortage, short form content. You look at social media networks, right? There's there's posts all the time that you can read and 20, 30 seconds and then move on. Right. Well, now some of those are just becoming videos.

00:37:03:21 - 00:37:21:22

Tyler Lessard

There's mid form content that dives deeper on topics and then there's ebooks and white papers and guides. And those things are still important, as will short form, mid form and long form video, right? It's a new medium to deliver a lot of those same messages or to tell those same stories. And so I think that's just the mindset to have.

00:37:22:14 - 00:37:42:21

Tyler Lessard

And when we think about short form video, yeah, absolutely. We'll see, you know, five, ten, 30, 45 second videos, we'll see other mobile variants. The one thing I would suggest to be mindful of is a lot of people have asked me recently or tech talks been in the news about possibly being shut down in the United States and like are you worried about that?

00:37:42:21 - 00:38:00:05

Tyler Lessard

And you know, my responses, I mean, generally, no, I'm not worried about that because what we've developed as a team is not just an expertise for Tik Tok as a channel, Right. Which is great, but more so we've developed an expertise for short form vertical video content. Tik Tok happens to be the primary channel for that, but guess what?

00:38:00:12 - 00:38:26:00

Tyler Lessard

YouTube Shorts is embracing that. Instagram reels is basically just short form vertical video. And you know what the most successful content is? We put on our LinkedIn channel. It's short form vertical video that we first created for TikTok. I like to say LinkedIn is where adults watch Tik Tok. And so, you know, my point there is that even if you say, like even if you're listening right now and you say, you know what, I'm just not convinced that Tik Tok is a channel for us, that's fine.

00:38:26:11 - 00:38:45:05

Tyler Lessard

But I still encourage you to think about short form vertical video as a format that can be successful on any channel that you use because our audiences are being hard wired to look for that content because they have certain expectations around what it's going to be. It's going to be short, is going to be valuable, it's going to be entertaining.

00:38:45:14 - 00:38:52:01

Tyler Lessard

We're getting more and more drawn to that format. So lean in on the format and then figure out what your best channels are.

00:38:55:17 - 00:38:59:21

Ben Hillman

And now looking inside and outside of tech for content inspiration.

00:39:03:06 - 00:39:23:01

Andrew Davies

Well, what do you think the implications are of video and video and marketing and sales, particularly of text to video? You know, the AI based solutions we're seeing, particularly the ability for people to create this content and turn it into video in a stream, you know, completely frictionless, automated way.

00:39:23:01 - 00:39:54:17

Tyler Lessard

I'm not going to lie. It's pretty wild to see what's happening out there. And we're already experimenting with using A.I. tools and chat CBT to, you know, write video scripts or at least a starting point of a video script. And, you know, that's the analogy to like writing the starting for a blog post or other formats. So no question that there will be tools that will make it easier than ever for anybody, frankly, to come up with a concept, for a video, to write a script for a video.

00:39:55:08 - 00:40:19:23

Tyler Lessard

And then there's still, though, a huge role for our personalities, our delivery to play. It's interesting with I actually believe this drives more importance around video as a medium. So let's just say and I'm not I'm not suggesting this is the way we'll play out, but let's just say for sake of argument that Chartbeat commoditize traditional content marketing, right?

00:40:19:23 - 00:40:43:15

Tyler Lessard

Like literally everybody is writing a blog a day in an automated way and you know, that text based content becomes effectively commoditized. Now you still need your voice and all these things, but in this world, our personalities, right? Our trustworthiness, our ability to tell stories becomes way more important because those are things that actually Beaty can't do yet and most I can't do yet.

00:40:44:07 - 00:41:03:05

Tyler Lessard

And so that's where we differentiate. And how do we bring our personalities, our stories to life? How do we create greater trust? Well, video is, I think, the perfect way to do that. And so I think that the rise of all these tools are going to make video even more important for us. It's going to be how we differentiate, how we earn trust with our audience.

00:41:03:22 - 00:41:25:10

Tyler Lessard

But there's absolutely tools that now help us make video faster, easier, cheaper writing scripts. I mean, we read there's even A.I. tools where if you're like looking off camera because you're reading a script, it can make it look like you're looking at the camera like it's wild, right? So these things are going to make it easier and easier for us to create great professional video, which is exciting, right?

00:41:25:10 - 00:41:29:05

Tyler Lessard

It's going to help us create better content faster and I think that's the opportunity.

00:41:29:06 - 00:41:44:12

Andrew Davies

Well, I'm looking forward to the first few videos you publish of yourself or of Will, where you've spent no time at all because it's just a deepfake of you talking and is mimicking your voice and mimicking your personality. And when we get to that point, then perhaps, perhaps we can have another conversation about how it's changing the game.

00:41:44:15 - 00:42:00:17

Andrew Davies

So instead of with here, know who do you point to? Obviously you know yourselves are a great example. Who else do you point to? Perhaps one or two inside tech and a couple of outside tech as inspirations? You've mentioned Mr. Beast already of great video communicators who show rather than tell.

00:42:00:22 - 00:42:19:02

Tyler Lessard

Yeah. You know, there's so many great folks that we follow. Like LinkedIn is just like it's such a wonderful place to discover and there's so many people that we all follow that we think do a great job, you know, using it as a way to to build their identities and earn trust. I mean, there there are too many to count.

00:42:19:02 - 00:42:43:00

Tyler Lessard

But I would start with there, like I encourage everybody, like follow great influencers in your community on LinkedIn and keep tabs on what they are doing. We look at, as you said, we take a lot of inspiration from consumer world. Folks like Mr. Beast are great inspiration on YouTube. Other great YouTubers who do really educational videos. I actually just I follow a lot of what my kids are watching hundred percent serious and that my 13 year old often recommends YouTubers to me.

00:42:43:07 - 00:43:00:10

Tyler Lessard

I can't even think of any of their names now. They're just like in my feed and I'm like, Wow, this person is terrific. Like, they're just they're nailing it. Like, I totally want to do a sales version of that. And then Tik Tok is the same way, right? It's just like I take a lot of inspiration from Tik Tok now, and you know, a lot 90% of what I see is I look at that, I hear, but like everyone.

00:43:00:10 - 00:43:19:06

Tyler Lessard

So I'm like, Oh, this person gets it. They know what they're doing. So that I mean, that's my honest answer. I'm like, so much of this is just sort of ongoing consumption of what's happening around me and finding those where you're like, Oh, I really like the way this person's doing it. Go for it. So look for those people in your audience network and take inspiration from them.

00:43:19:12 - 00:43:22:09

Tyler Lessard

Flattery is the or sorry imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

00:43:22:12 - 00:43:40:19

Andrew Davies

There we go. There we go. One final question that I've been wanting to ask, because there's loads of people in our audience who might be in your go to market functions and looking at how much content you put out there. So just tell me how much of your day or how much of your week is focused on video creation and doing what we've just discussed versus your day job.

00:43:41:00 - 00:43:50:13

Andrew Davies

And many people who are listening to this might be aspiring to doing what you're doing, but they've got a day job, they've got teams to manage, they've got product to build, they've got solutions to market. So how do you divide that up in your calendar?

00:43:50:14 - 00:44:10:16

Tyler Lessard

So personally, for me, I wish I was able to spend more time on creating content myself and putting it out there. I try to stay consistent on LinkedIn, right? LinkedIn is my one channel that that I embrace as a creator and as a personal brand builder. If you will. And so I try to make sure that I am posting on LinkedIn at least three times a week, and I really should be daily.

00:44:10:16 - 00:44:25:22

Tyler Lessard

I mean, these these days, if you want to, to build that audience daily content is really, really important. And so but I do mix it up. I mean, some of it is just perspective. It's quick ideas and tips and then, you know, sometimes it's a video, but I feel really comfortable doing all of those because I've been doing them a long time.

00:44:26:14 - 00:44:43:15

Tyler Lessard

And I think that's the biggest, you know, suggestion for anybody out there is, is like with anything, you know, the more you do it, the more you practice it, the more comfortable, the more efficient, the better you get at it. And, you know, I would say be, you know, get comfortable with just recording short videos, putting them out there into your community.

00:44:44:00 - 00:44:55:15

Tyler Lessard

They don't have to you don't have to like, sit down and go, oh, my gosh, you got to come up with a whole new idea. Write a big new script. Right? If you know things that are coming on a daily basis, if an interesting idea pops up, an interesting story to share, you know, make a quick note of it.

00:44:55:15 - 00:45:14:04

Tyler Lessard

Take 10 minutes later that day with your phone and just record a quick video of you talking about that. And the more you do that, the more comfortable you'll get. And eventually you might be like me and actually do like parody rap videos and put them out on your channel for everybody to see as embarrassing as they may be and push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit.

00:45:14:04 - 00:45:25:11

Andrew Davies

Love it. Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate the time today, Tyler. I'm looking forward to seeing people's responses to this, but also to see their responses to some of the videos we'll share alongside this from Sales Feed. So thank you so much.

00:45:25:22 - 00:45:26:13

Tyler Lessard

Thank you, Andrew.

00:45:28:23 - 00:45:48:15

Ben Hillman

Shout out to Tyler for being on the show. Now you have a better understanding of the idea of show Don't Tell in content marketing. Today we talked about showing instead of telling the three pillars of Sales Feed success, using humor in content without crossing the line, building a scalable rapport engine, and looking inside and outside of tech for content inspiration.

00:45:48:15 - 00:46:01:15

Ben Hillman

Make sure to get Protect the Hustle a five star review and tell us what lesson from Tyler was your favorite. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Paddle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SaaS.