Episode 14: The Godfather of Content Marketing

00:30
Lisa Perry Kovacs

Welcome to another episode of Marketing Moves. I'm your host, Lisa Perry Kovacs. And today we have a guest that has me as a marketer, positively starstruck. Joe Pulizzi, also known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, is the author of five best selling marketing books and a sought after speaker at Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, the Wall Street Journal, and Dell, just to name a few.

He's a serial entrepreneur as a founder of successful companies like the Tilt content Entrepreneur Expo, Content Marketing Institute, and Content Marketing World. And you guys, he's a Clevelander. Joe, welcome to Marketing Moves.

01:16
Joe Pulizzi
Lisa, thanks so much for having me. And when you read that out, I have to realize I need to stop starting companies like, no more companies. I think that's enough for the bio.

01:25
Lisa Perry Kovacs
You've reached your limit.

01:26
Joe Pulizzi
I think I've reached a limit.

01:27
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I love it. I wore your color orange today as a nod to your personal brand. Did you notice?

01:32
Joe Pulizzi
I absolutely always do. There's a lot of orange around this office as we do this. So thank you for making me feel at home.

01:39
Lisa Perry Kovacs
You bet. Your website copy and you recently redid your website, I think, says that you wear orange everywhere. So I was curious if you would wear orange today. And lo and behold, here you are in orange. I wanted to test it out and.

01:53
Joe Pulizzi
I always have the orange shoes on. So wear the orange kicks everywhere, just in case. If I have to go to like a wedding or something like that, I'll always have at least orange shoes on.

02:02
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Always orange?

02:03
Joe Pulizzi
Yes. So if you know the scene from Pulp Fiction where they open the briefcase and there's the drugs and it's like an orange glow. That's my closet.

02:13
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I love it.

02:14
Joe Pulizzi
So I don't have much of a choice because everything is whittled down to orange anyway.

02:20
Lisa Perry Kovacs
How does your wife feel about that?

02:22
Joe Pulizzi
It's been 15/16 years. I've been doing this since 2007. So you get used to it. It's easy when I'm not wearing orange. That's when my wife is like, “Are you not feeling well? Bad mood today. What's going on?”

02:36
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Right. The origin of your brand color as orange, the origin of orange. Have you used that copy before?

02:43
Joe Pulizzi
No, but I should.

02:44
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah, I think it's a great place to start today because it takes us back to the beginning of your story. So, Joe, can you tell our listeners your backstory? What got you into content marketing? What started it?

02:56
Joe Pulizzi
Shoot. Well, the color is interesting because I'd been wanting to start a business for a long time, but I was working at a publishing company at the time, and I was on family vacation with my two kids, and I was in the pool. We were having a good time with the kids, just splashing around. And we had an orange and gray volleyball. And I took that and I looked at it and I held it up to my wife and I said, if I ever start a business, these are going to be the colors for the business. And she said, would you just shut up and not pay attention to your kids so they don't drown? And I always remember that. And I've still got a picture of that today. And I said, if I ever do that.

03:32
Joe Pulizzi
So that was, the original color was orange and gray. And of course, every company that we started has had the same colors. And so it makes everything easy from a brand perspective. But I was lucky to start at Penton Media, local Cleveland Company. At the time, it was the largest independent B to B Publishing Company. And I got stuck in as account manager over their custom publishing division. And I had no idea what that was at the time, but basically Petton did advertising and magazines and trade shows and all sorts of stuff, but they had this little division that did custom magazines for large B, two B brands. And so they were working with Microsoft and Autodesk and a bunch of associations. And I was lucky enough to start to learn this business. And I'm like, okay, this is fantastic.

04:18
Joe Pulizzi
And then as we evolved into Google getting found in search and social media, I realized, wow, you're going to have companies out there are going to have to learn how to tell a story. They're going to have to create lots of content. They're going to have lots of pipes to put it in. And that's where in six and seven I said, well, I would really like to focus on this area as sort of my thing. And in 2007 ended up leaving, and the original name for the project was CustomPublishers.com. And were going to match up content providers like custom publishers at the time, or agencies with brands that needed those services. And I thought that name was boring. And I didn't like custom Publishing. I really thought that content marketing was going to be the term for the industry.

05:05
Joe Pulizzi
And for whatever reason, I thought it was the coolest brand, Web 2.0 name Junta42, which we don't even have to get into that story, but I was like, okay, we'll launch that. And were known as the eharmony for content marketing.

05:21
Lisa Perry Kovacs
That was the first business.

05:22
Joe Pulizzi
That was the first business, yeah. So I started the blog in 2007 and the service actually launched in 2008. And that evolved into May of 2010. We did a pivot and changed everything over to Content Marketing institute. And as soon as we did that, everything changed. And that led to content marketing world, which was September of 2011, which were hoping for. Wow, could we get 100 and 150 people to come to Cleveland around an educational event for content marketing? And we ended up having 660 that year at the Renaissance downtown and grew to 4000 in 2015 and still the largest in person event. So it's just weird how things happen.

06:05
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Incredible. And I wanted touch on that today because anyone who is anyone in marketing knows about content marketing world. So how did you get it off the ground? Like what grew it in popularity?

06:23
Joe Pulizzi
So take you to 2009, a small business. We were hemorrhaging money. We were losing so much money. We had a lot going into development with this eHarmony matching service for Junta42, which I fell in love with. I thought it was the greatest product ever, but of course that was the learning. I fell so much in love with this thing, but that's not what our customers, our audience wanted. Luckily, at the same time, I've been blogging four or five times a week on a regular basis. We had more than 10,000 subscribers built up, so that was going well. And when we got to September of 2009, I basically had come to Jesus meeting with my wife, who is co owner, and I said, we're not going to make it. This is losing money. I don't see it changing.

07:08
Joe Pulizzi
And for two weeks, I started filling out the LinkedIn profile and say, I'm going to have to actually go get a job. And then for whatever reason, it was on a cocktail napkin. So I know I was drinking at the time.

07:21
Lisa Perry Kovacs
All the best companies start out on a cocktail napkin.

07:24
Joe Pulizzi
That's so true. I started going through feedback from the audience as I'm pushing this matching product that nobody wants, I started to look at feedback on the blog as well as email. And people were asking, Joe, is there an event for content marketing? I could send my team to? Joe, is there any formal training for content market? Because it was a new concept, it was a new term. Nobody knew. So they started asking for Joe, do you do formal consulting? All these things that I didn't do anything of. And I'm like, why am I pushing this product that nobody wants instead of actually they're asking to give money to something and nobody's providing these things. And that's when we made the pivot over. So I did on the cocktail napkin, I said, okay, what's the new business model?

08:10
Joe Pulizzi
And I wrote Content Marketing Institute at the top. And I said, we'll create the go to informational resource for content marketing online, ContentMarketinginstitute.com. We would create the leading print magazine for content marketing for executives. That was chief content Officer magazine. And then we would create the number one in person experience for content marketing education. And that became content marketing world. So that was September of 2009. We did as we said, launched it in May of 2010. The magazine Content Marketing Institute, the magazine brand chief content officer was launched in January of Eleven and then content marketing World in September of eleven. And that was the first coming out on stage in front of 600 people that I didn't know, most of them, that was the first time I actually said, oh my God, I don't have to go get a real job.

09:03
Joe Pulizzi
I think this is actually going to work. So that's for those people that are launching a business. So that was over four years from start to really believing that we had something and I could provide for the family and actually make something work.

09:17
Lisa Perry Kovacs
And it originally came from listening to your audience and your audience was telling you and asking you for something new.

09:24
Joe Pulizzi
It's crazy, right? You hear it over and over again. You push out this product. And that's what I tell when I mentor a lot of entrepreneurs now. I always say, remember, the product you launch with is probably not the one that's going to be part of the business long term. You're just going out there and you're testing the waters. And that's what were doing with Junta42. Luckily, we had the content marketing thing right. The trend toward companies creating lots of content and telling their stories and wanting to build audiences and monetizing that behavior, that absolutely happened. And were definitely early to the game in that, but the product wasn't a fit. And I guess what I learned from that also is that the market moves way slower than you think it will. Especially marketers make decisions so much slower.

10:11
Joe Pulizzi
Like, we talk about this whole AI thing going on right now. We got to remember it's been going on for almost more than a decade, we've been talking about it in marketing and then chat. GPT is out, but we've been really talking about this for a long time. So that's why you want to remind entrepreneurs. It's like, don't worry if the first product doesn't work. That's why I love going out. Audience first. If you just build a blog or a podcast or a newsletter, first build the audience, and then you figure out what their needs, wants and pain points are, and then you launch the product, that's always a better way to launch the business if you could do it.

10:47
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah. And you're touching on some of these new shiny objects that marketers also kind of get, I think, a little distracted by AI, whatever the new hot buzzword is. And I think there's something to be said about going back to the basics and remembering the fundamentals of figuring out who your audience is before you start marketing to them. I mean, why do we think that is such a difficult concept for business owners to remember? Is it because it's not sexy?

11:15
Joe Pulizzi
A lot of us is. Check the box mentality, too. I was talking to somebody actually yesterday on a podcast, and were talking about all the changes that happened. And I said, oh, I did a speech in Boston a few weeks ago, and I asked everyone, I said, how many of you are doing print marketing as part of your integrated marketing program? And of the 250 people in the audience, only one raised their hands. We were talking about the difference between the United States and Europe. Europe, everyone still does print. But for some reason, marketers in the United States, we all jumped online, and I get it right. We jumped online and social media and now AI, and we're jumping to the next thing where our senior executive is saying, what are we doing in AI?

11:56
Joe Pulizzi
And what are we doing in marketing automation, and what are we doing in social media? And then we forget all these things that worked in the past that was like, oh, that's old school, or, we don't want to do that anymore. And I still believe in, we've got to look at what are we doing for in person experiences. Why should we even consider print? Oh, my gosh. Well, the post delivers six times a week to somebody at their business location or their home. And there's no competition. Like, you could create an amazing print experience and basically have the whole thing all to yourself. And nobody's doing it here in the States, except for who? Amazon, Walmart, Lego? Those are the companies that you're getting.

12:37
Joe Pulizzi
We always go back and talk to marketers, it's like, okay, figure out who your audience is, what their pain points are, how can we reach them most effectively? And sometimes the most effective thing is not the hot cool thing.

12:47
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I love it. And I couldn't agree more about print. We've been beating the drum about that recently as well, because like you said, no competition. Now there are some hot and cool ways to bring those tried and true foundational tactics to people. Like we have a company called Navistone that we work with that allows us to hit people with direct mail pieces after they visited a website. So you cookie somebody on the website and then you can retarget to them via mail. So there are ways to use digital marketing but still give those Hallmark experiences that people are craving and people are ready for that post. COVID. I mean, I want to talk about the in person experience and talk about how we're missing that and you're able to offer that through your conferences.

13:39
Lisa Perry Kovacs
So are you seeing a rise in people wanting to come to these conferences post COVID and is that true that people are craving that in person experience?

13:48
Joe Pulizzi
It's absolutely true. So we're obviously 21. 22 were tough years for the in person event business. 23, absolutely back. 24 is going to be way bigger than 23. And 23 was a pretty good year for most events, I think as we are connecting with more and more people socially and whatever it is, if it's TikTok, if it's Instagram, if it's Facebook, humans still want to be near other human beings. Whatever you want to say out there, it's like we're always online. Whether the Americans are spending an average of 5 hours online a day or whatever the current stats are, which are crazy, at the end of the day, they want to actually network with other people that are challenged with the same things that they're dealing with.

14:32
Joe Pulizzi
And that's where if you talk about any type of an educational event, people talk about, oh, what are the seminars? What am I going to learn? And those are all really important things. But the number one reason people go to events is to meet other people and network with other people. So that's why the parties, the gatherings, and the one one meetings are so important. Whether it's content marketing world or our new event, content entrepreneur Expo or whatever the case is, it's always the gathering time. I expect 24 and 25 to be huge for anyone in the in person event industry because of that. And by the way, there's a moat as well, right? I mean, anybody can launch a website today, anyone can be on any social media platform, but it's much more difficult to launch an event.

15:16
Joe Pulizzi
So you're seeing brands of all sizes think, oh, maybe we should do a customer event. Maybe we should be more involved and get an exhibit or sponsor a networking gathering at some event in the industry. So you're going to see more of that next year.

15:31
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I want to hear more about the content Entrepreneur Expo. So I think you're branding it as the CeX, correct? It is May. It's right here in Cleveland. Tell us about the event.

15:44
Joe Pulizzi
I love events. So as the whole creator economy thing started to take off during COVID and then 21, I didn't feel there were any events out there that really were helping content creators become content entrepreneurs. And when I say that, I'd look at content creators who maybe are hobbyists, they've got a podcast, they've got a newsletter, they're on YouTube, they're building an audience, but they want to do it full time. And that's a content. That's when I'm thinking of a business who full time. They are driving revenues directly from their audience, however they're doing it. That's what content entrepreneurship is. And I didn't feel that there was a conference that really helped with how do I grow my audience, of course, but how do I drive revenue from that audience, make sure it's profitable revenue.

16:32
Joe Pulizzi
How do I set up my company the right way? So outsource the right way? How do I legally set it up the right way? How do I look for new content opportunities that we're not thinking of and create a little media company? And that's what content creators are doing today, whether it's Mr. Beast or Matt Pat or whatever, the podcaster down the street. I just saw some new research that I think it was something crazy, like 6% of the US population considers themselves a content creator, which I was like, that seems really high, by the way. Those ages are 18 to 54.

17:10
Joe Pulizzi
And I'm looking at them and I'm like, okay, well, I can see that there's a lot of people that are doing it as a hobby and a lot of people that want to move from, I don't want to go into work anymore. I don't want to do that thing. I want to do something that I'm passionate about. And they've got this amazing podcast or this amazing YouTube channel. They figured out TikTok and they built this audience, but they don't know how to create a business out of it. So we didn't see any of that, and we created CeX, and first event was 2022 in Phoenix. And then, of course, I wanted to do all events. We moved it back to Cleveland. So last year was the second year we had it in Cleveland at the Convention center.

17:47
Joe Pulizzi
And this year it'll be at the newly remodeled Renaissance.

17:50
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yes.

17:51
Joe Pulizzi
Downtown. So we're expecting about 500 people to come in from all over the world and to go through the latest. And of course, we've got AI covered and we've got all the new technology covered, but most of it is about, okay, great. You're building this audience. You've got this thing going. You've started something. How can you be financially free and do all the things you want to do and build a full time business.

18:13
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Out of this incredible 6%? That's a crazy stat. So I do think that words and definitions and you as a writer can attest to this. It's important. So what's the difference between a content creator, a content entrepreneur, and influencer? I mean, we're throwing out all this jargon, and I would love to know your take on some of the differences.

18:35
Joe Pulizzi
A content creator is anyone, including my mom, who posts on Facebook. We're all in content creators, and that's mean. You talk about content creators. I talk about content creators on my podcast, and I use it because some people say, oh, that's me, I'm a content creator. I don't like that term because anyone can do it. There's no process, there's no strategy. It's like, oh, I'm creating content and I'm distributing it out. You might not have any purpose for doing that. That's why I like, content entrepreneur is somebody that delivers valuable, relevant, compelling information in order to build an audience, and they want to monetize that audience as a full time business. That's a content entrepreneur. So a little bit different, you might say, okay, well, where does an influencer come in? An influencer does not have to distribute regular content to be an influencer.

19:21
Joe Pulizzi
Kim Kardashian is an influencer, and she's a content creator, but she's not a content entrepreneur. She can throw out content on all these channels all the time. There's no necessary strategy. A content entrepreneur looks more like a little media company where, oh, they're distributing a newsletter every week. They've been doing so for two, three years. There's a podcast that goes out Monday and Wednesday of every week of every month of every year. So there's a consistency, and they look like if the New York Times was small or Washington Post or the leading trade organizations doing media. That's what we're looking at with content entrepreneurs. Influencer, you can be influential over anything, and you don't necessarily have to be a content creator. Can you be a content creator and an influencer and an content entrepreneur? Yeah, you can be all of them.

20:12
Joe Pulizzi
But just want to make sure that people are aware. When you see influencer, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're doing the things that a content entrepreneur would do to build some kind of a minimum viable audience. Let's say they're a newsletter writer, they've got 10,000 subscribers, and now they're monetizing it through sponsorship, through training and classes, maybe through consulting, maybe through doing sponsored webinars, those types of things. So it's a little bit different.

20:42
Lisa Perry Kovacs
So we have this digital marketing agency, Vivid front, and then we are trying to launch this media spin off called marketing Moves that you are on here today. So are we content entrepreneurs?

20:57
Joe Pulizzi
You are doing content marketing. Okay, so I know it can be very confusing. So if any company, you already have products and services, obviously you're a very successful agency, you're doing well, you've got lots of clients. You are then saying, okay, well, how do I grow that core business? You're growing that core business with a strategy and philosophy called content Marketing. You believe that if you create valuable, relevant information, you're going to build an audience, and from that audience you are ultimately going to draw customers in. So lead generation, or you're going to say, we're going to send this out to current customers because then they'll be more loyal or they'll spend more money with us. That is pure 100% content marketing.

21:39
Joe Pulizzi
If you had no product at all and you said, oh, I want to launch marketing moves and I'm going to build marketing moves and build that audience. And then from that audience I'm going to launch direct revenue, sponsorship, training, those types of things. That would be pure content entrepreneurship. There's a lot of things. It looks the same because it is the same business model. Exactly. It just depends on what type of business you're running.

22:04
Lisa Perry Kovacs
That's really helpful. And one of the reasons I was so excited to speak with you today is I am thinking about changing the name of this podcast, and you have been going through quite a few name changes recently. Content. Before it was CEX, what was it?

22:20
Joe Pulizzi
It was creator Economy Expo and we changed it to content entrepreneur Expo, but we kept the CEX. I love it.

22:26
Lisa Perry Kovacs
It's brilliant. But what do you think of the name marketing Moves for this podcast.

22:30
Joe Pulizzi
I think the name marketing moves is probably too broad.

22:34
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah, I figured you would say that.

22:36
Joe Pulizzi
Well, there's two reasons why content marketing programs fail, right? So the first one is consistency. Most organizations just don't deliver consistently over a long period of time. And when you end up going two, three years and everybody stops doing it, or they say, okay, well, the blog's got to go out on Friday. Well, we missed it, we'll send it out on Monday. That's, consistency is a big issue. So that's one, the second issue is what we would call a lack of content tilt. And the content tilt is your differentiation area. What's the thing that separates you from all the other things going on so that you can separate from the clutter, get attention and build an audience? I'm under the assumption that when you put marketing moves out there, people say, okay, well, that's marketing. But what exactly is that?

23:24
Joe Pulizzi
How does that differentiate vivid from all the other clutter, content clutter that's out there. It may be right, you don't know. But when we go back and say, well, why did we go with content marketing versus custom media versus custom publishing? Well, content marketing was, nobody was using that term at the time. And it did resonate with people. And were targeting mostly business to business marketers who were doing content, they were doing marketing. We brought it together. Great content marketing. We've got something. If I went out today and did something like content Marketing association, it would probably be too broad. It would probably be like, oh, how can I be the leading informational expert in that thing? It's just content marketing when you've got a million people doing it.

24:13
Joe Pulizzi
So I guess what I would take a look at is, and I don't make these changes lightly, it's very big deal. And you already know this because you work with a lot of clients that think about product name changes and all those types of things. But I would probably sit down and say, okay, who are we trying to target? Who is our core audience? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What are those informational needs that we want to get down there? And then what are the things that you bring to the table that are completely special? What's the insight that you have? What's your understanding and marketing strategy over and above everywhere else? And you get to that point and you come up with, okay, well, what could our mission be?

24:51
Joe Pulizzi
And when I say mission, it's really best to look at it as what would our editorial mission be if were a media company. What would it look like? Who are we targeting? What are we going to deliver? Podcast, email, print? What's the thing you're going to deliver? And then what's the outcome for that audience? How are we going to solve their challenges and be that informational resource that they're going to count on? So I know we're getting a little bit into the weeds, but if you do that, I think you'll come up with and say we can then come up with a mission and a name that when people see it really differentiates us. And I would think it's also helpful to look like if you were a B to B Media company.

25:31
Joe Pulizzi
Like for example, I talked with the publisher of Lawn and Landscape yesterday. When you say lawn and landscape, there's only one lawn and landscape. Lawn and Landscape magazine, Lawn and Landscape trade show. That's what they are. Who are they targeting? Lawn and landscape contractors. Can they be the leading expert in that area? Absolutely. They've been doing it for the last 30, 40 years. Whatever. If they went out today and launched Lawn and landscape, they would have a lot more difficulty than launching it 30 years ago when they were the only one to do it. So it is more difficult today. So I don't know.

26:07
Lisa Perry Kovacs
You probably know what it, and I think it goes back to what were talking about at the top of the episode, which is we have to remember to get back to basics and we have to remember to do that work of establishing those fundamentals before we scale any sort of marketing program. And it's a lot of hard work, but it's critical. I've been in this business for ten years. I'm trying to spin off this podcast because I want to speak to companies that want to scale their brand digitally. I mean, that's what Vividfront does best. But I sat down and thought about, oh, what's a cool title that also has the word marketing in it and has something that I love, which is dancing. Now, that is not helpful. And I know that.

26:55
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I know that it's important to identify your audience and then work backwards from the audience, but I didn't even follow my own advice, and that's what I meant at the beginning of this episode, is we know these things, but we're not following them. We lack this sort of discipline that's necessary to profitably grow brands. And I feel like you're someone that is an expert at that discipline.

27:20
Joe Pulizzi
Well, you got to remember, too, I'm the one that launched Junta42. That's true because I thought it was a cool name, Junta meeting or a Junta which have a negative connotation too. 42, my favorite number. I put them together, the.com was available and then Voila, there we go. And it was two and a half years of pain because of that, because I first had to explain what we do. And that's the tough part about especially pop marketing and figuring out what the name should be. Because I agree. It's like having marketing in the title is very helpful because right away you're answering questions. And that's why I went to this really boring name called Content Marketing Institute because people knew right away, oh, it's an educational organization around content marketing. So not that marketing moves is bad.

28:05
Joe Pulizzi
You might actually say, oh, well, that might work. But you also have the issue with, you've got multiple audiences, you have clients that are B to C, B to B, multiple sizes, different needs. You're going to have to make the decision and say, the thing that we're going to provide from a content standpoint can't serve all of them. It can't, because if you do, it'll be vanilla. You have to focus and say, what's our most important prospect base or client base? The most important audience we want to reach for the future of vivid. That's what I would probably look at. And then it might be something very small, it might be direct to consumer, it might be B to B because you really want to focus on that area now, whatever it is.

28:49
Lisa Perry Kovacs
And I always tell my clients, the riches are in the niches and I'm not even following that advice myself.

28:54
Joe Pulizzi
Like I said, it's so tough though, right? Because we want to hit everybody. Yeah, but then we're back to marketing and strategy. And that's why I always say strategy is about saying no to almost everything on a big emphatic yes to one or two things. So it's very exciting. I love talking about this stuff where you say, oh, you can really be amazing for this small group of people that you service. Great. And then when you get that and you build the audience for that, then you might say, let's say it's direct to consumer. Then you come over here and say, but now we need this little thing over for B to B. That's a next year project or a two years from now project because you already conquered the other one anyways.

29:36
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Do you see entrepreneurs making that mistake.

29:39
Joe Pulizzi
When you consult them all the time? Any content creator who wants to become a content entrepreneur, they always go wide first because they think more is better and they always feel like, well, if I niche myself too much, I won't have enough opportunity. There won't be enough audience. But this is with content marketing as well. It's like you have to narrow it down to a small enough niche from a content standpoint and an audience standpoint where you can honestly say, if I do the work, I can be the leading informational expert over that thing, however we position it. And that's where you have an honest conversation with yourself or with the entrepreneur you're talking to and say, okay, well, let's say cRyptocurrency trends for the next decade or whatever and say, that's what I'm going to create my blog about.

30:31
Joe Pulizzi
And then I'd look and say, okay, well, you have 2000 competitors that I know of and probably another thousand that are out there that are competing against you. There's no way like you would need a massive budget to go or the one were talking about before, AI. I've seen a slew of content entrepreneurs launch newsletters around AI, generative AI chat, GPT, all that stuff. I'm like, okay, great, you just got into the most competitive content area on the planet right now. Granted it's newer, but look at all that stuff's out there. So maybe you should take the next step and drill down and drill down and say, okay, well, here's the topic, but also here's the really specific audience and your expertise matched with your audience's needs. Then you'll figure out that content tilt and then you might have something.

31:21
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Is this going to be part of the programming at the CEX 24 event? Like, can you tell us about some of the speakers and some things on the agenda?

31:30
Joe Pulizzi
Yes. So the tracks that we have would probably, you'll get a good feel for what we're trying to do. So there's always going to be an audience building track. So whether you, how do you build your newsletter audience, how do you build your podcast audience? We're talking, we have a podcasting track specifically. We'll have one probably both days on revenue generation, which I think is the most important thing. What we found is that most of our audience can build at least a small enough audience. And when I say small enough, sometimes it's only a couple of hundred people think you need tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands or millions in your, you absolutely do not.

32:06
Joe Pulizzi
If you do what were talking about finding your niche and you've got an audience that really relies on you, there are a lot of content entrepreneurs that are doing really well. The average content entrepreneur, according to our survey, they're making in revenue over $100,000 a year, as long as they're doing it for more than three years. Obviously it takes a little while to get there, but we're seeing a lot of success in that area. So we're going to focus a lot on revenue generation. Should I launch a training program, an online course? What about a membership and a subscription program? How about those? How do I sell sponsorship programs? How does that work? Should I do an in person event? All those things. And then we talk about the business stuff as well.

32:46
Joe Pulizzi
Some people are there, they need to know how to set up their business. They need to know how to construct their agreements from a legal standpoint. So we're going to be talking about those. And then we've got a lot of authors coming in as well to talk about their business models and how they've started from a book and then worked that book to, oh, building a newsletter and then building other avenues to gather an audience and then generate multiple ways to drive revenue. The average attendee that we will have that have been doing this for three or four years, they drive revenue six or seven different ways.

33:22
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Is that so?

33:24
Joe Pulizzi
That's what we're trying to get our content creators to move into that area. Generally somebody that comes to our event, they've got something started. It's a podcast, it's a newsletter, it's a YouTube channel. It's something. And they're monetizing it at least one way, sometimes through advertising or sponsorship. In order to survive and be successful, we've got to get them to Diversify revenue as quickly as possible so that they can make it through whatever this rough time is and actually become a profitable business.

33:52
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Incredible. And registration is open, right? Because we're going to link it in the.

33:55
Joe Pulizzi
Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. CEX Events registration is open. Early Birds open till the end of the year, early bird Pricing, and we are naming all of our speakers and keynotes and everything by mid December. So we'll be getting all that up on the site. And then May 5 to 7th, we'll have our little content entrepreneur party as.

34:15
Lisa Perry Kovacs
We wrap up 2023. What is on your mind for content marketing in 2024? Are there any trends or shifts that you think companies should keep in mind as they build their content strategy?

34:27
Joe Pulizzi
I talk about this every year, but we haven't talked about it yet. But it's this move from rented land to owned property is really important when I say that you have most companies are doing whatever they're doing on social media platforms, which is fine. If anybody listening to this has had success with TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or whatever, that's wonderful. And if it can help the business, that's great. But we've got to remember that we don't have any control over those channels. They're owned by private companies. You can get kicked off at any point. The algorithms will change and continue to change every day. So you might find success tomorrow and then the next day it doesn't work. So we want to leverage those channels and create any kind of business asset we can as we go.

35:11
Joe Pulizzi
And I think that really moves into an email newsletter. So I think that's where if you're finding success on social and you can drive them some way into something that you have control over, whether that's email name, whether that's a membership, something where you are allowed opt in communication with that person, that's really important. So we're going to see that trend continue in 24, 23 was amazing. We've seen a lot of larger brands as well as content. Entrepreneurs say, look, I can't rely on Twitter X anymore because of all the stuff that's going on there. Who knows what Instagram is going to do? What about threads, TikTok? Are they going to be banned or not? There's a lot of questions out there, and I get concerned when a lot of businesses put resources into those areas because they might not be there tomorrow.

35:59
Joe Pulizzi
So that's a big deal. We talked about print, we don't have to talk about it again. I think if you are even a smaller company, and when I say small company, if you have 30, 40, 50 employees, we're seeing a lot of smaller newsletters and magazines. Look out. And you said really well integrated into your online plan, but you could have a regular print program. And we're seeing a lot of, I guess I would call them quarterly magazines being launched, where they're creating these amazing content experiences in print and they're working really well. We talked about in person, it's going to be a huge year in 24 for in person. And then with AI, I have to mention something about AI, and my recommendation to anyone listening is just to experiment with it.

36:44
Joe Pulizzi
I'm really concerned about all the things happening because we let the genie out of the bottle. We can't put it back in. We've seen a lot of new things that are being launched. The new chat GPT, you can create your own chat bot now from OpenAI is allowing you to do that, we're going to see probably in the next couple of years, I would say 90% of all the content that you're going to see online is going to at least touch AI in some perspective, and it might be higher than that right now. It's probably already 50%. We just don't know it. We don't see it because it looks like it's human created. I don't know where it's going to go. I wish I did, but it scares me a little bit.

37:26
Joe Pulizzi
But if you're a marketer, if you're a business owner, I think it's your responsibility to at least figure it out. So that might start with using a chat GPT for ideation, use it for editing, see what it can do. I mean, dabble with Dolly two or mid journey, which are the image producing AIs that are out there, and just see where it can help you be more efficient. But don't do any of that. And that's just experimentation. I'm not saying anyone should use it full time or replace anything. I think you should figure it out for yourself so that you have some knowledge. Same thing for social media, right?

37:59
Joe Pulizzi
When we started getting into social, it's like, well, don't start a whole Instagram program until you actually use it and know what it's good for and know how you can succeed with it and how you can. I would take the same approach with AI.

38:10
Lisa Perry Kovacs
And are you thinking about that as you plan your vision for Joe Pulizzi over the next, call it five to ten years? I mean, what's the vision? Where do you go from here?

38:18
Joe Pulizzi
I'm testing some things out. So the one thing that I've been working on is an audiobook that is me, but it's AI driven. And this is available right now. And I don't know if I'm going to release it, but I'm just seeing if I can tell. So, for example, what you can do already, and the technology is there. I can read about a 92nd script and then upload that script into an AI program and then give them my manuscript. So what if it's my next novel or my next business book or whatever, and then have the AI read it and it'll be in my voice and whatever. So that's about 97, 98% already there, which is kind of crazy. So we'll test that.

39:05
Joe Pulizzi
I want to see if it works because as we start producing or helping content entrepreneurs with their book projects, I want to see if that's a really good audiobook resource that we could launch. So that's one thing that we're looking. And I use chat GBT almost every day. Do you just. Mostly for editing. I treat it like a friend, so I'll say hi, good morning, or whatever. It's like. Okay, I want to send out this email for content Entrepreneur Expo. It's targeting. These are the people that I'm trying to target. Could you take a look at this and let me know what you think? Any edits? And I always say thank you. It just gives me the whole thing. Sure. I'd be happy to do that. It's a little bit weird, but I just want to be nice.

39:52
Joe Pulizzi
I figure if I'm nicer to the AI, they're going to give me better results. So that's kind of. I just don't want to dictate. Here's what I need. So I do use that a lot, and it's so good already.

40:04
Lisa Perry Kovacs
It's just going to keep getting better.

40:06
Joe Pulizzi
But as we have to remember, so Paul Razor, also local, Cleveland, literally lives right down the street. Founder of Marketing AI Institute. He always reminds me, he says, remember, the Ai you're using now is the dumbest AI you'll ever use. And we don't realize that they're already 912 months ahead of us and we haven't gotten those versions yet. So it's a little bit scary with what's going to happen, but if we're not, we got to be prepared as marketers. We do. We got a front row seat to this. It's going to be the most amazing thing, or it's going to be Terminator to the end of the world, one or the other. I'm going to be an optimist with this one, though.

40:47
Lisa Perry Kovacs
So hopefully this episode has kind of left people inspired to create their own content. We've been talking about content entrepreneurs. There's a lot in 2024 for creating content. How do we make sure that we can get the revenue back to the creator, especially amidst all of this? Like, are you worried about that attribution and credit and making sure that we can respect the creator and all of this?

41:18
Joe Pulizzi
With TikTok and YouTube, we've seen that creators are all over the place. They have access to these, they can do whatever they want. And YouTube and TikTok have their own creator programs which are as nice as they can be is the best way that I can put it. They're trying to drive revenue back, but unfortunately, only the larger creators are going to get most of that money. If you are a smaller creator, a mid sized creator, you're not going to get a lot of help from platforms. You're going to have to do it yourself. So that's where, if I'm starting a content business today, I'm focusing one thing, doing one thing really well. Is it a podcast? Is it a newsletter? Is it your YouTube channel? Be great at one thing. You don't have to be jack of all trades.

42:09
Joe Pulizzi
Just be great at one and then focus on a direct relationship with your audience. And that means right now, the best case is email. Set up an email newsletter for that so that you get that opt in approval. And then once you do that and your audience becomes to know, like and trust you can monetize that better. So newsletter businesses are wonderful right now, where you can monetize it through sponsorship, you can set up training programs, you can sell consulting, you can do all sorts of things, but you can start it. If you said, hey, I want to start a podcast, I want to do YouTube first. And that's great because maybe your audience is already on YouTube. You don't have to start. Wonderful start there. But you always have to remember, okay, how do I take control of my business?

42:54
Joe Pulizzi
And if you look at what media companies do, they all do that. Like New York Times, were talking about it before. How do they make this work? They're on all the social platforms, but at the end of the day, how do they monetize? They do it through, they have some kind of digital connection with them. And at the end of the day, that's what I would focus on. And then once you do that, you have all sorts of freedom to monetize. Five, six, seven ways. Merchandise is another one. We talked about donation, and there's a lot of content entrepreneurs out there that just ask their audience for regular donations and they're supported because they're doing something important. So lots of different ways to do it, but you have to make sure you do it outside the big platforms.

43:31
Lisa Perry Kovacs
And you have to capture that first party data on something like a website. Right. And we have a few of your books here. Okay. But I ordered them on Amazon. Then I listened to one of your episodes talking about the value of buying directly from the author so that you can capture that first party data. But then I went to your website and I can't buy it direct on your website.

43:51
Joe Pulizzi
No, you're right.

43:54
Lisa Perry Kovacs
We're talking about not taking our own advice.

43:56
Joe Pulizzi
No. So here's a really good one. So this is all new for me. I thought that you had to be on Amazon in order to sell a book. I'll give you. So Content Inc. Is in front of us. So I've got two versions of Content Inc. That book has sold more than 100,000 copies in all forms. I don't have one piece of data. Isn't that horrible? What I would give for 5000 names from that? So the next book that we're launching, it's a group project with my CeX community called the Content Entrepreneur. It'S all the stuff we're talking about. The book will be out in January where it'll only be available direct for sale. So you'll go to CeX events or you go to Joepolitzi.com and you'll buy that directly from me and then I'll get that data.

44:42
Joe Pulizzi
If you have an audience, I think that is absolutely the decision. If you don't have an audience at all, that's fine. Put it up on Amazon, put it up on Kobo, put it up on some of these other Barnes and noble. It's all good. But if you have some kind of an audience that already knows, likes and trusts you and you have superfans, you absolutely want to go direct. Yes. Even the will to die. I've got the novel in front that I wrote in 2020. We're working on that right now so that I can sell that direct and the next one that comes out, that will be sold direct as well.

45:12
Lisa Perry Kovacs
It's perfect. So in 2024, you're taking your own advice, you're selling direct? I'm taking my own advice.

45:18
Joe Pulizzi
I'm going to identify we're doing all the things right. It's amazing, the direct thing. And I'm excited about the idea of selling Direct. But at the same time, every day that I do a little work, I'm always sad. I'm like, oh, what could have been? We could have had those 100,000 names or it wouldn't have been that many. But it's almost the same thing when you talk about, oh, I've got 150,000 Twitter followers. I would trade that in for 5000 newsletter subscribers. So it's the trade you want to make where you have the opt in first party data.

45:51
Lisa Perry Kovacs
All right. So to sum it up, content marketing is on the rise. It's evolving in extremely exciting ways. I've learned so much today, and there's so much opportunity to seize it. If you're interested in building a business around content or using content to scale your existing business, we love to wrap up all of our guests with a round of rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

46:11
Joe Pulizzi
I am ready.

46:12
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Okay, here we go. Craft beer or wine?

46:15
Joe Pulizzi
Craft beer.

46:16
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Edgewater or Lakewood Park?

46:18
Joe Pulizzi
Edgewater.

46:19
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Books or podcasts?

46:20
Joe Pulizzi
Books.

46:21
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Okay. Good job, Joe.

46:23
Joe Pulizzi
I love it.

46:25
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah, well, there's no wrong answer, but you did it very well. Joe, the Godfather of content Marketing. Thank you so much for being here with us today. We hope this episode helped business leaders think a little differently about content and the power it has to drive growth. Where can listeners find you if they want to connect?

46:41
Joe Pulizzi
Best place is joepulizzi.com. P-U-L-I-Z-Z-I. That's got everything that I do. And then, as you said, the event is Content Entrepreneur Expo CEX events.

46:53
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I will be there.

46:54
Joe Pulizzi
Awesome. Thank you so much.

46:55
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Thanks, Joe.