Monday.
Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPAgroup, bringing premiere online promotion to your business.
And Melanie of Stump Social Media training, who empowersbusiness owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Andwelcome back to the Monday morning marketing podcast. Today we're joined byJade Halsted, marketing manager for Horn show, a search marketing agency basedin England, and we're talking about content creation. Welcome, Jade.
Hello. Thanks for having me.
You're very welcome to be here with us.
So explain.
Why you work in content creation. Why is that your field ofinterest rather than anything else in marketing?
So for me, content marketing is all about emotions andunderstanding your customer. I absolutely love human psychology, neuroscience,and I love the way that it ties into marketing. So for me, content is the firstport of call or the first place where people are going to find you. It's fromthat content that if you're doing it really well, you don't actually need tospend loads of money on advertising or et cetera, that organic content can bereally powerful. That's why I absolutely love it.
Now, content creation typically is one of the hardest piecesof marketing that people have, isn't it? It's the most frequent question that Iget from somebody is, What on Earth do I put up? How do I put it up? How oftenshould I put it up? How do you come to the conclusion on what pieces of contentare required and which platforms they go on?
For me, you got to go so far back other than to be like,Let's look at Instagram and what I want to put on there. It goes so far backto, Let's understand our customers on a really deep level, across the board.Especially looking at their pain problems and to understand what it is yousolve, rather than I know if you're selling glasses or a mug, you don't talkabout the benefits of your glasses or your mug, but you're talking about thebenefits that your product is solving or the problem.
That they are coming to. Features tell benefits sell. Sorry?Features tell benefits sell. That scenario.
Exactly. And it's looking at that no one goes on to theinternet and goes into Google or any other social media platform and like, Letme look for this one particular thing. Unless they're very product aware,usually they're not. It's far down that by a journey. When you can understandthe problem that you're solving and the pain that they're facing in theterminologies that they would use and talking in their language, that's whenyou can start to create really good content.
Instead of me saying, look at this nice mug that I have forsale, you should really buy this mug. We'd be talking about, it's so coldoutside that once you get your hands around a nice warm cup of tea, you'll feelmuch better. The picture is of somebody's hands around my mug. I haven'tactually said that it's my mug in the content. Is that what we're saying here?
Yeah, you can be saying that, but yeah, it's that problem.If you're taking, say, a hiker and they hike for 6 hours, the top of themountain and their tee is cold, interview that customer, understand exactlywhat it is that they're facing, and then how can your product link into thatand use their wording, use their problem in your content or your advertising orwhatever that is, rather than all this keeps it warm, if that makes sense. Foran example, recently, I purchased so much hair stuff to help my hair grow. Iwasn't searching... I can't remember the company that I bought it from in theend. Oh, UK Lash. I wasn't typing in UK Lash hair solution or whatever it'scalled. I was typing in, How do I get my hair to grow? Or how do I stop my hairfrom being so brittle? And that's my problem. The words I always use are, Iabsolutely hate my hair. It annoys me that my hair keeps falling out. It annoysme that I twiddle my hair all the time and it keeps snapping. How can I stopthat? How can I stop my hair snapping when I twiddle it all day long?
Stop twiddling it? That's why.
It's in braids. I did wonder. Otherwise, I'd sit theretwiddling it all day. To create content around those problems, I'm going torelate with it so much more than this helps your hair grow.
Okay. Say we have... Sorry, we've got a lot of people thatlisten to us that are just starting out or that have really, really smallbusinesses and maybe they don't have very many customers to go and interview.Where should they start?
With one customer that they have? I would say it doesn'tneed to be hundreds of customers. It just needs to be some really in depthquestions or conversations with your customers. It could even be even 10.There's some marketer, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, butsays one customer interview is worth a 1,000 surveys. It's because you canactually go into depth with that person and you can ask them about theirjourney, ask them what their first fault was, where they first started researching.Then when did they go after they researched that? How long did it take them toactually buy? Because honestly, it took me three months before I started buyingthe hair product that I wanted. That one in depth conversation that lasts, say,half an hour, it can be so valuable to you, but not many people do it.
I've got to agree with you there. Especially when you firststart with a business, you find talking to your customers actually quite hard.First of all, you don't want to look like you don't know what you're talkingabout. Secondly, you don't want to leave a lasting impression that you'reunprofessional, that you don't understand what their problem is. I actually didthis questioning your client, your customer. I did that four years ago. Thatwas the first time I did it. That's completely true.
You're trying to dismiss what? Nine years, Melanie?
Nine years, 10 years later this year. But previous to that,it was me guessing, and also on top of that, it was me looking at testimonials,looking at testimonials and seeing the language that people were saying, Oh,out of this session, I got this, this, and this. Fantastic. Amazing. I waslike, Really? You got that? Oh, okay. And then I saw that several people weresaying the same thing and I was like, Interesting. Okay. And my languagechanged about how I was promoting and what I was saying about my businessbecause this is what people were actually getting out of it. Is that the thingthat you would use?
Absolutely. So there's two things I want to add here. Sojust to the second point, you need to use your buyer's language because that'swhat they resonate with. Unless you interview, actual face to face or Zoom oreven on the phone, have conversations with your customers, you do not know thelanguage or the terminology they use. No one in a survey writes how they speakand they go into the depth that we need. The same with polls or any other wayof collecting this feedback or even testimonials. I don't write in atestimonial, the journey I went through, the pain I went through, the research,the YouTube videos, all of that. I don't put it into a testimonial. Youactually don't know what I'm going through. From the minute I realised I have aproblem or a pain that needs solving to buy in your product. There's one otherthing I wanted to say. I think it was along the line of people, they don'tinterview early enough. They had this fantastic product, but they market itwrong. Where you could change the way that you talk about it to solve someone'sproblem, it could completely change your business.
It could make or break the product. So the earlier peopleinterview, the better.
I remember being at a networking event and there was one ofthe guys that was there doing a 60 second pitch was saying things. He's ahypnotist and he was saying things like, I help your child get through examanxiety. That resonated with me as a mother who had a child going throughexams. I was like, I did not know that I needed your services, or maybe mychild needed your services until this minute. Even though I'd known him forthree, four years. I was like, How did I never twig that that was also somethingthat you could do? So it's not until somebody might have said to him, Oh, thatwas great. You really helped my child. That he then used that in his pitch orin his marketing. And that's only then that I realised that I might have hadthat pain point. So you never actually realise, sometimes as a customer, youdon't even realise what your pain points are until the company says, We helpyou with this. It's like, Whoa, you read my mind.
I wanted to ask you, Jade, another point I see frequentlyis, and I hear about actually frequently is how many times people should postabout something? People feel very self conscious about putting up the samecontent. How do you feel about sharing other people's content as well? Is thereany relevance there?
Just quick question, are you referring to social mediacontent right now?
Social media, yeah. I know we could talk about the wholemarketing plethora, but right now, just social media.
Yeah. I would say on that, there is no harm in supportingother people and sharing their content if it is relevant to your audience.There is enough opportunity in this world for everyone to win if they do itproperly. I truly believe that. Then in terms of sharing, share as often as youlike if you are not posting for the sake of posting. Post because it addsvalue. Post because your audience wants to see it. Or even if they don't knowthey want to see it, it's going to add value to their life, to their day, tosolving their problem is what I would say. But it also, your social mediafollowers, they follow you because they're aware of you and they're usuallyaware of the problems that you solve. I feel like it gets a little trickierwhen you go out of the scope of people that you don't know when you'retargeting new people. That's when it gets when you have to be so spot on on thelanguage that you're using and what you're posting. I would say that's moreimportant than your generic social media page that is organic and just yourfollowers tend to see it.
Sorry, you're talking up there about the language beingused. Should companies then use a corporate language? I'm talking companieseven as soul traders, solopreneurs, people on their own, jewellery makers,candle makers. Should they stick to a corporate language, or should they usethe language of their customers? Obviously, we build websites here, so we couldstart talking jargon about CSS and CMS and JavaScript and all these jargonwords that a lot of people wouldn't understand. But because that's part of ourcompany identity, then that's the thing that we could talk about. Or should wejust say things like that thingy magick, that thing that helps you code thing.Where do you have that language language?
I would say it completely depends on your business. But forme, I know very small amounts of coding, et cetera. I know I've added a fewwebsites in my time and it's been painful. But if I wanted a website, or if Iwanted a new element or something feature added to my website, I don't carewhat you use. I don't care whether you use this coding or that coding or thisspecial free letters that I actually don't know about. What I want to know iswhat you're going to do for me. You're solving my problem. You don't need tosay I'll build you X, Y, and Z using a load of different letters throwntogether because I don't know. However, if you're going to say, I'm going tosolve your booking system problem by making it easier for you to edit yourbookings, for people to book, etc. In a really simple way, or whatever I need,it's that. You don't need to know how we solve it, but we're going to stop youpulling your hair out. When it comes to website design or website creation, I'mgoing to stop you having arguments with your spouse because you're fumingbecause you haven't been able to do it for the last seven hours.
That's what you're solving for me. I don't care how you doit is ultimately what I would say. However, depending on the business, you maynot want to say that.
It sounded like a little bit of brand persona was beingbrought into the conversation there. But I think how much of being specific isa good thing in your messaging when you're doing content creation? You'retrying to understand who your customers are, but so difficult. If you've gotlots of customers, and I know Esther does, she's got, I'd say, at least 10customer advertiser. Does that mean she needs to write 10 separate posts,obviously on the correct social platforms, answering different specific problemsthey have, or can we be a bit more general? Or will that not work?
It's tricky, but it's definitely worth experimenting with.However, I would say to make the most out of it, out of your social media, totry and at least target all of them at some point in their journey because youdon't want to start going too generic that no one cares. You really do need tohone down on those individuals. But I suppose that's where it comes whensegmentation comes into this, where actually your social media could be alittle bit more generic, but your advertising is so targeted or your emailcampaigns are segmented, so no one receives the same email across yourpersonas. There is a different email going to each persona, or maybe twopersonas at the bottom of the chart here, they get the same email and it goesup with skill or language, or if there's similar pain points is what I wouldsay. But I wouldn't say too generic and I probably wouldn't say too honing oneach. Very broad answer, I know, but it's worth experimenting with it.
Yeah. So it's finding the happy medium.
It's finding the happy point in the middle that you're notexcluding some and including others.
When it comes back to content creation again, how oftenwould you repurpose? Is that something you do regularly?
All the time.
All.
The time? Repurposing. I don't know about you, but I knowthat not all of my followers see my posts. There are so many different waysthat you can repurpose. You can put the second sentence first, or you canrepurpose it as a real, as a tweet, as an Instagram post, an Instagramcarousel, as a story, as a Facebook post. I feel like there is so many optionsand ways to diversify that piece of content that reusing it all the time, ifit's a good piece of content, is beneficial.
What would you say to people who just use their content tosell and it's constantly buy from us, come to us, subscribe with us, do thiswith us. There's constant... They're always in selling mood in their content.Across all boards, like I'm talking digital, I'm talking normal, traditionalmarketing. Across all boards, it's always selling.
One, I'd love to ask them how they keep their followersbecause I don't follow people that just sell, sell, sell. But again, if you'rejust trying to sell without understanding your clients or providing them withvalue and nurturing them, you're never going to sell, whether you post all thetime or not. And actually, if you were to go to the 80 20 rule, which mostpeople, I would like to think, go by, you're more likely to convert than youare going 100 % selling. Because one, people stop reading your messages. Two,you're actually not solving anyone's problem. You're not educating them, you'renot pushing them further down that buyer journey towards your product orwhatever you're trying to sell. That's what I would say. You just think they'reextremely product aware. Let's be honest, they're not. Otherwise, they'reprobably going to be your clients or your customers. By taking it back tocreating content for people who are unaware or problem aware, just as they gofurther down that journey, providing content for all different stages, for alldifferent personas is more likely going to help you convert than just trying tosell 100 % of the time.
Okay. Well, thank you so much for discussing contentcreation with us today. We seem to have covered a huge area. When people speakto us, I don't think they really appreciate just how much is actually involvedin this one element from language, messaging, platforms, customer avatars,brand personas. It's just vast, isn't it? There is.
So much to take into consideration, but I would say ifthere's one thing that they take away from this is to interview your customersand create content for every single stage of the buyer journey, not just thefinal purchase stage.
Brilliant. That's a great take away to leave us with. Andthank you again, Jade, very much for being here. We will be back next week withmore money in my marketing. Until then, bye.
I knew the dog had to come in there at some stage.
Barking mad. Never work with children or animals. But it'sso cute to allow them away. I tried.
To press the mute button. It does work. I think it was me panicking, thinking, Oh, my God. Maybe it doesn't work. So I do apologise.Hopefully, you can remove those.