Shattering The Mold: Unleashing the Creator Economy in B2B Marketing

0:07Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Christy Horstman. With over 10 years experience in the B2B and B2C SaaS space, she is the director, mother, and teacher based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Currently serves as the VP of Marketing at Thinkific, a software platform that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses. And she also writes about marketing for Entrepreneur Magazine. So Christy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, John. I've been a listener for many years, so it's very exciting for me to be here.

0:46Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate you listening for many years. Many. So you recently wrote an article that appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine, Four Ways to Create a Revolution. Four Ways Creators are revolutionizing marketing and how big brands can benefit. So let's start there a little bit because we are really going to talk about change in marketing, change in B2B marketing. I want to bring in the whole creator topic. So it seemed like that just kind of teed it up for us. So talk a little bit about what kind of the primary point you were trying to get across in that article. Yeah, I think, you know, just coming from my career in B2B marketing and the way that B2B marketing has evolved over time.

1:29And one of the biggest, I think, impacts to B2B marketing and how people are approaching it today has been through the creator economy. and just the change in marketing because you have so many people that are able to open their phone and talk to their audience, talk to people, talk about their point of view, talk about their passion, their unique genius, and how companies are kind of scrambling to get into that mindset of what the creator brings to their marketing tactics and their business and what that means for businesses that have typically been a little stiffer in their marketing. So let's define a term there.

2:10You use the term creator economy, and I'm guessing it's a pretty buzzy term, but I'm also guessing there's a lot of confusion about what that means or misconceptions, even frankly, about what that means. So how do you define that or how do you define that as being maybe different than kind of traditional economic models? Yeah. So I think there's a lot of, you know, read, heard, you know, being in the, you know, part of the creator economy ourselves at Thinkific. And there's a lot of definitions out there of what it is. And the way that we define it and the way that I kind of look at it is anybody who is out there really using their unique genius, their unique point of view to influence, to attract, to, you know, create either a community, a group of people, an audience, or sell something through that community or audience.

2:57And it's really just, You know, I think a lot of people would say, are, you know, creators, are they, you know, you see these YouTube creators, are they entertainers, or are they educators? And actually, I think if we look at these two categories, and kind of define them as such, because, you know, there are people that are out there that are just creating for the sake of entertainment purposes, which is amazing. And then there's people out there that are creating for education. And that's how we kind of look at the lens of the creator economy. I think last time I read, and I think it was a Forbes article a couple of weeks ago, there was this estimate of what is the creator economy worth?

3:32And it's somewhere between$100 billion to like$700 billion, which is depending on how you define those people that are within it. But it's growing every day, obviously, with the advent of social media. So I think for a lot of people, they see some of the folks that are really doing what seem like kind of goofy things that are getting them a lot of attention and maybe making them a lot of money. And I'm sure that big brands, B2B brands particularly, are looking at that and going, well, that's not for us necessarily. So what is the lesson that might come to play that would be practical, usable, relevant for that B2B brand particularly?

4:09Yeah, and I think when you – yeah, exactly. When you look at – I always look at Mr. Beast, for instance, right? And, you know, brands are going to go out there and start trying to, you know, jump, you know, 1300 motorcycles in a row or something like that. Right. And so do something crazy. But what the kind of dilution, if you bring it down to it, that even creator entertainers and educators have in common is it's this human element. It's this trusted element. And it's something that brands like big brands really are, have always been striving for. right? To be that trusted brand, to have that element of, yes, like come to us for the product or service that you want or need.

4:49And it really boils down to that human and that trustworthy element. They're putting themselves out there so much. We know so much about these creators and they've created this humanity as part of their, you know, towards their audience, as part of their brand that, that, that big brands really need to look at and say, how do I emulate this? How do I bring this into, you know, our messaging and our core values? So it seems to me there would be a couple of logical paths if somebody is saying, yeah, that's kind of a missing piece of ours. Obviously, they could go create their own connection of some form to their, they're not fans yet.

5:24I guess it would be their customers even or their community. But also a lot of brands are exploring, let's get one of those influencers, if you will, or somebody that's a creator that has a big audience. Let's get them associated with our brand. And is there a better way? Are there pitfalls to one way or the other? Yeah, I think the only pitfalls I see when you're looking for, I think, hiring creator influencers to represent your brand is great. I think that it's a great way to bridge and find a new audience. If you understand your core customer, where your core customer is digesting content, who they're looking up to in the creator sphere, it's a great way to bridge that and gain that new audience.

6:06I think where sometimes it falls flat. And this is where, again, that kind of trusted component is a lot of the times creators, you know, we always say, you know, they say it's an ad, they say it's sponsored. And everyone knows that it's a sponsored deal. And that's how creators, realistically, a lot of creators make the majority of their money is through these big brand sponsorships. And lately we've seen some of that fall off, right? As brands have pulled back a little bit because they're seeing that, yeah, it's great for eyeballs, but maybe it's not always driving the sales they want to see.

6:38And so I think that it's definitely important to align yourself with creators that align with your values and that make sense for your brand. But I would also say that for brands to take the tactics that creators are using and try to employ them themselves to create more of an authentic, humanized element for their brand without having to go through that creator or that third party. Right, right. One of the hallmarks, I suppose, of a popular influencer or creator is it's basically personal branding, right? I mean, they've gone out there and established themselves as a voice that does this or as a person that does this or a person who shares amazing information or how to stuff on a certain topic.

7:23How does a brand really kind of adopt that mentality? Because I think that's real tricky for them, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's where people have gotten stuck a lot of the time because they think that, and especially I think when we think of B2B traditionally has been very, very broad strokes, right. In terms of our marketing, we're trying to capture a broad audience. We're also trying to be a little bit elusive because we really actually just want you to talk to our sales team who's going to get you more details. Right. And I think that, you know, we need to go away from that and what the creator brings and what brands can start to emulate, you know, in terms of tactics are, you know, when we think about creating that human element and connection, it's really about, you know, I've seen companies use their employees in a lot of their advertising, for instance, and not just for hiring for actual, you know, campaigns.

8:14We did this actually last year with our meet the CS campaign. And we wanted to humanize our customer service team. And we used actual customer service reps in the campaign. And I've seen other brands do this where they're like, look, we're not good at commercials and we're not good about talking about this, but what we are good at is actually being customer service reps. And here's why, but it humanizes the brand because you're bringing in that element of people. And that's the thing that the creator does is they bring themselves, you know, the creator's life story, you know, their family, sometimes, you know, their kids, their dog.

8:48And the more that you can do that as a company with your employees to bring them to the forefront really humanizes the brand because it is a company, but it's also a company that's made up of actual people with actual lives. That's one way that I see. We've certainly for the last few years, particularly as hiring has become more challenging for a lot of companies, we've really put their employee or employer branding on the forefront of marketing just because it's a great marketing message too. I mean, the fact that you have employees that love where they work probably is a good marketing message as well.

9:23Not to mention that they obviously are going to are on the front lines of really interacting with customers anyway. So I think a lot of people, you know, I'm thinking makeup, for example, you know, a lot of makeup is sold directly to consumers, you know, through the Ukraine economy, right? It's probably one of the bigger categories. So that model, I mean, has that model as B2B folks try, I mean, that's typically a B2C play, they're not trying to sell stores. So is that model really something that is influencing or maybe even blurring the lines? You know, there used to be the, oh, I sell only B2B.

9:56I mean, a lot of marketers are like, I'm a B2B marketer. I'm a B2C marketer, right? And I sort of blurring the lines now because a lot of the same ideas are being employed. It's authenticity, personal branding, those things. Yeah. And I think the makeup one is such a good example because it really did open the doors for people to say like, this is how I apply this. This is how I do this. This is how I use this. And you can actually see like a foundation go on, you know, in, in a video using real people. And I think the interesting thing that how it's, how I've seen it kind of manifest in B2B is been in the kind of the, the veil being lifted on the product or service that you're selling.

10:37So for instance, I think that I've seen a couple of companies are ourselves included. We've played with this a little bit. And I think that we, you know, we have to get better at it. Everyone does, but it's offering, you know, real people, those customer stories of like how they're using the product, how, what does the product look like on the inside, showing more of the product upfront and having real customers talk about it in a, you know, an unfiltered way. We've done this in terms of, you know, LinkedIn lives where we just have customers come on and talk about their, you know, journey and their company or their, you know, their personal brand and then how they use the product and we actually show the product being used.

11:13And I think that that's like, it's bridging, right? We have to figure out how to kind of open that door a little bit more, right? But it is, I think that's the transition where we're saying, look, you're not having this kind of, you're not going to see the product until you've had like three or four sales calls, right? We'll finally show you the product. It's like, no, we're going to show you the product up front. It's in our marketing. It's right here and it's being used by real people. So it's probably an antiquated terminology, but I think it still means something. But But a lot of B2B brands used to spend some money, sampling, for example, spend some money on getting directly to the consumer, even though that consumer was only going to go to the store now and ask for the product.

11:51So we used to call that pulling sales as opposed to pushing sales. So does the idea of this creator economy that way apply? In other words, get exposure for your product, even though you're then going to tell them, go to Macy's and get it or whatever, wherever it's sold. Yeah, I think that's one of the, for me, I think that's one of the best things about the creator economy is that they're bringing that audience in, right? They're pulling people in and bringing that audience in. That's the right fit audience. So again, finding the right creator to pair with based on your brand, your objectives, your product service.

12:24But from a B2B perspective, it's even, I think, more important because a lot of these companies have such a core, you know, ideal customer profile that we can, if you know it, you can go out there and really pull people in with interesting content through these creators because they're talking about it. And I think about for us, we have, you know, we talk a lot to people in, you know, customer education and these roles and people that run these communities where customer educators are living and talking about, you know, their day-to-day problems of how do I make this content? How do I create these programming?

13:02And so we're going out there and kind of trying to pull those people back in, into the conversation through those creator, you know, communities that they're building with these really engaged audiences. All right, let's talk about ROI or metrics in general, I think, you know, because initially sort of a creator economy plays have kind of focused on engagement and building community and things that sometimes are hard to measure. I think that those have obviously, I think people are putting metrics to those. But what do you say to a B2B person that's just like, you know, how's that going to move the needle?

13:37Yeah. So I think, you know, we even, I think have struggled in the past with, we, you know, we love working with some of these creators, but to your point, the measurement of the metric that we're trying to move is like, you know, brand awareness, right? Which we all know is you can try and put a, you know, try to put some numbers to it, but eventually you know that there's something there that you can't quite measure. So what we like to do is when we're working with creators or we're, you know, thinking about working with these communities, for instance, we love to think about, you know, depending on what it is.

14:09But for instance, we held a community kind of roundup event where it was like a, you know, mingle event. And then it was a bit of a, you know, let's, you know, talk about roundtable kind of topics. And the ROI on events like that, for me, obviously, there's an element of just getting the brand out there and having those conversations. But it's also about, you know, how many people are coming in and actually, you know, wanting to have a conversation. So, you know, thinking about, you know, how many conversations the sales team was able to capture, how many net new names did we get on to our list?

14:41And then going all the way down is, you know, obviously, how are we making that into a sale and trading that back or tracing that back into, you know, these events that we hold. A lot of it's around influence pipe, right? That influence pipe number for B2B. And then a lot of it for some of our creators is we have a really excellent affiliate program. So we entice them to bring people in and sign them up with the product on our self-serve side. And we have really great payouts on that affiliate side. So that's kind of the two sides of it. There's definitely, again, that middle layer of like brand awareness.

15:13How do we measure that? And obviously we look at things like media and share of voice. but we try to think about that influence pipe on the B2B side. And then thinking about that, you know, we have those hard numbers on the affiliate side of how we're driving signups. So Thinkific, you know, naturally was created as a tool for the creative economy, right? I mean, a lot of influencers, a lot of creators, you know, needed, you know, beyond YouTube, they needed, you know, a paywall and they needed ability to have courses and to, you know, expand access to them, you know, in a paid way. What are you seeing?

15:46So, I mean, I think that, you know, it's well established. That's a great tool for that. So, what are you telling or what would you tell B2B brands now who are like, well, we don't courses. Does that make sense for us? You know, what would you tell them in terms of their concrete creation? So, and to start on how Thinkific was our founder, we actually have a really great founder story because he's a creator himself. He has a course that's still today. You can take it. It's an LSAT prep course. That's how it started. And he wanted to be able to educate, you know, the masses. Sounds awful. Yeah, I know.

16:18That was how we started. And so we really have been, you know, through the pandemic, we went through this boom. And then we started thinking, you know, companies really could benefit from having courses to expand their reach to their customers. I always think about this when we talk to companies on sales calls, even to say like, look, do you want to have customers or do you want to have fans? Do you want to have people who are, you know, extremely loyal and engaged with your brand? And the way you can do that is through customer education programs. You can create, you know, you're educating your customers to better use your product.

16:53You're creating exclusive communities sometimes in this case. So you're creating these fans that are incredibly loyal to your company and your brand. and that eventually, you know, are going to, A, you know, create more word of mouth and better, you know, referrals for your company, but also you're creating a very loyal group of customers that are fully educated in your product, which is, you know, some B2B SaaS, you know, one of the trickiest things is getting people to make sure that they're using your product, right? When your customers buy it. So - More features they use, the less churn, right?

17:25Exactly. And I think in today's economy too, we see that, you know, acquiring customers right now is tough. And so you want to keep the customers you have. And one of the best ways to do that is through customer education programs. We've got a really good example is Hootsuite, which is a social media management software. And they have Hootsuite Academy. And they have built Hootsuite Academy from just a few courses on social media certification to this is a standalone kind of revenue set for them outside of their core. So they've got a secondary line of revenue, and they're driving, you know, customer loyalty, customer education within the product for the actual users and users of their product.

18:06But they're also, they've created this certification where it's like, Hey, I'm Hootsuite certified. Like I am ready to be your social media manager. So it's this twofold. And I think for me, when I see companies like that be so successful, and we have a lot of really great customer stories around that, I'm like, why aren't all companies doing this. Like take this education piece that's happening and bring it into, you know, your, you know, B2B customers. It just makes sense. You see that success. Yeah. I think you make a great point I've been using for years. You know, when I talk about the customer journey, you know, for many people, it stops at buy, but certainly content stops at buy, you know, quite often.

18:45And I think you're right. I mean, even if it's just orientation and onboarding, and then obviously through what you said, repeat business and referral business, Those are great reasons to create content. And obviously, that's a whole category of content that most businesses aren't even thinking about. You also mentioned a couple of times, and I think that B2B brands are really waking up to this idea of community. I think a lot of brands are waking up to this idea of community because for the reason you said, it's sometimes tougher to get eyeballs or keep customers. And community is one of the greatest ways to do it.

19:16How would you use a platform like Thinkific really as a community model? I mean, there's a lot of community tools coming up. Circle is one, for example. How is Thinkific kind of addressing? Because I believe you were created as a pure content creation and not necessarily as a community tool. How are you addressing kind of that engagement amongst members? So because we saw when we were to your point coming, you know, coming up through content engagement, online education, really that like learning management software tool. Right. We saw early on that community was such a hand in hand thing with these groups of people that were wanting to learn together to, you know, take courses together.

20:00And even if in an on demand setting, you're by yourself, community was a way for, you know, people could talk about it and learn more and discuss. And we actually, you know, we, so we launched our own community products last year and it's been such a great add on for both our creator educators, which we kind of, we call our B2C side, as well as some of our B2B customers, which we call them ThinkFig Plus, because it does bind those people together. And it gives you a place where you as a company or you as a creator can kind of moderate the conversation and create more engagement post-courses. Because a lot of the time, you know, you're taking an on-demand course, you're sitting in your home by yourself, right?

20:40You don't get that engagement. The community is a way to bridge that engagement aspect. And it's been really exciting to see. I actually love our Thinkific community. I'm in it almost daily talking to our creators because it's just such an interesting place to be. And one thing for us being obviously B2B and B2C SaaS, we launch a lot of products in there first. Like we'll put stuff in there and then we make that exclusive feeling for our community. But also we're getting such amazing intel back from them as the end users of the product. Yeah. I'm sure more businesses will wake up to this, but I've certainly seen it firsthand.

21:17We certify agencies in our methodology and they go through and they love it. They get a lot of great training, but we have agencies that have been with us 10 years and they'll tell you point blank. I stay for the community. I don't need John and his team anymore. I stay because I've made friends here. And I think that's a huge element for businesses. It's that peer to peer, you know, communication that they get that's hosted by if you're smart, it's hosted by you. Right. The other thing is, I think a lot of companies don't realize there are communities out there about their product or service.

21:48And if they're not in the conversation, it's happening without them. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point for good or bad. Right. So, so Krista, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the show. You want to tell people where they can connect with you and find out more, a little more about what we talked about today. Yeah. So I'm obviously on LinkedIn. It's Christy Horstman, VP of Thinkific, if you're looking for Christy Horstman. And you can always come over to thinkific.com. You can check out the product and service there. And also we've got links on there to our social and our communities, which all of my team run.

22:20So I'm always hopping in our community if you need to, if you want to join there as well. Awesome. Again, I appreciate you taking a moment and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road in beautiful Vancouver. Thank you so much, John. Appreciate the opportunity.