Market Mentors · 2025-05-07 · 29 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
45 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Araminta Robertson, founder and MD of Mint Studios, makes a compelling case that B2B content marketing remains essential in 2025 - but the game has changed. While AI and ChatGPT may disrupt search behavior, the fundamental lever remains unchanged: sharing expertise through content. Robertson argues that in a budget-constrained environment, B2B marketers should start with bottom-of-funnel SEO targeting high-intent keywords rather than top-of-funnel awareness content. For fintech and financial services companies targeting SMEs, tier-one bankers, or compliance managers, the distribution channel - SEO, LinkedIn ads, newsletters - must match where customers actually consume content. She emphasizes the importance of understanding pain points over demographic personas, building authority through backlinks and PR partnerships, and setting realistic timelines: mature websites can see results in months, while younger domains may take a year. Robertson also stresses that in an AI-saturated world of generic content, deep customer empathy and specificity become increasingly valuable competitive advantages.
Yes - content remains the best way to share expertise in B2B, but how you create and distribute it has changed. Quality matters more than ever, and distribution strategy (SEO vs. social vs. LinkedIn ads) now matters more than just creating and pushing content across all channels equally.
Start with bottom-of-funnel SEO targeting high-intent keywords if resources are constrained. People searching for specific solutions (like 'marketing analytics tool') are closer to buying than those searching generic terms. Once you have results and a business case, expand to mid-funnel and top-funnel content.
It depends on website maturity and target audience. Mature websites with existing conversions may see results in months; young websites in competitive spaces might take 6 months to a year. Targeting SMEs typically yields faster results than targeting tier-one enterprise buyers.
Track qualified leads and revenue if possible through your CRM, plus rankings, traffic, and impressions as secondary signals. Conversions are the primary metric; other metrics indicate if you're moving in the right direction.
Empathy - the ability to deeply understand your target customer's pain points, motivations, and challenges. In an AI-saturated world of generic content, specific knowledge of what your audience truly cares about becomes a key competitive advantage.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode offers a handful of useful practitioner heuristics (start bottom-of-funnel, channel depends on audience segment) but is padded with extensive hedging, repetition, and obvious statements. The ratio of novel-per-minute is low for a 29-minute runtime.
someone who's typing up marketing analytics tool is closer to buying a marketing analytics tool than someone who's typing up what is analytics
if we're targeting bankers, I wouldn't invest so much in SEO and instead create a big report that you distribute via LinkedIn ads. If you're investing in compliance, if you're compliance managers, they uh, like newsletters or short form
The episode largely recycles widely-circulated advice - bottom-of-funnel first, empathy as top marketing skill, AI as copilot - with few genuinely contrarian or first-principles arguments. The persona critique uses a well-worn anecdote (two similar 60-year-olds) that circulates in marketing circles.
empathy is the number one thing. Empathy in the sense of being able to put yourself in the shoes of the reader
I mean you're talking to a content marketing agency. So what do you think? I'm going to answer
Araminta Robertson is a genuine practitioner running a real agency with active clients in fintech content marketing, which gives her credibility and domain specificity. However, she is a niche agency founder rather than a senior in-house marketing operator who has driven content ROI at scale inside a B2B company.
we'll spend two weeks doing something what we call a, uh, diagnostic, uh, where we spend time going through their HubSpot bot, talking to their salespeople
we are accountable for the conversions that we bring in the leads and we want to be able to be accurate
The guest names specific channels per audience segment and gives rough timeline estimates (six months, a year) tied to website maturity, and cites named tools (Writesonic, Napkin AI, Eleven Labs). However, no actual client names, revenue figures, or hard performance data are provided, keeping specificity at a middling level.
the identity verification space is very much like that. So yeah, these are just a few pointers
we've already brought in A few conversions, even though we thought it would take a lot longer
The host asks topically relevant questions and introduces a mildly interesting angle on AI in hiring assessments, but largely accepts answers at face value, frequently summarises rather than probes, and generates no productive disagreement or genuine follow-up pressure.
Yeah. And you touched on there. You know, one of the reasons why I was excited to be talking to you
So I guess as you mentioned, and then the first step is kind of really understanding what is the go to market
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
In this episode of Market Mentors, Matt Dodgson interviews Araminta Robertson, founder of Mint Studios, about the state of B2B content marketing in 2025. Despite AI disruption and tightening budgets, Araminta explains why content remains essential for sharing expertise and generating leads. They discuss: The Importance of Content Marketing in 2025 Blogs and Their Evolving Role Where Would You Start to Create Inbound Leads? Understanding Your Audience: Beyond Demographics How Do You Decide What Type of Content to Produce? When Will You Start to See Results From SEO Focused Content What Metrics Do You Track? Making Boring Content Engaging What Skill Should Content Marketers Master Today? How to Assess Content Marketers at Final Interview Stage What AI Tools Are You Using and Recommending? Market Mentors is
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Matt Dodgson: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Market Mentors podcast. I'm Matt Dodgson, co founder of Market Recruitment, and we connect B2B tech and SaaS businesses with marketers to help them grow. This week we're joined by Araminta Robertson, who is founder and MD of Mint Studios, a content marketing agency for financial services and fintech companies. And I wanted to discuss whether with all the AI tools out there and the fact that people are potentially using tools like ChatGPT to search, whether it's still worth investing in content in 2025. So let's dig in. So welcome to the Market Mentors podcast.
Araminta Robertson: Araminter, Good to be here. Thanks, Matt.
Matt Dodgson: No problem. So I've been excited to do this podcast in particular because I feel like content marketing is perhaps under the microscope. We've got marketing budgets that are under pressure, we've got tactics that are constantly having to be link revenue. And of course, we can't forget that, uh, we've had AI disrupt things recently. Let me kick this one off by asking you, in 2025, should we invest in content given the increasing use of ChatGPT for search?
Araminta Robertson: I mean, you're talking to a content marketing agency. So what do you think? I'm going to answer, Right. Um, I think if we're talking to B2B enterprises or companies, the best marketing strategy is always sharing expertise. It always comes down to expertise. And the best way to share that expertise is still with content. Right. If, uh, you're going to go from, you're going to try and reach as many people as possible and even just your targeted audience. Content is the way to communicate the expertise from a subject matter expert to an audience. So if we just go to the foundational level, content will always be the key way to share that expertise. And if that's what you want to do, and if you're in B2B, then hopefully it does. Then of course, content is still very important in 2025. And I think ChatGPT and AI, the main thing has changed is just how we create that content. And what. And the fact that quality matters even more. It hasn't changed the fact that content is still important.
Matt Dodgson: Yeah. And what about for sort of blogs in particular? I mean, I hear what you're saying, content, you know, what is marketing without content? You know, there was a post by, um, Oren Greenberg, I don't know if you, or follow him on LinkedIn, but he was saying that, uh, you just can't put things in silos. You can't put that's content and that's demand gen and that's digital because it's all interrelated. Um, but what about blogs then? Do you think they're still, um, worthwhile investing in having blogs produced?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, I mean, I think as long as they're getting read by people and reaching your audience, then yes, of course. And people still read content. I mean the blog content, I guess the way the we do it is, and we can talk about this later, is we're doing it mainly for SEO and that's how we ensure that it reaches the target audience. Um, now if you're not going to distribute it via SEO, I think it is getting harder to distribute it via social, for example, just because like links are being like, you know, LinkedIn won't promote your post as much if it includes a link. So I think it all depends on the distribution channel. But people are still very much reading blog content. I mean, I do as well. I think what matters, what's changed more is distribution. And as you say, it's gotten more harder and harder to kind of just invest in one channel. I think now it's what matters more than ever is having like a strategy where you're across a lot of different channels or you're pushing your content across multiple channels because just investing in one, like the typical create a blog, then promote it via Facebook, x Twitter and LinkedIn and just doing that over and over. Not sure if that works as well anymore just because social has just stopped a lot of that, uh, sharing. So it kind of depends on, just answer your question. It just kind of depends on how you're distributing it. Brilliant.
Matt Dodgson: Yeah, and you touched on there. You know, one of the reasons why I was excited to be talking to you is because you do this for, you know, B2B tech clients. Actually you're focusing a lot on the fintech market. Um, B2C and B2B I believe, correct me if I'm wrong. But, um, but for our audience who are typically B2B tech marketers and some in the sort of fintech space, you know, if you were, uh, a content marketer, we placed you, let's say in a company then, and you were hired to create inbound leads, um, where would you.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, well, there's just so many follow up questions here that I can't really give like a cookie cutter. Like it depends on how old the company is, depends on what they're selling, depends on like their resources. So many different things. Like it's really hard to. Without having a specific company, what I would say is that it depends, you know, if you're a content marketer, you know, that means that you're really focused on the, helping create the content and hopefully using that to grow the business. So because you're focused on the content side rather than say, events or something else. Okay, well what does that mean then? So if, for example, the m. The website is very young, not very mature, and maybe the brand is very young, I would try and focus on creating content. I mean, start doing the like, foundational stuff that's going to pay off in a couple of years for sure. But I'd also focus on doing something that generates like a bigger Splash, uh, on LinkedIn or whatever it is. So that could be maybe a big report or a big event or something that kind of starts to, to bring attention to you. Because your brand's really small, your website's quite young, not many people are seeing it, so you kind of want really stand out with something big. That's kind of what I would look at. If the website's more mature or if the, the company's more mature, then of course, as a content marketer, uh, I start with the bottom of the funnel. So that means creating a content strategy where you're targeting people who are maybe more problem aware, more aware that they're, that they're actively looking for a solution. Sorry, uh, aware that they have a problem and are actively looking for a solution. Because that way, um, you're talking people who are closer to converting. And then you work your way up the funnel, start with the bottom of the fun and then work your way up. Um, and that's kind of what I would approach how, how I would approach like uh, a content program. Because then you also learn a lot more like, okay, what are the pain points? What are issues? And you're more likely to resonate with them. And then with what you're learning, you can then continue your, your content strategy. But then, yeah, as I said, it would depend a lot on who your target audience is. So if you're targeting maybe SMEs, then SEO is a really good channel. If you're targeting bankers, I wouldn't invest so much in SEO and instead create a big report that you distribute via LinkedIn ads. If you're investing in compliance, if you're compliance managers, they uh, like newsletters or short form, like updates, weekly news, that kind of thing. So yeah, I don't know if that's helpful, but basically it would depend a lot on the type of audience because B2B enterprise is still even quite different from B2B, you know, SMB, for example. So, yeah, that's kind of how I would look at it.
Matt Dodgson: So I guess as you mentioned, and then the first step is kind of really understanding what is the go to market and who is the audience. And like you said, it's trying to understand where the audience consumes that content to really decide what sort of content you're going to produce in the first place. And I think the tendency perhaps for some marketers is to think top of the funnel first because they think to themselves, well, hang on a minute. If we do top of the funnel, we're going to reach a bigger audience, therefore we're going to get more traffic, therefore it's more likely that somebody who comes to our website might convert. But what you're saying is really the opposite. You focus on your money keywords to start off with. If you're thinking about SEO. Yeah, if I've summarized it.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's not to say don't do top of the funnel, it's just that, you know, we're in a world where marketers are held accountable for revenue and where it's quite important to track and attribute. Um, and so doing bottom of the funnel M. And depending on your resources, if they're very tight, I would start with bottom of the funnel. If you've got enough resources, you could do both. Right. Um, but the benefit of the bottom of. The benefit of the bottom of the funnel is that you're getting results a lot more quickly. Someone who's typing up marketing analytics tool is closer to buying a marketing analytics tool than someone who's typing up what is analytics or what is first touch attribution. Right. And so that doesn't mean don't do top of the funnel, but if I'm talking to a B2B tech company where resources are constrained, which is very common nowadays, start with the bottom of the funnel. Target the people who are already at that research phase. You'll get results sooner, which you can then use to build a business case and say, okay, now can we do more middle and more top of the funnel? So it's more of a, uh, results oriented approach, um, which really helps as a marketer, especially when you're dealing with leaders who maybe don't understand marketing so well or want to see some results maybe before increasing the budget, something like that.
Matt Dodgson: And do you still do Persona research then? Years back when HubSpot started to introduce. I know it's been going on for a while, but they Tended to formulate it a little bit more and then it sort of drifted a little bit out of fashion, didn't it? But do you still use Personas yourself when you're thinking about the audience?
Araminta Robertson: What do you mean exactly by Personas? Is that like an imaginary person who.
Matt Dodgson: Yeah, Joe is a marketing director at an enterprise, you know, SAS company and uh, you know, 53 has been to university and uh, reads the Telegraph and all that. All that kind of like, you know, it's the uh, demographic stuff. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Araminta Robertson: I mean I'm not a huge fan of those because ultimately what really matters is the pain points. It doesn't really matter because there was this use, this case study that they used where they compared two different 60 year old men with very similar attributes. One I think was the uh, Prince Charles possibly and the other one was like a famous rock star. And from the outside that very similar attributes but actually their pain points and motivations were very different. So I don't think demographics are a very good way of understanding your customers. I think the best is the way we would do is like sit down with the sales team and ask them questions, you know, what are the pain points? Who are they comparing you to? Why would they pick you over a competitor? What keeps them up at night? So really like spending time understanding the customer and focusing on the pain points and motivations, those kind of things rather than the demographic. No, we don't use Personas basically, just more like motivations and pain points. That's really the focus.
Matt Dodgson: Um, and this is where tools like GONG come in really well. But actually the people who are speaking to the customers, the salespeople, the customer. Success functions as well, can be a treasure trove if I can get my words out. A treasure trove of ideas of content. I guess like Reddit in a way. If you're a consumer business, you're trying to dive into, what are people actually really talking about behind the scenes rather than sort of uh, searching for. Sometimes you talked a little bit about content and whether it be sort of SEO and kind of thought leadership. How do you sort of decide what to do in terms of balancing that type of stuff? Not everybody's sort of searching through stuff for sort of SEO. And you know, we have seen quite a bit of or quite a few companies driving a lot of demand through thought leadership, through LinkedIn as an example. And those two content channels are quite different.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, I mean we mainly specialize in SEO, so we would mainly work with clients. Not always, but mainly work with clients we like when we first engage with uh, a client, for example, we'll spend two weeks doing something what we call a, uh, diagnostic, uh, where we spend time going through their HubSpot bot, talking to their salespeople to understand what are the main distribution channels, how do your, how does your target audience read and consume content? And then from there we can establish kind of what are the main distribution channels. And so mainly we would help with the SEO side of things, but we've also done like LinkedIn and a few others. So, you know, where do you start? Well, you start with understanding the customer, like where are they consuming the content, what kind of content are they consuming? Where, what social media do they use? That kind of stuff. That's where I would start. Because it's true, there's no point in investing in a lot of SEO content if your audience doesn't really do research online. And like, you know, tier one bankers is a good example. Like if a client comes to us and they're like, we're targeting tier one banks, I'm going to be like, okay, let's do LinkedIn ads or let's focus on something else. Because SEO probably will help with awareness, but it'll be harder to reach them. So it really all comes down to like understanding and knowing where your customer consumes content.
Matt Dodgson: One of the common questions you hear marketers ask, well, certainly CEOs ask is kind of results. You talked about SEO being a longer term tactic, if you like, or strategy. I mean, when you're in front of your customers, perhaps just to help our audience, sometimes educate their audience who are founders. What do you say when you're asked, okay, well look, we're going to invest in this content, this SEO focused content. When will we realistically start to see results?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, so it will come down again to how old or young or how strong the website is, and also the audience. So I think if we're talking to a company with a website, with quite a mature website, and maybe they're already bringing in conversions, then you know, the results will be in a couple of months.
Matt Dodgson: Right.
Araminta Robertson: Because we're already bringing in conversions and now it's just a matter of like dialing it up. If we, we do have a client where the website is quite young and actually we're focusing on other marketing activities, but we're still doing SEO content just to help kind of build up that, that authority. And we've been very honest with them. It could take a year, so it could take a lot longer. And interestingly, we've already brought in A few conversions, even though we thought it would take a lot longer. So that's been quite interesting. So sometimes it just shows you that it really, it's good to set expectations, but sometimes you can be surprised and then, you know, if it's a medium like, like the website's kind of not super mature, but midway, let's just say then we could, we, we might say like six months. I think if it's, if we think it would take longer than six months, we might advise a client to invest in something else and still invest in SEO content. But just be really aware that could take like a year. So yeah, it kind of depends on the stage of the website, the audience that they're targeting. I think if they're targeting SMEs, it'll be a lot easier to get results a lot sooner. If we're targeting people who are like, I don't want to say it's a saturated market, but there's a lot of competitors in the space also likely to see results sooner just because that means a lot of people are doing research online. So like the identity verification space is very much like that. So yeah, these are just a few pointers. But it's uh, that's the kind of questions we would ask to kind of try and give an estimate. And then again, this two week diagnostic that we do, a big reason we do it is so we can give a more, a better, accurate like estimate to the client and say based on your HubSpot data, based on your analytics, based on this, this is what we expect. This is a goal that we could set and this is how realistic it is because. And we started doing this diagnostic for exactly that reason because it's just so hard to give an estimate. And we are accountable for the conversions that we bring in the leads and we want to be able to be accurate. And the best way was to spend those two weeks digging into the data to really get a good understanding of the company.
Matt Dodgson: And what metrics do you track? You mentioned leads as an example. So you know, tools like HubSpot let you attribute stuff to lead and you can follow a journey of where somebody's been, perhaps. But what are the metrics do you tend to sort of report on each month for clients to give them an idea that stuff's, stuff's heading in the right direction?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, so, so leads, uh, definitely, if we have access to their CRM, we would try and not just track leads, but also qualified leads and even revenue if possible. So like how many clothes and how much revenue did it bring in and if not it would be just like leads conversions rankings for sure. Because obviously the higher that a piece is ranking, the more likely that it is that someone will click on it and potentially convert and then traffic as well. Although traffic is becoming less, I don't want to say less relevant, but um, especially with AI overviews, it's less accurate maybe. Or less relevant. Yeah, maybe less relevant. Still, still tracking, still. I think good to track, but I think that one's good to, good to look at and then maybe also impressions. But the main one, I think as long as we're tracking conversions, all the other metrics are just a good like signal, um, to see if we're going in the right direction.
Matt Dodgson: And if you were speaking to a client that had a less mature website then perhaps with a lower domain authority. Are there any other tactics that you would suggest, um, to improve that? Uh, apart from good quality content as an example, things like backlinks?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, definitely backlinks. So we partner with a, uh, digital PR agency and we will build backlinks as well for the clients because yeah, for sure backlinks is a huge part of that. So yeah, regular content backlinks. And we always tell them, you know, jump on any podcast that you're invited to or any events like try and get, put yourself out there. And then I think publishing on social media helps a lot. Just for brand awareness. Really not it doesn't really affect the website, but yeah, backlinks for sure is a big one. Yeah.
Matt Dodgson: Great. And I know you do a lot in the fintech space. I mean one of the key, one of the things that uh, I hear some people say is I work for a B2B fintech and the solutions are quite boring. Mhm. Is it then the case that content is also quite boring or is there an angle to make it less, uh, boring?
Araminta Robertson: Well, it kind of depends on your definition of boring. Right. Because yeah, what might be boring to me or you might not be boring to someone else. And you know, I've organized a lot of fintech events and for example I organized one on compliance and fraud and, and you could tell the speakers were genuinely fascinated by it and loved it. And I don't think they would consider it boring. So I don't know if you're, if you're, what really matters. Is your target customer going to read it and consume it and appreciate it and will it help them? That's the most important. Whether it's boring or not, I think just depends a little bit on who you're targeting. If they value things that are not boring, then yes, for sure. But uh, the industry that I'm in, you're targeting really smart people that don't have a lot of time and just want the information. They don't need some fancy 10 page graphic infographic. No, they just want the information. So I think it, I think it's okay to keep it simple and just give them the information they need. I would say that's number one. But if you're trying to stand out, if you're really trying to catch attention, I think then it makes sense to do something that's a little bit out there, that's not boring. But I would just say, I think if you can, you can do both. You know, you can do the simple normal stuff and then when you have the resources, do something exciting and not boring. But also don't beat yourself up. Like not every single piece of content has to be super exciting. And it's okay to just give people the information they're looking for because that's often, that's all they need. So I don't know, I know there's a big thing in fintech of like trying to make it less boring, but I just, it all comes down to who are you targeting? Do they care about that? And if they don't, then I think it's okay to just keep it simple.
Matt Dodgson: What about advice for people in their careers then? Marketing, as you and I both know, has evolved a hell of a lot over the last few years. But from your side, I mean, what would you say is the most underrated skill? Um, B2B content marketer should kind of master really to develop their skills over the next few years.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, I think like empathy is the number one thing. Empathy in the sense of being able to put yourself in the shoes of the reader. Because if I were to summarize marketing in one sentence, it's just understanding your target customer, right? Being obsessed with them. Like being obsessed with what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what keeps them up at night. If you have a super strong understanding of your customer and everything else follows. And so ah, like I find it myself, you know, when I'm really fascinated with the target customer, um, naturally I will want to reach out to the sales team and ask them questions. Naturally I'll be on Reddit reading what people are asking. Naturally I'll be on LinkedIn following people in that industry. It'll just, everything will come naturally because I'm genuinely fascinated by this target customers, pain points Basically. So I think if you can, if you're a marketer, hopefully that means you're already naturally interested in like, psychology and what makes people tick. So then it's all about, okay, how can I understand my customer? As much as possible, go to their events, read their newsletters, follow the influencers, just completely immerse yourself in that world. And everything else will be a lot easier because you can, you can like, talk about the pain points that really, you know, really trigger them. And when they see that, when they, when they see that you're talking about their pain points in such a specific way, they'll be like, they can only know those pain points if they know how to solve them, if they understand my problem and are going to offer me a proper tool or solution. So anyway, that was a bit of a ramble. But my point is I really think it all comes down to, especially in the world of AI and all that, where everything's super generic, it's going to be more important than ever to have a really deep understanding of who you're talking to.
Matt Dodgson: Yeah. And interviewing your customers as well. Speaking to your customers directly. Cool. What about scenario then? So we as a recruitment agency are, uh, asked a lot of the time by companies. Look, we've got a few candidates that, ah, final interview stage. Let's say it's for a B2B content role. Then if you were hiring, if you were the head of marketing, you're hiring for this B2B content marketing role and you had three candidates and you want to assess who was the best candidate, then how would you do it at final interview stage?
Araminta Robertson: So final interview stage, there's three candidates. How would I evaluate whether they're a good B2B content marketer and who was
Matt Dodgson: the best out of the three?
Araminta Robertson: Well, I mean, it kind of come back to what I said. So I try and figure out a way to evaluate how their approach to understanding the customer, whether they care about that, to be honest. So one question that I like, for example, is when we're hiring writers is what are the three skills that you think make a fantastic writer or a great writer? And that often can tell you a little bit what they value and whether that's in line with what you think is important as well. I also like, we do a test and I think like a little like a paid test where you pay someone to do a test, an activity, whatever it is, can be really helpful because it's quite hard to find on interviews. So if you can do that, that'd be really helpful. And maybe that test involves doing some research on the target customer and see how they do that. And if they kind of do the right things in terms of like looking at the kind of content they would consume or the events they would go for, that could be a good sign that they're really interested in the customer. That's what I would personally look for.
Matt Dodgson: Let's say, for instance, you were doing this tomorrow, then for a company, for hiring into your company, would you be concerned about candidates using AI then to support this?
Araminta Robertson: Um, using AI to do the test or to help them do the.
Matt Dodgson: Yeah, I mean, a lot of companies, I, uh, always think there's like two ways of assessing people is either looking forwards, that is, here's a scenario. How would you approach it? Or looking backwards. Give me an example of a time when you have the looking forward thing is what a lot of companies lean on, which I guess is kind of a little bit like what you've talked about. But I could chuck that into ChatGPT.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Matt Dodgson: And it could give me a pretty decent answer or presentation or whatever it might be. Would it worry you that people might do that in an assessment?
Araminta Robertson: Well, I think ultimately what you can do is ask them questions, like, if you were, if they were going to do their research, I wouldn't evaluate them on the research in the sense of like, give me a document, send it to me. Because, yeah, they could just chatgpt that. What I would try and do is say, you know, go ahead, do your research for a few days, whatever it is, use AI, use whatever you want, and then ask them some questions, like just an, uh, interview. And that will give you. I mean, you can't, like, you know, you can't use AI for that. And because, and ultimately that is a better assessment because I'm trying to understand whether they really, really understand the target customer. Because I'd rather allow someone to use all the tools at their disposal and then see what they come up with.
Matt Dodgson: That.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'd have to think about this a bit more. This is just me, like thinking off the top of my head. But I, um, would maybe just interview them or just talk to them and say, so what have you found? What was interesting? What do you think about this? What do you think about that? How would you approach this? But just they've had their time to do their research and now it's like just talking, just, um, riffing off. What do they come up with? Maybe I would try that, but I'm not sure. I'd have to also Think about it a bit and see if there's a better way.
Matt Dodgson: On the subject of AI, then final question. Yep, we've seen lots of quotes about AI. I think the quote that everybody sort of lands on is the fact that it's a copilot, copilot for us all in our jobs. Um, from your side then, I mean, I'd say one of the areas where we've seen a lot of AI be introduced is around things like content creation and writing and stuff like that. What AI tools would you sort of recommend right now then for a B2B content marketer to be using?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, so when it comes to writing, we found that still to go from like 0 to 1, AI is still not great at creating content that's really high quality. And so the way we approach AI is more how can we make it 10% better than what it currently is? So I think the first thing is to use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever your favorite one is and use that to really improve your content. So that could be things like ask it specific prompts, you know, make the sentence flow better, or connect these two paragraphs. I really like setting up custom GPTs or Claude projects and just use that for a lot of little parts of your life, whatever content that is, Create this Podcast intro, create this, create that and like improve it. So I really like using lots of little custom GPTs. There's a few other tools, you know, writesonic is one of them. Napkin AI is one that I like just for creating graphics. Evan Labs is really good if you want a, uh, tool that just talks back to you. Um, so there's a few tools like that. But I think especially, you know, if everyone's going to create AI, ah, content, then just doing that as well is just what's the point of marketing? The whole point is to stand out. Right, Is to attract people. And if you're just creating the same stuff as everyone else, then you're kind of wasting your time. So I still feel that, that just creating tons of content isn't the right use case for it. I think it's really good for, you know, a human adds the original thought or extracts the original thought from an expert, whatever it is, does the main work and then AI optimizes it and proves it. That's what we found. Works really well, open to obviously other possibilities. And we're constantly testing, like every week. I'm trying lots of different things, but I still find that original thought, original content is going to be more important now than ever. So you have to be careful about, you know, removing that with AI accidentally. Um, but yeah, that's how I would approach it.
Matt Dodgson: And do you think AI is. Will mean that you have less people in your agency, as an example?
Araminta Robertson: In our case, that's not the case yet because the kind of content we create is complex and we really focus on super high quality. I think for really complex industries. I don't know, we'll see. Right. Because obviously things could get a lot better. But at the moment, I'll just say that for the complex industry that we're in, where we're talking about payments, we're talking about. About financial technology, it's just not at that level yet. A human's way better. So all of our writers are people and it's, it's, as you said, it's people, it's writers with their co pilots. Right. Who are using AI to improve what they're already doing. So for us, that's not really the case. I am using AI for other things though, for like, helping with the podcast, for helping with distribution, for helping with just improving, like, small bits. So more for operations, I would say, rather than for, you know, the actual work that we do. Uh, but I am hearing other companies that are replacing a part of their workforce with AI and I guess in certain situations it makes sense. Um, but for marketing, I don't know, the creative aspect, I don't see how. Ah, I don't know, we'll see. But I think the creative aspect is still very human and, uh, I'm not sure if it could be completely replaced.
Matt Dodgson: Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how it pans out further down the line. But I'd agree. I mean, we sort of use it internally ourselves for, as you mentioned, operations around podcast creation, which is great, but then also around sort of. I like the idea of that. You talked about the, uh, custom chat GPT. So what's an element of my role? I do lots and lots and you can actually use chat GTP to help you do it much more efficiently. So, um, Cool. Well, look, I've really enjoyed our chat, Araminta. Ah, you know, it's been fascinating to talk to you. It's good to hear that, uh, you know, B2B content is still, still alive and well for a lot of the companies that you, uh, work with. And it's still a good channel for companies to invest in. If there's anybody that wants to listen to more about you. I know you run your own podcast. Could you just remind guests what that is?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, sure. So I run my own agency, Mint Studios, but I also run a fintech marketing community. So if you're in the fintech space, uh, you're welcome to join this community. It's completely free. It's a Slack group with over 2,000 people. Um, and we also run events in London and in New York. So, you know, you're welcome to join these. And the podcast is also part of that community. It's called Market like a fintech. And, yeah, it's just, uh, a safe place for other marketers in this industry to exchange ideas and meet and connect with other people.
Matt Dodgson: You're a superstar. Thank you very much for giving your time.
Araminta Robertson: Thank you, Matt.
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