B2B Marketing Lessons from a B2C Startup: Q&A with Greatist Founder Derek Flanzraich

Greatist founder Derek Flanzraich talks about the content philosophy that’s helping his health and wellness media startup achieve incredible growth, and what B2B marketers can learn from B2C brands like Red Bull and GoPro.

When Derek Flanzraich graduated from Harvard in 2010, he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to be. Out of college, Flanzraich took a job with Clicker Media (which was subsequently acquired by CBS), but the self-proclaimed lifelong builder says he couldn’t resist the entrepreneurial bug. So, in 2011 Flanzraich decided to follow his passion for health and brand building by founding Greatist, an Internet media startup designed to deliver high-quality fitness, health, and happiness content.
“There were other websites and content farms that already focused on health and wellness content, but most of those brands were driven by quantity over quality, and they seemed to talk down to readers instead of with them,” Flanzraich says. “I think the world is changing how it feels about health and consumers are becoming much more savvy about the content they consume. I felt like Greatist could be a brand that satisfied those needs.”
So far, Flanzraich has been proven right. Greatist’s growth hasn’t come without its fair share of the typical startup hiccups and pivots, but this year the company won the People’s Voice Webby Award for Best Lifestyle Website on the Internet and the site now reaches five million unique visitors per month.
Flanzraich recently sat down with OpenView to talk about the company’s philosophy on content creation, and revealed why he thinks B2B companies could learn a lot from the core principles of consumer-focused content.
OpenView: At Greatist, you take a different approach than many Internet media companies — favoring super high-quality content over pumping out a seemingly endless stream of lists. Why is that?

Derek Flanzraich: When we started, our goal was to create a quality brand that our readers could rely on for trustworthy, in-depth content. When we write an article, we want it to be the greatest article ever written on the subject. Obviously, that philosophy makes it virtually impossible to churn out endless streams of new content, but we’re okay with that.
I think the obsession over quantity is misplaced — in both B2B and B2C. Does that mean you should only publish one article or case study every month? No. But the focus on pumping out a ton of daily content — whether or not it’s relevant and helpful to your customers — is a bad strategy, in my opinion. At some point, drowning your customers in bad content will just lead to them tuning you out.
OV: Were you able to achieve traction right away with a core audience, or did it take some trial-and-error to find out who exactly that audience was?
DF: Like any startup, B2B or B2C, it took some blood, sweat, and tears to identify our core audience — who they were, where they hung out, what they cared about, and how they preferred to interact with our brand. At first, we tried to be all things to all people — basically, any human being who wanted to make healthier eating and fitness decisions. But that took us down a rabbit hole that, ultimately, led to one of the many moments in startup life when you think the sky is falling and your life is over.
Thankfully, three years ago we started to notice that there was a narrow audience of people — 18-to-35 year olds — who were really responding to and sharing our content. So, we factored that into our content creation — writing articles and creating multimedia that conveyed a much younger, fresher voice. Because our team fit that demographic, that change came naturally, too. The topics were easier to choose, the articles were easier to write, and everything came across much more authentic and engaging.

The minute we started appealing to that narrower audience, the site really took off.

OV: That’s a really key lesson for B2B software companies, which very often market products that could be sold to a bunch of different segments or verticals. What advice would you give to those types of businesses?

DF: For lack of a better way of saying it, if you cast a wide net of crappy, generic content, then you’ll get crappy, generic results. Most customers — whether they’re buying shoes or enterprise software — can sniff out the businesses that disingenuously deliver crappy content under the guise of “thought leadership.”
But the biggest piece of advice I’d give B2B marketers is to remember that, while they’re selling products and services to businesses, they still need to appeal to the human interests, motivations, pains, and behaviors of human buyers. Too often, B2B content lacks any sort of creativity and consistency, and it follows the herd mentality — if competitor X is producing great infographics and videos, then company Y rushes to do the same.
The problem with that approach is that if “Company Y” doesn’t invest the appropriate time into studying what makes their competitor’s content so great or why buyers find it interesting, then the likelihood is it will end up looking like a copycat. And modern customers — whether they’re in B2B or B2C environments — don’t really respond well to that.
Also, just because you sell software doesn’t mean you should only write about software. Sure, that’s a topic your buyers probably care about. But it’s also important to study your audience on a more individual level and understand what kinds of things they’re really interested in. That will help you create content that’s unique and consistent to your audience, even if it’s not exactly what you sell.
OV: B2C brands like Red Bull and GoPro are good examples of that. Their content revolves more around their customers’ lifestyle than it does the product itself. Of course, that doesn’t perfectly translate to B2B, but it’s something B2B companies should take note of, right?
DF: Absolutely. RedBull and GoPro are excellent examples of companies that really “get” content marketing and use it in a powerful, authentic way. Instead of pounding product features down their customers’ throats, they focus on the stories behind their brand and their customers.
The result is the creation of a bunch of brand advocates who may not talk about how much they love the taste of Red Bull or the hardware behind GoPro, but are happy to proclaim to the world how proud they are to associate with those companies. That’s really the key lesson for B2B companies. Are you ever going to get B2B buyers to shoot incredible videos of themselves using your product? Probably not. But if you develop a true sense of trust, credibility, and authenticity with your customers — and your product doesn’t suck — then you’ll make it much easier for them to choose or refer you when it’s time to make a buying decision.

Photo by: adifansnet