Standing Out in a Sea of Content: The Power of Framework Thinking

Eric Eden:
0:59

Welcome to today's episode. Our guest today is Sean Johnson. He is a CEO of Madison. Welcome to the show. Great to be here, so tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do before we get into your remarkable story.

Sean Johnson:
1:14

Sure, for 12 years, I was a partner at a firm called Manifold in Chicago. It's a venture holding company. We had an innovation advisory firm about 70 team members working with the Unpriced Consulting basically to do bring disruptive innovations to market. We had an early stage fund that did around 25 investments, several exits, a bunch of failures, like everybody. Then for nine years, I was a professor of digital marketing at Kellogg and stepped away from the business in late 2022. It took a year off and basically started Madison three months ago with the intent of helping professional services firms grow, taking a lot of lessons that I took for Manifold around what works and what doesn't for boutique firms, especially in terms of how do you go to market and how do you do that effectively. Realize has a different playbook than a lot of certainly like B2B SaaS companies and that kind of thing. There's a different set of tools and techniques that you use, and so that's what we tried to do.

Eric Eden:
2:07

Very cool. All right, professor, we'll share with us your story of the marketing that you're most proud of, the best marketing you've done. What's here, sure?

Sean Johnson:
2:16

Yeah, I think when I was at and really ties into the stuff of Madison like the genesis of all of it was we were at Manifold trying to professionalize our practice and bring in some managing directors from like PwC and BCG and things like that, I naively at the time assumed that those folks did their own thought leadership, did their own marketing, and it turned out that wasn't true at all. They had marketing departments that kind of created all that content for them, realized I needed to do the same for them. We dug under the hood and we're like how do we go about doing this? I realized that they a bunch of things. One, a lot of professional services firms focus on long form content like blog posts and things like that which, if you're a Deloitte, people might be going to those sites. They have a high domain authority, a lot of inbound traffic, that kind of thing. If you're a boutique firm, it's a lot harder to do. It's a lot harder to rank for the kind of phrases you'd want to rank for a lot of link building efforts, a lot of domain authority building efforts, that either you are time constrained or budget constrained, so you don't really do. So I said, rather than go all in on organic search. Let's focus on organic, social and specifically LinkedIn. Every single one of those partners had several thousand followers or several thousand connections, and the idea was the combinatorial effect of all of that would be more effective. So then it was like what do we say?

Sean Johnson:
3:40

That was the second key thing, which was I looked at the content that these larger firms were putting out and realized that I think they're being created by committees to a large degree. Sometimes there's like legal and compliance involved, but the end result is that they have to round a lot of the edges off of the content and make it a little bit more vanilla in order to pass the various gatekeepers that were involved in getting it up there. So I said we're not Deloitte, we can't get away with that. So let's just be an open book and let's just give away all of our secrets. I realized that our proprietary methodology was the same as everybody else's, so let's not hide it and let's just walk you through. This is how we do set up governance structures to make an innovation initiative work at a corporate level. Here's how we do ideation to find different opportunities at various time horizons and risk profiles to create a portfolio of innovations, so to speak, borrowing from our venture language All the way down. Here's how we validate these things, here's how we run smoke tests, here's how we set up our, here's how we model growth and make the case internally, here's how we set up the stage gate criteria for what initiatives warrant additional resources, and so on.

Sean Johnson:
4:53

So those were the key insights and so we stood up and apparatus that basically We'd hop on calls every month with them, we'd riff, we would talk shop about client conversations that they had, what they were thinking about, things they read. And then we turned around and we packaged all that stuff up into content that we distributed, not from manifold but from the partners. And that took some negotiating, because the idea is, what if we'd build up the personal brand of the partner and then they just go leave? But I was, what if we don't and they stay and they're just ineffective? The I think the combinatorial effect was much, much more effective in terms of the aggregate reach we were able to get by creating content from the leader versus the brand, optimized, using all the best practices that folks talk about on LinkedIn and really just like focusing on giving tons and tons of value.

Sean Johnson:
5:41

So very little, very, very actionable stuff was instrumental, I think, in terms of growing the firm and I think the last piece of that was we did works. So we I saw like McKinsey has a seven S framework or BCG has the BCG matrix and all these kinds of things there's. They took these ideas that are really, if you break them down, pretty straightforward ideas, but they packaged them in a way by the terminology they used, by putting a schematic kind of lens behind it, making it visual in some way and creating a framework. And that was a key piece of what their thought leadership did. That was really effective.

Sean Johnson:
6:22

And so we we created one around what we call the growth innovators and I learned there's so many downstream effects from that because it's like this is a proprietary thing that you own.

Sean Johnson:
6:32

It helps simplify decision making and thinking through a problem with clients.

Sean Johnson:
6:36

It creates differentiation because you're the only one that has it. It creates lots of opportunities throughout the entire buyer's journey to get people in the loop. So, like you can create top of the funnel thought leadership around it, you can say, hey, let us run the growth innovators diagnostic on your phone and benchmark you against your peers. So like great middle of the funnel, scalable, highly personalized, highly relevant middle of the funnel content. And then it's like all right, you did our growth and diagnostic, here's where you are, here's how you get there and these are the ways that we can theoretically help. And so conversion rates on proposals and things like that went up considerably too. So I'd say that to the high level, which was like articulate our point of view in a compelling way and translate that into authority marketing, again very personality driven versus brand driven, in a way where we literally give away all of the secrets and just trust that by doing so we'll become trusted advisors in their mind and they'll be more inclined to want to work with us.

Eric Eden:
7:33

So Very interesting. So the content by committee that those big firms do that sounds awful. But that's something I don't want to read. That sounds really boring and awful and it sounds like when you say they took the edge off it, that it's like they took all the goodness out of it.

Sean Johnson:
7:51

I think it's, and I get why they do it and I think they can get away with it. Like I think it's fine for them, like if you're Minzi, it's like the whole like nobody gets fired for hiring IBM thing. I think it's the same idea I just realized we're not IBM, like we can't do that. And so, like the stuff that we need, the stuff that we do, the first thing that they read I need them to think, wow, that was interesting, like that was really helpful. And then I earn a follow. And then it's the next thing is oh, that was interesting too. Oh, that was interesting too.

Sean Johnson:
8:20

Like the bar, I think if you're a smaller firm, even though you're more resource constrained, is a lot higher. And so I think the secret is don't beat around the bush, put a stake in the ground and say this is what we believe and this is what we don't. We have a point of view that we can articulate. That doesn't have to be like incendiary or like snarky I know some people do that and it can work but you can do it in a way that's still kind and authentic and respectful. But you actually have an opinion about something and articulate it and share with people concretely. Here's how we would do this if we were you. I think that's how you win. If you're a smaller firm Because you can't play the vanilla game Like you can't speak in platitudes and expect it to be effective. If you're a really small firm.

Eric Eden:
9:03

So creating cornerstone content that gives people the real information it's not just a sales piece for them to then get information from you is really the key. And so cornerstone content, like you're saying, that impacts all sages of the funnel. What was the impact of it overall, would you say? How would you describe the overall impact to the business of having that strategy?

Sean Johnson:
9:31

Yeah, so the firm doubled in size when within probably 18 months of starting that process.

Sean Johnson:
9:36

I don't it's hard to multivariate, and so how much of that was a function of bringing in managing directors from firms who had reputations and things like that, versus how much of it was the stuff that we were doing?

Sean Johnson:
9:52

I do know that, in terms of inbound leads and things like that, like we saw commensurate kind of increase. It was a noticeable increase at every stage of the funnel. So, like I was able to point to a noticeable increase in terms of awareness, as evidenced by the follower size of the people that we were doing this for, as well as the follower size of our brand itself, increase in the number of leads generated and increase in close rate. So each stage of the funnel we saw incremental improvements which, in aggregate, led to pretty material differences. How much of that was their personality versus the work we were doing, I'm not sure, but I think the fact that we grew their accounts the way that we did and the fact that the engagement with their content kind of pre-manifold and while they were there, I think points to we were at least reasonably effective, I think, in what we were doing and it definitely improved our metrics before versus after, so yeah, there's a lot of variables.

Eric Eden:
10:46

There's always a lot of variables, but you're saying your belief is that it was a strong contributing factor and I think that's enough right. Nothing in itself is usually the sole driver, so that's great that you were able to drive that sort of a result of doubling the business by having the right content strategy and cornerstone content. What advice would you give to marketers broadly about implementing content strategies to win like that?

Sean Johnson:
11:19

Yeah, and I think, depending on the type of firm, that there are some of them better than others, and sometimes I think it requires a little bit more work. But, like a lot of the companies that are really aggressive, from a B2B SaaS companies, for example, I think they've gotten pretty sophisticated with a lot of this. It's identify. I called it in my Kella class. I called it the meta narrative of your customer. I may sell CRM software.

Sean Johnson:
11:41

The meta narrative of my customer is I want to build an elite sales apparatus or sales function in my company, and so CRM is certainly part of that, and exercising the discipline in your team of using it effectively and et cetera is definitely a part of that. But there's other pieces of that too, and how do we help them be ultimately better at their jobs? And what that does is it takes us away from writing content that's very self-serving about how great we are and humbled and honored to whatever, and moves into much more actionable stuff where every single, the goal of every single piece of content, whether that's short form or long form or course don't like you were saying is designed around helping me get better at my job today, like actionable things I can do that are not just fluff and not just theory, but actually tangible ways that I can improve my business, to improve the way that I do my job.

Eric Eden:
12:36

That makes sense. I think that's good advice. The trouble with content, of course, is everybody's putting out a ton of content, and I think you've mentioned a few of the ways to break through. That is to not be boring, to be more direct, to give away the secrets, to use your words and to not make it full of just buzz words and you take off the edge because you don't want to rub anybody the wrong way. All of those things feel like good ways for people to stand out in just an ocean of content on LinkedIn and other places. There's so much out there.

Eric Eden:
13:14

Is there anything else that you think people can do to stand out?

Sean Johnson:
13:17

I think you hit on that with the cornerstone thing and I called it like framework thinking. I think that's a big, and it isn't just for professional services. I've seen it with conversion rate optimization, I've seen it with CRM. I've seen it with other industries where basically, you say, okay, this is if similar assignments and X start with Y framework, okay, this is the service that we provide, this is how we do it, and how we do it might be differentiated in a way, but here's why we do it and that gets into our point of view around the world, or around our domain. If I can articulate very clearly, this is our unique take on CRM or on project management. I think the guys at Basecamp, for example, were very good at this. The product was informed by their beliefs about the world, and that allows them to go to market with a much more persuasive. Everything that they do from a marketing perspective is just sharper and better because it's informed by what they believe to be true and what they don't, and they're willing to create content and willing to have a point of view that implicitly says we're not right for everybody. So they're saying this is who we're perfect for and this is who we're not.

Sean Johnson:
14:29

I think a lot of times that temptation to water down your content and make it more vanilla comes downstream of that, of course. What if we offend not offend somebody, but what if we? What if someone disagrees with us and they no longer want to work with us? The world is plenty big and there's plenty of customers out there who, if you can create something that is perfect for them, they will be more likely to. It'll make every dollar you spend on marketing better. It'll make your conversion rate go up. You probably can charge higher prices for it. It just requires having conviction and then being able to codify it in a way that makes sense for people, and that's where that cornerstone thing comes in.

Sean Johnson:
15:01

I think it allows you. That was the unlock for me. I think we were writing lots of very top of the funnel content before, and when we started thinking more in terms of frameworks, it became a lot more campaign based and more full funnel, because we were immediately thinking of all right, here's the framework, here's the tool that helps you self assess relative to that framework and then cure engagements that can get you in the door in a natural way that are downstream of that framework, and so, versus just creating tons and tons of top of the funnel stuff where you don't necessarily or it's difficult to draw a line to how we nurture them and move them down in the buyer's journey. That's one other benefit I think framework thinking is. It allows you, it very naturally lends itself to content at every stage of that funnel.

Eric Eden:
15:49

So yeah, it's much better than just blasting a bunch of stuff out there. That's all top of funnel, like you're saying, and it's more with people. When you have that sort of focus, you can't be everything to everybody, so that focus the privilege of focus, as I like to call it is great for standing out to. Yeah, all right. Thank you so much for the story and these insights, sean. I appreciate it. I encourage everyone to visit his website, hire Madison. I'll link to it in the show notes so that everyone can easily get there, check it out and you can learn more about this strategy there and connect with Sean. Awesome, I appreciate it, eric. Thanks for having me.