Building an AI Content Marketing Team to Attract New Customers (with Ani Hoang)

James Dooley: How to build a content marketing team to attract new customers? I know you've been successfully doing this for multiple businesses. So let's jump straight into it. How do you build a content marketing team for growth in the AI era?

Ani Hoang: Thanks for having me, James. Content marketing has changed over the years. It keeps changing all the time. But one prevalent thing is now video. Everything is video first. We've seen this on social media. We've seen this even at SEO conferences. I see this video being recommended as a part of the SEO strategy. So today I wanted to bring this up. Building a video content marketing team is not easy. A lot of people, business owners or starting creators for personal branding, they just say, oh, let's just hire a video editor. A video editor will take care of it. And long story short, they make a bunch of videos with no aim, no goal in mind. The video editor will do what the video editor does. And then at the end of the day, they get maybe 100, 200, at most 500 views. And this is why building a content marketing team is essential because you get the right idea and the right production line in mind. A good content marketing team could help both of your strategies that you love, James, which is organic visibility that helps AI ranking as well as Google. And then you also have a team who could create video advertisements for any of your activities. Could it be meta ads? I've done this for meta ad campaigns. We've done this for demand generations. We've also done it for conferences. So not just to promote conferences, but when you are sponsoring a conference, you have to have video assets as well. So building the right team here is very, very essential. So before I get on to the actual building of the content management team, the content, like the team that you need to do for it, there's another episode where we go through video SEO and what it does for LLM visibility. There was a recent study that came out, 53% of citations within LLMs is video.

James Dooley: No way.

Ani Hoang: Yeah. It was a crazy, it was for specific industries that came up, but it was a huge start. And YouTube obviously was by far the biggest within that. Within Google search, now there's so many searches that the video carousel comes in. You've got the short video tab as well. So I completely agree that video is absolutely huge. And then obviously there's different types of video that you can create. There's video for search demand. So trying to rank for specific keywords, the way you're saying certain things, the title of the videos. It's trying to rank in YouTube. It's trying to rank in Google search. It's trying to get cited within AI citations like ChatGPT. And then you've got the viral type of campaigns. Now you're good at doing both, right?

James Dooley: But I would say you're very good on the viral campaigns and also on the creating video content for advertising. So like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok ads, YouTube ads, right? What is the difference between a good, no, I want to revert it back to the content marketing team. In an ideal world, if someone came to you and had unlimited budget, what team would you build for a brilliant team to start running video ads? So would you have someone full-time for ideation? Would you have someone full-time for the recording? Would you have someone full-time for the editing? And would you have someone full-time for actually physically running the video ads? How does that work? Would you have more members of staff than that? Would you have certain roles that can do duplicates? Like you've got unlimited budget. What does that content marketing team look like in your opinion?

Ani Hoang: This is a wonderful question. Now that you brought up unlimited budget, my creativity went as far as, okay, how does my office look like? Because as I mentioned, in terms of virality, but even for YouTube now, the barrier to entry is getting higher and higher, which means not just the team, but also props, backgrounds, and scenes. So you are essentially building a mini production house or a studio where you can build so many scenarios. I'm not sure if you know, but in China now, they literally have a warehouse full of influencers while they do live streaming. I think that's where we're at. That's where we're going to head in the future. So if I had unlimited budget, number one, one of the most expensive hires is going to be a creative strategist, someone who knows the ins and outs of the current trends and current, you say, hooks, but anything that grabs attention. It's not just what they say. It's about, okay, what's that background going to look like? Where are they at? Did you know that one of the best backgrounds for high-performing meta ads is in the car?

James Dooley: Really?

Ani Hoang: People sitting in their car. Now, if we're going to leave the studio now, you should get into your car, do a selfie, and then say whatever offer you have. Do you think it's to do with the background? Or is it just like correlation doesn't mean causation? Do you think it is? Why do you think that is?

James Dooley: I don't know if it's correlation or causation or anything, but I just know that it is so relatable to talking in the car because in Western cultures where people drive a lot in their car, a lot of things happen there, right? It's used so many times of the day, and everyone almost has a car. And that's almost like that setting is where you are close with your friend or you're going through something or you are doing your day-to-day stuff. It's a repeatable, how to say, scene. Do you know why I think it is in the car? I was interested to see whether you would come up with this or not. When you're in a studio, some of it could be prescripted, right? So you're knowing you're in a studio, you're knowing that you're going to be talking about specific topics, where sometimes you're in the car, it's not like you've planned to do it. So sometimes it's very impulsive. You're having a rant about something or something like that, that it's just like, I need to get this off my chest. And you've not planned it, and sometimes it's so raw, that footage. And I think it's that that makes it amazing. But I was wondering on the psychological part, where's the scroll? And if someone is in a car, does that mean that it performs better or not?

Ani Hoang: No, it just, again, as you said, it brings out some relatability without saying anything.

James Dooley: Yeah. So with the studio, there is a reason to be in a studio today, right? Like it brings credibility. It brings out the professional in you. Like James takes this seriously. This is a serious podcast. People should listen, which is genius, by the way.

Ani Hoang: It is a very serious podcast. So there's a place for a professional setting. There's also a place for a relatable setting, which, for example, in a car. Because the majority of the population is in a car, either from the young age or older age. It's relatable. You don't have to say anything. When you see someone in the car, you're like, ah, something's going to happen. This is some relatable stuff, I know. People eat in their cars. There are viral videos of people just eating in their cars, and they continue eating in the car, because they know that performs well. But you should ask why. And I think, back to the question, the creative strategist here is going to tell you why, or they're just going to tell you immediately, like, okay, guys, for this campaign, we have to be in a car, we have to wear a white T-shirt or a green hoodie, and this is what it's going to look like. And perhaps, I don't know if the creative director or a copywriter would be a one-person thing, but since we have unlimited budget, I would also have a really good copywriter who could use Cloud and other AI tools. And you have talked with Hans about it, like it's important to have AI literacy at this age. But yeah, having a good copywriter with taste.

James Dooley: So let's go through this. So this content marketing team, up to now, we've got a creative strategist. Yes. Now we've got a copywriter. So the creative strategist is going to come up with the ideation, going to explain how everything's going to be set up. Copywriter then grabs all of that strategy and then says, okay, I get what you're doing. Now I'm going to turn this...

Ani Hoang: Into a script.

James Dooley: Into a script. Because whether or not you're going to do a short-form advertisement or a long-form YouTube video, the script is everything. So because we all know how these evil platforms are trying to get our time to watch longer, right? What happens on the script defines the editing, defines the actors, movements, just like a film. So now we basically have to become movie makers. Someone who is planning movies, but these aren't just short, relatable, everyday movies. So we've got the script. Yeah. And now I'm presuming we need either the brand person, so it could be James Dooley, it could be Annie, it could be an influencer. Or it could be AI. Yeah, it could be AI. So let's say you've got the person who's going to be recorded. I'm presuming then you need someone who's actually recording, a videographer.

Ani Hoang: Yeah.

James Dooley: What about then after, so creative strategist gives it to copywriter, they've got the script. Someone then, videographer now, records the person doing it. What comes after this then? Do we need video editing, I'm presuming?

Ani Hoang: Yes. Amplification of the video, like to be sharing it out, almost like a social media manager. And then creating it into shorts. Is that the same person as the video editor that does it? Like what happens after you've got the footage now for this content marketing team to scale, to be attracting new business? What else is needed after that?

James Dooley: Yeah, I think a post-production manager would be very helpful. But we are in an unlimited budget, so why should we merge roles, right? But I usually merge roles because that's more cost effective. We don't need to, let's split them out. We don't have to. Okay, so after the footage is done, now we need a post-production manager or an editor or someone like a higher editor. So what does the post-production manager do?

Ani Hoang: They assemble what's going to look like at the end. And I want someone with a project manager experience because we are creating, we're not creating a Hollywood movie, we're creating ads, which requires volume. So here you need a marketer who has the directness, the assertiveness to assemble the teams. Like this is how many videos and variations we need from this single asset. This is why. And they will help the editor to prioritize their work because I feel a lot for video editors. I myself edited videos in the past. The process in itself is pretty long. So that's why you need a manager on top of a video editor to get things moving. And a video editor's job is to edit the video, really. And often these creative designers and editors need to have a structure. What am I going to work on today? What am I going to work on next? Because they are great at their craft, which is editing or graphic design. And then the same project manager, or you could hire a social media manager who could maybe post this and publish this. But the post and publishing part, it doesn't take that long. Post-production manager, a video editor. And a graphic designer, because depending on what type of creatives you make. Graphic designer then for the thumbnails or whatever else might be needed and the bits that are coming in.

James Dooley: Once the video now is created, I'm presuming you're going to need some sort of video ads manager to actually set up the campaigns, to feed that back. And what about if you wanted it for also being shared organically on social media, a social media manager for amplification of the videos as well?

Ani Hoang: I don't see why we need that. I think the project manager I talked about could handle that. Because at this point, the video is planned. That's why you have the creative strategies at the beginning of the whole process. In terms of posting, that post-production marketer or manager is a marketer. So they should know, okay, what is that keyword? What is the objective? So I don't know.

James Dooley: Yeah, okay. So I don't want to go down the road of the video ads going live and then they're not performing. So you've now started to come back and you're starting to realize that the video ads expert who's been running it, and let's role play, we were doing it on Facebook, right? Because I've got first-hand experience of you seeing certain setups and then you coming back saying, the hook's not good enough. I've seen it where you've come back and said you need to do three variations of this. And I'm just like, why? And you're like, just trust me, you need three variations. And then next minute, variation number three or variation number two outperform the others. And then you start split testing that different variation. And there's a lot of different editing that comes into it. How does that come back into the team of a content manager? You built this team up now, the ad person now says it doesn't perform. Does that just go straight back to post-production manager and the editor to then change them out? Where does that loop go in?

Ani Hoang: It should go back to the creative director again, or the creative strategist. Should we go back right to the start, creative strategist to say, okay. Because first of all, the creative strategist has started the workflow. So the feedback should also go back to that person. So then it will also become a loop of like, okay, well, next time we're just not going to do talking in the car with green hoodie and whatnot. Or the other way is like, maybe that performed really well. So the creative director now, or strategist have a library of things that worked out really well for the team. So it has to go back to the first person. And depending on where, what the problem was, we can fix that either at the beginning, like redo the whole deck, now that we are redoing the whole thing, or we just redo the beginning. So that based on that, the creative director should know.

James Dooley: If I'm being honest with you, it sounds like a lot of work. It sounds like something that I don't want to do. I don't want to build out a whole team, right? So somebody like yourself that does this day in, day out, if someone wanted a little bit of advice from yourself to say, look, I can't afford, like I've given you a limited budget and I'm going, I can't afford to have a creative strategist. I can't afford them to have the videographer. I can't afford to have the actor. Can't then afford to basically have the editing team and the post production manager and the ads team. How can someone reach out to somebody like yourself to say, Annie, look, this is what I'm doing. How can someone reach out to say, what help? No, it might be depending on what budget they have or what setup they might have. How can someone reach out to somebody like yourself where you might be able to guide them in the right way to say, look, if I was you, I'd outsource it and freelance it to this agency. If I was you, I would set up an in-house team. You only need a creative person and an ads person and they can run everything, including the editing. Like how can someone reach out to somebody like yourself to get that advice?

Ani Hoang: So if someone doesn't have a budget and want to start, the most important part is to just get your offer in place and perhaps give it to someone like me and then we could help you build out the ideas. So now you have the recipe to do the whole show and hire perhaps a freelancer to edit those videos for you, a graphic designer to make those images for you. Although now you can do, Canva has always been a lifesaver and they do work. Canva designs do work. So I think at this point you probably afforded Canva. You could just do the graphic design yourself. In terms of video editing, CapCut is also very beginner friendly. So at this point, that business owner or brand manager, whoever could do that by themselves really. The most important is like what idea you want, what offer you want to sell, and then you could do this whole show by yourself. Most people don't have this whole setup I just explained. And they could do the creative strategy, acting and editing and publishing part themselves. The most important part probably is like a media buyer who could run the campaign. But there are YouTube tutorials you could also, you could run the campaign yourself, right?

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Anyone who's watching this with regards to building out a content marketing team to attract new customers, Ani, it's been an absolute pleasure. I strongly recommend, check out the videos in the description. We've got one where Ani goes through about content repurposing. So getting hold of that video and using it across multiple platforms. I think it's an absolute brilliant episode. And Ani, thanks for having me.

Ani Hoang: Thank you.