Tim Metz is the Director of Marketing and Innovation at Animalz.
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My journey to content marketing was a winding one. I started as a web developer in the ’90s, but in 2000, I shifted to video production. I worked on some cool projects, like filming electronic dance parties across Europe and the US. We’d create videos of these events and put them online to attract people to our site. Looking back, it was a form of content marketing before anyone called it that.
I also did an internet documentary in Africa, traveling with a camera and laptop, creating a narrative-driven video series about my journey while I was on the road. This was all pre-YouTube and before SEO really took off. People found my content mostly through word of mouth.
After that, I went more into managerial positions — running a digital marketing agency in China, getting back into video production and broadcasting for dance events on a larger scale, and even launching my own productivity hardware startup. After that, I became the global marketing director at KaiOS, a mobile operating system.
Throughout these roles, I was always at the intersection of marketing, startups, and tech. I enjoyed writing and often handled content in these positions, but more on the periphery of everything else I was doing.
It wasn’t until after KaiOS that I went into content full-time. I was already working with Animalz as a customer and realized I wanted to take a break from management and write full-time. I joined them as a senior content marketing manager, which was more challenging than I expected, but also a great learning experience.
What keeps me excited about content marketing is that it has some enduring elements that I really like — storytelling and trying to produce something that’s valuable for people. With content marketing, you really have to provide value to people. And then of course it also has to drive business results. I like that combination.
At the same time, there’s always something changing in content marketing. Especially recently, everything is kind of up for grabs again with the effects of AI. That’s super exciting. It’s also a bit scary, but that keeps it interesting. And the principle of always having to deliver value for the reader first before you can get business results will remain. And I think that’s great.
It’s a little bit tongue-in-cheek. I was in management roles for about 15 years, and there’s a lot I like about management, but there are also things I like less. That’s why I wanted to go back to being more in a producer or individual contributor kind of role.
I like working with people. I like seeing other people succeed on the team and doing well, often helping them do things they didn’t realize they could do.
What I like less is keeping people accountable. I have very strict standards for myself, but I’m very trusting in other people. That’s mostly a good thing, but up to a fault, I would say. I don’t like to call people out if I feel that maybe they didn’t put in the effort they should have. I guess that’s the part about management that I don’t like, where you sometimes just have to be pretty strict and maybe push people a little bit to get the best results. That’s not one of my strengths.
That’s why after a long time of trying to do management, I was ready to try something else and step out of such a role.
There are many reasons why working with an agency can be beneficial, but also some potential drawbacks.
A benefit of working with an agency like ours is the breadth of experience we bring. At Animalz, we’ve worked with some of the biggest names in B2B SaaS since 2015. We’ve been with several startups on their entire journey from Series A to post-IPO, so we have a good sense of the strategies and tactics that work and when to use them.
We see trends across many different accounts, which gives us valuable insights that are hard to replicate in-house. Plus our team often has more time than someone in-house to dig into the latest tools and industry trends.
Another reason companies come to us is because they have too much on their plate. They want to do content, or maybe they’re already doing it, but it’s not working or they can’t scale up fast enough. This can happen with both small and larger teams. At the same time, an agency offers flexibility. You can scale up or down more easily than with full-time hires.
A pitfall is if a client has zero time for content. We can take a lot off someone’s plate — strategy, creation, distribution — but not without any involvement. We need the client’s input, especially early on in a relationship, to get things right. We’re good at ramping up our knowledge on someone’s offering and industry quickly, but ultimately, the client usually knows their product, company, and industry best.
In the end, the best approach depends on the company’s specific situation, resources, and goals.
I think at the moment, the worst mistake people can make is just writing content with AI without any original input. I don’t say that because I’m against AI, but if you purely write something with AI, where you don’t put in any original thoughts, you get something very generic.
To the untrained eye, it might seem okay, but if you really look closer, there’s nothing original there. And we see that such content does worse in terms of engagement and conversion.
Another mistake people make is using AI to fill the blank page. Even if you’re going to spend time improving it later, your thoughts are already anchored in a certain direction that the AI has taken. I think a much better approach is to force yourself to get something on the blank page by yourself first, without AI. Then you can involve AI, and that’s a very powerful combination that improves quality and creativity.
A non-AI example would be getting stuck in a production target mindset and just crank out content. Sometimes it’s more valuable to take a step back, refine your strategy, or update existing content that’s still getting visitors. It’s easy to fall into the trap of always running to the next thing, forgetting about other important aspects of content marketing.
I think the beauty of content marketing is that if you do it well, people indeed don’t realize it’s marketing. This mostly applies at the top of the funnel, of course. Once you get more into explaining the product and use cases, which is also important content, it becomes more obvious that it’s marketing.
But if you read, watch, or listen to a well-produced and researched piece of content, you either enjoy it so much or find it so valuable that you almost forget the source is a brand that’s ultimately trying to sell you something.
I’ve experienced this myself. You end up on an article because somebody sent it to you or you found it on Google, and you’re reading it. It’s so good and valuable that at the end, you’re like, “Oh, wait a minute, who wrote this?” “What else did they make?” or “Who is this company?” That way, it starts to pull you in. I think that’s one of the best and most beautiful ways to do marketing, and that’s what we mean by “content so good that people don’t realize it’s marketing.”
I’ll talk about our own content marketing strategy here. And I’m in a unique and fortunate position as not every agency has someone full-time focused on their own marketing.
We always aim to serve our audience with practical, high-quality content that has a unique point of view. Our strategy has three pillars:
I think the most important quality is having a clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve with your content. It sounds obvious, but many people don’t actually have this clarity. For example, are you trying to generate leads, create awareness for your brand, something else? And this applies at both the overall strategic level — what’s the main purpose of your entire program — and for each individual asset you create.
It’s also crucial to understand your audience — what they like, where they hang out, and how they consume information. Knowing this means you don’t default to a certain strategy or channel, like “let’s just do SEO.” You need to understand your audience and figure out where you have the biggest opportunity to really engage them. Maybe that is SEO, but we often find during the Growth Quadrant exercise we do with customers that they might have a bigger or additional opportunity somewhere else. Sometimes that’s LinkedIn or an email newsletter, but it can also be putting resources towards sales or customer success content.
Another important aspect is covering different stages of the funnel or buying journey. Some companies produce too much top-of-funnel content and none that goes for the sale or explains the product. Others are the opposite — they’re more comfortable with content that’s all about their product and very sales-focused. To be effective, you usually need to cover all those different stages.
It’s also important to understand what your reader wants from the content. We sometimes call this “recipes versus movies.” If someone’s looking for a how-to guide, they just want the steps — that’s a “recipe.” You don’t need a fancy intro or narrative structure. But if you’re trying to convince someone of a new perspective or introduce a completely new topic, you might need more of a narrative approach — that’s a “movie” because it needs a beginning, middle, and end.
You know, that’s actually a tricky question. It’s a bit like asking, “What are the best business strategies anyone should try?” The answer really depends on the specific situation.
There isn’t one best content strategy that works for everyone. It depends on various factors: what industry you’re in, what product or service you’re selling, who your customers are, and what resources you have available. A one-person company has very different capabilities compared to an enterprise, right?
I think the best content strategy is one where you really understand what you’re trying to achieve with content and what content can do for you. For some companies, focusing entirely on SEO might make sense if their customers are searching for topics related to their business. But if you’re new in an established market, like healthcare or even launching an SEO agency, ranking high can be really challenging. So in that case, solely focusing on SEO might not be the right approach.
It’s crucial to consider your objectives and who you’re trying to reach. Are you targeting executives in a B2B context or consumers in a B2C setting? This determines which channels you should use — email, LinkedIn, blog, video, TikTok, or whatever fits best.
You also need to think about what you want the content to do for you. Are you trying to attract new customers, upsell existing ones, or maybe even reach investors or journalists?
At Animalz, when we work with new clients, we often do what we call a “Growth Quadrant Exercise.” We map out all the available channels and see which ones are over-utilized and which are under-utilized. Sometimes a client comes to us wanting to focus on SEO, but we might find that creating content specifically for their sales team could actually give them a higher return on their content investment.
So, I guess the best strategy that everyone should try is having a solid approach to building your content program. Really know what you’re trying to achieve, assess the best way to use your resources, and figure out how to reach the audience you need to reach. It’s about understanding your unique situation and tailoring your strategy accordingly.
Let’s start with Paddle. I think what’s great about Paddle is that they take a really comprehensive approach to content marketing and they’re not afraid to take risks. They do a lot of content that doesn’t necessarily adhere to short-term, easy-to-measure metrics. It’s a much more long-term play — they have video series, really original written content, all kinds of stuff.
A lot of it isn’t your standard organic traffic, SEO-measured content. It’s riskier in the sense that it’s much more original, and I think that’s really cool. They experiment with different types of content and produce beautiful, high-quality work.
Next, I’d say Wistia. What’s nice about Wistia is that their content really aligns with their product. It’s all about video and it’s all done in really nice videos. So their content is also a showcase of their product. The founders are very involved too, which adds a personal touch, and they’re very transparent about their journey.
Amplitude’s content program is maybe less sexy than the other two, but from a strategic perspective, everything is just very solid. If you look up close, they have everything covered. Their approach to SEO, how they treat their funnel, good help content as well, and all complemented with events and a great community. It’s just a very comprehensive content program that I admire.
As the head of marketing and innovation at Animalz, I use more AI tools than others in the agency. I’m constantly experimenting, so my usage isn’t necessarily representative of the entire agency.
We follow the principle I mentioned earlier: don’t let AI fill a blank page. This applies to all stages of our process — ideation, briefing, drafting, or research. We always start with our own ideas before considering to involve AI. We believe that if you start with AI, you’re unlikely to end up with truly great content.
(Of course, if clients specifically request no AI to be involved in the creation of their content, we don’t.)
Ultimately, we’ve always had very high-quality standards and checks before anything we create goes to our clients. Only high-quality content gets through.
Whether content is created by humans or with AI assistance is also somewhat irrelevant to our quality assessment. What matters is the end result: if it’s good, it passes; if it’s not up to our standards, it doesn’t. And in our experience, content that’s fully or almost completely generated by AI never meets our quality bar.
Personally, I often use AI as a sparring partner. I’ll write something and then ask the AI, “What do you think of this sentence?” or “How would you phrase this differently?” or “Do you see any weak spots in this outline?” It’s about enhancing our work, not replacing our thinking or creativity.
We have integrated AI into our internal workflows. For example, we’ve built an automated QA check based on our quality standards. It gives initial feedback to writers before human editors review the content. This allows our editors to focus on more sophisticated aspects.
I think AI is obviously influencing how we create content. Even though it can’t pass our quality standards on its own, AI will get better at creating content. This presents a challenge for those focused solely on the writing craft, as AI will likely take over more of what currently has to be written or produced by humans. We’re seeing similar trends in image creation, video, and even programming.
At the same time, AI gives content marketers new skills. For example, I can’t really code, but I can now build simple apps, which wasn’t possible before. This means we can create content that we wouldn’t have considered part of content marketing previously — like sophisticated videos, images, or even interactive apps. Things that would have required other disciplines and resources are now becoming possible for content marketers.
I think the search is changing too. I would certainly not say SEO is dead, but it’s clear that how people discover content is changing. With new players like Perplexity and people using ChatGPT for things they’d previously Google, the landscape is shifting.
These developments will change how we produce content and what kind of content we create.
Lastly, I believe we’re still very much at the start of what’s possible with AI, for better or worse. Anyone who thinks we’ve hit some kind of ceiling is mistaken. I think there will be other shock waves like the one we experienced with the launch of ChatGPT. One could be voice models, which might completely change how we interact with computers and the kind of solutions we can create. Video creation is another area that’s evolving fast.
It’s really hard to predict exactly what will happen. It’s like trying to predict the impact of the internet in its very early days. But I’m certain that AI is going to significantly change how we do content marketing, and the revolution is only just getting started.
