In this week’s episode, Stewart and Travis interview the amazing Sujan Patel, who hits us with so many growth hacking and content marketing techniques it leaves Stewart’s head spinning.
And in the news, it is AI all the way, as we find out more about Microsoft’s massive investments in the space, discover yet another AI-powered marketing tool, and dig into what it all means for the budding marketer.
And don’t forget: You can win a Huawei MediaPad M3 tablet in our fantastic giveaway, details of which you can find at the end of this article.
June 5th: The AI Audit in NYC
Join us next week in NYC to engage with top executive leaders, delving into strategies for auditing AI models to ensure fairness, optimal performance, and ethical compliance across diverse organizations. Secure your attendance for this exclusive invite-only event.
- Welcome to VB Engage episode 51! [0:20]
- Stewart is still surprised that he hasn’t killed Travis yet. He’s so violent. [00:55]
- This week Stewart is in San Francisco; next week Travis will be. [01:30]
- Stewart visited the GamesBeat Summit conference, which was a smashing success! [02:05]
- Microsoft to bring bots to Bing! [02:15]
- Tay, Microsoft’s first foray into AI, was a racist disaster! [04:20]
- Microsoft Ventures aims to democratize AI for all with Bonsai. [05:10]
- Element AI was the first funding from MSFT Ventures in December. [06:10]
- It’s GIF, not Jif! [06:30]
- Travis is looking forward for his AI IV drip of fake news. [07:00]
- Bloomreach releases it Digital Experience Platform this week. [07:75]
- Marketers want to be able to personalize at the top of the funnel. [08:05]
- Bloomreach acquired Hippo awhile back and can now customize content at scale. [08:35]
- Next up is the firehose of information that is Sujan Patel! [10:10]
- Please welcome our guest, Sujan Patel! He is cofounder and GM of Web Profits and managing partner of Ramp Ventures, which is the team behind contentmarketer.io and narrow.io, Mailshake.com, linktexting.com, quuu.co, and pick.co. [10:30]
- Sujan loves being called “The Thunder!” [11:00]
- What are the things you consider when planning how to make more people visit your website? [12:00]
- Build an audience as quickly as possible. Before you launch, start giving people the value of what you are offering. It’s all about understanding who your potential client is. [12:30]
- Identify gaps in knowledge or gaps in marketing from your competitors. If there is a problem, you solve it. [13:40]
- Content marketing is the best way to do SEO. I start everything by searching for keywords. [14:40]
- It takes forever for your SEO efforts to rank, mainly because there are companies out there that have been working on leveraging your keywords for the past 15 years. [15:45]
- Your gains are the difference between your competitor’s average and what you do. [16:00]
- Content marketing helps you get a better ranking for the keyword by being more authoritative. In the meantime, you also get traffic, and it helps find people who are interested in your topic. [16:40]
- How do you find an original idea? How do you make sure you are driving emotions? [18:00]
- Your minimum quality should be better than what is already out there. You need to come up with a unique angle. [19:00]
- How did Sujan manage to build so many startups all at the same time? [20:10]
- Sujan and his team at Ramp Ventures can manage multiple startups because they’re working with SaaS companies at different stages. [20:25]
- The startups all have similar audiences with a similar marketing strategy. [021:10]
- Product marketing and user experience need to be great. [21:20]
- Building one big community from the five companies — it’s one effort. [22:00]
- It is incredibly challenging. Different stages have different problems. [22:20]
- We learn from each other. [22:40]
- Sujan shares some of his fantastic community-building tips and hacks [23:10]
- Tune in to hear these. Travis isn’t transcribing all of the nuggets! [24:00]
- CMXHub.com was instrumental in learning about how to grow communities. [26:00]
- Check out the show notes on how to win this Huawei MediaPad tablet. [28:10]
Next week, tune in to hear our conversation with Adelyn Zhou, the CMO of TopBots, as we discuss mobile marketing and how to engage your audience in a mobile world.
Competition time!
To mark our podcast-iversary, we’re giving away a Huawei MediaPad M3! Entering the competition is easy — just click the image to get started with your entry below and earn extra points by completing simple tasks. The more points you have, the more chance you’ve got of winning the MediaPad. Our special thanks go to Huawei for donating such an awesome prize. Good luck!
Above: No image? That’s OK – just click here to enter.
Last week, if you missed it, we mark our 50th episode with one of our biggest ever interviews – the one and only Noah Kagan. You won’t want to miss a single word he says, as we dig into his story and his secrets of success.
As always, if you enjoy the show, please rate or review it on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. I mean it’s free… so you should leave a rating out of the kindness of your heart, right?
