Ep. 269- CONTENT That Leads to PIPELINE? w/Limelight FOUNDER David Walsh🧠 #1 B2B Creator Partnership Platform!

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Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. We are here for do this, not that.

Presented by Marigold. And I've been trying to get this guy on the show for a long time, so I'm hyped that he's here. He's a big deal. So who do we got today?

We got David Walsh. He is the CEO of Limelight. Now, maybe you know Limelight, maybe you don't, but Limelight is like bananas cool.

It is the first ever business to business creator partnership platform. It like links all the brands and all the creators and influencers. They have over 3,000 verified B2B creators, part of this platform.

This thing is growing. They've raised a boatload of money and David just hasn't done this.

His last business that he sold that they did great with was Matheson that and they, they raised like over $30 million. I mean, this guy knows what he's doing and so this thing's taken off. We're going to be talking about social selling.

We're going to peel back the curtain on influencer marketing and get into all the details. But first, let me welcome David to the show. David, welcome to the podcast, man.

Thank you so much for having me, Jay, and excited to dive in and thanks for the hype up. Yeah, always. We've done a lot and happy to tell you a little bit more.

I can't wait to hear about it all. So, all right, before we get into the topic of the day and everyone's going to learn a lot of stuff that they can be actionable with.

How did David become David? How did this all happen?

Well, the short answer is I have been in software for 10 years.

Started in sales and marketing, taught myself as a salesperson, emigrated from Ireland to the United States, lived in New York for five years, then LA for the last five years. Always wanted to get into entrepreneurship.

We actually had the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders wearing our watches at one point, which was my claim to fame. So I had some experience in the B2C influencer marketing space.

Had that experience of going from 0 to 11 to 5 or 10, scaling to over 100 employees, getting to 250 customers. Really amazing experience. I always wanted to be in revenue tech and truthfully I kind of got tired of selling to HR people.

Even though I love them and they have a lot to chat about, I really wanted to sell to sales and marketing people. That's my passion, that's my background, that's what I want build.

So decided to launch Limelight about a year ago and I had no intention of launching an influencer marketing platform, which I think is like the story every founder goes to is like you kind of just figure it out along the way. And so just the short answer is we launched as a referral software company, got deep into revenue attribution, wanted to help.

Our thesis was helping customers influence their users to introduce more customers as a really high return on investment ad like marketing strategy. If you ask your users to introduce more users, it's going to be cost efficient.

Started building a revenue attribution platform and then started posting content on LinkedIn to drive awareness for this. That is something that I did not do at my last company.

I did everything other than build in public and I just really wanted to build in public this time.

So I started posting content on LinkedIn and three months later raised $1.1 million with, you know, about 100 companies inbound to us just directly from my content as well as investors. And I started to realize the power of LinkedIn and the power of building an audience and the power of like a founder brand.

And I decided to pivot the business.

Closed the investment round in December, pivoted the business in January, told my investors that we're actually building Influencer platform and the future is going to be B2B influencer marketing, focusing specifically initially on LinkedIn. And I think that the thesis was people want to follow people, they don't want to follow brands.

And these individuals like yourself, Jay, who have built large audiences, haven't really monetized the brand from a brand partnership perspective. So I just went deep into that and started launching the business and now we are where we are, which is really exciting and learning every day.

You know, maybe I'm too close to it, but I. There's Such a need for what you're doing.

And this is not just a hype up about limelight, but in general, you know, call it, you know, influencer marketing or whatever you want to call it. It's so decentralized and weird even for myself.

The way that I hear from brands about doing something, somebody will like DM me like, hey, do you do like paid deals? And then you're like, yeah, sort of, let's talk about it. And it's like the most wonky experience in the world.

So when I heard that you all were building a platform to try to get everybody into a marketplace, I'm like, well, that makes a lot of sense. But before we even get into kind of the influencer side of stuff, let's just talk about this idea of social selling.

Because this phrase, this term I think is new to a lot of people and yet it is what is dominating B2B and LinkedIn and all this stuff. And not just B2B, but what is social selling and why should we care?

Yeah, great question.

The simplest answer of social selling is building trust, building a personality and doing it in public, on social media and then using that audience and that reach that you have to start to solve problems for that audience and then eventually sell a product or service to that audience. That would be typically what social selling is about. It starts with generating content.

You learn quickly on what works, what doesn't work, what resonates, right?

You build top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottle of funnel, you start to generate that content engine and then you start to listen and you start to see who's engaged and who's interacting.

And then hopefully your product that you're building along the way can help solve a need that that audience feels and that solve a problem that audience has. And then you start to actively promote the product and sell a service or a product to them. And if you're successful, it can be extremely powerful.

I can't tell you how important it is in today's world to stand out from the crowd.

And I think as a founder of an early stage company or of any business, even just like an executive team member, you need to have a unique competitive advantage. And especially when it comes to distribution, you can't just throw ad like money at ads and expect that to be your unique competitive advantage.

So building a founder brand has been impaired, like is so powerful and I highly recommend it to everyone. It is not easy, it requires a lot of patience, it requires determination and grit. You fall flat a lot and it gets in your head.

But the most of the time, you know, if you're, if you persevere and you stay at it, you can really get a lot of value from it. So hopefully that answers your question. Happy to.

Yeah, let me dig into that a little bit because this idea, I almost think the phrase is, is it needs a new branding.

Because the idea of social selling, right to your point, is you're putting out content that people gravitate towards, they want to engage with and then you kind of layer in the selling aspect, right? Like is it what is the type of content that actually will lead to pipeline?

Because it doesn't feel like I could just go out there, go on LinkedIn saying, hey, this is my new product or service, work with me. I don't feel like that works. And yet social selling is like this idea of selling. So what is the content that leads to pipeline?

Yeah, I mentioned it briefly, but I would say it requires you to build that kind of three step funnel, right? The top of funnel content that you know will perform, it will get engagement. That could be like remote working employee benefits.

I'm specifically talking about LinkedIn remote working employee benefits.

You have to like pick an enemy that everyone universally doesn't like, feels an opinion on and then write content for that and that will generate eyeballs and it will get clicks.

It's not the highest quality sometimes, but it does what it needs to do, which is get awareness, get your profile out there and start interacting with people. The middle of funnel content, depending on your industry, I'm in marketing, middle of funnel content is me talking about marketing industry.

Could be me talking about the shift in the marketing industry away from brands growth versus now personality led growth and people being spokespeople at companies. It could be, you know, revenue attribution as it, you know, as it applies to marketing strategies.

Anything marketing related is me doing middle of the funnel content. And that usually gets okay engagement because it's a bit more universally known and you're not aggressively selling in that content.

What you're doing is you're sharing knowledge as a thought leader that can help solve a problem or shed light on a certain thing. And then the bottom of funnel content is about your company, it's about your brand.

It's the stuff that you default to and want to do immediately if you don't or if you don't aren't like in doing this every single day and you don't like spend a lot of time thinking about your strategy. Everybody defaults to, I just want to tell people about my product. I Just want to go and sell my product. I want to go post a post about my product.

Guess what? Nobody cares. Like, they just don't care, you know.

So the bottom of funnel content has to be layered in with top of funnel, middle of funnel, and then it performs the worst in the sense that you get the least likes and the least engagement. But those that engagement is typically the highest quality and that will result in the revenue.

And so for me, at least more recently, Jay, I've been doing a lot of bottom of funnel content in video format, which I think is performing extremely well on LinkedIn right now.

I actually spoke with an executive team member at Link who focuses on the product business development partnerships team and he said the number one, two and three priority at LinkedIn right now is video. So I just went all in on video.

Yeah, it's getting extremely wide circulation for everybody listening and you always want to follow what the platform is prioritizing. They're prioritizing Visio, so you should be prioritizing Visio. That's the, that's just the way it works. But you're doing something on your own page.

And I strongly recommend everybody follow David and we'll put his link, his LinkedIn link in the show notes that I think is important, important for people to know, which is here you are, you have this startup business, you have a bunch of investors, right? So they're watching you, these important people and companies are watching what you post and you're trying to grow this brand the right way.

And yet you're doing a lot of what I would call very vulnerable content. You're being out there and you're saying, hey, we did this, didn't work great, we're doing this now. And you're being very upfront about that.

Which the reason I think it's important for you to do that is, hey, you've raised money, you've got investors, they're looking at what you're doing. So why is it that you feel comfortable doing that? Does that resonate and should people try to get comfortable kind of being uncomfortable?

Jay, I love that question so much. Firstly, it is not easy to do.

When I anticipated building in public, you have to build in public the positives and the negatives and everyone wants to talk about the positives. The negatives are actually the thing that drive the most trust and have the biggest impact.

So you start to build this resilience to creating content online.

As you start to publish more and more content, you start to care less about not getting the amount of impressions or how you might seem in the public eye, or sharing something that maybe is you just failing. And then as you start to realize that's the stuff that people really engage with, it says authentic stories. So building in public is.

It requires you to talk about the challenges and the things that aren't going well. And in sharing those challenges, you build trust and you help other people.

The amount of messages, Jay, that I get on LinkedIn and just in WhatsApp and on emails that just says, you know, thanks for sharing that everyone talks about the, the ups, right. They don't talk about the downs. Is it natural? Does it feel normal? No. And is it easy? No. But it's necessary because sharing that publicly helps you.

For me, at least, it sometimes just like, helps me alleviate some of the stress. Right. Just publishing it online, I don't know why. Only recently that started to happen. If I write something that I think is like a really negative.

I failed doing this. You know, I actually think it, like, alleviates. It gets the stress off, and then I could just move on. And then I just move on and keep building.

And that's the underlying common theme of all of this, Jay, and I know you know this, but hopefully the audience does too, is that the journey of building something is a road that is so windy and mostly uncertainty, stress, worry and failure are just like ongoing battles. And the goal of my content is to be able to share that in an authentic way.

And then hopefully we look back and we say, look how far we've come, you know, and. And that's the, the ultimate goal.

I couldn't agree more.

And you know, to me, the secret sauce of content, secret sauce of connecting with people is being relatable and not trying to make it seem like you got everything figured out, because nobody does. Relatable in your personal life, relatable in your work life.

Sharing kind of the warts, the bumps, the hard things, because we're all going through it. You know, life's not linear, it's just. It's just not like that. So I have a lot of respect for the way that you go about doing that. So.

Okay, let's just talk about if you're trying to grow your own LinkedIn following, you want to get a lot more connections, a lot more followers, not a lot more. Whatever. Give me the, the, the rapid fire, quick tips on how do you.

How do you recommend people grow their following if they're just kind of getting rolling?

Yeah. Number one, find a list of people that are writing content that is getting engagement and go Engage with them.

Everyone that doesn't post content online publicly, consistently on LinkedIn, doesn't realize that a lot of the growth comes from giving, not taking. And what I mean by giving is writing comments that are thoughtful comments, listening to others and like adding value. That's the number one thing.

So you go to go to LinkedIn, find the people that you want to engage with, find the ones that are performing well and writing good content, and write a thoughtful comment. Do that 15 to 30 times a day. What I mean by 15 to 30 times, post comments a day.

Otherwise I can't be doing that or I wouldn't be running the business. But get really smart about it.

I do it in the first 30 minutes of the day and the end, last 30 minutes of the day, I sit down and I do it methodically. And that helps. Then interact with people, and then people will interact with you.

And writing a comment on somebody's posts brings that post to your audience and your newsfeed because your followers see it and the vice versa, meaning if the people that you write comments on write comments on your posts, that's how you start to grow. So that's number one. Second thing is write good content. And like Jay, you know this way better than I do.

You've been at this for much longer than I have. Right? But writing good content takes a lot of time. The initial stuff that you write is gonna be terrible.

If I look back to the stuff that I used to write, I'm like, oh my God, did I actually say that? You know, and I think everyone that writes content does this publicly has the same experience. You gotta learn, you know, you gotta learn by doing it.

So. But don't be worried about that, right Yet.

It takes a certain level of confidence to be able to get slapped a few times and like realize that your content's falling flat. But then persevere and continue to do it.

That takes a sort of mindset and over time you start to realize what works and that where the commenting actually comes into play.

Because when you start commenting, you start to see what other people are doing, the way they format the post, the way that what they're writing about, what styles are working, what themes are working. The algorithm changes regularly, so you need to be up to speed on that. Engaging on others helps with that.

So write comments, write good content, don't write salesy content and just post salesy content. Bottom of funnel, stuff layer in a content strategy. Top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. Then you start to gather that momentum.

So that's what I would do. Takes a lot of work to get going. No questions about it. A lot of front level, like, front loaded work.

But once you're up and running, it runs like a content engine. And it is so, so, so powerful. And to give you context, 95% of my leads right now come directly inbound to me.

LinkedIn, through my LinkedIn, and that's the main channel. And then not only that, Jay, but everyone I speak to if I jump on a call with them.

The thing I didn't realize about writing content online is people get to know you, they have a relationship with you online, they. You mentioned the word relatability. Well, guess what? When you jump on a call with somebody, you're already relatable before you even get there.

And that is something that's so powerful and it's generates that trust. So those are the three things I would say is, like, important to get going.

I love that, and it's so true. And I'm with you. You got to get your reps in. It's like a muscle posting. You got to get that muscle going. Learn what feels right, and be consistent.

Don't stop. All right, one final thing here.

So every time I'm on social media, whatever, you're in some sort of body of water, you're on a water ski, you're on a boat, you're doing something near water. And I want to know something I can't like, I've tried to water ski. I am like an embarrassment. So I've done like the.

The knee board thing where you hold on with two arms. If you saw me doing that, because you're like, such a pro at all this stuff, would you judge me and say, Jay is a giant loser?

Or would you be like, way to go, Jay. You're trying. I mean, the real answer, not what you're supposed to say.

So kneeboarding sucks is my honest answer. Jay and I. And the reason I say that is I have really tight hips. I don't. Maybe I'm an old man, but if I'm on a knee board, my hips are killing me.

And it's just painful. And I'm just standing behind the thing, like, bumping up and down. My back's killing me. My knees are killing me.

I learned to water ski when I was about four years of age. Three or four years of age. My dad had a small little rib in Ireland off the coast of Wexford.

We used to go it into the Irish water, which is like, minus. I don't know how many degrees. He just threw me in and was like, you're learning to water ski. Let's go.

And so we just learned how to water ski at a young age and taught the. My, my dad taught my friends how to water ski. I've done it for most of my life. I don't do it enough anymore, as you can imagine.

But when I get the opportunity to, I definitely do.

You would judge me. That's what I got out of that, which is fine.

All right, before we wrap up here, David, tell everybody we're going to put in the show notes or all your links there. But how does everybody get involved with Limelight with you? What do they do? Let's tell everybody.

Yeah, well, as you can probably tell, I'm pretty loud on LinkedIn, so. Go to LinkedIn, look at David Walsh Limelight, and you should be able to follow me there. Our website is limelighthq.com so check out the website.

You can sign up as a creator. You can sign up as a brand. We have, you know, hundreds of brands have signed up over the last few months.

So, you know, feel free to sign up as a creator. It's free. You can check it out. Highly recommend giving us product feedback. That's something I'm always looking for and we're constantly improving on.

But those are the two main channels I'm using right now, LinkedIn. And just go to our website.

Yeah. And I'll tell everybody.

If you're at all interested in the creator world, influencer world, check out Limelight, what they're doing because they're really leading the way. David, can't thank you enough for being here, man. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Jay. Love the conversation.

All right, we'll talk soon. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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