Patrick cautions that the relevant internet culture depends on the audience being served. Effective creative work starts with detailed customer understanding, then selects formats, references, humor, and stunts that resonate with that buyer rather than chasing whatever is currently viral.

Define the audience before adopting an internet-native tone.
Consider buyers' age, responsibilities, location, and media habits.
A successful stunt still needs to fit the brand and customer.
Aim to be interesting without making shock tactics the entire content mix.

“Yeah, but keep in mind it's the internet of today for the audience you're going after.”
Patrick Campbell · 32:00

“It is about understanding the audience that you are trying to reach and unique and different ways to reach them that are gonna capture their…”
Kip Bodner · 34:30

#internet-culture#customer-research#brand-tone#audience

Hot Take· 1

Hot Take28:00

Your Best B2B Media Hire May Come From E-Commerce

The speakers argue that hiring only from the same B2B market limits creative perspective. Consumer and e-commerce talent can bring stronger top-of-funnel instincts, studio practices, and content formats that B2B teams can adapt to their own audience.

Industry outsiders can see audiences and problems differently.
Consumer and e-commerce creators often excel at top-of-funnel attention.
Pair complementary creatives who agree on standards but debate execution.
Teach outsiders the business domain while using their existing media instincts.

“If you're talking about making taste, you have to have somebody who's far enough away that they can have a different perspective on the problem,…”
Kip Bodner · 28:00

“And I think one of the best places to look for content creators is e commerce.”
Patrick Campbell · 29:00

#hiring#ecommerce#b2b-saas#creative-talent

Explainer· 4

Explainer05:30

The Critical Difference Between Inbound Marketing and Inbound Media

Traditional inbound marketing produces traffic and leads through search content and downloadable offers, but its results often spike around individual launches. Inbound media instead builds a recurring audience that intentionally returns every week or binges multiple episodes, creating a more durable relationship with potential customers.

Traditional inbound campaigns are often dependent on individual content hits.
Inbound media optimizes for recurring consumption rather than one-time conversion.
The desired behavior is weekly engagement or sustained episode binges.
A recurring audience can make opportunity creation more predictable.

“So inbound marketing traditionally is like the content wheel, right? Inbound media is audience driven. I am building audience.”
Patrick Campbell · 07:00

“Or I want them to binge 12 episodes in a row.”
Patrick Campbell · 07:00

#inbound-marketing#inbound-media#audience#b2b

Explainer11:30

The Three Roles Behind an Effective Internal Media Studio

Patrick divides media production into three responsibilities: operational production, storytelling, and visual or brand production. Early teams can use generalists and founders to cover gaps, then hire specialists as the operation matures.

A producer manages recording and production mechanics.
A storyteller shapes the episode, outline, or script.
A brand producer defines treatments, graphics, intros, music, and transitions.
Teams can begin with generalists before adding specialized talent.

“So I think there's three types of people when you're doing this strategy.”
Patrick Campbell · 11:30

#media-team#production#storytelling#hiring

Explainer17:00

How Inbound Media Changes the Relationship With Buyers

An ebook opt-in often starts a transactional sequence that buyers expect will lead to sales outreach. A recurring show asks people to identify as members of an audience, allowing familiarity and trust to accumulate before a commercial conversation begins.

Lead magnets commonly create a transactional expectation.
A show invites ongoing participation rather than a single download.
Repeated exposure gives later sales outreach useful context.
Audience membership can turn an interruption into a familiar conversation.

“What they're doing is they're saying, Oh, this series is interesting. This marketing against the grain is interesting. I am signing up as a member…”
Patrick Campbell · 18:00

“And it's a really important distinction because it changes the relationship that you have with the customer, right?”
Patrick Campbell · 18:00

#customer-relationship#trust#audience#sales

Explainer23:30

Why Editorial Taste Needs a Studio Model, Not a Marketing Sprint

Inbound media cannot rely solely on keyword science to determine what deserves attention. Patrick says creative teams need collaborative studio workflows, deliberate ideation and editing stages, and a person empowered to set a coherent standard of taste.

Editorial taste is unevenly distributed across a team.
A studio operates through collaboration, debate, and repeated editing.
The media lead should have creative judgment, not merely distribution expertise.
Executive producers should guide standards without handling every production task.

“Because you're you're essentially creating a little like creative studio inside the company, right?”
Patrick Campbell · 24:30

“And a studio model, there's a lot more collaboration and there's a lot more like little arguing.”
Patrick Campbell · 24:30

#editorial-taste#creative-studio#workflow#leadership

Story· 2

Story03:00

How ProfitWell Evolved From Blog Posts Into Eight Media Shows

Patrick Campbell explains how ProfitWell began with conventional blog posts and an ebook before adopting a broader media strategy. The company eventually created eight shows and series, helping it appear larger while significantly increasing word-of-mouth and referral traffic.

ProfitWell initially followed a conventional inbound content loop.
A small addressable market made sustained brand recognition essential.
The company expanded from one pricing show to eight shows and series.
The media strategy increased word-of-mouth and referral traffic.

“We were one of the first companies, if not one of the first uh B2B companies to do like a media strategy.”
Patrick Campbell · 03:00

“And it built brand in such a way that we definitely look bigger than we are.”
Patrick Campbell · 08:00

#profitwell#inbound-media#brand#content-marketing

Story09:30

ProfitWell's Biggest Media Mistakes—and What It Would Change

ProfitWell initially overemphasized view counts, moved too slowly, and assumed too much work needed to stay in-house. Patrick says the company improved after distinguishing pure brand stunts from funnel-oriented programming and outsourcing repeatable production work.

An early fixation on views pushed the team toward irrelevant opportunities.
Brand plays needed different goals from funnel-oriented shows.
The team could have accelerated by learning to use agencies and contractors sooner.
Creative staff should design pilots, not repeat mechanical production indefinitely.

“I think we fixated too much on view count in the beginning.”
Patrick Campbell · 09:30

“We did everything in-house. That's how I would start instead of hiring a content writer, hire a video person because video person can also do…”
Patrick Campbell · 10:00

#media-strategy#outsourcing#creative-production#profitwell

Q&A· 1

Q&A18:30

How Marketers Can Sell an Inbound Media Strategy to Leadership

Patrick suggests explaining a recurring media show as a webinar that attracts more qualified attendees each week. Leaders can then compare its expected audience and cost with familiar assets such as ebooks, even when precise attribution remains unavailable.

Use the recurring-webinar analogy to make audience building concrete.
Connect historical webinar attendance and revenue to possible audience growth.
Challenge the assumption that useful media requires millions of views.
Compare season-level production costs with the cost of a premium ebook.

“Try to communicate to them that basically what we're trying to do is we're trying to have a webinar every week where more and more…”
Patrick Campbell · 19:00

“We looked at a season of a show could actually probably cost less than $10,000, a season being 13 episodes.”
Patrick Campbell · 19:30

#executive-buy-in#media-budget#webinars#attribution

Tool· 3

Tool21:00

Map Your Media Network Across the Buyer's Week

Kip describes a planning slide that mapped a target buyer's week against the formats and channels used to reach them. The view made it easy to see how newsletters, podcasts, and other programming could create complementary touchpoints instead of disconnected content assets.

Represent the target buyer's week visually.
Place each media format on the day and channel where it will be consumed.
Use different shows to serve different personas.
Track how many shows each audience member consumes.

“And it was the formats of content they created and like the days of the week.”
Kip Bodner · 21:00

“Here are the channels, here's the stories we're telling them, and like here's kind of how they're experiencing it over their week.”
Kip Bodner · 21:30

#content-planning#buyer-journey#media-network#touchpoints

Tool25:30

Use a One-Page Verbal Brand Guide to Align Creative Work

ProfitWell condensed its verbal identity into a one-page guide rather than a lengthy deck. The constraints forced the team to define memorable metaphors, a consistent tone, and practical requirements such as making every piece helpful and including a usable summary.

Keep the verbal brand guide to one page.
Use recognizable personality combinations to convey tone quickly.
Define what every piece of content must deliver.
Use the guide to drive alignment conversations rather than add documentation layers.

“Second thing, verbal brand guide. That was huge.”
Patrick Campbell · 25:30

“The verbal brand guide, the biggest mistake people make is it's 20 slides long, it's five pages long, one page, one page verbal brand.”
Patrick Campbell · 25:30

#brand-voice#editorial-guidelines#creative-team#profitwell

Tool30:00

Find One Proven Media Format Every Week

Patrick assigned creatives to identify a reusable content format each week, then adapt it to ProfitWell's subject matter. This approach lets people hired outside the software industry transfer familiar entertainment structures into useful B2B programming without copying the original content.

Search for repeatable formats rather than isolated topics.
Study formats across YouTube, sports, television, and other industries.
Adapt the structure to the brand's expertise and audience.
Set timelines so ambitious ideas do not derail immediate work.

“What I told them is your job is every week, find a format.”
Patrick Campbell · 30:00

“And a format is like, all right, I have talk soup format, a guy in front of a screen just given commentary.”
Patrick Campbell · 30:00

#content-formats#ideation#creative-process#b2b-media

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway08:30

Why Relevant Viewers Matter More Than Massive View Counts

Patrick argues that B2B media should target either a specific buyer persona or a problem the company can solve. ProfitWell's pricing show deliberately appealed to people concerned about pricing, making a smaller but highly relevant audience more useful than broad, untargeted reach.

Target a defined persona or a specific customer problem.
Do not judge specialist B2B media by mass-entertainment traffic standards.
A narrow audience can function like a recurring webinar of qualified leads.
Separate targeted commercial shows from broad brand plays.

“What you should be focused on is either the persona you're trying to attract or the problem you're trying to solve.”
Patrick Campbell · 08:30

“That's totally fine. I don't want you to look. I'm I'm having a webinar every week, right?”
Patrick Campbell · 08:30

#audience-targeting#b2b-media#personas#view-count

Takeaway13:30

A Low-Risk Way to Start Producing B2B Media

Companies do not need a fully staffed studio to begin. Patrick recommends adding simple videos to existing articles or beginning with an audio-only podcast, which lowers production complexity and reduces discomfort for people who are not ready for the camera.

Assess which storytelling and production skills already exist internally.
Add a video interpretation to each existing blog post.
Avoid merely reading written content into the camera.
Use audio-only podcasting as a lower-complexity starting point.

“Like each blog post, just add a video at the top that just kind of like goes through it and maybe like has a little…”
Patrick Campbell · 13:30

“Like, start with an audio only podcast and kind of go from there.”
Patrick Campbell · 13:30

#podcasting#video#content-production#b2b-media

Takeaway26:00

Reserve Part of the Content Mix for Tasteful Creative Risks

Patrick recommends allowing creatives to devote a minority of their work to unusual, attention-grabbing ideas while removing repetitive production burdens. Strong opinions and a shared definition of taste help distinguish purposeful experimentation from empty stunts.

Reserve roughly 10–20% of creative capacity for riskier ideas.
Protect experimental work from excessive mechanical production.
Use a clear point of view to make the brand distinctive.
Distinguish shared standards of taste from individual preferences.

“Like, let them have like 10, 20% of the stuff they're doing to just be out there and then take away all of that mechanical…”
Patrick Campbell · 26:30

“But if there's no opinion, there's no taste, right?”
Patrick Campbell · 26:30

#creative-risk#brand-opinion#experimentation#editorial-taste

Frameworks in this episode

Brand-and-Funnel Content Portfolio

Buyer-Week Media Map

Editorial Taste Operating Model

Inbound Media Audience Engine

Media Start Ladder

One-Page Verbal Brand Guide

Persona-or-Problem Show Filter

Pilot-Template Production System

Recurring-Webinar Business Case

Three-Role Media Studio

Weekly Format Mining

Insights & moments

⚡Myth Buster· 1

Internet-Native Content Does Not Mean Copying the Latest Meme

◆Hot Take· 1