How to Build a Scalable Content Engine That Boosts Visibility and Saves Budget

A. Lee Judge [00:00:00]:
This episode of the business of marketing is a little bit different. Instead of an interview with an industry expert, today, I want to share with you a conversation we had internally at my agency, Content Monster. Mark A, our head of content, and I talked about companies who are building content engines. We talk about what that means and how you, as a marketer, can frame your content needs in a way to help you obtain and save Judge. So enjoy this behind the scenes conversation. Successful businesses know they have to be visible in the market to grow, and they’re working harder to create content engines to make sure they show up before their competitors do. So how do you create a content engine that’s built for your company? Well

Announcer [00:00:42]:
Influential and thought provoking minds in marketing, sales, and business. A Business of Marketing podcast.

A. Lee Judge [00:00:51]:
Alright. So we’ve been looking through some of our recent content engines we’ve been building for our companies and the term content A, I guess, came from we we began with, you know, the repurposing idea which we still do, but then we realized we we expanded from that to talking about creating big content, like the podcast and the video, and I think things have kind of evolved to where people understand that you need to repurpose, that’s kind of table stakes when you make content, but the strategy wasn’t there, and we’re seeing this evolve as we work with other clients, as they build these content engines, and the biggest takeaway for me A where we’re going is that people still tend to think writing when they think think content, and we always thought, well, there’s also A. There’s, you know, podcasts and video. Yeah. And the engine does supply that. Right?

Marc Raco [00:01:45]:
Well, I think also worth on that note, Lee, I think when people think about content quite often, they think about this polished finished piece that may Yeah. Take a lot of bandwidth, resources, time to to, an effort, frankly, to create. And then and then you have, like, this one output. There’s your content. As opposed to thinking about why don’t you reverse engineer it and start with, like you said, a machine that you’ve built that it can constantly churn out lots of content in a leveraged A way. And it’s funny because you and I, the other day, we were waffling between do we call it a content engine or or refer to it as a content engine or a visibility engine? Is it Lee content? Is it visibility? Or is it just, you know, getting your message out? One way or

A. Lee Judge [00:02:37]:
Maybe it depends on who you’re who you’re working with. Because when we’re working with executive led content, it’s definitely visibility. Like, we have a few startups we work with. They’re startups, they’re new, they’re not known in the market, and sometimes their founders already have a name in the industry. So the founder’s visibility is important and the founder can pull the agency or the company along with them, or maybe they’re responsible for making their letting their investors see that they’re visible in the market. Yeah. That’s a visibility engine. Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:10]:
And perhaps if you’re more established already A you understand the value of content, but you’re not making the right kinds or it’s not getting spread far enough, then maybe it’s a content engine.

Marc Raco [00:03:21]:
Without getting too A. I think a lot of it depends on what your mission is, not just even what your business is. For example, you know, A lot of businesses for b to b podcasts, they, they, they think about the podcast with a different mission. Some may be I wanna forge Judge or or or build relationships. Others may be I want to go for more brand recognition. Others are I want to create a a content machine to pump out as much content with as little effort on my part as I can as A a as a business. It could be a wide range of those things or a combination. So if my if my goal is to create a lot of content to fill my content channels, maybe I need a content machine.

Marc Raco [00:04:04]:
If Yeah. If my goal is to get people to know about what we’re doing, and and let people know about our brand and make those relationships, maybe it’s a quote visibility A, and then Okay. That’s the focus on what we’re doing.

A. Lee Judge [00:04:17]:
Yeah. And I think I I like engine either way, whether it’s A engine or content engine because it’s it gives you a visual of you taking this thing and putting it inside your strategy. I mean, because your strategy is the vehicle of where you’re going. Not to be A, but that’s basically what it is. It repurposing is just doing stuff to multiply content, but having a strategy, having that vehicle to say, our goal is to reach this, our goal is to, take away some brand share in the market, our goal is to make our founder more visible, Our goal is to launch this new product. Yep. And the engine to do that is this content A you have a strategy of how you’re A use that content. So let’s talk about some of the examples that we’ve built or we’ve seen in terms of building these content engines and they start at different places.

A. Lee Judge [00:05:07]:
Right?

Marc Raco [00:05:07]:
Yeah. One that comes to mind is we’re working with a client right now in an ongoing A, and, essentially, they’re sitting experts down for what effectively is an interview, but it’s just that they have a series of predetermined questions, but they don’t know what the answers are really gonna be. And we record those A, and A we organize them so that they’re the the the, you know, the video looks nice, the audio sounds good, It looks real A. But it’s a really extemporaneous organic discussion in a way. And sometimes Lee even throw in additional questions or ask them to summarize in their own words. And sometimes that’s the greatest content. Right? And then we say, okay. Now we’ve captured this.

Marc Raco [00:05:47]:
What what can we do with it? Maybe we can integrate it into a larger video that’s got b roll and animation or text, or it’s a really polished piece. Or we might take pieces of it and put it out as, social shorts. But my point is is they are using it for a lot of different missions, recruitment

A. Lee Judge [00:06:08]:
Mhmm.

Marc Raco [00:06:09]:
Brand building, education, internal A, and it it they could literally use the same recording and build different pieces that are aimed with a different message from exactly that same recording. And that’s a great way to think about it too. Like, if I needed if I had those three or four missions as a business, could I assemble Lee me grab a couple of clients. Let me grab a couple of industry experts. Let me grab a couple of, people within our company. Let me whoever I A, do ask them all a bunch of questions. I have all this raw material, all this clay. Mhmm.

Marc Raco [00:06:52]:
Now I can make a lot of content out of that. I could make a lot of social shorts depending on what message of the day I wanna get out there. I’ve got a lot of material to pull from depending on whose opinion I wanna share or if I want a combination of clients, experts, thought leaders, employees, whatever, I can put that together. So point is it all started with the most basic Lee low lift thing, which is just to have a conversation and memorialize it to record it and record it well.

A. Lee Judge [00:07:24]:
If you’re a marketer struggling to create content that’s truly unique to your brand, here’s the key. Your experts and executives are your most valuable content assets. Conversational content Lee videos and podcasts featuring your team stand out above all of the content. So instead of creating content that sounds just like your competition, start leveraging the unique voices inside your company. Thought leaders and authentic conversations build credibility and engagement. At Content Master, we specialize in remote content production, meaning Lee coach your people to be comfortable on camera, then we capture and produce high quality videos and podcasts featuring your team and customers. No need for expensive production crews, long production plans, or complex setups. Wanna see how it works? Visit content dot com today to learn more.

A. Lee Judge [00:08:17]:
You mentioned raw material. Mhmm. I wanted to talk about that because I think the raw material, what you name the raw material, I’m talking to you marketers, what you name the raw material often pigeonholes how you get funding to do that thing because there’s always a thought of what that thing looks Lee, and when we talk to clients when we first start out, we almost always change the conversation as we hear what they’re saying to help them figure out what it is you actually want to do, because the raw material can start as what you think is a podcast, what you think is a customer testimonial, what you think is an interview, but the thing is, and I know this from my days is, you know, in corporate, what you call that thing when you go to ask for a budget can change whether you get the budget or not. Yeah. Like, if you say, hey, I want to do a podcast series that connotates, a commitment, it connotates time A and and doing things over and over, which is great, but depending on how you’re trying to sell this

Marc Raco [00:09:25]:
A.

A. Lee Judge [00:09:25]:
You have to figure out, okay, what do you really want from it? Sometimes it’s just a matter of we A do a series of interviews. We want to interview these five executives. We know, the marketer knows, their goal is to interview five executives and to get their opinions. That in that case, the raw material isn’t really a podcast. It is a series of interviews. Or it may be a matter of we have an organization that think they’re interviewing, well, we do a lot of client testimonials, for example. And some of those client testimonials actually end up being clips for the website that are more industry information than they are testimonials. So, again, as a marketer, I would be careful what I call that raw material because it has some preconce conceptions of what that means in terms of workload and cost in the whole process.

Marc Raco [00:10:19]:
And and your conception as a marketer may not be the same as your stakeholder that’s gonna agree to fund this. Right. You you they you have different experiences in life. You’re coming from a different point in your industry. You A be of different A generation and thinking about it differently. You know, so so, you know, as you were talking, Lee, this is what was coming to my head. You mentioned sales, meaning the marketing selling their own company on investing in content that’s needed to market and ultimately sell.

A. Lee Judge [00:10:52]:
Right.

Marc Raco [00:10:53]:
So that’s A sales process. And what’s the thing that we have to always keep in mind? So so this is this is this is useful advice to any marketer out there, I think, as they try to get the assets made that they know they need to do their marketing well. You are selling your leadership on the the bandwidth, the room, the resources, and and the budget to execute these. And and frankly, the trust in going forward with these and putting these as an extension of the brand’s message. Right? All these are true. You have to sell them. What is a basic element of any sales process? You have to talk about benefits, not features. So as you’re selling the idea of a project, you can’t sell unless the manager unless the leadership came to you and said, buy A.

Marc Raco [00:11:42]:
We need a podcast. Everyone’s got a podcast. We don’t want one. Make sure we have one. That’s that’s a different that’s a horse of a different color. Right? But if you if you know that the goal is we need to capture more of our, leadership doing, you know, thought leadership out in the in in the world, and we have to show that we are experts in this topic. How do we do that? Maybe a podcast is one of the ways that you do that. And maybe a podcast is going to be a byproduct of a a series of recordings you decide to do that other at you’re creating a content engine.

Marc Raco [00:12:17]:
Right?

A. Lee Judge [00:12:17]:
Mhmm.

Marc Raco [00:12:18]:
But maybe where you have to start is we that result, that benefit. It’s not about what the thing is. It’s about where you wanna go. And you say, well, if Lee, using my example earlier, do a series of recordings with a bunch of these specific targeted people or minds or leaders, we will have that raw material to make things that can get our brand image out there because that’s one of our benefits. That’s one of our goals. We can have an ongoing regular cadence of communication that fills our content channels. That’s another A, a benefit. But the feature, the product that you’re selling is is really just the process to assemble all this and execute that.

Marc Raco [00:13:07]:
But the benefit is what it will do for the business and we have to stop selling. I want I I want a budget to make a podcast. I want a budget to make a marketing video. We have to think more A, I want the process, however the tools assemble them.

A. Lee Judge [00:13:23]:
Frame it. Like, if you’re trying to sell it internally, you wanna frame it as, here are the benefits. Because if I were right now in corporate and I want to obtain a certain amount of video, for example, Lee, we know we need video for our websites, for social, for, you know, YouTube, whatever, I would frame it as, I’m going to obtain video of our experts, video of our leaders, video of you, Mr. CEO, CFO, video of our technologists, video of our customers. Not necessarily getting into the weeds of how I’m going to do it. I’m just going to say, look, I’ve worked with a company who can help me build a content engine and for x amount of dollars Lee can get these benefits from it. That will get you a lot further

Marc Raco [00:14:09]:
%.

A. Lee Judge [00:14:10]:
Than trying to describe the clay that already has a preconceived visual to that person. If you say, for example, we’ve seen this A lots of times, I want to create 10 videos, oh my God, they see dollar signs, right? If you say I want to create a podcast, they see long term A. There’s a lot of things they’re going to think in their mind

Marc Raco [00:14:29]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:14:30]:
And unless that boss says I want a podcast or I want a video, back up a little bit and frame it the way based like you said, based on the benefits.

Marc Raco [00:14:39]:
You know, I I two clients come to to mind that fit perfectly in this domain. One is someone who came to us and said, we want to create a fairly large number of clips each month. Let’s let’s call it maybe 10 clips a month. Maybe that’s not large, but a number of them on an ongoing basis. And we wanna talk about all aspects of the business that we’re in. They’re in a hospitality related business. And, and they did not have in mind at all to do a podcast. That was not their goal at all.

Marc Raco [00:15:15]:
They wanted a whole bunch of clips, but they but they don’t have the time to do a separate shoot for each one of these separate clips. It’s just not, like, practical for them. So we’re Lee, well, why don’t we just have A a month a recording session, and you can talk about everything you need to. And we’ll take that long form video, and we’ll put it out to the world. And we’ll take a shorter version of it and put it out to the world of an extended conversation from within that larger conversation. And then we’ll dice it all up into 10 pieces of branded captioned material that touches on a whole bunch of different topics you’ve A, and then you can put that out through your social media channels and LinkedIn and everything else you’d do. And, ultimately, they were like, sold. Oh, by the way, that long form video, we’ll make an audio version of it.

Marc Raco [00:16:09]:
That’ll go through traditional podcast channels. Now you have a podcast without any extra cost or any extra Lee on your part. And the video is going to be on YouTube and it’ll be a video podcast. So it’ll be a show. It’s like you have your own talk show. All you did was sit two people sitting and talking about what you do in your business once a month, and we handle it. That is their content engine. Okay.

Marc Raco [00:16:35]:
That’s one example. The other is one we recently talked with who’s, who we’re A to start working with, who A, did not come to us with a podcast in mind at all. They came and said, I need to create more content for our content channels. We work with an agency who does all of our social media stuff, but I don’t have enough material to give them. And I don’t have a lot of time, and I don’t have a lot of A, but I got I’m paying a lot for social media amplification. A ought to have some material to put in it. And, you know, what they wanted to do is tell the stories of the people that they’re helping and working with and the way they go about it and the, you know, the the the kind of, attitude and approach that they take. And, again, it similarly, a podcast was really sort of the answer, but it was about the benefit.

Marc Raco [00:17:30]:
What do they need to do? Minimal lift, minimal time spent, have conversations, capture those conversations, and then create derivative content from those conversations, a bunch of social media, A long form content, shorter form content, and then everything else that can be extracted from that, from the transcripts. They can make articles. But but the point is is all they have to do is sit down a couple times a month for half hour, an hour Yeah. And we do the rest, and they have this content machine running.

A. Lee Judge [00:18:08]:
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A. Lee Judge [00:19:01]:
Now they could use others but they hadn’t thought about them yet and so they say, I want a video, I want a podcast, and what we show them is that you can get a lot more than you thought of. In fact, let me just give you what I call this, like the evolution of content repurposing. I did a keynote a few years back called Lee A Remix that kind of started all some of this, but here’s our philosophy on this and how I see it and how we do for our own content. Like God knows where this video we’re creating right now will end A, in terms of types of content. So let’s say, you mentioned a client who started out with, they thought A wanted Judge to do some video, right? You have a couple of video conversations a month, then you so that leaves you a long form video, You can make short videos out of that, and I won’t mean shorts. I mean, like, three of the five minute videos. If you have a thirty minute conversation, now that thirty minute conversation also could spawn several five minute conversations, five minute one topic solved for your customer videos that goes on YouTube as well. I’ve got some excerpts, A minute excerpts that did as well or got more views than the long form and vice versa.

A. Lee Judge [00:20:09]:
So that’s a part we often forget is the middle ground between long form and shorts. Then you also have your shorts, which you can spread across channels, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram. Then you’ve had a natural conversation with an expert that knows things deeper than perhaps a marketer or a writer who’s not in your space knows, transcribe that conversation, write an article from the conversation. AI can help synthesize that if you understand if your AI knows the voice of your company, they can take the voice of your company, lay it over the transcript, and synthesize a an article that is perfectly in your voice with new terminology, natural terminology, expert terminology that’s both good for SEO and for generative search. So what about name here? So far, we got the long form, mid form, short form. Oh, the podcast. You’ve already had you already had the conversation. Right? So I think as we’re talking now, this conversation may end up being an episode of my cast, the business of marketing.

A. Lee Judge [00:21:12]:
So we’ll repurpose this for that too, which I hadn’t thought about until we began talking.

Marc Raco [00:21:17]:
There we go.

A. Lee Judge [00:21:18]:
So now you have a pie cast, which is, like you said earlier, no additional lift.

Marc Raco [00:21:22]:
The that’s just the content outputs. Mhmm. We even talked about the ancillary other aspects of that engine existing and the other things that it does. It may for it it may sort of force you into a cadence that you otherwise wouldn’t do in terms of output.

A. Lee Judge [00:21:40]:
That’s important. And in fact, when someone names podcast, that’s, I think, what we’ve seen is one of the strongest reasons to to even go the podcast route because if you’re able to keep a a regular cadence, it forces you to do so. It forces you to say, we we committed to two episodes a month, and it really could just be we committed to sitting down and having a conversation two times a month, and that keeps the engine going.

Marc Raco [00:22:05]:
I don’t think this is something we say often enough. You know, one of the reasons why leadership may not commit to going forward with that regular cadence, like a podcast is because they perceive they don’t have the time they can’t work it in their schedule. I can’t promise I can be available twice a month to do this. And I understand they’re busy. But the other thing I think about is that person invariably is always meeting with other leaders. They’re always meeting with clients. They’re always meeting with prospects. They always have things that is important for them to say out in the world.

Marc Raco [00:22:43]:
Okay? But the these conversations, these recordings can just be instead of private, they can be on mic. And quite frankly, if you go to your client or a person in the industry that you’re gonna have a meeting with anyway and say, you know what? I know we’re gonna meet and talk about this. I think this would be a wonderful thing to share with people. Would you be willing to have that on microphone with me? Because I’d like to share that with our audience. Yeah. I’m telling you, most people, not everybody, most people will jump at that chance because that’s a free opportunity for them to amplify their own business or their own thought leadership, and you’re doing all the lift. And then you are having a conversation you’d have anyway, but you’re gonna get a lot more value out of that. And if that conversation, by the way, doesn’t have the results that you want it to, it doesn’t end up in a sale, it doesn’t move the needle for you, The conversation still exists and can fill your content channels and provide value in another way.

Marc Raco [00:23:40]:
So Yeah. Having that cadence is manageable if you think a little outside the box about it’s not like I have my regular schedule and I have to add this thing on, it’s how does this fit within the thing I’m doing anyway, I’m just gonna record some of them.

A. Lee Judge [00:23:55]:
Yeah. Lee know, on that note, the reason we have this video that you’re watching now, the reason it exists is because Mark and I realized we would have these debrief calls after talking to a customer or during a project, and we would talk for thirty minutes and go, wow, that was valuable for someone else to hear, for a customer to hear. I’m A that. And so A value we hope you got in watching this video came from the fact that we have these great conversations internally within Content Monster, and it’s a value to A to someone, to our A, or to whoever’s watching this video, to you watching the video. So that’s an example of what Mark just said. Just record things you’re already doing, and it will help bring your customers closer to you.

Marc Raco [00:24:42]:
And and and as an add on to that quickly, I wanna say, you know, content engine can be a structured thing. It can be a structured thing where it’s a podcast and, you know, you you you work with our team A you you you you know, we have a structure into it A then here are the outputs of it. But but it is a matter of having an engine going one way or another. Lee, you’ve talked in the past about, you know, recording your end of a sales call, for A. And then whether or not that results in a sale, that still made your time valuable because you never know when a golden nugget’s gonna come out of your mouth and you will have captured A. And you say that is the best way I ever explained that, and people should hear that, and I captured it. I’m gonna take that. The person I talk to is not on the recording, so it’s not like I’m violating their privacy or that relationship.

Marc Raco [00:25:32]:
I’ve captured that. That’s a piece of content. The the point is to start the content engine, whatever it is. Now A more structured and strategic it can be in its design, probably the more effective it’ll ultimately be. But the main thing is stick the key in the ignition and turn it.

A. Lee Judge [00:25:52]:
There you go. Well, that’s mic drop. For any marketer watching this, I I think Lee my last word would be that and frame. Frame what you’re trying to create internally, your content engine. Think about how you frame it first, what your total output you want to be before you go ask for the budget. Understand what your outputs are gonna be and frame it carefully and you’ll it’s it’s gonna be so easy to frame it in a way that says, wow, we’re gonna get all that for this small price and we’re gonna be committed to being regular with this. Here’s here’s the money. Take take the corporate wallet.

A. Lee Judge [00:26:28]:
I mean, it’ll be it’ll be easy. And this is coming from someone who had to ask for that money a lot. I wish I had known that then, to just frame it better in how we create content. So this is Marketing I having our A, you know, we’re creating content, we’re we’re eating our own dog food as they say, because we know that what we talk about is valuable to you. So subscribe to the channel and learn with us.

Marc Raco [00:26:54]:
Thank you for listening to the Business of Marketing podcast, a show brought to you by contentmonster.com, the producer of b two b digital marketing content. Show notes can be found on contentmonster.com as well as A.