Recently I sat down with Justin Champion, digital nomad and author of Inbound Content, to talk about content marketing. From how to get started in the content marketing game to the hyper personalized future of content marketing we covered a lot of ground. In the first part of the interview, we focused on the importance of strategically creating content so that it builds relationships and tells a story. You can watch the video here or (if video isn’t your thing) read the transcription below.
Todd: Justin, quick question about content: why do you think content is a strategic imperative for business leaders today?
people are finding businesses nowadays by searching for problems they are looking to solve
Justin: Well nowadays, content is the first thing that people are finding when they're actually finding your brand in the first place. Google is one of the number one places where people are going and searching for information. People are still driving around and finding businesses, but people are finding businesses nowadays by searching for problems they are looking to solve or looking to learn more about something.
So, by a business strategically creating content that is meant to attract a specific audience. It's the first touch point that this person might ever have with your brand. And when you think about it, if you're creating content that's engaging and then exciting and it's something that can be helpful to that audience then that's the first impression that they're going to have with you which can really lead into a valuable relationship.
Todd: In many cases it's the only impression people have of your business. You have say an online product, you're selling things digitally they may never engage with a salesperson at all. There's lots of businesses today that that would certainly be the case.
What about more kind of traditional businesses that may be more relationship driven or personal interactions or maybe kind of long sale cycles for example? Like the businesses I deal with are a lot of capital equipment people or distributors that are kind of built on relationships. Again, how do you see that content being a strategic issue for those companies who may have some doubts?
Justin: Yeah. No, that's a great point. Like how do you replicate the experience of building relationships with people and doing business that way? How can you replicate that by creating content, like storytelling and engaging and audience based on whatever sale cycle they're supposed to have? When you think about it, the best thing you can do is really try to understand the traditional model like what does that relationship look like. What sort of things are happening that are going through it? And then what does that sale cycle look like and can you replicate that with the content that you're creating?
It is something that can take a lot more time but when you think about it people are married to their devices nowadays. Everybody we know is on a smartphone that’s really able to find information, engage with people at the click of a thumb and so by actually having content and engaging that person now you can actually build the relationship that way versus just the traditional route of going and you know like we're doing now with talking to each other. I think it can lead to this, but you can create more of a hands-off model with content if you take the time and really understand what the experience is, and making sure that that experience is something that's going to be helpful and beneficial to this person.
Todd: Do you think there's an expectation today that companies always have self-service content for most questions available? I know I'm always looking for what the frequently asked questions that are. I Google search for, I search on the website, the customer's website, to answer my questions, right. I would prefer to do that. I know my wife for example, she'll never get on the phone with a customer service representative, ever. If your content isn't helping her, you don't exist to her. Do you see that as an ongoing trend or is that just conformation of what we’re talking about?
content is like a story, it's meant to get a specific response
Justin: I love that. The thing I think about content right because content is like a story, it's meant to get a specific response. It's all about the packaging of it, right? People might search for a specific question that they have and that's a great strategy of like doing, creating ongoing content around specific questions, building like FAQS.
One thing I would challenge people to think about is, "What can you do to enhance that experience?" Because people don't know what they're supposed to be looking for until they start being educated on it. So maybe if you start off with somebody searching for a question and you have content on that, maybe you can take that content and build it with other themed content and then turn it into a resource. Maybe a package resource whether it's a guide, e-book, white paper, whatever the experience is.
And think about initially bringing this person in for maybe a question that they're looking for. And then I'm going to take this content and think about how I can continue engaging this person and keeping them on either my website, or just engaging with my brand.
So, I would say it's good to think about a starting point of how people are going to find you. But then really take this person on a journey and really help them experience something that's going to help them to become a customer or whatever's going to help them grow.
Todd: Well you've said something that's, two things in there that I think are really key. You mentioned the person. We always talk to our clients about persona which is the ideal buyer. And you've talked about the journey which means there's kind of a beginning, a middle, and an end and it's actually a repeat you can see it in your business.
Getting back to the initial question about the strategic imperative. To deliver something strategically you have to actually understand what its impact will be and how it will make an impact. So, talk a little bit about persona as it goes through that journey and kind of understanding, people understanding, companies understanding how important that is and how they relate that to their content.
Justin: It’s such a big thing because there's a high percentage of organizations or brands that are building content and they're not sure exactly what audience they're creating it for. And if you don't understand what you're trying tell- that would be like if you were wanting to go to a movie or you're promoting a movie, and you're not going to promote it to everybody. You're going to try to find the audience that's really gonna care about that content and something that they're going to find enjoyable or helpful. So, it's the same exact thing with this.
It's like starting off with a buyer persona, like you said, it's a semi fictional representation of your ideal audience. Is extremely important because it can influence and inform what kind of content you're going to create. Is it going to be more visual like in the form of video? Is it going to be text? Do you know where this person exists, what channels they're spending their time on? And understanding the persona is probably one of the number one things that I think most businesses don't do and I think that's the reason why their content might not be effective.
What I would say is once you understand your persona the next best thing you can do is plan out the experience of what would be helpful to this persona. Don't just say, “Okay, I know my persona and now I'm just going to start creating content.” Because maybe you create something that does well but three to six months down the road, and I'm going to tell you right now if you don't plan out what you're trying to create or what experience you're trying to give, it's going to become a disconnected pile of roots. You're not going to know everything that's connected. It's going to be disjointed.
So, what I would challenge everybody to think about is think of your buyer persona as like a road map, right. You have this persona and you have a destination of what this person is ultimately trying to achieve and think about content, think about experience, think about questions, think about everything of how you can guide this person. And once you start forming a longer-term plan, not only are you going to give yourself actionable things to be doing on a weekly basis as opposed to just twiddling your thumbs and wondering what should I create this week. But you're also going to be working towards a larger picture of what your content is trying to do versus just saying "Somebody told me to write a blog post because I can get visibility from a search engine." It's having a bigger goal in mind of what you're trying to do with that buyer persona.
In part two of this four-part series we talk more about the kinds of content you should be creating, why your content should be helping, and the importance of website authority. You can watch and read the second part of the interview here.
