[00:00:00] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Welcome to the Revenue Engine podcast. I'm your host, Rosalyn Santa Elena, and I am thrilled to bring you the most inspirational stories from revenue generators, innovators, and disruptors, revenue leaders in sales, in marketing, and of course in operations. Together, we will unpack everything that optimizes and powers the revenue engine. Are you ready? Let's get to it.

Content is such a critical part of any organization, especially in today's world where we are all inundated with information. Cutting through the noise and getting the right messaging to the right personas at the right time is so important.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Outreach.io. Outreach is the first and only engagement and intelligence platform built by revenue innovators, for revenue innovators. Outreach allows you to commit to an accurate sales forecast, replace manual processes with real-time guidance, and unlock actionable customer intelligence that guides you and your team to win more often. Traditional tools don't work in a hybrid sales world. Find out why Outreach is the right solution at click.outreach.io/RevEngine

In this episode of the Revenue Engine Podcast, Rishabh Bhandari, the CEO and founder at Content Beta shares how to leverage content to not only engage prospects at the top of the funnel, but how to drive engagement at every stage of the funnel, especially after a prospect becomes a customer.

So please take a listen and learn how to approach content to help optimize and power revenue. Retention and an overall better customer experience. So excited to be here today with Rish Bandari, the CEO and co-founder of Content Beta. Content Beta is a content studio for product marketing and customer success content at B2B SaaS companies.

So welcome and thank you so much for joining me. Super excited to share your story and just learn from you.

[00:02:23] Rishabh Bhandari: Thanks for having me Rosalyn.

[00:02:24] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Awesome. Well, let's start by talking a little bit about your journey before Content Beta. I mean, you've held a number of different roles. You've even co-founded another company called Yoda Learning Solutions prior to content beta. So maybe can you share a little bit about your backstory and your career journey?

[00:02:40] Rishabh Bhandari: Sure. So I used to, I started my career with a financial analyst with the venture capital fund, and we looked at a lot of educational opportunities. And we really love this online school, kinda. So I put that, this was back in and I started doing YouTube channels at an online school.

We were able to scale that YouTube channel subscribers and we put, we used to software tools, how to, to do, how to create a chart in Excel or how to create a McKinsey kinda slide on a presentation or how to create a dashboard using tableau. Things which are more analytical than visualization driven.

And during that we had covid, right? And during Covid, a lot of people stopped investing in at non-essential education. . And we got stuck. We got stuck. But on the flip side, we, we basically how to content itt a a is only when the retention your is higher video is ranked in their search.

So we kind of figured that can, if he, if somebody begins watching our video, we can most likely make him complete fortune, that video. And why don't we use the same skillset? To help other small and medium software businesses and not just the enterprise software market. And that's how Conta was for, this was way back in 2020.

We've started reaching out a lot of software companies and told them, Hey, we can help you create how to content for your product, or and you don't need to teach us. We do it ourselves. And people said, surely, why don't you give it, give it a try. And slowly, steadily, we got build customer software customers.

Today we work with close to 88 software companies cause of the nature of the industry. Most of our customers are in the. We help them create content for both product, marketing and customer.

[00:04:24] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Got it. Yeah. It's interesting how Covid kind of definitely changed the landscape for a lot of things, right? In terms of kind of where the focus is and the needs are, and then a much higher demand in certain areas as we're all sitting at home watching, you know, watching our computer all day and staring at the screen.

You know, I think about content, you know, I think about, it's just such a critical part, right, of the organization and I think in today's world where. Inundated with information you know, you know, on our phone, on our laptop, you know, when we go out everywhere. And it's just, it's so important to try to cut through the noise and then, you know, get the right messaging to the right persona.

So when it comes to content, you know, how do you think organizations should be thinking about and approaching content from a product marketing perspective?

[00:05:08] Rishabh Bhandari: I think from whatever I see in the industry, most of the. Companies, they focus on helping about the product, right? Like, hey, I have this 20 features which will solve this problem.

Or, Hey, my product is great, we are AI enabled, blah, blah, blah. I think what, what most companies and, and they're mostly top of the fault, they want, they want explain their product or make sure that the use signs out, right? I think the, the, the big problem is, They don't focus on middle and bottom of the funnel.

And I think where there's a real scarcity of creating content the way, the way we look at content is see like a marketing funnel, like very similar to how we do for creating blogs in for SEO way back, way back 10 years, about 20 years ago. So think about content like a marketing funnel and say, Hey What do I need to do to attract people?

At the top of the funnel, I may wanna talk about the problems which they, which my target audiences suffering with. I might wanna talk about alternatives of the solution, which they should tried or something they don't need to spend a lot of money. More in the middle and the bottom of the funnel.

Hey, I might wanna to talk more about my product, cause now the audience is more problem aware and solution aware. And that's where I may want to talk about, Hey, this is, if you have this problem, this feature could just solve this problem. Or if you have problem B, my products feature B could solve this problem.

And I think that's where a lot of product demo videos and customer videos too, right? I mean, instead of me saying that, Hey, look at my family's in product. With these features and with these benefits, I might want to make my customer talk about the same thing, right? I mean, it, it, it, it sounds more relatable.

It sounds more genuine and doesn't sound biased. So that's kind of content, which I would do more. What above the funnel where my outcome is more, hey, is the, is is the audience converting after consuming my content. And the third type of content where where little energy spent today is on educating your customer, right?

So let's. You're running a product and your customer has signed, signed up, you, the marketing team has won the battle to get the customer into your system. But now how do you make sure this guy around longer, this guy knows how to use your product really well? And, and to be honest, sometimes it's not just about product.

If I'm an email marketing software, sure, I might wanna piece them that, Hey, how do you run this software to make, make sure your are doing good. But I might also want. Create content to make sure that he the person, my customer, becomes a better email market. Even outside my product, right? So I think these are the three letters of content when we think about how should they be organizer or where you should put your energy.

[00:07:47] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Yeah, I love that. I love that, you know, helping them not just use the solution, but just be a better being a better marketer in general. I think there's a lot of teaching that goes on and that build up that relationship, and obviously it helps with retention and such. You know, I think about, you know, you touched on this a little bit because aside from trying to reach pro prospective buyers, there's just a whole nother world of content for customers, right?

As you mentioned, and I know your company has a huge focus on customer success content. So when it comes to this type of content for existing customers, you know, how should organizations be thinking about this? I

[00:08:20] Rishabh Bhandari: think the. Is creating help docs, right? Creating like knowledge base. How to use this feature of this platform or how to solve this problem with this software.

And that's a good way to create a help center, which is fail organized, right? So I mean, suppose your support is not on and somebody still ask the question, you could just point out to the right article basis on. What keyword they used in their question. Another way which I see evolving, I mean, see all as human beings, we are feel lazy, right?

We wanna do stuff which are fast and easy and where we get quicks. Yeah. And, and sometimes the help center, I think sometimes it becomes tedious, right? Your product is exhaustive and you want to, and write and write as a, as a reader or as a software, I may or may not want to reap so much stuff.

I think what getting is creating videos around the same thing. So these are not forms very short form videos. And one classic mistake to do is just show them, hey, you click here and click there. And that's how we done what one should focus on. Like how I said in the previous question, focus on how to make that person a better professional, right?

So if I'm teaching how to create a campaign in your, in your email software, I wanna to about, by the way, if you want to get your open rates higher to use the subject line, those, the centrics, which you may want to help your user to pick it up so that he becomes a better. Email marketer and continue using your product.

Another thing which I see companies could do is humanize the connection, right? Very simply how Loom really does, right? It captures your face in a circle in the bottom. And you could teach, teach your product on the screen. I think that really helps because in, in, in this age of content, I think just looks staring at a screen.

The piece of software, sometimes it gets less engaging. And if you put a human being, of course that person has to be camera friendly or has to, to have a, but I think that is also one of an important part.

[00:10:23] Rosalyn Santa Elena: I love that. I love that. You know, I guess along the same lines, I mean, you have a chance to work with so many different organizations, so you probably see a lot of different types of media.

What are you seeing organizations really doing right and maybe doing wrong when it comes to media? You know, whether it's videos or podcasts or other types of media?

[00:10:41] Rishabh Bhandari: I think organizations do really well in terms of creating the top of the funnel. I mean, look everywhere, drift hot, Spott. I mean, they're really good at generating demand and making sure the customer knows about the brand.

I think where they're, where I think they could improve is more on the middle and middle and of the funnel, because that's where, where once you've gotten the interest, you got to convert this interest. A sign up a user or even ask them, make, make them ask you questions. Right? I think that's the kind of content where most of the people in my view the other, other type of content, I think one way which organizations do doing.

Wrong is they create a piece of content and leave it, leave it as is, right? So let's say we have done like a one hour webinar or a minute podcast with a leader. Or you could have done an internal session. These are like say 40 or on, and that's, that's done. I think repurposing the same piece of content has a lot of value.

And, and to be honest, if you have a really long form of content, like have five minute video, nobody wants watch a recording of a video. Unless it's too good. But it's very rare for somebody to sign, at least begin watching that video, knowing that it's a video. Why don't pick up that same video?

Chop, chop, chop, make like small social media consumable piece of content so you can create fresh, fresh pieces of content without investing. Content creation all over care, right? Let's take webinar. You could create ebook out it, you could create those just micro videos for social, social code graphics.

You could even chop it down into lessons and maybe create a course with some assessment. So I think repurposing. Is one more area which I think alternations could improve so that they could improve their plans reach without creating new piece of content.

[00:12:33] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Yeah. Yeah. That's really good advice. I love that.

Thank you. What about some advice for, you know, revenue leaders on how to start, how to get started leveraging videos, you know, to start using video to close business faster. And then as you've been touching on sort of to retain existing customers

[00:12:49] Rishabh Bhandari: I. I think it also depends upon how much budget you have.

But let me start with, with the companies who don't spend a lot of money. I think pick up some, somebody, some people in your team who are conversational or camera who are friendly with it and start creating some of the funnel content. It could be a marketer, it could be your founder. And believe me, by the way, founder running is also one of the key aspects, which I think is really helping.

At least software product companies and start creating content. Write down a script and start recording yourself with a presentation on the screen and your face on the corner. I think that's a really good start. If your content is good, people don't really care about how animated it is, right?

If you have goods. Another thing which I would ask people to focus on. At least have watchable quality, right? I mean, sure all laptops have good web cameras or we all have microphones. But I would, I would, in this world of, of content overdose, it's very easy to ignore content, which doesn't have.

Decent quality, right? I mean, you, ourselves. How many videos are being upload on YouTube every second? I think if your content doesn't qualify for, okay. Sound at, okay. Visual. But I think okay, visual is at least then you lose that interest. And I don't want that to happen because of bad interest. I would say invest in infrastructure for at least creating good content.

And secondly, focus on. Focus on distribution first. I mean, think distribution first. Don't think this is what we could create. Don't think that very similar to how we create SEO strategy. Try researching what your customers are talking about. Ask them what kind of content they want to see.

Look at the search volume of keywords on Q YouTube and good demand driven content creation. Don't try to create content where you think, Hey, I'm comfortable with this topic and I wanna talk. I think these are the three areas which I would think that these are easy steps. You don't need a lot of investment and you could start creating decent quality of content.

[00:14:43] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Mm. I love that. I love that. That's really great advice. So with I guess all this digital transformation and now we have access, as you mentioned, to media all around us, you know, all the time. I mean, I can't, I just imagine we'll continue to see videos, right, and virtual engagement grow. And maybe from your perspective, you know, where do you see the market headed?

Do you have any predictions for sort of what's next in this area?

[00:15:07] Rishabh Bhandari: I think two things. One is I see the attention span. People, audience, including me, and probably lot of people it's going on decreasing, right? I mean, initially I was ok. 10 minute video. Now I say, if somebody can explain me two minutes, I wanna watch 10.

And I think with the events and YouTube and Instagram, they attention now it's, yeah. And I think the future is short form content, right? It be just videos, but could be even like, we would see LinkedIn posts, which are those swipe files where you could just. Just like swipe right And you can see different slides.

I think, I think micro content or short form content is the future. And the faster we switch there, the faster the audience content. The second part I think, I think it's the content is becoming more. Personal branding driven, right? So if so initially people used to create content with lots of animations and jazz and creating characters.

I'm thinking more on the B2B point of view. I think these days the content has to be more person driven, right? It's okay to see less of animation. It's okay to see slight reduction in quality in terms of the visual look and feel. But it has to be personable because that builds a lot of trust.

And I think that that goes long way. When what, what we have experienced when we create those personal driven videos, like mostly founder videos they have seen improvement in conversions and attracting leads, right? It's not just sjt pushes for more. Outreach, but they're also able to attract more audience.

And it's also helping, helping helpful for hiring, right? You don't need to convince your potential candidate that, Hey, we are good. I think these two areas I see Content. The future of where the content lies.

[00:16:47] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Yeah, yeah. It's amazing how our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. And I actually have, actually, my daughter watches TikTok videos and I actually struggle with it because I think it's too fast.

You know, things are moving too quickly. , I'm still a little more old school work. Those kind of really short clips are too short for me, so, well, very, very good advice.

[00:17:05] Rishabh Bhandari: One thing which I'd like to add is tell a story, right? I mean, yeah. I think that there's the reason why we keep on watching Netflix or movies, I think if you tell stories, and this is more relevant for b2b cause most of the B2B content is considered to be boring.

Right . I mean, you look at the ads on link and Hey, download this ebook. Or Hey, come on, click here and join this 15 minute webinar. It's boring. It's not interesting. I mean, if you think of it as, if you think like B2C market, B2 market do a fantastic job at grabbing the, and I. Far, far, far ahead in terms of driving engagement with their marketing content.

And I think one of the key element is if you can tell a good story your audience will feel more engaged and they'll be emotionally invested in your content. You may not convert it today, convert that audience in your customer today, but probably.

[00:17:54] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Got it. Yep. Yep. That makes a lot of sense. So, you know, as I think about the revenue engine and this podcast, I'm always hoping that others will be able to learn how to, you know, accelerate revenue growth, right?

And really power the revenue engine, you know, from your perspective, you know, what are the top maybe two or three things that you think all revenue leaders should really be thinking about today, right? To have the biggest impact on driving and accelerating revenue?

[00:18:17] Rishabh Bhandari: Well, I learned this lesson in a tougher way.

Pushy sales never. Right. So I think the number one job as a, a sales guy or somebody who's driving revenues is of course you have targets, you have quota to meet, but don't look like a guy. There is a natural of resistance, which a non people, how was the, that world has to salesmen. I if. Meet like a sales guy on the on your street, you would want to repel that person, right?

Cause you think that that person might end up selling me something. So I think the, the, this is one thing which I learned that hey, try to avoid stuff which creates like, resistance with my target audience, right? So I may not want ask that. Hey, I just wanted to follow from our last call. What do you think about the project we discussed?

I, I might want to put the ball in his court. Hey, how would you like to proceed or make him feel that he's, that your, your customer or your prospect is more powerful? So that's, that's number one thing, which I which I learned that he don't, don't look like a sales guy. Don't look like a, don't be so pushy at sales.

And the second thing, which I which I learned is email outreach works. And if, if, if you do it well, so if you research a lot about sure there are tons of tools to automate your sending, you are sending emails. But I think if you research your audience well and personalize the email copy it may not be so scalable, like sending like bulk messaging, but I think if you invest that time, the audience really appreciates.

If you get an email, which you think would be copy past on somebody else's, somebody a different company with doing the same thing. If the audience, if your prospect figures out that there's a resistance. So I think if you make him feel he's, and you create copy, which is unique to I think that's what I mean.

You've got to personalize your content for your audience. You can't have like one pill for. All types of a Yeah,

[00:20:13] Rosalyn Santa Elena: that's great advice. Definitely when you receive those emails, you can tell right away as a prospect if those were just a template, right? A template that was created for everybody. I like that.

So maybe looking back, I mean, at your career, you know, are there things that you wish you knew earlier or maybe you would do differently if you could go back and do it all over again?

[00:20:33] Rishabh Bhandari: I think I didn't know enough about. How to create software products, right? I mean, I just, I mean, I'm learning on the way, but I think if I, if a lot of stuff which I do, we could either ize them or create product nothing.

I think I would go more towards product way because that seems to be more scalable as opposed. Like product I service. So that's one thing which I would do differently. And secondly, I would've focused on personal brand. Way back when when I started the YouTube channel. I mean I mean the one thing which I've learned is just be consistent in in creating content, even as an individual.

I mean, you, you may, may not be founder, you could be just be a professional. But even when I was studying or I was working with the VC fund, if I could have created personal content consistently, code quality, but consistently I think I would've done different things that. So these are my two pieces of advice to myself.

[00:21:26] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Well thank you so much for joining me today. But as we wrap up, and before I let you go, I always ask all of my guests two things. One, you know, what is the one thing about you that others would be surprised to learn? And two, what is the one thing that you really want everyone to know about you?

[00:21:43] Rishabh Bhandari: So I think both I, I'll make it nonverbal so I could. I could pick 22 music for instruments.

[00:21:50] Rosalyn Santa Elena: You can see my face. I know we're only doing audio, but my face just dropped like in shock 22. I didn't even know there's that many instruments. Yeah.

[00:21:58] Rishabh Bhandari: And and because I'm not, I have not formally studied music. So I don't know how to read notes at all. The way I learn is just by listening.

So yeah, so that's one thing which I don't dunno. I don't know how to read music notes, so, I mean, I don't want people to know cause it's not believable, but I

[00:22:14] Rosalyn Santa Elena: That's awesome. That's awesome. That's great. I love that. Is that the same thing that you want everyone to know about you? Yep.

[00:22:22] Rishabh Bhandari: Yeah. Yeah. So know, know about me, not know about me.

[00:22:25] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Perfect. I love that. We have to, do you, do you ever record, like, do you ever share your music on your YouTube channel?

[00:22:31] Rishabh Bhandari: I haven't done that yet, but, but, but, but, but Food for thought.

[00:22:34] Rosalyn Santa Elena: Yeah. Yeah. That would probably, that may go viral for . I'll probably go viral for sure. Well, great. Well, thank you so much for joining me.

I really appreciate your time and I'm so happy that we were able to do this together.

[00:22:46] Rishabh Bhandari: Sure, sure. I think thank you so much for taking your time to Thank you.

This episode was digitally transcribed.