How to Make Your B2B Marketing Stand Out

With so much digital noise and intense competition in today’s B2B marketing landscape, now more than ever, marketing teams need to go the extra mile to differentiate their companies. Many, however, fall into the trap of sounding like everyone else or defaulting to pricing and features. So what can B2B brands do to stand out and capture their audience’s attention?

That’s why we’re talking to David J. Ebner (Founder, Content Workshop), who shares insights and expert strategies on how to make your B2B marketing stand out. During our conversation, David emphasized the need to create unique, insightful, and customer-centric content that doesn’t disrupt the audience’s flow. He also discussed the importance of giving away actionable advice to demonstrate true expertise and build trust. He elaborated on the power of B2B brand storytelling that focuses on customer needs, pain points, and emotional connection. David also highlighted the need for marketers to continuously test their content to find out what’s working or not.

https://youtu.be/cniJ6uBzgLI

Topics discussed in episode:

[3:25] How to stand out by being relevant, insightful, and engaging

[4:32] How to deliver real value to the audience, and balance between volume and quality

[8:23] Key pitfalls in B2B marketing when trying to stand out, and what should be done instead

[12:59] How to do B2B brand storytelling effectively

[16:07] How to get buy-in for brand storytelling within your organization

[27:25] Examples of how brands can stand out in saturated B2B markets

[29:19 The role of AI in content marketing

[35:47] Actionable tips for B2B marketers on how to apply storytelling and strategy effectively:

Involve the operations and service teams in content creation
Match content with the appropriate medium
Use AI to improve efficiency while maintaining a focus on quality
Ask questions about the purpose and impact of the content

[38:59] The emotional impact of brand storytelling on audiences

Companies and links mentioned:

Transcript

Christian Klepp 00:01

With so much digital noise and intensely competitive markets out there, now more than ever, B2B brands need to go the extra mile to set themselves apart. Many, however, fall into the trap of sounding like everyone else. So what can B2B brands do to stand out amidst the noise? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host. Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to David J Ebner, who will be answering this question. He is the founder and CEO of Content Workshop, which helps small and overworked marketing teams and transformative industries to reach their business goals. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. Mr. David J Ebner, welcome to the show, sir.

David J Ebner 00:48

Thanks for having me, Christian.

Christian Klepp 00:50

And David, you know what? Like I feel like just talking to you. I feel like we’ve known each other a million years.

David J Ebner 00:55

It does feel that way, yeah.

Christian Klepp 00:57

But this is the power of connection, right? Like…

David J Ebner 00:59

Yeah.

Christian Klepp 01:00

But listen, I’m really looking forward to diving in today, because this is a topic that’s also close to my heart. This is something that you’re passionate about, or should I say to you know, to make it appropriate for the show, this is what you’re on a mission on, right? This is part of your mission. So I’d like to dive right in to the first question. And let me just pull this up here. You’re on a mission to help B2B companies and people grow through storytelling. So for this conversation, I’d like to focus on the topic of how to make your B2B marketing stand out in saturated markets. And let me tell you, man in B2B, that is so true. There are so many companies that are fighting and competing and markets that are becoming increasingly saturated out there, so that’s why I think this is so pertinent for our audience. So I want to kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. So question number one, why do you think it’s so important for B2B companies in this day and age to stand out and be the signal amidst the noise, as it were? And where do you see a lot of marketing teams struggle?

David J Ebner 02:11

Yeah, I don’t know how much time do we have for this podcast, because we could spend the whole time on this.

Christian Klepp 02:17

Absolutely, absolutely.

David J Ebner 02:19

It’s really tough. It’s always been important to stand out. Today is just more difficult. I feel, you know, I’ve been doing this now longer than I care to admit, right there’s gray hair is starting to come to me faster than I like, but it seemed 10, 20, years ago, is a little bit easier to stand out. Not only is the market more saturated now, the marketing is more saturated now. So you have more vendors, more competition. You have like these, I don’t know, not direct competitors, but the people that are like in your sphere of influence that can be pulling people away from, potentially your brand, certainly your awareness, awareness of your brand and your time. And then on top of that, you have a million different tools that you can use as a marketer to generate content faster and more of it, right? We are tying lots, as they used to say in the scouts when I was younger, right? You know, there’s less targeting with the marketing. So it’s, it’s important, and it’s becoming even more important because it’s harder to do.

David J Ebner 03:25

I believe that the best way that you can stand out is to look for the option to be interruptive, right? You want to interrupt the flow. You don’t want to disrupt it so much. You don’t want to throw people completely off. You just want them to, like, have a little moment of, Oh, interesting like, that’s, that’s really what you’re trying to achieve as a marketer. And that’s a way to stand out, is to have more Oh, interesting moments, right? There’s a lot of different ways to do that. You can literally just Zig when everybody else is sagging, right? Like, if everybody’s doing X, you can do Y, something a little bit different, but not something that’s going to like, completely take them out of the mode that they’re in, the medium that they’re in, whatever they’re consuming content on or marketing on, whether it’s social media or an email or billboards, I don’t know, like it can really be anything. You don’t want to be completely disruptive. You just want to interrupt slightly, and that’s how you stand out. And I am definitely going to need the second question repeated, Christian.

Christian Klepp 04:24

Where do you see marketing teams struggle with standing out like because, you know, at the end of the day, people keep saying, Oh, they all sound the same.

David J Ebner 04:32

Yeah, that’s a great point too. And I do think it has a lot to do with the question one point B, right? Which is that there’s just so much more volume out there right now. And I think people are following the trap of more is more. More is not more when it comes to marketing, right? If you don’t have a unique opinion about something, you shouldn’t be saying something about it at all. That’s always been my opinion. You know? I love, you know, I don’t mind seeing people post on social media, particularly like happy this holiday, happy that holiday. Happy Thanksgiving. Everybody that’s one that goes across both borders, right? Happy Thanksgiving. But that’s not a unique opinion about something like as a consumer, some of you, you want to try to pull their attention away from them. You want the most valuable thing they have, which is their unlimited resource of time and attention. You’re trying to get that from people right? You really need to give them something of value in return. And I think we need to just take a step back every time we’re producing a piece of content, and ask us, who is this helping? How is it helping them? And is the exchange worth it, right? Like the time and energy that they’re going to give you to consume this piece of content, this piece of marketing, is it worth that? That value to them of their time and attention, right? We call it the great barter over here, but it’s value versus time, and that’s, that’s, that’s, I think that’s a place a lot of marketers fall short, especially in the age of AI, you know, there’s just easy to produce a lot of stuff, but there also it gives you an opportunity to produce great thing, things of great value as well, too. And that that could literally be the thing that’s the that’s interruptive, is literally the content you produce is just of higher value. That’s really all it could be.

Christian Klepp 06:22

Absolutely, absolutely. I wanted to go back to what you said earlier about being interruptive, right? And it’s not because I want to play the devil’s advocate, but you know that there’s a camp out there that says, What interruptive if it’s not providing any value to me, if it’s not useful to me, if it’s not interesting or insightful, then, yes, in fact, it is an interruption to my usual workday and flow. And yeah, your thoughts on that?

David J Ebner 06:49

Yeah, you know, so much stuff is just living in the sea of sameness right now, right? Like, so much stuff just looks like everything else. So I think actually being interruptive, whereas in the past, you may have said, well, this thing that produces me no value is actually the interrupt development. Now, because so many things produce so little value, being the thing of value would be the interrupt development. So it’s kind of flipped itself on its head a little bit, because there’s so much volume out there right now. So literally, I think just producing the thing of value can be that, that interruptive nature. Now you gotta be careful. It’s a fine line to dance, right? Christian, like, you do not want to cross that edge of that line into like, into disruption, right? So I’m what I’m saying is medium matters, right? So if you’re going to be interruptive, you have to be in a sphere of influence of the medium that you’re in. So don’t like, put a pop up on your website that just says, huge value here. Click here, right? That’s disruptive.

Christian Klepp 07:52

Those YouTube videos where they do this, right? Like…

David J Ebner 07:54

Yeah, subscribe now, click here, right? Like, that’s disruptive, right? That’s a it’s a lot. It’s a step too far that takes the person out of the flow of what they’re doing. All you want to do is present a blip, and that blip can be simply just something of value.

Christian Klepp 08:08

That’s a fair point. That’s a fair point. You brought up some of this stuff already, but I’m going to move on to the next question about key pitfalls that marketing folks should avoid when they’re trying to stand out, and what should they be doing instead?

David J Ebner 08:23

There’s a lot of key pitfalls, and we’re seeing it every day. I would just ask every marketer to go look at your inbox. Right? I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and various marketing materials because I’m interested. I’m always doing like, research, right? What? What? What is a subject line that I actually click on right that I’ll actually open from a vendor. What is something of value that actually gets me to click on the thing in the email to go to the following thing? What’s an ad that actually stands out to me? I would use yourself as kind of a test on that front, none of your content is going to be as interesting to your audience as it is to you as the person creating it. I think that’s really important for us to understand. You know, you might get really excited about an email or an ad campaign or some social media content, but the likelihood that anybody’s gonna care as much as you is next to zero. That just shows that sometimes we’re not the best judge. You know, judgment of the content, of it being valuable or not. So I would actually test some of the content that you’re producing if you have clients that you trust, if you have maybe even other people in your company that can look over things and give you honest feedback. That’d be helpful. I think a pitfall is, is assuming that people will care about the thing that we’re producing. I think you should probably get some feedback on especially if you’re doing, like, a long term campaign or something, you’re investing a lot of money into AB testing is fantastic. I don’t as much as it’s available to us today. Christian, I don’t think a lot of brands AB test, I don’t think they’re testing as much as they should.

Christian Klepp 09:59

Yeah. No, no, they’re using time as the excuse, right? Like we don’t. We just don’t have time. You gotta get this, yeah? We gotta get this off the ground pronto.

David J Ebner 10:07

Yeah, we just don’t have time. And I also think a big pitfall is, is because words are cheap, and content is cheap right now, because AI can produce it, we, we’re just going to flood the market with it. I’ve always thought that in marketing and sales actually, to the idea of volume is the more that you can put in the top of the funnel, the more that has potential of coming out of the bottom of the funnel. But it’s still a funnel. It’s not a hallway, right? Like everything that goes in, it doesn’t have to come out the back end, right? So if that’s the case, and we have the ability to put a lot in the top of the funnel that should make the things that come out of the bottom of the funnel actually higher quality, because we pickier. So if you can have AI write you 100 blogs, right? Well, then pick the 10 Best, right? Why produce all 100 because it dilutes your brand by producing things of low value. So anyway, I think that’s one of the pitfalls too. I mean, AB testing certainly is one of them. Whether it’s an email or an ad campaign, AB tests certainly do that. Get real data from potential clients or current clients on how things are performing, ask questions and then secondarily thinking that volume is somehow a solution. Volume should be get to higher quality.

Christian Klepp 11:21

Man, I’m gonna steal that one. What did you say? It’s a funnel, not a hallway,

David J Ebner 11:25

Yeah, exactly, yeah. Everybody doesn’t get in. This is, you know, I, as much as it’s a crude TV show, I’m a big fan of South Park, right? I’ve always been, since I was a kid, right? And they’re actually, if you want to, if you want, this is a bit of a tangent. But if you want a master class in storytelling, South Park, oh yeah, so good at that. Like, everything in an episode follows like a chain of events in a line. There’s no like things that happen that don’t make sense or like are just thrown in there for character development. They don’t just do that. They literally everything happens in concession with the next thing. But anyway, there’s an episode where Cartman opens his own, you know, theme park, and he tells people they can’t come in, like nobody can come in. And, of course, there’s a line around the block, right? That’s a funnel, not a hallway, right?

Christian Klepp 12:12

I love it. I love it. Yeah. Think they came up with an episode lately that, I’ll that was a, I won’t say, slightly political. It was highly political.

David J Ebner 12:22

Who these guys? Highly political? Never they. You know, what I do like about them is they make fun of everybody kind of, kind of equally. When they see injustice in the world, they certainly point a finger at it, and actually point it in the eye of the person that is causing the injustice as they see it. But they are, they’re open to point a finger at anybody?

Christian Klepp 12:42

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, moving on to the next question. So one way that B2B companies can stand out in that sea of sameness is through brand storytelling. So talk to us about that and how B2B companies can leverage brand storytelling for greater success.

David J Ebner 12:59

Yeah, that’s a great question. Christian, I think a lot of people kind of have different definitions of brand storytelling, I should say, so I’ll share my definition. None are particularly right or wrong, but, you know, I like mine, so I’ll share that one. I think brand storytelling is everything about the audience and not really about the brand at all. I think a lot of people will assume that brand storytelling aligns itself more with the story of the brand, the history of the brand, the founders, story, all those elements which can play into it, certainly. But people like to hear stories about people like them. They don’t want to hear a brand just promote itself, right? They want to hear something that kind of excites them, something that solves their problems. They want to hear about something that saves them money or it gives them a better quality of life, right? That’s pretty much like the only three things any product or solution ever does. With that being the case, you need to make the brand story a telling about the people whose lives you’re improving. So focus on that. When you’re building a brand story. The brand story, you start to think through your personas, your target audiences, you think through their pain points. You think through your solutions, and then your solutions to their pain points. It makes almost a mathematical equation. What’s the outcome? Right? So pain point plus solution should equal x, and that x should be a better life, you know, saving money, right? Reaching goals, all those kind of things should be what fits in that box.

David J Ebner 14:32

And that’s really where your brain story should start. Our story is about helping who? Who do you help? How do you help them? How is their life better now that they’ve been helped answer those questions, and you’re on your way to telling a great story. And there’s plenty of great brands who do this, and they still get plenty of brand recognition. I think of Nike is a fantastic, fantastic at this. You know, you look at their commercials, and they’re really not about Nike, they’re about empowering people. Who are using Nike products, right? Like the kid running the, you know, running the drills at football camp or whatever it may be, right? You might see a Nike branded asset somewhere in the commercial, but until the end, you probably could say that’s almost any brand other than you know that it’s Nike, because they’re the only one that does that. So they’ve got brand recognition even when their logo is not showing but it’s really all about how they’re making the lives better the people who use their products. And that’s a good place to start, um, and then you can build story off of that.

Christian Klepp 15:31

Yeah, yeah. No, no, I love it. I love it, and I’m absolutely on board with that. But, um, you know the world of B2B, um, it’s not always easy to get buy in for brand storytelling. And you know where I’m going with this, right? Because, you know, I’m totally with you, with you there, man, like you’re preaching the choir here, but like, for those people that are in the Board of Directors the C-suite, and people that that don’t even know what brand is, how do you get buy in in terms of the importance of brand storytelling to stand out.

David J Ebner 16:07

That’s a great question. I’ve been spending, you know, half of my life trying to, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to solve that problem. I like to kind of point the question back at the person who’s asking it, when that happens. So why should we invest in brand storytelling? I would ask that executive, you know, what their favorite? You know, what kind of car do they drive? Why do they drive that type of car? Right? If they drive a BMW, why they drive a BMW? They think it’s a nice car. It’s a high quality car. It’s got a little bit of performance baked in with, like, a little bit of luxury. Great off. You know, if BMW, you always drive BMW is like, why? What brought you to them in the first place? Like, you know, when you start to really dive into how everybody buys products and consumes things, a lot of it comes down to trust. We have some sort of trust built with that brand, whether it’s through advertising and marketing or we’ve used their products before. Something leads us to that beginning of that trust, beginning of that relationship. And that’s all brand storytelling is, is trying to build trust between the audience and a brand, right? And everybody does it with everything that they consume in their lives, right? So I think if you get in that meeting room and you’re getting some pushback from executives, you can just explain that that’s how things are purchased everywhere, and they always start with some sort of relationship, typically. And sometimes people just randomly buy things that happens less likely today than it used to, but their interaction with that product then starts to build that relationship. So no matter what, it still comes down to relationship. And usually you can correlate that with some personal experience of the person asking the question. And that usually gets you, at least to the next step.

Christian Klepp 17:50

Or at the very least, they’ll look at you and kind of like, understand, like, Okay, this is what we’re trying to achieve here. This is the objective of the exercise, right?

David J Ebner 17:58

Yeah, exactly. If, when you start to explain that, when you can start to build trust with people, and they start to see themselves in as part of your brand, and you truly get brand loyalty. You don’t just have a customer that buys something one time, right? And the end goal for any business usually is not to sell one item to one person, maybe people who like, I don’t know, produce caskets or something like that, right? Yeah, we’re not going to sell two to that guy, right? But, you know, in the end, almost every product on the planet, you’re trying to get more than one purchase from an individual consumer, especially if you sell a monthly subscription. If you’re in the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) business, you’re doing that all day long, right? You’re trying to get them to continue to buy, continue to answer the question, What have you done for me lately? Brand storytelling in the producing marketing that comes from that can answer those questions and keeps you relevant to those people who can continue to buy your products.

Christian Klepp 18:51

It’s funny that you brought that up, because I find that the SaaS space is one that could really benefit from brand storytelling. I feel that. Like, not all of them again, right? Like, but many of them are like, the repeat offenders of like, Yeah, well, look at how awesome all our features are, and look at what this, what this little gizmo here can do, right? And it, and some of them do answer or address the pain points of the target audience, but I find that they make it more about the product and less about the customer.

David J Ebner 19:20

Yeah.

Christian Klepp 19:20

Right? And that’s where it all goes a bit all right.

David J Ebner 19:22

Yeah, I agree 100% like, you have to this is why I honestly prefer to call everything we produce solutions and not products, right? Because it really puts you in the pain point or in the mindset of pain points. See, I was already at pain points before finished my sentence. But, like, you want to solve problems for people. So you sell solutions, not products, right? That’s extremely important. You have benefits, not features, right? We want to call them features. We’re really excited about this new thing people can do. But how does it benefit someone? How does it make their life better when you promote whatever that feature is, it should really be all about how you make somebody’s life better with that piece, right? Not just how you make more money with it, which is a veiled sometimes comes through from available point of view, like, Hey, we’re announcing, we’re very excited to announce this new launch of a feature set. Well, what, what’s in it for me is the answer we should always be answering. It’s a question that we should always be answering for our customers.

Christian Klepp 20:20

Exactly, exactly. Okay, so please provide examples of how B2B companies can stand out in saturated markets. So specifically, like, you know, what steps can they take? What are those components that need to be in that process? And you brought some of these up already.

David J Ebner 20:37

Yeah, I’ll actually take a little bit of a step out and say, I’m gonna say something that’s somewhat unpopular, right? So I think one way for you to step out is to give away the secret sauce. We’re big proponents of this over at content workshop, we want to tell people we want to essentially demonstrate our expertise, and the best way we can do that is tell people what we do and how we do it. Now, some could say, hey, like anybody could grab that then and then go do it themselves. Sure they can, but it’s still really, really hard to do. It took us, you know, 13 years of being in business to figure this out, not just to like we’re not solving a mathematical equation. A lot of work goes into it every time to make it successful so they can do it on their own and try to do it cheap, they’ll probably fail if they want it done right and fast, they’re going to come to us right. So I think that’s a great way to stand out, just to use us as an example.

David J Ebner 21:34

We sell, you know, content marketing services. We do a lot of backlink building for our clients to build domain authority for their sites, and so we essentially sell that service to a lot of brands, and we recently came out with a series of eight blogs that essentially explains exactly how we do it and our theory behind it. It is certainly giving away the secret sauce, but it’s gotten a lot of attention from our target audience on LinkedIn and emails and different different mediums. And we even can ask some of our customers have come to us, like, why are you publishing that? Like, and then I turn it back on them, like you already knew that, and you still buy stuff from us. So like, why do you buy stuff from us? And it always comes back to the same. Thing is that, you know, we still can’t do it, even though we know how right I might be able to look up like how a rocket sends people into space. That doesn’t mean I can do it, right? So anyway, that’s one way to certainly stand out, because you have to demonstrate expertise or have a specific opinion about something in your content. And if you’re going to produce, produce marketing that does that, that will stand out and giving away the secret sauce is something that has always worked since the beginning of time.

Christian Klepp 22:44

I love that. I love that. And I did read some of those articles, by the way, yeah, because I saw, I saw the posts, and I’m of exactly the same opinion that, yes, people can get that and take that knowledge and start to apply it. But like, you know, having done some of this work myself, I can, I can attest to the fact that it’s no walk in the park, right? I mean, I’m a copywriter myself, and I’ve run into like, prospects that say, well, that shouldn’t be too difficult, right? Like, website copywriting. I mean, I can write. I know how to do it. I’m like, it’s an entirely different set of skills and craft, right? It’s one thing if you know how to write like, like, I can write you an email, but like, but writing like copy that actually will go onto a website that will convert people, like visitors or visitors into paying customers. I would argue that that’s a skill, right? Like anybody can get up on stage and say something, not many people can get up on stage and move a crowd.

David J Ebner 23:48

Yeah, you’re exactly right. I mean, I literally went to school for this Christian I have a master in fine arts, in creative writing. I studied storytelling, right, right? So, so I can attest to what you’re saying is 100% true. We’ve hired a million writers here at content workshop. You don’t knowing how to write is very easy. It’s very easy to write. Writing well is very difficult. Writing Well, in specific mediums, to move an audience is near impossible task, and there’s very few people that can do it effectively. I mean, you’re probably gonna get today people saying, well, I can’t ChatGPT do that. Like, why? Why would I hire somebody to do that? ChatGPT can do that. Words are cheap right now. Words are very cheap. Good brand storytelling is not and that is part of the reason that people need to stand out right now. It’s because of, words are extremely cheap.

Christian Klepp 24:40

100% 100% and I’m gonna go back to what you said earlier, only because I’m genuinely interested in this, like you studied storytelling. And for those of you out there that have spent some time doing this type of work, there are different types of storytelling techniques. So I’m gonna throw. This one out at you, David, like, what? What’s your, what’s your, what, I wouldn’t say prefer, but what’s one of your favorite storytelling techniques to use for customers? And why?

David J Ebner 25:09

Yeah, well, I’m big on the audience, and I’m big on solving pain points, so I am all day long. Hero’s Journey is the method of storytelling that we try to adopt for our clients, it’s the best way to do brand storytelling. Certainly is to focus on a character. Have that character be the people whose lives you make better, and let that be your main character, right? And tell the story of literally. You can tell their story literally, you can do a case study, you can do a testimonial. You can do something like that, where you actually break down the individual story of somebody going through the life of having a problem, searching for a solution, and in the midst of all the terrible options out there, there was a shining a shining star, and that shining star was your brand. And now their life is so much better, and now they can do X that they couldn’t do before, right? That is the flow. I mean, that’s, for the most part, the hero’s journey. There’s usually, like, some sort of, like conflict that’s a little bit heavier in the middle there. But set aside, it’s the idea that, you know, there’s, there’s a main character, that main character is embarking on a task. That main character, the task is thrust upon them and their life, they accomplish it, and their life is better, right? So you can, you can adopt that into any type of content, whether it actually has characters in it or not just any through any type of storytelling, like problem, solution based storytelling is all heroes journey kind of wrapped up in a little bit of a different ball.

Christian Klepp 26:43

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Good old Joseph Campbell.

David J Ebner 26:46

That’s right!

Christian Klepp 26:47

Fantastic. Okay, so based on what you’ve been saying in the past, like 20 or 30 minutes or so, like B2B companies can build trust and credibility with their target audience by developing interesting, relevant and insightful content. Now here comes the fun part. In our previous conversation, you mentioned you had some unpopular opinions about content marketing in 2025 and just from a top level perspective, because I know you could probably talk about this topic for like, 10 hours, but like, just from the top of perspective, what are these unpopular opinions?

David J Ebner 27:25

Yeah, well, we’ve talked about a few of them. I’m obviously very, not very brash about bringing up unpopular opinions, but I definitely believe giving away, giving away the secret sauce, is one of them. On the same note, I actually do believe that it’s okay to gate some content, and I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive either. I think there’s this, this barter system between, you know, time and value, and if the value is great enough, you certainly can gate content. The problem is you will have had to already build trust with the individual audience that they would believe you that the gate is worth, worth handing over the keys to get in. And that doesn’t happen a lot. You can’t just come out of the gate with a gate, for lack of a better phrase, but there’s gated content all over the place. What do we call Netflix? What do we call Hulu? Their entertainment content has always been gated because we believe it provides enough value that’s worth the money that we’re going to exchange. For brands it’s really just about the value for the content that they’re going to consume and their time that they’re going to give for it. So I do believe that there is a place where it can live. It’s few and far between from presenting enough value, though, in today’s space, another unpopular opinion. And I guess there’s really two camps on this. I do believe that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important still. I know that a lot of people are losing a lot of top of funnel informational traffic, but I think SEO is still important.

Christian Klepp 28:56

What’s your thought on Well, it’s 2025 and you know, I have to ask you this question, but like AI search engines, right? How does that play into the whole… Well, I would say the manner and methodology in which you craft brand stories and, you know, create content for AI search engines.

David J Ebner 29:19

Yeah, that’s a good question. I was recently talking to somebody on my team about this, and it’s like we get so caught up in the latest tool and the latest gateway from how are people going to consume our content, that we kind of lose sight in what the content should be in the first place. SEO, you know, Google was just a gateway. It was just a gateway to see our content. So yeah, we played the game. We added keywords in certain places, right? Like we worked around the angles that we were supposed to work around. But the reason why all of those elements actually worked is because the consumers actually preferred it that way. Google was just giving people know what they wanted, and they search for a solution, they get an answer, right? So of course they were going to do AI overviews. Of course they were going to do snippets. Snippets existed way before AI overviews. People didn’t complain about that. They all just wanted to be in the snippet. Why? Because it was more likely that their link was going to get clicked. So the same is true for AI overviews. The same is true for LLMs (Large Language Models), the same is true for AI search engines.

David J Ebner 30:24

If you produce good content and you’re an authority on a topic and people are talking about you, which is all the same stuff that was true before, it’s still true today, it’s just a different gateway of people coming to your content. Now that doesn’t mean you don’t have to, again, play the game a little bit in today’s world, it’s important to have domain authority and brand authority to get people to see your content to be more visible. In this zero click environment we’re in, there’s fewer behavior triggers that that allow Google and open AI and other tools to rank appropriately the content. So it’s going to be brand, it’s going to be ranked based on authority first, and then people will engage in it eventually. So that being the case, you really need to focus time and energy on making sure your site, your website, your digital storefront, your home base, has authority. Backlinking is a great way to do that, actually. So it’s full circle, but all we have to do is is keep doing the good things we were doing before, which is telling good stories, having engaging content, build not just informational content, build educational content, right? Like write content for people who seek to understand, not just seek to be informed.

David J Ebner 31:39

Informational content will be served up more likely in the AI overviews. We’re talking about like, what is x, right? Like, what is something definition content which is actually still extremely valuable to produce. Don’t see that ground, because the last thing we need is AI not having informed sites to pull that information from. We need that as a society and as a brand you want to show up in the AI overview. However, spend more time and energy, or I would say, probably a larger percentage of your budget, producing educational content. When people are posed a problem, give them the solution and then show them how they can solve that problem for themselves in the future. I guess that’s the same thing as giving away the secret sauce. But dive in deep. Don’t go wide. Go deep on your content. And I think that’s going to serve you in this new environment. And it’s also better for the consumer. And if it’s better for the consumer, then it’s, you know, it’s going to make its way to the top of whatever search engine the individual is using.

Christian Klepp 32:37

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I’m totally with you on that one. I guess so many people just get caught up in this whole aspect of SEO where, like, keyword stuffing, right? Well, it’s gonna have keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, and then there’s the whole discussion, which I had with a guest last week about, like, oh, then they’re obsessed with, they’re obsessing with the technical SEO aspect of it. And I’m not saying that that’s not important, but there’s no point having great technical SEO and then the contents no good, right? Or you’re developing the content for the algorithm, as it were, versus for the actual to your point. What purpose does this content serve? And who is this for? And how is this going to help them?

David J Ebner 33:21

Right? Yeah, exactly. That’s what we should do at the end of every piece, or when you’re IDing a new piece of content, or really any marketing campaign, yeah. But specifically content, you should ask yourself those questions, who does this help? How does it help them? And I actually like to ask the question, Who does this hurt? We don’t think about our content hurting people, right? It’s just content. But for you to like, abuse somebody’s time and attention that is not something they don’t get that back, that’s time they can be spending with their family, with their kids, with on something more important at work. So having a flashing headline, having a piece of content that doesn’t produce any value, not following up on the promise that your content has, that that can actually hurt people. So you know, I’m of the camp of asking those questions on the front end. And one of my team members likes to ask the question, so what? Like we wrote this thing, we have this piece. So what? And if you don’t have an answer for that, it’s a little intrusive, right? By Design. If you don’t have a good answer for that, then you probably shouldn’t have the piece in the first place, right? We shouldn’t also be asking ourselves, like, what medium should we produce this content on? Or should it be gated, or un gated? Like, all of those should be answered before you start, because you need to build the content to meet those metrics, meet those mediums. Certain types of content plays better on social than it does in an email, right? It’s just that’s just that simple. When somebody is viewing content, whatever medium they’re viewing it in, puts them in a certain state of mind, right? And. Um, some things are scrolls, some things are diving deep, some things are searching, right? Those are all different mediums. So they’re all looking for something different there. So try to match your content with your medium. I think it’s extremely helpful just making sure more people see it.

Christian Klepp 35:16

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely okay. We come to the point in the conversation where we’re talking about actionable tips, and you’ve given us plenty already. So this is almost, think of this like a recap of everything that you’ve just said. But just imagine that there’s somebody out there, a B2B content marketer, as it were, that’s listening to this conversation and going, Gosh, you know what? David’s right? And I really want to take action on this right away. What are these three to five things you would advise them to take action on right now when it comes to standing out.

David J Ebner 35:47

Yeah, I would, depending on the size of your company, find the person who works in the service department or operations, or whatever it is, whoever delivers the solution to the client, go to them and ask them, give me some broad strokes on how we actually deliver the solution to the client. That is a great indicator of giving away the secret sauce, a way for you to build an entire series around those things. You can even keep it super high level. You don’t have to get super detail if you’re really worried about people taking away that. What you do just don’t go into a ton of detail, but give them the broad strokes of it. Sure. That’s fine. That’s helpful for most people. So looking to your operations and service team as triggers for content is fantastic. Certainly, I would say, from an AI point of view, using AI and developing content, use it however you best think you can. But don’t. Do not let quality be sacrificed in efficiency. Do not let quality be sacrificed in efficiency. It’s a great quote from Jerry Seinfeld when he talks about writing Seinfeld, and they talk about how much work it was and how demanding it was to write an episode every week, right? And somebody asked Jerry like, couldn’t you outsource some of the writing to another team, to a consultant, something like that, and his initial thought was we could but then it wouldn’t be ours. It wouldn’t be our thing. It wouldn’t be special to us, right? We weren’t just there to sell ad space in our show. We were there to tell a story, right? So think of AI the same way too, right? Just because it’s more efficient does not mean that it’s better, it’s better when it’s better, that’s the rule of thumb. Doesn’t matter if a monkey wrote it, a copywriter wrote it, or AI wrote it. If it’s good, it’s good, right? Just have your quality metric.

Christian Klepp 37:35

Fantastic tips. Yeah. So definitely like talking to the people in the front lines, as it were, that are delivering the product or the service and getting their take on. Like, okay, well, what is it that’s keeping these customers up at night? Like, what are they, what are these challenges that they’re dealing with that, you know, I think it’s, I think it’s the design thinking approach, where they ask the question, suppose we did this this this. How would that help you, right? What if we did this this this, how would that be useful to you, right? So it’s trying to come at it from a more constructive angle, versus all the other so many problems. Like, yeah, we get that right? And then, and then the AI piece, I mean, couldn’t agree more. I mean, the focusing on the quality and not like the, as you alluded to the volume aspect of it, because there is that temptation to just keep cranking that stuff out. I’m going to use the word cranking because that’s really what it is, right?

David J Ebner 38:34

Yeah, you’re winding a machine up. Man. Go!

Christian Klepp 38:37

Exactly, exactly. Okay. Here comes the bonus question, my friend and again, only because you speak about this so passionately, what is it about brand storytelling, right? This craft that you have honed over the years? What is it about this craft that you wish more people knew about?

David J Ebner 38:59

I would want them to know more about the emotional impact that brand storytelling actually has. I think of, you know, I went to school, I got a Fine Arts Degree, and then that wasn’t enough, and I got another Fine Arts Degree, like I got a Master’s in Fine Arts, right? And the difference, I think, between art and content is about emotional connection. But I don’t think there has to be that difference. I really do believe we can build emotional connection in the content in the brain stories that we tell in whatever medium they come out in. And when I say that, I mean an emotional connection means that somebody views something or experiences something, and then later, when they’re not in front of that thing anymore or experiencing it anymore, they can recall the feelings that those items brought out in them, and they can feel it once again. That’s what art does to us. We see a piece of art, we remember it. We think of the passion, or whatever you. Feeling it brought sadness, or whatever was depicted in the art, or however we view that art, and by being able to recall it again in the future is really what defines it. And I think brand storytelling can do that too. There’s plenty of great examples of brands that can build emotion with their audience, and the emotions are varying, obviously. So I would like people to know that that’s possible. I’d like people to think of ways that they can do that. You know, we work a lot in cybersecurity, and one of our clients said that he wants to create content so good that his target audience, cries. And I’m like, Man, I mean, I don’t even know where to go with that, but that’s, that’s deep, right? We can build emotional connection in the content that we’re producing, and it can be a positive experience for the individual. So that’s something I wish more people knew that could happen in brand storytelling, and more people would attempt to accomplish that.

Christian Klepp 40:56

that. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And it doesn’t have to be emotional in the sense that it makes you cry, but it’s, it’s aspirational, or it leaves you awestruck, like, wow. Kind of like when you, you know, you, you brought it up earlier on the conversation, like the Nike ads, right? Like, and you look at that and go, Wow, that’s kind of like what I’m going through, all right? Like, that kind of thing. Fantastic, fantastic. David, um, this was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. So please quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.

David J Ebner 41:32

Fantastic, fantastic once again, David, thanks so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

David J Ebner 41:32

Yeah, I’m David J Ebner. I’m the President and Founder of Content Workshop. The best way to get a hold of me is really just going to our website contentworkshop.com, there’s a little chat window in the bottom that’s not it’s a bot that literally comes to me in my phone right here. So if you want to get a hold of me or connect with me, it’s a great way just to chat with me. I tell people my friendship is always free, so go there and take advantage of that if you want to, you know, see what’s interesting to me, and what I want to talk about, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, and that’s David J Ebner, yeah, I’d love to, I’d love to connect.

David J Ebner 42:09

Sounds good. Thanks, Christian.

Christian Klepp 42:14

Thanks bye for now.

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