I Spent $350k on Video Last Year (And Plan to Double It in 2024)

In 2023, I spent $350,000 producing a reality TV show about building Retention.com. (Check out The Billion Dollar Challenge playlist to see it).
This year I plan to spend DOUBLE that on video. Here's why video is the biggest bet I'm making (and the 6 areas we're investing):
Why is video the biggest bet I’m making this year?
1. None of us realize how powerful the unmeasurable combo of video/ story is
2. I realized making compelling video is a superpower we have as an org
3. The future of B2B marketing is content that competes w/ TikTok not ebooks
4. I believe making key team members influencers leads to really low CAC
5. We’re not in B2B sales, we’re in human-to-human (H2H) sales.
And there’s only one way to scale H2H sales...
Through really, really good video.
Here are the 6 BIG (and not so big) bets I’m making with video:
1. “Events that Don’t Suck” Episodic Series (Ecomm)
We spent stupid amounts of $$ on big trade shows last year, then realized that small-to-medium-sized events (where we control the list) were the only for-sure wins for us. We did a 100 person wellness-event in LA that had a 10X ROI. So we're doubling down and creating a media brand following Kyle Standaert as he builds out this motion.
2. “Art of Excellence” Episodic Series (Ecomm)
We are creating a mini-series where we tell the incredible stories of our most successful customers. Nothing to do with our product whatsoever, just their stories, aligning their excellence with our brand.
3. B2B Work-In-Public (B2B)
I’m recording and publicizing our weekly team meetings along with my meeting notes so that you can watch our company grow from $1.2k MRR (and 3 paying customers) to wherever we get by the end of the year. You will be able to look back on the entire year week by week to see where we were at, key metrics what we were trying, what worked, what didn’t. All hosted in our video-based B2B community.
4. Ask-Me-Anything with Adam and Santosh (B2B)
This is another community feature. You get access to myself and Santosh to discuss why we’re doing what we’re doing, and how that applies to your startup, go-to-market, or product.
5. Monthly LinkedIn Teardowns (B2B)
This is reserved for our Elite community members. We will let you in on our monthly LinkedIn strategy sessions, then you can submit posts for us to critique and we will show you how to master LinkedIn.
6. More talking head videos on LinkedIn (B2B)
Interestingly, when I post an episode of our reality TV show, I’ll be lucky if it gets watched for 6k minutes, despite the huge effort and high production value. If I post a talking head of me riffing about VC vs. Bootstrap in my office, it gets watched for 40k min.
TAKEAWAY:
I am investing what some consider to be WAY too much in video.
There is no way we will be able to measure what came from it.
Why is this my bet for 2024?
Because I believe there are two moats left in SaaS:
1. Brand
2. Community
Great video does both of these things.
Better than literally anything else.
____________________________
rb2b.com
Adam is the CEO / Founder of RB2B, a FREE app that allows you to identify your anonymous website visitors, then push their LinkedIn profiles to Slack in realtime. It's the ONLY legitimate way to get person-level identity. All other vendors stop at the account (or company) level.
Make Your Outbound Sales More Productive
The "Predictable Revenue" model and BDR motion as we know it is broken. Cold Email doesn't work anymore because inboxes have been ruined by automation tools. With RB2B you can focus your BDR time on higher-intent prospects by using website signals to trigger sales motions.
Discover Decision Makers Who Are on Your Website
With RB2B you can uncover which of your marketing efforts are driving what type of buyer (industry, title, etc) to your website. This allows you to figure out what people with which titles are responding to which channel and reach out to the hottest prospects with the most decision making power.
Close More Deals with Fewer Resources
Turning your attention to the bottom of the funnel will allow you to close more deals with fewer people. This means, sales cycles will shorten by 2/3, deal sizes will remain unchanged, and your salespeople will love working with you because fast-paced environments are fun and rewarding.
But is it legal?
Yes.

[@itsajaysharma]

Please save your money and instead hire a better content strategist to
1) Research and send you a list of content ideas that people actually wanna see from you
2) Keep up a consistent schedule across the platforms.
And hire a better content production team consisting a video editor (to better edit your videos that actually capture and retain attention), and a content scheduler to get those videos out consistently.
this literally would cost MAX 10k/mo. (for a top notch team).
Why you are not doing this is wild to me.
The ROI doesn't seem to add up. $350k spent - 800 subs.. ?? 10 subs on tiktok. Something isn't adding up.