1585 – How Content Has Changedwith Goodman Lantern’s Raj Goodman Anand

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0:59with us right now raj goodman anand raj you are the founder and ceo of goodman lantern you're found on the web at goodmanlantern.com raj thank you so much for joining us josh thank you for having me on good to be here and goodman lantern is content marketing Buy humans for humans. Tell me more. Yeah, so Gidman Lantern's mission is to help our customers sell better and grow faster. And in the dawn of AI and what's happening with the ecosystem, we were always passionate about how do we allow people to make human-to-human connections. At the end of the day, it's not B2B or B2C. It is human to human.

1:47It's H2H, actually. And so the more we can make it authentic and real and really bring in that thought leadership from the point of view of the customer and their clients, that's where the magic really happens. So it's about that strategy, the creation, and then distribution of content we can really help our customers with. And it all came from the back of my work previously, where I helped the company grow from$7.5 million to$45 million in revenue in the back of great content. That's mainly storytelling and talk leadership content and SEO. So that helped grow that in B2B and insurance and telecom market.

2:31That applies to almost every B2B industry. And so that's why we started to work on that. And we're now helping mainly high-tech companies, so defense companies who actually build planes and whatnot, satellites, for example, telecom organizations, fintech companies, banks, and we also help organizations who are in the medical sector. And how have your customers, what they've been asking for and how those conversations have been going, how has that been evolving in this era of more accessible AI tools?

3:17yeah so there has been um there has been a lot of changes which have which have happened over the over the years um and steadily we've seen the you know the incoming ai taking a big part of the of the attention span of people uh and i and i love ai because i actually did research in ai 20 years back. And back in the day, my mom thought AI was a study of UFOs. So that's where it was 20 years back. And today, obviously, we're all talking about AI and chat GPT. So, you know, AI is something which will change a few things for us across different sectors. I mean, re-embracing AI quite a bit. It's helping us a lot with research, for example.

4:06I often talk about this was about 20 %-ish savings on the research, which you would do traditionally. But there is a lot to be said from where AIs, you know, kind of create that kind of content initially, which might be, some people might feel like, yeah, this is it. There's a lot of work to be done beyond that to really match the company's value system, the company's token points, content style guides. So, you know, in different content types, like, for example, blog posts versus work descriptions versus white papers, the input required by human beings can vary. In fact, things like case studies and white papers require 40 % to 50 % input from human beings to make it more real, to really bring it back into that human to human connection.

4:59So while AI does help in the research part, there is an element of additional work required. Sometimes you bring in that proprietary content from the customer and bring that into the white paper or the writing of the content. Raj, where does content fit today? And I'm primarily concerned about trends in content marketing and where that fits in. Where do you see content? Thinking about even just like an SMB, what should a great small business be doing today in regards to content that you know is going to pay off dividends? Yeah. So as I was saying earlier, content has been around for decades. I was talking about Napoleon and how Napoleon used to do best releases as part of the content strategy.

5:52Now, while content has been around in today's world, we have been coming to a dawn of a lot of changes in content. And I think at the end of the day, the marketing, which we do, depends upon our target market. Where do they hang out? What do they do? And what set of marketing are you looking at? Is your customer sort of more B2B? It's more B2C. I think that's the fundamental starting point to figure out where do your customers hang out? What do they do? And then planning things around it. Do they like a, are they very busy people that you'd like go and do a bit of outbound, for example? Are they looking for stuff and so they're going to send you inbound.

6:38So it's, you know, typically if you look at the generic sort of market, I think, you know, what we, what we, what marketers recommend is having a marketing mix. So a bit of everything is required to really make sure you're really wrapping around the opportunities across which you miss as a, as a company. But it's also really important to have a forte. So for example, for us, our biggest driver of leads is SEO. that's inbound marketing. So we rank really well for a ton of keywords like telecom content writing, manufacturing content writing. And that's what helps us get the leads coming in. So that's a forte.

7:20Then we add to it advertisements, a bit of outbound. That's really important. Mix it up a little bit. Yeah. So let's say that you're getting content to rank, but no one's doing anything. Like they're, okay, cool. They read your article, but now they're not, you know, I don't know. You just, you see people, a bunch of people consuming this article. What can we do to better maybe capture those folks so that maybe we could do some business together? So even like think about content as well, it had different styles of content. If you divide it into, say the famous, the funnel, for example. Yeah. Hey Raj, I'm sorry to interrupt.

7:59Could you take maybe your microphone and just pull it back just a little bit there? Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Sorry, back to the question. Yeah, so at the end of the day, it comes down to the type of content you're creating. And different content have different style and different purposes. So we divide the content into, say, three parts, the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. Top of the funnel is all about education, bringing a large set of people who might be potentially interested in your offering to come in. That's the top part of the funnel, about just generic education about the industry.

8:36When they kind of come in there, come to your website, and start to click around, then it's about educating them on your offering, your product, your service, what that might look like. Educate them on that. The third part is conversion. That's a bottom of the funnel. That's where you can, you know, kind of create a bit more work on, you know, building offers, you know, contact us for different things. you give them like forms to fill in for example so if you're getting a lot of people coming to the top and they get stuck there then it's about educating to the middle and you're getting stuck in the middle then educating to come to the third part that's how you will get more conversions it's about identifying where your client's getting stuck and then bringing into the funnel and then when they come to the funnel and buy from you you do a great job for them then that goes back to the top because they recommend people as well.

9:31And that comes into like a, what we call a flywheel effect as well. Yeah. You know, as, as an agency or as a company, Goodman Lantern has, I mean, you work with, you've worked with a lot of, over a hundred businesses, including TikTok, Calvin Klein, Trivago, among others. You're part of EO. You're pretty well established. What did Goodman Lantern do that separated itself maybe from other content agencies that you think has really led to your growth? Well, two bits of things. One is having a mission. I don't know if you saw this on the website or not, but our mission is what drives us every day.

10:17Our mission is to empower women in technology and marketing, so much so that we're 80 % women in our organization. Why is that important? That's important because when there's a mission attached to a company, that company owner and the company, the team are driven by goals beyond just making a lot of cash. It's about making everyone in the ecosystem successful. And that's what drives all of us. We all align in the same direction. Number two, a clear vision for the future. So we are all, you know, we know what we want to do. We have a mission to go public as a company. And so everybody's driving in that direction to go, you know, this is what we need to focus on.

10:58We all want to do this for our families, for our team members, for everyone together. And that's what makes us Goodman Lantern is that clear focus and a bigger mission than just making money. On your website, Goodman Lantern, by the way, your social media content is pretty good, especially I was going through your LinkedIn posts. So my recommendation is Raj, connect with you on LinkedIn and just kind of follow what you do on social. It's good stuff. But on your website, you know, someone that is listening to your conversation and, you know, they, maybe they're doing some research and came across this podcast and where would you recommend that they go from here?

11:42They may or may not be ready for a conversation, but they definitely want to learn more about why Goodman Lantern excels. well i mean um i think linkedin is a great place you know connect with me follow me and you know learn more about that goodman lantern's blogs goodmanlenton.com slash blog um you know to see what we're talking about and then i'm just starting to like really focus a bit more on twitter so twitter i'm twitter.com slash rajan and yeah follow follow connect let's have a chat always just keen to connect with people and just converse. Yeah. Again, your website, goodmanlantern.com.

12:22And there's plenty of opportunities. You got a brochure that covers everything. Certainly there's a lot of resources on the website itself. Everything from, and again, Goodman Lantern, when we're thinking about content, everything from article writing to marketing, copy, infographics, press releases, that's all a part of what you do. Specifically, under the generate leads for someone's like, yeah, we just need more client conversations. What is the typical prescription for someone that's looking to just get more engagements and hopefully do so a little bit more quickly? Yeah, I mean, again, it depends upon the company itself.

13:09It's great. With some companies, it's really hard to just say, listen, we'll just get you a ton of leads on day one. It just doesn't happen. Content is a gift that keeps giving. But for that to happen, there's an investment required in time and energy. Especially when you're working with, like, you know, our clients have big ticket items. You know, some of them are selling stuff for$10 million,$100 million. and when that comes into play, it's a lot about education and thought leadership content, thought leadership style of creating media and that takes time. So I'm not a big believer of just like, you know, quick turnaround opportunities.

13:56I think that's, you know, if that is the case, then the barrier to entry is also very low because then the next person is exactly the same. When you put in the energy, you put in the effort, you've been listening for the long term. I'm always a believer of a long-term strategy and a quick short-term win. Yeah, yeah. Well, awesome. Raj Goodman, again, founder, CEO of Goodman Lantern, found on the web at goodmanlantern.com. Raj, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh, for the opportunity. It was lovely to talk to you.

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