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The In Search SEO Podcast
What makes standout content in 2023? That’s what we’re talking about today with a man who helps companies find and retain better, higher-paying clients who don’t gobble up their time like Pacman.
He and his wife, Lindsay, are authors of the best-selling book Content Fortress, and he’s also the director of Jammy Digital, an award-winning content marketing agency for businesses that aren’t afraid to stand out. Are Welcome to the In Search SEO podcast. Martin Huntbach.
In this episode, Martin shares 5 steps to attract better clients using standout content:
- Create great content for your blog
- Make sales with sales content
- Prequalify leads with content
- Use content to move clients to the next stage
- Repurpose content across all platforms
Attract Better Clients Using Standout Content
Martin: Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited about this.
D: Thanks so much for coming on. You can find Martin over at jammydigital.com. So Martin, what does standout content mean to you?
M: It’s a really interesting one. Standout online is a phrase that people use quite a lot. But when it comes to their content, everybody’s trying to pick the perfect brand, the best colors, the best style, the best fonts, the best taglines, and all that kind of stuff. But when it comes to producing content, everyone does the same thing. They just come up with the 10 best tips and the five ways to achieve this and things like that. And there is a very magical thing when it comes to content in general, when you can apply the same principles to stand out as you would with a brand or with a logo or with your color scheme, and actually have some personality with your content. And it’s a combination of things which we’ll get into in the show. But essentially, it’s when someone lands on that piece of content, how easy is it to connect with you and gather that value, and help you differentiate yourself compared to everyone else who produces content in your industry.
D: So today, you’re sharing five ways to attract better clients using standout content, starting off with great content on your blog first?
1. Great content for your blog
M: Absolutely. Blogs have been around for a long time. And with the blog, you have a unique opportunity for you to combine those two things, which is creating really helpful in-depth content that allows you to educate, inform, and stand out. But it also helps you to connect with people on a level that most people aren’t. So the idea of setting up a blog for the first time in a competitive niche is like standing at the foot of Mount Everest because there are so many people that have been there and done it before you and how are you going to be able to achieve that? And by having a personality and by creating content that feels like you. It feels like if somebody was to jump on a call with you a phone call or Zoom call or speak to you face to face. The excitement, the little intricacies of what excites you, what energizes you, and what empowers you. If you can get that on to the content on your blog… Because everybody wants to know before working with you how informed you are and how knowledgeable you are but they also want to know that you’re someone that they want to work with. Especially in the SEO industry, a lot of the companies that you’ll stumble across will just be faceless companies. They won’t have a personality necessarily, they’ll just have some information, and maybe they’ve got some SEO content on there, which is a term I dislike. Content as long as it’s helpful is fantastic. But a lot of the times in our industry is we think that we just need better rankings. And that’s what blogging is used for, especially in the SEO industry, we find that it’s an incredibly powerful when it comes to attracting your ideal clients, and also repelling clients who are not the right fit for you as well. So it’s something that we’ve really enjoyed doing. And that’s what we do for our clients. We loved it so much for our own business, we decided to start doing it for others. So you have to start with a blog first and then you can move on to the various other things. When you have that content first energy about your business, it can lead to a lot of success.
D: I must talk to you about the AI elephant in the room. Because over the last six months or so it seems like the ability to create content on an automated basis has improved immensely. Is there a space in your mind for your clients to also utilize AI to generate content somewhere in the process? Or is human written content still best?
M: We **** AI. It might not be the answer you expected, but we absolutely **** it. And we’ve run a few webinars on the impact of AI on content, and how we’re using it in our business, but before AI came along, there are a number of set stages within a content production machine, which is essentially what we have for our own business and for clients. There are various stages that all had to be done manually. Things at the start of the process, coming up with content ideas, maybe getting some alternative variations of words for keyword research, all that had to be done manually. The other thing that had to be done manually, obviously, is the written content. And then another part of creating content comes after that, which is how can I take this article and then repurpose it to be a LinkedIn carousel or a Twitter thread. And that takes a lot of time. So planning content and repurposing content takes a lot of time not even mentioning the creation of the content.
So how we’re using it in our business is we’re using it after we speak to clients with a kickoff call, and we find out more about them. Whenever you’ve got a goal that you want to achieve, you need to have a planning stage. And with planning out content, there are two different planning methods which AI really works well. One is mapping out a series of articles or a series of pieces of content that you can create across three to six months, or 12 months longer. You can really use it to explore some content ideas that you might not have considered. But also when it comes to planning individual pieces of content and using it to structure the piece. What are the H1s, the H2s, and the H3s? You can use it effectively to brief writers and brief internal team members if they’re struggling for content. And then we use it to take the content that we create and repurpose it ten times over. Because it’s incredibly powerful when you feed it with the right content. There’s a big problem right now, which is everybody’s talking about how you frame AI, and how you can imagine that you’re a content writer, imagine that you are a personal trainer. And this is becoming more and more topical. But we just found that you’d never have to do that, especially with Chat GPT 4. If you feed it with a unique piece of content that you’ve created, and then get it to do what it’s supposed to do in terms of repurposing, crafted an email to promote the content. There are so many various different ways that you can use AI. But if you want to use it in the most effective way, you have to feed it. Imagine feeding it with a 2000-word article, and then getting it to do some work rather than you trying to educate it and come up with this lengthy prompt.
Now one thing we don’t do is we don’t use AI to create the content. We use it to plan the content, we use it to repurpose it, we use it to even come up with ideas as to what images we could include, it’s fantastic. But we still believe that creating content should be your responsibility. Or if you hire an agency, their responsibility, in order to create something that matches your brand and that matches the the level of quality and authority that you have as an organization, as a personal brand, and as a business owner. It’s important that you have the ability to differentiate yourself, both from a quality standpoint, but also from an originality standpoint, and I just don’t think AI is there yet.
D: I’m glad we went down that rabbit hole because it certainly sounds like you’ve had a great deal of thought about it. And obviously how it impacts you and your clients processes. And perhaps there’s even another solo episode just on that particular topic. But let’s get on to the second step in your process, which is to use the content on your blog to sell your services.
2. Make sales with sales content
M: Yeah, this is one of the elements that we talk about in our book, Content Fortress. And the idea is that when somebody lands on your website, they are at various different stages. We’ve all heard of the buying cycle, their level of awareness, and obviously getting people to your website is one thing. And a lot of the times from an SEO perspective if we’ve got lots of clients who are managing lots of clients, and they’re looking at ways to give data and results to clients, they’ll usually think about things like this is your traffic number or this is how many rankings you’ve got. This says you’ve got an extra 10% of keywords that are ranking high up. We’ve done our part, we’ve generated traffic and maybe leads but the reality is that clients and customers don’t see a return on that investment until they get sales. So one of the pillars in the book is called sales content.
Sales content is very bottom of the funnel. And you find that when we speak to people who maybe have an email list, and they have a loyal fan base, and maybe they’ve got a little bit of money to spend, quite often, they can earn money quickly from creating very specific content that helps them sell their products and services. We’re not thinking about top of the funnel keywords, rankings, and low hanging fruit just for the sake of keyword rankings on the first page of Google. We’re talking about how that business can make money by creating very specific simple blog content.
A few examples, if you have a service, or your clients have a service that sometimes requires a phone call or conversation with their prospects, one of the pieces of content you can create is an everything you need to know post. We’ve done this loads of times for all of our clients and for our business as well, which is when we launch a new product or service, we’ll create a hybrid of what that phone call would be where there might ask lots of questions. For instance, how much does it cost? How long does it take? Are there any pricing options available? An informative FAQ posts, but it’s everything you need to know about the product and service. You know those questions need to be answered and they will be asked, but for the most part businesses don’t answer them on their website. They might have a small FAQ, with, “Why are you so cheap?” or “How much does it cost?” And then there’s a short description that says we have to price accordingly and we have to learn about you. That’s not a helpful FAQ. Whereas when you create a unique piece of content that’s about your product and service you can say, “How does this compare to this?”, “What are the different options available?”, and that becomes a very helpful, easy article to create. It’s essential for your potential customers. And it also allows you to be honest and transparent, which has so many other benefits as well as just educating them.
So much to the point that when we speak to clients before working with us, they don’t need to take up much of our time at the beginning. As an example, we spoke to someone we’d never spoken to before yesterday on a 15-minute call and they were in a position to sign up immediately because they’ve consumed so much of our content. Our services aren’t cheap, they cost over 1000 pounds a month, and that’s one of the pieces of content they consumed, which meant we didn’t have to take up too much of our time, which meant we’re able to onboard people so much sooner, get people onto our systems, and just get started sooner. That’s one example of an everything you need to know post.
And if you’ve got multiple services, you ideally want a piece like that for each one. Other pieces of content, this one is slightly more marketingy, but it works incredibly well if you need to make money instantly. And this is a “Why we’re increasing our prices” article. It doesn’t have to be an article, it could be a video or even a podcast if you have that kind of business and that would work. It’s an article that explains that you are about to increase your prices because of all of the extra services, all of the extra resources, and all of the extra things included within the package. When you sat it out, you didn’t have these things. Now you have these things, you’re going to increase the prices to accommodate. However, the prices aren’t going up just yet. And if you sign up before this day, you’ll still get the original price. And I can’t tell you how effective that is in terms of generating sales. Now, everybody who’s on the fence jumps in, everybody who’s thinking about joining or thinking about having a conversation with you has that conversation, even if they don’t sign up. There are a few examples. There are loads in the book, lots of examples of sales content like that. But that’s again, very much bottom-of-the-funnel content to get people in with the SEO, but when they start to get in touch, you need a process. And this is the kind of content that really helps people get over that finish line.
D: And step number three is to use this to prequalify people before you speak to them.
3. Prequalify leads with content
M: Yeah, this is something we needed to implement out of necessity, rather than practicality. It was a way for you to deal with inquiries when they start to come in. If you’re great at generating traffic and leads then that’s one thing, but you need a way to filter out these people from getting into your mind mental space and have a way for you to prequalify people. So content, for instance, about your processes and about how you work. One of the pieces of content we created early on when we built websites was our 31 step process that we use in order to build your website. That’s one example because that helps educate people that you do have a process and also that they need to stick within your process. And it’s really good because you can send it to people before you work with them that this is the exact process that we use in order to help you be successful.
Content like things to consider before you work with us, or before you hire a SEO agency would be an example. You’re not going to get results straight away. It does cost money, because the process takes time and resources. You could put all of that into content and help educate people and prequalify people. And it will help you repel the people that want those fast results because it’s their final money, they’re investing it all, and they need results within a month. It’s clearly not going to happen in most industries so you might as well say it up front. And rather than disappoint people, you’ve got a way to prequalify. And we actually send that content to new inquiries when they come through. We say that it’s great that you want to talk to us, we’ll book a call with you, but before we get to that I need you to just look at these articles, these resources, or this PDF that that will help us have a much more productive conversation when we do speak. And at that point, if you’ve sent them information about pricing or processes, and they’re not the right fit, they’ll probably just not book that call, or cancel if they’ve already booked. It’s really important that you send that to people before you speak to them to save you time.
D: Yeah, it certainly sounds like we can get an individual podcast episode out of each of these points. I’d **** to drill deeper but hopefully, there’s an opportunity for part two down the line. But let’s move on to part four of this process of yours and that’s to use this to help clients to the next stage. So what’s the next stage?
4. Use content to move clients to the next stage
M: Yeah, we spoke a little bit about it there, which is helping them to book a call. The next thing is helping them to be successful while working with you. For instance, educating them on when they’re going to get things. And the worst thing in the world is buyer’s remorse, especially when someone’s really excited. And if you’re a good salesperson, or you have an effective way with people, people quite often will sign up and want to work with you. And then after a week or two, they might start to question it. And that always happens when people make a big investment. So it’s important that you keep people on track. And that’s why it’s important that you do the process content, and you actually list all of the individual steps that somebody would have to take and what you take. But communication is key.
For instance, we’ll continue the web design example, because I’m sure a lot of your listeners have built websites in the past. When you have a website, there are various stages throughout the process. So after somebody’s worked with you, you think that content journey has to end. But in reality, there’s so much more work to do in terms of content. Getting the sale isn’t the end, helping the client be successful is the end. So what’s the next step? It might be content production, you need to create some content and send it over to us so that we can actually know what words are going on this new website. And the next step might be photographs, you need to send those photographs of your team. Or, “By the way, I forgot to mention this before we started working together…” You’re telling the client that they need this, this, and this.
And that’s why it’s so important that the communication is mapped out from start to finish. And when you do that, you’ll prevent buyer’s remorse. But you’ll also prevent what we like to call Trojan horse clients who are super excited to get in touch with you, but somewhere down the line, something goes wrong, they switch completely, and they become the enemy, which is not something you want. They start to send you super long emails, they start to email and contact you day and *****, it becomes very difficult because we’ve not mapped out the process. And even if there is a mapped out process, we’ve not communicated it effectively so that they know what’s coming next. And again, process content and guiding content, those are the pillars within the Content Fortress that would help you prevent that. I’m sure it happens a lot, it happens towards still now. Therefore we use those stories and those experiences in order to go and create a piece of content to solve that problem.
D: And number five, use this content and repurpose it across all platforms.
5. Repurpose content across all platforms
M: Absolutely. So not everybody will sit and read your blog before they get in touch. Some people might be connected on LinkedIn, they might have never visited your website. Now my wife Lindsay, she’s not here so I can tell you she’s incredible. I would also tell her when she’s here. But she is incredible at transforming content from a 3000 word article into the perfect LinkedIn carousel, into the perfect email. And I think we need to do that because a lot of the times people are not actively looking for the products and services that you are offering. They’re not going to be on your website at the exact time that you publish that everything you need to know post or how you can work with us post. So we need to take that content and distribute it. Using ChatGPT as a tool will help you manage this. But essentially, every single one of our clients, when they get content created, they’ll get an email, they’ll get a LinkedIn post, they’ll get a potential Instagram carousel that they can use, because we understand that standout content needs to stand out. And if it sits on your blog, it’s not going to stand out for everyone. So if you can take that content and create various different pieces of content from it, it’s not the same piece of content. I think a lot of people are probably aware of that. Now, it can’t just be the same copy-and-paste content on all of the platforms, it needs to be platform specific. But when you have the core principles, and you are ready to get people to your website, in order to consume your content and want to work with you, you need to get them to the site first.
So repurposing is number five, it comes after the content creation because you can use that alongside AI in order to create extra content. But in reality, that’s usually the first step. Some people will connect with you on LinkedIn, and they’ll see content and then they’ll go back to your website, and they reverse go through the process. But without it, you’re solely relying on SEO and solely relying on somebody Googling a service that you offer, or a product that you sell. And then the website copy does its work. But we need to get people there and we can’t just rely on Google, unfortunately. And that wouldn’t make it stand out because you’d just be one of the listings on the first page. You need that repurposing mentality. We call it “Will it Stretch?” This is a term that we use when we think about creating a unique piece of content. Will it stretch? Can you create a piece of content that you would be able to distribute 10-20 times over and still be helpful? And at that point, if it doesn’t, then it might be worth going back to that piece of content. So it’s important that you have that mindset when creating these content pieces.
Pareto Pickle – Content That Sells
D: Let’s finish off with the Pareto Pickle. Pareto says that you can get 80% of your results from 20% of your efforts. What’s one SEO activity that you would recommend that provides incredible results for modest levels of effort.
M: Definitely sales content, not just content, which we spoke about. Creating specific content that helps people over the finish line. It’s been super effective for us to generate sales immediately. As long as you share it with your email list and you share it with your audience. It can be extremely powerful.
D: I’ve been your host, David Bain. You can find Martin Huntbach over at jammydigital.com. Martin, thanks so much for being on the In Search SEO podcast.
M: Thanks so much for having me. I loved it.
D: And thank you for listening. Check out all the previous episodes and sign up for a free trial of the Rank Ranger platform over at rankranger.com.
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