Cole Heilborn (00:00)

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to visit the hike expo and not only walk around the floor and get to meet with some of the brands and vendors who were there, but I also got to set up and table and record podcasts live with people in person, which for someone who records most of his podcasts virtually, it was incredible to actually see someone in real life. So we've got a couple episodes coming out next week.

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that I think you'll really enjoy. But for the sake of this episode, I wanted to reflect on some of the conversations I had with some of these business owners. And the reason I wanted to reflect on this is because I see a real challenge out there for a lot of these small brands. So at the Hike Expo, was a dozen, couple dozen smaller brands. I would wager up to a million, maybe at max five million in revenue. And a lot of these companies are, you know,

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of the owner operator who maybe has a team of contractors, maybe a small agency working with them on marketing and social. And so having the opportunity to chat with these folks and just try to understand what challenges they're up against as a small business owner compared to the mid and large brands that are usually represented on this podcast was really insightful. And there was one conversation I had in particular that...

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I want to highlight, ⁓ I was talking with an owner operator, they're maybe two and a half million in revenue. They have a team of 10 99s, but they spend up to $10,000 a month on paid media on Instagram and Facebook on Meta. Now I was doing some research and you know, their Instagram page has, it's like 10,000, 15,000 followers, ⁓ respectable for a small brand, but they're organic reach.

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on that content is not great. It's not good. And so they're having to spend eight to 10 grand a month just to capture the awareness that they need for their business. They're also capturing a really good ROI on that spend. The owner was telling me they get somewhere between 12x and 18x return on that ad spend, which is pretty darn good.

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But as a small business where capital and cash flow is everything, I was asking him, like, how difficult is it for you to have to spend eight to $10,000 a month just to keep the business going? And he was just talking to me about how difficult that is. And it got me thinking about just this reoccurring thought that I continually have, which is organic content is so underrated. If you can figure out

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how to actually drive awareness at scale through organic. Because the beauty of organic, I mean, it's self-explanatory. It is organic. You don't have to pay to play to reach hundreds of thousands, millions of people. But what it takes to unlock organic is a deep understanding of your audience, a unique point of view that your brand speaks through that.

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is actually interesting and engaging and relevant and emotionally compelling for your audience. ⁓ And then it requires the ability to translate that point of view in your brand into content ideas that are again, sticky, relevant, entertaining. And that's the big opportunity I see for brands out there is basically how do you translate who you are as a company, as a brand into content that's actually interesting and relevant?

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for your audience. You know, this is where I feel like small brands have an opportunity. Big brands try to do this. I would argue they don't do it very well because they have miles of red tape and reviews and stakeholders. And the more people you get, the harder it can be. Well, all at the same time, you also have more money. So, you know, that makes things easier. But the point being these small brands are nimble, they're quick. They have, you know, less stakeholders. They have the ability to turn on a dime and to try new things and to test and to iterate.

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So I was talking to this business owner. was like, you know, this is actually something that we might be able to help you with. I think we can help you decrease your ad spend while increasing your organic reach. And, you know, we'll see what comes of it. But there's just, I see so much opportunity for small brands and big brands alike when it comes to truly leveraging social media and its organic content. And I guess for context, like social media, has become interest media. You go onto YouTube, for example, you're not watching content necessarily from the people you subscribe to. You on Instagram, you're not necessarily only seeing content from your friends, right? You're seeing from creators and travel accounts. And this rise of interest-based media is telling us that these platforms are designed to provide relevance and entertainment and education

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or edutainment if you want to combine the two. And that's what people are consuming. That's what people are interested in watching. And so why, as a brand, why would you not try to produce edutainment or entertainment or educational content? It just, it's a no brainer. And then especially when you add the business case in of having to rely less on paid media, the impact and the strength of building a durable, committed,

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audience. Like how much value does that have on a business? It's substantial. I can tell you from this podcast, it's highly valuable for us. I see huge opportunity for these brands to invest in organic, actually get creative with what you're producing and then study and iterate on it. Organic content is the future. It's sustainable. The problem is most outdoor brands aren't prioritizing organic content. Most of them don't have a social team.

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Most of them see organic content as an afterthought. A lot of brands struggle internally where they, leadership feels like every single piece of content needs to end up on social. In order, if it didn't end up on social, it didn't happen. But that thinking is degrading the potential of what organic content can do for a business and the value that it can drive.

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