How Video Content Scales Relationships with Tim Glomb of Marigold

Lindsay Tjepkema: Welcome to the Casted podcast. I'm Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co- founder of Casted, and I'm bringing you the conversations with the most innovative and forward- thinking podcasters in the B2B world. These brilliant marketers are harnessing the power of podcasting to reach their revenue goals, to rev their thought leadership engines, and to amplify their voices in the marketplace. Let's dive into this week's conversation.

Tim Glomb: I'm Tim Glomb. I am the VP of Global Content at the CM Group, which includes seven products, Liveclicker, Selligent, Sailthru, Emma, Campaign Monitor, Vuture, and Cheetah Digital. I think I got them all.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Just a few things going on in your camp. I'm excited to dig at CM Group where conversations like this fit into your overall strategy. Let's talk about origin story. How did your podcasting journey at CM Group get started? Tell me a little bit about what the thought process was, where the concept or idea came from, and just how that little nugget turned into a show.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, yeah. Look, we're video- heavy, but it all kind of started, Cheetah Digital was out on its own and the CMO at the time, Richard Jones, just going to say it, we are good drinking buddies. Here in Denver, our kids went to school together, and we both were marketers. He was a technologist. He had been building marketing technology for almost 20 years and I had been using marketing technology for almost 20 years on behalf of brands. We were kind of like the chocolate and peanut butter, or the yin and yang, and we used to talk a lot about the storytelling and some of the best marketers explaining how they're getting over the hurdles and how they're getting great results. They finally convinced me to join Cheetah Digital like January of 2020, and both Rich and I, we just love to get in the bar and talk about marketing hurdles, so we're like, "Why don't we point a camera at this?" We kept it to 10 minutes or less, kind of timely and relevant. We just pick a topic that was in the news, death of the cookie, Google says this or that, Apple rolls out this new privacy, so we'd just get on, and kind of spout. Then started bringing in some other guests and experts on some of these topics. We're well over a hundred episodes to date, but that was really the start of it. It was like we both had opinions and we both saw some of these topics from the different side of the fence, so we just thought we'd have fun and point some cameras at it and now we're nonstop.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I think that's a really important story to capture and to tell because everybody starts somewhere and so yours started as you were having these great conversations and like you just said, why not point a camera at it? Why not capture it? Why not channel it? Hundreds of episodes later, here you are. Tell me more about how that turned into structure. That was a concept, that was conversations. It's easy to say, " Let's point some cameras at it." What did that actually look like earliest days? Then let's talk about how that evolved.

Tim Glomb: We started incredibly rough and tumble. We had a 10 by 10 call booth in our office in Denver. We have four different little call mini- conference rooms. We just took one over and I went on Amazon. We bought some background display, like 18- inch square tiles. You just stick them on the wall. I went straight to B& H and I bought three LUMIX G85 cameras, couple of lightweight tripods, two lights. Start very simple. Rich and I are both people who like to tell stories and talk a lot. Our goal was no editing. If we can cut out editing, if we can just say, " Slap a bumper on the front and show open and just close it when we close it," that would be the win because now we don't have to have somebody going in and edit this thing. They could just very quickly sync three cameras, blade a little bit between us, and no cutting out, and that's what it was. We'd record something 10 minutes or less, all in real- time. I'd literally use my phone in front of me for a stopwatch and we'd be done in 10 minutes and the editor would be like, " Cool. This will be up and online in an hour." When Ad Age or Digit Age or somebody drops big news during the day, we have tens of thousands of clients who are like, " Oh, my God, what's this mean for my business? Is this something I need to invest in or worry about?" Or this and that, and for us, it was like a 20- year brand marketer, a 20- year technology veteran trying to solve these problems through technology and we had opinions and we had advice the same day that news would break and that is when we knew we had something. We got to scale this out, we got to make it bigger. We got to have long form versions, we got to have webinar- style things, and that's where we live today.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Staying with where you started, it was you and it was Rich, and how many other people? One other person?

Tim Glomb: Yeah, I had one editor who was chewing on all kinds of different creative, but he didn't even come into the office. We're doing this through a pandemic, so again, shooting 4K with a gigabit internet feed, I could get him three camera files because they're 10 minutes or less. I could get them to him instantly and he would have it straight back. He'd have a rough cut with Vimeo Review Tool. It's like boom, maybe change this. But again, we never really changed anything. It was like, " Print, get it up to LinkedIn, get it on our website, get it out." We have a hot take email list, so Dane, Rich, and myself, and we usually crank out two or three at a time, within an hour of production in a studio, we had three different segments in any given sitting. We'd sit down for 10 minutes, read the article, say, " I would like this. I like that. I like that." Okay, great. Record, record, record, and we'd go for it. Just wing it.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Love it. What has remained the same and why and what has changed?

Tim Glomb: Well, the first thing was, it was an idea, but we had a goal. The goal was, will this move the business forward? Do people even care? I'm not looking for 10,000 views on any given video. I could care less what the numbers are. I used to be in television, used to get three million viewers per night on a Sunday night on MTV. That's when metrics mattered. The bigger the number, the more you made, the more successful you were. Here in a B2B space, it's getting the right people to see the right content, and we knew it was working early on because we landed business. We'd literally, you go through business, you sign up a big deal. One was a big hotel chain, and through that onboarding process, how did this all start? Did you go to our website? Did you look at other things? They said, " We were getting hit constantly with your podcast thinking caps. When we came to RFP, we were like, 'Yeah, that company does that. We need to go check them out.'" We dug in a little more, they found some other content from us, and said, " Whoa, these guys actually share the same ideas of where the future of marketing and data is going," so we already had a leg up when they went into RFP, and then we ultimately won it. I have multiple stories like that where they said, " Yes, this thing was annoying me in my LinkedIn feed. I constantly saw your podcast, but one day I clicked on it, and we knew it was driving business." Now, there's three people dedicated on the video team here across all brands. If a camera isn't rolling each day, something's awry, so we are like 110% committed to video. Case studies, client stories, thought leadership, pretty much anything we do, we try and include a video format for the campaign.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Something that you said when you first started answering this question was about how all of this was driving the business. The first question you asked was, " Is this going to drive business impact?", which is the question to ask, and I think quite often it's, " How do we get into podcasting? How can we make a show? How can we grow an audience for our show?" That's fine, it's a great way to get started, but at some point, you've got to shift that thinking into, " What can we do to drive the business? What creative thing can we do to drive the business? What conversation can we have to drive the business?" Tell me your thoughts on the fact that because you started there, you have achieved really great results, yes, in your content and in the results and in your audience, but even more so in the results that it has driven for the business.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, look, for us, it wasn't just fun to do, it had to drive business. It was an idea. It was like, " Let's try this, fail fast. If it doesn't work, our audience doesn't care." But they clearly did, so being able to measure it was everything, not pats on the back, not high fives like, " Oh, that was a great episode." You got to be able to measure it, and again, yes, views were a metric we were looking at, but it wasn't the volume, it was who is actually watching. Who actually came? Can I tell that the head of loyalty at Coca- Cola actually watched that episode? That's an incredible signal, so that was really where we were anchoring, and that's where we doubled down once we saw that it was working and we validated. I mean, look, we sold a million- dollar deal, not just because we had a podcast, by no means, but that was the first touch, and if we hadn't had that, would we have gotten that deal? Or it would've been tougher deal? Or you never know, so I'll take the credit that that was the first touch, and now like I said, it's all about how do I get the right story in front of the right person and understand that the right people are watching that and that's all we focus on right now.

Lindsay Tjepkema: How do you even think about the investment that you're making in this content? Because it's not cut and dry. It sounds like it's, you said, " If the camera's not rolling, something's wrong." I wonder if you even, and if so, how you think about the investment that you're making because it sounds like it's the investment you're making in everything. It's not any one thing. It's not like, " Hey, well, I'm investing in the show over here." It sounds like the foundational investment you're making in everything and then how you ring it out and amplify it. Tell me your thought process on that. What's the investment?

Tim Glomb: We take really a startup mentality here. Unless you have unlimited resources, which I don't know anybody who does these days, everybody digs in. For example, I was in Europe for two weeks. I hired a crew for two days, but the rest I shot myself. I'm lucky enough I know how to do that. That has allowed us to do a lot more, be more nimble, and budget really isn't even an issue. The trip I went to Europe beforehand, I think we averaged the cost was$1, 100 per session for two people going to Europe for two weeks. You come back at$1, 100 a session, I mean, as a business, think about how much money you spend in advertising or here or there. That's like peanuts. Even our giant Signals event, which produces about 30 sessions, which is coming up the end of October, that thing is under$ 50,000 for us, and it's a pile, 30 big client story sessions shop from all over the world, so to be able to do that for under 50 grand allows us to do more and more frequently. Now, not everybody's going to be able to do that. You got to have the skillset. That's why I like to hire generally when it comes to production, I love Swiss Army knives, Jack of all trades, master of none, so getting well- rounded people that can pitch in, that can turn a camera on, that can listen to audio and know what they need to be listening to live, be able to edit that, be able to throw it into Casted, create takeaways because they're also partly subject matter expert to know the right takeaway to create, that's where the team needs to be well- rounded. But the other side is you can hire production crews. You can go out and spend$ 5, 000 for somebody to put you in a studio and shoot one client's story that day and it's going to look beautiful and be great. Just look at your resources. That's one of the things we've been very lucky at is understanding how to actually produce this stuff in- house.

Lindsay Tjepkema: It sounds like that shapes a lot, dare I say, all of the decisions that you're making. It's who you're hiring. It's how you're spending your time. It's how the team is spending their time. It's what you're prioritizing. It sounds like when you think about, " Hey, what are we going to do with something as big as Signals?" Your event, or any other strategic initiative you're going to do, you think about the content, you think about how you can use what you have, or what you're going to make. Would you say that's true? I mean, is it driving everything?

Tim Glomb: Oh, absolutely. We usually have a big tent pole content asset per quarter at least. For example, we're working on our Consumer Trends Index. It's a giant research report. It's like 30 survey questions that goes... This year, I think we're going to about 9, 000 consumers across the globe, like 11 different countries, or regions. It's a massive project. Of course, we build this giant global report, and then we'll create a US- only. Then we'll create an age version that will create all kinds of different versions per industries that we serve, restaurants, how do you look at these consumer trends and what consumers expect through retail, through CPPG, through whatever. It's an anchor piece that creates a ton of offshoot content. However, what we found the quickest and easiest thing to do if you understand the subject matter is get on to make a video version of it, so we'll probably create, I wouldn't be surprised if we had 20 or more video versions of this anchor research report. People are going to write whitepapers, they're going to create infographics, all the expected things that our competitors would do, " Download this, get this infographic on how consumers are thinking about privacy." But when we can have a real- time conversation and video back and forth with maybe an expert in a 15- minute chunk, we've heard it straight from our clients. They've said, " That was incredibly insightful. Thank you for not forcing me to read the 90 page, but you whet my appetite. You had a couple of good points in there showing these trends year over year," whatever it might have been, so that's why I told my team, " Go get the 90- page report, dig in, and tell us how's that going to affect our business." Again, flipping those switches in a pre- made studio in our office, I can Skype in anybody from anywhere, you can Zoom them in, I can bring them in a live stream, however, talk to an expert, get an expert opinion, and people have really appreciated the short form video version of monster reference material. That's what we do. That's what we're working on right now. Our Signals event, Consumer Trends Index, we've got a bunch of other surveys coming out, and there'll be dozens of video versions of it.

Lindsay Tjepkema: The best place to start for so many reasons is with a conversation. One, it's more fun. Maybe I'm biased, but this is more fun than sitting down and typing that 90- page report because I've done both. It's a lot more engaging to listen in on, it's easier to consume. You can do it passively. People can be listening to this conversation while they're mowing the lawn. You can't do that while you're diving into the 90- page report and it's more efficient because if you're not the expert in saying what the 90- page report is about, you can be a great marketer and have a great conversation with the person who is the expert in the thing. Then you have this source material to be able to ring out and turn into the 90- page report and the infographics and all the things. You all have done that so well and you are a testament to the fact that it can be done and what can happen when you center the entire strategy on that approach. It's not and, and, and, and, and, it's not net new across every single channel, separate strategies for every single channel, it's how do I start from this one thing and ring it out across all the different channels to provide something that's created a lot more efficiently, consumed a lot more effectively, and just ends up presenting a more unified message to your audience, too, because it's all coming from that one source.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, it's been very effective for us. One tip I have, because a lot of people say, " Oh, our clients won't get on camera." You mentioned something. Go and find those experts. They want to talk. They want to build their personal brand, and if you have a good production, you have good execution from production through edit, if you get 10, 12, 20 of those under your belt, it's a great way to show a potential client who says, " Yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't want to comment on that," or, " We don't want to do video," or da, da, da, da, da. It's a great way to show that you know what you're doing and give them a comfort level of like, " Hey, look, this is edited. It's cool, don't worry. It's going to look beautiful. Hey, here's a couple of clips." That has actually helped us get clients across the board who normally don't get on camera. Then once you get a couple of clients talking, then it's even easier to get more clients, so start somewhere. But those subject- matter experts are out there. They'd love to talk. I mean, look, you reached out to me, and that's why we're talking.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Exactly.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, there's always somebody who can help your content just go find them.

Lindsay Tjepkema: That's absolutely true. We've talked about how you got started. We've talked about how it started, how it's going. I'd love to hear results because one of the things that sets you and your team and CM Group apart with this whole maturity curve thing that we've launched here at Casted that has set you apart as that stage five is that it's not just about the show and it's not even just about the brand. You have, as we indicated from one of the very first things you said, you started by saying, " What's it going to do for the business? How can this drive the business?" I'd love to hear with the ability to look back now on how far you've come, how is it impacting the business? What have you seen?

Tim Glomb: Again, I'll go back to the fundamentals. It's pretty easy. You get a lot of bang for your buck in video, so if I can convince somebody, an expert, a client, whatever, to sit down for 20 minutes, we probably can get at least five good topics out of that. Now, yeah, that's one 20- minute video. You hit and record, you edit that, it's done. But the beauty of Casted, that's turned one single 20- minute, or maybe a 30- minute webinar into these slippery takeaways that now are subsets of that conversation. That's where we're measuring the impact that I know it's working because I've got a global sales team selling seven products, from Tony's Pizza Place, who swipes a credit card online to start an email marketing list to Starbucks, largest technology company on the planet, I think, they're amazing. For us to be able to empower and enable that sales team and when they say, " Oh, man, I just had a great conversation with a prospect who wanted to know our take on emotional loyalty and is that the future of loyalty programs," they can go into Casted and search that, quotes, whatever, Boolean logic, emotional loyalty, and find 15 or more one to two- minute clips, not sending somebody to a 30- minute webinar, so now I know it's working because my sales team are in the tool and sending out these personalized emails and follow- ups with awesome video content. It differentiates, it looks beautiful, and it's usually an expert. The sales team is using it. That's how I know it works, because salespeople don't do things that don't work. They're coin- operated. They want to make money. Two, we have a lot of metrics tied into, particularly we use Salesforce, so getting that information of who is actually watching, who's coming to our site, and the Casted player being able to give us that granularity of this person watched this episode or visited on this day. That's just another signal that the sales development team has at their disposal. Does it work? I talked about hotel chain finding us. Same thing. A good friend of mine, TGI Friday's, she's the chief revenue officer, same exact thing, hadn't talked to her in 10 years, said, " Why are you all over my LinkedIn feed with these crazy videos?" " Hey, we should talk." She watched a couple. I sent her some more because she was going into a new role. She's like, "This is great. Get me in touch with whoever. I need to talk to you at your company." Now, she knew me and I could have fast tracked all that, but it was easy for me to say, " Hey, just go watch these videos and these snippets. This is how we feel about this. This is where we're going and why we're building our tool to get over this particular hurdle," and she's like, "That's exactly my problem. Who do I need to talk to?" Video was that first touch. It was that top of the funnel that got her in, and now they're a client. TGI Friday's is a client, they've onboarded, and the rest is history. That's a pretty big contract for us.

Lindsay Tjepkema: It is. This video content that you had, the way that I interpreted what you said, it scaled that personal relationship you have. I know people and people and you can reach out to people, but this conversation and the way that it's consumed by audience members feels more personal, it is more human, and it scales that trust and that credibility and that like, " Hey, here's what we talk about. Here's the expertise that I can offer you. Here's this thing that could resonate and relate to this experience that you're having." It does scale that ability to feel more connected to a brand before you reach out.

Tim Glomb: Yes, allows you to do it in a more human way. You'd always love to have that back- and- forth conversation. I asked you a question, you answer. We build from there. We listen and we keep the conversation moving in the right direction. Video is one way if it's truly VOD, but it is far more human, and sometimes if you're a good personality... I don't know that I am the best person on video, but I have my style, and I'm very excitable and I'm very passionate about a lot of the things that I talk about in video and sometimes that comes through, so video is the human layer if you can't just truly do it face-to-face.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Absolutely. At this moment in time, we're calling you stage five, and I know because of what we're seeing and everything that we've talked about, you're just getting started. What's something that you're really proud of or that you see as a big success of everything you've done around audio and video at CM Group so far?

Tim Glomb: It's definitely the ability to enable sales. I have a huge sales team. I'm multilingual. We're in like eight different languages. We're everywhere, so being able to get the sales team what they need in the moment where they need it, that has been the most effective and best use of our time. I got to say, I mean, it's the secret sauce of Casted makes it incredibly easy for my team to make tiny, tiny video snippets that, I mean, we thousands of them, literally thousands, so to enable a sales team to not bug me, or not have to go to somebody and say, " Hey, do we have anything on emotional loyalty?", and have this platform where they can just go in and find it, and we scale that out to even our Asana and our digital asset management tools. They can go in where they need it. They can find what they need, where they need it, and get it off into that conversation. That's probably the most impressive thing that we've pulled off in the last two years. It was tough to get there, get everyone to buy in and everyone to use it. It's that trickle- down. Three people make video and now roughly over 150 people can enable it in any given moment.

Lindsay Tjepkema: That's fantastic. To pull it all together, what advice would you have for somebody who sees what you're doing and wants to get there, but they're like, " It's overwhelming, it can seem like a lot"? What would you say?

Tim Glomb: Yeah, you just got to start. That's not an excuse, especially going into recession. Your budgets are going to go down, your targets are going to get tougher, like hunker down and just do it. It differentiates. It's fairly easy to do. It might be overwhelming because you haven't done it before, but it's like riding a bike. Once you figure it out, you're going to get addicted to it, and you're going to put more resources into it. Don't let any excuse get in the way. Just try it. Look, if you're failing, call somebody. There's people who can help you get you off the ground in the first three months so that you get to your own sustainable path to do it in- house or just contracting out in- house. Put a deadline. Once a week, you're going to film something. See what happens. But make it meaningful and promote it. Don't just put it on a shelf either. That's a big part of it.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Start by asking how it could impact the business. Well, thank you so much, Tim. This is fantastic and congrats on all that you're doing. Exciting to watch.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, thanks. It's been great. Casted has been a huge partner for us.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Well, that's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are ready to harness the power of podcasting for your brand strategy, make sure that you click the link in our show notes to subscribe to the Casted newsletter and all of our shows and for all the latest content from our team of experts to yours. Until next time.