How to Get 10X More Traffic From Content You Already Have (with Ross Simmonds, Foundation Marketing)

0:00Hey, it's Dave. So Zoom Webinars and Events has made our recent Exit 5 Live sessions way more pro lately. But don't just take my word for it. Check this out. This is what Kelly B said. She said, I compare all other webinars now against Exit 5. I love that. And look, in a world of AI slop, we just want to make something that's actually worth going to. It's not easy to get an hour out of your day. I'm just the on-air talent though. So I'm going to kick it over to Marissa and Maria. This is our Exit 5 Live production team, our content team here at Exit 5, since they're the ones actually making this all happen.

0:29Marissa? I've been doing B2B content a long time. I know. It's hard to hold attention for more than 30 seconds, let alone a whole webinar. But Zoom webinars helps. Recently, we've had nearly 2 ,000 registrants, over 500 live, and hundreds of hours of watch time on our sessions. Maria, what would you say is driving that? It all starts with prep. We do up to seven hours per session. Choosing a topic, prep calls, building the run of show, and so much more. With Zoom webinars and events, everything's in one place. Registration, emails, polls, analytics. So it's simple to run that cycle every two weeks.

1:02At Showtime, I hand it back to Marissa in Zoom's production studio. With Zoom's production studio, I can set the scenes in advance. So on the big day, I just send them live with speakers and content already in place. Clean transitions, crystal clear audio and video. I feel like I'm running the big game back there. So this is why our webinars have been crushing it lately. Look, they just said we're spending seven hours per session on this. And don't just take our word for it. Come and see firsthand. We run these every other Friday. It's called Exit 5 Live, now powered by Zoom webinars and events.

1:32So come and check us out. See this whole thing live. And if you want to learn more about using Zoom at your company, check out zoom.com slash exit5. That's zoom.com slash exit5. Hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Convertive, a B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy. Q4 is the time of year when having a great agency partner matters more than ever. If you're shopping for a new agency, Convertive is worth looking into. They work with marketing and operations leaders to help grow revenue across the business and AEO. One of the things I know you're thinking about right now is one of their specialties.

2:07Trusted by companies like DocuSign, Databank, and Constructor, Convertive builds on the search and marketing work you're already doing and helps optimize your site so more of your buyers find you and turn it into pipeline. Right now, they're offering Exit 5 listeners a free AI search review. They'll run the questions your buyers are actually asking through your Google and AI tools, show you how you stack up against competitors, and tell you what's worth fixing. If you're looking for a refresh of your AEO strategy in 2027, this AI search review with Convertive is a great place to start. Check it out.

2:38It's convertive.com slash exit 5. That's convertive.com slash exit 5. And you can also see the link in the show notes. You're listening to The Dave Gerrard Show.

3:02Hey, it's Dasha. And the episode that you're about to hear was recorded live in person in Stowe, Vermont at Exit 5's Drive event. I sat down with marketing legend Ross Simmons. Ross is the founder and CEO of not one, but two companies. One is called Distribution AI and one is called Foundation Marketing. Ross is an expert when it comes to educating marketers around what it's like to actually get the most out of the content that they're creating. He is the king of content distribution. And that's exactly what we spend some time talking about in this short but mighty episode. I also ask Ross what worked for him and his team in 2026 and what bet they're making for 2027.

3:46I hope you enjoy this episode. All right, Ross, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me on. Not your usual podcast environment. What a place. It's crazy. I'm excited for this. First time in Vermont? Second time in Vermont. First time doing a podcast outside. Yeah. Honestly, me too. The sun is beaming down on us. It's all right. It's good. Gotta get the vitamin D. Gotta get the vitamin D. 100%. This is your second drive. Second drive. Second drive. Excited to be back. You went to the very first. You went to the OG drive. Went to the inaugural drive event. And it was a blast. It was so much fun.

4:20So I'm excited to be back. Did you have any takeaways from the first drive? The first drive. Wow. Takeaway. Takeaways are like things that you did after drive that you wouldn't have otherwise done. Before the podcast, Ross said, ask me some hard hitting questions I've never been asked before. And I said, say less. I've never been asked that. I think one of the biggest takeaways that I took from that was that AI was actually going to be playing a massive role in the way in which we worked. And it came true, which is fascinating because it's been like, what, 30 some months since then. Right. Yeah.

4:54I mean, it's changed literally everything. Yeah. We should introduce you. We should. We should introduce you. Please introduce you. Who the heck are you? What do you do? Why are you here? Yeah. My name is Ross Simmons. I'm the founder and entrepreneur. I run multiple companies, primarily known for foundation marketing, as well as distribution.ai. I'm helping enterprise brands get their story spread. I've been one of the OGs in the world of distribution and Reddit and marketing and content, all of that good stuff, and have always been in B2B and SaaS. Say more about the distribution of content.

5:24You help enterprise companies distribute their content how? Yeah. So it started off with this belief that a lot of companies were creating great content, but just letting it collect us. I would talk to companies, CMOs, executives, and they would produce white papers, eBooks, all of this stuff. And they wouldn't do anything with it. They wouldn't promote it on LinkedIn. They wouldn't share it on Reddit. At the time, there's a site called SlideShare. They weren't using that, Medium, none of those things. And I was like, the biggest problem in marketing is that we're creating things and not actually spreading them.

5:52So I started to talk about organic distribution, built foundation around that concept of distributing your stories through Reddit, through SEO, through paid, through all of these different channels. And then as you fast forward through AI, AI is now using all of those different distribution surfaces to translate back into the LLM's answers to questions. So our services have increased in demand because of that. In addition to that, I launched distribution.ai, recognizing like, hey, software is definitely still a key part of the world in which we live in. So can we build a platform that allows brands and marketers and their teams, sales executives, et cetera, distribute their stories online at scale?

6:29How has AI changed how you view distribution of content? Does it make it harder? Is it more important, less important, easier? How has the dynamic changed? Because you started before AI was a big thing. Say some more. There's two key things that have changed in distribution with the rise of AI. One, it has never been noisier. There's a lot of slop. There's a lot of trash content being produced. You can go on any channel and you'll see it. A lot of people like to pick on sites like Reddit, et cetera, but it's everywhere. It's on X, it's on threads, it's on LinkedIn, it's on Quora. Every site you go on is filled with a lot of slop.

7:03That creates an opportunity. If you can create authentic, valuable human content and then put it on these platforms, you can win. But it's noisier than ever before. What AI has also done is it's given us a superpower as humans. We now have the ability to distribute great content, valuable stories across multiple platforms for a fraction of the cost that it used to take. It used to take hours to listen to a podcast and find the key moments that you have to cut up and then send it off to an editor and chop it up. Now AI can do a lot of that for you. So I think it's created a lot of challenges, but the opportunity that it has presented has been massive as well.

7:42Can we take a real example of a piece of content? Let's say, let's take a blog post, because everyone's producing blog posts and maybe with AI even more so. You have a blog post, a lot of marketers will stop there. If I'm working with Ross, what am I doing with that blog post to distribute it? Yeah, so as long as the blog post is good, I will do something with it. Let's assume it's not slow. I don't want to just like send out something that's trash. So assuming that it's a good blog post, the first thing we're going to do is just send it out on social. So if you have a LinkedIn account, you have an X account, a Threads account, Blue Sky, Masterjohn, you name it, we're probably going to write a piece of content that can promote it on those different channels.

8:18LinkedIn's probably going to be a little bit longer, have a strong hook and then send it out that way. But you're not just going to do that once you're going to schedule it so it goes out the next week as well. Because the people who are online today at that moment aren't going to be the same people that are on next week. So you're going to reshare it the next day. You're also going to send it out to your email newsletter. You're also going to tap into your sales team and hopefully ask them to send it out to their contacts. Anybody who's in the pipeline that might've gone quiet, they're going to send it out to them.

8:40I would recommend that you also create a video on the blog post, ideally a long form video that you can then chop up into shorts. Take those shorts, you're going to share them as individual shorts on Reels, on TikTok, on all those platforms. Hopefully, you're also going to share it on your stories and then share it on LinkedIn again. At that moment, you're probably going to have a cup of coffee and then you're going to ask yourself, what else can I do? You can take the blog post and then upload it to Reddit, submit it into key subreddits that are relevant to your niche and your audience. Then after those pieces are submitted to Reddit, I would say you're probably going to also want to create like a carousel or something that can go on Instagram or LinkedIn with the slides functionality.

9:12From there, if you're really feeling ambitious, I would advise that you just put up a story talking about the blog post and then put a green screen behind you. so you check the link and then people will swipe up and go to it i think that would be a nice add-on and then from there you're going to go back to those social media channels because it's probably been two weeks and repost it again on those and then schedule a few more to go next week and the week after that holy heck i am not repurposing content enough at all um for the marketer listening to this that's like all right i can do all those things but is it worth it right what are you seeing like you work with clients so you get to see the before and after right not just with one client, but you know, across multiple, what on average are you seeing?

9:53Like if you do this, what happens to your business? Oh, we've seen like 10 X the amount of traffic to multiple brands, websites and their content because they actually distributed. A brand came to us a few months back. They had a white paper that they created. It was, it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, design stats, surveys, all of this stuff. And they promoted it once on LinkedIn, they got like six leads. The right approach is to do what I just said and then distribute it and start to amplify it, et cetera. And from that, you're just going to see the lead start to trickle in. We've had one example where we created a piece of content for a client and instead of taking the traditional route, we distribute it, we amplified it, et cetera.

10:30That content asset that was created back in like three years ago, we continue to update it, distribute it and promote it is now cited in the LLMs consistently across some of the most priority prompts in their category. And they're generating leads on the back of this asset from like three years ago. And this is the key that people don't realize is that it's a long game. Like when you play the long game and you're willing to distribute your stories, the ROI can be infinite, which is why I always say create ridiculously content once and then distribute it forever. And if you do that, you'll just win.

11:01How often should you be creating original content? Like when do you know, OK, I've squeezed as much as possible out of this piece of content. Like we're going to just like let that live somewhere and move on to the next piece. Nike said just do it for a very long time. And I think a lot of marketers overestimate how many people they actually reach, underestimate how much they have actually promoted things, and they should probably lean a little bit more towards the promotion side. If you create something that's absolutely ridiculously good, you should promote that until the wheels fall off. There is no point in which I would say stop promoting it unless you can say with high confidence that you've reached 100 % of the target market in your demographic.

11:41And I would argue that simply due to math, that is likely impossible because new people have entered the market. And at the end of that 12 months, guess what? New people have just entered the market who didn't have that resource. And if you update it annually, you are providing new value to the people who subscribe the first time. So I think you can do it consistently as long as you actually focus on content excellence up front. Let's talk about the content excellence piece. Yeah. It sounds like you have a high bar for a good piece of content. For sure. What's like the menu for this is genuinely good.

12:14The best content does what I like to call the four E's. It educates, engages, entertains, and empowers people. Now it's hard to do all four, but if you crack that, you will have a piece of content that is super successful. So in the educational side, you provide people with information they never had before. Engaging, it gets people talking. It might have a little bit of controversy. It might be kind of contrarian in nature. Right. Entertaining, you should try to like make people feel some type of emotion. I like to make people feel like they can do anything, which leans in well to the next E, which is empowering.

12:46So when you make people feel empowered that they read this and they feel like they can go and do something special, then they'll go and do that. And I think the beauty of content is in the idea that one piece of content can fundamentally change anybody's life. Like I grew up in Halifax, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, small town, not a lot of people talking about marketing, not a lot of people doing a lot of things. And I've been able to work with some of the biggest brands in the world because I committed to this idea that if I give value to the internet, the internet will give me value back. And it's unlocked a ridiculous amount of opportunities.

13:19So to anyone listening, anybody watching, my piece of advice to you is you are one piece of content away from a fundamentally different life. So just create great things, publish it out there. Don't be afraid of the cringe. Don't be afraid to get roasted in the group chat. Just do your thing and watch what happens.

14:04landing pages built from signals like job postings, press releases, and leadership changes. That's like the holy grail of ABM, by the way. Optimizely's agent platform is built specifically for you, the B2B marketer. You can build your own agents like McKeel did or pull from a directory of 50 plus pre-built ones made just for marketing use cases all in one place. They also just launch virtual teammates. These are digital members of the team that learn over time and can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. If you're being asked to look into AI agents right now, Optimizely should be at the top of your list.

14:38Go and see how they can help you reclaim your time and build cool stuff just like McKeel did. Check them out at optimizely.com slash exit five. That's optimizely.com slash exit five. Hey, it's Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Compound Growth Marketing. They're a full funnel demand gen agency that I've personally hired twice. Yep. Before I was just a thought leader. I was a real marketer and CGM was one of the best agencies that I worked with. They help high growth software companies show up earlier in the buying journey where potential customers are forming opinions about which product to use.

15:09They've helped an enterprise cybersecurity company grow pipeline 168 % year over year with full funnel media and an HR tech company grow 48 % through paid search. And they can do the same for you. They offer a combination of full funnel paid advertising strategy and execution, AEO, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Everything CGM does gets tracked, measured, and improved over time. That means more pipeline for you. And this works because they were started by an actual former VP of marketing who really gets this space that you work in in B2B. So visit compoundgrowthmarketing.com slash exit five to see how they can help you meet your 2027 revenue goals.

15:47That's compoundgrowthmarketing.com slash exit five. And you're living proof of that. On the other side of climbing Mount Cringe is Mount Cool. That's it. That's it. You got to play the game. You do. What is a piece of content that's changed your life? Ooh, there's so many. Let's break it down like this, okay? Blog post that's changed your life? Okay. And then we'll do a book because it's a little bit longer. Yeah. So the first blog post that changed my life, I wrote when I was a young pop. I think I was, oh, there's two. I'm going to give you two. Yeah, please. So the first one that changed my life was a blog post I wrote before I had a job in advertising.

16:23Okay. I wrote this blog post and it was titled 14 books that you need to read to get a job in advertising. And then all of the agents... I know. The irony is not lost on me. And then every agency in the city reached out to me and they're like, man, if he's reading all these books, he's probably worth hiring. Right. So that got me my interviews with a lot of agencies. And then I wrote a blog post. This is when Gen Z was still young and hip and cool. I wrote an article about five things that marketers need to know to do marketing to Gen Z. and I was living in my parents' basement, drinking instant coffee, probably an overdraft, like no money.

16:55And Bacardi comes across the piece and they're like, hey, can we fly you out from Nova Scotia to Miami to present to our C-suite? And I was like, mom. And they're like, sure, do your thing. So then I flew down and I was like, okay, this internet thing is real. I can create content on the internet, reach brands that are like globally known and unlock some amazing opportunities. So I kept going. That's amazing. Yeah, it was cool. Have you worked with Bacardi since? No, I went B2B. I was in the consumer world. I was like, too much emotions. Let's just stick to capitalism. Wait, what do you mean too much emotions?

17:28With consumer marketing, it's very much a emotional driven purchase. So I did a lot of time in consumer marketing. I sold KitKat bars, all that stuff, Canadian consumer goods. And from that, what I realized is there was two things I didn't like. One, you have to really go deep into all of the different layers of a human like an onion and have to play with a lot of different emotions. And that was complex. It was fun and enjoyable, but you're not just playing and trying to understand the emotions of your audience. You're also trying to understand the emotions of your clients who might respond negatively to certain things that don't actually influence the buyer in a bunch of drama.

18:07So that was difficult. And B2B is much more linear in nature. It's like, can you solve this problem? and I will give you a certain amount of cash to solve this problem. And it was very much more cut and dry. So I started to lean into that and loved it. I still love consumer for what it provides the market in terms of intelligence. And I love the psychology of marketing, but I like to apply it to B2B because it's just a, I don't want to say it's an easier game, but it's a It gives you the best of both worlds. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I get that. It's easier to innovate, I'd say, because in B2B, most people are slow to respond to the changes the consumer sees quicker.

18:44Is there a brand or a company? It can be a client of yours. It can be just a company that you like that is doing the four E's really well. Like if I'm a marketer and I'm like, all right, yeah, I want to engage with a piece of content. I just want to see what good looks like. Yeah. What's something they should check out? There's a lot of them. I would look at brands like Canva have done it ridiculously well. HubSpot is doing it ridiculously well with their shift to YouTube videos and the content that they're putting out there. Bitly does an amazing job with it as well. There's a lot of brands in B2B that are starting to really like lean into educational, engaging, entertaining, and empowering content.

19:21But it's always the ones that are just like willing to do things that everybody else isn't. And then they get copied and then the industry starts to catch on. But those are a few brands that do it well. Love it. What was your biggest win in 2026? The biggest win that I had in 2026 would have probably been a lot of the partnerships. I've been partnering with a lot of brands to create content, helping them with their actual stories through my team at Foundation. And Foundation has just grown and built an amazing team. So I would say the biggest win is actually building the team. The team that we have at Foundation and the work that they do to be able to go into some of these top brands in the world and influence their culture amidst so much change would probably be my biggest win, even though I didn't actually do it.

20:05So my biggest win of 2026, let me put this on a bumper sticker, would be the ability to create a culture where my team can go into these organizations, do best in class work, and really move the needle for these clients on an innovative problem, which is AI visibility, and then translating that into pipeline. It's been really cool to see. And the fact that they're doing it without me and so many of them are better than me now at Reddit, at LinkedIn and stuff like that is just like chef's kiss. That's what it's all about. That's beautiful. We were just talking with Dave about how building a great team is like the secret sauce to building anything great.

20:43Yeah. You've hired a number of people. Yeah. How do you hire great people? What have you learned? I've learned the most important thing to hire great people is to be ridiculously intentional of holding up your values of what you care about as a business, and then showing them to the person who's interested in the role and seeing how they react to it. And then from there, making sure that there's no surprises on the other end, give them big problems, be transparent with all of the warts. So there's no like, oh, that was a trick. And then just let them go and thrive. And if you do that, you can win.

21:20I think what also has helped us is we eat our own dog food. We promote content, We create software. We do innovative things. We speak at events. We empower our team. We have an unlimited book budget because we are so committed to learning and professional development that people get books just sent to them all the time. We're big on living the values that kind of started with Foundation and giving people the capacity to do it. And then I think great people just get interested and then they show up. And we're also fully remote. So we have people who are all the way in Spain through all across Canada, the US and beyond.

21:53So it's been fun. what you just said the being transparent about what happens on the inside yeah we call that the anti-sell and it works so well you're like look here are all the reasons you should join and here are all the reasons you probably don't want to join and if someone's like heck yeah sign me up for that like i always say if you don't like ambiguity like if you want a really clear swim lane yeah series a startup probably not the vibe 100 and if someone's like oh yeah like that's kind it. Not it. Great. Like we both avoided a bad fit. And if someone's like, no, I actually want to be wearing like 12 hats, sign me up.

22:26Like perfect. Yeah. It's a good fit. Come aboard. Yeah. Makes sense. I love that. Is there a trend that you're hoping stays in 2026 and doesn't follow us to 2027 in marketing? I think it would be manipulating Reddit. I'm a big Redditor. I've loved Reddit. Favorite subreddit real quick. Favorite subreddit, our fantasy football, because I am a big football guy. I spent a lot of time there. But I also like, I could geek out. I like best of Reddit updates. Best of Reddit is good. There's a lot of good ones. So yeah, I'm a big Redditor. I think people spamming Reddit needs to stay in 2026. It's killing a lot of the good value that comes out of this channel pre all of the slop getting dropped into it.

23:04I think it's a ridiculously valuable platform still today. There's billions of dollars worth of deals in B2B that are being influenced by Reddit that people don't even realize because Reddit is such a powerful training data platform for things like Gemini, etc. Totally. But marketers are starting to mess it up a little bit. So I hope that stays in 2026. Do you include white hat redditing? Have you heard that? No, I think that's great. That's good. We like that. Yeah. White hat redditing is the idea that you go in authentic as a brand. Yeah. Simply chime in when it is relevant to you. Yeah. You're like, yo, I work at Proton.

23:35I love that. Yeah. I love that. I eat that up. I think that's exactly how brands should be doing it. Be transparent, add value, educate, engage, entertain, empower. If you do that on Reddit, you'll win. But if you go in and every single time your comment is, hey, you should buy my software. Hey, we are the best. We are the top. And you're just using queries. Or worse, like pretending to be like... Pretending to be someone else that you're not. Yeah. Like I would say that needs to stay in 2026. What is your biggest bet for 2027? My biggest bet for 2027 would be that there's going to be a massive surge in in real life events.

24:08I think people have loved the internet and AI and social and all of that. But I think there's a real desire amongst buyers to get together with real people, build those connections in person. I've always been a digital first person. I love the internet. I built my career on the internet. But there's something special about going from pixels to flesh. And I think it will never be replaced. And amidst the rise of AI, I think it's becoming more and more of a necessity. hence the reasons why some of the top ai firms in the world are starting to actually hire for these community and events roles pixels to flesh should be a band name that would be a good band that would be i like do you plan and like should we start this band maybe a harmonica i'll pick it okay you can be the harmonica i will play i played the piano as a kid but i've like since lost it but i can't lose it i will bring it back to start this band because you came up with this iconic iconic brand name of all time.

25:02Cool. Well, before we go, is there anyone that you're like really pumped to see at Drive this week? Oh, I am pumped to see everyone. I just love... Just love everyone. Just love everybody. It's a great industry. You're signed up for workshops, I imagine? I am. And you're giving a talk. I am. Jess Cook. Jess Cook. I'm signed up for her talk as well. So good. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. Brand has back or something? It's like Baby Got Back, but Baby Got Brand. Yeah, that's it. So good. It's so just. I'm looking forward to that. It was great. So excited to see her. Thanks for coming on to the podcast in the outdoors.

25:32Thrilled to be here. This is so much fun. This is great. Okay. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks.

25:40Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit 5. And you can go and check that out. instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exit5.com. Our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit 5. There's nearly 5 ,000 members now in our community.

26:12People are in there posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers, building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group. or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100 % free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk-free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out, learn more, exit5.com, and I will see you over there in the community.

26:51Hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Customer.io. They're one of our longest running sponsors. Customer.io helps marketing teams get more impact from every message they send so you can reach the right people with the right message at the right moment. What we love about Customer.io is that they have a great team of marketers who really care about the craft. They just get marketing and understand our audience. Molly, Rosie, and the team bring something creative. Every time that we work together at our Exit 5 event in Austin, they handed out cowboy boots in our newsletter. They shared an AI prompt cookbook.

27:21And at Drive last month, they were giving out Airbnb gift cards and AirPods. They believe marketing is a craft that takes creativity, thought, and taste. And no, AI can't do this part for you. The best teams treat AI as infrastructure and built the right way. It actually makes marketing feel more human, not less. Customer.io helps product teams build personalized campaigns across email, SMS, push, in-app, and webhooks using their own first-party data. And today, more than 9 ,000 brands trust Customer.io to send their messages, including Notion, Les Mills and Angie. So if you need a new vendor to power your customer messaging, or you just want a great marketing team to follow, it's time to go and check out customer IO, go to customer.io slash exit five.

28:02That's customer.io slash exit five.