113: The Executive Content Playbook: Founder-Led Marketing in the Age of AI with Purna Virji

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor. I'm your host, Danny Gavin. And together with industry leaders and marketing experts, we'll explore the meeting point of mentorship and marketing. We'll discover how these connections have affected careers, marketing strategies, and lives.

Now get ready to get human. Hello everyone, I'm Danny Gavin, Optage Founder Marketing Professor, and the host of the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome back a very special guest to the podcast, PernaVirgie. When we last spoke in episode 62, Perna was the principal consultant of content solutions at LinkedIn, but her role has recently expanded to applied AI strategy lead.

With a career spanning over 20 years, Perna brings a rare holistic perspective to the table. She has seen every corner of this industry, from her early days in journalism and TV production to serving as a brand evangelist, SEO, and instructional designer for global giants like Microsoft. She's also the author of the highly acclaimed book High Impact Content Marketing, which is a masterclass in actionable modern day content strategy. Perna, it's a big deal to have you back in the hot seat.

Today we're going to talk about AI strategy, the critical role of executive content, and what's new in content marketing since we last spoke. Welcome back to the show. How are you? I'm good.

It's a big deal to be back here chatting with you, Danny. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, I think you're our first like non-optage employee that's done a multiple episode. So there's no better person to have episode number two of their own as Perna.

Woohoo. Maybe we can make this a series hint in. No kidding now. You don't have to convince me.

All right. So, Perna, since we last spoke, you have moved from just being the principal consultant of content solutions to also overseeing applied AI strategy. How has your holistic view of marketing shifted with this new focus? The thing is that this is, yes, it's a new focus for me here at LinkedIn.

But AI has been something that I've worked on for a decade. Like literally in 2016, I was the one talking about voice search when Cortana was at things. I was uh at Microsoft at the time, and I could very quickly see how Cortana was becoming a big shift. We had Xiao Ice in in China at the time, that was the the friendly chatbot that was all the rage.

And you could see people's interactions with technology changing. So I literally have been talking about AI and marketing since late 2015, early 2016, from whether it was voice search, visual search, AI-powered surge, early chatbots, which is of the early sort of nascent invention of what now we see agentic AI, et cetera, becoming. So it's a place that I know very well. And so when we were looking at, I mean, it's very, it's no surprise that our entire industry has been shifting more and more to how do we use AI to be more efficient, to be more effective.

And so when there was a need for looking at how we do our things and how we advise customers and unmarketers to be more effective. So of course, it was the perfect next step for me to take this on. And so I'm thrilled that I get to lead our applied AI work stream. And it's not just me, like I have a team of just incredibly brilliant global colleagues and teammates who are joining in.

And I think it's the one of the most exciting things I'm working on. Your journalism professors taught you that storytelling has a ripple effect and carries responsibility. How do you apply those ethical guardrails to AI-generated executive content today? And I love that you remembered that and brought that up.

But the one is that responsible applies to everything we do, how we show up. So I'm never a fan of like, hey, just have AI write your post and then just keep posting everything. It's like, nope, people want to hear from you. So you can AI is your tool, it can help you, but you're the one that has to give it the ideas and everything.

So it's not just trust me, I've gotten asked this question. And, you know, like, oh, what if I just have AI read the transcripts of all my meetings or have it read through all my inbox and just have it uh create posts, and then I just never have to think about well, what is the point of doing that? Like you're trying to build a relationship with your audience and they want a relationship with Hudic. People aren't stupid, like they can absolutely tell the difference.

So that's number one. Two is also so how you go about it. So I'd say that what you can do is help AI help you find the ideas in it. So you can do a voice note into AI, do your sort of thought dump where you could just do stream of consciousness, no structure, and then you can have AI identify, like, okay, you know my audience, these two or three kernels would be really good for you to take out.

So it's a little bit things like that when it comes to executive thought leadership. It also comes to sometimes a little bit more polishing, like read my post, help me make it better, help me make a stronger hook. Like all of those things are amazing ways to use AI. You know, if I could have my AI go to the dentist and get a root canal for me, I would so do it yesterday, but sadly uh it'll have no benefit.

It would still be me. You've long followed Will Reynolds' advice. When someone sends the elevator down for you, you need to send it down for someone else. Yeah.

So in the fast-moving world of AI right now, how are you currently sending the elevator down for others? So the big thing that I believe is if I'm learning anything, if I'm having an aha moment, I need to share it with others instantly. So I post a lot more on everything that I'm learning or thinking or sharing all the time. And I'm writing more.

I write for both Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal. Am I constantly putting ideas out there? Like sometimes I have more ideas when I'm sending, you know, poor Shelly Walsh, uh editor at certain journal or Danny at uh a search engine land. I'm like, oh, I have this article.

Do you want it? Do you want it? And they're like, okay, this is great, thank you. Keep sending them.

But then after like the three articles in a row, I'm wondering, am I bombarding them? So no, I think it's so exciting. And if you can just share it out, plus the benefit is to you, right? Isn't the isn't the saying that to teach is to learn twice?

And so it's actually doubly helpful. Like I said, I'm putting my thoughts down, it's great. And then I'm, you know, I mentor others as well and give back as much as possible. Yeah, I love the teaching uh or learning through teaching because we obviously want to give, but it more often than not by teaching.

That's actually how you really understand something better. You'll find those little points that you know, you almost those little doubts, like, oh, is it this or is it that? Or like, do I really do it like this? Exactly.

So when you're trying to teach others, that's when your thoughts will get refined, or I'll have amenities who ask me a question, and I'm like, oh, I never thought about it that way. So it's awesome. It's so helpful and it's such a win-win for both of you. So one of the topics I wanted to discuss today was in response to some recent insights you've shared on LinkedIn, specifically on executive content and its role in content marketing.

You recently noted that roles like head of CEO content are commanding salaries from 240,000 to 1.5 million at companies like PayPal, OpenAI, and Vario. Why has this skill become one of the highest paid jobs in tech during the AI boom? Oh my gosh, and we see this everywhere.

And ever since I wrote that, if we look at the Anthropics, the Open AIs, the Microsoft, they're all hiring storytellers because that is the one thing that AI cannot yet replicate with good essence. We're also realizing that a lot of these AI products, they're all new. Yes, if you're in the tech bubble and you're deep in the tech space, like so many of the people we'll talk to every day are people we get it, but that's just a small, small bubble. Those millions and millions or billions who still AI is still new to them.

It's still scary, like they're associated with the those Hollywood scary movies like Terminator or whatever. If you're trying to position and showcase AI from something that's so nebulous to something that's very tangible, you need a good storytelling to actually translate something that is so advanced or misconceived of. So that is a big reason why. And AI can help, yes, but it cannot do it for you.

The other reason why is because there's a new baseline, right? AI set a new baseline. We can, everybody can be a creator, everyone can write. You know, 10 people can go to Chat GPT, say, I want an article about this, or write something.

It'll be researched. The bar is just higher. And so, how do you stand out when like everybody can write and everybody starts sounding similar? You have to just elevate.

And that's where good storytellers just become 10x better. You also cited staggering data. Sendosa saw 120% larger deal sizes when prospects followed executives, and Gong found deals closed 22% faster when buyers knew the seller. So, how does executive presence bridge the gap between brand and revenue?

We're seeing people increasingly wanting to follow people. There's less trust in institutions. Like people want to are less likely to follow the brand versus they want to connect with the person. Let's look at the biggest tech companies in the world.

If you look at Microsoft or Google, if you look at their following on LinkedIn, they'll have really good, large followings. But if I look at Satya Nadella or Sundar, their CEOs, they will have almost double the following of the main company, right? People want to hear from them. The person is what connects the brand.

You think of the, even if I think of any company now, well, let's say McDonald's has been in the news now with their CEO eating the burger. Like if you think of McDonald's, you don't just think about the brand, you think about Ronald McDonald's, you think about now the CEO and him taking that bite, right? You you associate the people with the company. And so when people are more likely to follow the company, when they learn from the leaders, when they feel a sense of not just, oh, can I trust this company, but can I trust the people who build who are building and leading the company?

That makes a big, big difference. And there's some cool study by that uh LinkedIn did in partnership with Bain and Company, where we looked at the top five reasons that people will buy. And out of those five, only two were about the products or services. The other the three were about more organizational dynamics.

It's more important to defend the decision than to choose the best product, right? And B2B. And so often as B2B marketers, we're all like, well, let me just go check about the products and features, et cetera. And it doesn't just have to be the CEO, it can be the developers, the subject matter experts.

If they go out and post, people are more likely to consume that content. And it gives you a sense of, I've got faith in how this company thinks and how they operate, and I want to walk with them. You've cautioned against made-up personas that have no bearing on real customers. How can executives ensure that their content remains authentic and grounded in customer science rather than just performing for an algorithm?

And I know for some executives it's really easy, but for others, it's like, uh, you know, they they can't be so open. How do you approach it? It's super simple. Your content is not about you, it is for your audience.

So if you just change your thinking from what do I need to say to what do they need to hear? So just start by taking a little time to think about the audience. What do they care about? What keeps them up at night?

What goals are they chasing? What are the common friction areas that they have? And from there, it's so easy. You can almost train it like a radar to think about what's going to resonate.

Now, I I asked this question. Like I'm sure, Danny, you've got whether it's kids, spouses, friends in your life, people that you care about. Like, you know, if you watch something, you'd be like, oh, so-and-so would love that. Or you see something in a store and you're like, oh, so-and-so would love that.

We all have somebody in our life who we can think that way of. And that's because we've trained our radar to know them well. So we know what resonates. That's the sort of radar that you've got to double up about your audience.

And it's not going to be natural the first one, first day. It's something you build up, but it is absolutely essential because then in your day-to-day. So let's say you have a meeting with a customer and they ask a question, and then you realize, like, oh, that's a really good question. The answer I give them could actually help lots more of my customers.

And so then you can share something like that. Or if you're having a meeting or just going about your day-to-day, you're talking to a colleague, you see, or you see a research that's something that surprised you, you could be like, oh, this would help so this would resonate so well with them. And so I think it's a very long way of saying, get to know your audience. And AI can help you a lot there.

You can use AI to look at your tickets, you to review calls if you save call uh transcripts. You can have it look at, you know, you can have it look at social media. Like, for example, Perplexity can read through all of Reddit, and you can read through what people are saying about in your niche or about your brand, and you can come up with ideas and have a short list. So AI can help you, but that's a step that you can't miss.

So let's get a little bit deeper into like the practical areas that AI can help executives. So you suggest using AI to speed up thinking, not replace your voice. Yes. Practically, how do you use LLMs to sharpen an executive's unique perspective without it becoming generic corporate speak?

You could do a few things. One, you could get it to know your voice and what you do. So you could have it look at the posts that you've got, log in, like let's say you've got like a month worth of data, upload some of your top performing posts. I mean, LinkedIn will give you that data if you look at the data, but these were my top performing posts, both by impressions and engagements.

Copy those in or take screenshots and put your AI and put up what were the common themes? Like, what did my best performing things have in common? So then you can get to know a little bit of what works. You can have it take an idea and then have it give you additional angles.

So, like, hey, what are three angles I could take on this insight or this research or this approach? Or, you know, I'm getting this feedback from customers, like, oh, your product is too expensive based on some of the core transcripts that I've had before. Help me come up with the right, shorter, sort of succinct way of explaining that. Or I want to write a story about something in my background that would be important for people.

Here's my resume. So try to do some of those. The other thing is again, just talk into it, stream of consciousness. You could also ask it to give you a contrarian take to standard.

You can, you know what I everybody says always be testing. But, you know, I wanna kill some of those sacred cows. And I think like people should not be always B testing. Like, I want to go write this, help me find some research and data.

So there's just so many different things that you can lean on with AI that helps you write, it doesn't actually replace you doing all of the work. You advise splurging time and research before content creation. What specific research questions should a marketing team ask an executive to extract their most heirloom quality insights? Let's say we were trying to come up with a new feature or product launch.

As a marketing team, I would know that what does my audience want to care about? They want to know more about the why. They want to know the process it took to build it. And they wanted to know more about my CEO and the sort of motivations of what does he care about?

So I would put together a list of sort of interview questions and I could ask this the AI to even help me come up with these questions. And then I could just, as a marketing team, sit there and have a regular interview just on Teams or Zoom and make sure the transcripts are on and record this as a dialogue, low effort, supernatural, just me talking to the executive, get all of their thoughts, and then I can then plug in that transcript into an AI and be like, well, I want to come up with three or four posts.

Like, come and help me create the raw drafts of three or four posts. From there, if I was the sort of corp comms exec, I could then sort of tweak it, prioritize it, see what would work, and then just give it to the CEO to do a final lookover, edit to make sure it's in their words. And so now it goes from 10 hours of content creation to an hour of your exec's time, which is more than possible to fit in. And in fact, I would say if you can't fit in an hour a week to even work on your business, then what are you doing?

Because the stats have been proven time and time again from different, different companies and LinkedIn's own data that shows that if you post even regularly, you see greater leads. So last time we spoke, you talked about a concept that you've covered in your own book, Eugene Schwartz's Five Stages of Awareness. How does an executive's content need to shift when speaking to a completely unaware audience versus a C-suite audience that is already problem aware? This is a big reason why we talk about A, always being on and B, creating content for different stages in the customer journey.

So if they don't know who you are, they don't know why you exist, or they've never heard of you, which is it's a big problem because in B2B, what we find is that 86% of people will choose a company that's been on their short list from day one, right? There's thousands of companies. So how do you get on that short list? That's where your exec content can help.

And what we see cuts through from executive contents is teaching people something that they didn't know about or showing them a new way of looking at something. Like people really come to LinkedIn to learn and grow. Even execs do. They want to look at new ways of approaching the challenges that they're dealing with.

So a company can do that. Another thing that the exec can do is again tie it back to them. There's really three core stories that an executive can really lead with. One is about tell me about the customer priority and pain.

So you can lean into stories like that. You'll be like, hey, today I was talking to XYZ, and their big issue has been blah, blah, blah. And here's how we think about it. So those could be stories that are rooted in your actual customer.

Another type of story could be a transformational story about the clear vision, like how to navigate the winners and losers. So you could be like, right now, most people we talk to are dealing with X, but in the future, there's an opportunity for AI to come in and do, you know, ABC. So you can be the bridge of the current pain to the future hope. And then the third one, which is another really good one, would be personal journeys, personal stories.

Why did you create what you are creating? Right? What are your stories? Like, why are you so passionate?

What made you want to be the CEO of this company? What have you grappled with? In healthcare, for example, you'll you'll see like VPs or senior leaders when they'll say that in my childhood, my mom was a NICU nurse. I would come and see this.

And so it just sort of grounds it into the this is what shaped me, this is why. And that helps people want to trust you. So these are really like the three story types that you can take that really help with somebody who's earlier in the journey, but they're also resonate with people who might be a little aware of you, but not really thinking of you in their problems. Thank you.

Those are rich examples, and I think will be really helpful. You just released this new playbook focused on founder-led sales and marketing. What was the most surprising thing you learned from interviewing startup founders about building a movement rather than just a company? Well, one was just how effective it was.

We all knew at some level that yes, it works. The more time you spend on posting and people getting to know you, it works. But the fact that startups whose founders post at least 10 times a year see 33% more leads than those that don't. I'm like, that's that's huge.

And that's a LinkedIn's own research. Or send also the third party, if we look at them, they said that they saw up to a 3.7x higher deal size when the exec posted regularly. Or the gong stat that we talked about earlier, which said the deals close 22% faster.

So it's more leads, larger deal sizes, and faster pipeline acceleration. Like those three were just seeing the actual numbers was the one that really stood out to me. And then hearing folks like Irina from Hootsuite and you know Irving Jain from Glean, the founder of Glean, who says that you know, he encourages it thought leadership as a company-wide effort and that he wants everyone at Blean to come together. So I love to see the stats and then how folks are empowering their their teams to do it.

So cool. Because so you like had a hypothesis and you kind of knew it already, but then you get when you get these real life examples, it just like makes it all like, yeah, like to meant it. It is, it is. And so we did this in partnership.

So I authored this playbook in partnership with the LinkedIn from Startups team. And we did this because Scale Ventures was talking to us, and they said that a lot of their founders were having these questions or they were encouraging founders to do it, and we're like, you know what? Let's just go and put some research behind this and advice. And so, yeah, the numbers really were really we're like, we know it's important, but whoa, it is so important.

So the playbook outlines five clear steps to turn expertise into demand. Without giving away all the heirlooms, what is the very first step an executive should take? One is to lead with the perspective and not the product. So I think the biggest, biggest shift that people make, or when people first start posting on LinkedIn on behalf of their company.

So this, I see this whether you're a Fortune 50 company or whether you're a fast-growing startup, is that they'll always want to lead with their product. They'll be like, hey, you know, we help X do Y, but that's not what you should lead with. It's a three-step. People need to know you, they need to like you, and then they will trust you.

And when they trust you, they'll be much more likely to buy you. Don't go straight for the sales pitch. Just share your story first. So that's the first thing people should think about is like, what is my story?

And we all have stories to share. So many feel repurposing content is like repetitive, but you argue that it's necessary for things to stick. How do you determine if an idea is one that deserves a global rollout? You should definitely repeat content, and that's for two reasons.

One is that the first time you post it, not everyone in your total address. Accessible market is going to even see it. Right. So you want to post it again so that more and more people can see it.

And then the second reason why you should do it is it's going back to instructional design and adult learning behavior. Like repeating ideas helps them stick. It's the same reason why a company like Nike will have just do it as their logo and they don't change it. Like repetition makes things stick.

So how do you determine what to do? Is A, is it something that's done really well? Post it again. If it's something that's clear um relevant for your audience, it's resonated before, post it again and again.

And the second thing is if it's really, really important for you to get it across very often and that there's clear value for your audience, right? It's not just, oh, I want to talk about my new pitch. No, is it something that's important that you know your audience? You're changing a mindset, you're helping them see something new.

Share it again. And yes, you can share it again, even as text. Another clever way to go about resharing content and keeping it feeling fresh is to put it in a different format. So if I've come up with a text post, can I convert it into a carousel?

Can I convert it into a document? Can I convert it into a video? And that way you can keep sharing the same content. But because it's coming in different formats, it can feel fresh and interesting.

And it's more inclusive because people have different content consumption styles. You get to give them the content in the format that they they most prefer to consume it in. So I think you just answered my next question, but I just wanted to see if there's anything else that you wanted to add. But how can a company build a library of executive content that remains valuable three generations later rather than just being worn once and tossed?

Some of the biggest things, and this was a great idea from uh from Gal Aga and from some of the founders that we interviewed, where they said that they create systems or they create an entire sort of library of content that they've posted. So whether it is an entire page or a section on their audience, the pain points of their audiences or key points about their ICP or the ideal customer profile that they want to know. So that way they have a source of trust. The other thing that they'll do is like, these are the hooks that I've used, that they've worked.

This is what hasn't worked. And so that way, if you can keep and build this library as an ongoing resource, and the next time you want to go and create, you can quickly refer back to it. You can even train your AI on it when you can be like, hey, this is what I want to do. Just make sure that is this resonating with my audience, or is this what what do I need to tweak in my draft to make it resonate better?

And so these are simple things, plus it is something that can be a shared resource across marketing and comms teams and the executives. So this way others can add to it as well. And it's not just solely in the hands of one person. And I think those are the smartest executives and CEOs when they can create that system.

Do you think there's a large gap between like the CEOs and executives who know how to do it and then the ones who like have no clue? There is, and that gap is just confidence. So I think when you don't start, I I love the comparison of comparing it to somebody who is a marathon runner and somebody who's a couch potato, right? You if you're sitting on the couch and you're like, oh my god, they're running like miles and miles every day, like how?

And like maybe that's just not me. I'm like, nope. What was that book, Couch to 5K? It's like anybody can do it.

So, like the first few times that you know you get off and and and run or jog, it's gonna feel terrible. You're gonna be out of breath, it's gonna feel painful. But then the more you do it, the easier it gets. And soon you'll be running and reaping all of the benefits from doing that, both from the mood and from the sort of physical.

And so that is the only big difference. It's like it's getting started is the 100% hardest part. And it's so easy to look at somebody who's been doing it for years. Like if you look at somebody like a Rand Fishkin who's been creating videos since like the early 2000s, and somebody who's never created video, be like, oh my God, that's just impossible.

I could never do that. And it's not the case. Anybody can do it. You just need to get started, and you've just got to be okay sucking for the first, you know, few first few times you do it because no, we didn't come out of the womb like running and skipping, right?

We've all learned to like crawl and then walk, and we fell on our faces, and then we learned. And so it's okay to be the beginner. The exercise comparison is so on par because I know myself, like, I'll get into a swing, you know, on LinkedIn and then I'll take a little bit of a break. And just to get back on, it's so tough.

I'm thinking it's like getting up at five in the morning, like, oh, I need to go back to the gym, but it's so true. I know, and the thing is, this is so much even easier than that. Because what you can do is you can batch create, right? I mean, if only I could just like, okay, this is a Sunday.

I'm going to like batch create. I'll do a three-hour walk, and that'll should give me excess, you know, that's my exercise for like the week done. It's not, but with your pulse, you can do that. You can batch create when you have inspiration.

All right, it's time for a lightning round, but it's gonna be a little bit different because I know you a little bit. So beyond work, has AI helped you with your love of gardening or cooking since we last talked? Oh my gosh, so much. I'm doing like garden design plans.

There's this whole system of there's the French potager, like the kitchen gardening where you can plant different plants next to each other, which help each other and they help get you a more like abundant crop. And so I've learned so much about that where you know you should plant basil next to tomatoes and peppers because that helps repel some of these creatures. It also helps them grow more. And so they grow better together.

So I've learned all these different, you know, sort of tips and tricks. So I can get much more out of a much smaller space. And then I've learned way more on different recipes and even just ideas. I'll be like, this is what I have in my fridge.

I'm so tired. Like, I don't want to even have to think or make another decision today. Like, what do I cook? And AI is like sort of my lifesaver because it now knows the preferences of me and my husband.

And it'll be like, okay, I think you can, you know, rustle this up together and it'll be super quick and easy. And I'm sure it tastes delicious. And it is so good. And then, of course, there are some days where it's like, Porta, you're you could do it, but you should order takeouts.

I'm like, thank you for giving me the permission to just get takeout. So AI knows us well, so we're just great. That's very cool. So if you were to add a chapter zero to your book, High Impact Content Marketing today, specifically about AI and executives, what would the title be?

Empower yourself with uh with AI because that's what it is. It is so empowering, and it helps you to do more. There's a lot more AI that I would go back and add to my book now that things have happened. Uh now that you know I wrote that in 2023 is when it came out.

And now three years later, everything shifted. So there's a lot of frameworks and principles that hold completely true, but now with AI, you can be like you can execute it faster. So probably, oh, maybe I'll choose what is the Daft Punk song? What is it like faster, better, stronger?

No, hotter, faster, better, stronger, hotter, better, faster, stronger. So I would probably title Dash. I would probably use that song. I probably chat a little bit of Daft Punk energy.

Love it. So, in our last conversation, you mentioned your grandmother's masala chai recipe that it's your grounding morning routine. How else do you ground yourself before high-stakes AI strategy meeting to ensure you stay focused on the human side of the data? I'll try to read a single customer story or I'll think back to a recent customer meeting and I'll think back to the actual dialogue or the conversation I had with the actual person, the marketer.

And so then I'm I'm creating, I'm not just creating in a vacuum for this like nameless, faceless group of people. I'm creating for these are my peers. These are the people that, you know, I might be two or three steps ahead of them. This is what I want to show them or what I'm excited about.

So I'll always try to ground myself into who am I solving for? What is the issue and why does it matter to them? And if I go back to that, I'm always steered in the right direction. Love that.

So we're gonna include a link to the playbook. But if you can just remind our listeners, where can they find your newest insights on a strategy, content, and everything else? You can follow me on LinkedIn, of course. That's my hub where I'll share everything there.

So everything that I'm constantly learning, doing, reading about, fascinated by. I'm always posting about it on LinkedIn or I'm writing about it on Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal. So you can check me out there, but I also will share links on my LinkedIn. So come to that one hub for everything.

Amazing. Well, Perna, this was such an awesome discussion. I'm so glad that we got to reconnect and everyone can hear an update about you, which is so cool. Thank you for joining the Digital Marketing Mentor, and we hope to speak with you next time.

Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. Be sure to check us out online at thedor.com and at the DM Mentor on Instagram. And don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts for more Marketing Mentor magic.

See you next time.