Marketing Happy Hour - "Edutainment" 101: Content That Converts | Travis Tyler of PandaDoc

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

This week, Cassie and Erica catch up with Travis Tyler, Senior Digital Content Producer at PandaDoc, for a look at all things "edutainment," and how this strategy can take seemingly uninteresting content and transform it into something consumers truly love (and keep coming back to!). Here's a peek at what we cover in this episode: [00:05:32] - Travis gives us background on what he studied in college (spoiler alert: not marketing!), how he pivoted into the world of content production and found a home at PandaDoc. [00:09:08] - Travis breaks down the history of "edutainment" as a tactic to add value to your audience and explains how he's infusing "edu-tainment" into his role at PandaDoc by creating content that stops the scroll and encourages engagement.  [00:17:20] - Travis shares how you can implement "edutainment" in your marketing strategy by "piloting" your ideas.  [00:27:52] - A behind the scenes look at how Travis grew PandaDoc's social media following to over 150K (100K of which are on LinkedIn specifically) by diversifying their "boring" content with humor and truly using analytics to learn and adapt.  [00:33:31] - Travis explains the purpose of PandaDoc's podcast, The Customer Engagement Lab, and the unique way he's found to build his network and promote the show (and ultimately PandaDoc) at the same time. [00:41:32] - The inside scoop on what Travis' team is doing to navigate budget cuts. Grab a drink and listen in to this week's Marketing Happy Hour conversation! ----- Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Travis' episode: TikTok 101: How to Build an Engaged Audience | Zaria Parvez of Duolingo Video Content 101: Make it "Snackable" | Adam Cilley of Sports Card Investor ____ Say hi! DM us on Instagram and share your favorite moments from this episode - we can't wait to hear from you! NEW: Download the Dream Career Game Plan! NEW: Check out our website! NEW: Join our email list! Follow Travis on Social: TikTok | LinkedIn Listen in to Cassie's episode of The Customer Engagement Lab! Follow MHH on Social: Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter, Marketing Happy Hour Weekly: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/marketing-happy-hour-weekly-6950530577867427840/ Learn more about 99designs and get $20 OFF your first design contest: https://99designs.com/marketinghappyhour

you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode. We are so excited to share that our first

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So go check it out at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie to download and make your career dreams come true. All right, everyone, we're welcoming our friend Travis Tyler to the Marketing Happy Hour podcast today. Travis is a creative marketing and communications professional working with in-house teams, creative vendors, freelancers, and agency partners to bring revenue driving community building campaigns to life on podcasts, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more. He's the senior digital content producer at PandaDoc and the host of PandaDoc's podcast, The Customer Engagement Lab. Cassie had the honor of being a guest on Travis's podcast last year, so we thought we'd bring him on to see what he knows.

Turns out it's a lot. Grab your favorite drink and get ready to learn about edutainment as a tactic to add value to your audience, how the PandaDoc team grew their following to over 150,000 by infusing their boring content with humor and using analytics to learn and adapt, and get an inside scoop on what Travis's team is doing to navigate budget cuts. It's a juicy one today. Let's dive in. All right, you are in for a treat today. This guest is one of the funniest marketers I know on the internet, and he is a fellow podcast host. Travis Tyler's with us. Hey, Travis, how are you? Hey, Cassie. Great to be here. Erica, thanks so much for letting me join the two of you. Absolutely. Yes. We're so excited. I was on Travis's show a few months back. It was

the most fun ever. He has the coolest setup at his studio and we had a blast here in Tampa, Florida. But yes, very excited for you to join us, Travis. And one of the most important things that we ask all of our guests is what is in your glass? Because this is marketing happy hour. So would love to hear what you're sipping on today. Well, I listened to almost all of your episodes that the two of you put out. So I was like, I have to be prepared for this. And I went out and got myself a very basic white girl drink, which is a Venti Starbucks, Java chip Frappuccino with 2% milk and extra chocolate sauce. It's now empty. I drank it before this.

I couldn't help myself. And now I'm just sitting on a bubbly. That is fantastic. Cassie, what do you have in your glass? So I have clever matcha. So I just put that together. Actually, come to think of it, when I recorded with you, Travis, I also had matcha. So it's a theme here. Um, and I also have water as always. So with one of my community groups that I'm in, we're doing a drink more water challenge this week. So I am,

I have about, I think this is like 32 ounces or 36 ounces. So I need to drink many of those today. So if we see you skedaddle to the bathroom, we know why. Yeah, exactly. What about you, Erica? I love that. I also have a very large water. I, uh, succumb to the pressure for a Stanley cup. So I am always drinking water all the time. And I also just realized I still have all of like most of the Andas that you got me, Cassie, when I moved into my apartment. So I will be getting one of those later on today. Very excited about that. Love it.

Love it. So Travis, we'd love for just to dive in right away. Our Marketing Happy Hour listeners don't really know anything about your career journey up until this point. So what did you study in school? What was your first job? How did you then eventually find PandaDoc and step into the role that you have now? For sure. So I studied developmental psychology in my undergrad, and my first job was actually in sales. I was an admissions recruiter for the college I went to, shout out Eckerd College

here in the Tampa Bay area. And I did that for two years. And I then leapfrogged into marketing because I was spending more time on my presentations than I was on my actual like sales pitches. And I was doing copywriting and photography and videography. And I just was like, man, this is like, this is what I want to be doing. So after doing sales for a couple years, I said, you know, a lot of my friends are working in tech, and they don't have to work nearly as hard as I do. They're making way more money than me. And they just have a better work life balance. So I'm going to go check it out. I leapfrogged into it as a 25-year-old marketing intern. And so I was a little bit

old at the time to do a career change, but I knew I wanted to make this happen. So by day, I was doing my marketing internship at a software company from like 8am to 3pm. And then I was off to go deliver pizzas for Flipper's Pizzeria, if you're familiar with it in the Tampa Bay area. Yes. I did that part time to just make ends meet, really. I was just grinding and just trying to make it happen. Finally landed a full-time gig and just said yes to every project as a marketing generalist, a marketing grunt for like the first three years and was just trying to get my hands in everything from marketing automation.

I learned how to build things in Salesforce and Pardot and HubSpot, email campaigns. I learned how to do event marketing as well with customer events in person. So really got to dabble in it all. And then eventually got my role over at PandaDoc where I currently am. And we are a digital document automation software, which is a fancy way of saying we do e-signatures. But yeah, so that's where I'm at now. And the most interesting part is that I was on a procurement team where I was trying to find a proposal e-signature tool for my sales team. And we narrowed it down to three different softwawares and panda doc was one of them we didn't choose

panda doc but i fell in love with the product with the with the company and just kept applying didn't get my first job there uh got told no i think twice and just kept just kept going back to him was like i want to keep working for you uh so i know a lot of the the stuff that you talk about with your guests is like um you know journeying through your career and just don't give up, right? Like don't be butthurt if you, they said no to you the first time. If you really believe in the product and the company, like I did with PandaDoc, keep going at it. So yeah. Yeah. Great lesson and perseverance there. That's fantastic. Well, we'll talk a little bit more about your current role and some of the stuff you're doing, including the podcast here in a minute.

But first, I want to ask you about edutainment. And this is something that you have expertise in. And I know you listening, you're like, what in the world does that mean? So tell us a little bit more about what that is, how it came to be, and how you're using it in your brand. Yeah. So edutainment is a fun little word of combining education and entertainment. And it's actually existed for hundreds of years. If you go all the way back to Renaissance period, Enlightenment period, and then maybe a little bit more, you know, in American history, Benjamin Franklin used it, he had this publication that he was putting out for, I think, like two decades, for the colonists in America called Poor Richard's Almanac. For all my history buffs out there that want to nerd out on this with me. But anyway, he was trying to combine, you know know puzzles and forms of entertainment with his lessons of just like how to live and conduct yourself as a colonist

more recently as a cassie guest as we were prepping for this the term edutainment is more tied to walt disney and his first attempt at edutainment is in a 1922 somewhat animated film but mostly um a just black and white really weird movie I watched on YouTube just to like research for this it's called Tommy Tucker's Tooth and um he created it for a dental institute to teach kids about the importance of dental hygiene. Really exciting stuff here, Erica. But later, he created a series called True Life Adventures, which were fun nature documentaries that some people might be a little bit more familiar with. And the idea was to teach people about animals and their ecosystems from all over the world. And some edutainment that our generation

might be a little bit more familiar with is Schoolhouse Rock, Sesame Street, Bill Nye the Science Guy. And so like for people that are listening to this, I mean like, yeah, maybe I recognize some of those or no, I don't know what those are. The idea is that edutainment is going beyond just amusing people, right? So it exists on a spectrum. Wikipedia, if you were to Google this, has this nice little

graphic that basically shows you on the left-hand side, you have impact. And on the right-hand side, you have pure entertainment. So pure impact, pure entertainment. And where does it fall? Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. And so it's about teaching lessons, exposing ideas, transmitting technical knowledge in an entertaining way. So long-winded, but I'm passionate about edutainment, as you can see. Yes, it's awesome.

Yeah, I love the fusion of this because a lot of times when we think about adding value, we always say add value to your audience. That's like a buzzword in marketing. There's a couple of ways to add value. One of them is entertainment, education, but creating a fusion of them and how can you kind of marry the two concepts is such a cool concept there. So

Travis, too, within PandaDoc, what are some of the ways that you all are infusing edutainment into your content, into your podcast and all of these different platforms you're managing? So my job is to take, I'm just going to say it, boring or intricate topics like digital document automation, e-signature laws and processes, and present them in a way that stops people mid-scroll, because everybody's on their phone or on a computer, and get them to engage with us and be like, what is this? So I do things like I dress up in costumes. I wear a panda onesie pajama and look like an absolute idiot. And I do these skits with my friends and I do them in kind of a TikTok narrative style. Sometimes I have music. Sometimes I play

different characters. Heck, sometimes I'll even put a wig on. It just depends what the scenario calls for. But the idea is to then present our stance, which in our case is providing more than just e-signatures. It's being able to just overhaul your workflow. And yeah, we are always trying to create content across our buyer's journey. And that starts with discover, then it goes learn, then it goes try, then it goes buy. So there's different, obviously, buyer journeys, depending on who you talk to, what industry they're in, and what it is they sell product or service. But for us, that's kind of what we've decided to use. That is so awesome. And I'm just curious when you started at PandaDoc, is that who they were looking for? Like, were they looking for someone to bring these quote unquote boring ideas to life in that way of edutainment? Or is that something that you kind of brought into the picture and

kind of said, Hey, I think this is a great way to go about it and uh you know they kind of let you do that um just curious to hear there what your journey was you're absolutely right on they they were like we just need a guy to write ebooks um my my current boss who's been with me uh since day one and is still with me to this day was just tired of doing all the heavy lifting herself. And she needed someone to help out, right? There's only so many years you can write 15-page e-books on the best way to create a sales proposal. And so I originally started writing eBooks. And one of the things that we were doing at the time that was actually really helpful

was we were focusing a lot on the educational aspect. And we were doing a really good job of partnering with audiences where we had overlap but didn't compete with. So one of our most successful pieces of content that I was hired to write was this like in-depth 20-page ebook with our friends over at HubSpot. And it garnered like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of downloads. And again, this was back in 2019. So we know things have changed and how we try to create and capture demand. But at the time, that was what I was hired for. And how I ended up where I am today is we had a marketing VP who had the foresight to be like, he had a one-on-one with me, called him skip level meetings. And he, this is when we were back still in person. And he was like, Travis, I like you, man. You got spunk. I was like, thanks. He was like, I saw this one blog article you wrote for fun.

Pretty silly stuff. And I was like, I like to have fun, man. I'm a big comedy buff. I watch and listen to a lot of podcasts and stand up. And I do improv comedy. And he goes, really? And I was like, yeah. I was like, it's a local theater here.

I'm part of like a troupe. And we perform every weekend. And I did like a three's a local theater here. I'm part of like a troupe and we perform every weekend. And I did like a three-year training at this theater as well. And he was like, that's incredible. That actually leads me to what I want to talk to you about, which is that your superpower is not writing. And I was like, that's a nice way of saying that I'm not a good writer. And he was like, no, man, I want to put you in front of the camera. Let's start with small things. Let's take our most popular blog articles that have the highest search value and have the highest conversion rates.

And let's create three to five minute videos recapping what that blog article is about just to try to boost our SEO and rankings on search engines. But also in case anyone wants to dive into that without reading it and they just want to watch it, let's see what you got. And I was like, whatever I can do to not get fired. And then two and a half years later, here I am today with a huge budget, an amazing professional studio, and lots of other cool things. That is so cool to hear. And I know a lot of our listeners out there have these big ideas and have these superpowers that may not be what they're in right now. How do you recommend stepping into something like that? Say somebody

is out there taking notes. What do you think that they can do to kind of bring this element of edutainment to their marketing strategy? As far as finding what it is, if you've got a big idea you want to bring forward, my biggest tip is to go all in on a pilot. So in the entertainment industry, popular TV shows, you're probably familiar with the concept of a pilot, which is this episode that sometimes will never air to see the light of day. They market test it, and it's the first chance to show the concept come to light. So I've done that with nearly every big project I've ever done here at PandaDoc. And it's an opportunity to get really direct feedback on your big crazy idea. And it's really helpful when it comes to multimedia projects, videos, videos, gifts, sketches, live streaming events, podcasts, all those types of things. Especially in the business world. You know,

there's a lot to be scared of you in tarnishing your brand or reputation. So you don't necessarily always want to just spend all your time on this big pie in the sky idea and not have it come to fruition. So during the pilots, I always am really taking lots of critical feedback. I'll give you an example. So I am trying to film some really fun social media skits for PandaDoc currently called Dr. Panda and his document therapy sessions. And the idea is obviously a play on word, PandaDoc, documents. And I, myself, am somebody that has been in and out of therapy for close to a decade. I am a big fan of it.

I studied it in undergrad. And I just thought there could be some cool overlap here where we have somebody dressed up as a panda, and they're also a therapist. And they're dealing with our ideal customer profiles, which are like salespeople, marketers, entrepreneurs, people running small businesses. And they're in there for these sessions. It's a big, it's a lofty idea, guys. Just me hearing it, you're probably like, good Lord, dude, like, how does your brain work? But so I script it out, I film it, and then I work with an agency partner to help me get

all the edits, all the cuts. And then I present it to my team. And it may never see the light of day. And I have to do it low budget, right? I have to get scrappy. I have to figure out how to film it on my phone myself. And I'm going to tell you, it didn't come out the way I thought it would.

We filmed two different sketches. And yeah, that's my biggest tip for everybody is like create a pilot because giving concrete feedback on something tangible, like a pilot episode or a sketch or just a concept is so much easier than trying to give feedback on like, your idea from like a slide deck or a Google Doc. So that would be my my tip. So good. Yeah. And one of the things too, that we talk a lot about on the show is when you're pitching those ideas to what can you create for your pitch? That's kind of encompassing that idea. So maybe it's recording your own

version really quickly on your iPhone and like kind of showcasing that. So the more visual elements and realistic elements of that, that you can pull in. But that's a great idea. I love the idea of pulling in the pilot into the world of marketing. I mean, such a great concept. So really good tip there, Travis. content that showcases your personality, being funny, allowing your personality there to shine through. I think that can be hard for a lot of people and people can be hesitant to let that happen on their personal channels, but also on just public brand channels as well. So how are you personally diving deep into that personality of yours and what recommendations can you give to everyone about just not being embarrassed with yourself and embracing who you are online and offline too? Yeah, I'm so glad you touched on this and I'm really passionate about this. I will also put a big disclaimer at the

beginning of this. This isn't for everyone and that's okay. Many of my colleagues are not interested in doing what it is I do online. And there are many reasons they do that, right? So I get really personal with a lot of my posts that I put out there. And that doesn't necessarily need to be the formula for everyone. It just happens to be the way I operate, because I think of myself as multifaceted. I'm more than just my job. I'm more than just the content I create. I'm like an onion, like in Shrek. I got layers. And when you peel them back, there's going to be a lot to me. And so that's why I try to mix it up with what I talk about, with what I'm posting. And I've also just found it allows me to never run out of content ideas or topics. And that's where I think some people get hung up when they're trying to create

a personal brand. And when they're trying to create content for an actual brand, is if you put too many parameters on what it is you are allowed to talk about, it gets really tough. That's why I probably wouldn't do well at a huge corporation that's really, really worried about its reputation, is not interested in towing the line of humor. I know consumer brands tend to be a bit more willing to do that. And I remember that same VP, I got into a conversation with him where I was like, I want my content to be like 50% comedy, 50% educational.

He's like, that's great. That won't always fly. I just want to give you a piece of advice. Why? And I was like, okay. And he's like, a brand like Coca-Cola can afford to be silly. They can afford to take risks because, well, if they piss somebody off, you know, it's just one bottle of Coca-Cola lost.

Okay. With the SaaS industry, if you're selling like a, you know, a pretty large enterprise software, I mean, that could be make or break. And that could mean people's jobs. And so you have to be a bit more careful. And so that was just one way of looking at it. My tip for being vulnerable in creating content is test out different variations of what you want to talk about. I would say for me, it's mental health, marketing content, the SaaS industry as a whole. And then just, yeah, things I like to buy in my personal life. I do a couple of posts like that every year and I try to find a nice blend. But yeah, I'm curious from hearing from the two of you, what have you done to do that as well?

That's a tough one because I get comments all the time from family and they're like, Cassie, you're funny. You need to show that more. so I don't think I do it enough but I think for me I am into a lot of nerdy things and Travis you and I talked about this a lot on your show um you called out at the beginning of the episode you're into spider-man and sports and Tom Brady and all this stuff and I'm like I am like I love all of these kind of nerdy things I I love Disney. Like I love Mickey mouse. And so for me, it's been more about holding onto that stuff and talking about the things that I love and why it resonates with me and share lessons through those if I can. Um, so I don't know, Erica, what about you? Totally. And I think it's a mixture of just mixing who you are as a person with your professional

self that you put out there. There's been a couple of guests on this podcast that talk about LinkedIn and talk about it because they hate it because everyone puts forth like such a front on LinkedIn. Like, look at this success that I have. Look at this success that I have. You know, look at this great story about how I helped this homeless person. And now I'm the best person ever. But it's, you know, and I'm guilty of it at times too.

I'm always like, look at our marketing happy hour episodes, please. But, you know, like you have to break down that barrier. And it's not always about being professional, being so buttoned up. It's more like combining the two. So you have your professional life, you have your personal life. How can you work that together for your own sanity and not have to keep them separate? So that's like something that I think about when I think about that. And that's something that has worked for me, at least knowing that I don't always have to be this like professional self all the

time like that I know that Cassie and I were talking about and when people like go too far with sharing too much online and I would my piece of advice for folks listening to that and we're like this is great you know I want to create edutainment content I want to be funny I want to toe the line I want to do things that are edgy and different I want to be funny. I want to toe the line. I want to do things that are edgy and different. I want to be the next Wendy's on Twitter. That's great. But know that I'm going to do a little, you know, really meta callback humor here. Spider-Man quote with great power comes great responsibility. So know what you're getting yourself into if you want to test this out. And you're at some point, if you're doing it right, you might cross a line. You might make a mistake. I know, I know I have, I've had some stern talking to's, uh, here at my company and yeah, it's, it's always iterative getting feedback, especially from my

closest peers who I know have my back as a person. That'd be my tip there is like get a couple trusted people in your life that are in your industry and outside of it. And you're for really unsure, test it with them first. Just like my, my tip of like getting a pilot episode. If you have a really vulnerable post, you want to put out there, maybe run it by one person in your industry and outside of your industry and just say like, got any feedback for me on this one? It's close to the chest here. Yeah. Great advice. And it's all learning. And I love that so much. So let's switch gears just a little bit and talk about the social media following that you were able to help Panda

Doc grow to nearly 150,000 social followers. Is that correct? Correct. First of all, congratulations. That's so awesome. We just have to know, how did you do it? Were there any strategies that you utilized in particular that grew the following the most? What do you think worked the best for you? Yeah. So a few things here. We just crossed 100,000 followers on LinkedIn this week. So when this episode airs, hopefully we'll be a little bit farther past that.

That's a 536% growth in a little less than two years, which is when I really started with my team doubling down on LinkedIn as a platform. When I first got into it, yeah, just like a lot of your listeners and a lot of your guests have come on here. And it was a huge cringe fest. I saw that as a huge opportunity where I was like, man, all these nerds over here with all this spending power on this platform, this is just an untapped goldmine for us to stand out with some entertaining and amusing content. Let's give it a whirl. Just because you're a CEO doesn't mean you don't have a sense of humor. You still want to laugh. You still want

to be challenged. You still want to be entertained from time to time. So that was the thought process as we began to build our strategy. And it didn't happen overnight. We slowly started to test things. And one of the things that we really tried to incorporate was commenting as a brand on people's posts, especially when they tag us and adding a human element and a human touch to it. I know that I listened to the episode that you had with the person who does social media for Duolingo. I'm trying to remember her name. Zaria. Yeah. And the idea of showing that you're more than just a brand, like, like knowing that it's going to be me or one of my teammates responding, you know, to a post and commenting and usually not clapping back with as much vigor as a Duolingo

post would. But I think that was, that was definitely intentional and part of our strategy to be like, hey, alongside the PandaDoc brand, we're also gonna try to build the brand of the people on our content marketing team, which includes me, my boss, Bethany, our social media manager, Tyler, and the three of us just really being active

on the platform and engaging with people, I think is what has helped us get to that number and where we're at today. It's not just like, here's our upcoming webinar. Hope you'll like it. No, that's not going to work. We were doing that for years and it didn't do squats. So we started throwing in one of my favorites. Cassie is like, if you're a football fan, there was this football game with the Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator losing his mind in the booth and slamming his ipad against the thing and so little things like that like i quickly turned that into a gif that night and then posted it the next day we ran up by the team just to make sure everybody was cool with it um and just saying

like when you know a customer sends you a a p print, sign, scan, and fax back instead of just sending a PandaDoc. So those types of things. And the other part to it was diversifying our content and building in a strategy where, yes, we are taking a look at, we use a tool called Sprout Social, which is pretty popular for enterprise brands to run their social media accounts on and do a lot of listening and reporting on. And yeah, weekly, monthly meeting to see what performed best and how can we recreate that. And then taking a look at the folks who had done it really well in our industry. So those were kind of the three things of building community by having personalities grow alongside of it with their personal brands, diversifying content with some humor, and then, yeah, just just calling out customer pain points in a fun way.

Maybe, you know, there's certain things you don't want to poke too much fun at because they're sensitive subjects, but with the document software, calling out the pain points of traditional printing, signing, all that stuff to call attention to the solution that you provide. It's a great, it's a great hack because humor and comedy lands with people. Maybe not going on LinkedIn and saying, we're a document e-sign company. This is what we do. Click here to learn more. So being able to draw in the audience there, but when it comes to try to selling software or selling something in service to another business, if you're, you work at a creative agency or professional services agency, one of the best narratives to tap into is the old way versus new way narrative. And that's what we try to blend with our edutainment strategy and tactics. It's like, here's the old way of doing things. It's the new way of doing things. And it can be very visual. It can just be very helpful for people to understand what it is you do and what it is you offer and to see a before and an after.

I mean, just like going back to like old laundry commercials, right? It's just as simple as that. So good. Such a good technique. And I want to draw attention. And speaking of growth here for a minute, I want to talk more about the podcast, the customer engagement lab. You all have garnered over 60,000 downloads, which again, by the time this comes out, I'm sure it'll be much more than that. But tell us a little bit about the strategy of building that show. I mean, it is absolutely fantastic. So if you've not listened, please go listen or watch actually, because the video is a

load of fun. But yeah, walk us through that, Travis. What's the experience building that show? We had been doing podcasting for a while before we started this new podcast called the Customer Engagement Lab. And it was boring. It was not interesting um and i wanted to just shake it up with alongside of the social media strategy that we were starting to implement and i got tapped with okay well what

do you want to do i said i want to be in the show they said okay uh what else and i said i want it to be a business comedy show there's a lot of great shows out there um that are very business focused but they're not having a lot of fun yours i think is one of the ones that does have fun um we're drinking we're talking we're hanging out but i wanted to do it different and it took some time to get there. We released a pilot episode. And I drew some inspiration from some of my favorite comedy podcasts and some of my favorite educational podcasts. So those two for me at the time, were your mom's house podcast is a very dirty, raunchy, explicit warning podcast from two comedians, Tom Segura and Christina Pajitsky, who are husband and wife. They'd been doing it for over a decade. They have one of the biggest followings. And then

my other favorite podcast was from the guys that created the Freakonomics books. Stephen Dubner had this show called Freakonomics, obviously, and then another one called No Stupid Questions, where he sat down with a psychology professor from the University of Pennsylvania. And the two of them were just hilarious, but also like really interesting. And you learn so much from every episode. And that was kind of the strategy to build this show was I was like, I don't want just another sales and marketing show. There's plenty of those out there. Let's do something different. So we started to build the show with segments, sketches, gags. So Cassie came on the show. Erica, you went out of town for that one, but we'll get you on this season for sure. But one of the things I do with every guest is we record

a comedy sketch to kind of break the ice, loosen things up, get to know each other a little bit more. And we do that sometimes after, but usually before we record the actual episode. And that's what I put out to kind of tease that the episode is coming out the week of. So yeah, I can go on and on, but that's the gist of it. Okay. Well, I want to ask you two about connecting with your audience, but I have to tell you how impressed we were with your pitch to, for us to come on the show. So Travis sent us, what platform did you use to record the video? I used Wistia. Okay. So Wistia, Travis used Wistia, which another one that I've used before is Loom. So kind of similar, Searchy. There's a bunch of them. And you created a custom video where you threw up our podcast cover and your podcast cover

and did this whole personalized, very intentional outreach, which I thought was so impressive because I cannot tell you how many times Eric and I get contacted just by people either wanting to be on the show or inviting us on the show. And that really stood out to us. So love that, that you do that. Yes. Incredible. Thanks, gang.

Yeah, I don't do that for every guest. You guys were special. I would say I do it for probably every, I don't know, one out of five guests. I would do that for just because it's really time consuming. But yeah, the idea is to take some account based marketing techniques that I've learned, field marketing techniques where you really personalize some content that isn't just, you know, and asking them for 15 minutes of their time. You're giving them something in return and did my best to, yeah,

use the logos of your show, reference some things that you were doing, what I thought my audience could learn from you. And then I package it inside of a PandaDoc, which can also show people who aren't familiar with our software, what it is and what we do. So had, you know, Cassie sign her life away in an agreement saying, yes, you can use videos of me for this podcast. And so, yeah, just a creative application. And the show is called The Customer Engagement Lab. I got to set the bar of like, how do you engage your customers or your potential customers? We're always diving into the most creative sales and marketing techniques that people are using to do that. Well, I got to say that it worked because I was familiar a little bit with PandaDoc prior to that,

but I had never really used it or anything like that. And then after that video, I obviously knew of you and of the customer engagement lab and of PandaDoc. And I actually used PandaDoc for my first ever consulting agreement, like template thing. So it worked. Great job. Hey, Erica, can we, we're going to use that soundbite. We're going to send it to my boss. You bet. Permission granted for you.

So good. Again, I'm glad it worked. The idea is just like, look, there's lots of software out there that can do this kind of stuff. We're trying to differentiate ourselves, especially for like solopreneurs, entrepreneurs. We do have a freemium plan where folks can use it. And it's just something for people to try out if they're like, hey, actually, no, I need to send somebody an agreement. What tool could I use? Hopefully that we're top of mind, you give us a chance if we suck or for your use case, and we're sorry, we'll help guide you towards somebody else. But yeah, that's kind of the idea. So good. Well, and speaking of engagement too, so we talked a little bit about engaging with the guests on your show, but with the podcast specifically, what are you doing to engage the audience on social or outside of social just to generate interest, awareness, and listens for the podcast? This is a tough one. And I got some

really good advice from my former VP of marketing. We had wrapped up the first season of the show and I had been doing this for a year out of this really dingy apartment that I was embarrassed to bring people to. And he said, I've got some advice for your show. This is this, by the way, the same guy who was like, your superpower isn't writing.

So he was always really good about giving me unsolicited feedback. And his advice has stuck with me to this day, which is that when you're creating content like a podcast, you have to put your audience first. And right now you're putting your guests first. And I was like, well, and you know, and I was like, he's right. I need to be tougher on my guests. his advice was you have to always keep your audience in mind above anyone else, including the people that come onto your show. Even if the guests, their feelings get hurt, oh well, but you want to try to keep that trust that you've built for as long as you can. That's so good. And 10 out of 10 advice. I don't even have a follow-up to that. Let's just talk a little bit. This is something that we're kind of focusing on as we move into the year 2023. As the economy kind of shifts now and in the future, brands are reducing budgets

for marketing and advertising. Do you have any tips for navigating those budget cuts? How are you kind of personally getting creative with lower budgets within your role? Yeah. So one of the ways we've tried to navigate this is we were approached as an organization. We started making a big splash in 2021, 2022 with a lot of our content. So people were approaching us and saying, Hey, I am an influencer. I would love to create some sort of affiliate or partnership with you guys. Can we make it happen? You know, I can promote your, your, your brand, your solutions, let us know. And we got really close to doing that. But they were expensive. And we hadn't done that before. Nobody on the team had a lot of experience

managing like influencers. And so we never pulled the trigger on it. And I sat over winter break thinking about like, how can, how can I do this knowing that layoffs are happening at all the major companies and at some of the smaller companies and startups and scale ups and still tap into, you know, more creative content for our audience and not have it always just be me and my face that you see with Pandadoc because we have almost 900 people at this company. There's plenty of talent to tap into. And so I said, why don't I create an internal creator program? Completely voluntary, by the way. God bless the people who are working with me. This is not their full-time job. But I'd seen four to five people at our organization

who were creating content on their social media profiles for fun. And they were really good at it. They were creating TikToks, vertical videos, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and some of them had acting experience. Some of them had been working in entertainment industries before they came to Panadoc, and I just decided to get more organized with it. So I took a notepad that was on my iPhone with I think like 45 hilarious TikToks that I had saved and said,

okay, I'm going to put it on a spreadsheet. Now, you know, it's legit and I'm going to break it out and assign these and create a brief of what the script is, what the acting they need to do, directions for how to film it. And I'm going to assign it to them. And I'm going to have like a meeting to explain like, hey, I'm going to assign this to you. I'm going to give you a due date. And I'm expecting you that if you say yes to me now, you're not going to, you know, leave me hanging. And so far, we've created I think 25 videos in like 40 days. And they're all really short. And they were all free, right? Like they didn't cost any money. And I was able to do it by just tapping into the content and, or excuse me, tapping into the creative inside of my own organization. And that's part of my role now. And in addition to creating my

own content, I manage our internal creators as well. So good. I think a lot of organizations forget that they have a wealth of talent within the organization that they may not necessarily think about because it's not specifically role-based, right? Creating content is probably not part of the role of a lot of these people, but just paying attention to people outside of the workspace, what are they doing online? What type of content are they creating and what skill sets can they bring to the table? That's such a great tip and something that can, I'm sure, save a lot of money versus going out there and finding UGC creators or influencers or what have you to create that content for you. It also helps people internally buy more, buy into like what you're doing they they have a blast doing

it because it's like outside their normal job function you know I'm working with people on the sales team account managers account executives um customers you know success and support associates and managers uh somebody on the ops team who's like hilarious but like never getting the chance to do kind of creative projects like this so those are the folks i'm tapping into and as long as you're organized about it and you find the right people that was the big thing is like i didn't want to have to train people on like okay so you have to hold your camera here i was like these people already like they knew what they were kind of doing just because i'd seen like you you said, Cassie, like I'd seen them, what they were doing outside on their personal accounts.

And I was like, yo, look, come do it with me. Let's have fun. That's awesome. departments, getting to know how different functions of your business work. Because a lot of times when we're sitting in our little marketing corner, we think that what the sales team is doing, A, we don't know much about it. B, we may not understand it. And C, we don't understand the depth of those different skill sets and the needs in those teams. So establishing those relationships, having people to go to, to talk to you about, hey, how does this work? And how can we work together to further the mission and the vision of the company? So it's kind of a twofold process, I feel like. So has that been beneficial for you guys too? Absolutely. We're

able to especially like tap into the folks who are, I don't always like the analogy of like on the front lines, but it's folks who are talking to customers much more frequently than I am and hearing their pain points, hearing like what is sending them over the edge to, you know, buy our software and partner with us in that regard. So I get to record a, you know, soundbite from Macho Man Randy Savage wrestling clip, but we're slinging PandaDoc in, you know, in the TikTok. And it's hilarious. And it's this, you know, 24 year old kid that is really good on the iPhone, recorded it from multiple angles and just did all these cool things. And then I assembled it and it came out hilarious. Awesome. Well, we're excited to see that content continue to roll out and just see what the team is

creating, but awesome work and such great tips that you've shared throughout this whole episode. So thank you for that. But as we wrap up, very sad, we're closing out this episode here. We love to ask this question. We'd love to hear your take and vision on this here. But what do you know now in your career that you wish you knew early on? I read a book and listened to a lot of content from Simon Sinek.

If you're not familiar with him, he is a career evangelist and has a lovely, slight Canadian accent. And he said, one of the biggest challenges that millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha really struggle with professionally is understanding that things take time. We've grown up in a world with instant gratification, instant responses, and we want to get to the top of the mountain overnight. And the truth of the matter is, it's not going to happen that way. And really great things take time. So those years where I was delivering pizzas, wearing my non-slip Skechers after working six hours, trying to figure out how to set up a drip campaign in Salesforce Pardot. That stuff paid off.

You got to, I know people are, you know, hesitant to say hustle culture is toxic and stuff for sure. I work in tech. I'm here for the work-life balance. Don't get me wrong, but it takes time. So I wish I had just known like, Travis, be patient. Eight years from now, you're going to be having so much fun. You won't even remember, you know, those late nights trying to figure out why, you know, the email click you set up didn't work because you forgot to put HTTPS colon backslash backslash in your link. Like, oh. Oh my gosh. Totally. And and I that I totally agree a lot of us feel pressure like even pressure like feeling we are not where we're supposed to be in our career and I think

that's so important to remember to take a step back it takes time to get to where you need to be so totally agree with you thanks so much for that. Yeah. Climb that mountain slowly. Take your time. Yes. Yes. Well, where can everyone find you follow along with what you're up to? What Panda doc is up to tell us all the, all the links we need to know for sure. I am blown away by how many people my age are not on Tik TOK. You can, but if you're not, you should be because it's so much better than Instagram reels. I'm sorry. It's the truth. You can find me at the customer engagement lab on TikTok. You can find me Travis Tyler on LinkedIn. And those would be my two places.

Awesome. We'll link out to all of that in the show notes. And thank you again so much for joining us today. We've been looking forward to this for a long time. Thanks, Travis. Thanks, Erica. Thanks, Cassie. This is like a dream come true. I'm fangirling over here. Thank you for having me. Please.

That is all for this week's episode. We hope you enjoyed getting to know Travis and hearing all about PandaDoc's unique strategies. If you loved this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite platform. And as always, keep up with all things Marketing Happy Hour on our website at marketinghappyhr.com and follow us on Instagram at marketinghappyhr. Be sure to grab our first ever free digital resource, the Dream Career Game Plan at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. That's marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. We can't wait to connect with you online

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