ERP084 - Content Marketing Done Right

But what we're not going to try to do is hook you with an interesting article and then have a CTA somewhere in the middle that says buy a million dollars worth of software. First of all, sales cycles don't happen like that usually, at least in the BDB context. And secondly, you know, if you're in idea mode, getting you to shift into product mode is really hard. And so instead, what we're trying to do is we're trying to do exactly what you said. You know, we're trying to create opportunities to re-engage you around ideas, to get you to come back to the idea store. Welcome to Evolved Radio, where we explore the evolution of business and technology. I'm your host Todd Kane. Are you still using on-prem file servers and VPNs to share files with remote workers? Ignite is a business class cloud sharing solution that works more like on-prem servers than other solutions. With a security first approach for file sharing and collaboration, Ignite offers multiple options for sharing files and collecting files from outside sources. And do it all addressing data governance and compliance needs. Want to learn more? Check out ignite.com/mspradio. And when you do, tell them Dave sent you. Today on the Evolved Radio podcast, I'm chatting with Ben Worthen, CEO of Message Lab, an award-winning agency that combines journalism, data, and design to create content that resonates with any audience. Having studied how more than 1 million people engage with online content, Ben is the go-to expert when it comes to customer engagement and brand storytelling. This episode is packed with practical takeaways that will help you improve your marketing by engaging with people in the correct way at the correct point in their journey. I especially like Ben's concept of the idea store. So please enjoy my conversation with Ben. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. It really helps to spread awareness and bring more listeners to the show so we can share the message with more of the community. Now, on with the show. Ben, welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. Thank you for having me. So, you're an expert on storytelling and content marketing, which I think is going to be super useful and relevant. And probably best place to start is that some of the the thought leadership or what people think of as thought leadership and the traditional approaches to content marketing and SEO are a bit sort of tried and routine and everyone's kind of attacking it the same way. And you have some thoughts around how people should maybe reconsider their approach around online marketing. Do you want to give us some of your thoughts on on the approach between thought following and thought leadership? Yeah, sure, thank you for the setup. You know, I would say, you know, I think you're the way you actually phrase the question at the beginning is a nice place to start. Storytelling and content marketing. Because they are often times conflated and as professional content marketers, we have to do both. But they're also very different. You know, and and if you think about the universe of things that we see people doing wrong, they're they fall into both camps. Storytelling from our standpoint is about how do you package up what you're trying to say in a way that's going to be interesting and compelling to the people you're trying to reach. Then content marketing is, you know, how do you do that in a way that's actually effective, that actually helps you achieve some sort of outcome for the organization that you're representing. And they're really different. And to do this well, to to stand out in a crowd, to be an effective professional content marketer, you have to be able to do both. And the reality is is that, you know, the universe is filled with bad content performing poorly. And, you know, and we can talk about how that is. And and and and frame a lot of it. You know, you mentioned for instance, this notion of thought following versus thought leadership. You know, for us, I would say thought leadership is a, you know, a single kind of content. You know, the it's it's it's become this be all for companies especially, we want to be a thought leader and so forth. Um, but but really I think at its core, it means that you have some sort of novel idea that you're putting into the world. But when you think about how content marketing as a discipline has evolved inside of many, many companies, you really see what we call pejoratively thought following. You see people thinking about one channel in which you can engage people, search, SEO, and trying to figure out what are the highest volume keywords and then reverse engineering a piece of content that is designed not necessarily to appeal to a person, but to design to appeal to an algorithm. And so we so we say thought following is sort of the opposite of thought leadership. If you have a brand new idea that is novel, that is groundbreaking, that is interesting, that no one has thought of before, then sort of almost definitionally, there aren't going to be tens of thousands of people who are typing into Google, you know, that a version of that idea in order to find this brand new thing that they've never thought of before. You know, what you're going to find is that 200,000 people are going to type in mortgage rate or mortgage rate information. And the most effective way to rank for that keyword, maybe not that one, but a less competitive version of it, is just to do, you know, packaging up, you know, sort of, you know, we've all seen it the the content marketing manager who is sitting at a desk, you know, and has to write an article a day and is trying to put something out into the world. And I think where we might hit a timeout button is, does the world need more of that? You know, are there is that is that something that if you go back to this first thing about storytelling? Is that something that's going to appeal to people? And this isn't an argument against doing things that, you know, meets the needs of people who are typing things into search, but it's more about, you know, thinking about people, you know, thinking about customers, not as someone who's trying to find your product, but as someone who is like a real person with real needs and real interests and things that they're trying to do and achieve. Uh, and and and if we thought of it that way, and we sort of freed ourselves from the tyranny of a single channel, what would we make in order to add value to their lives? So, I know enough to be dangerous about marketing. Like I I as a business owner, I kind of have to experiment with this and and, you know, I'm no expert, but I I certainly read these same blogs and follow some of the advice that I see as well and and a couple of things that I know of that I'll sort of bounce off of you here is that it feels like you're saying like the traditional approach of just spray and pray and try to ratchet up the amount that you're willing to pay for those those sort of high volume keywords, I feel is a bit of a losing battle. And maybe the way I would interpret what you're saying is focusing more on what people would typically refer to as sort of the long tail keywords. Of like, okay, here's a search, but, you know, it costs $1,500 to get an impression on this because it's incredibly competitive. But if I think about this in the sub context of what would people actually be looking for if they search for this and then drilled around on a bunch of pages and found something that actually appealed to them. And that feels like a much more less intuitive, but a more wide open space to play in, right? Like, for example, you know, in in my space in in the IT space, like a lot of people want to compete for IT support or manage services. The typical terms that maybe people would be looking for. But if you're you have to be a lot more specific in order to capture their interest. So are they having a specific problem? Are they looking for security? Are they looking for a new phone system? Like going sort of two to three layers deeper on whatever you you suspect those people might be looking for and ultimately is probably a less competitive space. Is that is that am I kind of on the right track here? Yeah, I think so with the with the putting a pin for a moment in the notion that again, search isn't the only way that you should think about reaching people. We can come back to that one. But I think just to pick up on your example, if someone is typing in cloud PBX into Google, you know, what they're telling the search engine and what you have to assume their mindset is is I am trying to research a product. I have something specific in my head and the thing and the and the outputs that I want are, you know, a laundry list of potential vendors from whom I can, you know, shop around. If someone is saying typing in best ways to upgrade a phone system, they're in a different place. You know, they're they're trying to figure out, um, you know, they're they're they're probably again, based on their intent, already thinking about a product. You know, but they're in a different place, they want a different kind of information. Um, if they go a step further and they type in telephony trends, that's sort of where you're getting more into the concept of ideas. And and and one of the things that we try to do to guide our work from a strategic standpoint is, you know, I I always use myself as an example. I buy stuff. I'm a consumer and and I think about buying stuff more often than I actually buy stuff. But I only think about buying stuff like 5% of my time. You know, the vast majority of my time, I'm thinking about other things. You know, and they may be sort of ideas, topics, issues that I'm facing that are that are broader than that are sort of related to the product. But like, you know, like like, you know, I run a business too and let's say we needed to, you know, think about our accounting. There's issues like, are we doing a good job, are we are we paying attention to the right financial metrics? Do we need a different accountant? You know, should we have new accounting software is only a small part of, you know, the things that we would think about in the universe there. So if if all you're doing as a business is, you know, how to evaluate your accounting software, you're missing many, many, many opportunities to engage with someone around an idea. That you would genuinely have an opinion about or a point of view that you could contribute about. And that I like one help with. Like, you know, I'm thinking about this and you could reach me there. And to go back to how we started this with search and SEO and long tail to pick up on what you're you're saying, yeah, that's exactly where we think it is. You know, the the conversation around what metrics should small like important financial metrics for small businesses. You know, is going to have much lower search volume than accounting software. But the people who are searching for, you know, best accounting metrics for small businesses, you know, they want something different. They don't want to be told what software to buy. They want to they want an idea that's going to help them, they want information that's going to help them, you know, make decisions and solve a problem. And then yes, you know, I I think the proposition that we believe is that if you're the one who's having that strategic conversation with them, then you are in a better position later on when they're ready to buy something, not when they finish your blog post, but at a different point in time, you know, they might be more likely to buy from you. But, you know, we believe first you participate in that conversation. Yeah, and that leads really well to sort of the other thing that I think is important here. You know, I certainly recognize people on social media platforms especially when they're trying to advertise content and it seems ultra specific. And it's like, like you're saying, like they're focusing too much on a product and just saying, hey, buy my stuff, hey, my buy my stuff. And like, like that's a fractional chance that you're actually going to show up on someone's radar when they're actually interested in that. Because when people are interested in something, like you said, they're probably going to go to Google and look for that. But I I I think your point is, you're missing the opportunity to connect with someone just in the sphere of their their interest and understanding. And then kind of create more of an entertainment or like a thought connection or or that's where I think that the relevancy of of sort of that that thought leadership is relevant. The where, you know, I like what this person says and it has nothing to do with the fact that I actually want to buy something from them. I just like what they're saying and I like what they're putting out in the world and it feels somewhat related or interested. And sometimes really not, you know, like some of my best performing emails on my weekly email were things that were not really related to our industry at all. But it just resonated with people. So I I think that do you want to talk a bit more about that idea of just taking a different approach around marketing and being there much more as a personality? And to sort of provide someone a narrative, more entertainment rather than specific value, is that a is that a good thought to follow? Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly what we would advocate, you know, that there is a time and a place when people want to buy. But the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of those instances, they just want to be entertained or informed or engaged somehow. And, you know, I often times use the metaphor of, you know, a salesperson. You know, like the best sales people are pretty intuitive. And and yeah, they want to close and they know they're only going to get their commission if they close the deal. But if they come up to me and they, you know, can learn very quickly that I'm not someone who's about to buy, it's not like they don't they don't just hang up the phone and walk away. You know, they're going to spend time getting to know me, what I'm interested in, they're going to reach out to me with something else that I care about and so forth. When it comes to marketing, we kind of forget that. You know, to your point about the spray and pray, we just kind of pump the sales stuff out there because there's kind of no consequence or at least no measurable consequence for someone who ignores it. Right. You know, and and it's um, it's like fishing with a net. Yeah, you know. And and and if instead we sort of recognize that marketing can behave a lot like that intuitive salesperson, and we can have more than one mood. We can have a mood where we're trying to engage people, where we're trying to, you know, curate a conversation around shared interests and ideas. We often times use this metaphor of an idea store. You know, everybody knows what their product store is. You know what you're selling. And you know what's on the shelves. But if you had a different store where all you sold was ideas, what would be on the shelves? What would the customer experience be like? How would you behave in order to turn people into repeating customers of your ideas? Get them to come back and buy a new idea each time. And this notion that you set up the question where it about social was a really good one. You know, if we go back to that SEO piece, you know, that that same piece isn't going to play well on social. You know, when you're on social, you're sort of thumbing through, you're in a in a fairly passive mode. And you're looking for something that captures your attention and your imagination. And, you know, how to, you know, how to evaluate accounting software is not exactly the most inspiring thing in the world. You know, and and even if you're someone who wants to do that, you probably don't want to do it like while you're waiting for the train. So, you know, so what can you create that allows you to have a meaningful interaction with someone? That's providing value to them first and foremost. You know, that's sort of purpose built for that moment and that's a cool idea. Or it's a story about somebody who they might recognize or it's something visually engaging. You know, that's going to provide them sort of, you know, channel appropriate, moment appropriate, you know, interest. I really like that idea of the idea store. I think that that's that's that's such a powerful visual for me to to really understand. Like, it's not about ideas sprinkled in amongst the product. It's more like you love this idea store so much that you keep coming back and we're having conversations and eventually you're like, what's in the back of the store? Like, what do you guys do here? Right? Totally. Yeah. Yeah, let's just let's just shop. If you guys also own next door, you know. I love I love this store. I come back all the time, you know, what's in your sister store next door? It's like, oh, well, let's show you all these products. You know. And it's funny, like like this feels so intuitive when we talk about it, you're like, yeah, of course, like this all makes sense. But it it's incredible how how easy it is to get sucked away from all of these things and and not focus on it. Because, you know, honestly, I didn't recognize the power of this in my own marketing until I really started to recognize the fact that the amount of content that I had to push out, and then eventually someone would come back and say, hey, I really like the things that you're doing and they would sort of say between the lines is I feel an alignment with the things that you say in the industry. So tell me more about what you do. And I'm I would at first I was always shocked by the fact like, like you've been following my content for almost a year and you're asking what I do. Right, like how does that make any sense? Right? But it was it's just the fact that like I don't talk about the product a lot, you know. Every once in a while I'll do like like 12 posts of just random stuff and then like, hey, I do this by the way, right? And and like that almost it never registers for people, like they didn't care about those things, but they liked me. So that they would come back and say, hey, what do you do? Can you help me? Right? Like that like that that just isn't intuitive somehow. Yeah, as people, you know, if you think about yourself as a as as an inhabitant of the world, we're so good at ignoring stuff that isn't relevant to us. You know. And it's and it's like, you know, I don't can you remember the last time you saw an ad on TV? You know. I remember seeing the ads, but I have no idea what the ads were. Right. You know, yeah, you know, like you know that they ran during the game, but you were probably looking at your phone or you were going to get some food or that sort of stuff. Or or the billboards that go by on buses, you know. And and yeah, there's probably a moment where, you know, I'm thinking about gosh, you know, I'm really unhappy with my laundry detergent. I wish someone would, you know, tell me about a better version of laundry detergent. But like, that's just a small number of moments. And and instead as people, we're like really good at paying attention to things that we're interested in. And we're really good about, you know, especially now, maybe not maybe we're not good at it, but it's behavior that we all engage in. Of like, really, like there's so much noise out there. And finding signal, finding something that is worthy of our attention. Is this triage like thing that we all have to do countless times per day. You know, we do it when you're going through a social feed. It's thing, thing, thing, thing, thing, thing, thing, okay, maybe I'll pay attention to this net, thing, thing, thing, you know, click. Or your blog is a great example. You know, like people love the ideas, not not from something ignore this thing, I've got blinders on for this thing that's just telling me about the product. Until they have a moment where it's appropriate. It's just that those are the smaller universe of moments than the ones where they're interested. Yeah, and this wedges well against sort of something you told me when we we met sort of pre-interview that resonated with me is like, always be asking yourself, why does anyone care? And I think that it's incredibly important for us to be self-critical and not just create content for content's sake, but to actually sort of look at this and say, would anyone really give a shit about what I have to say and why is that? I think that that's an important point. Do you want to say more on that? Yeah, and and you know, as professionals who work in organizations, you know, we have to, you know, we drink the Kool-Aid, you sort of have to. It's the thing that gets us through the day. If you don't find your work interesting, it's kind of hard to get up every day and go to work. And so you and I, like I'm really interested in message lab. You know, I think it's like this fascinating organization that does fascinating stuff. People listening to this podcast, never heard of message lab. Don't care. You know. And I don't remember, you know, I'm just going to be the billboard on the bus that nobody's paying attention to or the ad that's running in the middle of the show that people fast forward through. And instead, I have to we have to have a conversation like this. You know, hopefully people are finding this interesting. We're batting about ideas and, you know, these are ideas that are hopefully relevant to the people who are, you know, listening. Like content marketing, engaging people, you know, driving new ways to drive business growth that I haven't been thinking about yet. And, you know, to your point, like, I mean, sure, maybe someone, maybe I'll get an email, you know, at the end of the podcast. But like that's not why we're doing this. You know, we're doing this because it's an issue that we care about and we have an opportunity to engage people in a conversation that we're curating around ideas that they care about too. So this sort of reminds me of a quote that's relevant to management, but I think actually applies really well here. I'll bounce this off you, so there's a management idea from Mark Horseman, he says, I don't know if this is originally from him, but but his quote of it is, if you say something seven times, your team will tell you they heard it once. Right? And I think that that is incredibly relevant around what you're talking about. Is just the the repetition is so incredibly key because like you say it once, people go, oh, that Ben guy on that podcast, like he had a he had a he had a smart idea about this. That was neat. And then they completely forget about it the next day. But if you continue to show up and say something that they they recognize, like after they've heard you seven times, they're like, man, he really knows what he's talking about. Maybe I should reach out to this guy. Like that's sort of the basis of content marketing, right? Yeah, and actually we see that through our data. You know, one of the things that so so we believe again, sort of consistent with this conversation, that our job is to get you into the idea store. And our job is to get you to pay attention to the idea. We don't just want to get you in, we want to turn you into a customer of that idea. And the we we measure that, we sort of see how much time you spend reading an article, for example. But what we're not going to try to do is hook you with an interesting article and then have a CTA somewhere in the middle that says buy a million dollars worth of software. First of all, sales cycles don't happen like that usually. At least in the BDB context. And secondly, you know, if you're in idea mode, getting you to shift into product mode is really hard. And so instead, what we're trying to do is we're trying to do exactly what you said. You know, we're trying to create opportunities to re-engage you around ideas, to get you to come back to the idea store. Sign up for our content email newsletter. You know, or trying to get ourselves, follow us on social. You know, like we're trying to do things to get you to create the mechanisms so that you can get another one of our ideas. And what we have seen through data is that, you know, someone who has seen our content once is like less than 1% chance that they're going to become a qualified lead. But by the time someone has seen our content three times, there's a 9% chance that they're going to become a qualified lead. And if it's four times or five times, it just goes up and up and up and up. And it's like and there's sometimes you see data and you're like, wow. If I made this data up, it would not look like this. You know. There's like a linear correlation between the number of times someone engages with their idea and the more likely they are to become a lead. But it doesn't happen once, like, you know. Three is a magic number, you know, and then four and five and six and seven and so forth and so on. So yes, maybe it's not seven, maybe it's not three, maybe it's not five, but this notion of it isn't merely engaging someone around an idea. It's re-engaging them. And making them sort of habit form to looking to you for counsel and ideas and and and so forth. That that leads to a to a sales transaction, you know, the deepening of a relationship in a different way. Yeah, that's great. Can you talk a bit about sort of the structure and format of content? And like I'm not sure exactly how to approach this necessarily because there's so many different vehicles for content. It's videos on social, you know, posts on YouTube, a blog post, a landing page. But do you have any like maybe just considering people that maybe are early in their marketing journey and don't have a ton of maturity around this? I always like to sort of give some some tips and tricks that people can absorb and and potentially make use of. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for people about how to think about the structure and format of the content that they should be considering to to at least start the engagement in that idea store? Yeah, I think there's nothing bad and there's nothing wrong. It's really just a function of how are you using it. And I think what we would say is sort of extrapolating from that, sometimes people want a video. Sometimes they want an article, sometimes they want a graphic. Sometimes they want something skimmable and stackable. Sometimes they want something that has more depth. And you're not really going to know. And in part because, you know, you are going to want, you know, a different version of that. Depending on, you know, if you're at the bus stop or if you're at your desk. You know, what kind of mood you're in. So we believe that a that a good content strategy has all of it. You know, you create multiple kinds of content. Ideally, you're doing so in a way where they're related to one another and creating pathways back and forth. Both in terms of economizing the effort to create it, but then also to to give people different opportunities to engage in different ways. So, so I think again, there's, you know, there's real world constraints. You know, often times writing a blog post is less expensive than creating a video. Not always, but most of the time. And so that could be a constraint. But even if all you're doing is writing things, there's a lot of different formats. You can do a Q&A. You can do a point of view column. You can do a reported article where you're going off and talking to different people and presenting things like you would in a newspaper. You know, there's there's any number of of of ways to sort of vary it up and mix it up. And we think that that's, you know, really important. The other thing I would say is especially for someone who is just beginning to go down this path or thinking about like we've got to sort of baseline level that we're trying to figure out how we can get, you know, really rapid gains is think about the experience that you're creating for somebody. And what I mean by this is in this world, it is not enough to come and get someone to your site. What matters is, you know, are they spending time engaging with your idea? Because you know, you're trying to win the proverbial hearts and minds. And you don't win a heart and mind in one second. You know, I have a a friend who runs a prominent digital publication. He says, you know, if we get someone to our site for three seconds, we win because we get the ad dollar. And or or the ad impression, right? But that's not the way content marketing works. You have to engage people and, you know, and for us, we always sort of look at like if someone's spending at least a minute, you know. But but one of the things that we'll see often is that people, like you have a big article on the site, people will leave before they even read a word. And so they're not passing judgment, should I stay and invest my time or should I leave and go find something else based on the substance of what you're trying to communicate? They're making that decision based on the experience that you created. The load time of the site. The UX of the blog. You know, is it did they are they in a place that looks like the place they expected to be or not? You know, a lot of people will sort of skim an article or look at it before deciding whether to read or not. If it is a wall of text, if it is 800, 1000 words, it's just uninterrupted copy, no one is going to read it. It could be the greatest, smartest idea ever, no one will read it. You know, so have you been thoughtful about putting in subheads and graphics and and like just little things to relax people and and sort of make a better experience for them? Those are super easy wins. And they don't involve like you can even just go back and take all the content that you've already created and go back and make it more consumable. And you will see results, not necessarily measured by page views, but as measured by outcomes that matter, you increase substantially. Right, that's great. I think multi modes of content and and just spice of life is variety, I suppose in in marketing, right? Like just keep hashing at it and try in different things. And maybe that's a bit different from what people say is like own a channel, like show up in one place and really dominate that one place. I think there's there's some method to the madness in that idea around it making it easier because if people try to spread themselves too thin, like I guess I should be on TikTok and and if that's not relevant to your consumers, then you're just kind of wasting effort. But I think also people, you know, they also get stuck in the idea of like, okay, all I'm going to do is turn out blog content. Like one a day, every day. And like, maybe that has some some benefit. Like especially if you have a high volume of content, eventually you'll have a hit. But, you know, again, if you if you're not experimenting with a little audio, a little video, some visual graphics, like whatever the case is, then you're only probably going to appeal to a subsection of the people that you're looking for as well, right? Yeah. Another thing that goes along with that and and this goes to your point about experimentation with different like audio, video, etc. Like there's more and more content coming into the world every single day. And more and more people are creating content, both content marketing, you know, creators who are just, you know, launching a podcast or a YouTube channel. More publications are being born. Like like, you know, the world is a wash in content. And so it isn't necessarily, I mean, yes, fundamentally, the more you do, the more bets you're putting into the world, the more chances you have to be successful. But but but balanced with that is this increasing need to be the signal that breaks through the noise. You know, and being that signal is hard. You know, being that signal increasingly means doing something that is at a glance, valuable, interesting, doing something that projects, you know, value. And and and so like, you know, sometimes that means saying, okay, well, you know, if we're going to do a blog post a day, what if we instead did a blog post every other day? You're still making a ton of stuff. And took half of our effort, made one big special thing. And and and designed campaigns around it. You know, we're not just putting the special thing on the web and saying great to a victory. But thinking about how can we make sure that we build an audience for this special thing because, you know, we're investing so much time. It is going to be worthwhile, it will be interesting, it will be valuable and it will be good, but we're going to do the work to make sure that we get it in front of those people that we draw those people to it too. Very cool. Well, Ben, this has been really a really interesting, very insightful. Like, uh, like I said, like some of this feels intuitive, but at the same time, I I don't think it's how people generally think about the the marketing that they're doing. So I I think a ton of value. I guess if you'd if you'd like to invite people into your idea store, where would people find you on that? Yeah, our idea store is at messagelab.com. And uh just type it in, you can find, you can learn about the company, you can learn about people who work there by going there. And if you want to just search for me, you can just go to LinkedIn and type in Ben Worthen and I'll hopefully be the first person who shows up there too. Okay, great. I'll put those links in the show notes as well. Thanks again for your time, Ben. Yeah, thank you, Todd.