The Benefits Of Taking A Video First Approach To Marketing

The Benefits Of Taking A Video First Approach To Marketing

Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a Revenue Acceleration Series interview where we talk to seven-figure B2B business owners and their growth-focused executives who are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Matt Mouline from GRIT Technologies with me today. Matt, welcome and thanks for being here.

Matt Moline
Tim, thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, man. And dude, I love the sign you've got behind you, man. This is old hat, man. You're a pro.

Matt Moline
Oh, thanks.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Well, I always love to connect with other marketers. And so I know we're going to have a great conversation. Before we I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions to get things started. Are you ready to jump in?

Matt Moline
Yeah, let's do it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, man. So very quickly, what do you do? How long have you been doing it?

Matt Moline
Yeah. So I'm the head of marketing over here at GRIT Technologies, officially in this role for less than six months. But I have a sales marketing background. I've been doing that since... I think I really started back in 2005 as a freelance video editor doing commercial work, had some major accounts with the company I was working with, like Ford and Lincoln, for some examples, and then just progressed over the years into my own freelance gig and then got into sales and other marketing avenues, and here I am today. So that's our cliff note version right there.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So you've been in marketing for a long time. What's one of the most important lessons you've learned along the way?

Matt Moline
I would say probably one of the most important things is that relationships truly matter. Content creation and all the tools and stuff, they're important. But it's really, truly when you're able to really connect with people and really have strong relationships, that's when the real magic really happens. That's just any case in any part of business.

Tim Fitzpatrick
The other interesting thing about that, because it's a great point, is you never know which of those relationships are going to become really, really important, right?

Matt Moline
I've been doing this a long time, and there's just times where you get that next lead from something you never thought would ever come from. You try and think you're going to have a real strategic funnel, and this is where all this stuff is going to come from. I'm always blown away by where somebody calls us in from some other relationship that we've had with somebody else or just the fact we were kind to somebody else and we're helping them out in some way in some weird capacity. You never know. So that's why I go back to relationships matter in all parts.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. Marketing is not easy. We both know that. There is no easy button, right? Do you have any mantra or something motivational that you say to yourself when you run into those challenging times to help you push through it?

Matt Moline
Yeah. I mean, as far as challenging times, My mantra, it might be a little bit different than maybe what you're asking, but I don't know where I heard it from, or I'd love to give credit to whoever, but it's always something that stuck with me was, is either work for free or for full price, never for cheap. To me, that was always... You get in those situations where sometimes maybe the leads aren't coming in the way you want them to. You might want to take that one little side project that's half the cost of whatever. That's just going to get you into a lot of trouble really, really fast. Understand your worth, know your value, and just really keep driving, keep digging, because it usually does come after a period of time, and you're going to have those dry spells. Or in the other hand of that, if you're going to work for somebody and provide value to an organization, or you're going to work for free and do something like a nonprofit or whatever, you get so much satisfaction out of that and just delivering that service and being that just that servant to your neighbor, right? So that's how I live life. I either work for what you're worth or give it away, and that's where the best creative things I think happen. When you get bogged down into the stuff where it's really you're working for a cheap price or whatever, it just gets irritating. That's a mantra that I live by, and it's worked out pretty well for.

Shifting from Traditional to Video Marketing Strategy

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's a good one. I love it. I know when we connected for the pre-interview, one of the things that you talked about and mentioned was that you guys had been making some significant shifts in your marketing approach. Can you walk us through what you were doing and what led you to rethink your strategy?

Matt Moline
Yeah. What we did originally, that's the first part of your question, is I think we had a more traditional approach. I won't go into too many specifics of my position because I was an account manager here, then into sales and marketing, and hopefully marketing. But what we were doing is we were outsourcing our marketing to an industry-specific firm, like a lot of companies do that do what we do. The problem that we saw, or at least I saw, and we worked together on was the fact that everybody's speaking the same message. It's usually very technical in nature. There's companies that provided syndicated blog posts and things like that. They work on... It's very more SEO-driven, very for search. There are some paid ads and things like that. We got leads, but not the quality or who we would ever consider to be our customer. And that's a big issue when you outsource is that they can't always provide you with exactly what you're looking for. We also had a cold calling person that was a service we're also paying for. Again, we were getting leads, but we were not getting the quality leads that we were looking for. But in both of those scenarios, they both were like, well, in other companies that do what you do, they're happy with the leads or they're getting sales and things like that. It's just we had a higher level, a higher client type of service. And I'm not knocking anybody at all. It's just what we wanted to provide as a service to our clients and prospects who were like, a lot of successful businesses are really looking for it. That's what we wanted to be. And so that's where just the disconnect was. That's what I call tradition. We were doing a lot of that. So there was a big disconnect. Where we got the quality of clients was from our own customers, from our own referral base. The problem with that, though, is that they're not always really willing to do that until somebody's really in dire need or their friend or their business partner or whatever, whoever they have a strong relationship with, wants to really make a change, and then that would come. There's not a lot of success in getting those referrals from your current base. Don't ask me why. It's just everybody doesn't really do that well. We realized there was a disconnect. We obviously wanted to scale and grow, and we knew outside of acquiring another company, the only way to do that is obviously to get more customers, more reoccurring revenue. I started out in just the simplest way was... When I was an account manager for the company, I knew we were getting a lot of questions on a lot of the same type of topics, or we had specific solutions that we needed our client base to really adapt because of security reasons or overall issues with business continuity and talk about disaster recovery and stuff like that. So me being the video person in my background, I said, the only way I really know how to do that well is just, let's make a video, let's do it well, then let's push it to them and say, we're going to come to talk to you about this, and here's basically what we're going to come and talk to you about. It transformed a lot of the conversation because they knew what we were coming in. There was a clear message behind it. It was easy to follow. That's where it started. And then out of that, that branched into really where we are today as a video-first type of company versus the traditional stuff I was talking about.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So you're using... Let's break this down because I love this. I like video. Obviously, I've been doing video for a long time. The video that you're shooting that you're doing now, what does that look Is it long form? Is it short form? Is it a bit of both?

Matt Moline
What are you doing there? Yeah, it's really in a couple of different categories. It's long form educational concept and also podcasts like what we're doing today. The reason why we're going about... I'll start with podcast. The reason why we started doing podcast was not to be out there in the world and have people try to find us, and it's the new cool trendy thing to do or anything like that. I've done a lot of research, and what I know is just through experts that have done it before me. I'm not here to reinvent the wheel. I want to know what's working and move forward that way. Now, what I can tell you is the reason why we started doing podcast is because we have such a strong relationship with our current client base, and that's full credit to the team here at GRIT and what they've been able to do. So they've been able to provide top service. We have phenomenal relationships with our clients. I can even tell you clients' names, and they're not going to leave because they know they're good with us. And it doesn't matter if somebody comes to try to come in with a lower price or whatever. So the only way I know how to show people that, or traditionally you've done is you've done case studies, or maybe you'll spend the extra budget and you do a video testimonial and stuff like that. The way technology is advanced, it's so easy to now, if you have a great relationship, you have that foundation set, you should be able to go to your client and say, Hey, I've got a great idea. We've got a great partnership. Let's talk about some important topics that is important to you, what's important to us. Obviously, there's a theme around some technology, stuff like that, but just about business. Tell me your story of how you got started. What types of struggles and hurdles did you have to go through? Are there concerns about AI and cybersecurity? Just to give you guys some examples. Now, what's great about this is, and what I love about it is, it really shows the strong partnership between both companies. How you distribute it out is really important because you now have an opportunity to reach a larger network, and they also have an opportunity to reach a larger as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Because they're going to promote it, right?

Matt Moline
Yeah. Our CEO got on this podcast. How many times are they really able to actually tell their story? It does strengthen the partnership between both organizations too, because it's outside of the normal service that you're providing them. It's something completely different, which is unique. But there's interest. They've got friends, family, business partners, whatever in their network that are potentially looking for your type of service, whatever it is. So there's that piece to it, which is great. The other thing we do with that, so that's long form content. That's typically 45 minutes to an hour. What we do from that is we will take that and we will segment it off into different shorts or short form content. The important thing about that is it links back to the full-

Tim Fitzpatrick
The main episode.

Matt Moline
The main episode, because there's a piece of nugget or wisdom And just like we're talking today, there's going to be conversations of different little things and nuances about that specific topic that are interesting for other people. So that's the real important piece to that is that, where a lot of people live today, especially on social media, it doesn't matter what platform. If it's TikTok, if it's... I bring up TikTok because it's all about streaming and reels and those little 30 second shorts. But you see all platforms doing it. Youtube's got their own shorts. Linkedin just started adapting, and it's still in a beta right now where they're doing their own type of shorts, and then it's not really available yet. Facebook's got the reels, Instagram's got reels, and stories. So you're able to take one piece of content and then be able to make probably 10 to 20 different shorts just out of that one piece of content. And believe it or not, if you like social media or not, the reality is if most people are sitting there and they're scrolling, and if there's a topic, it's or it's thought-provoking. It doesn't matter if they're a business or not, they'll probably tune in and maybe want to know more and follow the link to the full episode, whatever. So podcast is one piece of that. The other part that we're doing, and that's more to get our top of funnel, get our interest.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Build more awareness.

Matt Moline
Build more awareness. It could be some silly thing that we said or somebody shocked or whatever. It doesn't matter. It was interesting enough for them to say, Well, what else you got? That starts the journey behind that. The other thing we are doing is more middle of funnel. We're actually creating, we're talking head videos, your typical teaching piece that you'd find on YouTube or anything like that about specific topics that are front of mind. It could be about cybersecurity and the latest fishing attacks. It could be top five things to protect your business or that you need to protect your business, what have you, usually around things that we're commonly talking about with our clients. And that changes every six months to a year that we find important. And I get that data from just looking at our service records and looking at our tickets and seeing what's typically the stuff that people are asking about, as well as my own market research as well, too.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Are your techs the ones that are doing those videos or are you doing them? Who's doing those?

Matt Moline
So right now it's primarily me because I'm the one that's just been the one to initiate a lot of this. I will say we actually this last week we did start recording videos of our service desk. And I'm excited about it because it's really showing people what a typical... What a service person does, but it's giving them a live look into our team. Our team is local. It's not people overseas. It's not outsourced. It's our guys right here, and it's probably even your neighbor that's there. And for us, it's really important to show that because one of the biggest things we offer is we're instant response. And that's a premium service where a lot of times in other industry or other managed service providers, it's more of you'll get somebody, but then we'll get back with you at a certain time. Time and period. The instant response thing is not something that you typically see. We're excited to see that. The response from our team has been great. They want to do more of it. We are starting to see some traction with our guys that we do low voltage cable installs, security cameras, things like that. Our guys are starting to get on board and start posting their own content that we then share out as well. So we're starting to see more employee-led type of content outside of-

Tim Fitzpatrick
So they're actually shooting their own videos, posting it on their own social profile?

Matt Moline
Yeah. Taking a picture, doing video. We're working hard to get more of that because we're finding that has more higher engagement. So it's just what the algorithm is liking.

Tim Fitzpatrick
There's a lot of stuff that you just shared that I want to break down a little bit. So the first thing I want to break down on the podcast, what's the title of the podcast or the name for the podcast?

Matt Moline
Yeah, so we call it the GRITty Business Podcast.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, so I love this. GRITty Business Podcast, it's about interviewing other business owners. Primarily, you've been interviewing existing clients.

Matt Moline
Correct.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I'm assuming at some point you're going to have to start reaching out to other business owners.

Matt Moline
Yeah. I mean, there's a point at which you're going to run out of your own pool. But you got to remember, too, we're taking on anywhere from 15 to 20 new customers a year. We're doing typically right now about 12 episodes as of right now per year.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, got it.

Matt Moline
Basically one a month. Now, I like to see that increase, of course, and we've got other partners and providers and stuff that we could definitely bring in and do that. But that's where we are today. So with our current base, it's been working. But when we have interviewed other what I would consider prospects, just people we run into and like, hey, would you be interested in talking... They've got a great personality. What they're talking about is of interest. We have done that, too. It could be used really mainly as a great means to collaborate work with your current base, but it can also be used as a prospecting tool, in my opinion.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I agree. Then the shorter form videos that you're shooting, how long are those? Are those one to five minutes?

Matt Moline
Yeah, it depends on what we're doing. But yeah, if it's more of like, Hey, check out this one quick tip, or something like that, yeah, that's going to be more of a short format. But we have some more longer form stuff. It's typically in that five to 10 minutes when we're going through the top five things that you need in cybersecurity or something like that. To give you an example.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Are you publishing those on your your blog as well, or are you just distributing those through social?

Matt Moline
Yeah. So again, we're a video-first company. So the great thing about video, outside of just that it's dynamic, the tools we have today, it's so easy to take the transcript. So with every video we do or podcast we do, it's going to be a blog post or series of blog posts pertaining to that topic. And it's so easy to do. So how we're using AI. Was AI built into my editing software. I use Premiere. It automatically provide a transcript for me. I take that transcript and I've already prompted ChatGPT is what I like to use. And I'll prompt how I want my I want my blogs to be set up, and I will let it have the transcript, and it will give me my initial draft just based off that with the same tonality, the same points, the same type of links and stuff that I need for my pages that I want to link to, all of that, and it's done within seconds. So it's a video, and then you can go in and have it create a blog for you. And then out of that, too, I'll be able to create a series of different social posts based on that as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. And then are you distributing any of this stuff through your email list as well?

Matt Moline
Oh, yeah. That's part of our normal email campaigns. Again, depending on what the content is, like our general newsletter and stuff that's always going out to our current clients and whatever subscribers we have on our newsletter, like our other prospects. But we also will do specific campaigns, specifically around a specific topic. So I'll use the cybersecurity example. Again, we'll create a four week or six week campaign within our whatever target audience that we're trying to get into. And that will have a different thing of maybe there's a talking head video of me talking on some stuff. We're incorporate more employee type of content that's on social that we're collecting so they can see just a greater picture of who we are, what we're about, and really get them thinking.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I really like And we approach it very similarly for our business, right? The thing that I love about video, as you touched on, well, one, video, I may not talk to people directly, but they're starting to get to know me because they see me, they hear me. But then you can repurpose it. Shorter form video, do audio, you can transcribe it, right? You can leverage it, and you're using that initial video to then drive social posts to distribute through your email list. That one piece of content can be disseminated through multiple marketing channels. So you're not reinventing the wheel. It's not like, what content And am I going to create? What am I going to send out via email this week? The video drives all of that. The other thing that I really like about what you mentioned, well, there's a couple of things. One, you mentioned, Hey, I'm going through service tickets, stuff like that. There is no shortage of content in our businesses. We just need to know where to look for it. For MSPs, folks in IT, that's great place to go, right? To get content ideas. But the other thing that I really love, and a lot of companies don't do this, one, because I think it's hard, you do have to get a employee buy in on it. But, man, why are they not posting content through their social. They're connected with a bunch of other people. It could be techs, it could be salespeople, account managers. And again, there's no shortage of what they can be posting. But gosh, you're just leveraging all of your people to disseminate even more content and get the brand out there, which leads me to my next point.

Integrating AI with Marketing

Tim Fitzpatrick
You touched on AI a little bit. How are you adapting your marketing with AI? And how are you using it? You touched on it a little bit with the podcast. What else are you doing?

Matt Moline
So, yeah, that's a good topic. So I think that's a broad topic. We probably have a whole- It's very broad. 3 hours just talking about all this stuff. But I'll answer your question starting with how we're using it right now. So we've got some AI built into our ticketing system now, so I can easily search for common trends and things like that. So it's not replacing anything. It's just It's just a tool to really help me disseminate what's being talked about, what types of issues and things are there, which is great. Like I said, I use AI, and it's built into my editing software, where I can easily transcribe and do all of that. So again, it's taking a lot longer manual tasks and just short the time frame. So we're seeing benefits with that. When I started seeing some stuff come out in the last couple of years, is doing that, I was like, I don't care what the cost is. That's so worth doing, getting into there. We already talked about how I'm using that. I think a lot of people do with using things for our blog posts and helps with their case studies and stuff like that. But that's from the videos we scripted and everything already. So it's your content. It's taking what you already have and just baking it in a really nice, easy to read format. What I will say in regards to AI and how it's affecting how other businesses are finding you, that's where a lot of in the marketing world, everybody's talking about right now. If you're familiar with HubSpot, they took a substantial hit in their search engine optimization. I mean, they went down, I think it was over half of what their typical search volume was within over the course of the last three months. And people are going, what does that mean for search? What does that mean for Google Ads? What does that mean for just our normal process in advertising? I've been asking the same questions that I've been talking to a lot of people. And this is where I'm really excited because we did adapt video early, I would say, compared to most. I'm not saying it was the first. There's definitely other people doing it before me. But I got the team on board to say, this is what we need to be a video first company for many for reasons. The interesting thing about the AI stuff that I'm learning as of even today is no longer are we, especially, we'll put it this way, some things have really happened in the last two months that I think nobody's really understood or they've seen, especially if you're in business leadership. You go on Google right now and you search for anything. It could be any type of service business. Call it a lawn mowing service or whatever. It's going to generate a response first, then it's going to look at ads, and then it's going to go into any type of original content that you've maybe produced out of there. And you're buried. What I've seen, and even how I look for things now in perplexity or ChatGPT, I'm asking it, Hey, I'm looking for this business, or I'm looking for this solution, but I need it to be focused in these key areas. And that's the real difference. So where traditionally you've seen where I need a business within 10 or 20 miles of me that does this, and it gives you all of the advertisements first and then anything else, that's really going away. And it's taking a lot of people out because it's a lot of money spent. The overall cost per click has gone up exponentially, especially in the last handful of years, because AI is really delivering a true, appropriate answer to the question that they're asking. And it's based on proximity to where you are, which the map stuff is really important. So local SEO is important. It's any type of relevant content or events. It's looking at things. It's searching the entire web base to see if you are partnered with any type of organization, certifications, any recent events and things like that to see if you're in the community. It's looking for social proof. It's actually going through all of the different types of Google reviews and Yelp reviews and all of that, and then delivering an answer. So what I've been really jumping on is making sure that we're really optimized for AI. And it's hard to process a little bit. I'm still, like I said, I'm learning as I'm going here, but we've been seeing good results in just our stuff, at least show up within the first top 10 in making sure that we're front and center when people are looking for that next IT provider, that next managed service provider, that cybersecurity partner, whatever, and ensuring that we're staying ahead of the game. And the interesting thing is, is that if you have a good, optimized website and you're present, you also have things across different organizations. You've got shared blog and things like that going for you. The biggest second search engine out there is YouTube, and it's going through. And if it's seeing that you're connected to different videos, it's putting video first because people don't want to read a blog. They don't want to do any of that. So you can almost double dip when it comes to the results, because you have, especially if it's based on the same question that everybody's asking, you have a really good chance of really being front and center as things progress and and things change with artificial intelligence.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's... Thank you for sharing that. And again, you shared a ton of good stuff there. So I want to pull a few things out. For people that are watching or listening, and if you're not using a lot of AI tools at this point, this could be an interesting conversation. But like you said, Matt, I'm the same as you. I use perplexity, I use ChatGPT. I do still I'll go in and do Google searches. But when I do Google searches, Gemini is popping in an AI answer right there. In the marketing space, what people are talking about is this zero-click world where people aren't going to search results and clicking on a bunch of stuff. So the content that people used to be creating that was driving traffic back to their website is not driving traffic back to their website as much as it did. And I believe that's just going to keep going down. I love the-

Matt Moline
And that's where everybody's freaking out right now. That's where everybody's freaking out because everybody's seeing their click rate and seeing their traffic just absolutely plummet right now. And that's the-

Tim Fitzpatrick
So traffic is going to be down, right? Yeah. But The thing that I find interesting is we still need to focus on things like SEO and content, even though they're not necessarily driving traffic back to the site, because they are going to help you get found when people use AI tools. As people start to do more direct business searches within AI, like you mentioned, Hey, I need a plumber in Denver that meets these requirements. Guess what? If the AI can't find you because you don't have content and you got a lousy freaking website, you're never going to show up in that AI search. So Content, SEO is still important, but it's shifting. And I also think that content that you put out on social is going to become more and more important because people are still finding and getting exposure to brands through social. Content is still super important, SEO is still important, but our expectations of it and how people are going to us are shifting.

Matt Moline
Yeah, literally overnight. I think we're seeing one of the most exponential shifts, I think even faster than the acceptance of the internet that was 30 years ago. And it's here now. That's the main point. Like you said, content's important, a well-built website, ensuring that AI can really skim through everything easily is going to be important. So there's tons of resources out there and there's tons of firms and stuff that can definitely help with that. That's definitely a clear focus to ensure that you're definitely found. But the quality of content is really going to be, I think, a really distinguishing factor between a lot of people. Just because you're producing something doesn't mean it's beneficial in any way. So that's the quality. Quality-produced, a very value driven or just interesting. That's really going to be king over just the general type of stuff that's out there. So if you're going about it and you're saying, give me, give me topics pertaining to my industry in ChatGPT and you're looking for brainstorming ideas, the reality is, is that if you're talking about what an IT provider does, and that's probably not going to do as well as maybe we should look into the top five hacks of different businesses over the course of the last year for 2025. So there's a whole other discussion we can have on that. But that's get into the mind of your people and sit down and have those conversations and really see what people are really wanting to talk about or what they want to learn about. That's going to really help push you forward.

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's awesome stuff, man. Matt, I really appreciate you sharing what you guys are doing, lifting the hood up, so to speak. Before we wrap things up, I want to ask you one last thing, which is knowing what you know now, is there anything you would do differently?

Matt Moline
Yeah, I think going back to what I originally started off with the rapid fire question and just talking about relationships is that's, again, where I think the most valuable content is for everybody. And I started stuff hitting with like, oh, this is cool, this is cool topic on backups or a cool thing about Microsoft 365 and stuff. And it's good. But what I found is that people really enjoy real, authentic conversations with other people. We're human. That's how we're designed, and that's just how it is. So I would definitely have maximized more effort into more of my podcast direction or interviews and things like that, and partnerships with other partners of ours or clients in the beginning. So that'd be my advice there.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. Matt, I appreciate you. Where can people connect?

Matt Moline
Yeah, you can find us on our website at www.GRITtechs.com. That is our company website. I've definitely reached out me on LinkedIn. Happy to have discussions with people open. Even if you're a competitor, more than happy to have a conversation with you. And I've talked to other people that are in that space. There's a lot of work to go around. So I'm more than happy to share with anybody else out there as far as direction.

Tim Fitzpatrick
We will make sure all that stuff is in the show notes, so it's easy to connect. Search out Matt Moline on LinkedIn and connect with them. Matt, thank you. Those of you that are watching and listening, appreciate you. If you want to connect with us, you can do that over at rialtomarketing.com. The other tool we've got for you is at revenueroadblockscorecard.com. So when we help clients build their marketing engine, we look at nine key components. If you want to know which of the nine are slowing down your growth, that's where you can do it. So go check it out. Thank you. Until next time. Take care.