Marketing and BD professionals have a wealth of tools and channels at their fingertips to create and share valuable thought leadership with their intended audience.

But what is often missing is the structure, strategy and process around that which enables professionals to create and publish relevant content, in a timely and efficient manner, that reaches their audience in real-time.

We’re delighted to welcome Tom Elgar, Co-founder of Passle to the CMO Series, to talk about how a new framework - the Four Pillars of Professional Services Content Marketing - will help overcome these very challenges.

Tom shares what the Four Pillars are and why they are so vital in getting thought leadership programs right.

Charlie and Tom discuss:

• The challenge or problem that the Four Pillars framework tackles
• What the Four Pillars of Content Marketing are and why they are so important and relevant to professional services firms
• What the first pillar, Author-Centric Publication, is and why it is key
• What Clear Governance looks like and why it’s so vital
• What Create Once, Publish Everywhere is in practice and how firms can get it right
• The final pillar - Relevant Feedback - why it’s important and how firms go about evidencing the impact of thought leadership 
• Advice for any marketing and BD professionals looking to implement a successful content marketing program

Transcription: 

Intro: Welcome to the Passle Podcast CMO series. 

Charlie: Hello and welcome to the Passle CMO series podcast. I'm Charlie Knight and on this special edition of the series, I'm lucky enough to sit down with Tom Elgar, Co-founder of Passle, to discuss the essential elements that make up a successful content marketing strategy. Designed to overcome the unique challenges that law firms and other professional services businesses face. Tom is going to talk through the four pillars of professional services content marketing, what they are and why they are so critical to getting your thought leadership program right. So welcome Tom!

Tom: Hello Charlie, Thanks for having me on. 

Charlie: Good to have you on. If you're okay, we'll get straight into the questions, but I guess before we look at the four pillars and what those actually are and mean to firms, can you just give us a bit of background on the challenge or the problem that this framework tackles? 

Tom: So the problem really is that content marketing can be quite amorphous. So when you're trying to work out what to do, it can feel a bit like a bit of a soup. And the idea with the four pillars is just to provide some simple bedrock that you absolutely must have, the processes you must have in order for it to be successful. So it's not around the marketing part of it, which is the audience, what's the message, tone of voice, all that sort of stuff. This is actually the simple steps you must go through in order to have a successful content marketing program. 

Charlie: Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you. Tom, can you give our listeners an overview of the four pillars of content marketing and then we can kind of delve into those in a bit more detail? 

Tom: Yes, of course. So the four pillars are having an author-centric publication process, having clear governance, having broad distribution, so great once and publish everywhere, and also feedback. And the point is that you really need to have all four of those things in place. It's not sort of a three-out-of-four will do situation. You actually have to have all of those processes in place and have a successful program. 

Charlie: Great. Why I guess is that so important, relevant to professional services firms in particular? 

Tom: Well, the unique problem for professional services is that if you're a content marketing specialist and that's your job, then you will actually have all these things set up. So when you arrive at work in the morning, you will have access to wherever you're publishing the content. So it's on the website, it's on WordPress or it's on Sitecore or whatever it might be, or Medium. You'll have image editing tools, you'll probably have podcast tools, video tools, all that sort of stuff is part of that, because that's your job. The problem for professional services is that they have none of those the authors have none of those tools and they don't have any of the other pillars they don't have an easy way of getting things published, they don't have an easy way of distributing it and they don't get feedback. So the problem for professional services is not that it's a unique challenge, it's just that you're trying to solve that problem at scale for a large number of authors because you want those experts creating the content. That's the real problem is how to get those experts engaged, and creating the content. 

Charlie: Yeah, that makes sense. So looking at those four pillars, then you kind of gave us a brief overview there. So when you talk about author-centric publication, what do you mean by that and why is that so key? 

Tom: Yes, what you're trying to do is the expert, the consultant, is creating this content maybe ten or 20 times a year. So it's an unfamiliar environment each time. So what you've got to do is make it extremely clear what's going on for that group and make it really engaging and make it easy, make it engaging. And so you might say, well, it's fine, we can get people to use Microsoft Word. They're very familiar with Microsoft Word. They can create the content there. But actually, when you're trying to get that content and create it, make it into a real, make it live as it would get it published, you've got issues like tagging, where should it appear on the website, for example, what about multiple authors? And you've got this kind of this friction that's basically what it ends up being. And you have versioning. So you write a copy, you send it, somebody else has a look at it, they come back, they changed it. Now you've got two versions of it. And what it does is it makes it extremely difficult to do this stuff at scale because you've just got this friction. So you're kind of pushing a car with the brakes-on kind of situation. 

Charlie: Yes, I'm sure our listeners, I'm sure many of them are sat here kind of nodding as you say that, and have experienced that very thing. So, yeah, that all makes sense. And I guess moving on to the second pillar, Clear Governance, can you tell us more about what that looks like and why it's vital? 

Tom: Yeah, it's related to the first one insofar as it's about scale. It's knowing, having lots of people who are non-specialists, knowing how to get this stuff, who they should send it to, who does it, how it gets and signed off. Is it easy to sign it off? And also, finally, is it fast? Because you've got to get, you need to, if you're making a point about what's going on in the market, there's no point making it in three weeks' time. You've got to make it in hours rather than days. Kind of a good example of this. It's a long time ago now, but it was in a previous business. I'd written a blog post about our niche area and I was very pleased with it. And I sent it off to our PR specialist to get it, to sign it off and put it live. And I sent it off and you've obviously got the whole imposter syndrome issue that you're feeling kind of, oh gosh, are they all going to laugh at me, sort of thing. So anyway, eventually sent it off and then he didn't get back to me that day and I remember thinking probably fine. And then a couple of weeks went by and I started thinking that he didn't want to get back to me because it was so embarrassingly poor that he didn't want to tell me, one of those situations. Anyway, eventually, I met him months and months later, actually at a party because I knew him personally and I eventually got into this thing and it turned out I’d sent it to the wrong email address. But it's a really good example of the sort of thing that happens. You've got this kind of and that never got published and we never did have a newsletter and it was just a really good example of how these things fall over on the smallest issue. 

Charlie: Yeah, I guess it's just kind of removing those barriers and like you say, those kind of human error things that kind of get in the way of things sometimes, like your story there. And I guess just to your point around kind of scale and speed, I think it's something we've heard a lot about from other CMOS on the podcast, actually. Do you think that that's kind of changed, obviously, recent events of the past few years? It really does feel like the speed at which people need to respond and react to things in the market has really kind of accelerated. Do you see that? 

Tom: Yes, absolutely. I think if you're working in a digital environment, people aren't going into offices as much as they were and so they're looking to their lawyers and consultants to provide them with expertise. But they're used to going online and reading the newspapers and the newspapers are minutes old or at most hours old and so that's their expectation. So turning up something three weeks after the event just looks unprofessional and incompetent nowadays. So you've got to do things to do so quickly and get it to your market rapidly, frankly, the point of which you have the piece of intelligence is at the same time, so there's no particular the only reason it would be late is through a poor process. It's not that the content hasn't been written. There's no reason for that to be a problem as far as I think. 

Charlie: Yeah, absolutely. Great. So moving on to the third pillar then, create once published everywhere, I guess it sounds fairly self-explanatory, but what does that look like in practice and how can firms get it right? 

Tom: Yeah. So again, if you're a professional, you will have relationships with magazines, you'll have access to the website to get it published and all sorts of processes like that, but again, for the individual. So what you've got to do is set up a process whereby you can get the content live, wherever that might be, and then also a system whereby people can easily publish it out to the key places they want to. So the obvious one is to get your consultants and lawyers to put it onto their LinkedIn profile. So some way of doing that, because their networks are absolute gold dust. They're your clients, so you definitely want to enable that, but then also have a way of getting onto newsletters easily. Automated digests are fantastic. The whole point is not to add in manual processes where you can possibly avoid it. And then there are other really good networks. People like JD Supra Lexology, Mondaq, all have excellent networks. And again, you want to automate the process by which he goes on to those platforms, again, to remove friction and make the whole thing timely and easy to get done. 

Charlie: Yeah. So I guess it's about optimising the content that you have, making the most out of its value and getting it everywhere, rather than creating it once, publishing it once, and then having to create more content because no one saw the first one. 

Tom: Yeah, exactly right. I mean, it is an effort to create good content, there's no denying it. So to not distribute it as widely as makes sense is crazy, really. The cost of creating the content has already been laid down by writing it in the first place or creating the podcast or whatever it is in the first place. So not disbributing it is not a good plan. 

Charlie: Okay, so the final pillar then. Relevant feedback. So why is feedback so important? And how can firms go about evidencing the impact of their thought leadership in a way that's meaningful? 

Tom: Yes, I must say, I'm kind of a bit of a late convert to the whole feedback idea. Which sounds ridiculous. But there's a good analogy that somebody gave me once. Which is when you go ten-pin bowling. And if you were to roll the ball down and just before it hit pins. This big black curtain came down and you could never see how many pins were rolled, or knocked over. You never do it twice. You would never throw the ball twice. And that's how important it is in this environment. If you can't tell the key people who are creating the content what happened, what the value of their content, the effort that they put into it was, then they're simply not going to do it twice. So that feeding back to the authors is absolutely critical otherwise, your program will fail, there's no doubt about it. But also you need to feedback to the various different stakeholders. So you might want to feedback directly to the lawyer or consultant, but you also want to feedback to the sector itself or that division. So how is that team doing in creating content for its market? So how many views it had this month and then equally up in layers. So to different people, you want to provide different tools and different analytics. So the BD professionals might be very comfortable going into Google Analytics or some more complex data, but for the consultants, you're typically trying to give them the key nugget that really makes a difference. The one person who read this thing, who they're trying to there are key clients and they're building an infrastructure project, is going to last ten years. That's the person they really want to influence. And the other 50 thousand people who read that content over the past year is irrelevant. So you've got to really try and break it down and work out what's interesting to what group. And if you do, when everyone can see the value, then they'll just go and go and go again. If you can show them the value, they'll do it. Everybody knows in there, everyone knows that content marketing is a good idea. You don't have to sell that. And it's completely axiomatic for lawyers and consultants who have been standing on stages and doing lunch and learns for hundreds of years. That's how they've been doing business for a very long time. So they completely understand the power of content marketing, but you've got to give them feedback. And when you're on stage, you can see people nodding in the audience and you can see people agreeing with you and they come and ask you after the speech. So that was really interesting. I'd love to get you to talk about this, that and the other. But you don't get that on the web and you don't get that with content very easily. So you've got to make an effort to make sure that people do get that feedback. It's absolutely critical and if you do, then it will work. 

Charlie: Yeah. And I suppose there's a kind of competition element to it, isn't that if you kind of know how many reads your content or views is getting, you can kind of start benchmarking and comparing it to your peers or even to your own work and it becomes a bit of a competition in that respect. 

Tom: Absolutely, yeah. And Gamifying is definitely a strong approach. The Gamification piece really just enables them to do what they already want to do. It makes something fun that they know they should do. And so it's really, really helpful, particularly in the launch process when you're setting it up, to go through that, to just add a bit of fun to it. But you're right, just, generally speaking, benchmarking, particularly for lawyers, is an absolute must. Everyone loves that. 

Charlie: And I guess the ultimate goal with all of this, thought leadership programs, is winning new business, retaining talent, attracting talent to the firm. So I suppose it's kind of being able to evidence that as well, isn't it? In time, being able to see those links between the people that are seeing your content and then seeing how those conversations start and see that business come in in the longer term. 

Tom: Absolutely, yeah. If you can get those real-world, those real-world stories. Things about B2B is all about small numbers, actually. The fact that a person or three people mentioned this post and they happen to be involved on whatever project is actually that's a real killer. So that's where the real value is. So those stories and also just in doing that, in creating content, some authenticity is important, which is kind of part of that same process. 

Charlie: Yeah, absolutely. That's wonderful. Thank you, Tom. Really helpful to hear more about the four pillars and what that means for businesses. So I guess that the last thing we like to ask on the podcast, as our regular listeners will know, is to ask you your key piece of advice or takeaway that you would offer to any other marketing and BD professionals out there looking to implement a successful content marketing program. 

Tom: Well, other than things I've just said above, which is about process, I think it's really and again, I'm not saying anybody who's in marketing, this is self-evident, but it's just really, really important to go back and think about who your audience is. Because in B2B it's quite easy to start to think that the numbers of people who are seeing stuff is relevant. But actually we almost all work in niche markets of one kind or another. And so 99 9% of people are just not relevant. And in fact, if they are reading it, then probably the stuff you're saying isn't actually as pertinent and as focused as maybe it should be. So I would just say don't be scared of small numbers. Small numbers are fine. And that's kind of the dirty secret of B2B marketing is that actually, it's just the right, the right dozen people are far better than the 50,000 wrong people. So that would just go back and focus on that and try and be as harsh about it as you possibly can, I think. 

Charlie: Brilliant advice, I guess quality over quantity then, in terms of the audience. Excellent. So just to round things off with a bit of fun, hopefully, should we get straight into our Quickfire round? 

Tom: Why not? 

Charlie: So, first question, what's your favourite business and non-business book?

Tom: So actually on the topic that we've just talked about, we have a book in the office called Hooked by a guy called Nir Eyal which is about creating processes. So the hook being a process, you have a trigger, something happens, you give feedback, there's a trigger, something happens and feedback. And it's just quite an interesting book about that. Just like most business books. Actually, if you read the first two chapters you're probably fine. You don't have to necessarily dig into the second 100 pages, but that's a good one. And then on the non-business book, this is just because I was in a bookshop recently and I read this book a while ago and there's a book called Summer by Edith Wharton. So I read a bunch of her books a few years ago and I saw this question and I thought, that's one that popped into my head and it's absolutely terrific, but there's lots of good books in the world. But that was a good one. 

Charlie: Good. I'll take a look at those. And question two, what was your first job? 

Tom: So. I don't know whether it's my first job. But it was certainly when I was very young and it was selling burglar alarms, door to door. I was 17 or whatever. It was dark. I remember it was in Winter. There are a bunch of us kids and we would go up and down the streets. Banging on people's doors and saying. Have you got a burglar alarm? 

Charlie: Probably quite disconcerting. 

Tom: It was a hard sell. And amazingly, amazingly, we did I think I sold two systems actually doing that, which is I don't know, people must be nicer in the old days. I don't know. That was one of my very first jobs. 

Charlie: Brilliant. Question three what makes you happy at work? 

Tom: Well, there's lots of things. So I think the thing that's most fun is where you're having a conversation about something that you're trying to do in the future and you've just got that quite fun dynamic going where typically it's quite a laugh. But also people just come up with some quite good ideas and then you're going back and forth with them and coming up with ideas and dropping the idea and then coming back the idea. And that whole process is just that whole innovation piece is just brilliant. And other than that, just sometimes we have our Passle punting. So just going out with everyone and just working with nice people basically is the best bit.

Charlie: Good answer. Question four what are you listening to at the moment? So that could be a podcast, obviously, apart from the CMO series. Music or an audiobook. 

Tom: Well, I don't actually listen very much music. I noticed when you saw them that's all the questions I basically get tortured by my kids in my car and at the moment, what the trouble is, what they do is they find some songs and then they just play them until they're dead, which is just a real shame. But anyway, so I'm getting a lot of Michael Jackson, getting a lot of Billie Jean at the moment. But the truth is, I know that in three weeks from now, it will just be dead to me and I won't be able to listen to it anymore because I've listened to it 200 times in three weeks. Whatever. 

Charlie: Yeah, that's kids for you. The last question. Where is your favorite place to visit and why? 

Tom: So my favorite place to visit. I don't usually go back to the same place twice, but I have been back to Costa Rica twice, both for long stays, and it's just fantastic. I went there without kids, and I went there with young kids and just the wildlife that's there, something like 5% of all the species on the planet are in Costa Rica, which is about the size of whales or something. It's really not a very big place. And so there's mountains and there's two oceans, and it's just amazing. The cloud forests, tremendous. So that's a really good visit. 

Charlie: Oh, yeah, that does sound amazing. That's it. Thank you, Tom. We're just out of time, but thanks for coming on and really, really interesting to hear more about Four Pillars and some of your favorite reads. Thank you. 

Tom: Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.