Nick Bennett, co-founder of Tack and B2B influencer is a great example of B2B marketing professional turned influencer turned entrepreneur. A trend we are going to being seeing a lot more of. Nick and I discuss where we are at in the adoption cycle of B2B influencer marketing, what the best platforms are for B2B, how we drove $2M in pipeline at his former company and a lot more!

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Transcript

Jess Phillips (00:01.512)
What’s up guys? Welcome back to the Social Standard Podcast. My guest today is Nick Bennett. Now Nick is a really interesting guy because he started his career out as a field marketer and he has parlayed that now into becoming a B2B influencer himself. And Nick is not just starting as a B2B influencer, he’s got a huge following on LinkedIn, he’s got a very successful newsletter that has just launched, he also is the host of the Anonymous Marketer podcast. And I believe if I’m not mistaken Nick, you’re also about to become an author.

Nick (00:30.354)
Yeah, yeah, writing a book on the creator economy in B2B right now.

Jess Phillips (00:33.572)
I love it. That’s super cool. Okay, and when can we expect that book to be out, do you think?

Nick (00:39.394)
So it’s coming out in April of 2024. These publishers, they want the book so early, but then they don’t, they take forever to actually bring it to market.

Jess Phillips (00:46.396)
Yes, yeah, that’s true. I think that’s always a sensitive question for an author, right, is when is the book coming? So that’s good. You’re gracious enough to answer it, which we appreciate. And yeah, I mean, for our audience who doesn’t know Nick, Nick is a really, really interesting guy doing some very cool stuff in the B2B space. He’s not just a B2B creator, but he is also trying to figure out how to scale the B2B creators and help them. And we’re going to get into a lot of that today. I really want to talk about.

What’s been the journey effectively for B2B creators? Also, how these B2B creators can impact the bottom line, which I know, Nick, you have done yourself. Why people are more impactful than brands on social media. And then lastly, let’s talk a little bit about events and B2B influencers and how, if you are a marketer who is listening, you can make sure your events are more effective with B2B influencers. So does that sound like a good plan? All right, let’s do it. So.

Nick (01:40.526)
Absolutely.

Jess Phillips (01:43.584)
When we think about the B2B creator journey, it’s been a much slower cycle than the B2C world has, right? B2C has successfully done a lot of things in this creative space, but B2B creators have really just started to kind of pick that up. So where do you think, from your perspective, where do you think we’re at in that overall journey or that overall cycle?

Nick (02:04.022)
I definitely think we’re in the early adopter phase. And it’s more industry specific. So like when I think of like creators and influencers in B2B, it’s mostly in martech and sales tech. Those are kind of like the big two. I feel like those are the ones that have a lot of those early adopters that are bought in that like this is a change that needs to happen. Now, when you think of like FinTech, healthcare, all these other industries, like they may have like subject matter experts or things like that, but like,

Jess Phillips (02:21.852)
Mm-hmm.

Nick (02:32.662)
feel like it’s gonna be a lot longer before they see mass adoption. I do think that like mass adoption for MarTech and SalesTech is probably like, I would say anywhere from like two to four years away. It could accelerate. I don’t think it will decline. I think it will, if anything, accelerate faster. But I would say between two and four years, we’ll start to see mass adoption in that space. And then hopefully it just continues to keep going.

Jess Phillips (02:57.788)
Yeah, I agree. I definitely think we’re early on in this space, but still a lot of exciting stuff that’s currently happening. Now, what about platforms? Do you think that there is one shining platform for B2B? Do you think there are several? Like, where are you looking at this as a marketer and as a creator?

Nick (03:13.278)
So I definitely think LinkedIn is the place, like the platform for like B2B that a lot of people are creating content on. So the majority, so like when I started creating content three and a half years ago on LinkedIn, 1% of users created content on LinkedIn. At the time it was 650 million users on LinkedIn. By the end of 2022, they were up to almost 4% of users that created content and up to about 920 million users at the time.

So they’ll probably eclipse a billion users this year. What’s to say 4% doesn’t turn into 10% in like the next year because everyone is kind of, I mean, I’m sure if you’ve seen it, like it’s becoming very noisy on LinkedIn. How do you stand out? I do think that’s like the number one platform. For me, I’m still doing YouTube. I’m a big believer of YouTube shorts, huge, huge believer that out of all platforms, I think that’s the one that marketers, especially in B2B should be like focused on.

Jess Phillips (04:08.296)
Really.

Nick (04:08.35)
I do post on TikTok, Instagram Rails, tried threads, got bored of it after a few days as well. But for me, the big thing was like, hey, what happens if you lose your audience on any of these social platforms? It’s not owned media. You don’t own these audiences that you bring. So how do you convert them and kind of like bring them over to your newsletter, for example?

Jess Phillips (04:14.7)
Mm-hmm.

Nick (04:32.482)
How do you bring them over to your podcast? How do you bring them over to all these things where you can start to build that email list that you actually own and kind of do more with. And I have now a membership community where people pay between $15 and $225 a month, and they have access to myself and my co-founder. And we do a lot of things around this whole people first go to market, which plays into this whole creator and influencer space.

Jess Phillips (04:52.756)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Phillips (04:56.196)
Yeah, super interesting. So it sounds to me like you are bullish on short form video when it comes to B2B marketing. Okay. So.

Nick (05:02.888)
Yeah, sure form videos the future. I mean, it’s not even the future. It’s the now, but like, it’s definitely going to be the future.

Jess Phillips (05:06.596)
It is the present. Yeah, I agree. And we’ve seen those trends very heavily, obviously, in B2C, which is leading. For B2B, my question is, do you think, with regard to short form video, do you think LinkedIn is a place for short form video? Or do you think LinkedIn will remain more text and image based?

Nick (05:22.026)
No, I think, you know, it’s funny, because I do think short form video, and I post a lot of like short form video on LinkedIn, whether it’s podcast clips or like stuff that I’ve been on personally, and they do really well, but a good friend of mine, Will Aiken, so he has been testing, driving directly to YouTube through short form video on there and then linking to his YouTube. And he is seeing massive engagement and impressions on those types of content.

Jess Phillips (05:31.528)
Same.

Jess Phillips (05:45.544)
Hmm, interesting. Okay, so you’re saying he’ll basically post a short form, a YouTube short, like a short form video, but when you click on that or you drop the link to your YouTube app, yeah, that’s what we do for our podcast as well, and I think that works really well. Okay, so you think there is a world, it sounds like you think there’s a world where short form makes sense for LinkedIn, but it’s not the only, or it’s not gonna be the majority of content there.

Nick (05:53.002)
Yep.

Nick (05:56.47)
the yet

Nick (06:11.526)
Yeah, I think it’s gonna, I think more, well, it’s interesting because I feel like with video, no one can copy you. People plagiarize my content all the time and I feel like LinkedIn is just a bunch of regurgitated information, but you can’t copy video. So I do think, I think of people like Chris Walker from Refine Labs, he’s been doing video on LinkedIn for years and like 95% of his content is video. And he told me the reason being was, people can’t plagiarize my videos.

Jess Phillips (06:21.812)
Oh. Mm-hmm.

Nick (06:39.298)
And it becomes like you get to know the person a little bit more. And I was like, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So I think, you know, there is a lot of people that are doing video now. I think it will increase over the upcoming years, too, though.

Jess Phillips (06:52.124)
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, tell me why you’re bullish on shorts and you think that is the Shortform video platform.

Nick (06:59.594)
I just think that like that’s the one platform that won’t go away. You never know TikTok could go away. I mean, I don’t think Instagram will go away, but I feel like it’s such an untapped area for B2B specifically. Like I feel like, you know, you have a lot of people that are creating like YouTube stuff and like content and like they’re like YouTube creators. Like cool, but like there’s not many B2B YouTube creators and the ones that I know that are creating there.

have done an amazing job. I’m actually hosting an event in Costa Rica the first week of November, and it’s a creator’s retreat. And so we’re teaching a workshop on YouTube Shorts specifically, where we’re bringing people in that have been doing, like in B2B that are like experts in YouTube Shorts, and they’re gonna be teaching like how to be better creators within YouTube specifically.

Jess Phillips (07:47.988)
I love that and I want to get into that specific event a little bit more in just a minute. But why do you, I’ll tell you I have a theory as to why B2B creators are not doing video. I’d love to hear yours but I think it’s mainly because number one it’s very time intensive in comparison to writing a quick short tweet or a text post on LinkedIn. And two I think you have to, you know, it’s a little daunting to get in front of the camera. I think that as we look at the B2B space there are a lot of people who have really strong voices and great opinions.

Nick (08:03.31)
Hmm.

Jess Phillips (08:16.552)
but they are even, I’m finding, a little hesitant to kind of dip their toe in the water on LinkedIn just to write a post, let alone to go out and shoot a whole video. So do you agree? Do you disagree? Where do you think I missed that?

Nick (08:27.666)
No, 100%. I think imposter syndrome is real. I think regardless, I mean, like I said, I’ve been doing this for three and a half years and I still, I still get imposter syndrome from time to time do like the content that I create because I’ve had a lot of stuff go viral and I’ve gotten a lot of hate on LinkedIn, which is supposed to be a special like a professional platform. But like you said, not everyone is used to video like for me, like

Jess Phillips (08:45.545)
Mm-hmm.

Nick (08:49.938)
I was doing evangelism work. So like I was the face of the brand for a few companies that I worked for. It’s like, I went and spoke at the events. I did the podcast. And again, not everyone is comfortable being on video and it takes a lot of work. Now I do think like the editing piece is a big piece. And you know, personally, I use some AI like to create clips from like different types of podcasts and videos that I do because I don’t have the time to do the editing. Now my podcast specifically, I do have an agency that does that for me, but like for all this other stuff.

Jess Phillips (09:12.328)
Yep. Sure.

Nick (09:19.018)
I’ve been testing all these AI platforms to see like, hey, can I actually get clips that I would use? And believe it or not, like I’m actually quite impressed with what I’ve been able to produce in a fraction of the time. Yeah.

Jess Phillips (09:29.936)
Really? Okay, well, I’m gonna have to give that a little bit of a try myself because my experience has not been that great with those, but I think the reality is, is you probably, I probably need to lean into giving a little bit more instruction than I’ve been giving it, right?

Nick (09:43.546)
Yep. Yeah. No, I’m not. I’m not sponsored by them, but I will give a shout out to I’ve been using momento. Um, check them out. Like I’ve used like seven different platforms and like they’re the one that allows me to get the most like customization and like allows me to move things like where I want it, the branding, all that stuff. So again, not sponsored, just go check them out.

Jess Phillips (09:49.273)
Okay, yeah.

Jess Phillips (09:56.764)
AHHHHH

Okay.

Jess Phillips (10:04.584)
Well, I think that’s helpful, because even when I try to edit in Riverside, sometimes I’m like, this is a little clunkier than I would like. So okay, that makes sense. And I mean, do you think that, I guess the one platform that we didn’t really touch much on that I think is traditionally a B2B platform is Twitter? Like, where do you think Twitter is going from a B2B standpoint?

Nick (10:11.086)
Yeah, yeah, yep.

Nick (10:25.266)
Yeah, that’s a good point, too. I mean, I guess we call it X now. But yeah, I know, I know it’s such a weird name. But like, I still so I, I’ve got like almost 4000 followers on there. And it’s like, I was creating there for a while. And then I stopped and I was like, ah, you know, I’m going to just focus on LinkedIn. But like more like probably the last couple of months, I’ve started to do more there. I just feel like I can be a little bit more like

Jess Phillips (10:28.624)
Yes, all right, you’re right.

Jess Phillips (10:39.346)
Okay.

Nick (10:50.914)
wild or like edgier and not have to worry as much because it’s like a different audience. I feel like all these platforms, it’s like I have different audiences on all of them. So like they see like different pieces of me.

Jess Phillips (10:52.476)
Yes. Yeah.

Jess Phillips (11:02.undefined)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And even I know when threads first launched, there were a lot of memes going around where it was like when my Instagram audience meets my Twitter audience, and then it’s just kind of this battle or this weird, very weird thing. But I do wonder if that edginess that Twitter does give, if that makes for a really good testing ground for brands and for creators to try, just to try out new material, try out maybe a new style of content without the full like,

Nick (11:23.842)
Mmm.

Jess Phillips (11:30.672)
risk of showing up on LinkedIn with something like that.

Nick (11:34.174)
Yeah, 100%. I mean, I’ve tried some stuff there before like moving it over and like, I feel like it’s done. Like it’s a good place. Like I’ve done, I’ve definitely like tested some things and like if it does well, I’ll write like a longer form version of it.

Jess Phillips (11:47.268)
Yeah, so that would be a great idea, right, as well as far as testing. And I mean, I do, what do you think? I’ve got to ask, what do you think about Twitter, i.e. X, generally? Like, are you bullish on the platform? Do you think it’s gonna crash and burn? Where’s your head?

Nick (12:04.302)
I mean, I think it definitely could crash and burn for sure. Um, I think it’s, yeah, I mean, with, you know, Elon leading it, I feel like it could definitely crash and burn any day. And trust me, like I’m a, I’m a huge, like, I’m a fan of him as like a business person, but like, I feel like, you know, kind of some of the moves he’s done is, uh, been, you know, it’s taken a lot of like the fun out of it to a certain degree. And I know people that have been like super like OG Twitter and it’s like, they, as soon as he took over, like they were out and, um, I’m definitely seeing people.

Jess Phillips (12:30.707)
Really?

Nick (12:32.566)
that have been creators there and they’re seeing less engagement. I feel like he’s tweaked the algorithm a bunch and there’s been a lot of changes on that side that’s prioritizing the monetizing of Twitter Blue, for example, and stuff like that. They want people to buy, he doesn’t want people to use it for free. He wants people to ultimately buy the monthly subscription or yearly subscription.

Jess Phillips (12:53.076)
Sure, yeah, and that makes sense, right? Because you have to do that if the ads are not coming in. Right, and I actually think that all platforms would like to go to that to some degree. It’s just a little bit more safety. I mean, the ATT stuff that came through and just wiped out Metta’s earnings among other social media platforms. So I understand the need to diversify the risk. I will say, I still think I’m kind of bullish on Twitter. Yeah, I think that there’s a lot of potential there.

Nick (12:58.379)
Yeah, exactly.

Nick (13:03.875)
Hmm.

Nick (13:17.931)
Yeah?

Jess Phillips (13:22.204)
The only thing that will get in the way of Twitter is Twitter. They’ve had a lot, you know, do you know what I mean? I think that there’s a lot of potential there, but if I’m a B2B creator, I think you’re 100% right. I’m going to LinkedIn, and that’s where I’m starting to build my following, because that’s where the most green pasture is. Twitter is a nice to have, but not a need to have. And I do, I would absolutely encourage people to get into video. It’s something that I try to do a lot more of myself, and it does just take a lot of time, but I think that.

Edutainment has been a huge trend on TikTok for B2C. It’s expanded into B2B, and I do think that B2B is going that way. Maybe not for all brands, but have you, I mean, you’ve got to see, I mean, you just launched a company, right? That feels a little bit like it’s going in this direction if you wanna talk about that in regards to this answer. But how do you see entertainment flowing into the B2B world? Entertainment marketing.

Nick (14:15.73)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m definitely seeing it a lot. Yeah, I’ll give you a good example. Like a good friend of mine, Tim Davidson, he works for this company Directive, but like all his videos is him cutting fruit and like talking about B2B, like just funny outtakes on B2B. So like when people see him, they’re like, hey, you’re the guy that cuts fruit on video. It’s kind of like his thing. Like people recognize that. And like, they put like, it’s just like for me, like when I started creating content, like people thought of me as like the field marketing guy.

Jess Phillips (14:35.631)
Awesome.

Nick (14:43.414)
Like still, even to this day, it’s like, you know, hey, you were like the one that talked about field marketing like three and a half years ago, when no one else was talking about it. And I was like, yeah, but it just, you know, it’s these things that like stick with you. And he’s just kind of now like when he goes, we’re actually gonna be at a conference together soon. And like, he was like, I’m bringing fruit with me.

And he’s like, I’m gonna record content of me like cutting fruit at this conference. He’s like, I want it, like, that’s what I wanna be known as. Yeah, and it’s like, it’s so interesting. And like, I’m a huge believer in like collaborating with like all of these creators. Prior to like launching this business, I worked for a company called AirMeet and I was building out this whole thing called the Creator Studio. And so basically it was a place for creators to go and collaborate on different types of projects together. And we didn’t benefit as a brand specifically, but we benefited through the referrals.

Jess Phillips (15:05.404)
That’s so awesome.

Jess Phillips (15:19.717)
Okay.

Nick (15:30.006)
when people saw the output of the content. Unfortunately, that got cut a little short, but with Tac, which is the new business, we’re launching a creative aspect of it. And so again, I’m basically taking what I did at Airmeet and just leveling it up and we’re gonna be bringing different creators on and like partnering with them to produce different types of episodic assets, whether it’s a podcast, shorts, newsletter, emails, stuff, like whatever, it doesn’t matter. We just wanna partner with the right people.

Jess Phillips (15:30.609)
Hmm.

Nick (15:59.138)
that will help us additionally get more awareness around this aspect of the business.

Jess Phillips (16:04.14)
Interesting. So are you, is it more of a consultation, like a creative consultation company?

Nick (16:10.33)
Not really, because we don’t do anything with the creative side of it. We’re just trying to get people to know that we are big believers that creator-led growth is a real thing, and that we think this is the future. Again, this is one aspect of the business, which ultimately will lead people to seeing hopefully what more other aspects of the business are. And so if they want to hire us for marketing services, or if the membership component, hopefully it leads to just more awareness overall.

Jess Phillips (16:33.236)
Got it.

Jess Phillips (16:37.84)
Okay, that makes sense. So you’re drinking your own KuWid, right? Okay, I love it. I think that’s so smart. We do the same thing. We actually, I use influencers to edit the podcast and do our short form clips and like all of our case studies and our marketing materials and all of that. So yeah, it’s a great way to do it because they’re, they understand the platforms and they, they can help us sort of create stuff that’s next level versus what we would ultimately be able to do ourselves. So.

Nick (16:40.535)
Yeah, exactly.

Nick (16:53.811)
Oh wow.

Nick (17:06.423)
It’s a great idea.

Jess Phillips (17:07.64)
Yeah, yeah. So, all right, switching gears a little bit. So for brands who want to partner with creators, like how do you, how would you guide them on content types and platforms? What do you think about like integrations in terms of like newsletters, for example, or podcasts? Because it’s obvious, I think, in terms of like YouTube, what you do and video. To me, those are easy ones for brands and you can look at B2C. But like a lot of B2C creators don’t have

Nick (17:22.157)
Hmm. Yeah.

Jess Phillips (17:36.772)
I just think that we’re leaving a lot on the table with regard to podcasts.

Nick (17:41.022)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you know, it’s so I’ve, so I’ve had this my second podcast, actually my fourth podcast, two of them didn’t really take off, but the last, yeah, the anonymous market. Exactly. So I started that one in January of this year. And so I, I said, you know, I really want to, I feel like I want to monetize this. I want to offer like ad roles. I want to offer sponsored content that goes with it. I want to see what happens if anyone would actually like bite. And so I remember putting a post out on like LinkedIn,

Jess Phillips (17:49.731)
The anonymous marketer, that’s the one we’re talking about now.

Jess Phillips (17:57.125)
Okay.

Nick (18:10.206)
And I had like a bunch of companies like come inbound, be like, hey, like, do you have a media kit? Like, I’d love to see more. And so I had one that was built, that was actually really, really nice. And I started sharing it and people were like, yeah, like I’m good with this. Like, let’s do it. And so I was able to start like having like podcast sponsors like day one, before I even had any listeners to the show because they knew of the audience that I brought with me. They knew that like my kind of track record, they believed in me as an individual.

Jess Phillips (18:34.919)
Interesting.

Nick (18:38.342)
And so it just, you know, we’re in, you know, almost, I guess, halfway through the year, almost three quarters of the way of the year in a few months. And it’s like, we’re, you know, Google sponsors the podcast now. And like, I have all these companies that have come inbound, I haven’t gone outbound to any of these companies. And it’s been really, really nice to be able to see that. Now, what they get, and I think one of the big drivers of it is they do get like a sponsored post for whatever it is that they want.

Jess Phillips (18:55.24)
Amazing.

Nick (19:07.154)
as part of sponsoring like the top package of like the podcast. So that’s one piece. They get the ad roll. They get me, you know, 30 second ad roll that I’m reading for them. They get shout outs in all of the posts when I post clips on it as well. I mean, I’m pulling right now I’m pulling about between YouTube and like, you know, Apple and Spotify, probably about three to six thousand listeners per episode. And I’ve released 10, 10 episodes so far.

Jess Phillips (19:33.16)
Great.

Nick (19:36.286)
So it’s definitely good. I’m definitely getting a lot of interest there, but again, a lot of it ties back to LinkedIn specifically.

Jess Phillips (19:43.728)
Yes. So LinkedIn is your place to advertise the podcast and that’s you’re leveraging LinkedIn to drive growth for your podcast.

Nick (19:48.782)
Thank you.

Exactly. Yep. Yeah, it’s and I have through my personal page and then I have like a company page for the podcast that has like, I think it has like 7000 followers now we’re almost 7000 followers. So like I’m posting clips, multiple different clips between both pages, getting a lot of different engagement across the both of them and I released twice a month so I don’t release you know, on a weekly basis or anything either so I try to make them impactful when they do come out.

Jess Phillips (20:18.128)
Yeah, I think that’s the way to go, right? Because if you lose somebody, especially in the early days with a podcast that’s not quality, they’re likely not gonna come back. And it’s hard because we all have a lot to do, a lot to listen to and a lot of content to consume.

Nick (20:32.072)
Yep, 100%.

Jess Phillips (20:33.584)
Well, what do you think though? I still think, I mean, I know that that’s great. That’s terrific that you’ve had that success. And I think that what is the next level of that though, because podcasts have been around for a while. I just, and with video being so popular, I really think that there is more to do with things that you could have in the background as far as sponsorships, like how can we tie in these events, especially with B2B to say, let’s get, you know, you can get a guest on your podcast.

You know, like what are all of the, you could have somebody at the events. Uh, and I feel like I’m, I’m babbling here a little bit, but I just think that there are so many different ways that we can increase engagement above and beyond a simple read. I mean, do you think that’s, do you think that’s true? And I mean, where do you, how long do you think we have until we can start doing that marketer is going to have that appetite.

Nick (21:22.442)
Yeah, no, 100%. I’ve always said, influence and marketing, at least in B2B, 1.0 is always the brand telling the creator or the influencer what to do. These are your deliverables. You didn’t have any creative freedom to a certain degree. It was like, you need to deliver on this. Now I feel like it’s definitely changed a bit. Some companies get this better than others, but it’s like, how can I integrate these influencers and creators back into my go-to-market strategy so they’re a larger part of it? So yeah, maybe.

their sponsored content and sponsored posts. Maybe they’re speaking at a webinar or an in-person event. I have one company that I’m working with that is posting like a 20 city road show and they’re bringing in influencers for every city to be like the MC, to drive a bunch of awareness. So like that’s another piece. So like I’m doing like Boston, for example, and they have people doing Miami and Chicago and like all these other places like LA.

and they’re bringing in B2B influencers and creators to be these emcees and to be like one of the big like, hey, you should come to this event to come see these people until I spend time with them. And they’ve seen like a ton of success with this. So like I’ve helped them build out this strategy to kind of see like what this actually looks like, but it’s been really, really fun, but it’s integrated more into like the whole strategy versus just that one small piece. And I think that that’s why you need to build it. Like, you know,

Maybe there’s a membership component. Maybe there’s the additional speaking or video or whatever it is. Maybe you become an advisor for the company and you help them. Like one company that I’m also helping right now is like, they’re like, we need podcast guests, but like we don’t know the right people, you do. Can we tap into that? And so like, you know, that’s another piece of it that’s like hugely untapped. And it’s like, I’m doing a content series for them. So like I’m the talent.

Jess Phillips (22:53.587)
Yeah.

Jess Phillips (23:11.484)
Interesting.

Nick (23:12.69)
in their content series, which plays into the larger part of it.

Jess Phillips (23:16.964)
Okay, that makes sense. And I know SAP, who I always look at as a front runner in B2B influencers, that’s exactly what they did with their podcast is they had an influencer come on and be the host. And then they had guests, you know, thereafter. And she’s been the host for their podcast for I think going on three or four years now. And it’s a similar, it’s a very similar setup to what you’re talking about as well, because she has a reasonable following on LinkedIn. And she’s doing a lot of those things. Now what-

Nick (23:36.866)
Bye.

Jess Phillips (23:45.724)
What do you think though, like something that you just touched on there, it’s almost like podcast casting or interview setups. Where do you think that piece belongs? Like who does that belong to? To me it’s almost, I could see PR wanting to be in that pretty seriously, but I also think that there is, there’s a role for social teams in that as well.

Nick (24:10.018)
Yeah, I think the issue is a lot of these like early stage B2B companies don’t have PR teams. So it’s like, you know, they might not even have social teams, it might be like a one person marketer that’s trying to do everything. So it’s like, I see a lot of founders getting involved in a lot of this stuff, especially in like early stage, maybe seed stage series A, I feel like those where you see a lot of like founder led marketing where like they’re the ones that are working with you.

Jess Phillips (24:15.827)
Right.

Jess Phillips (24:34.949)
Mm-hmm.

Nick (24:37.454)
I feel like once you get to Series B and a little bit later, it starts to, they start to add a bit more functionality within marketing, it becomes a lot easier. But at least that’s what I’ve seen so far.

Jess Phillips (24:48.036)
Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess I’m approaching it more from the lens of like Adobe and Zendesk and some of our larger clients. And then you’re bringing in really nicely some of the smaller folks that are just getting their start and that’s a good point of distinction.

Nick (25:03.382)
Yeah, it’s tough too, because I mean, you know, all these like those larger companies, like, yeah, they have the budgets, they have all the people to be able to do this. But like, these smaller companies want to do it. And you know, speaking of Adobe, for example, you know, they put out a survey that said 88% of B2B companies want to do

Jess Phillips (25:15.688)
Yeah.

Jess Phillips (25:24.212)
It’s a great one.

Nick (25:27.37)
they just don’t know how to get started when they’re a team of one or a team of two and like their budget is very, very minimal and they need to stretch it. How can you like, not even, what I’m seeing a lot is like not even like pay someone, but like, hey, I’ll give you free access to our platform or our tools in exchange for something.

Jess Phillips (25:46.477)
Yeah. Yeah, and that can make really good sense, right? Especially if you’re a creator and you need analytics for your social media platforms, right? Or if you needed a tech stack for your newsletter. So, okay.

Nick (25:53.614)
Exactly.

Nick (25:57.654)
Yep, I do it myself and I’m just like, this is great. I get access to free tools that like normally, one, I was saving companies a lot of money before, but like now that I’m on my own, it’s like, I need these things, but like I don’t have the money to pay for them. But like, hey, if I can like bargain with you, absolutely.

Jess Phillips (26:12.88)
Yeah, I mean bartering is the, it’s the best way to do things in my opinion. So, um, I like it. Okay. Now newsletter specifically, you know, I know I hear a lot of B2B companies talking about wanting to like sponsor newsletters and I think a big reason for that is because LinkedIn has really been pushing the newsletter, right? It helps your following, it helps your engagement. And so you see a ton of creators on LinkedIn specifically having newsletters. I know that there are other platforms.

Nick (26:16.811)
Yeah.

Jess Phillips (26:38.532)
like Substack, like Beehive, where you can do paid or free subscriptions and really own your audience a little bit more. But how would you guide a brand who said, hey, I think we need to be in newsletters. How can we partner with B2B influencers in the newsletter game? What’s your advice for them?

Nick (26:52.814)
So I’ve been testing this out myself, like personally. And so I have my newsletter that’s on Beehive. And so I think we’ve posted probably like seven or eight. It’s all about the creator economy, influence of marketing called the creative circle. Yeah, now I launched the same thing on LinkedIn, but a monthly version. So like the Beehive one is bi-weekly, LinkedIn one is monthly. And so like the Beehive one, we’ve got like 183 subs, like not anything crazy. On LinkedIn though,

Jess Phillips (27:04.689)
Yeah, I’ve checked it out. It’s good.

Nick (27:21.714)
I have almost 8,000. And so I’m like, all right, this is great. The issue is you don’t own those people. You can’t get their contact info. How can I push those people over to the other one? So I’ve been trying to basically just be like, hey, this is the monthly version. Here’s a link if you want more content from this, like a bi-weekly version, try to add some additional offers to move people over. And so I’m actually gonna push the second one out today to see if I can move more people.

Jess Phillips (27:23.4)
Yeah.

Nick (27:49.802)
First one, I was able to move like seven people. I haven’t figured out how to like crack that piece of it yet, but like I talked to a company yesterday. And so again, they wanted to do a newsletter. They were like, I’m thinking I’m just gonna launch it on LinkedIn. I said, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that. I said, the issue is you’re not gonna own that audience if we’re talking like owned media, like how are you gonna convert those people off? And they said, well, it doesn’t matter to me. Like my goal is just to educate them and they’ll come inbound.

when they’re ready. And I say, yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. I said, for a company that makes sense, for an individual creator that might not make as much sense.

Jess Phillips (28:28.94)
Exactly, because the companies don’t need to monetize it, right? Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Would you, so because companies are less, you know, they’re not looking to monetize newsletters, but maybe they are looking to spread awareness about their company, and therefore they want to partner with B2B influencers to drop an ad in their newsletter. What are some of, have you seen anyone do that really effectively?

Nick (28:32.042)
Exactly.

Nick (28:54.75)
Yeah, I’ve seen so I haven’t done it myself on the newsletter piece of it. But I’ve seen a few people do it where it’s very, it’s very educational through what they’re promoting. And like, lots of times they’re offering like, hey, sign up for this service and like use this code from this newsletter, and you’ll get like, 20% off or something. And I’m like, oh, that’s, that’s interesting. I’ve talked to a few people to ask, like, how many people have like converted off that?

Jess Phillips (29:05.332)
Hmm.

Nick (29:20.642)
And at least in B2B, like the ones that I’ve talked to, it’s always been a low percentage, unless you have like a huge audience for it. But yeah, I mean, I don’t know, I definitely think it’s worth trying and testing and seeing like what happens there. I get a lot of questions from people that are like, hey, what should I charge for like a spot in my newsletter for like an ad? And I’m just like, honestly, I don’t even know, I’m not doing it myself. Like some people like, well, I charged 250, some people like I charged 3000, like.

Jess Phillips (29:40.508)
Yeah.

Nick (29:48.142)
I was like, well, I don’t think there’s like a right or wrong answer here. It depends on your open rate and all these other things and like, you know, people engage, is it the right ICP? Like all that stuff.

Jess Phillips (29:58.18)
Yeah, exactly. A lot of factors go into it. But yeah, I mean, we’re still early days on all of that. So he kind of, I know that like, we always have really good insights into stuff like that because we’re reaching out to a lot of influencers at scale. And so we tend to guide creators who come back that are a little high or a little low and say, you know, like this is kind of roughly what we think you should, where you should be. And then it’s kind of a, all right, well, great. If that works, cool. And if it doesn’t, also fine. But part of what are the growing pains of being early days, right?

Nick (30:28.458)
Yep, 100%. I feel like I could use your help too.

Jess Phillips (30:31.312)
Yeah, I know, right? Maybe come on over. We’ll have to start repping the Nick Bennets of the world. I love it. So I do want to, you know, speaking of performance, I think one of the things that I read that you had success with as a creator yourself is that at one of your prior companies, you’d driven a really huge amount of pipeline business for them. I think 2 million is what you said. So tell me a little bit about how did you drive $2 million of pipeline for your company?

Nick (30:35.168)
Oh, shit.

Jess Phillips (31:01.392)
And I believe you said 60% of it closed. How did you make that happen?

Nick (31:04.358)
Yeah. Yeah, honestly, it was just through showing up every single day on LinkedIn. Yeah, I mean, we were able to drive 2 million 60% of it closed in two years. So like 1.2 million, which isn’t like too bad to you know, at basically at zero cost outside of my salary, of course, but like I wasn’t like my role was. Yeah, it might my role wasn’t to like, you know, be like a social media person. Like I the role that I was in was like an evangelist type role. So yeah, like

Jess Phillips (31:21.716)
I would say too bad, that’s incredible.

Nick (31:34.198)
that plays into a larger piece of what I was doing. But all I was doing, I was already doing this before I even started at this company. So it’s not like I did it specifically for the company. And 98% of the time, I never talked about the company. I was just talking about different types of projects that I was working on, stuff I was seeing in the market. Hopefully that would add additional value to other people that were reading it so that they either didn’t make the same mistake I did or that if I saw success, they could try to replicate it inside their own environments. And…

It was just, it was super successful. And like, you think about it, it’s like, all right, cool. If I’m, you know, if I’m driving a million impressions on LinkedIn each month, and you have all of a sudden, you know, 10 other people in the company or 20 other people, I forget someone just, was it, was it Adobe? Someone just put out a thing, an article, Cisco, I think it was actually. And they put out an article saying like, they’re turning like all their employees into influencers.

Jess Phillips (32:25.296)
So yes, that was from the end of last year though. It just sort of went viral on LinkedIn recently.

Nick (32:30.078)
Okay, because I was gonna say I’ve seen it everywhere on LinkedIn recently. And I was saying, you know, that’s such a smart idea, because think about how much you could save on like paid ad spend for like search all these different things. If you just empower your employees to voice their own opinion, you don’t have to talk about the company. Because when people are clicking my profile on LinkedIn, they’re gonna see where I work, they’re gonna come inbound when they’re ready. But if I’m adding value to their lives, it’s going to be much more likely that

Jess Phillips (32:32.38)
Yes, me too.

Jess Phillips (32:40.285)
Exactly.

Nick (32:56.79)
the company will be in the conversation when they’re looking for a product like ours.

Jess Phillips (33:00.76)
Exactly. And I think that you have just sold in the case for why hiring people with personal brands is effective marketing for any business.

Nick (33:10.258)
100%, yeah, I’m actually, I’m hosting a workshop, like a two and a half hour workshop next week, and it’s like, the whole thing is like, why B2B employers need to embrace like personal branding and like empower their employees, regardless if they go off and do their own thing or like move on to something next, because what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna start to be like, that’s a brand that I wanna work for because I’ve seen so many amazing things. You’re gonna have a backlog of all these people wanting to apply for that job without you having to like do anything.

Jess Phillips (33:39.876)
Exactly. And when you support your employees, they in turn support you. And I really think that supporting people and helping them build their personal brand is the new replacement for sponsoring MBAs.

Nick (33:51.69)
Yes, yep, 100%. I mean, it’s like I did a post the other day, I was like, you don’t even need a resume anymore. LinkedIn is your resume. Same here, I can be super selective in what I want for jobs now. Now for clients, who do I wanna work with? I don’t have to take just random stuff, because fortunately.

Jess Phillips (34:01.576)
Right? I have not had a resume in years. I mean, I obviously run my own company, but. Yeah.

Nick (34:14.326)
doing all this for like the last couple of years, I get a lot that has come inbound because people know who I am and like they wanna work with me. And like if I don’t enjoy the brand or vibe with them, like I don’t have to take it.

Jess Phillips (34:25.916)
Yeah, totally. And I think that’s one of the reasons why LinkedIn has been such a good place for professional discourse, is because you already have employers and employees showing up there daily for job stuff. And I think if you also look at Twitter, Twitter just launched jobs as well. And I am positive the reason that they’ve done that is because they’ve seen the success that LinkedIn has had and they’re trying to defend their turf. So Twitter seems like a little bit of a dangerous place to look for a job personally, just because our points earlier, right, about how you’re a little bit more wild on Twitter.

Nick (34:46.786)
Yep.

Nick (34:51.59)
Yeah.

Jess Phillips (34:55.632)
But probably as an employer, you should be looking on people’s Twitter feeds just to make sure you’re not hiring a ticking time bomb, right? Great. So do you think that that’s repeatable, what you did for your previous company in creating that pipeline? Was it a perfect storm? Or have you done that for a company since? Are you planning on doing that for your company now? Talk to me a little bit about that.

Nick (34:55.969)
Yeah.

Nick (35:02.364)
Exactly.

Nick (35:20.69)
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s definitely, you know, so after I left that company, I actually went to another company, I did the exact same thing. Now I ended up getting laid off six months into the job, which forced like forced me to basically, I’ve always wanted to start my own thing. This just kind of like put me in earlier than like I thought I was going to do it, which is fine, because it’s been really successful. But like, I did the exact same thing in like in the six months I was there, drove. I mean, between events between just like my organic stuff, like

I would say a couple million, you’re not as much of it closed because it was still so early on, like who knows by the end of the year what that could change into. But I think it’s repeatable for sure. You just need to embrace empowering your employees to give them the space to do this because lots of times they want to do this. And like, I feel like it’s a little bit different than employee advocacy. Like you employee advocacy, when I think of it as like very much like you talk about the company you hit like share.

because you need to promote some type of big announcement from the company, but it’s like, if you can tell them, hey, we’re gonna give you the time, you can work during work hours, post on LinkedIn, comment, engage, network with other people, it’s okay to us because it’s a win-win at the end of the day. I think you just need more marketing leaders and executive leaders that are bought in that this is an actual channel that delivers meaningful results.

Jess Phillips (36:43.088)
Yes, I think that if the senior leaders are also active in doing it, I do think that their teams who support them will also continue to, they’ll also at least be interested in trying it.

Nick (36:53.838)
100%. Well, and I was gonna say too, it’s like, you know, I, so I do ghostwriting for a lot of like founders and executives as well. And so like, they see the value in it, but they don’t, they were like, listen, I sit in meetings all day, I don’t have time to like, go and do this on LinkedIn. Some of them are better than others. But like, I, you’d be surprised at what companies hire ghostwriters to do a lot of their content for them. And like, you’d never know, because they’ll go and engage, which is no issue. But it’s like,

Jess Phillips (36:58.3)
Okay.

Jess Phillips (37:15.078)
Oh yeah, yeah.

Nick (37:20.038)
it’s they know they need to be there. They know they need to be active and like show the face because it’s like the tenure of like even CMOs in today’s world and B2B, it’s like, it’s not very long. And I read something that was like B2B marketers, the tenure for B2B marketers right now is 12 to 18 months at most companies. And so it’s like, you should be working on yourself, looking out for numero uno, because these companies are so quick to lay you off, they’re looking out for themselves.

Why aren’t you looking out for yourself?

Jess Phillips (37:50.596)
Oh gosh, yeah, I know. And I feel for people that seems like a very short, that just seems like a very short cycle. I think that what, from my personal experience running companies for the past couple of years, I always assume that when I hire someone who is younger than 27, that they will not be with me for more than two years, because they have a lot to do in their careers and they’re sort of just learning and growing. And so it makes sense for them to hop around a little bit. But my senior team has been with me for…

Nick (38:10.606)
Hmm. Yep.

Jess Phillips (38:19.792)
Almost a decade. Yeah, yeah, it’s really great. Hopefully that speaks to the culture of the social standard, but, you know, losing your senior people, if they’re good, of course, that’s very detrimental to any business. I’m always surprised that people would not make retention, employee retention, a bigger thing.

Nick (38:21.774)
Wow, that’s amazing.

Nick (38:39.594)
Yeah, you know, it’s funny because my mom she’s worked for a the on her entire life She actually she was texting me yesterday and she was like, oh, I’m celebrating my 45th year there And so like they’re giving me like they’re letting me like get something and like they’re giving her like in like an iPad That’s like three years old I was like you’ve been at this company for 45 years and like that’s all they can give you and I was just like I was like she’s like well you’ve worked for like seven companies and you’re only 36 and I was like Yeah, but I’ve made a 20% to 30% increased bump

from pay every single time I moved. Some of those were out of my control because of like layoffs and like IPOs and like running out of runway. But I was just like, I would much rather take that jump every personally, every year to two years, at least early on in my career, because if I didn’t do those things, I wouldn’t be, I don’t think where I am now.

Jess Phillips (39:19.592)
Hmm.

Jess Phillips (39:27.676)
Yeah, fair enough. You know, I think that’s a valid point. Do you feel like your expertise has grown exponentially because of that? Or do you know, because I think when you jump around, you cast a very wide net. When you stay with someone, you go very deep. And I don’t know, this actually leads me into our next question, my next question for you, which is, you know, you talk about, and I think a lot of people talk about four different types of B2B creators, right? You’ve got the creator.

Nick (39:42.423)
Yes.

Jess Phillips (39:54.844)
You’ve got the subject matter expert, which I think is kind of what I was getting at here with the deep stuff. But what were the other two that you talk about as well?

Nick (40:06.322)
It was, um, what was it? It was a subject, not influencers in evangelists. Yes. Yep. And it’s.

Jess Phillips (40:07.504)
Oh wait, as creators, influencers, subject matter experts, and evangelists. Yes. Yeah, so why is it important to distinguish between those?

Nick (40:17.826)
Because I think, I’ll take creators and influencers, for example, like everyone can be a creator, at least in B2B, but not every creator has influence. Now, I have influence in some of the stuff that I talk about because I’ve been doing it successfully for all these years. But if I was to talk about, I don’t know.

Fintech, for example, like I don’t know, I’ve never worked in Fintech, I don’t know anything about it. Why would someone listen to me? But I could still create content around Fintech if I worked for a company, but like I wouldn’t be considered as like a thought leader as an influencer within that space. Now, when I think of evangelists, I think of someone that’s like evangelizing the specific like company or like whatever that they work for. Like for me, it was easier because I always worked in Martech. We sold to marketers. I was the buyer. I understood the pain points. I could go out and speak to these people because I had those relationships.

through creating content. And then subject matter experts, I mean, I feel like that can really be anyone that has a deep understanding that knows the product, the company inside and out, and even like the category. And they can be like your trusted advisor and like give you a non-biased kind of look on everything.

Jess Phillips (41:25.616)
Yeah, absolutely. And then evangelists would be like you at a company, right? Somebody who works at the company, but talks about the product all the time. Got it. Yeah, and I think it’s smart to do that because when you look at B2B marketing and you look at things that happen online versus in real life, like a subject matter expert at a conference or a panel would drive a lot of interest, even if they only have a few thousand followers on LinkedIn, for example, right? Yeah, I really like that sort of grouping. Sometimes I tend to, I think it helps brands frame how they’re gonna

Nick (41:29.622)
Yeah. Exactly. Yep.

Nick (41:46.338)
Yep. 100%. Yep.

Jess Phillips (41:56.168)
go to market with an influencer strategy, right? So, okay, my last question here for you is when we think about building events, I think that in 2024, events are gonna be coming back, like roaring back in a big, big way. And so I foresee a lot of B2B brands leveraging influencers at events and at conferences, at dinners, all of those things.

Tell me how you think they can maximize these relationships, these activations, and these partnerships.

Nick (42:30.598)
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because I so I’ve had the idea to like do this like creator house for like a while and like there is there was a sales one that was done it was it was only like six or seven people that went to it but I was like, oh, that’s such a cool idea. I was like, you know, you see all these like tick tock tick tock houses and stuff and I’m like, yeah, I was like, it’s so interesting. I was just like, but like B2B no one’s like done this before. And I was like, I actually saw yesterday there’s this company called Aligned and they’re hosting

Jess Phillips (42:47.325)
TikTok houses, yeah.

Jess Phillips (42:53.381)
Right.

Nick (43:00.226)
during Saster, which is one of the bigger conferences in early September, 16 creators, one house for two days. And like everyone posts, they got all these influencers to post about it yesterday. They’re like a sales tech company. I don’t know too much about them, but like I flooded my like LinkedIn yesterday. And I was like, oh, it’s so interesting. I was just like, but I had this idea way before them. I was like, it’s super cool. They’re gonna create a ton of content. They have tracks around specific like sales methodology, like

overcoming certain sales objections and they have all these people who are already well known and they’re just gonna create content for two days in this one house. People are already in town for this conference anyways, so it probably makes sense. Now, I said, all right, cool, that makes sense, but I wanna do a micro conference. I’m big into micro events because I feel like trade shows, but micro events are the future.

intimate smaller types of things and I said, all right, I was gonna do it in the US, but I talked to someone that I’m doing it with and she was like, why don’t we do it in Costa Rica? And she like flew to Costa Rica and she scouted everything out and we rented three Airbnbs right on the beach and we ended up selling tickets for it. And we were like, all right, we’re only selling 20 tickets. And within one LinkedIn post that I put, people were just tossing money at it without even knowing really anything else at it.

We have one ticket left and people just like they saw, yeah, they saw the people that are like coming, they saw the people, like the schedule. It’s all about building relationships and so we’re calling it hiatus. And so it’s basically a place for like to recharge and reinvent yourself as a creator. And we wanna call it a micro conference because, yeah, we’ll be creating content at it, absolutely, but it’s more of an educational thing around how to be a better creator in the B2B space.

Jess Phillips (44:25.178)
Oh, I may have to get that.

Jess Phillips (44:51.988)
Wow, I love that. I think that’s so interesting. And so what types of B2B creators are you? Like what are the demos on an audience who will go and do this?

Nick (45:02.758)
Yeah, you know, it’s all over the place to be completely honest. I was looking at it yesterday. And so like we have founders that are there. We have copywriters that are there that are like more junior in their career. We have social media managers that are coming. We have actually some salespeople that are coming, some rev ops people that are coming. So it’s not just like marketing as well, because that’s what the initial thought was.

But then I was like, you know, let’s just open it up to like creators as a whole. And there’s people that are like, hey, like I find a lot of the stuff that you’re gonna be talking about on the schedule around like YouTube shorts and like just how to do like be better on video, stuff like that. Like they found it to be better. And they were like, this makes a lot of sense. And to be honest, the price was, it was three grand. And so everything was all inclusive for three grand. And it was four days. And again, you had your own Airbnb. So there’s one for men.

There’s one for women and then there’s one for like the host. And again, they’re all next to each other. So like, we can all kind of like mingle and stuff too. And so we were like, you just gotta buy your own flight. So all in like total cost for this is probably about like four grand. And I feel like that’s a pretty cheap price for the amount of knowledge that you’re gonna get. And probably why the tickets sold out so quick. And so we were like.

One, we’re gonna make this an annual thing, but we thought about maybe doing it twice a year. We’ve had people ask me like, hey, can you do one in Europe actually? Like I’ve had like 15 people like, I would buy a ticket regardless of the price if you do one in Europe somewhere. And I would love to go to Europe. So I was like, maybe next year, that’s something that we explore too. But I think this could be like, and we don’t even have any sponsors. Like it’s just, we were relying solely off of like, the ticket sales from it. And then,

one company that we are partnering that’s helping me put it together, he’s frontin’ some of the money himself because he sees so much value in this whole creator economy.

Jess Phillips (46:54.748)
Wow, super interesting. I am, and that’s coming up, right, in November?

Nick (46:59.278)
It’s yeah, November 1st through the 4th. Yep.

Jess Phillips (47:02.056)
That’s right. Okay. That’s really cool. I’m gonna have to check back in with you and see how that went. I, that sounds like something that I think a lot of people, if they can do, should do. Um, that’s just very interesting stuff. Cool. Well, hey, Nick, uh, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on. And, um, if you, if you don’t follow Nick on LinkedIn, give him a follow. We’ll link him below. Um, check out his content, check out what he’s doing. And you know, if you want to stay on top of the B2B space, he’s, he’s your guy. So thanks so much.

Nick (47:05.784)
Yeah.

Nick (47:11.298)
for share.

Nick (47:17.175)
Yeah.

Nick (47:31.094)
Appreciate you having me.

Jess Phillips (47:32.34)
Alright, bye bye.