The Customer Is the Marketer, Not the Reader

For this episode of Making Media, Dom and I sit down with Sean Griffey, CEO and Co-Founder of Industry Dive. When I first heard Sean talk about B2B media and his strategy for building Industry Dive, I needed to hear more. I devoured a ton of his podcast appearances and various interviews that he did because I often feel like conversations on media strategy purely focus on audience growth. They don't ever mention the nuances of who those people are in your audiences, how much you spent to acquire those audiences, and the realities of running a company that can actually just stay in business. Sean is the exact opposite of that and he has built a fascinating business with Industry Dive, which recently sold at an enterprise value north of $500 million. Sean is a great example of the success you can have with a focused strategy. I think there's something to learn regardless of whether you're a content creator or just on the business side of things. Enjoy this interview and our debrief after the conversation.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.

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Show Notes

[00:02:45] - [First question] - Overview of Industry Dive and the B2B media industry

[00:04:41] - The state of advertisement media versus subscription-based models

[00:06:20] - How they maintain consumer trust within their advertising model

[00:08:12] - Their strategy for launching into new markets

[00:11:42] - How Industry Dive has been able to accelerate their new launches 

[00:13:44] - The amount of investment runway they give to new publications

[00:15:35] - Industry Dive’s standardization across both talent and systems

[00:17:40] - Their perspective on advertisement sales

[00:19:49] - How they maintain their content production volume at scale

[00:21:36] - Their audience growth strategies

[00:23:16] - Why consumer platforms like TikTok don’t always work for B2B advertising

[00:24:45] - How they gather audience feedback

[00:26:35] - The importance of their tech stack in audience growth and maintenance 

[00:28:30] - How they collaborate with brands in their content studio

[00:31:33] - The proportions of their different sources of content

[00:32:27] - How margins differ between their content studio and advertising sales

[00:33:16] - How they might look to expand their business model in the future

[00:34:41] - Why he thinks of marketers as their primary customer

[00:35:55] - Their model for reinvestment to further grow their audience

[00:37:43] - How the team took advantage of increased digital ad budgets during COVID

[00:40:30] - What he worries about most regarding the future of Industry Dive

[00:42:12] - Debrief