The B2B Creator Economy Is Wide Open and Nobody Knows Pricing Yet | Ep 329 with David Walsh Founder & CEO of Limelight

0:00Daniel Robbins:Hi, this is Alex Kantrowicz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

0:35RingCentral's AI Receptionist uses Voice AI to answer on the first ring, so you'll never miss a call again. In just a few minutes, you can personalize your own AI Receptionist to answer questions, route calls, schedule appointments, and even send texts in multiple languages. Plus, it's easy to scale. Create unlimited AI Receptionists across any phone system It's all powered by one reliable platform for effortless AI communications. See for yourself at ringcentral.com. RingCentral, voice of your business.

1:09Daniel Robbins:So David, you and I have had the chance to work together. Limelight made me money. So I want to say first, I appreciate you because I've been building my LinkedIn channel for maybe 10 years at this point. and I didn't know if it would ever make me any money directly through like creating content for a company. Although I was excited for one day. LinkedIn is the hot thing right now. I've been waiting for this day and I'm sure you have, but I know this is your third company and I got to say, how exciting is it that your third company is getting so much momentum? Thanks for having me on the show and I'm excited.

1:50It's always nice to hear that you got money from the product. Like that's the most exciting part about what we build, right? I have spent 12 years at B2B software, launched a watch company, built an e-commerce business, used influencers to grow it. That was back in 2017. So I knew how to grow businesses using creators and influencers, but on the consumer side. And then I started a HR software company that grew it to 250 customers, raised$33 million, did everything backwards and wrong, raised too much capital, hired too many people. and then two years ago I just made this big bet that the future marketing is personality led in B2B and I wanted to launch a consumer product because I so fascinated with consumer but if you know anything about software consumer is impossible you know you just have to get to like such a large volume so I think we're in a nice mix where we've built a marketplace for content creators like yourselves who have LinkedIn newsletters podcasts YouTube business focused experts that are building audiences and trust for a long time, I made this big bad two years ago that they would want to monetize their audience.

2:51And the great thing about that is we get to build for the brands, which is like software, B2B, traditional, you know, let's help them with not just a marketplace, but actually like marketing in general. And then on the consumer side, it's like we put money into the back pockets of influencers. And that is so exciting. So always good to hear that you had a good experience using the product.

3:11Daniel Robbins:I mean, timing, right? I think the most successful founders that we've talked to and people like yourself, timing is the most incredible thing. You build and build and build it and all of a sudden, boom, it takes off. Let's talk about the beginning phases because I think anyone who has ever launched an app or a software knows. We were just having a conversation earlier about the chicken and egg. One side is you have to get users. The other side is you have to get companies and they have to work together. But how did you do that in the beginning phases? So Daniel, I have launched two marketplaces in the past.

3:49I did not want to launch another marketplace. They are so difficult. There's a huge supply and demand issue. You have to get past this call start problem. The marketplace just flops if you don't have enough traction on both sides. So we lowered the barriers to entry completely. We made the product free for six months. so we got as many creators as we could because we feel like they're the ones that will attract the brands we identified the highest quality creators we went through linkedin for three months and went through 30 000 profiles and scored ranked and tagged creators and then made it a searchable interface which hadn't existed before and we went out to brands and said hey would you pay for this and you know will you give me a subscription fee to get access to this?

4:32And the answer was yes. And so, you know, we jumpstart the cold start problem by getting and identifying the highest quality creators on LinkedIn, which we felt like had not been done before. There was influencer platform for consumer, for TikTok, for Instagram, but nobody had done it for LinkedIn. So that's where we started. And then we've expanded from there. And, you know, the marketplace, I think, has hit an inflection point about six months ago, where we actually just, you know, start to grow rapidly and there's network effects. But it was so painful. Like, I mean, so painful to get to this point.

5:03And so we have all the benefits now of kind of tailwinds behind the product, but very painful to start a marketplace.

5:10Daniel Robbins:How much do you think it helped that you were, you know, quote unquote, building in public, I keep hearing about this, like, building in public, it's not really something I've tried, I don't know, I'm not sure how I personally feel about it for myself. Not for others, though. I I enjoy watching, but how did the fact that you were building more publicly, but also on LinkedIn as the platform? So I came up with the idea for Limelight because I was building in public. In fact, when I started Limelight, my clear thesis was I want to build B2B software for marketing leaders. And we started with referral software because they needed more efficient ways to grow.

5:47I started posting content on LinkedIn every day, asked me why. My last company, I spent four years building. I never talked about it publicly once. And I was like, okay, I've done the behind the scenes building, you know, hiring people, raising capital, you know, all that other stuff of building companies. But I wasn't really the spokesperson for the brand. So I just said, this time I'm going to go all in from day one. I'm just going to post everything of my thoughts, the good, the bad, the ugly, the highs, the lows. And so I started posting content on LinkedIn. And then because of that, I became much more aware of the creator economy in B2B and influencers and people who have built large audiences.

6:23And to give you some numbers, Daniel, 90%, I would say, of our revenue today comes from my LinkedIn content, just posting content publicly on LinkedIn. That's how we've put ourselves on the map. And I think for any founders or any operators out there that are listening to this, any marketing leaders, you need a channel that is good return on investment. And there's no better channel than employee advocacy and founder brand. Of course, it takes time and effort and consistency like everything else. But once you do it, it's incredibly powerful. And I highly recommend this. It feels a bit awkward, though.

6:57It feels a bit unnatural to be posting your numbers online and telling people that things are going bad. But you build trust and you build audiences and people end up becoming aware of you, trusting you, and they're buying from you.

7:09Daniel Robbins:90%. That's insane. So if I'm somebody who's like, man, David says I need to do this and he's successful with Limelight right now, but how do I even get started? Is there a process? Is there something? Are there steps that you follow right now? Because I think, like you said, we do a lot of things in a day, right? But what do I put on my account out of all the things that I'm doing? I can tell you what not to do. Number one, do not go to ChatGPT and say, write a LinkedIn post for me. That is the worst idea ever. It will not work along with everyone else in the world that's trying to start out with doing this.

7:45The truth is, is you have to learn the craft, right? And some people are naturally better copywriters than others, right? I would say a mediocre copywriter. But once you start to read content from other people and follow their journey and interact on their content, you realize what's working, what formats are working, how to tell stories. You know, LinkedIn is short sentences to keep attention spans. The hook is really important. You learn all of that by doing it. So like number one, I think what I advise founders is like, or anybody essentially that wants to build in public or just post content online on LinkedIn, put yourself out there.

8:15Be aware that you're going to look like an idiot at the beginning and people are going to be like what he's lost his mind number two learn the craft like don't like get into it understand what's working and number three is consistency what i see is people do this for two weeks three weeks because they sit on a podcast and say you know this seems like a great idea let me go try it and then they give up the moment that they get anxious because it's not working it's like with everything you have to see it at least three to six months minimum if you don't do three to six months you're not going to see the combining nature of this um and then yeah again the under like maybe the common denominator of everything is be comfortable looking like an idiot look like a fool um i personally don't care because it drives revenue for my subscription revenue business so when my friends from ireland give out to me and say you've lost your mind you're an idiot i like point to the revenue and i'm like i don't give a crap what you say you're not building a software company i am and i'm okay with looking like an idiot for a little bit while i do it was there a time where you looked so much

9:13Daniel Robbins:like an idiot where you said this is it i'm done with this i'm not gonna do this anymore every week once a month at least um you know you have to put yourself out there and it feels awkward right and like sometimes it's a little bit too much right and i think that's natural you're gonna i like it with everything you have to learn the muscle so do i cringe at some posts every so often yeah but guess what daniel the ones that i cringe at usually get the most return the most impressions the most engagement and the most revenue so as you start to do this you realize okay like where's the line that i'm not willing to cross and truthfully at the beginning you know maybe this is helpful for everyone else like i focused on growth of my audience so we went from 2 000 followers to 42 000 followers which meant i was posting a lot of top of funnel content like engagement content you know remote working benefits you know stuff that people will interact with because it's universally understood and then over time i started layering in bottom of funnel middle of funnel content.

10:08So middle of funnel is like industry. I talk about marketing in general. I posted about it today about the marketing industry. It doesn't get as much engagement, but put yourself as a thought leader. And then there's bottom of funnel, the selling limelight, which gets the lowest engagement. And Daniel, I would say most people default to when they start to write content, let me write about me. Let me go sell. And that is not the way to do it. You actually need to think, what does the audience want to hear? How do I tell a story? and how do I not just aggressively try to tell them that I'm great and here's my features and functionalities and let me go sell to them through content.

10:40Once you start to do that, you realize nobody gives a shit. So it's a whole strategy.

10:45Daniel Robbins:By the way, I don't think you're an idiot. So I know I said that before, just playing off the term that you use. So I don't think any of your posts sound like an idiot. I think your posts are great. We are our biggest critics, though. I don't even like to – I never watch interviews or discussions I have with anyone, by the way. I don't even like to watch myself because I start to nitpick so many things. 2 ,000 to 42 ,000, incredible results right there. When you look at what you were talking about top of the funnel, which seemed to get the most following traction or the ones that drove the most people that wanted to follow you, what type of post?

11:26Daniel Robbins:Because I think I'm at like 34 ,000. I want to get to 80 ,000 or 60 ,000. Is there some type of post I can be doing that you think would move the needle in terms of strengthening the following count? We could do a whole podcast just on that topic alone. I could talk about it for ages. And by the time I finished recording the podcast, the game had changed. The algorithm's changed. So, you know, what's working last week isn't working this week. I think, number one, like, AI slop is everywhere. Go to LinkedIn, scroll, nine posts out of ten posts are AI slop. They're too well written. They're too structured.

12:01They're robotic and they don't tell a story. So I think like, number one, you have to input your own personal experience. Like, you know, an example of that is like, last week I spoke to a designer and I got 1 ,100 and something applicants. Here's why, you know, I interviewed this specific person. I posted about that last Friday. It got, I don't know, 30 ,000 impressions since Friday, which is again, hiring on LinkedIn is obviously a topic that a lot of people care about. It's a job search platform as well as many other things. But I also told a story. So I think it's like you've got to mix storytelling that AI can't write into the mix and grasp users.

12:41And then look, people might know this because they're probably interested in LinkedIn if they're listening to this podcast, but there's other ways to grow, right? Number one is write great content. That's what everyone thinks, right? But you also have to engage on other people's profiles that have audiences so they engage back, right? And then the third one is just consistency of doing the work nonstop every single day.

13:00Daniel Robbins:So I've been putting comments that I find to be funny or full of humor. Maybe those are not the right comments. Maybe I need to be more serious. When you look at what you put onto other people's profiles, what works for you? Comments that are humorous are good. In fact, now LinkedIn just made visible the amount of impressions you get from comments. I think anything to stand out, Instead of the generic chat GBT automated comments that just takes the post, picks one line and then regurgitates it back. Hi, this is Alex Kantrowicz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC.

13:40Daniel Robbins:And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. asking where this is all going. They come from places like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. If you add humor, you're going to stand out from the crowd. So I would definitely do it.

14:12Don't insult people. You can draw a line of like, I'm humorous, I'm funny, but I'm not aggressively going after you.

14:19Daniel Robbins:But I think LinkedIn is too conservative. of sometimes the impressions i get from my comments are better than the impressions i get from a post but i try to do sometimes more controversial comments or like like an opinion comment hoping that other people would draw their opinion recently that happened and i don't know she was kind of making fun of me i don't think she understood that there was humor in my comment and she was like so i was like whoa so i end up deleting it i do that a lot sometimes i'll post things, Dave, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't like it. Then I'm deleting it, which I probably should stop.

14:55Daniel Robbins:What are companies? The great thing is you get a lot of great data, I imagine. You're seeing not only what's working on the front end from the users, like the content creators, influencers, but you're also understanding the data of what companies want. If I'm thinking about how to really structure my LinkedIn profile because I want to be attractive to companies. What do companies want? That's actually such a great question. I, you know, I'm not actually, I've not been asked that on a podcast before. So I'll give you like straight off the top of my head. I think number one, what brands themselves are becoming more aware because B2B influencers new, they're becoming more aware of like the engagement bots, the profiles that are getting huge impressions and engagement, but it's actually just a farm of people interacting on each other's content.

15:46So I think authenticity is what I'm seeing all brands care about. And what's really interesting is they don't look for huge influencers and creators. Like they're not looking for the people with 100 ,000 followers plus, they're looking for the people with 10 to 30 ,000, 10 to 40 ,000 followers who have built audiences that have trust and haven't really monetized it effectively yet and aren't doing brand partnerships five days a week. Those types of people and audiences are the things that I'm seeing a lot of companies go after. And when I speak with, like we work with Webflow, HubSpot, Bill.com, ZoomInfo, ActiveCampaign, pretty large enterprises, I'm like, okay, tell me your budget.

16:24And then they're like, okay, we've got$200 ,000 a month to spend. It's like, okay, you can go wide, work with many creators. You can go high, work with the biggest creators. You can go deep, multi-channel partnership. Well, maybe it's a newsletter and an event and a LinkedIn post, which I always recommend they do go deeper with creators and influencers. But most of the time, I'm advising them to go wide. Work with as many as you can. Get as much surface area content out there. See what's working. Build an audience and then double down on the creators that are performing. So for people listening to this, if you're looking at your LinkedIn, I think authenticity is important to be clear about who your audience is, who you write for in your bio, in your header.

17:02Don't be vague. Be very specific and then um i think in general like try do some brand partnerships and once you start to do any brand partnerships we've seen that a lot of brands are aware that they're available to do brand partnerships and then start to increase the amount of offers that go out to those creators

17:21Daniel Robbins:that's through data that we've been tracking on our platform so what do you what i don't even know What is an average amount for a creator like myself? What can I even earn from LinkedIn? I see standards of Instagram, which I know everything is kind of all over the place, like YouTube. But because there's been people doing that for a longer time, I feel like there's some standards that have been created out of air. What about LinkedIn? Nobody knows how much to charge. Nobody knows how much to pay. It's the wild, wild west. We actually built benchmarks over the last two years, collecting data from all transactions to bring more transparency and educate both brands and creators.

18:03Creators on what they're worth and brands on what they should pay. But the truth is, even if we give them all the data, it's still a little bit like, you know, there's edge cases. I can give you some hard facts. The lowest amount for a post that we've seen, about$200. The highest amount for one post,$8 ,000. We've had scenarios where one creator was paid$30 ,000. That happened twice for one campaign. Now, there was multi-channel. There was like, you have to come to an event. You have to do two LinkedIn posts and you have to do one newsletter, for example,$30 ,000. So I think like it's up to the creator to decide what their worth is and how much they want to charge.

18:39But you also need a bit of guidance. You don't want to overestimate. And I would say, Daniel, for most part, like the B2B creators overestimate what they're worth. And they're probably charging a little bit or expecting to charge a little bit too much at the beginning where my recommendation is charge enough that you're not undercharging yourself. I never think that's a good idea, but also make it attractive to the brand and make it maybe more long-term. So when somebody reaches out to you and says, hey, I want to pay you to do one post on LinkedIn for$700, you say, no, I only do five posts. It's$3 ,000.

19:13And then you've built a relationship over time that then they can start to double down because a lot of brands, Daniel, are doing this for the first time. They're just trying it out. They're allocating budget and they're trying to figure out what's working. Don't immediately stop them in their tracks by overcharging at the beginning and then not delivering the results. The better plan is to get into the room, do a few partnerships with them, a few pieces of content, and then build that relationship because if you can prove revenue, which is what we can talk about, you become really valuable to them and they will pay you a lot more money because our ultimate goal is that you have an army.

19:46These brands are having an army of 100 creators creating content consistently, bringing their business to the top of the news feeds and driving a lot of revenue. And once we unlock that revenue, these brands will pay you a lot of money. They just want to make sure that it works to begin with.

20:02Daniel Robbins:That's always the thing. I've done influencer marketing for my own brand since 12 years ago. And the question is always like, what will it get to me as the brand and company? And I think a lot of companies, unless you're like a very large corporation, obviously it's different. Depending on your size, the budgets, you understand sometimes it's just brand awareness. Sometimes you need certain results. So what type of results are you seeing from the brand's perspective? So I always believe, Daniel, that if we were able to make influencer marketing in B2B performance-based, it will unlock 100x the budget because these brands are spending a fortune on paid ads on LinkedIn, on Google, on Facebook, and across all social channels.

20:48And they're competing on keywords that's now saturated and it's getting a worse return on investment. So they have millions. And I speak with like Webflow, ZoomInfo, Bill.com. And I'll say like, how much are you spending a month? And they're like$5 million on paid ads. I'm like, oh my God,$5 million on paid ads. If we could just take 10 % of that, you're talking 500 ,000 a month to creators, I guarantee you I can get a better return on investment than what you're getting today. So what we typically say with influencers and, you know, when they're standing these programs up is have the usual attribution systems in place, right?

21:23Track website traffic, demo signups, put self-reported demo links, use UTM links per creator. So custom UTM links to show conversion tracking and a handful of other things that we talk about. But what really moves the needle is when you start to track who's engaging on that content. So we are posting content across 100 creators every single week, let's say. There are people that are engaging on that content, liking, commenting, reacting, that are potential ICP. Now, 80 % of the people that engage on LinkedIn are not your ideal customer profile, it's probably rubbish, but 20 % of them probably are.

21:57And we're now driving leads. Because in B2B, the journey isn't, I see something on Instagram, I click the link and I buy the sunglasses. They're seeing something in a newsfeed, they're reading it in a newsletter, and then they're making a decision two months, three months later. So the brand needs to take one, a longer view of what revenue attribution and how to measure it. Like let's take it three to six months. Let's not just post three posts and hope that it drives revenue. But then you also need to track who's engaging on the content and prove that those engagements are actually becoming revenue.