Ty Magnin's 3-tier AI content strategy

Ty Magnin's 3-tier AI content strategy

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Ty Magnin, CEO at Animalz, shares his 3-tier A-driven content strategy.

AI and content. They go together like salt and pepper.

Or maybe like oysters on pizza (eww). It depends on who you ask.

For Ty Magnin, CEO of Animalz, he’s a big believer that AI can give content marketers superpowers. He’s doubled organic traffic for a client using AI-driven content.

In this Marketing Powerups episode, you’ll learn:

  • How to create AI content that matches your brand’s voice and tone.
  • The tools that Ty love using for AI-driven content.
  • Ty’s process for creating content using AI.
  • A career that’s helped Ty accelerate his growth.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast and Spotify now, or watch it on YouTube.

I want to thank the sponsor of this episode, 42/Agency.

When you're in scale-up mode, and you have KPIs to hit, the pressure is on to deliver demos and signups.

And it's a lot to handle: demand gen, email sequences, revenue ops, and more! That’s where 42/Agency, founded by my friend Kamil Rextin, can help you.

They’re a strategic partner that’s helped B2B SaaS companies like ProfitWell, Teamwork, Sprout Social and Hubdoc build a predictable revenue engine.

If you’re looking for performance experts and creatives to solve your marketing problems at a fraction of the cost of in-house, look no further.

Go to https://www.42agency.com/ to talk to a strategist to learn how you can build a high-efficiency revenue engine now.

⭐️ Ty Magnin's 3-tier AI content strategy

AI content creation is transforming marketing. With the right strategy, AI can help generate engaging, high-quality content at scale.

Ty Magnin, CEO of Animalz and former Director of Marketing at UiPath, has developed a 3-tier system for leveraging AI content:

Tier 1 - Strategic Assets

The first tier focuses on creating key, strategic assets with the highest value. As Ty explained:

"Tier one was stuff we deemed as of strategic importance. And we had calculator that actually looked at three factors for every idea or project that came our way. The three factors were value to customer...value to the business, value to UiPath...And the third thing was feasibility."

For UiPath, this included premium content like in-depth reports that provided unique insights by compiling and analyzing internal data. These high-impact assets were created manually in-house.

Tier 2 - Outsourced Premium Content

The second tier was still premium, strategic content, but outsourced to trusted agencies instead of created in-house. As Ty put it:

"The next level down would be we would fund it, okay. But it was produced by our trusted agent. Again, the content team says this is of strategic importance. Still, we will pay, but we can't do it ourselves."

This allowed UiPath to scale content output for items aligned to strategic goals. Although outsourced, UiPath still managed these projects closely.

Tier 3 - AI-Generated Content

The third tier focused on high-volume, AI-generated content. As Ty explained:

"Tier 3 content are the keywords that are probably not your most important keywords. The operating model would be if you can get someone in your team to do it using AI, provide guidelines that they can follow."

For UiPath, this included lower-priority SEO content and website pages that helped with overall domain authority. The content team provided guidelines but teams could largely self-serve.

This 3-tier system allowed UiPath to balance investment in premium assets with leveraging AI for scalable content output.

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    🎉 About Ty Magnin


    Ty Magnin is the CEO of Animalz, a leading content agency. Ty is a software marketing leader with over a decade of experience leading marketing teams at SaaS startups from $0-10M ARR twice. Prior to Animalz, Ty served as Director of Marketing at UiPath, leading the company from $40M to over $1B in revenue and through a successful IPO. He also led marketing at Appcues, establishing the growth flywheel that propelled the company to become a leader in user onboarding. Ty is obsessed with all things marketing, growth and content.

    🕰️ Timestamps and transcript

    • [00:00:00] AI in Content Creation: A Discussion with Ty Magnin
    • [00:00:53] The Power of AI in Content Marketing
    • [00:07:57] Discussing SEO Content and the Role of Generative AI
    • [00:12:32] 42 Agency - My Number One Recommended Growth Agency
    • [00:14:20] Evolution of Content Strategy in Startups
    • [00:18:39] Discussing the Content Program at Appcues
    • [00:19:40] Discussion on content distribution in SaaS
    • [00:20:34] Scaling Content Production at UIPath
    • [00:26:08] From Centralized to Decentralized: Content Creation at Appcues
    • [00:27:20] Discussion on Three Tiers of Content in B2B Marketing
    • [00:28:13] Content Scaling Strategy at UiPath
    • [00:29:49] Scaling Up Content Programs
    • [00:31:07] Managing Content Programs in a Tech Company
    • [00:36:51] Career Powerups with Ty Magnin
    • [00:38:57] Balancing career and life with Ty Magnin

    Episode transcript



    [00:00:00] AI in Content Creation: A Discussion with Ty Magnin



    [00:00:00] Ramli John: AI and content, they go together like salt and pepper. 

    [00:00:03] Ramli John: Or maybe more like oysters on pizza. 

    [00:00:06] Ew. 

    [00:00:06] Ramli John: Maybe you like it, but I don't. 

    [00:00:08] Ramli John: And it depends on who you ask for. 

    [00:00:10] Ramli John: Ty Magnin, CEO of Animals. 

    [00:00:12] Ramli John: He's a big believer that AI can give content markers, superpowers. 

    [00:00:17] Ramli John: And he's doubled the organic traffic for a client using AI driven content. 

    [00:00:22] Ramli John: So in this marketing power ups episode, you learn, first of of all, how to create AI content that matches your brand, voice and tone. 

    [00:00:29] Ramli John: Second, the tools that Ty loves using for AI driven content. 

    [00:00:32] Ramli John: Third, Ty's process for creating content using AI and number four, a career power up that's helped Ty accelerate his growth. 

    [00:00:41] Ramli John: Before I get started, I've created a free power up cheat sheet that you can download for free and apply TaI's AI driven content strategy. 

    [00:00:48] Ramli John: You can find that marketing Powerups.com or in the show notes and description below.


    [00:00:53] The Power of AI in Content Marketing: A Conversation with Ty Magnin



    [00:00:53] Ramli John: Are you ready? 

    [00:00:54] Ty Magnin: Let's go. 

    [00:00:55] Ramli John: Marketing powerups. 

    [00:00:58] Ty Magnin: Ready. 

    [00:00:59] Ramli John: Go. 

    [00:01:02] Ty Magnin: Here's your host, Ramli John. 

    [00:01:06] Ramli John: Thank you for being on the show. 

    [00:01:08] Ramli John: I'm excited to talk about marketing power ups. 

    [00:01:10] Ramli John: You've been in content, you've led marketing at Appcus, you've led marketing at UiPath before leading it all the way to IPO. 

    [00:01:19] Ramli John: I'm super exciting to talk about content because there's this thing that I saw online that you're doing this side hustle around AI and SEO content. 

    [00:01:32] Ramli John: It actually started off, it seems like it started with a story. 

    [00:01:34] Ramli John: You were talking about a blog post a day, which is super ambitious. 

    [00:01:39] Ramli John: I can't imagine like posting a blog post. 

    [00:01:43] Ramli John: What is the story behind this blog post a day campaign? 

    [00:01:47] Ramli John: And yeah, I'm curious how AI started in your world. 

    [00:01:52] Ty Magnin: Totally. 

    [00:01:53] Ty Magnin: Well, I think like all of us, generative AI is just like a super interesting game changing technology that I think everyone has this interest in dabbling with or putting to real use. 

    [00:02:07] Ty Magnin: I wanted to put it to real use. 

    [00:02:09] Ty Magnin: I think I was sort of early to believe. 

    [00:02:11] Ty Magnin: I think we all had an experience with GPT-3 maybe at similar tools that we all used at once, and kind of felt like, oh, it's not that good, right? 

    [00:02:23] Ty Magnin: But then there was like a quiet evoluTion, maybe in November, maybe it was in August last year where they had some new release and it started to actually be pretty damn good. 

    [00:02:35] Ty Magnin: And so I was at a company leading marketing at the time called Emotive. 

    [00:02:38] Ty Magnin: It's like an SMS marketing technology and we really didn't have a lot of organic traffic coming through and having the app use DNA. 

    [00:02:48] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:02:49] Ty Magnin: That's one channel that I feel is a strength of mine and that could really be good for this business. 

    [00:02:54] Ty Magnin: It made sense for them. 

    [00:02:56] Ty Magnin: And so I wanted to just put the throttle down on pumping out organic. 

    [00:03:03] Ty Magnin: And the usual way that we've been doing this is you go pay an agency like an animals a premium to handwrite this stuff or some freelancers, you're writing it in house and it's pretty costly. 

    [00:03:14] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:03:15] Ty Magnin: But with Gen AI, I was like, well, fucking trying to just like, crank. 

    [00:03:22] Ramli John: So cool. 

    [00:03:23] Ty Magnin: We had an SEO person at the time. 

    [00:03:25] Ty Magnin: He had a cubert list of like 300 great ideas. 

    [00:03:29] Ty Magnin: Wow. 

    [00:03:30] Ty Magnin: Yeah, that made sense for us. 

    [00:03:32] Ty Magnin: And so I was like, I don't want to spend three years getting through this thing. 

    [00:03:36] Ty Magnin: Let's go. 

    [00:03:38] Ty Magnin: So, yeah, we spent, I don't know, $300 a blog post. 

    [00:03:43] Ty Magnin: We partnered with animals, actually very early on. 

    [00:03:46] Ty Magnin: I think they hadn't really done this thing yet, but we were kind of the test dummies. 

    [00:03:50] Ty Magnin: I talked Ryan Law into doing it, who was there as a CEO at the time. 

    [00:03:56] Ty Magnin: And we did it. 

    [00:03:56] Ty Magnin: We did a blog post a day. 

    [00:03:57] Ty Magnin: We saw our organic traffic just like literally 30 days in just double, like big step in growth. 

    [00:04:04] Ty Magnin: And I think Google just liked seeing the cadence of content we were putting, right? 

    [00:04:09] Ty Magnin: We went from doing, I don't know, one every other week to one every day. 

    [00:04:13] Ty Magnin: And we were rewarded for that. 

    [00:04:17] Ty Magnin: So, yeah, I kept going up to the right until I stepped off that company after five months or something. 

    [00:04:23] Ramli John: But that's a cool experiment that people usually think like, hey, it takes, I don't know, six months is what I've heard traditionally for you to see results from SEO. 

    [00:04:34] Ty Magnin: That's because you're doing blog posts every. 

    [00:04:36] Ramli John: Week. 

    [00:04:39] Ty Magnin: During my ram. 

    [00:04:41] Ramli John: That's super interesting. 

    [00:04:43] Ramli John: People never, I've never seen that so dramatic variety. 

    [00:04:47] Ramli John: The other thing that's super interesting, just. 

    [00:04:49] Ty Magnin: To note, we did have good backlinks already at the domain home page and a decent domain authority. 

    [00:04:56] Ty Magnin: So we were working with something like a solid, you know what I mean? 

    [00:05:00] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:05:00] Ramli John: From their early animals. 

    [00:05:03] Ramli John: Price is not cheap. 

    [00:05:04] Ramli John: And I think they increased their price at some point to come up with a blog post a day that's like, I'm not sure, six figures at least, maybe more. 

    [00:05:14] Ty Magnin: But we did well, part of the deal was we dropped the price way down. 

    [00:05:18] Ty Magnin: Right, because they're using generative AI, right, exactly. 

    [00:05:21] Ty Magnin: Well, now they have actually a generative AI practice, if we can call it that. 

    [00:05:25] Ty Magnin: And it's like way more economical, we'll say. 

    [00:05:31] Ty Magnin: And a lot of clients are kind of eating that up as an alternative to the premium work. 

    [00:05:37] Ty Magnin: And so we're all just figuring it out. 

    [00:05:39] Ty Magnin: But for me, there's kind of two tiers in content. 

    [00:05:42] Ty Magnin: There's the generative AI like SEO focused stuff that you can and should do at high volume. 

    [00:05:47] Ty Magnin: Right now, I don't know if it'll last forever. 

    [00:05:50] Ty Magnin: Eventually Google might chip away at how much traffic they're sending to your site, but whatever, it's working right now. 

    [00:05:59] Ty Magnin: And I think because that's becoming a bit more commoditized potentially, that the higher level thought leadership stuff is becoming that much more important. 

    [00:06:09] Ty Magnin: Right. 

    [00:06:10] Ty Magnin: And so what I'm kind of toying with is like, how does tier two support tier one and what does Tier one look like if it's not organic focused blog posts? 

    [00:06:24] Ramli John: It's interesting. 

    [00:06:25] Ramli John: You're talking about. 

    [00:06:27] Ramli John: Can you talk a little bit about that tier? 

    [00:06:29] Ramli John: That sounds super interesting. 

    [00:06:30] Ramli John: Tier two is like the best kind of content, is that what you're saying? 

    [00:06:32] Ramli John: And then Tier two is not that. 

    [00:06:38] Ty Magnin: I kind of see it that way. 

    [00:06:39] Ty Magnin: So tier one, I'm sure you have a ton of ideas around this. 

    [00:06:43] Ty Magnin: You're doing this now. 

    [00:06:44] Ty Magnin: This is Tier one in a sense, or a lot of the shows or the series that you've produced for app queues are tier one for me, like user onboarding Academy. 

    [00:06:55] Ty Magnin: That shit's valuable, right? 

    [00:06:57] Ty Magnin: You can almost sell thing. 

    [00:06:58] Ty Magnin: It's so valuable. 

    [00:06:59] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:07:00] Ty Magnin: I just helped the company vendor produce a Q One SaaS Trends report. 

    [00:07:06] Ty Magnin: It took all of vendors. 

    [00:07:08] Ty Magnin: So vendor basically is a. 

    [00:07:11] Ty Magnin: I don't know what to call it anymore, but it's kind of aspiring to be a marketplace for people to buy and sell SaaS. 

    [00:07:17] Ty Magnin: So they have a lot of transaction information about who bought what Saas and how much. 

    [00:07:23] Ty Magnin: And so that is like a treasure trove of data that we turned into a quarterly report that was like custom design, custom dev, probably like 10,000 words. 

    [00:07:34] Ty Magnin: We invested a ton in it. 

    [00:07:36] Ty Magnin: And for me, that's another example of tier one content. 

    [00:07:41] Ty Magnin: Yeah, there's probably a zillion examples of that, but it's that stuff that could be generative, AI supported, but is not like, at its core generated from some corpus of language model.


    [00:07:57] Discussing SEO content and the increasing role of generative AI with Ramli John and Ty Magnin



    [00:07:57] Ramli John: What would you consider tier two and tier three like, SEO content would be tier three like more like, I guess, targeted keywords. 

    [00:08:06] Ramli John: Is that what you would say? 

    [00:08:06] Ramli John: I'm not entirely sure. 

    [00:08:07] Ramli John: I'm curious how you see lower tiers. 

    [00:08:10] Ty Magnin: I do think it's that it's like the keywords that are probably not your most important keywords because the most important ones might still need to be handwritten in a way. 

    [00:08:24] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:08:24] Ty Magnin: Like you need that thing to rank first and you're going to invest a lot in doing that. 

    [00:08:29] Ty Magnin: So I see Tier two. 

    [00:08:31] Ty Magnin: I only have two tiers in this very simple model. 

    [00:08:34] Ramli John: That's cool. 

    [00:08:35] Ty Magnin: All the other keywords that you're kind of like, hey, we're just filling in these gaps. 

    [00:08:39] Ty Magnin: We're going to bring up our domain authority. 

    [00:08:41] Ty Magnin: We're going to teach Google that these are the topics that we want to rank for and so on. 

    [00:08:46] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:08:47] Ramli John: Interesting. 

    [00:08:49] Ty Magnin: I feel like, give me your two cent on this idea. 

    [00:08:53] Ty Magnin: I'm sure I'm wrong. 

    [00:08:55] Ramli John: It totally makes sense. 

    [00:08:57] Ramli John: I think what I'm hearing with the tier, like Tier one are ones that you invest a ton of resources designing it. 

    [00:09:06] Ramli John: A lot of your thinking process where that report for vendor compiling data is hard work. 

    [00:09:14] Ramli John: Right. 

    [00:09:14] Ramli John: Making it understandable, readable, digestible and valuable. 

    [00:09:20] Ramli John: You need a human to do that to really dig into the data. 

    [00:09:24] Ramli John: And then tier two would be more. 

    [00:09:26] Ramli John: You're right. 

    [00:09:27] Ramli John: I think some of the stuff that has worked in the past where we got a bunch of keywords, let's write a blog post about it that has this specific h two headings and this many images and so that it ranks for that. 

    [00:09:41] Ramli John: But it might not necessarily be novel on you in that sense. 

    [00:09:47] Ramli John: It could be like a traditional maybe listicle side to it is what I'm hearing here. 

    [00:09:52] Ty Magnin: Right. 

    [00:09:52] Ty Magnin: And my answer is, why would we do tier two? 

    [00:09:56] Ty Magnin: My short answer is because it still works. 

    [00:09:58] Ramli John: Still works? 

    [00:09:59] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:09:59] Ramli John: You showed it with this example, and I think I saw in LinkedIn that you've also worked with a few other companies as a side hustle that has doubled their organic traffic just based on this. 

    [00:10:12] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:10:13] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:10:13] Ty Magnin: So I've seen each client so far, knock on wood. 

    [00:10:16] Ty Magnin: I started basically side hustle around the turn of the year because I saw the success with the motive. 

    [00:10:21] Ty Magnin: I was like, all right, shit, I can make some extra money just offering this to friends who would also benefit. 

    [00:10:29] Ty Magnin: And so each company has seen their organic growth rate really make a big increase, usually like two X in their organic growth rate. 

    [00:10:36] Ty Magnin: So moving from 5% month over month, which is really good to like 10% because they increase their cadence and output through generative AI services. 

    [00:10:46] Ramli John: Do you have a hunch? 

    [00:10:47] Ramli John: You mentioned it a little bit earlier. 

    [00:10:50] Ramli John: It's working right now, but Google can totally remove this almost arbitrage. 

    [00:10:57] Ramli John: I'm curious for sure, while still working, we should tap into that opportunity. 

    [00:11:04] Ramli John: Do you see that continuing going forward this year or will that end anytime soon? 

    [00:11:12] Ty Magnin: It's a great question. 

    [00:11:13] Ty Magnin: I don't think Ramley and I'm really curious to get your input on this and there are some people that are far more expert in know sort of in the thinking about this than I am. 

    [00:11:22] Ty Magnin: But a few things feel clear to me. 

    [00:11:25] Ty Magnin: One, one of the biggest companies in the world, right, Alphabet or Google, their biggest revenue driver is all about sending traffic for them. 

    [00:11:41] Ty Magnin: They don't want to totally disrupt themselves, I imagine, and stop sending people traffic because then who's advertising there? 

    [00:11:49] Ty Magnin: What is the advertising model on Google? 

    [00:11:52] Ty Magnin: So there's probably an artful way that they start. 

    [00:11:57] Ty Magnin: They might continue to reduce the number of clicks because we have seen a reduction in clicks over the years. 

    [00:12:03] Ty Magnin: Zero Click Search is the big thing and we might continue to see that trend, but I don't think it's going to zero anytime soon. 

    [00:12:12] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:12:12] Ty Magnin: The other argument is like, okay, maybe Bing, it's so funny. 

    [00:12:16] Ty Magnin: It's been laughable years ago. 

    [00:12:17] Ty Magnin: Maybe Bing starts to take more of a portion of Google's traffic because people like using the OpenAI search engine. 

    [00:12:25] Ty Magnin: What are they calling that now? 

    [00:12:26] Ty Magnin: But I don't think we're really at risk of search oriented content going to Zero anytime soon.


    [00:12:32] The Future of Content in 2023



    [00:12:32] Ramli John: Before I continue, I want to thank the sponsor for this episode 42 Agency now when you're in scale up growth mode and you have to hit your KPIs, the pressure is on to deliver demos and sign ups and it's a lot to handle. 

    [00:12:44] Ramli John: There's demand gen email sequences, rev Ops and more. 

    [00:12:48] Ramli John: And that's where 42 agency founded by my good friend Camille Rexton can help you. 

    [00:12:52] Ramli John: They're a strategic partner that's helped B two B SaaS companies like Profit, AWOL, Teamwork, Sprout Social and Hubdoc to build a predictable revenue engine. 

    [00:13:01] Ramli John: If you're looking for performance experts and creatives to solve your marketing growth problems today and help you build the foundations for the future, look no further. 

    [00:13:10] Ramli John: Visit 42 agency.com to talk to a strategist right now to learn how you can build a high efficiency revenue engine. 

    [00:13:18] Ramli John: I think it's Eli Schwartz and Kevin Indig who talk about it in their show could try and marketing where I don't Google, it's their cash cow, the search ads. 

    [00:13:29] Ramli John: Right? 

    [00:13:29] Ramli John: They don't want to disrupt that. 

    [00:13:31] Ramli John: They've been forced to disrupt that through Bing and OpenAI like doing this. 

    [00:13:37] Ramli John: And I think you're right. 

    [00:13:39] Ramli John: I think the next twelve months, I mean knock on wood here because we can look back to this episode, they're like tying Ramley is wrong. 

    [00:13:52] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:13:53] Ramli John: Right. 

    [00:13:54] Ramli John: People don't Google search anymore. 

    [00:13:56] Ramli John: They just use their brain. 

    [00:13:59] Ramli John: They plugged it into this algorithm and they can just think. 

    [00:14:02] Ramli John: Now, I'm not entirely sure what the future looks like, but I think you're right. 

    [00:14:06] Ramli John: It's something that Google will have to figure out, but they're not going to fully kill their cash cow again to figure that stuff out. 

    [00:14:15] Ramli John: I mean, that's an interesting discussion around what state of content can look like in 23.


    [00:14:20] Evolution of Content Strategy in Startups



    [00:14:20] Ramli John: I think the other thing that I'd love to chat with you about specifically is you've seen content evolve in a fast growing company or startup and even enterprise company. 

    [00:14:35] Ramli John: I would say we're still figuring that out. 

    [00:14:39] Ramli John: It's funny because we were joking. 

    [00:14:41] Ramli John: We're in this messy middle where we're trying to figure out exactly where they're going to go next. 

    [00:14:47] Ramli John: But you've seen it all. 

    [00:14:48] Ramli John: You had Uipath went all the way to IPO, you were at Appcus, you're in motive, you're a vendor. 

    [00:14:55] Ramli John: I'm curious how you see content evolve as it goes to a maturity, a different level of maturity. 

    [00:15:04] Ty Magnin: Let's start all the way down at the, like, it's actually an interesting thing. 

    [00:15:08] Ty Magnin: Zero to one content, right? 

    [00:15:10] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:15:11] Ty Magnin: And my favorite, I still tell companies to follow the App use Playbook, which was. 

    [00:15:19] Ty Magnin: I don't know if you know this, tell me. 

    [00:15:21] Ty Magnin: But Jonathan and Jackson are the two founders of Apptus. 

    [00:15:26] Ty Magnin: And early on they built a user onboarding academy, okay, which was like a twelve lesson course, maybe 16 at the time, on different. 

    [00:15:37] Ty Magnin: It was chronological in a way. 

    [00:15:38] Ty Magnin: It was sort of organized on the different lessons and angles into user onboarding. 

    [00:15:43] Ty Magnin: And they even had different experts like Samuel Hewlick and other design types write articles for them, and they hosted that all on their website. 

    [00:15:54] Ty Magnin: So it was this deep, probably the deepest thing on user onboarding at the time. 

    [00:16:01] Ty Magnin: And that asset continues to pay dividends for app use today. 

    [00:16:05] Ty Magnin: It's evolved a lot. 

    [00:16:06] Ty Magnin: Right now, you'll have to tell the audience. 

    [00:16:09] Ty Magnin: It basically went from written to like, we did a video form of it. 

    [00:16:13] Ty Magnin: And what is user onboarding Academy now? 

    [00:16:15] Ty Magnin: Right. 

    [00:16:16] Ramli John: I think when I came across it, it was 2019. 

    [00:16:19] Ramli John: I was working at product led us. 

    [00:16:21] Ramli John: It was like a five day email series, I think. 

    [00:16:25] Ramli John: I'm not sure. 

    [00:16:26] Ty Magnin: Yeah, that sounds right. 

    [00:16:27] Ramli John: And then it turned into the product adoption Academy, which devolution is that now. 

    [00:16:33] Ty Magnin: But what is that like, what's inside the product Adoption Academy? 

    [00:16:36] Ty Magnin: If I go sign up for it today, what do I get? 

    [00:16:38] Ramli John: Right? 

    [00:16:39] Ramli John: Yeah, that course, user onboarding 101, it's like a six lesson, self paced, mostly text, but some videos from experts, very similar to what you mentioned. 

    [00:16:55] Ramli John: I got videos from Andrew Kaplan, Samuel Eulick. 

    [00:17:00] Ramli John: So I would say it sounds very similar to what you just mentioned all the way from the very beginning, which is interesting. 

    [00:17:08] Ty Magnin: Cool. 

    [00:17:09] Ramli John: Still paying dividends. 

    [00:17:10] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:17:11] Ty Magnin: So again, I think when you look at, if a founder asks you, how do I get started doing content? 

    [00:17:18] Ty Magnin: I think don't just write random blog articles. 

    [00:17:23] Ty Magnin: Go write the deepest thing on the problem that you're trying to solve and unpack your brain there and get your friends that you've been talking to to also contribute. 

    [00:17:33] Ty Magnin: I think that's important. 

    [00:17:34] Ty Magnin: I think a written form is one way to do it. 

    [00:17:37] Ty Magnin: I think nowadays, like, I don't know, videos and podcasts and LinkedIn, it might not show up the same way as we want. 

    [00:17:45] Ty Magnin: But that's what I think is a good way to get it off the ground. 

    [00:17:48] Ty Magnin: From then at Appcus, what we went to do is this is where I came in and I said, well, I think I'll start a blog. 

    [00:17:54] Ty Magnin: If I'm going to double down on content, what's that going to be? 

    [00:17:56] Ty Magnin: Am I going to write the next user onboarding academy? 

    [00:17:59] Ty Magnin: No, I said, we're in this experimental phase. 

    [00:18:01] Ty Magnin: We're going to dabble in product adoption, feature adoption, all these different areas. 

    [00:18:06] Ty Magnin: And so we started writing in a more sort of broad sense. 

    [00:18:10] Ty Magnin: And then we kept seeing organic traffic increase and increase and we just doubled down on it again and again. 

    [00:18:14] Ty Magnin: Right. 

    [00:18:15] Ty Magnin: So we hired a full. 

    [00:18:15] Ty Magnin: First we hired animals. 

    [00:18:17] Ty Magnin: We were able to go from one blog post a week to do blog posts a week. 

    [00:18:20] Ty Magnin: Then we hired writer, and then we went from two to three, right. 

    [00:18:24] Ty Magnin: And so on and so forth until we hire a video person. 

    [00:18:27] Ty Magnin: Now that's another way to do more content. 

    [00:18:31] Ty Magnin: That's kind of how it went through that stage up until where you are, which I guess you're calling it the messy middle.


    [00:18:39] Discussing the Content Program at AppCus with Ty Magnin



    [00:18:39] Ty Magnin: So before I talk about UiPath, because that is kind of the other enterprise playbook, why don't you catch me up on what is the content program at AppCus look like today? 

    [00:18:50] Ramli John: It's funny, all this stuff you mentioned is like what we're focusing out on even more. 

    [00:18:56] Ramli John: So if, correct me if I'm wrong, this is Tier one content, right? 

    [00:19:00] Ramli John: You're really investing in really in depth guides and content. 

    [00:19:07] Ramli John: The past year, the tier three stuff hasn't performed as well, those SEO pieces. 

    [00:19:13] Ramli John: And that's why you mentioned focusing more on video, focusing more on academy educational pieces as well. 

    [00:19:23] Ramli John: So I think sounds like, it came full circle. 

    [00:19:27] Ramli John: It started with Tier one, it went to tier one plus tier two, and then now it's more like 80, 90% is probably focused on that tier one versus the tier two side.


    [00:19:40] Discussion on content distribution in SaaS



    [00:19:40] Ty Magnin: Where's distribution coming from for AVQ these days? 

    [00:19:43] Ty Magnin: Right. 

    [00:19:44] Ramli John: I think distribution wise, SEO is still our biggest play, though it's not as effective. 

    [00:19:51] Ramli John: Everybody across SaaS has seen a decrease in SEO. 

    [00:19:56] Ramli John: Yeah, it's mainly like, we have that email list that we have, like, I think 30,000. 

    [00:20:04] Ramli John: And then we started doing more outbound stuff in the sales side. 

    [00:20:11] Ramli John: So I think email, social and then outbound has been. 

    [00:20:16] Ramli John: And also search. 

    [00:20:17] Ramli John: Search is a big piece lately. 

    [00:20:19] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:20:20] Ty Magnin: Interesting. 

    [00:20:20] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:20:21] Ty Magnin: I think content in 2023 is like kind of back to the beginning. 

    [00:20:25] Ty Magnin: We're just trying to figure out. 

    [00:20:28] Ramli John: Yeah, exactly. 

    [00:20:30] Ty Magnin: You're not alone in that. 

    [00:20:31] Ty Magnin: I'm feeling the same thing.


    [00:20:34] Scaling Content Production at UIPath



    [00:20:34] Ty Magnin: Do you want me to talk about your iPad? 

    [00:20:35] Ramli John: I'm curious how that has been a different experience for you in terms of your approach to content there, your team. 

    [00:20:42] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:20:42] Ty Magnin: Like at app queues, you can kind of extrapolate from what I already said, which is like, I was able to kind of help edit and direct a lot of the content and the subject matter that we should be writing on because I understood the domain pretty well and I understood our product and one person could kind of oversee it all. 

    [00:21:02] Ty Magnin: But a UIPath. 

    [00:21:03] Ty Magnin: So for context, I joined UIPath again, Series B, we had three products. 

    [00:21:07] Ty Magnin: We were like 40 million in revenue. 

    [00:21:10] Ty Magnin: By the time I got off, we were a billion in revenue and beyond. 

    [00:21:13] Ty Magnin: Wow. 

    [00:21:13] Ty Magnin: We had like 30 products. 

    [00:21:16] Ty Magnin: Like, not joking. 

    [00:21:17] Ty Magnin: 30 different SKUs shoot. 

    [00:21:19] Ramli John: So you went from three products to 30 in that space that you were there. 

    [00:21:24] Ty Magnin: And so no one person could be over the stuff. 

    [00:21:32] Ty Magnin: Right. 

    [00:21:33] Ty Magnin: Couldn't edit other people's stuff because I didn't know the applications. 

    [00:21:38] Ty Magnin: And then we had a solutions team. 

    [00:21:41] Ty Magnin: There's a big industry play and then there's the horizontal plays. 

    [00:21:45] Ty Magnin: And so you quickly realize that your content team is an expert in nothing. 

    [00:21:52] Ty Magnin: And so the playbook becomes like, how do I get this team to empower all these SMEs across the organization? 

    [00:21:59] Ty Magnin: Subject matter, SMEs, SMEs. 

    [00:22:02] Ty Magnin: Word. 

    [00:22:02] Ty Magnin: I didn't know until I joined UiPath, by the way, and facilitate content production through them. 

    [00:22:11] Ty Magnin: And I have to get them to use the right terminology, maybe sound a bit on brand if you have a kind of centralized brand voice. 

    [00:22:20] Ty Magnin: Sometimes companies say, I want you, Ramley, to sound like you. 

    [00:22:24] Ty Magnin: But for us, we cared about sounding like UiPath a little bit more, a bit. 

    [00:22:31] Ty Magnin: And so it was about implementing the tools and the processes and building the relationships for content creation across an organization with just depth to it. 

    [00:22:42] Ramli John: That sounds exhausting. 

    [00:22:45] Ramli John: I'm not sure, there's just so much. 

    [00:22:48] Ramli John: 30 products. 

    [00:22:52] Ramli John: Was there one content marketer focused on five products? 

    [00:22:56] Ramli John: How did that work in that sense? 

    [00:22:59] Ramli John: Now I'm like looking at UiPath and LinkedIn, there's like over, I'm not sure if this is correct, but over 4000 employees as of today. 

    [00:23:11] Ramli John: How did you manage that? 

    [00:23:13] Ramli John: It's huge. 

    [00:23:15] Ty Magnin: Yeah, we're definitely like chasing a rock down a. 

    [00:23:22] Ty Magnin: Yeah, I don't know if you ever hear Jackson, the CEO at accuse, used to always say a lot of startups like every day it's sisype and you're pushing a rock up a. 

    [00:23:33] Ramli John: Yeah, he just said it to first ago first. 

    [00:23:36] Ramli John: Ursus is like our company wise, it's like. 

    [00:23:42] Ty Magnin: Yes. 

    [00:23:43] Ty Magnin: And so most startups the whole trajectory is pushing a rock up a hill every single day. 

    [00:23:48] Ty Magnin: But at some point the hope is that you tip over that hill and now you're basically chasing the rock down a hill and you're kind of like, just don't kill anyone, just don't kill anyone. 

    [00:23:59] Ramli John: Go destroy. 

    [00:24:01] Ramli John: You're right. 

    [00:24:02] Ty Magnin: The whole time it was like, we're chasing the rock down the hill. 

    [00:24:06] Ty Magnin: I think it was just a semblance of great product market fit. 

    [00:24:09] Ty Magnin: It was just like we're in a white hot space at the right time. 

    [00:24:13] Ty Magnin: So really it was about keeping people from doing something that's off brand or creating content that's just not aligned to our core messaging, things like that. 

    [00:24:27] Ty Magnin: One key tool for us that we implemented that really helped us hone in all these content contributors was writer or writer. 

    [00:24:36] Ty Magnin: It helped us align everybody to our voice and tone and used AI to do that. 

    [00:24:41] Ty Magnin: So it would basically proofread someone's Doc and say, this is long winded or this sounds casual, which is how we wanted to come across, et cetera. 

    [00:24:51] Ty Magnin: It also had a terminology bank, which you could imagine is super important for a company with 30 SKUs. 

    [00:24:59] Ty Magnin: We had such a proliferation of how to product names, key feature names, et cetera. 

    [00:25:06] Ty Magnin: And so it would work like grammarly in a way, or even like Microsoft Word spell check to know, here's how to use the right term. 

    [00:25:16] Ty Magnin: And so that was hugely useful. 

    [00:25:17] Ty Magnin: It did more than just that, but that was the core of what we bought it for. 

    [00:25:20] Ty Magnin: And we had content contributors from just like we had hundreds of them. 

    [00:25:25] Ty Magnin: Because you had your team in the Netherlands that was writing, they wanted to put out a white paper on some industry important to, like they were working with a freelancer or an agency that was, we're going to host this on the website. 

    [00:25:39] Ty Magnin: So we had to make sure that that sounded like UIPath the same way that something written by our CMO does. 

    [00:25:47] Ty Magnin: And so writer was important. 

    [00:25:48] Ty Magnin: And then building again the processes and the relationships helped us manage that at scale. 

    [00:25:53] Ramli John: Did you find people, the inbound requests, for example, that white paper, was that an inbound request from that team in Netherlands or the content team was actively pursuing SME's in the organization.


    [00:26:08] From Centralized to Decentralized: Content Creation at Appcues



    [00:26:08] Ty Magnin: So there's a thought around are you a centralized service business or are you decentralized and you are kind of the enabler of other teams to create great content. 

    [00:26:20] Ty Magnin: We in the beginning were centralized when we were a marketing team of 40 when I joined or so we were creating all the content. 

    [00:26:29] Ty Magnin: Like sure, product marketing wrote product pages and we helped them with that, but we were writing so it would be a request and we produce it if it's a value that became smaller over time, believe it or not. 

    [00:26:41] Ty Magnin: And instead we became the enabler of others to produce great content. 

    [00:26:46] Ty Magnin: And then we also helped, like, we measured how content performed and if we saw something work well, we call it out and try to facilitate more of that and then vice versa. 

    [00:26:56] Ramli John: Right. 

    [00:26:56] Ty Magnin: If people are producing some stuff that wasn't getting downloaded, call that out. 

    [00:27:00] Ty Magnin: We start kind of cutting back on that. 

    [00:27:03] Ty Magnin: So it was almost like we were evangelizing content and good content in the organization. 

    [00:27:08] Ty Magnin: And that was kind of the central role, which, again, back to our original point, super different, right, than what you're doing, what you're doing in the messy metal or in the early days. 

    [00:27:17] Ty Magnin: It's a very different kind of role.


    [00:27:20] Discussion on Three Tiers of Content in B2B Marketing



    [00:27:20] Ramli John: That's super interesting. 

    [00:27:21] Ramli John: Do you find like going back, I really love this two tier system that you talked about earlier, and I'm trying to apply it here. 

    [00:27:29] Ramli John: Did you find like you were doing more of that tier one conduct, like the white paper? 

    [00:27:33] Ramli John: I would consider a tier one less so like a tier two kind of stuff or. 

    [00:27:39] Ramli John: I'm curious because my past roles have been mainly in those messy middle companies. 

    [00:27:50] Ramli John: I worked at GoDaddy once where our company got acquired, so I stayed there for three months. 

    [00:27:55] Ramli John: I didn't stay long. 

    [00:27:56] Ramli John: So this is super new to me, what you're talking about. 

    [00:27:59] Ramli John: So I'm really curious how everything is, including this mix. 

    [00:28:04] Ty Magnin: Yeah, so great question. 

    [00:28:08] Ty Magnin: We actually did have three tiers of content. 

    [00:28:11] Ramli John: Okay, that's cool.


    [00:28:13] Content Scaling Strategy at UiPath Discussed by Ty Magnin



    [00:28:13] Ramli John: All right. 

    [00:28:14] Ramli John: Exciting. 

    [00:28:15] Ramli John: My own mold. 

    [00:28:16] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:28:16] Ty Magnin: So the first tier was stuff we deemed as of strategic importance. 

    [00:28:21] Ramli John: Right. 

    [00:28:22] Ty Magnin: And we had calculator that actually looked at three factors for every idea or project that came our way. 

    [00:28:29] Ty Magnin: The three factors were value to customer. 

    [00:28:33] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:28:34] Ty Magnin: So what is this thing? 

    [00:28:35] Ty Magnin: How valuable is this thing on a one to five scale to our customer? 

    [00:28:39] Ty Magnin: The next was value to the business, value to UiPath. 

    [00:28:43] Ty Magnin: How much revenue, basically, do you think we can expect from this thing? 

    [00:28:47] Ty Magnin: And the third thing was feasibility. 

    [00:28:49] Ty Magnin: Like, do we have the time, the resources, the expertise to produce this thing? 

    [00:28:53] Ty Magnin: If it ranked. 

    [00:28:54] Ty Magnin: If a project or an idea ranked really high, that might become a tier one strategic asset and we produce those in house by hand ourselves. 

    [00:29:04] Ramli John: Interesting. 

    [00:29:05] Ty Magnin: Tier two. 

    [00:29:06] Ty Magnin: The next level down would be we would fund it, okay. 

    [00:29:12] Ty Magnin: But it was produced by our trusted agent. 

    [00:29:14] Ty Magnin: Again, the content team says this is of strategic importance. 

    [00:29:17] Ty Magnin: Still, we will pay, but we can't do it ourselves. 

    [00:29:21] Ty Magnin: We don't have the resources. 

    [00:29:22] Ty Magnin: So we will fund it and we will still edit it and manage the project. 

    [00:29:27] Ty Magnin: And then Tier two was basically not that important. 

    [00:29:30] Ty Magnin: It is a bit more. 

    [00:29:32] Ty Magnin: So we would say the model is. 

    [00:29:33] Ty Magnin: The operating model would be you fund it or you do it yourself and you do it within these guidelines. 

    [00:29:40] Ty Magnin: Meaning they have to follow the brand process or if they're building a web page, it has to follow a certain format, et cetera, et cetera.


    [00:29:49] Scaling Up: A Discussion between Ramli John and Ty Magnin



    [00:29:49] Ramli John: What was the split mix across? 

    [00:29:52] Ramli John: Yeah, I'm curious now. 

    [00:29:54] Ramli John: Is it like 40, 30? 

    [00:29:56] Ramli John: I'm not entirely sure. 

    [00:29:57] Ramli John: This could be just off the top of your head, like, what that looks like for you. 

    [00:30:02] Ty Magnin: It's a great question. 

    [00:30:03] Ty Magnin: Like, what was the split between each tier? 

    [00:30:06] Ty Magnin: A lot ended up in tier two. 

    [00:30:08] Ty Magnin: A few things. 

    [00:30:10] Ty Magnin: A quarter would be in tier one and then a lot of stuff over time became tier three because we got better and better at enabling teams over the years. 

    [00:30:22] Ty Magnin: Kind of out of necessity, but also strategically, we just knew that we couldn't do it all. 

    [00:30:27] Ty Magnin: The first few years at Uipath, Brand Lou was like, we were just drowning. 

    [00:30:31] Ty Magnin: We're chasing the rock down the hill. 

    [00:30:32] Ty Magnin: We were just drowning in requests and ideas and needs because we were growing from three SKUs to 30 and we were growing thousand people to 4000. 

    [00:30:41] Ty Magnin: We were growing from 40 million revenue to 500 over these couple of first years. 

    [00:30:47] Ty Magnin: And so, yeah, it was just a lot of hours and a lot of stress and a lot of things that fell through the cracks. 

    [00:30:55] Ty Magnin: But through that, that to me was our messy middle. 

    [00:30:58] Ty Magnin: And on the other side was this pretty clear system that was right sized for the business that we were in.


    [00:31:07] Managing Content Programs in a Tech Company



    [00:31:07] Ramli John: I'm curious what you take us on this because this is a challenge we're facing at Apkis right now, where there's this drive to create more content, and sometimes there's too many content programs at that point. 

    [00:31:21] Ramli John: Where there's the academy, there's a podcast, there's the good ux, and there's this. 

    [00:31:25] Ramli John: And then it gets to the point where there's a lot. 

    [00:31:29] Ramli John: Did you get to that point at UIPath where, like, shoot, we have so many content programs. 

    [00:31:36] Ramli John: How do they all fit together? 

    [00:31:38] Ramli John: How do they tie together? 

    [00:31:39] Ramli John: And that tier system is very helpful. 

    [00:31:43] Ramli John: But I'm curious, did you ever face that problem there at UiPath where there's this too many program kind of problems, content programs? 

    [00:31:53] Ramli John: And I'm curious if, what was your Approach? 

    [00:31:57] Ty Magnin: Yeah, we did. 

    [00:31:58] Ty Magnin: Sometimes I think about our customer reference program, which I sort of inherited and then carried along with me for a year or two and then kind of limped along towards the end of my time there. 

    [00:32:11] Ty Magnin: But what happened was the production of case studies and customer videos. 

    [00:32:16] Ty Magnin: Okay? 

    [00:32:17] Ty Magnin: That was kind of core to this customer reference program, and it felt like it was a tier two, tier three thing. 

    [00:32:24] Ty Magnin: It's important to the business, but it wasn't the thing that we had enough of it. 

    [00:32:30] Ty Magnin: It was, like, going, well, it didn't need to be going that much better. 

    [00:32:33] Ty Magnin: So it was kind of like limping along. 

    [00:32:36] Ty Magnin: And what happened over the years was we kind of played hot potato with the responsibility. 

    [00:32:46] Ty Magnin: It was like contents thing, and then we kind of tossed it out to the regions. 

    [00:32:50] Ty Magnin: Like, hey, regional marketers, like, you deal with this, and then they kind of would toss it back after a year. 

    [00:32:57] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:32:57] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:33:00] Ty Magnin: That's not a way to solve the issue. 

    [00:33:03] Ty Magnin: Yeah, but that's kind of what happens. 

    [00:33:06] Ty Magnin: I also think back to ApPQ's days. 

    [00:33:10] Ty Magnin: I mean, listen, you have to kill your darlings, right? 

    [00:33:12] Ty Magnin: You have to stuff that's just not pulling all the weight. 

    [00:33:15] Ty Magnin: It's usually an 80 20. 

    [00:33:17] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:33:17] Ty Magnin: Like 20% of the stuff is pulling 80% of the weight. 

    [00:33:21] Ty Magnin: And if you've been giving something an earnest go, and it hasn't really gotten to that 80%, you kind of have to take a hard look at it and figure out, all right, how does this continue, or how do we wind it down? 

    [00:33:34] Ty Magnin: I guess is the better question. 

    [00:33:36] Ramli John: That's very helpful. 

    [00:33:37] Ramli John: I think especially Jackson has been talking a lot more lately about let's. 

    [00:33:43] Ramli John: Let's focus on things. 

    [00:33:45] Ramli John: And I think this is super important for people to realize. 

    [00:33:50] Ramli John: There's just so many content options. 

    [00:33:52] Ramli John: You can do podcasts now. 

    [00:33:54] Ramli John: There's TikTok, there's treads so many things that content teams can do and focusing on the right thing and going back to the right thing, especially for startups, maybe that tier one in depth content is where people should start first. 

    [00:34:08] Ty Magnin: Well, I think what this takes is good measurement, right, Ramley? 

    [00:34:11] Ty Magnin: You have to know what's driving pipeline or MQLs or revenue at the end of the day. 

    [00:34:18] Ty Magnin: And if you have a decent enough attribution model, then you can just kind know unemotionally say. 

    [00:34:24] Ty Magnin: And it's hard, of course, with like a podcast. 

    [00:34:27] Ty Magnin: It's like, I don't know, they hear about like, I get it. 

    [00:34:30] Ty Magnin: But then you can also do like self attributed whatnot. 

    [00:34:35] Ty Magnin: There's a way to do this stuff that can help guide you on where you want to double down and where you want to cut. 

    [00:34:42] Ty Magnin: And I think that content marketers do themselves sometimes a disservice by not setting that stuff up early enough and being disciplined about tracking their expenses and their investments against any returns. 

    [00:34:56] Ty Magnin: Too many times we leave it to demand Gen to figure that out. 

    [00:34:59] Ty Magnin: But really, I think it's everyone's job in marketing, regardless of where you sit. 

    [00:35:03] Ramli John: It's not just about often I feel like content teams are just like, hey, let's just get traffic, let's just get the eyeballs and demand, we'll figure out how to convert them. 

    [00:35:14] Ramli John: Or the growth team, the growth market performance or growth marketing team will figure out how to convert them once we have them. 

    [00:35:21] Ramli John: But to your point, it's the whole marketing's job to create that pipeline, or else people wouldn't have that job. 

    [00:35:28] Ty Magnin: Demand Gen is good at measuring their own stuff, okay? 

    [00:35:32] Ty Magnin: And you might think, oh, demand Gen, you'll help me figure out how my content efforts are returning, but often they don't. 

    [00:35:40] Ty Magnin: And then when it comes time, when it's 2023 in the spring and the CEO is making layoffs and cuts, if you left it up to demand gen to figure out your attribution, and they didn't, you're fucked. 

    [00:35:59] Ty Magnin: You're getting it taken into your own hands. 

    [00:36:03] Ty Magnin: Content marketers. 

    [00:36:04] Ty Magnin: Maybe we'd be getting laid off a little less, you know what I mean? 

    [00:36:07] Ty Magnin: Because if we're able to say this is how much pipe content is driving, we need to be doubling down, Mr. 

    [00:36:13] Ty Magnin: Executive or Mrs. 

    [00:36:14] Ty Magnin: Executive, not cutting, you know what I mean? 

    [00:36:18] Ty Magnin: I think then we become less of a squishy thing that is nice to have and more of a core business and go to market driver. 

    [00:36:27] Ramli John: Yeah, I feel like that's such an important point. 

    [00:36:32] Ramli John: Especially I feel like more marketing teams these days are trying to do more with less or trying to increase their pipeline with less people or less budget. 

    [00:36:43] Ramli John: So I think being, I guess, disciplined about figuring out which channels are working, which is not super important there.


    [00:36:51] Career Power Ups with Ty Magnin



    [00:36:51] Ramli John: I want to shift gears and talk about career power ups specifically for you. 

    [00:36:56] Ramli John: You've been in marketing for over a decade. 

    [00:36:59] Ramli John: We're head of marketing at APPGus way before my time. 

    [00:37:02] Ramli John: But once again, I still see your name on Google Drive, which is super cool to chat with you here. 

    [00:37:06] Ramli John: You were director of marketing at UiPath and then you worked at Vendor. 

    [00:37:11] Ramli John: I'm curious, what's a power up that's helped you accelerate your career? 

    [00:37:16] Ramli John: It could be something soft scale, it could be something that's more marketing related. 

    [00:37:20] Ramli John: But what is that power up that's helped you in your career? 

    [00:37:23] Ty Magnin: Yeah, love it. 

    [00:37:26] Ty Magnin: For me, the power up. 

    [00:37:27] Ty Magnin: And actually, I take a page from Jackson Noel, who's the CEO at his book, which is basically to focus on the principles of psychology, if you will. 

    [00:37:42] Ty Magnin: And if you master those and you understand cognitive biases and that's what your tool belt is made of, then regardless of how markets evolve, technologies evolve. 

    [00:37:54] Ty Magnin: If you're in a big company or a small company, you'll have a core to pull from, and it can be applied to so many things. 

    [00:38:03] Ty Magnin: So, yeah, the power up is understand human psychology and use that in your marketing. 

    [00:38:10] Ramli John: So good. 

    [00:38:11] Ramli John: That applies to so many things in marketing, like content, brand, demand Gen. 

    [00:38:16] Ramli John: I think that foundation really is core to it. 

    [00:38:20] Ramli John: It's funny because I got a chance to chat with Margaret Kelsey, who also worked at AppCUs, and she said marketing is just Margaret, she's so great. 

    [00:38:30] Ramli John: She said marketing is just changing behavior at scale. 

    [00:38:34] Ramli John: And if you don't know the core principles of that, then how do you even do your job? 

    [00:38:40] Ramli John: How do we even do our job as marketers? 

    [00:38:42] Ty Magnin: Essentially, it's such a hack because psychology doesn't change often like the Internet does. 

    [00:38:49] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:38:50] Ty Magnin: So if you understand those principles, then you could have a long career just based off of that.


    [00:38:57] Balancing career and life with Ty Magnin



    [00:38:57] Ramli John: And one final question. 

    [00:38:58] Ramli John: If you can give yourself a younger version of you, it could be one or two pieces of advice, it could be more, it could be around marketing, it could be around career, it could be around life. 

    [00:39:08] Ramli John: What would be an advice you'd give a younger version of Ty, who just may be starting out, or it's just like getting out of college and trying to figure out what to do in life or in marketing. 

    [00:39:21] Ty Magnin: I think it'd be to stay balanced in life, pursue all that's interesting, not just career stuff. 

    [00:39:31] Ty Magnin: I think looking back in my really focused in on work, and although I think that gave me a bit of maybe a head start or like, I got to skip a rung in the ladder, I also think that it came at a cost of just being a more interesting person. 

    [00:39:52] Ty Magnin: Right. 

    [00:39:53] Ty Magnin: And having more balance in life. 

    [00:39:56] Ty Magnin: And I think now, I don't know, I think I'm paying the cost of that a little bit. 

    [00:40:02] Ty Magnin: So, yeah, all the folks that were a little more balanced in their approach through their sort of turned my nose up to, I now am like, oh, maybe they understood something. 

    [00:40:15] Ty Magnin: So, yeah, my advice would be slow down. 

    [00:40:18] Ramli John: That's good. 

    [00:40:19] Ramli John: And when you say balance, is that work and life balance, or did you overwork yourself? 

    [00:40:26] Ramli John: Is that what you're talking about there, like, working 60 hours a week? 

    [00:40:31] Ty Magnin: Yeah, I think so. 

    [00:40:32] Ty Magnin: There's something like, I think it was the working hard and then also, it's not just that the rambling was also just letting go of myself a little bit and experiencing a lot of things. 

    [00:40:48] Ty Magnin: I sort of just would say yes to anything that I thought was going to drive my career forwards, which could be more hours, which could be a different job, but I'm not sure was totally in tune with my inner child, I guess, and what I want long term. 

    [00:41:06] Ty Magnin: So, anyways, I'm still wrestling with this one, but I think there's something there. 

    [00:41:12] Ramli John: Yeah, I think that's totally true. 

    [00:41:15] Ramli John: The inner child piece is so important. 

    [00:41:17] Ramli John: I keep going back to Margaret because this is very fresh. 

    [00:41:20] Ramli John: She talks about having fun in a creative output somewhere, which sounds, I don't know, that sounds like a very Margaret thing to say. 

    [00:41:30] Ramli John: She's like this artist that creates and paints, and I feel like that there is definitely something there where sometimes the creative output to your work kind of pulls away from creative output somewhere else and finding that even that balance there where you're doing stuff to create, not necessarily to, I guess, make a ton of money out of that creating thing that you're doing, could be very healthy for a lot of folks. 

    [00:41:59] Ty Magnin: I love that. 

    [00:42:00] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:42:00] Ty Magnin: Most of us got into marketing because it's fun to create. 

    [00:42:03] Ty Magnin: Right? 

    [00:42:05] Ramli John: Yeah. 

    [00:42:05] Ty Magnin: And so it's like, yeah, don't lose that through the process, for sure. 

    [00:42:09] Ty Magnin: And also don't put all your eggs in one basket and expect to get all your creative joy out of work. 

    [00:42:17] Ty Magnin: It's important to also pursue that on the side. 

    [00:42:19] Ty Magnin: I used to write a lot of poetry. 

    [00:42:21] Ramli John: Oh, interesting. 

    [00:42:23] Ty Magnin: Yeah. 

    [00:42:24] Ty Magnin: Studied it in college, the whole thing. 

    [00:42:26] Ty Magnin: And since I started working, I gave it up. 

    [00:42:30] Ty Magnin: It wasn't intentional. 

    [00:42:31] Ty Magnin: I just stopped and it's not that I just gave up the time I spent writing it, but I gave up. 

    [00:42:38] Ty Magnin: In some sense, writing poetry is a way to explore the world. 

    [00:42:43] Ty Magnin: It's like, it's like a lens to view the world through that open minded and present. 

    [00:42:47] Ty Magnin: And I feel like some of that has been. 

    [00:42:50] Ty Magnin: I'm like that way at work. 

    [00:42:52] Ty Magnin: But then when I leave it, it's kind of off. 

    [00:42:54] Ty Magnin: I guess my advice is don't trade one for the other. 

    [00:42:59] Ty Magnin: Don't put all your eggs into the work basket. 

    [00:43:01] Ty Magnin: But you can see I'm still kind of writing this thing out. 

    [00:43:04] Ty Magnin: I learn every day. 

    [00:43:05] Ramli John: If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Powerups newsletter. 

    [00:43:09] Ramli John: Share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers. 

    [00:43:13] Ramli John: You can go Marketing Powerups.com, subscribe and you'll instantly unlock the three best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues. 

    [00:43:24] Ramli John: I want to say thank you to you for listening. 

    [00:43:26] Ramli John: And please like and follow marketing powerups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify if you're feeling extra generous, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and leave a comment on YouTube goes a long way in others finding out about marketing powerups. 

    [00:43:41] Ramli John: Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design. 

    [00:43:44] Ramli John: And thank you to five cell for editing the intro video. 

    [00:43:47] Ramli John: And of course, thank you for listening. 

    [00:43:49] Ramli John: That's all for now. 

    [00:43:50] Ramli John: Have a powered update marketing power ups. 

    [00:43:57] Ty Magnin: Until the next episode.

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