From Creation to Amplification: How Drift Brought “Pipeline” to Life with Drift's Molly Sloan & Elizabeth Hilfrank

Lindsay Tjepkema: Welcome to our new show, the Amplified Marketing Podcast, where we get into the challenges that content marketers face, and we look at the brands who are already knocking down obstacles and raising the quality of their content with a little something that we call amplified marketing. And so we've practiced and preached here at Casted from the very beginning, how to create the most meaningful content and then get the most traction from that content by wringing it out and amplifying it across all channels. And these interviews for our first season, we recorded them all as part of a very, very special event to officially kickstart this new approach to content marketing. And we dive into the components of amplified marketing, the strategies that work best, and we reveal just how much of an impact this new approach can have on your business. But we also explore all the ways that amplified marketing makes life easier and more efficient for the content marketers out there, who like so many of us are struggling to be creative and relevant and cut through all that noise out there. This is where the real change begins. I'm Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co- founder of Casted, the first and the only amplified marketing platform for B2B marketers. And this is our new podcast. Experiments are not just good for science. You know that, right? I mean, they're kind of critical to content marketing too. Think about it. Your audience's preferences aren't stagnant. I mean, we're all part of audiences and we know that our needs change, we need variety, our preferences change. And part of a brand's purpose is to recognize when these shifts and these changes happen. My guests today are masters of listening to each of their audiences, all of the different sub- sectors, Drift. Drift was one of the first brands to really go all- in on content streams around recorded conversations, which is really one of the pillars of amplified marketing. On today's show, content marketing extraordinaires, Molly Sloan and Elizabeth Hilfrank discuss how Drift not only experimented early on and incorporated video and podcast into their overall strategy, but also how they kept a close eye on each of their shows, each different type of content's audience, how they have found riches in those niches, and how they've gone all- in to create multiple shows for different evolving audiences and how they've shifted over time. For instance, Elizabeth's running four shows at the moment, including a new one which we're really excited about, which you'll hear the excitement in this show, it's called Pipeline. It's hosted by the returning Drift alum, Dave Gerhardt, one of the original conversational content creators. In this special season in this special session from this recent Amplified event that we did to kick off Amplified Marketing, Molly and Elizabeth explore all the ways that Drift puts their audience first, for mining that rich content from the expert's brain, and how Molly and Elizabeth promote that and tap into it and access it and amplify their content to reach all of those people, all those different niches waiting for that episode. And it all started with an experiment.

Molly Sloan: Hi everyone. I'm Molly Sloan. I work at Drift and I am the Manager of Content Marketing. And I'm really sitting on the media side of the content team and that means that I look over the blog, our whole podcast program, and our newsletter program.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Hi. I'm Elizabeth. I'm a Content Marketing Manager at Drift. I report to Molly for the media side of our content team. Specifically, I work on our Drift podcast network which includes four shows like the American Dream, Operations, Growth and Pipeline.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Awesome. So I'm so excited that you're here because Drift is no stranger to audio and video content. I think everyone that's watching and listening today is aware of the incredible podcasts that you've done and a lot of video stuff that you've done and, and, and, and experienced your events. So I'm so excited to get into it and kind of peek behind the scenes a little bit. So let's hear a little bit about the importance of audio and video from you in your marketing strategy.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah. So I think some background is I came from the video team, so I have been at Drift for three years now and the first two and a half were spent on the video team. So when I came when Drift was about half the size, video was already a huge priority and it pretty much has been since the start of Drift. That's something that our co- founders were very passionate about because we believe a lot in showing the person behind the product and making the B2B SAS world a bit more personable, and audio and video is the perfect way to do that.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And it's true, it's so important. Everybody's talking about, which I'm happy about, business being more human and the more human we can make our brands and the more personable and the relatable. It breeds trust, and I think so many people have already known that for a long time but I'm glad that that's actually becoming more of the common narrative. So yeah, that's exciting to hear. So tell me about how audio and video is actually used throughout the business. I think a lot of us on the outside experience it through listening to your podcasts, watching your shows, attending your events. But let's hear it behind the scenes, like what role does it actually play throughout the business?

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah, I think audio and video is pretty much everywhere in our company. So we have the Drift video product that we use a lot for asynchronous feedback, kind of instead of meetings, sending those out. I sent a GIF this morning actually showing someone how to upload their video podcast to the Casted platform. So we do a lot with that. We have our big company meetings Monday morning and Friday afternoon. And now that we have people kind of all over the world, we're uploading videos so the people in London don't have to be on at like midnight on a Friday giving a presentation, but they can just upload a video. So we've had podcasts in the past that were just internal- facing. So it's everything we do internal we also do external. We're very much practicing what we preach, for sure.

Lindsay Tjepkema: That's awesome. And I think, it is important for sure, for people who are in Europe or APAC to be able to be involved and in the conversation in the time that works for them. But also, for the person who's across the street but has a conflict, like a legit conflict with whatever's happening at that time or wants to go back and re- listen to it later. And so that's one of the valuable things about capturing those moments, be it external marketing but also internal. It's really, really important to be able to capture those and re- purpose them later. So it's awesome. Okay. Let's talk about podcasting and all the different shows, all the different audiences that they reach. I know Molly, when we talked in the early days I was so excited about what you were doing because you had this show that was reaching this specific audience, you had this umbrella of audience members. And it was like, " Okay, we're going to do this because this really speaks to these people. And then we have this person who's an expert in this area who can really speak to these people." So tell me about the role that podcasting and these shows really plays in your overall content marketing strategy and you're overall, I guess we could call amplified marketing strategy. Tell me about the role and maybe that it plays in total and then maybe we can get into some of the individual shows.

Molly Sloan: Yeah. Podcasting has been part of Drift's content strategy I think from the beginning, definitely before I joined like three years ago. We were early adopters and our OG show, Seeking Wisdom, was something our founder got on the bandwagon early and saw the value and it was no turning back from there. And I think just along the way, we found... I love this line that you were talking about earlier, the riches and the niches. We definitely found our audience along the way. We've had people, basically the way that once Seeking Wisdom took off, we ended up having auditions for hosts at Drift. People would pitch our marketing leadership team, DC our founder who had that show Seeking Wisdom, their idea for the next Drift podcast. And from there we got three different shows geared at very different audiences, but all ultimately were helping build the Drift brand and reaching different people in different niches. So we still have this show that's geared towards operations. We have another show called Growth that is geared more towards product managers and growth marketers. We had a show called Build that was also geared toward more senior product managers, people at bigger companies, people at growing companies. And so it's just really helped developed our brand at every kind of intersection of our company's growth. And another thing is that a podcast doesn't have to be forever. So that's a learning we've had along the way, where some of these podcasts were great for where we were at this growth period, but then one door closes and then another opens. And now we've just launched a new show called Pipeline which is geared towards CMOs and CROs and bringing those people literally like two roles that are so important. For Drift, our target of sales and marketing leaders, putting them in the same room and having a conversation about the actual tactics that they're using day to day. Like this is the next evolution for us. And so it's just really exciting as a content marketer to have a big hand in that and be able to know that this is a target audience for us and be able to develop a show geared towards them and really contribute to, no pun intended, driving Pipeline for our business. It's really amazing.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah, and I'm very excited to get to talking about Pipeline because that's exciting.

Molly Sloan: Yeah, so are we.

Lindsay Tjepkema: It's so exciting. But before we do, I love a couple things that you said. One is the riches and the niches. I feel like I should say the riches and the niches too.

Molly Sloan: I know. I definitely was like, " How should I pronounce this right now?"

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah, the riches and the niches.

Molly Sloan: Riches and the niches. Right?

Lindsay Tjepkema: Because it is so important. And so is experimenting. You also said, I think one thing that can be a little bit frightening for people about podcasting, or about shows, or anything that is a series is you're signing up for something for ever and ever and ever. Every Wednesday morning at 9: 00AM forever, for all eternity. And that's not true. You can do seasons, you can pull something, you can take a pause, you can bring it back.

Molly Sloan: We've done that.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yes you have. Very successfully, right?

Molly Sloan: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah. Seeking Wisdom was one of my first favorite podcasts that I listened to religiously. And then you sunset it, and it comes back, and it'll come and go and maybe it won't. And it'll be welcomed with open arms if and when you do bring it back because you've done such a good job of the whole, " Who is it for and why are you doing it?" And when that fades for any reason, you're like, " Maybe we need to pause on this for a little bit because why we're doing it or how we're pulling it together needs to take a break." And that's okay, and I think that's a really important message for people to hear from a brand as strong as yours and the work that you are doing, that it's okay to take a break, you're not signing up for something forever. And you can, even if the show isn't continuing to produce net new content, you can go back and use it. Nothing it stopping you from using a clip or an entire episode from Seeking Wisdom from four years ago. So you can do that.

Molly Sloan: Yeah. crosstalk. And honestly, if we're not focusing on shows that we had been producing for the last three years, you can rest assured we just launched Pipeline but we're also literally tomorrow meeting with a group of people at Drift to talk about our next show and setting up another launch plan for that. Stay tuned, probably Q1 next year. But yeah, we're always improving and trying to try new things. I think with Elizabeth being in a dedicated podcast role, she is experimenting all the time, and it's just so awesome to see what the possibilities are with this channel. And there's so many obviously different audiences and those audiences prefer different things, and because she has dedicated time to focus on this, she can figure that out.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah, so let's hear about that. So you're focused on these shows. What's a day in life like for you? What's that like for you? What are some of the things you're excited about with the shows that you're working on, knowing that we're going to get to Pipeline next?

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah, so I think just to build off of that, one of the first things I did when I came into the role about a month and a half ago was meet with all the podcasters.

Molly Sloan: It feels like so much longer. I'm sorry.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: crosstalk It does feel longer. It probably was, but I was transitioning teams so there was a little bit of overlap. But one of the first things I did was meet with all the podcast hosts and kind of just do a pulse check on them. Like in their eyes, what was working, what was not? It was a good time to understand some people's bandwidth constraints too and just looking at that and how can we better optimize that time. So for example, from that I've now been working with Katie, our CSM, a lot on building out audiograms and now videograms to create a more seamless approach at getting those social clips out the door versus trying to pass through three different people and then someone's too busy so then you're a week late on promotion and by then another episode's coming out. So it's like what do you promote when? So that's been something that's been big is just working on social and different promotion tactics. And then also with what we were talking about before, just looking at the format for shows. So a lot of hosts have just been doing the same thing they've always done, and now's kind of the perfect time to re- look at everything. So for example, the American Dream podcast is going to become a more frequent show. We've re- identified more guests again by kind of what our audience wants, polling our audience, a lot of that kind of stuff.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Mm- hmm(affirmative). And I love what you're talking about because it's so much more than, " We're creating great shows." Like that's huge and in so many ways, that's the hard part is pulling together the hosts and all the different ideas and topics and guests and how are you going to keep it interesting and how are you going to create something that's high quality and engaging and interesting? Once you cross that hurdle, why in the world would you stop there? Why would you not keep going and say, " How can we use this not just as a podcast, not just as a video, not just one way of producing, but how can we wring it out and use it across other channels?" So I love that you're always thinking about that. You do such a good job there. Okay, so Pipeline. I heard, I don't know, we haven't talked about it at all in this session yet. I heard that you have a new show called Pipeline. So let's talk about Pipeline. Just throw it at me. What's it all about? Who's it for? Why are you doing it?

Molly Sloan: So Pipeline came out of Dave Gerhardt returning to Drift. Dave was the original cohost of Seeking Wisdom, which was this podcast we keep talking about that is just the reason why Drift is so all- in on podcasts. So Dave Gerhardt, DG, and Dave Cancel, DC, our CO, they were the two cohosts of the show. Dave Gerhardt left Drift, was a CMO for a couple years, and is now back at Drift. He's a Chief Brand Officer and I think he has a couple things he's focused on, really narrow focus, and one of those, when we found out when he was coming back we learned, it was to launch the Pipeline podcast. And Elizabeth and I were like, " Yes, this is amazing!" Because if you're a content marketer and you focus on podcasts, there's literally no one better to come back to the company and launch a brand new show than Dave. So we were just thrilled to initially partner with him, pick his brain about what his ideas were, how we can figure out who the real target audience of the show is, and all of the little pieces that weave into creating the show and launching it. So kind of like I mentioned earlier, at Drift our main audience and people that we sell to are sales and marketing leaders. And so we had podcasts geared towards marketers, a few different ones actually. Kind of like I mentioned, they've come and gone. Whatever. But we've never really had a podcast geared towards sales and marketers. And so the idea, the initial idea that Dave presented, was I want to get a CMO and a CRO in a room to talk about the hardest thing that they have to each do, which is drive pipeline, build pipeline, and they have to do it together. It starts a lot of fights. There's a lot of finger- pointing. He's like, " Enough is enough. Let's just figure this out." And obviously, there are so many companies today that have figured it out or are figuring it out. And so Dave's idea was to get these two people in a room and actually share the real tactics that they're using to build pipeline for their business. And so Dave is like notoriously famous, he hates small talk. When he came back to Drift we literally just went straight to talking about Pipeline. It wasn't like, " Hey, how have the last two years been for you?" It was just right down to business. And I love that because I'm so excited about this show. Elizabeth is so excited about this show. So that was great and we knew that we wanted to build in Dave's personality into our show description, and just get people excited about what they were going to get, which was the real authentic Dave. He's not going to have these fluffy conversations about I don't know, like why you need to know your CRO's coffee order and that's the secret to successful partnership.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Wait. That's not the secret?

Molly Sloan: I mean crosstalk. But no, it's basically just to have these real conversations like what we're having right now, where people interject and interrupt each other and call each other out. And so that's really what Dave is trying to foster here. And in terms of the marketing support side, Elizabeth and I are just here to make it all happen. And so like Elizabeth alluded to, Dave and I had quite the brainstorm writing session over Slack, just back and forth, tweaking each other's work until we got a description that was perfect. And that kind of informed a lot of the other creative that we were creating. So Elizabeth really took that and ran with it and worked with our design team to come up with the cover art for the new show. It also informed I think our music choice because we know what Dave's tastes are. And so Elizabeth was pulling all these clips for what our intro and outro music would be. So it was just, the list continued from there. I feel like I'm spiraling but it's just so exciting. There was so much to cover and yeah. We had a great time.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. I love it. Some of the little nuggets along the way and some of the background, because I've been a nerd about Drift and about what you all are doing for a long time, like longer than I'd like to admit. About this time last year we actually did a whole kind of in- depth podcast around what inaudible had done and how they kind of grew. And Dave Gerhardt's part of that because he was involved in podcasting there and took literally his actual equipment with him to Drift and was talking to Dave Cancel and was talking about what so many of us as marketers do, trying to pull information out of his brain so that he could turn it into content, and then that became a podcast. And that's my story too. And that's my story too. I started a job at a company when I was responsible for content and building up the content engine. And I found myself interviewing all these people and was like, " Why don't we turn it into a podcast?" I think that when you start there, and tying that to Pipeline, is you're talking about no fluff, all tactics, going directly to two people, the CRO and the CMO, who have duked it out and figured it out or are figuring it out. And literally, you all are the conduit. You're taking that information and you're not trying to be a CMO and a CRO and come up with tips and advice out of your minds. You're saying like, " Why don't we go to the experts and harness their minds, harness their brains and their expertise and their experience, and just be the conduit? And be the facilitator of that information out to our audience?" That's how you add value. That's how you add real tangible value. And it's no wonder you're so excited because then you get to also be creative to support that conduit. And to be really creative and to do what you all do best, which is, " How do we bring this information to the people in a way that's really engaging and valuable?" So.

Molly Sloan: Yeah. And I think also something that's different about Drift, because Elizabeth and I had an actual role in ownership in creating what the show is... Dave's idea 100%, but he brought us into the fold and we were able to contribute. So I think for us Elizabeth is coming up with potential guests. So she's just so involved. And me getting to write the description and have that creative process with Dave, I feel so connected to the show as well. I think this has probably been said 100 times in all of the Casted content, but one person doesn't launch a podcast on their own. It takes so many people. And I think Elizabeth and I are really lucky to not just be the doers of the podcast. We actually are also actively involved in the creative and creation process.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. I love it. So, tell me your thoughts, Elizabeth. How has it been? I know you're new to this role, to this specific seat. And you jumped right in it with something really big. So how are you feeling about it? What's it like from your perspective?

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah. It was definitely exciting to hear about. Not going to lie, a little overwhelming, because this is like four weeks in. But no better way to learn and really get into the process. And yeah, I can second everything Molly said. I think when I was talking to Dave one of the things he said was when he was a CMO at Privy, previous to this current role, he learned everything by talking to other people and just listening to what they had to say versus reading articles. So really what he wants to do is just bring those conversations now to a dedicated space just like you were talking about. And I think he's such a great interviewer because he's not afraid to press people. So if someone's kind of vague like, " Oh, we have this one meeting every two weeks," he's like, " Well, what's the meeting? What's it called? How long is it? What do you do?" And it forces people to get things out so that you do learn those tactical takeaways. So that's been cool and it's awesome to just listen to the podcast and learn his style. And then yeah, like Molly said, like a true partnership with him. I was going back and forth with him yesterday on the upcoming schedule. It is our first weekly podcast, so there's a lot of logistics behind the scenes just making sure that stuff's coming out weekly. But yeah, that's when Casted's come in great, again, for the social clips. We're also launching it all in a video format too. So the timing has lined up perfectly with pretty much everything we want to do at the same time, which has been great.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Awesome. And you mentioned one thing there just in passing. " We're launching it as video too." So how did that come about? What can you tell us about that? So it's not just audio. It's audio and video. How? Why? What does that look like? Tell us more.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah. Video is, as we've said, something Drift's always been very passionate about. At the beginning of this year, all of our podcast hosts did get upgraded video equipment, so upgraded microphones and cameras. And they have been producing on video most of the time. But again, it's come up to be a bandwidth constraint in terms of editing those videos. So recently just with some org changes within our team too, we've had now more bandwidth. We've always wanted to have a dedicated YouTube playlist for our podcasts as well. And so what better show to try that out with than Pipeline with Dave? He's no stranger to video anyways. So yeah, so now we're launching it so it's on Casted in the video format as well. And then we also have a separate YouTube playlist. And we believe really strongly in using video on social, so that's been how we do all of our promotion, in clips.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. Fantastic. Big fan. Like it very much. So obviously you're excited. I'm sure that you're not the only ones who are excited about it. What are your plans? What's the vision for the show?

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Oh man. Well, I think the end goal is for it to be kind of the number one go- to resource for sales and marketing leaders. I think one of the other things that we haven't touched on with the show is Dave does interview sales and marketing leaders together but he's also going to be interviewing sales leaders of various departments and marketing leaders of various departments. For example, we have one coming up that's all on social strategy and brand voice. So ideally this is going to be the place that even if you have a question just related to maybe demand gen or content, you can go find a specific episode and get everything you need in an hour of listening to audio while you clean your house or whatever it is you do.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Whatever it is you do. One of the beautiful things about podcasting and having the option to watch or listen or both. So okay. So we're here talking about amplified marketing. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask what are your plans for... We talked a lot about how it came together and how you're creating and how you did create. How are you planning to amplify it? What's next for all of this amazing content outside of publishing podcast and video content?

Molly Sloan: Lots. A lot of plans.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Why does that not surprise me?

Molly Sloan: I don't think I covered this when I was teeing up Pipeline, but we did launch the show relatively quickly. I think Dave came back to Drift in mid- August, and on October 4th we launched our very first episode. We did a trailer the week before. And then the week before that, so like mid- September, we did what I think Dave coined this but like a pre- trailer trailer where I mentioned he was involved in picking out the music. And so he and Elizabeth and Dan, who's on our video team, kind of put their heads together. They made this pre- trailer trailer-

Lindsay Tjepkema: Trailer teaser.

Molly Sloan: Yeah.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Exactly.

Molly Sloan: And it's Dave just picking out the music. He's like, " Oh, this option is good. This option is good." And it's just like Dave is just so likable like that, and he's put stuff like that on his own on LinkedIn. So it just made complete sense to us. So our goal is to just keep that drum beat going. And our team, I know we're here to talk about amplified marketing, I think our team thinks about it in the same way but we have a slightly different name for it, just at least on our content marketing team. And we talk about it all the time. We're getting to be actual space nerds. But we call it solar system- ing our content. So at Drift... This is my spiel. At Drift, the center of our content world is Drift Insider, which is our members- only content experience. There's classes, courses, lots of education. But all the planets that surround Insider are the media end. So for me, blog, podcast, newsletters. But we also have more of our content offers, which is e- books, reports, webinars. And so there's so many other channels that kind of are in the solar system of Drift. And so our idea is to really just create... Like solar system our content means so we have this brand new episode, the first episode of Pipeline. We launched it. Then we turned it into a blog post. Already did that. Check. And we also promoted it in the newsletter. So it's really just like, Lindsay you've said this a lot, wringing the value out of one piece of content and then refreshing it or reusing it or finding new ways to reinvent it, as opposed to recreating the wheel and being like, " Oh shoot. We have to create a brand new offer." We don't have to create a brand new offer every time. That's not the goal of content marketing. We have a limited amount of resources on every team, a limited amount of time. People like to sleep. So for us, solar system-ing our content is really just making sure that we are also integrated across the team. There are so many different functions just within marketing. So that our demand gen team knows like, " Okay. We just put out this report. We're going to mention it in our email copy to customers. We're going to mention it in our email copy to prospects. We're going to mention it in newsletters, a webinar, a book, a blog, all the things under the sun" ... solar system. So that we can just get the most value out of it.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: I think that's also one of the benefits of working together with Dave on Pipeline, is I know the guests that are coming up and the topics they're going to cover, so then I can bring that back to Molly. Molly can see maybe there's already a blog queued that relates to it. Or maybe we know about a book coming out. And then we can just tie it all together in more neat packages.

Molly Sloan: Yeah. Another big one is events or virtual events. That's something. So if Dave is going to do a session at our RevGrowth virtual event conference, then we could rerun that as a podcast offer, and then turn that into a blog post, turn it into an exclusive course. There are so many different things that you can do. Especially if you're starting with the audio or video component. Then there are just so many ways you can go and amplify it from there.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah. Once you get the transcript it's really-

Molly Sloan: You're off to the races.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: You can do whatever you want. Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. There's so much here to unpack of everything that you just said. Because if you're constantly chasing after... All of those different channels, essentially, and formats that you outlined, if you were trying to do net new in every single one, completely unrelated, one, that would be a huge amount of time and energy, which is an investment. And two, you'd be so disjointed. I mean the blog wouldn't relate to the podcast, which wouldn't relate to your videos, which wouldn't relate to your press release, which wouldn't relate to what your so- and- so leader was talking about. A whole lot more alignment comes out of the solar system or amplification of that central piece of content because it all comes back to the same thing. and so in and of itself that means it's going to be more aligned, it's going to be more consistent, it's going to be more unified. So yeah. I love that.

Molly Sloan: And I think the idea is not everything has to happen at once. Even if you're not starting with the podcast or the video recording component... A project that you might be working on that takes a while is a report. We're putting out a report coming up. It's called The State of Conversational Marketing. We've done it a few times. But we know that that's coming, so now we're planning to do... Like once that comes out, we're going to do a couple blogs on it. We're going to do a webinar kind of digging into one specific area. We'll have someone on the podcast to talk through what this specific thing means. It won't cover the whole entire report because no one wants to read... Maybe no one wants to read the whole report. But it will dig into one specific finding or one specific theme, or a prediction or something, that is actually relevant to that audience. And so there's just so many ways. You're working so hard to create content and to make it good as well. So just use the content you're working so hard on in other channels. Is the lesson that we learned and then that's why our team is now, we've seen the value and how much it saves our personal sanity, but also how much it does contribute to the business when we're all singing from the same songbook or whatever. Because it really works and that's why we're all now space nerds and want to get NASA shirts and hats and yeah. It's a thing.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love that. I love that. It's interesting that you said that too because nothing about this is linear, right? It's not always start here and then do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And content isn't consumed or engaged with in that way either. No one is going to be like, " Okay, it's Monday morning. Time to listen to the podcast. And then after that I'm going to read the blogs that they recommend. And then I'm going to download the report that it's related to." Somebody might stumble upon your report because they went to an event and somebody they sat next to at lunch recommended it so they downloaded it, didn't have time to read it, listened to a podcast, read a blog post that talked about a section of the report, said, " Oh, I have that," went back and read the entire report. Like it's not linear. So why are we trying to, one, produce it that way, or assume that people consume it that way. And so yeah, it's always about kind of going back to something that you've already created and getting more value out of it by using it in a different way, in a different channel, in a different format. And you guys do that so well. Such a good job at it. It's very interesting. It's fun to watch. Okay. So tell us about, specifically harness the power of an expert. You all have been doing that for a long time, internal and externally. Your hosts are experts. All of the people they bring on to interview as guests are experts. So how does that work? How has that shown up, not only from the two of you, but everybody else who's involved in the shows they are producing?

Elizabeth Hilfrank: I think everyone at Drift really believes strongly in the power of brand. Something that's been preached goes back to kind of what I said with how we've always been interested in video is connecting the personal brand to the company brand. Yes, people may come and go, but by building your personal brand through maybe a podcast or something you're not only generating your own audience but you're also, again, putting your face out there as the person behind the product or service that you're working on. And so really, everyone at Drift kind of wants to be a part of the brand. I feel like we almost sometimes have too many offers out there for people who want to be-

Lindsay Tjepkema: Some strong internal marketing right there.

Molly Sloan: I think also just the expert component for podcasts, one thing that I think I learned at Drift when I first started is our founders are really, really big fans of Robert and his Six Principle of Influence. And one of those principles is the authority principle. And so what better way to show that you have authority than having that expert for whatever given topic on as a guest on your show? I don't think a podcast host is expected to know everything about anything. The best podcaster is someone who's willing to say they don't know-

Lindsay Tjepkema: Curious.

Molly Sloan: Yeah, they're curious. And so for us, it really fits in with our values. I think the Principles of Influence has just been something that is part of our onboarding at Drift not just for marketers. It's definitely an important one for marketers to understand when they start at Drift, just because they have everything to do with our jobs. But I think everyone at Drift is introduced to the Principles of Influence in some way in their onboarding or just like those types of materials. For us, it just makes a lot of sense and it works, obviously.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Definitely. Okay. So as we wrap it up, before I let you go, you call it solar system- ing and we call it amplified marketing. You've talked a lot about what excites you and what works, and how you're all solar system nerds now, but what excites you about now and into the future? Because we're here today because I and we believe that this is the future of B2B marketing. It just makes sense. It's more efficient. It's more effective. It's more aligning. It builds more trust. All of that drives more revenue. But what excites you about it, in your roles, and within this great brand that you're working to build?

Molly Sloan: I think, for me, I love getting to see how it helps us work together as an actual team. Not just Elizabeth and I, like in our media team. But it's helping us work and align better with many of the people outside of content marketing and more on demand gen or in events. It's helping us all talk to each other more and get excited about the content that we're working on because it's not just something we're doing in a silo. We're involving people, they're involving us. And I think that when a team is aligned that always means good things. And I think it just is more fun and just exciting to work on a team like that. So I'm excited about how Casted is helping us do that.

Elizabeth Hilfrank: Yeah. I'd just say in addition to the alignment and communication aspect, also I think it gives the opportunity for more bigger projects and exciting things like that, like more certifications, courses, shows. Selfishly, I did work on the certifications before this role and so I've seen kind of how all the content comes together. So now having this amplified marketing perspective, I think there's just a lot of opportunity to incorporate more types of content into one learning hub. So then you can go and get your podcast, your book, your video course all in one place and truly become and expert on whatever topic it is that you want to learn about.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Amazing. And that's a great place to leave it because it's inspiring to start with that great content that you all are being so bold and creative about pulling together, and then thinking about what else could we do, and the answer is a lot. So thank you for sharing. Thank you for giving us a peek behind the scenes. Thank you for getting us all excited about Pipeline too. I'm very excited about it and I know that everybody else is too. That's our show. Thanks so much for listening. To learn more about the fascinating shows that Molly and Elizabeth are creating for us, especially Pipeline, make sure to visit Drift. com and check out any of their shows from Operations, Growth, American Dream, and their newest podcast, did I mention Pipeline? To learn more about Casted and how we can help you, visit Casted. US and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to get in on all things amplified marketing, audio and video content, and all things for the future of B2B marketing.