Head of Content @ LASSO | Co-host of That's Marketing, Baby | Delivering daily cheat codes for small content teams

I'm a creative director turned content marketer and strategist with more than 20 years of experience conceptualizing and executing breakthrough work for B2C brands like Eggo, Rice Krispies, Blue Cross, Cottonelle, and McDonald’s, and B2B brands like Fastly and Island.

I have a knack for leading cross-functional teams toward a common goal, bringing order to the oft-chaotic creative process, crafting insight-driven global campaigns, and bringing stories to life via long- and short-form content.

Jess Cook

I've worked with a lot of talented people over the years.
 
But every once in a while, you meet someone who just 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘵 in every way that matters.
 
Annalisa Rodriguez is one of those people.

I had the privilege of working with her for a short time at Fastly.
 
And this week, she joined Vector 👻 as our Sr. Content Marketer Manager — a sentence that makes me so happy I could cry.
 
Annalisa has a journalism background that shows in everything she touches. Long-form, repurposing, content design... she's equally amazing at all of it.
 
But what makes her truly special is her ability to take the things people 𝘴𝘢𝘺, turn them into content that makes readers 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭, and connect it all to results when buyers 𝘢𝘤𝘵.

(Read: not a common skill.)

Bonus: she's already vibing with us in Slack, and keeping our cat-loving hearts fed with pics and videos of her kitties, Oreo and Darkness. 😻
 
With Annalisa on the squad, we now have four marketers at Vector. And for the first time, a real three-legged stool:
 
→ Product marketing 
→ Demand gen 
→ Content

(i.e. I feel like I just collected ALL OF THE POKEMON.)

Annalisa's going to be sharing how she builds content here at Vector. You'll want a front-row seat for that, so go give her a follow.

Then stand back, 'cause sparks are 'bout to fly, y'all.

3 years ago, ChatGPT was supposed to kill content marketing jobs. Instead, content marketers are becoming CMOs.
 
That's not a coincidence.
 
In the age of AI, anyone can spin up a landing page, launch a campaign, or generate long-form content in minutes.
 
That's useful. Really.
 
But it's also made one skill more valuable than ever: storytelling.
 
The marketers who understand how to build a brand, create ownable content, and connect with an audience in a way that AI can't replicate—those are the people snagging seats at the table.

And not just in content, but across 👏 every. 👏 single. 👏 marketing. 👏 discipline.
 
(I shared more on Behind Good Content with Peter Conforti recently. Peep the clip!)
 
In fact, it's the skill I'm building Vector's entire marketing team around.
 
👾 Alex Virden is the most story-focused PMM you will ever meet. She doesn't just "do positioning"—she crafts narratives, messaging, and truly delightful content that make marketers feel seen and our product make sense.
 
Kelly Arndt's content background means he gets something most demand gen marketers miss: storytelling makes or breaks your demand gen activities. You can have the perfect targeting and the slickest automation. But if your message doesn't connect emotionally? None of it matters.
 
As B2B gets more crowded and products become more commoditized, storytellers ARE the differentiator.
 
And if you're one of us? Lean into those skills. They're more valuable than you think.

Just back from an incredible week at Above the Fold where I ran six content workshops over two days. I have but three pieces of photo evidence I was even there.

1) Schnitzel dinner with my ride or die agency guy, Justin Dunham. We've had two Zoom calls a week for nearly 5 years straight and had yet to meet in person. It was worth the wait. (For both the hang and the schnitzel.)

2) Got to meet my buddy from across the pond, Luke Winter - the man, the myth, the legend behind our "Next best way" ads. We talked shop (obvi), and concerts, and about what we do when we're not at our desks. His hair is just as fab in real life.

3) My parents were also flying out of Detroit at the same time as me - something we only realized a few days before. So we met up for an early bird special before boarding. They paid, of course, because I'm only 42. 🥰

So glad I went. So glad to be home. So ready for this damn snow to melt.

I've been a VP for all of 4 weeks.

And I'm obsessed with learning from leaders ahead of me.
 
The shift from "doing all the things" to "leading the people who do all the things" is real. I love it. But I also know there's so much more to learn.
 
Which is why I am counting down the days until Exit Five's Marketing Leadership Retreat in March.

I want to see how seasoned VPs and CMOs are building their teams, scaling high-impact programs, actually using AI (not the LinkedIn version, the real version), and proving brand value to skeptical CFOs.

Not so I can copy them, but so I can put them to work in a way that makes sense for Vector 👻.
 
March 18-20 in Paradise Valley, AZ.
 
I'll be the Hermione of the group: taking a bajillion notes and being way too eager to ask questions.
 
If you're going, let's connect. I'd love to meet you!

If you want to go, there are still a few tickets left! 
You can get yours here: https://lnkd.in/gXdGx4u3

I have a rule I live by in marketing: Test small before executing big.

It's why I ran an influencer pilot before making it a full program.
Tested new messaging in ads before our repositioning launch.
And why I'm so excited about what we're announcing today...

Vector 👻 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁-𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗔𝗱𝘀. 🎉 

Here's the metaphor that's been living in my head for this:

Clay is the proving ground. 🏁
It's where GTM teams experiment with signals, build enrichment workflows, test what actually predicts buying behavior, and figure out which audiences are worth activating.

Vector is the Autobahn. 🚗
Once you know what works? You open it up. Contact-level targeting, live audience updates, suppression logic that actually follows your buyers—running modern ads playbooks at full speed.

This isn't hypothetical for us.

It's exactly how Kelly and Sara have been building Vector’s ads program.

• Kelly uses Vector to identify accounts and contacts signaling intent. 
• Sara uses Clay to enrich and score those ICP contacts. 
• Then, they use Vector to activate those contacts across LinkedIn and Google, keeping our paid targeting aligned to real buyer signals as they move through the funnel.

When your team’s already living the use case, you know you're onto something.

Grab some time to see it in action: https://lnkd.in/eugn7rJh

I love a good Uno reverse. 

Especially when it's aimed at Joshua Perk 👻.

In the season two finale (!!!) of This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast, Josh and I take you through our entire website redesign process: from the awkward "you literally told me no when I suggested this six months ago" conversation (haha), to how we worked with our design agency to build the new look and feel, to the 37-item launch checklist 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 (Josh) did not see coming.

But one of my favorite takeaways from the entire project goes a little something like this...

The second someone lands on your site, they start to form an opinion about your product. 𝗔𝗻 𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺.
 
They assume the same level of polish and thought put into your website go into your product, too.
😒 If the design feels dated, they assume the product UI is clunky.
😒 If product screen shots feel too mocked up, they assume the product isn't robust enough.
😒 If it's hard to figure out what you do, they assume the product is just as convoluted.

A lot of teams either go full nuclear on a redesign and lose everything distinctive about their brand, or they're so precious about what they have that the "redesign" is just a fresh coat of paint on the same old house.
 
So when Josh and I sat down to figure out what to actually change, we built three buckets.
 
𝗕𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝟭: 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽. These are the things that make you you. The stuff your audience would immediately recognize and miss if it disappeared. You don't want to lose them—you want to evolve them. Same personality, better haircut. For us: Ghostie, bright colors, bold statements with a wink.
 
𝗕𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝟮: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽. These are the things that aren't bad, exactly—they're just limiting. They paint you into a corner or kill your flexibility, even if people associate them with your brand. For us: super saturated color usage that made text basically impossible to read.
 
𝗕𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝟯: 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲. These are the things actively working against you. They're building a perception you don't want—making you look smaller or less sophisticated than you actually are. No sentimentality. They gotta go. For us: all-caps headlines and ghost visuals in spots that should have had actual product screenshots.

The reason I love this framework is it gives you permission to make bold changes while protecting the things that actually matter. Before we kicked off the project with our design agency, Josh and I literally listed out which parts of our brand fell into which bucket. It made every every design decision after that so much cleaner. 🤌

The FULL second season of is out now! Just search This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast.

Some learning curves only make sense after you’ve lived them.


Funnel Vision was supposed to be 𝘵𝘩𝘦 thing for Vector 👻. Six months of building. A slick product UI. A beautiful narrative about contact-level intent. Launch posts. Playbooks. Customer testimonials. A scroll-stopping GIF with ghosts shooting lasers out of their eyes.
 
And then we killed it.
 
As a copywriter, you get used to having your darlings killed. But this one hurt differently.

It had been the entire company's full focus for two solid quarters, and we all believed in it wholeheartedly.

But when the data shows most customers aren't finding value, you listen.
 
The new episode of 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱'𝘃𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 is about what happened when we swung for the fences with Funnel Vision—and missed.
 
What broke (besides our hearts lol).
How we told 180+ customers.
Why it was the right call.
And how making the wrong decision led us to exactly where we needed to be.

P.S. Sorry not sorry for swearing at you, Joshua Perk 👻

"We need an explainer video," is one of the most exciting and anxiety-inducing things a marketer can hear.

They can take forever.
They can be expensive.
They usually require buy-in from everyone and their mother.
And, because of all of the above, they need to last a while.

BUT, if you get it right, the payoff can be massive.

Because a great explainer video doesn't just educate—it gets people excited: 
"Oh my gosh, this is a different way of doing things. I want to try it." 
"They're fixing that thing that's driven me insane!"
"That was cool. I want to see more from these people." 

And if you're building something category-defining, like we are at Vector 👻, they're 10,000% worth the effort.

HUGE shout out to João Freitas and his team at MezzoLab Studio, for not only being the brilliant minds behind the video, but also making the process FUN.

If you've ever wondered...


what the inside of Vector actually looks like, how it works, and what this whole contact-level advertising thing is all about...

then Thursday, March 5 is your lucky day. 

In our first-ever Booooo-t Camp, our mother of Customer Solutions, Ally Saylor will show you the three most impactful plays you can run inside of Vector 👻.

1. Visualize who visits your site from target accounts 
2. See which ICP clicks on your paid ads
3. Create an ad audience of your entire ICP

Be sure to hydrate. 'Cause your campaigns are 'bout to get SHREDDED: https://lnkd.in/ehJJQcbN

Bottom-of-funnel Content for Growth-Stage B2B SaaS | Content Strategy Vibe Marketer⚡️| Founder @ BOFU.ai

I was an in-house content strategist for over a decade. 
I got amazing results running BOFU programs in-house.
But since becoming a consultant I've been able to:

✅ Increase blog conversions from 6 to 30/mo ~ 5 months
✅ Achieve over two dozen first page rankings for teams 
✅ Take blog conversions from 5% to 30% ~ 90 days
✅ Drive 7-figures in attributable inbound pipeline
✅ Empower content teams to learn BOFU marketing 

When clients come to me they have a very specific goal:
Drive inbound leads, sales and customers from their blog 

But they're usually running into the following problems:
❌ Too much (or only) top-of-funnel content on the blog 
❌  Seeing an increase in traffic but not leads 
❌  Most of the leads are coming from paid ads vs oragnic
❌  Their content team is lean and limited on resources 
❌  Content and SEO agencies aren’t delivering
❌  In-house writers have knowledge gaps about BOFU 
❌  Not able to clearly attribute content to pipeline 

Here's how I help content teams:
- Creating a bottom-of-funnel comparison page strategy 
- Showing clear content to pipeline attribution 

If you’re a VP of Marketing or Marketing lead and you’re facing one or more of these problems: 

- Producing content there’s a lack of strategy and direction
- Not seeing attributable inbound signups from blogs
- Working with SEO agencies but not seeing inbound leads
- No or limited inbound leads coming from the blog  
- You or your team's knowledge of BOFU is limited 

I'm here to help you out. 

Let's talk!

Lashay Lewis

If you want to create content that surfaces in LLM's...
Don't start with a keyword. Use these 3 steps.

I used to create content how most writers are taught.

- Look around the company's website
- Get a sense of what they really do
- Find keywords for their audience
- Check the volume
- Start creating

But doing research this way is backwards.

Keywords are less relevant with LLM's.

Queries aren't formed the same way there...

As they are in Google.

- They are longer.
- More contextual.
- More conversational.

So where do we start now?

How do we get content to show up in LLMs?

> Persona research <

Here's how it works (3 steps).

STEP #1. Dig into the pain points

Since LLM searches are more pain driven than keyword driven...

We need to dig into what pains our persona is having.

Then we reverse engineer those pains back into a potential query they could be searching.

And you find that pain through customer research.

Supporting inputs.

STEP #2. Gather internal documents:

- ICP documents
- Sales call transcripts (GOLD)
- Closed/won data
- Analysis step

STEP #3. Query Specifics

I then take that internal info and query certain specifics I want from it like:

- Basic profile
- Responsibilities
- Pain points
- Goals and objectives
- Decision making profile

This helps me get crystal clear on:

- Who I'm talking to
- What they're struggling with
- What their day to day looks like
- Their goals

So when I'm creating content...

All of these factors are taken into account.

Content isn't written in a vacuum.

Different personas will care about different features and outcomes of your product.

This is how you make sure they're all captured.

Why does this work for LLMs?

The words and phrases they're using to describe their pain on sales calls...

Are probably similar to the ones they're searching in LLM's.

Use that info to guide your strategy.

P.S. I built a really big playbook all about how I use AI to run my bottom-of-funnel process. Everything from customer research, to how I do framework based prompting. Its the same one I teach in my live workshop. 

Link in the comments if you'd like to grab it.

Lashay  Lewis

Founder @ BOFU.ai | Bottom-of-funnel Content Systems for Growth-Stage B2B SaaS | The BOFU Queen

Optimizing for Google search is one thing.
Optimizing for AI search is another. 
Here's how show up in LLMs.

If you're trying to optimize for AI search the same way you did the big G...you're doing it wrong.

There’s another level of complexity when optimizing for AI search.

Traditionally, optimizing for Google has looked like:

→ Including keywords you wanted to rank for
→ Trying to obtain a certain “SEO score” in some tool
→ Doing outreach to other sites for backlinks

But AI search has completely shifted how we need to create content.

It has also taken a significant interest in bottom-of-funnel content.

I’ve been seeing some success with students and clients doing these things to surface in GPT more often:

→ Comparing to competitors
→ Indexing your URL in Bing
→ Addressing your audience’s pain points
→ Logically connecting pains and capabilities
→ Leading H2s with capabilities (not keywords)
→ Going in-depth on product (not 3 bullet points)
→ Adding capability images throughout your article

Now don’t get me wrong.

Foundational SEO should still be strong.
But that shouldn’t be the only thing you’re doing.

I love what’s happening with LLMs

It’s forcing marketers to prioritize what we should have been prioritizing all along:

The customer… 
...not the algorithm.

The paradox is that if you optimize for the customer, you ARE optimizing for the algorithm.

P.S. If you want a productized system your team can use to ensure you're optimizing BOFU articles for AI search the right way, I’ve just launched BOFU OS Lite. It’s the productized system I use for BOFU content execution. 

Link in the comments

After 3 years of consulting I'm about to start running the SEO strategy for my own business.
And I'm about to do something I’ve never seen done before.

Build interactive demos directly in my product-led content. 

Here’s my plan…

There are two sides to my business:
Software
Education 

When I create product-led content for the software side of course the first content pieces will be search terms like:

- Jasper alternatives
- Writesonic alternatives 

But I'm going to take these to the next level by adding product demos directly in the content.

And I'm going to do it using Guideflow.  

My exact flow:
- Download the chrome extension 
- Navigate through BOFU 
- Personalize it for my audience with dynamic segmentation 
- Track the buyer-intent 

While most other tools just do free trials ( I do now too).

I'm using interactive demos to take the experience potential customers have with me to another level. 

Letting them really experience BOFU before they decide to use it. 

Cause y’know, we do things differently over here at BOFU. 

I’ll share the first article when it goes live and give feedback on how well it's working. 


#guideflowpartner #productledcontent

I had a lot of plans in January and almost none of them got done. 

Website launch - Delayed 
New lead magnets - Delayed 
My 2nd cohort - Delayed 
New visuals - Delayed 

All these delays? 

Perfect opportunity to beat myself up for it. 

Except I didn’t this time. 

I let it be. 

For two reasons:

1. I’ve had an intense amount of coaching on this (thanks Sarah Stadler) 

2. I’m doing the most building I’ve done in years and Im genuinely happy about it (and tired)

But what I did get done?

- New website (launches tomorrow)
- Two new lead magnets for marketers 
- 54 users to our SaaS product 
- Back-end funnels built 
- Launched the BOFU bootcamp (starts Tuesday)
- Developed new frameworks 
- 2 workshops booked with companies for Feb

And all I can think about is how much all of this was worth the wait. 

How im going through the biggest business shift since I started in 2023. 

How I’m actually building a business around the thing that I love to do the most…..build. 

And last, but most importantly, not least…

How all of you have supported me and held me down throughout the process 

Despite my inconsistent posting, I’ve gotten more traction than I have in months. 

And I can’t thank you enough. 

Excited to launch this next chapter of my business with all of you.

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I’m running a 3-week intensive called The BOFU Bootcamp. 

Here’s what we’re going to cover:
- Customer and product research 
- Competitor research 
- Keyword research 
- Content production 

My entire productized process around product-led content. 

By the end of the bootcamp:
- We’ll have 3-5 LLM optimized blogs 
- You’ll have my full Claude process to scale 
- You’ll have all the prompt templates for content production and customer research 

And most importantly….

You have the knowledge to continue this process without your girl. 

My goal when I work with marketers? 

Get them in and out as soon as possible. 

Especially because 95% of my students are marketers on small content teams. 

Educating and and empowering them is my top priority. 

Most of the seats have sold through email but I wanted to give marketers who follow me here a change to get in if they’d like. 

You can also bring a team member for free. 

There are a few seats left. 

If you think this would be helpful for your team send me a DM and I’ll send you more details. 

Enrollment closes Monday night.

How do I create bottom-of-funnel content that gets picked up in AI Search? Here's how. 

I have a modular process for my content. 

Each article is built from a framework. 

And each framework includes Taxonomy. 

Here's a breakdown of the main taxonomy:
Current way - How prospects solve the problem now
Pain point - The pain they're having from the problem
Feature - What the product does 
Capability - The workflows that power the feature
Benefit - The benefit from solving the pain
Sub capabilities - Micro actions within a capability 

The extended taxonomy:

Forced tradeoffs - The either/or choice the market forces buyers to make

Negative Consequences — What buyers lose when forced to choose one side

Differentiator — What makes your product different from alternatives

Think of the taxonomy as fillable sections within a framework. 

I also have a knowledge base with internal docs.  

I'm able to then prompt from those documents....

And fill the framework. 

So every [pain point] or [benefit] or [feature] in the framework isn't a guess.

It comes straight from internal documents. 

I call it "Framework Based Prompting". 

Instead of prompting in an LLM:
"I'm writing around [x] article, create me an outline"

The framework itself IS the prompt. 

My favorite thing about creating content this way? 

It already has your customer insight baked in. 

So when a potential prospect goes into an LLM and says:

"I'm a [persona] and i'm struggling with [pain point], [pain point], and [pain point], and I need a product that can [capability] recommend me a solution?

That same taxonomy is included in the content. 
Semantic relation is there. And AI picks up on that. 

And it's been working really well. 

Now deploy this across 10 articles at once?

You keep quality, alignment and continuity. 

If you'd like to see this post in action, I just created the BOFU Operating System. It's my complete productized process from research to publishing so you can see the thinking behind this. Completely free. 

Link in the comments.

I’ve had to scratch, fight and claw my way into some deals. 

Why? 

Well because somebody knew BOFU wouldn’t work. 

While the other person DID think it would work. 

From there it created an internal battle. 

Either between the marketer and the c-suite.

Or two C-suite execs. 
(This was like watching the damn hunger games)

And the deal would either: 

Close - The exec stood ten toes down and went to bat for me (or didn’t answer to anyone). 

Didn’t close - They didn’t t have enough power to bring me in. 

Those people that did have the power to bring me in? 

I re-affirmed their beliefs…

Okay, that’s the cutesy way of phrasing it.

How it really felt to them after looking in Hubspot seeing attribution from this content their team just knew wouldn’t work? 

Sort of like 🖕🏿(in the most respectful way) 

All this to say…

When people go to bat for me, I’m coming in the deal with a chip on my shoulder. 

I mean, I’ve had that my whole life. 

But it’s been these circumstances where I’ve gotten some of my best results for clients. 

Because I don’t take people believing in my skill lightly. 

And the only thing better than giving myself a good I told you so moment. 

Is giving someone that believed in me one.

taplio

The Battle

Jess Cook

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The Battle

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Lashay Lewis

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Likes

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