Want to learn how you can utilise content to build engagement on social media, and in the long run, loyal customers and sales?
Meet the Content Marketer King, Steven Black. A guru in the art of marketing, he knows how to bring in maximum engagement for a minimum price.
Heidi Wright, Director of Wright Social, speaks with Steven Black about how you can use inbound marketing to attract customers to your ag business.
Heidi Wright: Steve, I’m going to introduce you as the Content Marketer King, totally fine with that? And copywriting. You’re also very skilled at copywriting and your expertise is well known in the Amazon space. Is there anything else you’d like to add to that aside from the Nashville experience?
Steven Black: No, no, it’s totally fine. I’m most well known in the Amazon space, because that’s where I found a gap in people needing to talk about marketing. But content marketing is kind of where I really excel because I understand the psychology of it all. And that’s really what’s behind all of my marketing efforts is a very, very heavy understanding of behavioural psychology and how people react. So, all of my systems are built around that. Most of our direct response advertising friends, especially the affiliate marketing crowd, they don’t know anything about content marketing, because they won’t study the psychology in the audiences, which is foolish.
Heidi Wright: So foolish. And let’s bring that into outbound marketing versus inbound marketing, because psychology is the cornerstone of inbound marketing. So, you described this to me in really simple terms prior to the conversation, I’ll let you describe it to our members now.
Steven Black: Right, okay. So, outbound marketing is where you run advertisements, and you’re trying to test and say, “okay, I need to see what creative or what copy or what offer is going to match my audience”. What that says is that you have a complete disregard for your audience. You have no idea who they are. You have no idea what they value. You have no idea how to bait them. That’s like standing out on a street corner, and every beautiful woman that passes by, you’re just going to yell as loud as you can, until you get attention.
Instead, with inbound marketing, you do a little market research, like you’re going hunting, right? And what you’re going to do is you’re going to go and find out where these people hang out, what their language is, what they value, what problems, questions, roadblocks they have when they search for anything online. What are the common things they talk about? What are the “go with it” type problems that are part of their pursuit that everybody just has to deal with?
Well, those common problems that they talk about, like the wallpaper in the room are really unmet demand in the marketplace that if you’re smart, you can say “aha, there’s an opportunity. I can make something there”.
Now, realistically, any of your messages, any of your advertising, I want you to think of all of your advertising like this, all right. All you’re trying to do is trying to connect a message with another person, and you’re trying to connect the right message with the right buyer based on where they are in the buyer’s journey at the right time. Right. Your advertisements are only meant to get a click. They’re not meant to sell anything. They can’t check out on the advertisement. Right? So, if I know my target audience, I know what they really value. I know what questions they’re going to ask. My message is in my advertisement, my messages and my content, my product itself can be an answer to those questions. And if I’m the one that’s taken the time to figure out what all those questions are, well, if they’re going to go online and find the answer to those questions, why aren’t they finding my space with all the answers to the questions?
Because if I can answer questions for people in the form of maybe blogs or social media posts or videos, or product offerings, or whatever, FAQ’s, whatever it is, what’s happening is I’m becoming that source of information that’s helping them get past their roadblocks, that’s taking them further into their passion pursuits. And when you do that, and you give freely, what happens is you build credibility within that audience within that space.
Now, what you’ve also done that people don’t think about, is you’re forcing people to accept a favour, and that’s something people don’t think about. And this was one of the things I mentioned, Heidi, when you and I met back in December, and it’s everybody is busy trying to build a better mousetrap with their advertisements, “my campaign has to do this, and I’ve got to get my creatives this way.” And all that.
That’s nice. Everybody’s trying to build a better mousetrap. I’m over here teaching the mice to dance for the cheese. They’ll do whatever I want. Because if I give, give, give, if I’m the guy, if you have a certain type of question in your Facebook group, and you know that I’m the person that can answer, you’re going to tag me whether or not we’re friends. What does that do? It says to everybody else, “hey, talk to this guy for the for this topic”. That means whenever I make a product suggestion, or I make an offer, if I’ve built that goodwill, and given given given, I’m going to get reciprocity from the group.
This is a lot like the Hollywood movie studios and how they launch products. They don’t just drop something in blind. They say, “hey, we’ve listened. We know you want this kind of story”. And then they do the trailers. They build hype. They have the launch parties. They talk to the celebrities, and now they have a huge audience of people ready to go on launch day. Apple does the same thing. How do you think they innovate their products? They listen to their audience.
And the trick is not coming up with content. That’s not the trick. The trick is, “where do I go to take inventory of all the questions people are asking?” Because if I know what they’re asking, I can find a way to make content. Or I can find where the answers are online and bring that to the audience that I would like to build trust with.
So, for everybody listening, I don’t want you to think that if you want to develop a reputation and inbound leads you want people to start coming to you. I don’t want you to think that you have to be super expert, like you’re an author of a book. Instead, I want people to think that you’re an editor of a magazine. You’re just trying to find topics that you think people would engage with and enjoy seeing and talking about.
All right, so let’s do some contrast. You know, before the real age of the internet, which is probably the last 10 or 15 years or so when online advertising really took off, since about 2005 2006, before that most things were outbound marketing. Most things, you just cast a message out there and that was that.
Now, people can research whatever they want. They can follow whoever they want. There’s no such thing as celebrity anymore. There’s no such thing as having to wait to get information. So, how many people have you found online that you’re like, “man, I love this YouTube channel”, because they just provide the best information on XYZ topic? And then what happens? They have some kind of link or product offer, and you go and click on their stuff. It’s very, very easy to build trust in front of people like that.
Now, here’s the difference. Here’s the best thing. Before Facebook groups were a giant thing like they have been the last four or five years, blogs had their heyday on the internet. Why? Why were blogs a big deal? Not because people, regular content producers, like regular people, versus a media house. It’s not in the information. It was the comment section. It was the two-way conversations.
So, think about it like this. In 2019, Facebook changed the Facebook algorithm, to where all of your groups that you’re in are now what you see on the newsfeed more than anything else. That’s what it is. They deliberately changed the algorithm, right? Because that’s how people were using the platform. Cool. So based on our interest and our behaviours, we arrange ourselves into those groups.
If I have an audience that I would like to serve better, what’s stopping me from being a chameleon and going in that group and learning to speak their language as one of them, and being helpful and answering comments? And taking inventory on the side of all the questions and all the comments? And poking the beehive and saying “you know, guys, I’m looking for something like this. I know this company has XYZ. But have you ever seen something like that, but with this, whatever innovation you’re considering developing?”, before you spend a crapload of money on it.
And what that does is it gets everybody talking. Everybody talking. I said, “oh, yeah, well, this company tried that, and this is where it didn’t work out, and blah, blah, blah”, and you go, “oh, cool, thanks”. Or they’re going to say, “hey, yeah, by the way, this other company does that. And they’re amazing. And everybody uses them”. You go, “ooh, I didn’t know that. Thanks.” Or they say “why would you do that? Here’s why we don’t like that bla, bla, bla, bla bla”. And what you find are their emotional trigger points. You find their values, and I haven’t even run any ads yet. I don’t have to spend any money to do that. That’s just going hunting. So, I call this Tiger hunting, right? Because you’re not going to go chase a tiger into the jungle. Nobody does that, right?
And I actually developed this phrase when I was dating when I was younger. If you want to find someone who’s an absolute knockout, especially if it’s a beautiful woman and men are going after her, it’s terrible, because all of all of the guys just want to go and peacock. And women hate men that peacock, right? But if I know that I can offer her something that she can’t get on her own and that nobody else can offer her, all I have to do is make her aware that I have it.
Same thing with your audience, it’s the exact same thing. It’s the same thing. So, if you have a unique offering, if you have better customer service than anybody else, and that’s the hill you die on, or let’s say, I know people in this space are in the agricultural field, let’s say you take care of something very, very specific. Right? Very, very specific, maybe it’s a special kind of fertiliser, or a special irrigation for a certain type of crop that’s very particular. Great, the more you know about that audience, and the more you can put information out that you can answer their questions ahead of them asking, the more you’re going to make those people chase you, because nobody else is standing up as a source that could potentially solve their problems.
And people think it’s like this huge process, and it’s not. You do not have to be a fantastic writer. You do not have to have fancy video equipment. You do not have to have any of that. You can choose the platform you want to be on, find a place where your target audience is going to congregate, and talk about the subjects that within the pursuit of those activities, they would use a product like yours. And then all you have to do is go and be a contributor, and if you’re a known contributor, people are gonna say, “hey, who are you? You’re really clever”. And you say, “well, you know, I represent XYZ company. This is kind of what we’re into. Happy to help”. And you leave it alone, because if you don’t give people a way to cast stones at you for just wanting to sell stuff, and you’re actually helpful, oh, man, people are going to try to beat down your door to give you reciprocity.
Heidi Wright: Steven, everything you’ve said there is just absolute gold. And I think too, if we bring that back to the cost of customer acquisition, you spend less money on cold traffic and you spend the money on those people that are ready to buy, which is bottom of the funnel.
Steven Black: You’re right. So, the middle of the funnel, if everybody here is a marketer, you’ve probably heard top of the funnel, which are people who have not heard about you before and maybe they’re problem aware, but they’re not product seeking yet and they don’t know about your products as a potential answer to their problems.
If you really think about it, any time you get on your phone or your computer and go online, there are only four things in your mind. That’s it, only four. What problems, questions, roadblocks you have related to the topic, and the result that you want. And you have no idea if you’ve got to buy a product, or you’re going to hire somebody or something. Maybe you have to go watch a video, and that’s the solution. That’s what you’re going hunting for. You know where you are, you know what you want to overcome. Okay, cool.
So, at the top of the funnel, if I have all of this content for people, I have my engagement content, I have my trust builder content to where people can see that I’m human. Or I’m talking about how I’m exploring a topic. Maybe I’ll give stories about failure that have happened. You know, “we tried this, and we found out that was a really bad idea”. Well, if you talk, and this is a question I usually get when I talk about that part, people say, “well, if you talk about failures, aren’t you putting out, you know, a negative light on yourself?” No, not even a little bit. You’re saying, “hey, I did this, I’m willing to share, don’t make the same mistake”. People go, “oh, wow, I love that. I can talk to them. They’re human”. And people don’t realise it.
So, at your top of the funnel, how are people really finding your top of the funnel? You think it’s Facebook ads with a direct offer? Nope. Nope. Usually it’s Google search, or it’s a referral. And everybody here is probably running lead gen, which is what you want, right? So, if people are searching for answers to their questions, oh my gosh, put the questions and answers on your site, and that way people can find them. Point people to that. Run Google search ads and say, “hey, if this is the phrase, point them at that content, I want them to be on my site”.
And here’s why that works. You’re only going to pay a few cents for the click, and that’s really all you want at the top of the funnel. You’re not selling anybody at the top of the funnel. You’re still building trust. You’re still building reputation and credibility. Okay, sure. But now I’ve got them to my site I can do all kinds of fun things there. They’re on my site. I can retarget them on Facebook, and I can take them further down the funnel.
So, the whole reason that that I developed a system of content to get questions answered is to bring people in across all the platforms, because I didn’t want to have to compete with a deeper wallet. I mean, a lot of my friends spend $10, $20, $30 million a year on Facebook ads. I’m like, “nope, I don’t want to do that”. But if everybody else is paying $25 to get a conversion action, but I’m only paying three, good luck, come and get me. And if I bring people in at the top of the funnel with content, I’m not pushing at them, because if I push, they’re gonna have something to push against. They have an ability to say no.
People that search on Google, here’s a stat that most people don’t know, people that search on Google, 60% of people surveyed have no idea that when they click on something at the top if it says “ad” next to it. They don’t know if that’s an ad or a regular website. Whoa, whoa. And out of all searches, about half of them click on ads, about 45% result in an ad click right at the top right there.
So, if it requires explanation, which I imagine agricultural solutions might because they’re probably not a low-ticket item, it’s lead gen, you have to talk to somebody and still close them. How much easier would it be to close people if they came to your site, you never had to talk to them on the site, you had content up that they could self-service, they could say, “oh, I’m interested in this”, or “I’m interested in that”, and you have your retargeting campaigns automatically showing them more content of the same? And if they click through that ad, guess what? Hit them with an offer about that because they have filtered themselves.
Heidi Wright: Segmented.
Steven Black: They’ve segmented themselves, and they’ve filter themselves. Now, you can say, “hey, who are my best clients? Who are the people that I really want to get narrow and service? Who can I really hit home runs with? Those are the people I want to drill down and find”. Well, if all you’re doing is making offers, good luck, because you haven’t been able to match a message based on people’s intent.
People might come, say they’re looking for an irrigation system, right? We’re talking agriculture, at some point, it’s going to be irrigation. People that come to your site, if it’s over the topic of irrigation, are we talking about water storage? Are we talking about water delivery? Are we talking about for livestock or for plants? Are we talking about green housing? Are we talking about hectares and hectares of land? What are we talking about? Because the people that are going to come off of that broad topic are going to have hugely different desires for what they’re looking for.
I don’t want to pay for all that, especially with a Facebook ad, because they’re very targeted, it’s interruptive advertising versus intent marketing. If I’m going to run a Facebook ad after people have come to my site, I’m going to position that ad very narrow with the messaging. I know exactly what kind of fish I’m going for here, because the purpose of an online ad is to get the right people to click and the wrong people to not.
And that’s not something a lot of people talk about. It’s all “I want to get as many people on my side as I can”. For what? Especially if it’s a lead gen, if you’re running a service, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your time is way more valuable than that. We need to find a way to get those people to segment themselves based on the content they’re viewing. So, this bucket wants this message, this bucket wants this message, if I’m going to make an offer, because I can service both segments, now I can optimise my messaging to match what their intent is and I go into the closing meeting already knowing what they’re doing, and I know that they like me. I know that they have brand trust, and it’s not a cold lead. It costs so much less to do business that way. It’s so much easier. That’s the way you want to do it, right?
Another thing that you can do, and I’m going to talk about two different things here, for those of you that are wanting to run lead gen, if you know based on your audience what some hot topics are, you go and you listen, and here’s how you listen, I’m going to pause there for a sec. If you go and you look up your main keywords, go on Facebook groups where people are talking about agriculture, people are talking about livestock, and people are talking about any kind of farming that you’re going to service, cool, start talking to them. And don’t go in there salesy saying “what are the problems you guys have with XYZ?” Don’t do that. Don’t do that. You want to drop something in the living room as a centrepiece for them to talk about. Go to Quora, which is an internet Question and Answer board, put in your keywords, take one of those conversations as the question and the answer. Just grab that and say, “hey, guys, I saw this, I was looking for something. These are my thoughts on it. What do you think?”
Heidi Wright: Beautiful
Steven Black: Let them ask and go to answers.yahoo.com. Same thing. It’s super easy. Go to Instagram, follow an account, take a caption that they had on a topic and drop that in a Facebook group where there’s a congregation of people that you know that’s the topic they want to talk about.
Why is that important? Because you’re going to get them to confess all the things that they really feel about it. Additionally, you’re letting other people be significant. That’s a big one. People don’t realise it. What you’ll see online if you really look for it, people have a couple of addictions, okay? People online have an addiction to being right. People online are, we’re all terrifically lonesome, especially with the virus thing going on right now. So, if you can let people say their piece and get some likes and contribute in a way that makes them feel like they’re significant to their peer group that they identify with, and you do that repetitively, you’re going to get as many people as you can handle, always commenting on your stuff. It’s so easy. All I’m doing is I’m being a good host.
Heidi Wright: You talked about building behavioural addiction.
Steven Black: Oh, you’re going to go there? Let’s do it. Let’s go ahead for sure. All right. So, here’s the fun backstory for everybody. I deal with psychology a lot, and that’s how I know some of these things and I try to take advantage of them in my marketing efforts. So, I know that people have these addictions, alright, this is behavioural engineering. That’s really what it is. I’m not giving people a choice. I know a few things about people.
Number one, if I make an offer and I push something at somebody, now they have something to push back against. So, I don’t want to do that. Number two is that once people have come to a belief about something, no amount of anything I throw in their face is going to change their mind. It’s not going to happen.
So, what I have to do is present information and make it their idea to come to me. If I’m always presenting content, if I can present content that’s not me telling them they’re wrong, it’s just presenting content in a consistent manner enough that I look like I’m an authoritative enough voice on the subject to where they can trust me, there you go. Because all of us, really, are susceptible to this. Instead of first-hand experience and research, if we know somebody that we think kind of registers like us, kind of thinks like us, is one of our peers, and they make a referral about something, we go with it, don’t we? Yeah. Because it’s a mistaken assumption.
So, if you’re the new person in town, go to the answer boards, inventory a bunch of content, and say “okay, cool. I’m going to put my thoughts on this question and this answer or this article. I’m going to put my thoughts on it. I’m going to post that for everybody to talk about, and I’m not going to make an offer on it”. Nope. What am I doing? I’m going to do that consistently enough to where everybody knows, when they see my name, it’s going to be good. They’re going to get something out of it. It’s going to be helpful. Okay. And so, if I do that consistently enough, what have I done their mind? I’ve built authority. I’ve built credibility. I’ve built trustworthiness, so that when a subject comes up, “oh hell, I don’t know, go see what Steve thinks about that”.
I do it over and over and over and over and over again. And all I have to do is be the editor of a magazine, because they know if I don’t know personally, I know the people that do. And so that’s training them. If they know that I’m the guy to go to for their answer, if I make a product recommendation, even if it’s my own product, who are they going to trust? They’re going to look at mine first. And they’re going to look at it real hard because they know there’s someone behind the product.
And people are like, “well, how well does this work?” Here’s one for you. Zero ads, right? I talked about using content, building hype, building credibility, all this kind of thing, zero ads for this. I ran a launch last year before I actually did this talk where Heidi and I met in December, and I posted content just like I’m talking about, and then I built my own group on it, too, because I started in other people’s groups, and people started following me and I built my own group. I said, “sure. You guys want the information? Here it is. Come follow me over here”. That way I had control of the group and I could make an offer if I wanted to. I set it up that way. Zero adds, zero, right?
Heidi Wright: How much time, Steve?
Steven Black: The real credibility behind it took me about five months, about five months of being consistent. It wasn’t even that bad. It’s like, “okay, I’ll find an article, I’ll post an article.” I like to write a lot, it’s kind of like my therapy. So, I post my own articles on things that I’ve read, and all I’m doing is I’m an explorer on the topic, answering people’s questions. I made an inventory in the Facebook units there.
And so, then I said, “hey, I’m developing XYZ product. Here’s the features of it. Here’s the benefits. Here’s what I’m going for with this, would love your feedback”. “Oh, well, I hope it has XYZ and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah”.
Okay, cool. And so, when I came out with the product, I already had a bunch of hype behind it for about a month and a half before launch day happened about six weeks, seven weeks out. And they knew that I had listened to their concerns. And realistically, all I did was use content to flush out what those concerns were.
You ready?
Steven Black; $50,000 in profit in first four hours, just like that. Zero ads.
Heidi Wright: Brilliant. You had a Facebook rep actually contact you on that and ask you?
Steven Black: Yeah, okay, so the way that I have my group set up, I generate so much engagement and so much retention in my Facebook groups, that the Facebook Communities Team for North America, I’m in one of their admin groups. There’s, you know, 100- 150 of us that are like super admins, and they wanted me to make learning units for the other super admins, in their Facebook North America community thing, like teach people how to get better group engagement, because they’re pushing the whole platform that way. I’m like, “okay.”
And so, most businesses when they’re starting out, they make the mistake of trying to go three feet deep, but a mile wide, and catch everybody and it’s very silly. Instead, I want to go maybe three metres wide, but a mile deep. I want to be the go-to guy for my audience. I want to know more about them than any anybody else. That’s the idea because that’s how you’re going to build repetitive business and that’s how I can acquire customers and not even think about it. Because if I know more about your audience than you do, and I know more about what they actually desire, well, I can spot problems that you can’t. I can spot the unmet demand and develop products that you can’t touch, and I can make those offers and there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing. It’s ridiculous.
Here’s one for you. Here’s one for you. Let’s say you say “okay, cool. I’m gonna go to my Facebook groups, I’m going to go hunt, you know, Instagrams or YouTubes. Or I’m going to go to Quora, or I’m gonna go to blogs or whatever, I’m going to see what questions people are asking. I’m going to see what they really want”. And guys, here’s another place to go look, if you have a help desk on your website or customer service emails, go through those. The questions people are asking on your help desk are a gold mine for content. Gold mine, right?
And if you go on another Facebook group, and you see somebody that’s like, “oh, man, that was a really insightful response to somebody’s question”, you say, “oh, I’m going to copy that response. I’m going to copy the question. I’m going to message the person say, ‘Hey, that was really great. I have another crowd of people. Would you mind if I pasted your response over there and tagged you? Could you come talk about it?’” You’re making them significant. And you’re giving them the point out, and they’re going to go “well, yeah, that’d be fine by me. Sure. Yeah”. Ego, ego, ego. What did you just do? You just courted another contributor for your group so that you don’t have to work so hard.
Now, here’s the fun part. How many social media platforms do you really have? How many different ways can you make content? So, let’s say I want to write a blog. Cool, that’s going to go on my website. Why can’t I break that into a couple of different pieces as Facebook posts for my page or my group? Or why can’t that accompany me being a talking head about an article? I’m going to make say 10 or 12 points, just little bullets out of that article. Why can’t each one of those get a picture behind them and become an Instagram post and repurpose it? If I’m going to make a talking head video, why don’t I just export the audio, and now I have a bunch of podcasts?
So, the point of it is, while you may be trying to service a certain segment of the audience, those people are going to consume content in different ways in trying to get their questions answered. So, if you can start one place and then branch out a little bit and just recycle your content, all you’re doing, if you really want to get going, is just curating the answers from other places, so you don’t have to be some crazy expert.
If you genuinely have expertise, great, that’s even better because people can trust you more. You’re not just saying similar stuff that they’re going to find elsewhere. You can give actual insight as to why something is a certain way. That’s gigantic, right? It’s way, way better. Instead of just telling somebody what something is, you can tell them why it’s important as an end user. Great. So now I have content I can be everywhere I want as often as I want. It didn’t cost me anything.
And now here’s the fun part. What happens then with your advertising? Once you get the messaging that connects to your audience, your advertising is only an amplifier to those messages. Whoa. So now, if I’m at the top of the funnel, I have my Google search ads where people can find me and find my content. Maybe I’ll run some Facebook ads to content. Once people are on my site, the way I run things, if they never go to my product pages, if they never go where they get an offer, if it’s like lead gen. If they never get to a point where they book that call, and there’s just content, run them back to content. They’re not done yet. The pie is not done baking. Leave them alone. They’re not there yet, right? But they’re hungry for something. So, I’m going to put it back in front of them.
The people that that come to my site, and maybe they click through and somebody makes it to where they they’ll see “book a call”, or “inquire now”, or “schedule a consultation”, you’re getting sent back with an offer. People that maybe get into the checkout process and back off, if you’re running a service-based business, maybe consider giving them a phone call if they get to the actual checkout process and bail, because they’re right there. Something happened, something happened, and that’s an easy way to do it.
But now, we talk about going narrow, and you say, “this person is looking for this kind of thing”. From the ad, to the content lander, to the messaging on the offer, maybe even to the email marketing that goes with that line, all of those messages are optimised for better conversions. Based on matching, I know they’re looking to solve this problem. This is the solution we have, I just need them to realise it’s best for them.
My ad, my lander, all of my content, my email marketing, everything is that way. If I have something else that I offer, if you’re going over here to path B, you’re going to get a different set of emails because I know you have a different problem. If I’m an irrigation company, cool, I can lay water pipe, but if you’re trying to maybe deal with an orchard versus livestock indoors, two different things. Okay, cool. What content page did you go to? Because that’s going to change what ad you get as follow up. And it should. Because now, what you’re doing is you’re showing people “I’ve listened to you. I’m not just waiting to tell you what the next sales thing is out of my mouth”.
And guys, when we talked at the beginning of this conversation, do not just run ads and shout at your customers, you do not want them to be listeners or readers. You want them to be participants in a conversation. You can do that. Instead of just worrying about driving traffic, now you’re converting more. And it’s very, very easy to double the conversion rates on your sites, even with lead gen. And if you segment out these people, you can say, “okay, cool, I’ll run them this way, I’ll run them that way”. But these people that come through this one channel, those are like my tip top people, stop everything else, make sure we get them in, because they’re going to have the highest lifetime value. We know that. We’ve traced the conversion path. Everybody else, sure we’ll service them, we’re good with that, but these other guys, I want to grow clones of these customers.
And that way, you know who you can really spend time with, because what will happen is once you sort that out, you start optimising your business for the people that you can service the best. And you end up with automation efficiencies for the people that aren’t a good fit. And you say, “okay, well, they can self-service themselves over here. And they can order X, Y, Z and schedule us to come out and we’ll take care of it. It’s a small deal”. Right? Because let’s say it’s irrigation, you know, putting in a sprinkler in the suburbs, for a couple thousand dollars is way different than putting in something on some land where you’re getting into 15 to 20 thousand dollars. Right?
And if you’ve got enough people coming through and saying, “hey, I need some work done”, you can optimise for one of those, but there are two different messages that need to be received. They’re going to look at content differently. They’re a different kind of buyer. They need to be talked to differently. And surely in the sales process and the closing process, everybody listening has that segmented out and how they would approach those different kinds of clientele. Make them approach you. Say, “hey, this is how we get down. This is what we’re about. This is what we know about. We’re happy to help you. Come on and put your feet on the fly paper, because once you step into our realm, it’s over. We’re going to get you”.
I mean, that’s really what it is make them come right to you. Because if you don’t put it out there, you’re forced to pay to chase people, and that’s just the game of the person with the deepest pockets wins, and no matter how deep your pockets are, if I’m paying a third of what you are to get the same customer, good luck. Come and get me. There’s no way you’re going to win. It’s not going to happen. Right? So instead of just traffic, whatever you think content is, it’s about audience segmentation and helping build credibility and authority in a space without being salesy, because that’s going to hugely boost your conversion rate and hugely boost your customer lifetime value.
Here’s the last thing for you. We talked about psychology. Guys, do not be afraid if you are not an expert. You’re an editor of a magazine, not an author, right? The more consistently you answer people’s questions, the more trust you build in the space, right? Familiarity is indistinguishable from truth. If you see something enough, if you see someone’s name enough, with solid answers to questions, with solid content in a space, they’re the person that’s the go to. Because when you have a question, are you really going to have the patience to dig through everything? Are you going to go “Tag, can you please help with this?” That’s what you’re going to do, and all you’re doing is you’re pointing everybody else and saying, “that’s the authority figure, ask them”. I love to be that guy, because all I have to do is say, “hey, go buy that. That’s going to be the solution to your problems. Thanks so much”.
Here’s the fun part about content versus ads. Once you turn off the money, your ads are gone. I still make money from content that’s from like three years ago. I had somebody not a week ago, they picked up a $2,000 package from me off a YouTube video from three years ago because I responded to their comment, and they follow me somewhere else, and they never have talked to me. They’re a lurker. They just read and read and read. And they said, “hey, I saw this video, would love to know, in this situation what would you do?” “Oh, well, you do this, and this, and this, and if you really, like, I could walk you through the whole process. This is where you book the call, and we can sort it out”.
A week later, done. Got him. And I love them. They’re awesome. They ask lots of questions, and I can service them incredibly. I love it. And that was like three years ago. That’s the name of the game. So, if you’re going to run ads, that’s one thing. In a given year, I can put out about 20,000 different pieces of content.
Heidi: Thank you so much, Steven. Brilliant information.
Steven: I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you.
You can connect with Steven via his Unstoppable Marketing Masterclass.
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