- It's amazing, it works, you need to have a strategy,
you need to have a game plan,
and you just need to start now.
- Welcome to The Journey, I'm Nealey.
And I'm Morgan.
- And today we are talking
about what is content marketing
and how it can drive your business?
All right Morgan.
What is content marketing?
- So the best definition I've ever heard
of content marketing is it's the art of persuading people
to buy through education,
so basically you're creating content on your website,
that your users want to engage with,
it's helpful, it's informative, it's educational,
maybe it's pretty looking,
but it's just information that they're going to go to
and they're going to learn something,
so the reason it's so important
to have all of this content at the ready is
because people research before they buy,
- Right.
- 88% of people before they make a purchase,
they do some sort of research,
they go on google, they look at reviews,
they compare, they price shop,
they do everything.
- Go on YouTube.
- Yes, so whether it's small potato's,
I just need to buy like hand fan
because I'm going outside,
or it's a big ticket item like a car,
people are going to see
and there going to go online,
and if your content provides them information
about to help make that purchase decision,
eventually they might just go to you
and buy it directly from you,
cause you've provided them such great information
in their research.
- Right, you've added just a tremendous amount of value,
helping them out
and they are going to help you out,
so give us some examples of content marketing in the wild.
- Yep, so my favorite example
of content marketing that I've ever heard,
I went to a conference
and content marketing guru Jade Baer was talking
about this company called River Pools & Spa's,
so what River Pools & Spa's does is they do
in ground fiber glass pools.
- Pretty specific.
- Very, very specific niche
and in 2008, okay people can't pay their mortgage,
the last thing they want to do is build a new pool.
- Right.
- So you know their business obviously was in the tank.
And so what did they do?
They said okay, well we're going to providing content
and writing all these articles
about questions that our customers constantly ask us,
so they wrote three hundred articles
about every single question
that probably they've ever been asked in their lifetime,
so the really cool thing about this is
that their very first post
that they ever did was.
How much does a fiberglass pool cost?
That has generated two point five million dollars in sales.
- Wow.
- People go, they search that,
they find all the information, it's a great article,
and then they say hey I'm just gonna buy from you,
so as a result by 2009 just one year later,
they were the number one fiberglass pool company
in the United States
and today they are the number one pool website in the world,
they just get so much traffic
from these articles, it's gold.
- That is crazy and not only did,
was that super beneficial,
but now they're not answering the same questions over
and over, and over, via support,
their website, or email,
that's all taken care of.
- Especially since they found
that on average their pool buyers read 150 articles.
- What?
- Before they make a purchase,
so these people, they are,
they want to have all the information
before making a decision
and River Pools & Spa's they have all the info.
- That is absolutely crazy.
So how do you really decide
what type of content that you want to create?
- So first and foremost you need to focus
on stuff that you're good at,
so if I'm a pool company,
I should probably stick to that
and just write about pools
and questions that my customers have.
- Right, not like doing Elsa hair tutorials,
you want to keep on topic.
- No, no, definitely stick to the pools.
The second thing is, you should do something
that you can be consistent at,
you can't just do one article
or one post, one piece of content
and assume that's enough,
you have to stick with it,
and lastly it has to be something
that you enjoy doing,
so if you hate writing, maybe blogs,
and that sort of content is not for you,
maybe if you're more of a photographer
and you want to share
and create content that way,
you should do that,
but stick with something that is your focus
that you can be consistent at
and that you're good at.
- Awesome.
So how often should a business owner be creating this type
of content?
- It really depends on you and your business
and where you can focus,
but it's just something like I said before
that you can consistently do
whether that's one post a week,
two post a week,
you find the calendar that works for you
and start pumping that content out on that schedule.
- Right, and it really helps to, be consistent,
so if you do a new post, the first Tuesday
of every month your reader start to expect,
cool, it's the first Tuesday of every month,
I'm going to your website
and I'm checking it out,
and it's just creates that consistency and that loyalty.
- Yep.
- All right, so other than a blog,
we talked about that a lot here.
What are some other ways we can create content
or a different platform?
- You can create content on your YouTube channel,
you can create eBooks for your audience,
you can start a podcast,
anything there's a podcast for everything now a days,
so if you have information
and that you know people are looking for it,
maybe just do podcast episode once a week,
once every two weeks,
about questions that your audience is asking you.
- Right, and I think it's important to really remember
that it's about your audience
and what they potentially like,
so if you're audience likes podcast,
like you should possibility look in to podcast,
they hate podcast, maybe a video, maybe blog content.
- Don't put your time there. Yep.
- Right, it's got to matter, and it's got to matter to them.
- Yep.
- All right Morgan, so that sounds awesome,
but I can also understand
that it can be pretty overwhelming especially
to a small business owner,
or even a solopreneur
that's doing just twenty different jobs already,
adding content creator just might put it over the top.
- Exactly, so what you said is some business owners
their time is worth more doing
what they do best,
if you're a plumber doing that,
if you're a carpenter doing that,
if you're a lawyer definitely doing that.
Right?
So if you really want to build
that content marketing library,
you might have to hire someone
or you might have to do it at night
and just do one post a week,
it's really up to you, you want to balance, you know.
Is my time worth this?
Pay someone or do it yourself.
- Perfect, and what a lot
of people can do too is batch content,
so like we keep bouncing back and forth
on all the different things we do,
sometimes it's better to spend a couple of hours
to knock out a few post,
but you don't post them all at once,
you do your scheduling, you keep it consistent,
so you have three or four posts lined up,
get your first post out
and then you still have all your others,
and you can focus on running your business
or if you can't do that, hire a pro,
there's lots of sites out there,
again Google is your friend.
- All right, so that's content marketing,
it's amazing, it's works,
you need to have a strategy,
you need to have game plan,
and you just need to start now,
so figure out what your audience likes,
what sort of content,
what medium it should be,
and then start producing content,
find a schedule, just start small,
you don't need 300 hundred articles.
- No.
- You will get there over time,
but just start answering questions
that your audience,
that your potential buyers are asking you already,
so that way when there searching on Google,
they'll find you and eventually they'll buy from you.
- Perfect, now we'd love to see some
of your best content you've created,
comment below, one of your links to your articles,
videos, blog post, podcast,
whatever medium is that chose, give a little shout out
down below, make sure you like, subscribe to our channel,
but that's all I have for you today,
this has been The Journey, signing off.