March 25, 2021

Advertising, Content, and SEO for Growing Inbound Marketing with Hamlet Azarian

Advertising, Content, and SEO for Growing Inbound Marketing with Hamlet Azarian
Apple Podcasts podcast player iconSpotify podcast player iconYoutube Music podcast player icon
Apple Podcasts podcast player iconSpotify podcast player iconYoutube Music podcast player icon

In part 10 of our Masterclass Series on How to Build a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Business, host Eric Dickmann interviews Hamlet Azarian. Hamlet is the Founder of The Retail Merchant Group and is a numerical and results-driven executive that blends marketing, technical and operational skill sets. He has delivered long-term scalable growth for both traditional, direct mail, and digital companies from start-up to established organizations.

For the past 5 years, he has predominantly focused on working with Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A venture-backed startups as a Senior Growth Adviser. In this role, he has developed playbooks, hired and trained the marketing and growth teams, and rolled-up his sleeves, and helped with execution.

For additional resources on this episode and from our other episodes in this Masterclass Series, visit https://fiveechelon.com/masterclass

For more information about Eric Dickmann and The Five Echelon Group, visit https://fiveechelon.com/

For more information on Hamlet Azarian, visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamletazarian/ or http://www.retailmerchantgroup.com

Episode #061

Send us your questions or comments

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Marketing Automation with HubSpot
Try HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing software to simplify campaign management and drive new leads.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

WEBVTT

00:00:00.530 --> 00:00:04.490
Hello, welcome to the virtual CMO podcast in our masterclass series.

00:00:04.490 --> 00:00:06.200
I'm so glad you could join us here today.

00:00:06.799 --> 00:00:07.250
Thanks, Eric.

00:00:07.309 --> 00:00:08.000
Thanks for having me.

00:00:08.449 --> 00:00:09.320
Yeah, this is exciting.

00:00:09.349 --> 00:00:11.570
We were talking a little bit before the show.

00:00:11.810 --> 00:00:20.030
Uh, this is part 10 now in our master class series, and we sort of started out talking about the importance of building a strategic marketing plan.

00:00:20.390 --> 00:00:23.329
Target marketing and your ideal customer profile.

00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:28.160
Then we went on and talked a little bit about product market fit and competitive differentiation.

00:00:28.489 --> 00:00:33.289
Building out your brand story and then the marketing messages, uh, underneath that.

00:00:33.679 --> 00:00:40.429
Uh, talking about then how to bring in outsiders from your team, whether they're freelancers or independent content creators.

00:00:40.759 --> 00:00:46.579
Then we got into a conversation about marketing automation, which is one of my favorite topics and CRM and analytics.

00:00:46.850 --> 00:00:52.850
And then, uh, last week we sort of talked about social media and the importance of using those channels to build your brand.

00:00:53.119 --> 00:01:01.310
So today it's kind of exciting because we're going to get a chance to talk about advertising content, SEO, and really growing your inbound marketing strategy.

00:01:01.549 --> 00:01:04.790
So I'd love for you to give us a little bit of introduction.

00:01:05.060 --> 00:01:07.159
So the audience knows who you are.

00:01:07.310 --> 00:01:09.349
And tell us a little bit about your background.

00:01:09.890 --> 00:01:12.260
No, of course, we'll a little bit about me.

00:01:12.260 --> 00:01:17.810
I've been working more or less in digital marketing for a little over 11, 12 years now.

00:01:18.349 --> 00:01:23.450
Our firm has been predominantly focused on working with venture back startups.

00:01:23.959 --> 00:01:26.239
Particularly in the early stage.

00:01:26.629 --> 00:01:37.879
So where we come in is a very, in the beginning, beginning, beginning, So it's usually, you know, a founder or a very small team there, there isn't that many resources.

00:01:38.390 --> 00:01:41.780
So there's maybe just us and a few other people.

00:01:41.780 --> 00:01:45.019
So the marketing plan hasn't been done, they go to market strategy.

00:01:45.019 --> 00:01:45.950
Hasn't been done.

00:01:46.340 --> 00:01:51.200
So we're going through a lot of the things that you've already talked about in this series and trying to plan all of this out.

00:01:51.709 --> 00:02:01.819
So we'll come in and help identify all of those, plan it out, and then begin, they go to market strategy, trying to identify exactly what the pain point of the customer is.

00:02:02.269 --> 00:02:08.960
And educate and inform and so on and so forth, and eventually be able to grow the business from the small core team.

00:02:09.289 --> 00:02:11.449
There's several hundred people ever successful.

00:02:11.900 --> 00:02:20.000
Fortunately, in the past, you know, five or six years, we've had two or three successes that have got into the series a stages.

00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:21.860
So it's kind of our passion.

00:02:21.860 --> 00:02:22.969
It's like what we like to do.

00:02:22.969 --> 00:02:24.349
And that's kind of what we're focused on.

00:02:25.400 --> 00:02:31.610
It's interesting because I think one of the beauties of working with a startup is in many ways, you've got a bit of a blank slate, right?

00:02:31.610 --> 00:02:33.500
You don't have a lot of history to go on.

00:02:33.530 --> 00:02:34.789
You can, if done right.

00:02:34.789 --> 00:02:37.250
You can build things correctly from scratch.

00:02:37.639 --> 00:02:43.939
And, you know, you mentioned a number of things there, and hopefully we've covered some of that in the preceding episode.

00:02:43.939 --> 00:02:46.310
So we understand what some of the pain points are.

00:02:46.490 --> 00:02:49.219
We understand what some of the competitive differentiation is.

00:02:49.219 --> 00:02:51.919
We've sort of built that story around our brand.

00:02:52.159 --> 00:02:55.069
So now we've got to get that message out there.

00:02:55.340 --> 00:03:01.969
And I was hoping you could start out by telling us a little bit about what your view of inbound marketing is.

00:03:02.180 --> 00:03:07.069
You know, I know it's a term that was really, um, made popular by HubSpot, uh, in, in.

00:03:07.069 --> 00:03:11.240
their whole marketing approach, but what is sort of inbound marketing mean to you?

00:03:12.530 --> 00:03:15.409
Jimmy inbound is about relationships, right?

00:03:15.439 --> 00:03:24.289
So, so in outbound marketing where you're kind of trying to go and destruct the consumer, and you're trying to, trying to get their attention.

00:03:24.889 --> 00:03:31.069
Inbound is the complete opposite of it were inbound is really about, you're trying to go and build a relationship with the consumer.

00:03:31.099 --> 00:03:33.680
You're truly trying to understand what their pain point is.

00:03:34.039 --> 00:03:35.569
What are they struggling with?

00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:42.830
Where are they in this, in this awareness kind of cycle that they're going through or in this journey, this consumer journey.

00:03:42.860 --> 00:03:46.849
Are they looking for a solution right now or in the early, early phases of it?

00:03:47.419 --> 00:03:49.280
Are they considering a solution?

00:03:49.340 --> 00:03:53.180
So are they, have they gone a little bit deeper into the funnel or are they.

00:03:53.479 --> 00:03:55.400
The point where they're trying to now make a decision.

00:03:55.909 --> 00:04:01.520
So this consumer, Jeremy, that the cycle that they're going through, what inbound does is it becomes a guide.

00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:09.770
And you as the marketer or you're not really trying to aggressively sell you're more or less China inform and educate.

00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:16.610
So we've talked a lot about, uh, the buyer's journey on this podcast.

00:04:16.910 --> 00:04:23.300
And I think it's so important because really what the buyer's journey helps you understand is what kinds of information somebody needs.

00:04:23.779 --> 00:04:26.360
A long they're sort of buying process.

00:04:26.389 --> 00:04:32.449
And we've had a number of guests that have also said, you know, it's not just something that ends at the sale, right?

00:04:32.449 --> 00:04:38.329
It's something that continues on beyond that, because hopefully you're got customers for life and they'll buy from you again.

00:04:38.689 --> 00:04:54.319
So when you talk about inbound marketing and you talk about sort of content creation and you work with the kinds of companies that you work with, What do you really advise them in terms of what do they need at different stages of the buyer's journey to successfully create an inbound strategy?

00:04:55.160 --> 00:04:56.600
Uh, into the type of content.

00:04:56.660 --> 00:04:59.029
So in the type of the content.

00:04:59.029 --> 00:05:04.939
So for example, what we try to do is we try to build white papers is one classic example of it.

00:05:04.939 --> 00:05:07.399
It was where were, you know, Building here.

00:05:07.459 --> 00:05:08.480
Here's the pain point.

00:05:08.540 --> 00:05:09.439
Here's the problem.

00:05:09.439 --> 00:05:14.449
And how do we go about solving this and how do we go about giving solutions for it?

00:05:14.870 --> 00:05:19.819
Other things that we do that might be a little bit different is we kind of do a lot of webinars.

00:05:19.879 --> 00:05:21.740
So we'll even host different webinars.

00:05:21.769 --> 00:05:26.480
We'll have different events that were kind of coordinating and bringing people in to kind of talk about it.

00:05:26.930 --> 00:05:30.110
We do the classic that everyone does is we have blog posts, right?

00:05:30.350 --> 00:05:31.879
So we'll have blog articles.

00:05:31.910 --> 00:05:35.779
We'll have blog posts created where we're kind of doing very long form.

00:05:35.779 --> 00:05:38.000
Blog posts are not necessarily bite sizable.

00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:39.589
They're really in-depth.

00:05:39.980 --> 00:05:42.350
Here's how we kind of saw all of this.

00:05:42.709 --> 00:05:47.810
Very similar to like ultimate guides is kind of the way I would kind of refine it.

00:05:48.170 --> 00:05:52.910
Um, we do what the world is without our product.

00:05:53.060 --> 00:05:58.579
So when you go a little bit different, we're like, Hey, this is a way of you solving this problem today.

00:05:58.579 --> 00:05:58.970
Right?

00:05:59.420 --> 00:06:00.860
If our product that didn't exist.

00:06:01.430 --> 00:06:03.259
So you can we show them how to do it?

00:06:03.290 --> 00:06:05.269
You're like, you can hack your way through it.

00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:08.509
You can use Google sheets per se at years, all the data.

00:06:08.540 --> 00:06:13.339
So we showed the hard way of all of it all the way, and we open source it more or less.

00:06:13.339 --> 00:06:13.610
Right.

00:06:13.850 --> 00:06:16.009
So you can go ahead and do this this way.

00:06:16.069 --> 00:06:18.019
So we have it fully built out for them.

00:06:18.290 --> 00:06:19.879
Or we're like, then we S.

00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:26.509
You know, show him here's the world at the tail end of this conversation of what the world looks like now with our product into the mix.

00:06:26.959 --> 00:06:35.810
So we try to provide as much education as we can throughout, throughout all of this, not necessarily aggressively selling.

00:06:35.990 --> 00:06:39.259
So that's kind of the focus of all the different types of content we produced.

00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:51.620
I love the way you frame that, because I think so often content gets created with a focus on water, product or service does not necessarily how it impacts the end user.

00:06:51.620 --> 00:06:58.040
Once they purchase it or implement it or whatnot, you're really buying something to, to make something better, right.

00:06:58.040 --> 00:06:58.850
To change it.

00:06:58.850 --> 00:07:04.459
Whether it's a want or desire you want that fancy car, you want that nice new sofa or it's.

00:07:04.579 --> 00:07:08.629
A need, you know, you need a new furnace or, you know, you need to find a plumber.

00:07:08.810 --> 00:07:13.009
There there's something that you're trying to accomplish by making a purchase.

00:07:13.009 --> 00:07:14.689
And it's not the features.

00:07:15.620 --> 00:07:16.250
Exactly.

00:07:16.310 --> 00:07:18.589
It's truly at the heart of it.

00:07:18.589 --> 00:07:19.009
If we.

00:07:19.370 --> 00:07:22.730
I mean as marketers, what we really do is we're solving problems, right?

00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:27.920
So at the tail end of all of this, I think we're something that some of us sometimes get lost.

00:07:28.370 --> 00:07:30.139
We're genuinely just coaches.

00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:32.449
I mean, that's, that's our role, right?

00:07:32.449 --> 00:07:34.009
We're like, Hey, what's wrong?

00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:35.750
What is the problem you're going through?

00:07:35.899 --> 00:07:39.079
And we w we want to guide you to the best solution.

00:07:39.410 --> 00:07:41.089
Sometimes it might not even be our product.

00:07:41.720 --> 00:07:46.759
And in a lot of the content in a lot of the marketing, I highly encourage that.

00:07:46.850 --> 00:07:51.589
And like what our team produces is like show alternatives, you know, show, show.

00:07:51.920 --> 00:07:54.500
We this customer might not even be a fit.

00:07:54.740 --> 00:07:59.810
So if they're not a fit, they're going to appreciate the fact that you were able to guide them to another solution.

00:07:59.839 --> 00:08:01.610
That's going to help them in the long run anyways.

00:08:01.610 --> 00:08:01.879
Right.

00:08:02.360 --> 00:08:10.339
So as more open you are, is more understanding and you know, you have empathy towards the customer's problem.

00:08:10.339 --> 00:08:18.259
I think that's when you're actually able to find the right customers that are a good fit, because you don't wanna, you don't want to the customer, that's not a fit because there's just been a churn.

00:08:18.649 --> 00:08:20.240
They're going to end up leaving in a month.

00:08:20.569 --> 00:08:22.639
No, one's going to be happy and so on.

00:08:22.639 --> 00:08:23.300
And self-aware right.

00:08:23.329 --> 00:08:30.709
So the more clear you are on exactly the pain point that they're going through and you can guide them to the right solution.

00:08:30.740 --> 00:08:33.679
It's just going to be an overall fit for both organizations.

00:08:34.309 --> 00:08:36.200
Yeah, I agree completely.

00:08:36.200 --> 00:08:39.409
And I love sort of the word guide there because that's what you're doing.

00:08:39.409 --> 00:08:42.230
You're guiding somebody, uh, you're you're helping them.

00:08:42.230 --> 00:08:45.590
You're providing them with information, but it's their journey, right?

00:08:45.590 --> 00:08:47.750
They have to sort of get there at their own pace.

00:08:47.960 --> 00:08:52.039
And you just want to provide the tools, the information, the value along that chain.

00:08:52.309 --> 00:08:57.679
And you mentioned a few minutes ago, this idea of creating content for blogs and.

00:08:58.009 --> 00:08:59.750
Obviously, I want to talk about SEO.

00:08:59.750 --> 00:09:00.799
We talk a lot about that.

00:09:00.799 --> 00:09:03.350
A lot on this podcast.

00:09:03.679 --> 00:09:06.500
But the two go hand in hand, right?

00:09:06.559 --> 00:09:09.679
The importance of a blog and the importance of SEO.

00:09:09.860 --> 00:09:13.070
So let's, let's take the sort of negative side of it first.

00:09:13.220 --> 00:09:17.720
What do you see many companies doing wrong in terms of their blogging strategy?

00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:19.250
Especially as it relates to SEO.

00:09:20.929 --> 00:09:23.659
On on what they're doing wrong is they're not thinking through it.

00:09:24.110 --> 00:09:32.720
So, so what I've seen is they'll kind of just put a content calendar together and they're like, Hey, let's just start writing about this.

00:09:32.720 --> 00:09:36.529
And eventually it's kind of going to work this kind of the mentality sometimes where I've seen.

00:09:37.100 --> 00:09:38.929
That does never, ever work.

00:09:39.169 --> 00:09:43.730
So just to be, to be quite honest, there's a lot of planning that has to occur.

00:09:44.179 --> 00:09:49.730
And then a lot of thought into kind of what are we going to write about how are we going to write about it?

00:09:50.059 --> 00:09:51.679
How are we going to be unique?

00:09:52.220 --> 00:09:56.750
Like, how are we going to be different than the content that currently exists out there?

00:09:57.110 --> 00:09:57.320
I don't know.

00:09:57.379 --> 00:09:58.429
Why would they care?

00:09:58.789 --> 00:10:02.330
Like why would someone who actually lands on that block here?

00:10:02.360 --> 00:10:04.279
What we're kind of offering to the world?

00:10:04.639 --> 00:10:12.740
And want to read through our mega articles that we're going to be producing or our take on what their current solution of this particular problem is.

00:10:12.740 --> 00:10:13.039
Right.

00:10:13.669 --> 00:10:18.950
So a lot of what we do in the early stages is we break out SEO into three pillars.

00:10:18.950 --> 00:10:21.289
So what we look at is on-site SEO.

00:10:21.559 --> 00:10:24.919
And then what that really is, is the content creation.

00:10:25.460 --> 00:10:28.220
So, what I mean by that is it's the keyword research.

00:10:28.279 --> 00:10:32.690
What's the search intent, you know, what would a user be really looking for?

00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:34.490
Going back to what we discussed earlier?

00:10:34.519 --> 00:10:35.990
What's the true pain point.

00:10:36.409 --> 00:10:38.059
And how are we going to be able to solve it?

00:10:38.570 --> 00:10:42.169
So from onsite, then we would kind of move into technical SEO.

00:10:42.169 --> 00:10:44.720
And this is kind of very critical as well.

00:10:45.049 --> 00:10:50.090
Um, what we're looking at here is just overarching site speed is one element of it.

00:10:50.090 --> 00:10:55.399
How easy can Google really crawl your site and kind of be able to find all of your content.

00:10:55.879 --> 00:11:03.919
Do you have schema in place, which is kind of a markup language that allows you ought to be able to identify where your content and have about isn't provided.

00:11:04.009 --> 00:11:07.129
You know, provide rich snippets on top of different search results.

00:11:07.549 --> 00:11:09.200
And are your images optimized?

00:11:09.259 --> 00:11:10.909
Are they loading really fast?

00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:13.009
Are they friendly for mobile?

00:11:13.039 --> 00:11:16.490
You know, even if you were on 3g and you had an older form.

00:11:16.820 --> 00:11:19.549
Would your site be able to load really, really fast.

00:11:19.759 --> 00:11:28.159
And lastly, do you have accelerated mobile pages, which has, you know, Uh, technology, Google and Judith several years ago, that causes super fast load times.

00:11:28.519 --> 00:11:29.929
So that's on the technical side.

00:11:30.440 --> 00:11:33.620
You can do the first one really well, which is on-site SEO.

00:11:33.620 --> 00:11:36.590
And you can do the second one really well, which is technical SEO.

00:11:36.649 --> 00:11:39.889
But if you're a brand new site, what typically happens is you don't win.

00:11:40.460 --> 00:11:43.789
You're not in those coveted sort of like one, two and three spots.

00:11:44.120 --> 00:11:48.470
So the last pillar that we kind of focus on is sort of like offsite SEO.

00:11:48.649 --> 00:11:50.480
So this is your overall authority.

00:11:51.049 --> 00:11:52.909
Do you have the core of this?

00:11:52.970 --> 00:11:56.000
What we look at is do you have the right relationships?

00:11:56.240 --> 00:12:00.830
So are you partnered with the, you know, sort of the hundred or 200.

00:12:01.250 --> 00:12:05.269
Influencers, because in any given industry, that's all that really matters.

00:12:05.299 --> 00:12:08.570
It's about a hundred or 200 different sites or authorities.

00:12:09.019 --> 00:12:10.519
And are they talk to me about you?

00:12:10.789 --> 00:12:16.399
You have a relationships with them, are you either being featured on their sites and so on and so forth?

00:12:16.490 --> 00:12:21.139
So given all those three pillars are the core of our, most of our SEO strategies that we focus on.

00:12:21.980 --> 00:12:26.330
That's so important because really what we're talking about here is generating organic traffic, right?

00:12:26.330 --> 00:12:35.269
Getting people to come to your website and the higher that you can build that domain authority, the higher you'll rank for the terms that you're going after.

00:12:35.570 --> 00:12:37.460
And I think it's so important to have.

00:12:37.789 --> 00:12:39.350
A plan a you're.

00:12:39.379 --> 00:12:39.860
So right.

00:12:39.860 --> 00:12:48.799
There are many organizations that I've worked with that they have a content calendar and they think that that's a plan, but what is the strategy behind that content calendar?

00:12:48.830 --> 00:12:50.330
What words are they going after?

00:12:50.330 --> 00:12:52.009
How are they building on that?

00:12:52.009 --> 00:12:52.879
Where are they linking to?

00:12:52.909 --> 00:12:53.450
How are they.

00:12:53.509 --> 00:12:55.850
Uh, you know, working to build that authority.

00:12:56.240 --> 00:13:00.769
I think that's, that's so important and a lot of this content.

00:13:01.309 --> 00:13:02.539
Really, if it's done right.

00:13:02.539 --> 00:13:04.250
Can, can be fairly evergreen.

00:13:04.250 --> 00:13:04.970
Don't you agree?

00:13:06.139 --> 00:13:06.769
100%.

00:13:06.830 --> 00:13:07.220
Yeah.

00:13:07.250 --> 00:13:17.720
I mean, at the core of what's happened now and it kind of became more reflective and the recent, um, December core update that came out on Google, which was the first week of December.

00:13:18.289 --> 00:13:20.450
It's really become about search intent.

00:13:20.539 --> 00:13:24.320
So similar to the buyer's journey or the customer journey, right.

00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:27.230
Where we have awareness, consideration decision.

00:13:27.740 --> 00:13:31.220
You have a similar thing happening on the circuit?

00:13:31.279 --> 00:13:32.690
SEO side of things as well.

00:13:32.690 --> 00:13:34.129
You have this notion of searching.

00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:41.629
So what is at the end of the day when someone is typing a keyword, what are they really genuinely care about?

00:13:41.720 --> 00:13:42.679
What is their intent?

00:13:42.740 --> 00:13:44.990
Where are they in their buyer's journey?

00:13:45.350 --> 00:13:50.419
And then how does your content kind of overlay and over-matched at, and how does this kind of solve that?

00:13:50.929 --> 00:14:02.330
So this paradigm that we kind of talk that you've been talking about in your classes as translated in the last two years, very aggressively into Google search results pages as well too.

00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:17.269
It's an interesting too, because when you talk about things that you're doing on your own site, You know, many blogs have the ability to have related posts or, uh, uh, topical areas that you can feature other articles.

00:14:17.480 --> 00:14:20.330
And once you get somebody to your website, you don't want to let them go, right.

00:14:20.330 --> 00:14:24.049
You want to sort of provide them with additional information.

00:14:24.409 --> 00:14:26.000
Uh, that's relevant.

00:14:26.299 --> 00:14:33.710
I I've worked with a company before called Uberflip and they sort of designed resource centers that were all focused on that buyer intent.

00:14:33.740 --> 00:14:42.769
And to just to narrow down the scope of information that was there to be able to show just what they believe the intent of that person visiting would be.

00:14:42.889 --> 00:14:45.350
So they can consume multiple pieces of content.

00:14:45.590 --> 00:14:51.049
And I see a lot of sites that maybe they'll just show their, their last six posts or something.

00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:54.139
Well, they may be completely unrelated to the topic area.

00:14:54.259 --> 00:14:57.259
that somebody came in on and they're missing an opportunity there.

00:14:58.460 --> 00:14:59.659
Agreed 100%.

00:14:59.720 --> 00:15:00.019
Yeah.

00:15:00.019 --> 00:15:02.509
A lot of what we do is this notion of con.

00:15:02.539 --> 00:15:04.850
Sort of called pillar and spoke strategy.

00:15:05.509 --> 00:15:09.950
And what I mean by that is, do you have sort of like a wheel, right?

00:15:09.950 --> 00:15:19.159
So the center of the wheel is, um, more or less, um, your pillar and then you have spokes, which are kind of the elements of the wheel kind of going out.

00:15:19.159 --> 00:15:19.399
Right?

00:15:19.399 --> 00:15:24.620
So that top, this is your topical relevance that you want to kind of talk about.

00:15:24.620 --> 00:15:26.480
It might be an overarching topic.

00:15:26.899 --> 00:15:32.210
So then you you'll bring in people from the different spokes.

00:15:32.870 --> 00:15:34.399
Uh, from the different spokes.

00:15:34.610 --> 00:15:38.000
And once you bring them in your goal is to get them as close to the pillar.

00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:40.580
So then they're educated about all the different ed.

00:15:40.879 --> 00:15:42.470
Pieces of content that you have.

00:15:42.950 --> 00:15:46.009
So it's really about topical authority, right?

00:15:46.250 --> 00:15:48.320
You're speaking to your personas.

00:15:48.679 --> 00:15:54.169
You're bringing them in once they're in there, how do you guide them to the next pieces of content you have?

00:15:54.230 --> 00:15:58.789
You might be able to have your good, you might be able to do it in the middle of that content.

00:15:58.789 --> 00:15:59.000
Right?

00:15:59.000 --> 00:15:59.840
You'll educate them.

00:15:59.899 --> 00:16:00.529
You'll tease them.

00:16:00.559 --> 00:16:02.840
You'll have an inner link or some element of that.

00:16:03.649 --> 00:16:04.820
That doesn't happen all the time.

00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:10.220
What happens is then you have to try to use a catch, catch their email, if you can write.

00:16:10.279 --> 00:16:12.590
So you have some sort of lead magnet.

00:16:12.980 --> 00:16:18.500
Some educational piece, that's going to give them more curiosity or like, Oh, this is interesting.

00:16:18.529 --> 00:16:18.889
Yeah.

00:16:18.919 --> 00:16:20.509
I want to know what this is all about.

00:16:20.509 --> 00:16:22.429
And something simple, something digestible.

00:16:22.429 --> 00:16:35.000
If they read a long form article or something, practical, something that they can take away with them right now and go try or give it to someone in their marketing department or giving someone into their engineering department or whatever solution B.

00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:39.080
And so in exchange, they'll give you their email and that doesn't work.

00:16:39.320 --> 00:16:44.750
Which sometimes, you know, There's a lot of people who won't do that, will you then have done at this stage?

00:16:45.110 --> 00:16:52.279
If you're, if you're really good on the advertising side of things is you'll now start, you know, covering them on social media.

00:16:52.549 --> 00:16:54.049
Maybe it's on LinkedIn.

00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:55.850
Maybe it's on Facebook.

00:16:56.179 --> 00:16:57.259
Cause you've pixeled them.

00:16:57.830 --> 00:17:07.190
So you've been able to pixel them and now in their stream, you can start showing other content that isn't very related to what they already read to you.

00:17:07.700 --> 00:17:09.559
So instead of evolution, right?

00:17:09.559 --> 00:17:11.269
So you, Hey, you read this article.

00:17:11.539 --> 00:17:14.690
This might be something of interest to you and so on and so forth.

00:17:14.690 --> 00:17:18.200
So you start building this sort of digital relationship with them.

00:17:18.710 --> 00:17:20.240
And through your content.

00:17:20.420 --> 00:17:24.019
So that's how sort of content advertising come together, hand in hand.

00:17:24.319 --> 00:17:25.519
No, I think that's great then.

00:17:25.519 --> 00:17:27.019
And I wanted to segue into that.

00:17:27.019 --> 00:17:27.890
So that's perfect.

00:17:27.890 --> 00:17:31.549
I really wanted to talk a little bit about more on the paid side of things.

00:17:31.880 --> 00:17:39.440
So, you know, we've always heard, we've heard about, you know, search engine marketing, you talking about retargeting here with Facebook pixels.

00:17:39.710 --> 00:17:41.150
So let's break these down.

00:17:41.150 --> 00:17:43.160
Let's talk a little bit above more.

00:17:43.400 --> 00:17:56.059
Uh, because you started down this path of retargeting and really what that means, you know, this is this whole idea of I go and look at a pair of shoes on a website, and then I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram.

00:17:56.059 --> 00:18:00.019
And all of a sudden I see that same pair of shoes or that same company being advertised.

00:18:00.019 --> 00:18:00.230
Right?

00:18:00.529 --> 00:18:02.299
This is, this is retargeting.

00:18:03.200 --> 00:18:09.019
We started to go down this path of retargeting and the, uh, the importance of that and, and what that can really mean for your business.

00:18:09.019 --> 00:18:17.599
So just explain a little bit more about how these pixels work, how you can do retargeting, whether it's, uh, through Facebook or through other services.

00:18:18.559 --> 00:18:19.339
No, of course.

00:18:19.339 --> 00:18:19.759
So, yeah.

00:18:19.759 --> 00:18:21.500
So on retargeting side of things.

00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:22.039
So what.

00:18:22.940 --> 00:18:33.049
So obviously you have SEO, which is kind of working and kind of getting going, but the core of what you're trying to do with your SEO strategy is you're trying to bring people into your content.

00:18:33.049 --> 00:18:39.680
So you can begin this top of the level of awareness type of it, where if you, if you're at that stage of the buyer journey, right.

00:18:40.220 --> 00:18:43.880
So now once they've landed on your site and we talked about earlier, they get pixeled.

00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:52.250
So all the platforms from Google to Twitter, from Facebook, do you kind of just name it?

00:18:52.279 --> 00:18:56.750
They all have this JavaScript code or pixel that you can put on your site.

00:18:57.230 --> 00:19:13.069
And once you've pixel bees users, where you can then do is you can start building sort of boosted posts or, you know, other posts that you've done and start if you're really, really good at it, start creating sequential posts.

00:19:13.369 --> 00:19:17.990
So will you start doing similar to what you're doing in the marketing automation side of things?

00:19:17.990 --> 00:19:19.250
You can do it on the paid media.

00:19:19.670 --> 00:19:24.950
You can say, all right, I'm going to run this particular post for a brief period.

00:19:25.099 --> 00:19:26.809
Once they've seen my article.

00:19:26.839 --> 00:19:27.140
Right?

00:19:27.140 --> 00:19:28.640
So this is how we normally do.

00:19:28.789 --> 00:19:29.539
We'll organize it.

00:19:29.539 --> 00:19:33.410
And we'll say for the first seven days, That they'd been on our site.

00:19:33.470 --> 00:19:41.930
If they'd been on these category of articles, this is a natural next article for them to read whatever that article might be.

00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:43.279
Then we'll move on.

00:19:43.279 --> 00:19:46.880
And we'll say the following seven days for some seven to 14 days.

00:19:47.150 --> 00:19:58.549
Now, if they've read that article and they've read this article, Why don't we give them a resource or a guide or something along the lines of that to kind of build, bring the relationship a little bit deeper.

00:19:58.940 --> 00:20:00.170
In exchange for the email.

00:20:00.170 --> 00:20:00.470
Right.

00:20:00.710 --> 00:20:02.539
So then we'll kind of showcase that.

00:20:03.230 --> 00:20:08.150
You know, if they don't react to that from that we kind of start showing customer testimonials.

00:20:08.269 --> 00:20:17.390
So we'll now start talking about, here are other customers that I've worked with us and, you know, th these are the stories that they're sharing and so on and so forth.

00:20:17.809 --> 00:20:18.859
And that doesn't work.

00:20:18.859 --> 00:20:20.420
Then we start moving onto press.

00:20:20.450 --> 00:20:24.410
So we start showcasing different press and stories and so on and so forth.

00:20:24.500 --> 00:20:24.589
Yeah.

00:20:25.460 --> 00:20:29.539
Yeah, I think that's really interesting, you know, uh, yesterday.

00:20:29.809 --> 00:20:37.700
I was going through and looking at some meal delivery services, I thought, well, that might be kind of nice to do in the new year.

00:20:37.940 --> 00:20:38.869
Uh, work with somebody.

00:20:38.869 --> 00:20:41.660
I think I was looking at, uh, at daily harvest.

00:20:42.170 --> 00:20:53.660
And today when I logged into my Instagram, You know, all the advertising posts that were showing in my Instagram feed we're around these meal delivery services.

00:20:53.839 --> 00:21:01.160
So not just the daily harvest, which is what I started with, but a bunch of different companies, some of which I had never heard of before.

00:21:01.519 --> 00:21:20.119
And that's a real benefit as well is not only can you take your brand and keep popping it around the internet in different places where your potential buyer would be, but you can use the interest, the buying intent that the Fire has demonstrated and then insert your brand.

00:21:21.140 --> 00:21:26.359
Into their feeds and whatnot, where they might not have even known that you offered the, the service.

00:21:26.390 --> 00:21:31.369
So you can kind of piggyback on that original interest and get your information out there.

00:21:31.369 --> 00:21:32.690
It's incredibly powerful.

00:21:32.690 --> 00:21:34.130
The targeting that you can do now.

00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:35.509
Oh, and social.

00:21:35.539 --> 00:21:35.779
Yeah.

00:21:35.809 --> 00:21:41.269
So what's happened in obviously is all of their machine learning algorithms protect.

00:21:41.269 --> 00:21:42.920
So we are now where we're talking about nurturing.

00:21:42.950 --> 00:21:45.559
Now we're going to talk about discovery is kind of what you're highlighting.

00:21:46.069 --> 00:21:59.119
So a lot of the machine learning algorithms, particularly for Facebook, even Google discovery, which is a really cool platform that a lot of people aren't using, which is kind of your stream on your phone, Twitter and so on and so forth.

00:21:59.150 --> 00:22:01.400
I've gotten really, really smart.

00:22:01.940 --> 00:22:15.170
So you can set up not these nurturing retargeting campaigns, but there's these true out awareness, you know, recruiting campaigns or discovery campaigns, and use the data and start building off of your pixels.

00:22:15.200 --> 00:22:16.069
Very much.

00:22:16.099 --> 00:22:17.509
Look alike audiences.

00:22:17.839 --> 00:22:22.519
So you can even take your own core customers and you can start building these different lookalike audiences.

00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:27.799
And what that you're able to go out and target and bring new customers into your journey as well.

00:22:27.799 --> 00:22:32.480
So you can say, all right, I know that I have a sequence that always works.

00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:32.750
Right.

00:22:32.809 --> 00:22:40.549
I know that if they read this particular article, then they read this article and they read this article, whatever the steps are, right.

00:22:40.579 --> 00:22:41.990
Some BDD it's a lot longer.

00:22:42.019 --> 00:22:42.380
It's not.

00:22:42.769 --> 00:22:43.670
It's not like B2C.

00:22:44.390 --> 00:22:49.670
We would all love to happen on the first interaction that, Hey, it becomes a customer, but we all know that that's not the case.

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:59.720
So once you've kind of organized and figured out what this path or this funnel is, you start kind of moving people throughout that path and have different elements of the strategy.

00:23:00.980 --> 00:23:01.309
Yeah.

00:23:01.339 --> 00:23:04.910
It's the tools that are available are, are pretty amazing.

00:23:05.150 --> 00:23:11.930
And you know, one of the things that we always talk about when we talk about organic content and SEO, Is it takes time, right?

00:23:11.930 --> 00:23:15.470
You have to, you have to give it time to sort of work its way up the rankings.

00:23:15.500 --> 00:23:16.609
You have to be consistent.

00:23:16.609 --> 00:23:21.140
You have to see what content is working and what isn't and maybe refine the content.

00:23:21.140 --> 00:23:26.029
Uh, that isn't, but what do you tell customers on the sort of the advertising front?

00:23:26.359 --> 00:23:40.430
I know it's great to do some quick promotions, but for companies that want to get into paid advertising, do you suggest that they're very consistent with it, that they make a steady investment month after month in advertising programs?

00:23:41.390 --> 00:23:42.019
I do.

00:23:42.019 --> 00:23:42.319
Yeah.

00:23:42.319 --> 00:23:43.250
So what we know.

00:23:43.640 --> 00:23:49.130
So, what we normally say on advertising is you kind of need a minimum budget span, right?

00:23:49.190 --> 00:23:51.230
You need enough to learn without.

00:23:51.650 --> 00:24:02.509
Having that budget, you're not going to be able to iterate and learn and kind of quickly move through the iteration cycle to kind of understand what's going on and how you can kind of.

00:24:03.079 --> 00:24:05.240
Uh, improve your overall targeting.

00:24:05.299 --> 00:24:08.599
So it might be your customer targeting and might be your creative.

00:24:08.630 --> 00:24:11.240
It might be your journey and so on and so forth.

00:24:11.599 --> 00:24:14.450
So in advertising, consistency's very critical.

00:24:15.289 --> 00:24:15.740
Yeah.

00:24:16.069 --> 00:24:17.779
No, it's, uh, I, I agree with that.

00:24:17.779 --> 00:24:20.299
I think you've got to experiment.

00:24:20.299 --> 00:24:28.569
You've got to try different things there are some great tools out there, like an addict espresso, which, you know, allow you to do multiple variations of an advertisement.

00:24:28.750 --> 00:24:39.250
See which one is getting the most, uh, um, interaction and then saying, you know, this is the winning advertisement and I'm sure there are others as well, but it's all about experimentation, right?

00:24:39.250 --> 00:24:39.609
Sometimes

00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:40.299
far.

00:24:40.299 --> 00:24:40.569
Yeah.

00:24:41.259 --> 00:24:43.660
I variant multi-band and testing.

00:24:44.200 --> 00:24:45.670
Added ad espresso, a great tool.

00:24:45.670 --> 00:24:47.829
It's one of the tools we use in the early days.

00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:53.259
Um, candidly, a lot of what they do has already evolved into the Facebook platform itself.

00:24:53.799 --> 00:25:00.609
So Facebook now has like dynamic creatives where it does that for you automatically, or you can run multiple headlines, right?

00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:09.789
So a lot of like what we do, and that's why there's a minimum budgets friend that's kind of necessary is you're testing the headlines in your test.

00:25:09.849 --> 00:25:15.099
You're testing the descriptions, you're testing the imagery and so on and so forth.

00:25:15.130 --> 00:25:19.359
And you're not just testing little small variations of it.

00:25:19.809 --> 00:25:23.680
While you're really testing as concepts and themes and topics.

00:25:24.039 --> 00:25:32.049
What you're really trying to figure out is, Hey, at the core, I know this is my customer persona, but what is the trigger?

00:25:32.049 --> 00:25:33.400
That's gonna move them.

00:25:33.519 --> 00:25:36.640
That's going to actually cause them to act and do something.

00:25:36.670 --> 00:25:38.200
What's going to be the emotional.

00:25:38.710 --> 00:25:41.650
Emotional movement that you're going to be able to connect with them.

00:25:42.130 --> 00:25:43.299
So th that w you.

00:25:43.569 --> 00:25:44.319
Everyone's busy.

00:25:44.470 --> 00:25:48.250
Everyone's streaming very packed and you're at the core of it.

00:25:48.279 --> 00:25:53.109
What you want to do is you want to connect with them and you want to be able to through your messaging.

00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:57.640
Cause them to collect or interact or watch your video or whatever it might be.

00:25:57.640 --> 00:26:01.569
So you can begin bringing them into your world into what content you've produced.

00:26:01.839 --> 00:26:05.170
So you can start beginning the whole process of moving them down the funnel.

00:26:06.490 --> 00:26:06.910
Yeah.

00:26:06.940 --> 00:26:19.660
And you know, I'm sure that there are some, uh, startups out there, some younger businesses who aren't really doing a whole lot around paid advertising, maybe have just done a few things around SEO and, you know, listening to us talk today.

00:26:19.809 --> 00:26:21.009
They might come away with it.

00:26:21.069 --> 00:26:22.660
Oh man, this sounds pretty complicated.

00:26:22.660 --> 00:26:24.400
There's a lot of things to do.

00:26:24.640 --> 00:26:27.160
And there are some things that are complicated about it, right.

00:26:27.160 --> 00:26:29.380
And you can end up spending money.

00:26:29.769 --> 00:26:32.109
In ways that aren't as effective.

00:26:32.109 --> 00:26:49.450
So, you know, I just sort of want to close today by talking about the real benefit of working with experts, whether it's an SEO expert, whether it's an advertising expert, people who really understand content creation, because you want to get the most for your advertising or your investment dollars.

00:26:49.450 --> 00:26:49.720
Right.