InnovaBuzz Episode #41 – David Jenyns: Authority Content
Authority Content with David Jenyns
In this episode number 41 of the InnovaBuzz podcast, my guest is David Jenyns, Founder of systemHUB.com, who talks to me about his new book Authority Content.
David has been on the podcast on a couple of occasions, telling us about his business (Episode 27) and about systems and processes (Episode 36). Today’s podcast is all about content marketing with a system – Authority Content. It’s the subject of David’s book and you can get a free Kindle copy of that book from August 11, so stay tuned later on in the interview to find out how.
Listen to the Podcast
If you’re not creating high-quality content, the ROI (return on investment) that you get on the money you’re spending with SEO just keeps decreasing.
David Jenyns
Show Highlights
Some of the highlights of this episode include:
- Authority Content is a structured process to build a business’s brand, credibility, and sales.
- If you’re not creating high-quality content, you’re really wasting your time on any other SEO efforts
- Beginning with video recordings of events or other content, you can produce up to six months’ worth of content to publish across the web.
- If you answer all the questions your leads might have, before they even pick up the phone to talk to you, you change the buying dynamic and their conversations with you become about how you can help them, rather than answering concerns.
- By constantly creating and publishing content, you are seen as a thought leader and it keeps you front of mind with your audience, as they see you as a helpful resource.
- The Authority Content process is adaptable to the front of the sales funnel, to the onboarding stage or to existing customers. By providing content that helps and appeals to your audience, you become their go-to person for that topic and they become your raving fans.
First and foremost you create that helpful content and you’ll find that SEO tends to happen naturally when you’re creating great content.
David Jenyns
Reach Out
You can reach out and thank David via SystemHUB.com.
Links
- Authority Content Website
- InnovaBuzz Ep 27 – David Jenyns
- InnovaBuzz Ep 36 – Systems and Processes with Troy Dean and David Jenyns
- SystemHub Website
- A Better Life with Simple Systems – David Jenyns on TedX Talks
Full Transcript
Click to Read…
Intro:
Hi, I’m Jürgen Strauss from Innovabiz. Welcome to Episode No 41 of the InnovaBuzz Podcast – designed to help smart businesses with an interest in innovation become even more innovative.
In this episode, we have a return guest – David Jenyns founder of systemHUB.com. David is here to talk about his new book called Authority Content – it’s a systematic, step by step guide to building your brand, sales and credibility. It launches on August 11, 2016 and if you are quick you can even get a free Kindle version.
To find out more about Authority Content and his book, let’s get into the Innovation Hive and get the Buzz from David Jenyns.
Interview:
Hi, I’m Jürgen Strauss from Innovabiz, and I’m really excited to have here with me on today’s episode of the Innovabuzz Podcast, from Melbourne in Australia here David Jenyns of Melbourne SEO Services and Melbourne Video Productions. Now we’ve had David on the podcast on a couple of occasions, actually once on your own, David, and once with Troy Dean talking about systems and processes. Today’s podcast is going to be a little bit different because David has a new book coming out fairly soon, on the 11th of August it launches, it’s called Authority Content, and it’s going to be available … In fact, there’s a way that you can get a free Kindle copy of the book, so stay tuned later on in the interview to find out more about that. So, welcome back to the podcast, David.
David:
Ah, fantastic. Thanks for having me back, Jürgen. And, yeah, I really enjoyed the last couple of episodes that we’ve done together, so I’m sure we’ll cover some great stuff on this call as well.
Jürgen:
Okay, now often I ask my guests about what they wanted to be as a child and so on. We know that you wanted to be a cook when you were a young child, and you love cooking, so I’ll refer people to the last episode.
David:
Great memory!
Jürgen:
Please go back to the Episode 27 of the podcast to find out all about that. But as I said, today we really want to talk about your Authority Content book and …. Give us a brief snapshot of what the book is all about.
David:
Yeah, so Authority Content really is the process to build a business’s brand, credibility, and sales, so as you mentioned at the start, we run a company called Melbourne SEO Services, and we just find that a lot of businesses struggle when it comes to creating content. And to win online, you need a content strategy and it needs to be tightly meshed together with a very solid SEO strategy. For that to happen, most business owners, they just can’t find the time or the space. They’re busy with their nine to five, servicing clients, making their business run, let alone trying to find some space to create a great blog post or a video or some content that we’d share. So we developed a process and a system that started off first for ourselves, and then we used it for our clients, and now we’re now kind of formalizing that because I’ve been doing it for years. And really systemized it. I think that probably comes out from one of the earlier podcasts that we had together. I’m all about systems and processes and how do you get it down to a real fine art where the business owner is just involved in a very small piece of the content creation and then you can have a team that follows processes and procedures behind them to basically roll it out en masse and potentially have a huge amount of high-quality, very engaging content that captures the attention of your target market and then starts to engage them because it’s helpful and useful long enough that it builds enough trust and then you can make a sale. So, it’s really a complete marketing system.
Jürgen:
Yeah, and the book … I mean, I love the book because it outlines the system from start to finish and there’s how to’s and there’s actions at the end of each chapter, so it really is a complete system. I always tell my clients that publishing valuable content is probably the most effective sales tool or sales process that they can do online, and one of the objections usually is, “I don’t have time to do that,” and I think what you’ve outlined is a really neat way to leverage time in generating a lot of content. So, do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?
David:
Well, that was the biggest thing. We just found with clients, when we started working with them with SEO. SEO starts to have these days a diminishing return, depending on the size of the site, but after I’d probably say five or six months, if you’re not creating high-quality content, the ROI that you get on the money you’re spending with SEO just keeps decreasing. So, you really do need to create that content, and we had trouble getting clients to do it. And we tested getting different content writers and people outside of the business to try and create the content, but for the content to really be engaging and maintain the business’s voice, it needs to come from within. So, we developed this way to batch content creation, and we do it almost like in a one-day format. We talk in terms of a workshop, but it doesn’t need to be a workshop like a traditional sense of the word “workshop” where you’ve got people sitting down at tables and chairs and notebooks and writing notes. So, we’ve done it for a lot of different companies, it could just be a group of staff, it could be some of your best clients that come together, and you get them all in one place on one day and then you deliver as much helpful content as you can, answering frequently asked questions, talking about how your business does what it does, explaining the philosophy behind it, and that might be presented by the business owner or key members of the staff, and a little bit of thinking up front and a little bit of planning means you present it all in one day. And it becomes almost like a forced constraint because you pick a line in the sand and you say, “Right, we’re presenting on this day, and we’re going to create a lot of valuable content all in one day,” and when you know you’ve got a room full of people that are going to be arriving or just a handful of people, it forces to have to have that content ready to present. And that’s probably one of the real keys is to almost like lock yourself into doing it, and by doing it, just by batching that content creation, in one day you might create three or six months’ worth of content because you start with the video content, but that can be chopped up and repurposed in many different ways.
Jürgen:
Yeah, that’s …. And I remember you telling me quite a while ago, in terms of using videos, so videoing things that you do anyway, and then turning that into content, which is not any extra work because if you’re answering questions on email, for example, or if you’re explaining a work process or explaining a tool to somebody, then videoing that is just a little bit of extra technology, if you like, and then you have the content that you can use in a whole range of different ways. And I thought that in itself was a great tool, but you’ve, in the book you talk about how you can then leverage that in a whole variety of different ways.
David:
Yeah. It’s one of those things. We’re frequently asked questions in this whole marketing system. I talk about it in terms of generating traffic and improving conversion. It really ticks so many different boxes when you go through this process. I mean, just answering those FAQs like you talked about, and that’s just one piece of this larger strategy. But just by doing that, it really becomes a time-saving tool because anytime someone reaches out to your business, you’ve got a lead or a prospect and they’ve got a question, you might answer them over the phone or maybe one of your staff members does, and then they follow up with a “Hey, can I grab your email address? One of the teams has actually answered this question in a little bit more detail, and I’d like to shoot you a link through the YouTube video.” That’s a great extra little tool to help with the conversion, and even if the person doesn’t get to the point of submitting an inquiry, and they’re just navigating around on your website, chances are they’re going to have the same questions. A lot of prospects and leads all have the same questions. So if you can answer those questions before they ever pick up the phone and talk to you, you really start to change that buying dynamic, because then they’re picking up the phone to place the order, not necessarily to ask some of these frequently asked questions. So that’s kind of really at that pointy end of the funnel, but it’s a very important piece.
Jürgen:
Exactly. And also it does save you time because you don’t have to spend time on the phone explaining it repeatedly. You can simply point to where you published a video or a blog post about it.
David:
Yes. Like the way that we break up the book, I’ve got this three-step process I call the Three P’s, which is Present, Product, and then Promote. So that first phase, the Present phase, is kind of what we talked about, it’s batching that content creation into one day. Then that second phase kind of dovetails into what you were talking where you might point someone on the website. So, the Product phase is where you set up a section on your website. Now depending on your type of business, there’s two ways that you can go. If you have a service-based business, you might end up creating a digital product that you sell, and it might be, “Hey, here’s how we do what we do,” and it becomes a perfect down-sell for those people who might not be able to afford your services. It’s kind of like a home study version, and it can also be a great tool to train new staff members when they join your team to find out more about your process. So, that’s one way to go. Now, another way to go, if you’re selling either high-ticket items or maybe a product, so I’ll give you an example. We worked with a swimming pool manufacturer to apply this strategy. Now, they’re not going to create a home study course on how to build your own swimming pool. So, what we did with them for the Authority Content is we created a buyer’s guide to purchasing a swimming pool, answering questions like “How much does a swimming pool cost?”, “When should I start planning for a swimming pool?”, “How close can I build it to my house?”, “Should I go for fiberglass or should I go for concrete?” And we just took people through that buying journey, right at the start when they’re started thinking about purchasing a swimming pool, we batched all of that content creation into one day, and then we loaded it onto their website as a free resource. So, those videos get chopped up, they get transcribed, they get turned into blog posts, and then we have a master blog post that connects everything together so it’s in a logical order and makes it easy for someone to consume. Now that’s the second stage, is that Product stage of someone either for use on their website or they promote the product. And then the final stage is the Promote stage, and that’s, okay, you’re sitting on a mountain of content now, how can we use that to generate traffic and give you something that engages your audience. So, you then take that content and you chop it up into little pieces and you’ve got YouTube videos, you get them transcribed, you split out the audio, and then you can take those and they can start to get shared on your social media, then upload it to YouTube, different PDF sharing sites, you can turn some of the content into like infographics and things like that. Basically, that right there, if you batch that content creation, you don’t have to publish all of this content in one go, you might then drip it out over a period of three or six months or even longer. You might have one or two videos and articles that get released every week. What a great way to be continually putting out high-quality content that can be very much systemized and another team member can do it, so you as the business owner don’t get caught up in it. You just create the content and then the team can help share it, and then you can use that to show that you’re a bit of a thought leader and constantly in front of your audience, which keeps you at the front of their mind and they see you as a helpful resource. So when it does come to the point of them wanting to buy your products or services or needing your products and services, you’re front of mind. And that’s really what it’s about. Now that’s at broad brush strokes, the strategy. There’s a lot of thinking that goes on behind that. We layer really smart SEO over the top of that and we identify which pieces of content are doing well and we double down on those, and we try and boost that content on social media. There’s a lot more to it, but at the broad brush strokes, if you understand just the Present, Product, and Promote and you follow that framework, it can be really a big game changer for a lot of businesses.
Jürgen:
What I really like, there’s a lot I like about it, but what I really like particularly in the book is that you’ve got it as a step-by-step process. And for somebody like me that understands some of the background technology, I think it’s pretty easy to follow, but I suspect that even people that at least are a little bit internet savvy might find it pretty easy to follow. But then there’s options where you obviously help people in implementing the whole system as well. As you say, the most valuable thing that the business owner can do is actually create the content.
David:
Yeah. And I did that really, particularly where I wanted this to be a complete user manual on how to deploy this strategy. And I’ve proven it works. I know it works. It gets fantastic results. And this is something that I’ve even suggested to some business owners: How about this for an idea. Go to a university, get a final-year marketing student as they’re coming out, pay them $30 grand to come and work in your business for six months, say, “Hey, read this book and deploy this strategy.” That could be a fantastic investment and be your marketing strategy for the next year. So, it’s designed in a way that it can be handed to someone and they can just run with it. And there’s even sections, there’s a couple of chapters that might get a little bit techie, there’s only or two of those chapters, and by design, I said, Hey, this is written in a way that you can hand it straight to your web developer and say “Can you fix these?” So, I wanted to make it completely all encompassing. As I was writing this, a few different versions, I know, Jürgen, I sent you some of the early copies, but I had also sent it to a couple of other marketing experts to get their thoughts. And I had one of them that suggested, “Hey, my suggestion is you pull out some of these really important bits and make your book useful but incomplete so that they then have to come to you.” And for me, that didn’t quite sit right, like, that’s not my philosophy. My philosophy is just put your best stuff out there. There’s going to be certain people that they wouldn’t ever work with you anyway, so let’s try and help those, and then for others, there will be certain people that will go, “Oh yeah, this helpful. I can see the methodology. I just want Dave to do it.” So, it’s really just about putting your best stuff out there, and you’ll find you attract the right people to you. And you help a larger audience. So, I made a very strong decision at that point, and I pushed back and said look that’s not my strategy here. And I’m glad I did it. I’m already starting to see the benefits of getting some great feedback on the book.
Jürgen:
It’s interesting, because I have that kind of discussion a lot with clients all the time, or potential clients. And I’ll say publish your stuff, give away the information, help people that are your ideal audience. And there’s often the objection, “If I tell them everything, they’ll do it themselves.” And I will go back and I’ll say, “Well, then they’ll love you for it,” and those people that want to do it themselves are probably never going to be your client anyway. And even if they are, they’ll probably micromanage you, so it might not be fun. So you’d prefer to work with other people who say this person knows what he’s doing, he knows the process, I agree with the process, I love everything he does, but where I add most value in this case is creating the content, so let’s get him to do the system for us.
David:
I think, one of the things that I think why we work so well together is our marketing philosophies are so closely aligned. And I know we were talking even just before the recording here, and there were parts where you were kind of like, Hey, there’s sections in the book that I’d written an article on earlier in my blog a good couple of years ago. And it’s almost like our thinking is very close together on this. I think you can’t provide too much value for your target market. That’s how you get them to know, like, and trust you, how you get raving fans, and a percentage of them will work with you, and a percentage of them won’t. But you’re speaking to a very specific audience. One of the things that we do with Authority Content, it’s very important to get that target market. I was working, we’re working with a domestic cleaner at the moment, we’re just about finished their application of Authority Content, and they had already started down the track of creating some content for, like, video content, and I was looking at some of the videos and they were creating videos like how to clean the grout from your shower tiles, and how to iron the perfect shirt. And I said to them the person who is on YouTube searching for how do I iron the perfect shirt or how do I clean the grout in my tiles is not your target market; that’s the person who’s doing it themselves. I said now when we are doing Authority Content, we’re going for things like how do I prepare my house before a cleaner comes and should I feel guilty about getting a cleaner, and those are the types of questions that our target market is asking just prior to them wanting to make a purchasing decision for their service. And we’re creating helpful, useful content that attracts the fish, so it’s very important right up front, one of the big things you need to do is get very clear on who we’re trying to attract, because this content, to use a metaphor it’s like going fishing, and the content becomes the bait that attracts the fish, and we need to make sure that we’re putting out the right bait, otherwise you won’t end up attracting the right people.
Jürgen:
I’ve been doing quite a few workshops recently on web design. We’ve got one coming up on how to write blogs, how to produce content, and every one I start with who’s your audience, let’s figure out who your audience is. And I’ve actually, I’ve sort of built a little process around that. And it’s quite funny because in some of the workshops people say, “It took you a long time to get to the topic,” for example on the website, it took us a whole morning before, it was after lunch before we actually got on the computer and started doing some hands-on stuff on the website. And I said, that’s because you weren’t ready. You didn’t know who you were talking to. Which is really important, and that’s the same message that you’re giving here, isn’t it.
David:
Yes, it’s Marketing 101. And it’s so funny how quickly people skip over that sort of thing as well that they just think ah yeah, got it, and they don’t really give it much thought. But if you keep going back to some of these marketing fundamentals and basics and really understanding them at a very deep level, it really does change the way that you market and the way that you’re positioning your message. And a lot of times people will say yeah, but my target market, I can sell my product and service to everybody, you know, this blue widget, I think everybody needs it. But the way marketing works and is most effective is when you think about that exact perfect person that you can market to, you tailor the message to them so when they hear that message they go “this product or service is exactly what it is that I’m looking for.” Now sometimes when other people that fall outside of that exact target market sees some of that content and engage with it, it doesn’t turn them off, it doesn’t get them to go “Wow, I’m never going to do business with them,” and it probably will still sell that other audience, but it speaks even more strongly and clearly to the exact person.
So, you get very clear on who are your easiest clients to work with, who are the clients that spend the most money with you, who are the ones that you want to work with on an ongoing basis and create the content that’s very relevant to them. And then if by doing that then when someone comes across it, but they just, because the world is so noisy and there’s so much information out there, when the message is very clear, it stands out like a shining light, and they say, “Ah, yes, this is exactly what I’m looking for.” And this idea of Authority Content, we talk about applying it at the front of the funnel, that’s one place where it can be used to get people into the front of your business. But we also use it, this same process, for other businesses once people are further into the funnel. You just have to think about this is just a real way to create high-quality content and batch it all in one go. So let’s say someone actually has become your client at this point. You could still go through the Authority Content process, once you’ve learned it, you’ll just start to see where it can be applied. And you could create an onboarding sequence for your clients. So they have a full experience of, depends on what your product and service is.
I’ll use the swimming pool manufacturer again. Once someone’s actually purchased a swimming pool, there’s probably things that they need to know along the journey of that swimming pool getting built. And also post the building, like how do I look after my swimming pool and continue to maintain it to get the best results and be really happy with the swimming pool. You could create or follow the Authority Content process with the very specific purpose of creating content that appeals to them, and bonds that person to you so they become your raving fan. And once they’ve got their swimming pool, they start taking photos and posting it on social media and sharing it with their friends and telling them, “Hey, this is the best decision that we ever made and it’s brought our family closer together.” Like you can take someone on that journey and educate them on how they can become your raving fan.
So, what Authority Content is really about it’s a process for attracting a certain audience to you and bonding them closer together. Now we talk at front of the funnel, but it really can be used in many different places. I’ve even got another person who’s actually planning on using it to attract partners into their business. So, for example, what they do is they’ve got a service where they want to actually, because they handle the financial side of businesses and sort of strategy that way. What they’re trying to do is they figure, right, if we can work with lawyers and some other people who already have our target market, that would be a great way then for those partners to introduce us into their clients. So, they’re creating an Authority Content process, we’re running a little workshop that they’re using to appeal to those partners. So, they’re running the workshop with their target marketing those partners, they’ll get them in, they’ll educate them on the process, give them the full tools and everything that they need, and then those partners will go back into their businesses and then introduce their services through their clients. So it’s again a different way to think of it, but the process is still the same.
Jürgen:
That’s really good. And again, because you’ve laid it out in the book so clearly as a process, it does give people the opportunity to think outside the box like that example you’ve just given us, which is great.
David:
I might add one more thing there. This is something that I was very conscious of about writing the book. I didn’t want to write a book that would very quickly date. If I mentioned a few different platforms and said, alright, once you’ve created this content, you need to start sharing it on Snapchat and you have to post it on Instagram and you have to post it on, and mention all of these different social media accounts that may or may not exist in the next few years. So, I wrote it in a slightly different way. I thought more about fundamental principles, and it doesn’t really matter which platforms still exists when at the time of listening to this podcast or reading the book. The methodology is still the same because you’re batching high-quality, helpful content, which is a great, well, it’s content marketing, and it’s a great way to engage your prospects in your target market. And then it’s about how you share that around the web. And if you understand the fundamentals, the platforms become irrelevant. You follow the process and substitute whatever currently is getting the attention of your audience.
Jürgen:
Yes, it is a fundamental, really and it reminds me because when I was in the corporate world, and this goes back to the mid-1990s, so even before Google existed, so things have changed quite a lot since then. And we were selling a fairly high tech product in the B2B space, and we weren’t gaining traction with it. And one of the reasons was that it was quite a complex product to actually make work properly. And at the time I was dealing with another company that was putting out all these brilliant brochures, booklets actually, and you could get these booklets at the trade shows and so on, about their products, and I thought this is great stuff. It had graphs, it had instructions on how to use the product, it had all this sort of stuff. And they were being quite successful with that product line that they were selling, and I thought that’s a model. And so we started, we actually, believe it or not, we started running workshops training our clients on how to use these products, our products, and then we started putting together documentation, and we started putting together training. Now a little bit later, around about 1997, we came up with the idea, and this was more general, it was a decorative paint business, we came up with the idea of building an authority website, and we actually used that term. And that website still exists today, paintquality.com, if anybody wants to have a look. And as a result the product line that we had, started taking off like crazy. We transformed the sales of paint because that was about educating the end user, and the products that we had went into paint. So the philosophy worked back then, even prior to introducing the internet aspect of it. And that whole lesson shaped my philosophy on all of this, and so it’s really just transforming that into an internet world, isn’t it?
David:
Yes. And I think that idea of the way you were helping people consume and understand your product, that’s the way to do it if you’re selling a product. Where we’re working with a horse supplies company at the moment, and when we were going through the thought process about how we’re going to apply Authority Content with them, we thought well let’s create a helpful resource guide on the A to Z of horse healthcare and looking after your horse. So, we are talking about how to groom, and how to put on horseshoes, and what you should be feeding your horse, and what type of rug you should be putting on, and choosing the right saddle. And then as we’re going through this process, it’s almost like product placement. We can then start to talk about Horseland’s products. And it’s a great way to educate people that’s helpful and we get to show them how to consume Horseland’s products and gets them in front of it, but it also becomes a very sharable resource through the horse community. So the goal is to have them as kind of like the #1 resource guide for the equestrian industry. That idea of trying to be helpful, it’s never going to date. And it helps with that consumption, and it kind of really dovetails into the way that you talk about marketing that business as well, the paint supplies business.
Jürgen:
That’s right. I do want to come back to something that you mentioned early in the book, because that was the one that immediately struck a chord with me. In fact, I went back to a blog post I posted awhile ago and thought I could have said that, and I hope I haven’t used the same words, and they’re not quite the same words but it’s the same sentiment, and you’re an expert in SEO, so you run a company that does SEO. And I keep telling people don’t get too hung up on the SEO particularly about what’s my keyword density on that blog post and that kind of stuff because it is a bit of the law of diminishing returns, and you get much more value out of actually being helpful and putting helpful content on there. And the fallacy is that but what about Google? So, you kind of address that really well, right.
David:
Well, it’s one of those things that if you can align your goals with Google’s goals, you’ll always stay on the right side of Google. Now what’s Google’s goal? Google’s goal is to provide the best, most helpful, relevant results when someone comes to their search engines. So, if someone comes to Google, they’ve got a question, and Google wants to give the answer in the least number of clicks. So, if you can help Google achieve that goal, they will reward you with higher traffic and higher rankings. Now the way to determining what’s helpful and useful at the moment is monitoring user metrics. So, when people actually visit your website, how long do they stick? Do they get there and hit the back button straight away? If someone does that, what sort of signal does that send to Google? Well, that sends to Google that hey the person probably didn’t find their answer and they’ve come back to the search results. So that then Google goes, “Well, that’s not a helpful result. Let’s push that further down the search results.” So, if people start off with the primary objective of trying to game the system and thinking, “Right, I’m going to try and stuff a keyword in here and here because I think Google is going to like that,” but it actually pulls away from the user experience, long term that’s going to come back to bite you. You’re much better off optimizing for that user experience first. Not only is that what Google wants, but also if you think about it logically, it’s the person doing the browsing who is the person who is going to pull out their wallet and make a purchase. The Google spider or Google bot isn’t going to make a purchase of your product. So you need to be optimizing for the user first, and then SEO second. And I think if you start to think about it that way and think about it logically …. Now, you can still inject some smart SEO into that, I’m not suggesting that you completely give away the idea of SEO. Thinking about what people are actually searching and making sure that phrase is mentioned in the title tag, the description, and a couple of times on the page, that’s all very smart strategy. And when you’re sharing any content across the world if you’re sharing it on Facebook or any other social media channel, you want to be SEOing that, you need to be thinking about tags, and you need to be thinking about keywords. So that all remains, but first and foremost you create that helpful content. And you’ll find that SEO tends to happen naturally when you’re creating great content. People will want to link to it and share it if it’s great. And then you’ll get that back link profile that you’re looking for in those links. It’s funny, I think about I just finished listening to the Elon Musk biography. He doesn’t really even apply much of his … Like, they don’t have a huge marketing budget. What they do is they really focus on creating great products and then people talk about great products. And then that’s his word of mouth. Now, I’m not suggesting doing, like, to that extreme because I think you still get a very good ROI on your money if you apply some smart marketing and SEO over the top of that, but I think there’s definitely a healthy balance between the extremes. I don’t think that you need to have a zero marketing budget, but I also don’t think that you need to just be beating to the SEO drum and that’s all you do.
Jürgen:
And of course, Elon Musk is a well-known public figure, so he can get away with perhaps less emphasis on the marketing side of it than those of us that are not out there in the public space as much.
David:
Yeah, exactly right. He’s out there trying to get us to Mars and building electric cars, so it’s a pretty shareable content.
Jürgen:
There is one fascinating thing, though, that he does, and I think that’s something that is a strategy that people can actually adopt in their own businesses, and that’s if you look at, and I’ve got a couple of friends on Facebook who are owners of a Tesla vehicle, and they actually appear in Tesla’s advertising. So, they’ve actually been filmed in the advertisements, and they actually talk about, “this is my Tesla and I love it,” and this is what’s great about it. So, he builds an audience or a tribe around the product, and they’re the raving fans.
David:
And then by creating …. That’s fantastic because that would create the content for their raving fan, and then that raving fan is going to share that.
Jürgen:
Exactly.
David:
So, that’s a really brilliant strategy to enable someone to share some content. Again, circling back around to the Compass Pools example, they’re about to start doing Authority Content again, and the second time that they want to do this, we’re changing the game slightly. They’re lining up all of their best clients, and we’re batching the content creation, we’re doing it in the same way, but each of them, their clients, are going to tell their Compass Pools story. And then that becomes shareable content and nothing is better proof than your product and service delivering result than having a client who purchased it and then telling their story and then suggesting other people should do the same. So, anytime you can embed that into your marketing, I think case study marketing is a fantastic addition to any business.
Jürgen:
That’s a great suggestion. I mean I talk about using testimonials as proof and also getting fans on board, but using that in the Authority Content framework is a great idea.
David:
Yeah, I think.
Jürgen:
It takes that to another level.
David:
That’s one thing that I’m finding. Now that we’re releasing this book out and it’s starting to get more exposure and soon enough the audience will be able to grab their free copy. We’ll talk about how we can do that in a moment, but I’m finding the application of Authority Content, people are reading the book, finding, like understanding the framework and then tweaking it, making it their own and putting their own spin on it and people seem to profit at different stages of the journey. So, I’ll see some people who run workshops and they sell tickets to these workshops and it gets recorded and it goes through the Authority Content process, but they make money when they’re selling tickets right up front, which funds the entire Authority Content endeavor. I’ve got another guy that’s used it to connect partners, so when he runs the event, he gets sponsors and get PayPal and one of the local banks to join in as well, and that was great way to align themselves. I’ve got another guy who then created the product, and he just created it that way. Turned it into a digital product and then sold it through their community, and then he made money that way because he got a lot from the digital version. And then I’ve got other people who make the money on the final stage, the Promote stage, like the swimming pool manufacturer where they didn’t make any money on the front end, they didn’t make any money on the first or the second stage. Where they made the money is putting the content out there and then using it as a way to presell people and get them engaged in their brand. And then when someone is making a $50,000 or $60,000 purchase for a swimming pool, they’re probably going to do a little bit of research first. So they’re capturing them right at the front there and then making the job for their sales person that much easier.
So, it’s …., you take Authority Content and then you make it your own. And just going through the application, doing it once yourself, and being very closely involved, this could become the way that you market your business. You could roll out Authority Content once or twice a year, and just keep on making minor pivots. I suggest that the first time you run it, create a very wide, broad range of content that hits lots of different areas. Do that the first time, put it out into the world, see what sticks, and you’ll find that some content gets 5 or 10x the number of views and engagement as other pieces of content. And when you identify that, you double down on those. And now you might go, “Alright, I’m going to do Authority Content again, but I’m going to really just go very deep on this one specific area.” Yeah, there’s lots of different ways it can be applied, and you’ll only learn by getting the momentum and applying it.
Jürgen:
That’s great. And another thing I like about the systematic way you’ve laid it out and you describe some different examples of how to apply it, is if you’re really clear about the outcome you want to achieve up front, then you can adapt the process, basically take it onboard but adapt it to achieve that outcome. So, it would be a little different if you’re in the game of selling swimming pools, which is the ultimate outcome for them, than if you’re wanting to sell a digital product, or the initial event was actually the profit maker. Then the rest of it actually becomes marketing for the next event.
David:
Exactly right. Exactly right. And, I’m just really confident. I’m excited to see the case studies and stories that come out from this. So, that’s really where I get most excited. And as I’ve got people who are previewing the book, the feedback I’m getting, and it’s always the most encouraging when I get someone who goes, “Wow, I love the book so much, now I want to run an event,” or “now I want to do the process.” Like, for me, that’s when I know, yep, this is a sign of a good book. It’s not, “Ah, yes, that was a great book,” it was “It’s motivated me to take the action.” And that’s really where the rubber hits the road is when someone takes it, runs with it, gets the result, it reinforces to them it works, and then they can start to spread the word and it grows from there.
Jürgen:
You’ve laid it out really nicely because every chapter at the end has an exercise which essentially are the action steps that everybody would need to take to run the process as you run it and as you say if you’re clear on your outcome and you tweak it to match your style and meeting that particular outcome, then it’s pretty easy to do because it’s all laid out very systematically.
David:
I suppose that almost leads to the “how do you guys get a copy?”
Jürgen:
Exactly. I was just going to do that.
David:
So, the exciting thing is we’re doing a big launch on Amazon, and it’s coming up as Jürgen mentioned at the start on the 11th of August. So, we’re launching on Amazon, and as part of that launch, my goal is to get this as an Amazon best seller. So, I’ve been talking to some different launch strategists, and what you can do is you actually say to Amazon, I’m happy to go exclusive with you Amazon for 90 days and when you do that, they give you a few little extra marketing channels and they’ll promote it and push it a little bit harder. So, one of the things that they recommend is you give the Kindle version of the book away free for the first five days of the launch. And by doing that, then they count each of the downloads almost like a purchase. So, that’s how you get a big push at the start, and then you start to see Authority Content pop up, you know when you’re looking on Amazon and down at the bottom it says “People who read this book also read that book”. Yeah, and then you start to get a bit more of a virality effect, and it’s an extra exposure. So, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
We’re giving the Authority Content book away free. You’ll get the entire book on Kindle, you can download it after or on the 11th of August. And in addition to that, we’re actually putting together a large bonus package as well, so anyone who takes part in the launch, we’re also giving them a whole bunch of extra goodies to say thanks for helping out and taking part.
So, if people are interested, they can head over to AuthorityContent.com and you can register on the notification list depending on when you listen to this, or if it’s on Amazon and depending, you know, it might already be launched if it’s after the 11th of August, you can head straight to Amazon and just type in Authority Content and grab it from there.
Jürgen:
Alright. So, there you go. So, we’re planning to publish, when you listen to this it will already be published obviously, but the 5th of August is the planned publish date. And so between next Monday then, when you’re listening to this, and a week later, you can go to Amazon and get Authority Content for free, the Kindle version. So, I encourage you to do that because it is a great book, it’s full of great ideas and very practical tips on how to implement a great marketing strategy for your business.
David:
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for having me on the call. And I get excited about this stuff, so I’m just loving spreading the word at the moment. Very keen to hear how your listeners go.
Jürgen:
Alright. Well, thanks for that, Dave, and thanks for coming back on the podcast. Now we won’t do the innovation round because I think the answers will probably be similar to what you’ve given before. We will refer back to those earlier podcasts, where you were on Episode 27 and you joined us with Troy on a recent episode. I can’t remember the number offhand now, but I’ll link back to those. And all the best with the launch of that book. I’m really excited to get my hands on a hard copy so that I can kind of bookmark it and put post-it notes in there and stuff to put highlighter marks on there as well, and probably share it with a lot of people as well.
David:
Ah, fantastic. Thanks for that. I really do appreciate your support.
Jürgen:
Alright. Thanks, Dave.
Wrap Up:
It was great to have David back on the podcast and his book Authority Content is well worth reading – it’s a step by step guide to implementing the content strategy that David described for us on the podcast.
All the show notes for this episode will be at innovabiz.com.au/authoritycontent, that is A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y-C-O-N-T-E-N-T, all lowercase, all one word, innovabiz.com.au/authoritycontent, for all of the links and everything we spoke about in this episode .
Thank you to our listeners for being here. We’d love you to review this podcast, because reviews help us get found and your feedback helps us improve. You can do that on iTunes or Stitcher or Pocket Casts and while you’re there, please subscribe so you’ll never miss a future episode. And if there is anything you’d like us to cover, or questions you want answered on a future podcast, please send them to us.
Until next time, I’m Jürgen Strauss from Innovabiz.
Remember, if you don’t innovate, you stagnate, so think big, be adventurous and keep innovating!