Randy Frisch, Chief Evangelist at Uberflip, discusses his role in pulling together a community and ways to foster it. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the community and bringing them together around a common belief or interest while adapting and being flexible in approach. Frisch also talks about his experience of writing his book, "Fuck Content Marketing", Frisch emphasizes that a book allows for a well-thought-out view of the market, and is a way of handing over the formula for success to customers. Finally, he discusses the challenges of delivering personalized content and how relevance is subjective and context-specific.
According to Frisch, the role of a Chief Evangelist is to pull together a community.
He explains that a community can be made up of various groups, including customers, non-customers, or people who are interested in your vision and mission.
For Frisch, the key to community-building is understanding what your community is and how you can bring them together around a common belief or interest.
Frisch highlights that there are various ways to foster a community, and it is important to adapt to changing situations.
He suggests that companies should focus on building relationships with their customers and engaging them through various channels, including social media and podcasts.
Frisch believes that podcasts are a great way to connect with people and create engaging content.
Frisch also discusses the importance of having "pillar pieces" of content or activities that he tries to do on a regular basis.
These "pillar pieces" can include podcasts, blogs, webinars, and events.
For Frisch, the key is to create content that is valuable and engaging for the community.
During the interview, Frisch shares his experience of writing a book.
He explains that it was a more challenging experience that he never thought he would do.
He wrote a blog post titled "Fuck Content Marketing," and the success of the post led to a demand for a deeper exploration of the topic, which eventually became the book.
Frisch emphasizes that a book allows for a well-thought-out view of the market, and is a way of handing over the formula for success to customers.
Frisch believes that people want what is relevant to them in every stage of their journey.
However, he acknowledges that delivering personalized content can be challenging.
He cites some statistics that scare marketers, such as the fact that only 5% of marketers are confident in their ability to deliver personalized content.
For Frisch, the key to personalized content creation is to keep in mind that relevance is subjective and context-specific.
Randy Frisch's insights provide valuable lessons for businesses seeking to build a community and create personalized content.
It is crucial to understand what your community is and how you can bring them together around a common interest.
Companies should also be flexible and adapt to changing situations while creating "pillar pieces" of content that are valuable and engaging.
Additionally, while writing a book may not be for everyone, it can be a valuable piece that allows one to put a well-thought view of the market.
Finally, delivering personalized content can be challenging, but it is crucial to keep in mind that relevance is subjective and context-specific.
By following these principles, businesses can build a loyal community and create personalized content that resonates with their audience.
All right. We are live in the Demostack Studios.
I got my guest here Randy Frisch, chief evangelist at Uberflip, we've been talking about evangelism content the different types of content evangelists do, but, uh, Randy, w- how are you doing today?
I'm excited to be here Yeah. I mean, go figure, we have to
come to Phoenix to film, something.
...to record together, even though we're both Torontonians, but
Exactly. Yeah,
Exactly.
I mean, [inaudible 00:01:29]. good to be.
together.
Yeah. This is awesome.
So
why
don't we
start off,
um, and I know I hold this title too at Chili Piper, but it seems to mean a bunch of different things.
So what,
[laughs] how would you explain your role
as Chief Evangelist at, uh,
at
Uberflip? Yeah,
it's, It's a word that has so
many meanings and even when I decided to transition from being a cmo, I had to go
to Wikipedia just to say like, what does this thing mean?
Yeah.
Uh,
partly because I had to explain it
to my father.
[laughs]
Uh, but you know,
this, eventually you get to the point of trying to explain it to your team and explain it to your community. And ultimately, when I landed on that word
community, I,
I think that's what this role's all about. Mm. It's, it's about pulling
together a community Mm.
...
okay. Now when we're
talking about community, I
know what pops in mind, uh,
slack communities. Um,
some people would say LinkedIn is a community.
Do How would you define community outside of like, is it just a bunch of individuals that you're trying to bring around this belief, or
is there a form for them to connect?
How do you. How do you
look at community? That's a great question.
and I think the important
thing,
to understand is it's not
one definition of what your
community is. Yeah. Your company is
made up of various
communities. Mm.
Now, I
remember this is going back, I mean, Uberflip is over
10 years old.
and I remember the first
time
we went and we did a roadshow,
we brought together a room of marketers. that was maybe 40 people in the room.
And this Marketer came up to me and they're like, it's so nice to get together with our community. Thanks for doing this. Mm. And that's honestly what she said
to me.
Mm-hmm. .And I was like, that's
kind
of an interesting way to look at it, is we're bringing together
these people who
normally wouldn't get together in their own
Backyard. Yeah. And all of a
sudden I realized we had created a community
That year I
think we ended up going to like 12 cities. So I guess we created 12 different
communities. But sometimes it's hard to start there. And, and
that I think, is
a way for
people to look
at this role. It's not, how do I go and run a 1000 person
plus event tomorrow? Yeah. You know, that takes huge budget. Yeah.
Huge
resources, It's a huge strain on your team, I've done it.
But how do you start to
bring together these different
groups with a common understanding so that by the time they do come
together, yeah,
now they have something in common they can
talk about.
Uh, the other thing when you think about community is, you know, uh, as a brand, is your community,
your customers, or is it people who are not a customer? Mm-hmm. or your
churned customers?
I mean, these are all
different groups
so we've
done some aggressive things in the, in the past. We even had our competitor speak at our conference one
year. Yeah. Um, [laughs] yeah, I don't know
if I'd do that again, [laughs] but
the, the
idea there is, is the more
people you can bring
together with different perspectives, you become, uh, you know, again, that chief evangelist, you become
the one who's
leading.
Yeah. This united
community
of people who believe
in your vision and mission and everything your company is out to achieve.
So this is making a ton of sense in terms of how you're,
you're looking at the role, how you want to bring people in, unite them under maybe a, a common set of beliefs or interests or anything like
that
when we're looking at maybe the, the day to day, and I know you
do a lot of work in
content. What are some of the things you're, you're
doing as a chief evangelist to, to
foster this
community? Sure.
before I
give you some examples, I
think the role I'm in is no different than the role
any marketer is in any CMO is in,
which is you're going to try and do
certain things on a
regular basis. Yeah. But you have to know and be ready to realize that you've got to adapt
in the moment. Okay.
So you can't completely
schedule out your day.
you know?
No marketer can do that. Yeah. Even if we. Had the best intention, you know,
shit's going to hit the fan at some point. Right. And you've got to be
ready
to move and respond.
So that's the same in
this role. Okay. I
have nonetheless a number of, I mean, I kind of call
them pillar pieces of content or activities that I try
and do on a
regular basis. And that's
cadences
that. um, relate to what I
post when I post down to the time of
the day that I do it.
Mm-hmm.
... Speaking to some of the specific
that
have worked really well,
uh, one without a doubt is a podcast. I Sitting one-on-one and
talking with someone is such a natural way to get
them to open
up mm-hmm. and talk
about where
their passions
lie. So I've been doing my Own podcast.
Yeah. Called The Marketer's Journey.
Um, and I just released this morning,
the 137th episode, so we're, we're going strong
there. And in that sense, what that is an opportunity.
for Is, you know, coming back to
this idea of community
as an ability
to connect
with CMOs and
understand and
share their beliefs
around, you know,
what's important to Uberflip, which
is
the importance of content Yeah.
...and a content
experience.
I do that once
a week. I release that out. It, it has.
a number of benefits for the purpose of evangelism. Number one.
some of the brands that I've spoken
to of CMOs, companies like Box, you know, as an example,
You've got this
CMO now out
there beating your drumbeat
in terms of what your vision and
mission is. Even if Box isn't a
customer.
today. Mm-hmm. .Right. And I think that has a
lot of of
value. The other opportunity you have is you get to sit down with the
CMO and you get to kind
of.
in the
background, pitch your
solution. Now I'm not having to pitch, you know where
I'm talking about Uberflip does this and
Uberflip does that. But you start to build rapport and they start to understand
the importance of what you're doing because They're naturally starting to
talk about it and they're starting to believe in
it.
Mm.
...and telling their team
this is
important, and their team sees them out talking on a podcast about the importance of your category, whatever that might
be.
Yeah. So there's a lot of benefits I think
that come from the podcast
itself, not to
mention now you've got
thousands of listeners
per week. Yeah. Tuning.
in With an affiliation to
your brand that's done in the
background. Most of us tend to agree
that the evangelist role focuses on almost evangelizing the problem that you're solving.
You're not getting as deep into maybe the solution. The product
podcast sounds like a great example of that.
but talk to me about, um, Yeah. I guess the, the different types of content you
think an evangelist
should do. I've, I've heard you talk about some of them now and again, maybe it depends, but
I heard you talk about posting on LinkedIn.
I've heard you talk about doing a podcast. Um, all of that is part of maybe the, the journey and the message that you're trying to send out to them, but
is, there Pieces of content or, or formats of
content that you truly believe
in that you think maybe every evangelist should do? Or in terms of evangelizing the message to the market that companies
should
focus on?
Yeah, so, so we hit on the importance of podcasts. Yeah. And I think we've hit on the
importance of customer
stories. Yeah. I think finding the right format for that customer
to tell the story, it's essentially a webinar always. But
you know, it doesn't mean you have to
have a signup for a webinar. I mean, sometimes I'll produce these as
videos
and I'll just throw them up on social
and do them in a way th- where they're really digestible.
Two minute little segments. Someone saying, this is my framework, this is
how I use it.
just kind of recapping
some
of the formats
we talked about already. And the last one that I'll hit on that's way
chunkier and one that I never thought I would do
was
writing a book,
Um, Oh. so I, I
wrote a
book, uh, this was about four years ago.
Uh, and honestly
it was never on
my to-do list as a personal goal. I don't think I ever thought as a company we.
would Want, or need or value a
book?
The funny thing is the book originated as a piece
of content in blog form, and it was a, uh,
I guess you could call it a questionable blog
topic. Uh, the headline was Fuck
Content Marketing. [laughs] Uh, and I wrote it on a
plane ride to
an event
like this. Um,
and
I remember I sent it to our head of content at the time, and
you know, in response to the headline
they were
fuck,
no way
[laughs] uh, you're not posting this. We are going to offend
everyone.
And they hadn't even read the post. They were just like, the headline is, yeah.
I wasn't allowed to post that for about
three months. Okay.
...Uh,
that post, it was just, didn't sit well with too many
people, but I found the right time to eventually push and and we put it out there and it was received so well.
Um, and it, it led to a lot
of other collateral as time went
on, people were like, you know, this would be a really
interesting topic to go
deeper on.
And that ultimately,
became the book that I wrote. Now the funny thing
is, When I went out and we had to come up with the title of
the book, I was very against
fuck Content Marketing being the title.
Mm-hmm. . And my team at that point was like, no,
no, no, You've got to do it. [laughs] Like,
and I was like, you,
wouldn't let me publish this.
And But, you know, back to the, the format, I'm, I'm not suggesting
everyone's got to go be as profane as I am sometimes, but,
um, you know, I, I think a book
allows you to put a well,
thought.
uh, view [inaudible 00:24:17] market. Mm-hmm. .And, you know, the idea of that
is that you can hand over
the formula
for success
to your customers. We did so in a way where we didn't talk
about the technology at all. So our book,
um, Other than talking about
some of the campaigns that some of our
customers run, you know, and not really mentioning Uberflip in that
case, but mentioning the idea of content experience being
something important. It was a way of us saying, from a
strategy perspective, we're hitting on something that you
really
need to prioritize. You know, writing a book's not for everyone,
but
I do.
think it's a really
valuable piece. And, you know, maybe the best way to summarize that story
is you get to that
book by the most provocative, compelling pieces that you've put out
that lead up.
to that.
That's a fantastic story. I think something that a lot of, a lot of companies should think about, maybe going down the path of what you all do at, at Uberflip, Um,
I feel like in ways
we've, I don't know if you have a framework to share
with the audience. of almost the, the content journey
you ideally would want your, your buyer to take. Right? So we've talked
about maybe more top of
funnel, getting
them to buy into the belief systems, but is there a framework for an ideal
journey that you want to take 'em down in terms of Uberflip? Or is it '
more of
a choose
your own adventure? .
Well, I, I,
I think let's just distill down to what people actually want. Mm-hmm. , uh,
and. You know,
I, I'm,
as much as I'm trying to sell my solution, I, I'm a
marketer and I'm being marketed to by great marketers
because But We're
we're signing up to all these things ultimately because we just want relevant
content.
That's my belief, Mm-hmm. right? Like we accept the email
because we
hope
it's going to suggest something
that's really relevant for us. We click on that ad
because we believe now that they've personalized the
ad and that we're going to get
something relevant in, on the other side. So I believe that we put up with a
lot of stuff in our lives
because we want
relevant
content.
Mm. Right. And if
you look at that in
the. consumer world, it's the same as just our willingness
to give
data over to Google or Netflix or
Amazon. It's, it's a barter, right? I will give you all this data about me, but in exchange, I expect something truly personalized and truly
relevant that's delivered to me. Yeah. Right. So the, question leading back,
back to
how you framed it is, well, what is, what is it that people wanted every
stage of the journey, and to me they just want what's relevant to them in that moment. Now that's really hard to do.
Yeah. Right. Um, You know, there's a whole bunch of stats
that are out there that just scare the shit out of marketers.
Right.
There's like, I think it's like 11 pieces of content before they're ready to buy. And
then there's, yeah. You know,
you look at, you know, the Gartner
CEB data that's just like 11 buyers in the
journey
who are weighing in that challenge your model. Yeah. Our friend Jen Allen. Yes. Yes. Uh, y- you know, shares that data.
Um, And then in your organization you
probably have like five different verticals that you're, you know, going after.
and
then you've got, you know, four different products.
So
you start to.
Like mathematically, if you take all those numbers and you multiply
them by each other, 11 times 11,
I think I said times like four times four. I did this math recently that
like it's like 2500%
permutations of personalized content
at different stages that you would need.
Yeah. Which is just like impossible.
Right? Yeah. Sure. So to me it's how do we distill down to the
moments that matter, right. in that journey and make
sure that we're there
to greet someone. when it matters and move them along
as seamlessly as
possible. And I, I truly
believe, I mean, I think
that's what
com- great companies are
doing. In MarTech.
I think that's what Chili Piper's doing. In terms of like kind of the pipes of communication, if you will. How do I get from this point to this point? Yeah. and Really
seamlessly.
Yeah. do a handoff. It's no different than how do I make sure the right content Is there to move
them from this
point to that point.
Mm. Right. And that was the same as back in the day when Marketo was really cool
and sexy, No offense to Marketo today. [laughs] But like it was about that email, it was
about that drip cadence that got us
From one stage to the next. Yeah, the buyer's just gotten a lot
more sophisticated. They're
doing a lot more of this on their own.
They're raising their hand to say, I'm ready to speak to sales.
Chili Piper can help them. They're raising their hand to say, I need
content here to get me
through.
That's where Uberflip's going to help. Right. So I think the role of a
marketer Is to find the best technology to help
progress that journey as quickly as.
possible. Randy, this has been amazing. Um, I'm learning so much you've got my head spinning with, with different
ideas of what we can do. Um, before we sign off, is there anything that, I maybe haven't asked you or
something
that you want to impart with the audience before we, uh, hop
off here?
I think I'll leave with this. Like you've got to have a bold. idea. Right. Yeah. And we're, we're here together at an
event and, and I woke
up this morning and I went to the exhibition
room for the first time, and my
head was spinning Right. Like you said, but in a bad way. Right.
Like there was
what, like at least 70 vendors in
there. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
And they all thought they had the sexiest
booth [laughs]
...And the coolest swag and all these
things. And
honestly, like, Yeah, those pieces are important, but like, what do you, what are you actually trying to do? Mm. and What is this
belief that you have, You know, distill it down to a few
words. you know, the, the few words I told you just before is
people just
want relevant content.
Yeah. Like, .That is a really strong belief that we have, that
we
want to help achieve and we want to help
people realize
that that's their
responsibility to deliver. So I
think people listening to this it's like,
look at your company.
Like distill it down to like what
is it
that your buyer is trying to do that
you can help with?
And if, if you can do that, build a community
around that, Find people that are passionate about that, who believe that it's silly to do it
any other way.
Yeah.
Perfect ending. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time,
Randy. This was great. Awesome man. This was fun.