Everything You Need to Know about Content Marketing

Transcript

You know that content marketing is important, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But did you know that for many businesses, content marketing is its primary source of leads and sales? How? Let me show you, well tell you because this is the podcast.

My name’s Tim Cameron Kitchen. I’m head ninja at Thinkplus. We’re a digital marketing agency and we help our clients get more leads on sales through, amongst other things, content marketing, which is exactly what we’re talking about today. So I’m gonna take you through some content marketing 1 0 1 tips.

Let’s start with how to build content. And in particular, how to choose the type of content that you’re gonna be putting out and where you are going to be placing it so that your target audience sees it. Now, content marketing isn’t just about writing blogs for your website. Content marketing includes obviously all of the content on your website, homepage, key pages, product pages, service pages, uh, F FAQs, knowledge base, all of that content.

But in addition, your videos, your podcasts, ads, downloadable resources like white papers and ebooks. Emails, case studies, social media, and guest posting and sponsored content. So all of this stuff falls under the content category. We’re gonna be looking at some specific examples today, primarily your website content.

Um, some strategies around downloadable resources and also. Some stuff that covers on, so on case studies and guest posting and sponsored content. So how do you decide what to prioritize? Cuz we’re all busy. That’s a huge amount of stuff and each of it is a basically full-time job. So how do you work out exactly what you’re gonna be spending your time on?

Well, we’ve got a little equation that we want to share with you and that is, Your company’s target audience, multiplied by your goals equals your content strategy. This is how you’re gonna be deciding what you’re gonna be putting your time behind. For example, if you know that your target audience makes Google searches about exactly what you offer and your goal.

So that’s your audience. Your goal is to get traffic in sales quickly. Then running some Google ads to a piece of content past a lead capture can be a good option. Let’s say that your goal is to, uh, generate brand awareness and familiarity in the warm and fuzzies annual target audience is younger folk.

Well, there may be your content strategy will be focusing on TikTok and producing TikTok videos. If your sales team is asking for case studies to help them close sales, well then your audience is warm leads. Your goal is improving your sales team’s conversion rate. Then maybe case studies should be at the top of your content list, so your ideal customers and the goal that you have for those customers should guide your content.

Don’t fall into the trap of just, you know, sharing company news and achievements that really aren’t relevant to your target audience. Let me give you a couple of examples. Firstly, um, our client, Chas, they wanted to get more people. Uh, more contractors verified their own accreditation firm. They realized a problem that their ideal customers had.

Um, there was a particular pain that customers had, which could be solved by giving them downloadable checklists. So this is exactly what we did. So we identified that this particular audience, which I wanted. Increase their membership of, were searching on Google for this particular pain point. So we produced these downloadable guides.

We put them behind an email capture, uh, screen so that when people search on Google, they would up, would pop the, the page that this guide was being promoted on. They’d fill in their email address and then they’d get to download the guide. Now, of course, The guide was really useful because it builds credibility with the lead.

It shows that you are in their space. It shows you understand, and it’s helping them to get a result, which is a great way of building a relationship with someone. But it also means that we’ve got that person’s email address so we can follow up with them and start building a relationship through that.

Now that’s an example of producing content that meets their target audience, where they are online, even if they don’t yet know about the business. Okay, so we’re just meeting people cold on Google. We’re bringing them in, we’re getting their email, and we’re giving them some stuff which is gonna be useful to them.

You are most likely gonna have different types of content target. People at different stages of the buyer journey, right? So that might be how you meet cold people. Um, examples of content that might be designed for people who are a bit warmer and have maybe purchased from you before. Well, let’s say that the audience that you were going after was previous customers, and the goal was to produce repeat business.

Let’s say that your Bloom and Wild, the flower company, they’re selling flowers. Through E-commerce. Right? Well, what they might do is they might focus on Instagram and they might, um, build sort of inspiration. They might show the flowers in context in people’s homes because people already know what they do, people already wear and they’ve purchased before.

And by showing examples of the products in people’s homes, you can spur them to make a repeat purchase. Or you can remind them that, Hey, Mother’s Day is tomorrow, you’re too late, but maybe don’t forget her birthday, which is three days later. You know? So you’ve gotta think about where people are going to be.

In their buyer journey and make sure that the content you’re producing is targeted to them. If they’re unfamiliar with you, then you need to do a good job of setting the scene and you meet them where they are. If they’re familiar with you and you’re trying to bring a repeat purchase, then you can skip some of the introductions and just nudge them into repurchasing.

Of course, it’s always a good idea to have a clear brand playbook that anyone in your business can follow, particularly when you’ve got lots of different content going out in different areas. This is one of the most common mistakes we see with businesses that are starting to scale their marketing, is that they might have a clear idea of what they’re doing in one particular area.

They might have some templates that they use for their blogs or templates that they use for their social media content, but then when they produce a video, it looks wildly off script because it’s using different colors or different styles or. So one of the things that’s really important to get nailed down is your brand playbook.

This is the central resource that anyone in your business can follow. It’s gonna include things like your USPs, your key messages, your tone of voice, and of course the look and feel that you want to present across all of your different channels. Exactly how you communicate and if each different channel is gonna vary slightly from platform to platform.

The way you speak in an ebook is likely to be very different to how you speak on social media. And even differences between social media, different platform, uh, between different social media platforms will be quite stark. For example, if you’re posting on Twitter, you are typically gonna be much more conversational and try and get people in a thread.

Whereas if you’re posting on LinkedIn, then maybe less so if you’re posting on TikTok, then you’re gonna be using some ridiculous filter or doing something that’s much. Entertainment first because that’s what you need to do in order to keep people’s attention on TikTok. Now, the only place that this sort of brand playbook thing doesn’t necessarily apply for content marketing before we get into how to create and distribute is guest posting and sponsor content.

If you’re creating stuff to be featured. In a publication on someone else’s website, then usually you get better traction from mimicking their tone of voice. Of course, you wanna add your personality and your style, but usually if they’re writing long-form, you wanna write long form because that’s what the readers of that publication will be used.

To, and that’s the way to sort of slip under the radar a bit like the old world of advertorials, right? You don’t wanna make an advertorial that looks wildly different to the content in the rest of the newspaper magazine, or it’s just simply gonna get ignored because it trips that sort of ad flag that we have in our heads.

Okay, let’s talk about how to create and distribute content. So you’ve got your content, you’ve got your audience, multiplied by your goals equals your content framework, your thinking of your target audience first. You’re then working out what your goals are and using that to inform your content ideas.

But it’s not just enough to have ideas. Without execution, you’ve got absolutely nothing, so you need to actually create them too. Now, the first question that you need to ask is this. Do you have the resources in-house to actually produce content in the quantity and quality that you really want to hit your goals?

This includes both time. And skills. So for example, if your strategy involves going, producing, going from producing one blog and posting on LinkedIn every month to posting five blogs, two eBooks, three videos, and going into TikTok, well, either you’re gonna need to hire some people or you’re gonna need to outsource to an agency.

Nudge, nudge. By the way, you can request your free website a marketing review from the team here at exposureninja.com. We can advise you on what your content marketing strategy should. All completely free of charge. Just go to Thinkplus.com/review to request your free website and marketing review today.

We’ll send it to you via video, usually within two to three working days. If we think that the video review isn’t right for you, then we’ll recommend something else which will be just as awesome on with the show. So if your strategy involves massively increasing the amount that you’re gonna be producing, you’ve gotta be realistic with your time scales.

How many times have we seen clients come in saying, yeah, do you know I’m gonna produce all of this stuff myself? I’m just gonna work a little bit later. I’m gonna, you know, stop looking at social media during the day. I’m just gonna get this stuff done. And then within three days they’re raising the white flag.

Or like, oh yeah, I’m gonna have to take some sick leave. This is really destroying me. It’s really important to be totally realistic with this. If you wanna produce quantity and quality, you’re gonna need additional resource for that. Now, it’s also important to remember that each content channel you’re working with is going to need a special touch.

Someone who can write amazing blogs and has written 500 blogs over the last couple of years, well, they can probably write an email too, because they’re obviously fairly literate and they know how to use one of these computer keyboard thingies. But that email probably won’t be at the same level as someone who has specialized in email and has written 500 emails over the last couple of years.

Right? So depending on how competitive your space is, you might need someone who is absolutely beastly at that particular channel. Jack of all trades, master of none, never applied better than in digital marketing. People are getting so many emails every day. Unless you have someone who actually knows email, then the chance of your email actually getting.

Could be fairly low. Alright, now into the fun part, how we make all of this stuff easier for you. So I’ve just told you that you need to be thinking about all these different channels and that you might need additional resource and you may be starting to panic. That’s totally fine. Um, Well, you don’t need to create original content or entirely original content for each platform.

That’s the good news here. If you’ve created an awesome blog, for example, or a guide, you can then use that to create video script, social media posts, emails. The list goes on. If you are an avid explosion in your family, which obviously you are, cuz you’re letting me talk into your ears every week. Um, and you might have noticed that we do this.

Thing. So for example, we’ve got a really popular video on our YouTube channel, which you could, should go and check out. Uh, just go to YouTube and search for Thinkplus keyword research. I e how to find the best keywords to target for your SEO. Now, this video was originally a blog. Before it was a video.

We made a video about the blog. And then after it became a video, it metamorphosized into social media posts. The goal of these social media posts is actually two types of social posts. Half of them were about, Hey, here’s how to do keyword research. So using the content from that video and from that blog, but half of them were to promote the video, so we.

Also updated the blog to include the video because some people, when they land on a blog, they don’t wanna read a whole bunch of words. They wanna watch a video demonstrating it. So they’ve got that option. And we recorded a podcast about that. So all of that stuff came from that one blog. You could say, here I am now making another podcast about that entire process.

So all of the research happened at that initial blog stage. That’s where we collected all the information together. That’s the bit that took the most time. And then from there, we’re just shopping it up. Like you know that story about the walls factory where they bring the pigs in and then they use all the bits of the pigs to make the products and then they use the fat to make the ice cream.

I dunno if that’s, Horrific if true, but you know, that’s the story. What you’re doing is you’re, you’re doing the hard work, you’re bringing the pig in, you’re making your blog out of it, and then you’re using every little bit of inn to make other stuff that you can post. There you go. Your social media content is your innards.

Now, you might also find opportunities to Newsjack too. Newsjacking is where you jump on a current trend in a way that connects to your, uh, brand and sort of resonates with your target. Now we do a lot of this, uh, Thinkplus. Um, what you’re gonna be doing is you’re gonna be going on Twitter and looking for things like #journorequest and #prrequest. When you see journalists requesting a, uh, a take on something that’s happening in the media, you can respond with. Your expert opinion, okay? And this can get you featured, but you can also produce your own content about what’s going on in the news. So let’s say for example, um, Kim Kardashian announces that she’s going vegan, or Kim Kardashian announces that she’s going on the, I don’t know, the all red meat.

All raw red meat diet. Okay? That’s probably maybe more newsworthy. So Kim K is. Decided that she’s just gonna be eating red meat from now on, and she’s gonna be eating it raw. So it’s gonna be in all the celeb magazines and papers and all this type of stuff. Now, if your business has any sort of parallel to any aspect of this story, you could use this as an opportunity to get coverage.

And I’m just gonna make some random stuff off at the top of my head. But let’s say that you are a, you are a vegan beauty products website, okay? You’ve got a vegan beauty product range, the new sell of Via E. Will you be immediately jumping on this, right? Talking about how irresponsible it is of Kim K to encourage people around the world’s beating meat.

Let’s say that you are something to do with health. You might be talking about the health implications of this. Let’s say that you are talking, you know, whatever it might be, you’ve gotta find your, if you’re a dentist, you might be talking about the impacts on Kim K’s beautiful teeth. What’s gonna happen if she’s ripping into this raw meat with her?

Canines and air in sizes and all that stuff. So you are gonna find an angle on these current topics to get in front of your target audience. Now, you can have different levels of this, right? I think we’ve talked recently about examples where we’ve got, in fact, in our Boring Business podcast, I gave you an example of a business that we worked with, which is all about a warehouse racking safety.

So fairly boring topic. Now, when we piggybacked on the latest Star Wars release to do a bit of newsjacking there, we didn’t necessarily target mainstream media. People who are reading mainstream media publications, like, you know, newspapers and stuff, they’re not necessarily, oh yeah, do you know what, actually, I am really interested in Star Wars and I have been needing to get my warehouse racking safety inspected.

So that is great that I’m seeing both of these things in one place. You know, that’s not the general public. What we did in the study is we targeted the, the sorts of people that were going to be interested in warehouse racking. People who are reading the manufacturer, for example, that audience matches that topic is interesting and hype.

Great combination. So there’s two flavors of newsjacking. You can either go super general interest or you can go industry specific if your product isn’t exactly like public, right? If it’s not sort of average person on the street is gonna want to. Your warehouse racking safety, then you probably want to go a little bit more niche.

When this is done well, it can be super effective. Not only do you get the links, not only do you get the features, but also you get a huge amount of credibility. Another example we’ve seen recently, uh, we got one of our clients, which is a regional, a chain of audiology clinics. So they fit hearing aids, they do hearing tests.

That’s what audiology is. Um, and they have a, a regional chain. I think it started as maybe one or two. We’ve now helped them grow to many. Which is awesome, but we got them featured, we got them a recent article in Forbes. And that’s fantastic because, you know what, right, or what typical scenario does a reasonable, a regional audiology chain get featured in one of the world’s highest authority websites?

That doesn’t happen unless we’re piggybacking on something, uh, that is very current and that is happening. And this type of stuff is all over the place. In the YouTube version of this podcast, I’ll show an example, um, in the Huffington Post, which is all about Airbnb scams. And this article features multiple travel companies talking about this Airbnb scams.

This is a current topic that’s relevant to the general public, but Huffington Post might not. Known about this problem unless a smart marketer reached out to them with the idea for the story. The journalist or writer then goes out and finds some additional sources that they can quote in the story to build it up into something that’s a little bit bigger.

So this is a great way. To build visibility and to align yourself with the, the current topics of the day. Now, you don’t even need to go out to the press with this stuff. You might do Newsjacking on your own social channels, just piggybacking on trends or things that are interesting, right? So you might not need to go all the way to National Press about Kim K’s Bloody Meat feast.

You might just be posting on your own social. About how what she’s doing is irresponsible or amazing or you know, whatever your angle is gonna be on it. Now, another way to get great features in high authority publications is through sites like Harrow Helper Report out and quoted, which is the word quoted, but with a W instead of a you.

We talked about these before, you get a whole bunch of emails, um, about information on a variety of different stories. The journalists are putting articles together on and you can contribute to them. You can be a source. More information about this stuff. We’re gonna be doing some more, um, videos and podcasts about this later on.

So if you haven’t subscribed, then please. Uh, you can also reach out to editors of publications that you want to be in directly. Publications often list editors and their email addresses on their website, but you can also use LinkedIn or Twitter to find the best person to speak to. Hello, on Quick tip before we move on.

Chase up after sending them a pitch. It could be that this person is really busy, that it is been deadline date, the article slipped their mind, whatever. So chase up. Obviously be cool about it. Don’t chase up after a few hours. Leave it two or three days or even a week, but do chase up because it’s very rare that you secure coverage on your first.

Pitch. Okay. Final thing I have to say on this topic, how can you get things actually rolling with content marketing in your business? Because often this involves a bit more investment. This, you know, this is something that requires ongoing commitment. Content marketing isn’t something that you can just.

You know, knock out in 15 minutes a week, this is something where it’s gonna take time, it’s gonna take energy, and you need to be putting this time and energy in over a sustained period. Well, typically marketing or company leadership want to see that you’ve considered the business overall KPIs and that the plan you’ve got fits in with the budget and delivers on some sort of goals that the company is working towards.

Luckily, if you follow this, Audience times goals equals content strategy, then you can show that you’re doing exactly that because the goals have been central to your decisions about what you’re going to be focusing on, where you’re gonna be putting your attention, by the way, if your leadership team needs a bit more convincing.

Here’s one story I actually didn’t know about this, but one of our content marketing team told me this is one of my favorite content marketing stories from way back in like 400 bc, which is obvious. Before content marketing law, you can use this story as leverage against your leadership team, by the way.

Um, and while this example may be old, the principles, the essence of this is timeless and beautiful. So, you know the Michelin stars, right? They’re top restaurant rating thing. You know, every restaurant wants to get their Michelin stars and. Fancy folk don’t go anywhere. That doesn’t ever start. Well, what the average person doesn’t know is that the whole Michelin stars thing started as a clever ploy by the Michelin company to sell more tires.

They created a genuinely useful guide, and the purpose of this guide was to encourage motorists to take more trips in their cars in order to generate more tire. Right people out driving to these restaurants, wearing out their tires, resulting in more sales of tires. Because this guide was so useful, though, it is now become synonymous with the best places to eat around the world.

But this piece of content, let’s look at it for what it is. This was a content marketing thing that they produced in order to sell more tires. Remember, audience times goals equals content. The audience, that was people who owned. The goal. Get these tires wearing Ls for, they buy more the content. Well, let’s get these people out on the road.

Let’s produce this restaurant guide, which today, 400 million years later, is still growing strong. So keep that in mind. You’ll create winning content that gets you traffic, leads and sales. Hope you found this podcast useful, as always. If you did, then drop us a review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening to.

Go and request a free website and more to review from exposureninja.com before my voice dies on me, and I’ll see you next week.