Ever dreamt of having a magnetic pull on your ideal customers while at the same time artfully warding off those who aren’t a fitting match? That’s precisely what this enlightening episode is all about! We're joined by Martin Huntbach and Lyndsay Cambridge, the incredible minds behind the game-changing book and strategy entitled Content Fortress. They let us in on their remarkable journey - from web designers to content marketing strategists - and how they've used content to filter out clients who may not align with their business goals.
Martin and Lyndsay reveal their secret sauce to creating content that not just answers the hard questions, but also sets boundaries and establishes trust. Our conversation dives into the benefits of incorporating structure and process in content creation and how it can make businesses more enjoyable and trustworthy. We also uncover the advantages of educating customers through content, which can dramatically reduce time spent on sales calls while boosting conversion rates.
But that's not all! We plunge into the captivating world of AI and how it can add a unique essence to your content strategy. From its role in content creation and repurposing to its challenges in delivering original content, we leave no stone unturned! So, tune in and let Martin and Lyndsay guide you through the process of constructing a content fortress that aligns perfectly with your business vision. You're about to redefine your content marketing strategy in ways you never imagined!
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Ever dreamt of having a magnetic pull on your ideal customers while at the same time artfully warding off those who aren’t a fitting match? That’s precisely what this enlightening episode is all about! We're joined by Martin Huntbach and Lyndsay Cambridge, the incredible minds behind the game-changing book and strategy entitled Content Fortress. They let us in on their remarkable journey - from web designers to content marketing strategists - and how they've used content to filter out clients who may not align with their business goals.
Martin and Lyndsay reveal their secret sauce to creating content that not just answers the hard questions, but also sets boundaries and establishes trust. Our conversation dives into the benefits of incorporating structure and process in content creation and how it can make businesses more enjoyable and trustworthy. We also uncover the advantages of educating customers through content, which can dramatically reduce time spent on sales calls while boosting conversion rates.
But that's not all! We plunge into the captivating world of AI and how it can add a unique essence to your content strategy. From its role in content creation and repurposing to its challenges in delivering original content, we leave no stone unturned! So, tune in and let Martin and Lyndsay guide you through the process of constructing a content fortress that aligns perfectly with your business vision. You're about to redefine your content marketing strategy in ways you never imagined!
Guest Links
Learn More:
We talk a lot about content creation, content marketing, but I want to ask you is it possible to create content that brings the right clients in yet keep the wrong ones out? Is that possible, what are the benefits to doing it and how do you do it? We're going to go deep on strategically using your content in a way you probably never heard of on this next episode of the digital marketing coach podcast.
Speaker 2:Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach helping you grow your business with digital. First marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to my podcast. Well, today we're going to talk a lot about content with my special guests. Today we have a duo. I'm going to introduce them shortly, but I want to continue on my quest to somehow achieve 100 reviews of this podcast your digital marketing coach podcast on Apple by the end of the year. So I've been doing this over the last few weeks, but today I want to continue and read a review from Fact Media, one of the best, if not the best, podcast I've been into. I love how concise and practical the contents are. Neil's great at providing real insights that definitely work. Fact Media that's FACQT definitely look them up. But I want to thank you for that nice comment and I would love to feature your comment here as well. So I hope you'll take me up on my challenge.
Speaker 1:You know I have a few challenges this year. Number one finish writing my book. Really happy to say that two days ago I finally finished the final chapter of my rough draft. Now there's still a rewriting process that has to be done, but I did that and that feels really good. I'm on target for a November 15th completion of manuscript. Still a lot that goes into it. After that. This book is not going to be published this year, but I'm hoping early next year. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1:I also have been really into YouTube. If you have not known, if I have not told you enough, that all of these interviews that I'm doing are also available on my YouTube channel, youtubecom Neil Schaefer. You can see the videos In fact you can catch them when I do them live If you subscribe to my channel and check for the notifications. I also want to mission for YouTube to somehow get to 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. I'm at 5,200, 300, but at the beginning of the year I was closer to 1,000 something. So I'm happy about the progress and without goals we get nowhere. So this Reach 100 Reviews of the Podcast and Apple Podcast is my latest goal and even if you don't review, I just love your feedback.
Speaker 1:I want to give a shout out to my friend, jim Went over at Belkin, a loyal listener. He said hey, neil, that podcast and email marketing was great. It's very timely as we're digging into strategies right now. Thanks. That sort of content or comment not only makes me happy, but it also helps me understand that my content is resonating it is. That is the R-Y-Y do what I do Right. So I want to thank you, jim, I want to thank you Fact Media and I want to thank you for your future engagement, reaching out to me, reviews, whatever you can do to support the podcast. I would really appreciate it. I also want to let you know if you subscribe to my newsletter.
Speaker 1:You would have found out today, but I am having my first call for case studies for my next book. I like to include case studies in my book of businesses that have been there, done that and illustrate these very, very specific best practices that I am talking about and explaining and showing. Hey, this is how a company in this situation followed these procedures or did these actions and got these results. So if that is you, whether you're an entrepreneur, a solopreneur or a business owner or a CEO of a larger company, I would love to hear from you. You can email me, neil, at neilchafercom.
Speaker 1:Let's jump into today's interview. So today I have the co-authors of the book Content Fortress, martin Humback and Lindsay Cambridge, and I guarantee it's a great book, by the way. But I guarantee, after you listen to this, you will think about your content very, very differently, not just your website content, your email content and I have definitely changed the way that I talk with people over email as a result of this interview, and I'm thinking of redoing some of my web pages as a result of this interview Is that impactful? So you're in for a treat. Let's just get right into this interview with Martin Humback and Lindsay Cambridge, co-authors of Content Fortress.
Speaker 2:You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neal Schaefer.
Speaker 1:It is always a pleasure to be able to interview other marketing authors on this podcast, because when you write a book, you are investing a lot into really formulating and processing and trying to make your content understandable and actionable for as many people as possible. Now there are a lot of books about content and content marketing out there, but today's guests have a very, very unique perspective which I'm very excited to learn about straight from the authors. But I think you're going to be excited about as well, because content can be used in many, many different ways and for many, many different purposes. Some of these purposes are extremely intuitive, some of them not so much so, and today we're going to be talking about how to build a content fortress.
Speaker 1:The authors of this book, martin Humback and Lindsay Cambridge. They're Martin and Lindsay. They are going to be talking about a simple content strategy to help you attract customers that you would love to work with, this notion of a fortress through your content. By the way, forward by Marcus Sheridan, everyone's favorite content marketer, you ask the answer, so, without further ado, I'm going to bring them both on stage and I can't wait to jump into the conversation. Martin Lindsay welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much. Yeah, no, we're excited.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 3:Thanks.
Speaker 1:Well, it's my lucky day, obviously, but thanks for taking the time. I know that it's obviously a Friday late afternoon where you are in the UK, so you're probably getting ready to have a pint about now. We can do that after a very short conversation. So, content fortress, I always like to get the backstory before we get into the maximal advice for the listeners of you. Know, I believe your background is web designing. You're going to have to correct me on that, but how did this all start? How did this journey into understanding this importance of content and this unique way of looking at it? How did this all start?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, like most businesses, when you start out, you need to come up with a way to generate more traffic, leads and sales. So when we started to learn about content marketing back in 2015, 2016, we really fell in love with this idea of helping people as much as you possibly can and getting more traffic, leads and sales. So that's the path that we followed and we started to produce a lot of content and we started to get traffic, leads and sales all on behold. It was only a couple of years into it where we realized that we were attracting a lot of people, a lot of inquiries that weren't always the right fit, and it caused us quite a bit of stress and anxiety and started to affect us the fact that we'd gone from having no clients to lots of inquiries and lots of people wanting to work with us.
Speaker 3:And this is when we were running a web agency building websites, graphic design, that kind of thing and we'd used content to get us to a point that was generating traffic, leads and sales, but we were generating it from everyone and that didn't feel too good because we didn't have the aspirations to grow a big agency. We just wanted to run the agency, you know, as a husband and wife team and get clients that we enjoyed to work with. It was only kind of that point when we started to realize that we needed to start using content in order to tackle that problem, which is not every client is our ideal client. A lot of the time we were speaking to people that weren't prepared to work with us, couldn't pay our prices, and we just thought you know, if content can get us to the point where it can get us new clients, can it get us to the point where it can get us better clients?
Speaker 1:So based on all of that, let's take a step back. What was the content that you were creating that began to attract clients in the first place? You mentioned, you know, provide valuable, helpful information, so I'm assuming that you did this in a blog format and, if so, what were some of the topics that you started writing about?
Speaker 4:just to give everybody an idea, yeah, so mainly the topics were kind of if you've read they asked your answer by Marcus Sheridan the big five topics. So things like how much does it cost for a website and what are the problems with WordPress, those kind of things are kind of tackling the questions that people really had around Website design and the other you know people weren't answering. You know it was 2015 when we started this and anything that's quite recent, but it was quite unusual then for people to be answering the question how much does the website cost? And being honest about how much we charge as well. So by producing a lot of that kind of content that really answered the questions that a lot of our competitors weren't answering, we managed to gain, you know, really good rankings on search engines and get a lot more traffic and leads to our business. So it worked incredibly well. The problem was is that we Attracted anyone and everyone and not anyone and everyone was the right fit.
Speaker 1:So would you say then that they asked? You answer was your framework. You basically followed the framework there, created the content that you always get asked or maybe clients are afraid to ask, but you wanted to get that information out there because you knew it would be helpful. But Can you give an example of content that you know? Going according to what you just said, you would think that all this is going to be valuable for your clients. But then you started to get the undesirable. So and I don't want to call them undesirables, but I think you know what I mean so what now content? What were the topics or what is it that you think brought in these people and how would you define them as being not your ideal client?
Speaker 3:So I think the thing is with content is the more you put out, the more relationships you start to build with these people. You know, if you're talking about problems and reasons then are ranking on Google and reasons your website isn't performing. People really start to learn and want to learn. And you start to people start to connect with you and start to trust you. So you'll get inquiries from everyone and everyone because you're putting out content in the world and it's helpful and they're feeling like you're speaking to them. And their problems and that comes from understanding that your audience have problems and concerns.
Speaker 3:So when we were attracting people, we're attracting people who were brand new to business. Maybe they didn't have a certain amount of money to spend on a new website, maybe it wasn't the right time because they hadn't really nailed down the solution or their business. So we were attracting people who had Not really positioned themselves correctly and that means the business. You know they could have been nice people, but they really wasn't ready to work with us and so it was a lot of wasted time saying, listen, it might not be the right time if your business isn't set up yet. If you have read a piece of content and you loved it. That's great, that's good for our ego, but it doesn't mean that you'd make an ideal client just because our words and content have connected with you, and I think this is a big problem for a lot of people, isn't it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we like to call them Damsels in distress, although we've had more I know it's kind of a gender term, but we've had more male damsels In our business but essentially these people are then. It's not that they're bad people, they're usually lovely people but they are kind of desperate and they need, they need help, and they they came to us with Extremely high expectations. A good example was them. Someone was made redundant and they had some redundancy money and they wanted to throw £10,000 at a website, and so they did. But once it launched, they were like, well, I haven't made any sales yet a day later and it was like, oh, because it takes some time, and they wanted to call back that money quite quickly because they but they hadn't. They hadn't kind of established anything yet, they hadn't established their business, they hadn't grown an audience, they hadn't really kind of figured out who their target market was.
Speaker 4:So at that point it was a very. It was extremely stressful for us because we want to deliver something, you know, amazing for our clients, that that makes them happy, and when they're not happy, that can be incredibly stressful. And so that's why we wrote a piece of content called why new business owners shouldn't invest tens of thousands of pounds in a website, or even five or two thousand pound. They should, you know they should DIY their website until you know they've really established who they are and who they're serving. And it's those kind of things where you're constantly trying to think about how can I create content to prevent this problem from happening again?
Speaker 1:so I think that there is, uh, obviously, a few different ways of looking at content. I'm assuming when you Provided those answers at the beginning, they were also very, very broad search terms and therefore, you know, I suppose if you were to do like you know web design best practices you might get businesses that are interested in understanding that may want to hire you, but you may also get students of web design that also interests you, so I can see how. So I guess the question is and maybe, um, um, you know, jumping a little bit too too far ahead how do you balance sort of this SEO of trying to rank in Keywords a lot of people are searching for, yet being able to maintain a rank and being able to maintain traffic, while also being able to cover topics, like you just mentioned, which will, you know, keep the customers you don't want out? Is there, uh, maybe that's what the book is about, but what? What's sort of the secret?
Speaker 1:balancing act there.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think you've got to think about it like a traditional buyers journey funnel which is nobody's going to complain if you rank before thousands and thousands of keywords. You know this is what we aim to do with all of our clients and all of the articles that we create. All the content we create, it's to rank for as many keywords as possible so that you get more people to Know who you are. To reach more people.
Speaker 3:The real trick lies in sort of middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, where we start creating content about, you know, what makes us different from this company, what makes us more expensive than this company, actually getting Into the details of what it is that you do and what you don't do.
Speaker 3:So you use that broad content to rank and to get the traffic. And then you know, nobody ever just reads an article and then decides to work with somebody, not at the price point that we're at. So then they start to click on other articles, they start to reach out to us. Maybe, and as long as you've got some blog content further down the funnel, you hopefully should have people read that and if they don't, we have, you know, processes in place in order to make them consume that content before we actually speak to them. So we really, really tied off as many different sort of Loopholes as we possibly could so that by the time we actually speak to people on a call, they are qualified to a certain extent and that dramatically impacts our conversion rate. And we just kept pushing that limit and pushing it and pushing it, didn't we?
Speaker 4:Yeah, the SEO content kind of gets them to be a lead and the Bottom of the funnel content, as Martin said. You know things like why are we more expensive than this other company? That gets them to be a client, essentially.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, it makes a lot of sense. So you know, before we started this interview, there were a few things we decided we would sort of discuss. So you know, one of them was you know, how do you use content to prevent problem clients? So it sounds like you once again jumping ahead and I don't want to see the answer because it was your question, but it sounds like the way that you prevent problem clients is through Education of that middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, content. Is that right or are? Is there more to the pictures than just that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's exactly right. I think it's producing that kind of content that is very much about your products and services. There is a direct way, a more kind of blunt way, of repelling the wrong types of clients, and we actually call that repelling content, and essentially that's the kind of content that you create that actively repels. So things like why? 11 reasons why you shouldn't work with us, and that's actually a very therapeutic piece of content to create. I recommend it to anyone but that. That kind of Content works incredibly well because you can set your boundaries in that. But you also tell everyone hey, I'm not, I'm not here to make a quick book out of anyone and everyone. I'm actually quite selective over who I work with and that tells the people who are right for you that, okay, this person, I can trust them because they're just not working with anyone. They don't want to work with anyone and I'm the right fit for them.
Speaker 1:So what is a process that a business market or listening when they want to create content that repels the wrong customers? Is there a process similar to Marcus Sheridan's process of delving into ideas of how to come up with their own therapeutic pieces, like you just described?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think the key is is that you don't want to make it so it sounds very arrogant and it can easily slip into that. I think when you create this kind of content, it's not you know, I don't want you to work with me if you don't have a big enough budget. It's more kind of coming at it from an educational point of view to say, okay, I want to make sure that you know you work with the right person, that you don't invest your money wrong, and that I also want to work with the right people. So it's making sure that your article comes across from that point of view and asking yourself questions like okay, what's happened in the past where someone, something hasn't quite gone right, as there's been an expectation there that a client has had that has been mismatched.
Speaker 4:For example, if you needed a website in two weeks and our process takes two or three months, we would put that in there. You know, if you need something too fast, then we're not the right fit for you. Or is there anyone who's not ready yet for your products and services? If someone isn't quite ready, you know, for example, with us, if they haven't got their positioning right, if they don't know their target audience or those kind of things, then they're not quite ready yet. So it's a number of things that are very specific to your business. But as soon as you start asking these questions, you can easily create that kind of content, can't you?
Speaker 3:And I think it also comes down to your reviewing the last 10 to 20 clients that you've had. What are the attributes to those difficult situations? You know, building a website I mean, we don't build websites anymore, we actually completely transitioned to writing content because we loved it so much. But whatever business that you have, you're always going to have problems and concerns that people have that you weren't aware of, and maybe it's that you think to yourself well, we've crafted the perfect process and we've created a service that's just next level. There's always going to be somebody who's more uneducated than you, who comes to work with you and think I thought you were going to do this. What's the situation? Why don't you do this thing? And it's like, well, it's obvious to you, but maybe not to them. So we have this mantra, I suppose, which is it's our responsibility to prevent that from happening again. If it happens once, then yes, that's new information, but if it happens for a second time, then that's because you've not created content to prevent it.
Speaker 3:Every single problem that can occur in your business is a new piece of content or multiple piece of content that you can actually create in order to stop that from happening again.
Speaker 3:And, like I say, if you completely just produce content and think that everyone's going to read it, that's not going to happen. So it's a combination of communication and content leading up to those sales conversations. That means that we're able to convert 90% of our prospects and proposals to clients just because it's not a case of let's get people on a sales call as quickly as possible. It's great, we would love to chat to you, but before we do that, we find that if we provide you with a little bit of content to answer some of your questions and maybe give you an idea of where we sit in the market, then that's going to make for a much more meaningful conversation and a lot of people will get excited from reading your content. They'll follow you on your social media and they'll just want to work with you. So it is important that you just get everyone back into the process. Make sure everybody's in the right space mentally and not emotionally Before they make a buying decision. You need to make sure that we're selling to the right people.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like you're also implementing this process, which is you're not just creating the content for you know, for blogging, for SEO, but you're also strategically using you know, linking to that content, you know, before a sales call, please make sure you read A, B and C or A and B and really using that content strategically, above and beyond Just you're basically using it to qualify leads as well. Is that, is that a correct assumption?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, and that's exactly what we do. As soon as someone wants to book a call with us, or they click to book a call on our calendar, we'll send them a link to say hey, it's great that you want to chat with us. And before we get on a call, please do read over this information. It'll be, we'll send them our prices and we'll send them things like who we are the right fit for, who we're not the right fit for. We used to send things like a buyer's guide and things like that, just to help them get as educated as possible before that call.
Speaker 4:Now, sometimes what happened is someone would say, oh, you're way out of our budget.
Speaker 4:In that case, then I'm going to have to leave it, and then that's absolutely fine.
Speaker 4:We haven't wasted an hour on a call and then three hours writing a proposal, only for them to come back and say that so we're perfectly happy.
Speaker 4:When that happens, that's always a good result. And well, a one really good side effect of doing this is that sometimes we've had people approaches that haven't been perhaps the most polite, so they've been you know, hi, they haven't included our name, you can tell it's kind of a copy and paste message, like I really want a call with you this Friday at this time to discuss my website. We actually had that email from someone and we sent them back this and then they came back to this content. They came back to us and they were a completely different person, because they understand that, okay, this person knows what they're talking about, they've got their boundaries in place and it just gives you that little bit of level of authority and it's unfortunate that we need it, but it does work in that way where people kind of switch a little bit and they you do get a little bit more respect, I think, from people because of it.
Speaker 1:So I'm assuming that once you, you know, go into the process that you recommended, martin, that you look at the reasons why you shouldn't be working with these clients, or you know why didn't these potential clients understand A, B or C or what have you? I'm assuming that once you build this content that helps repel those clients you don't want to work with and I'm assuming it could be blog form, it could be FAQ, it could be about page, it could be cut and pasted into an email, it could be part of an automated campaign. But I'm assuming that once you create this content, it's sort of one and done, or are you always, you know, revising it, refining it on a regular basis? What has been your experience?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think it's a case of having the infrastructure in place, knowing what the questions are, what the concerns are, what the problems might well be from experience, that you can actually build an infrastructure content fortress, which is what we call it, hence the name of the book, in whatever form that you want. We use blog content because it cancels two birds with one stone. It drives the traffic, but it also helps people, and we always say that people don't care what you say on sales calls, they care what you publish. So you could spend your 100% of your time on sales calls and you could be saying the same things over and over and over again. But if you're only saying it privately, if you're only saying it over email or over the phone or over a chat, a live chat then people tend to question it, whereas if you publish a 3,000 word article on your website about your exact process and start to finish and someone speaks to you on the phone and they say it's going to be built, whatever the process is for your service, it's going to be done in three months, then people have to stay in line, they have to stick with it, because you put pen to paper.
Speaker 3:You publish this content on your website and you can always refer back to it. Publishing content gives it more validity, like it's real. It becomes a real thing and you can always refer back to it. And that's an incredible step to do in any business, because you actually say actually this is a bit confusing and you start to come up with your own questions.
Speaker 3:So, if you can outline the perfect client and the perfect process and what would be the exact steps that somebody would take in order to be successful at that thing, and then create a process on it, yes, create a process, but articulate that process, communicate that process and, before you know it, you're answering so many questions.
Speaker 3:You're pre-qualifying people, you're educating people and you get to the point where you're having conversations and say we write content for clients now and clients aren't coming to us and saying, oh so when you publish that first piece of content, it's just going to miraculously land on the first page of Google, like they did with that website years ago. They're saying things like oh great, so now I've published that piece of content, now I have to share it as much as I possibly can. I need to get my email list involved. I need to be sharing it on social media, maybe repurposing it, because our content gets them to a point where to say the content is the start of the journey, not the end, and this is something that we try to do with everything.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But you're right in the sense that once something is published like that and you've got your kind of 11 reasons, you shouldn't work with me or whatever it might be, or your process is. It's never just a one and done type thing. It is something where, for every client, if there's something, if there's a miscommunication, if there's something that they're not quite understood and we've not quite communicated, right, that will go add on to the content where we're constantly refining it. It's kind of never done because we always want to make sure that we're as clear as possible. So there's I mean, nothing is ever 100% perfect. So anything where there's kind of a misunderstanding there, we can update that content as well.
Speaker 1:But I suppose once you start to create that content and you see, I'm curious, have you had feedback I'm sure you have of you build this content to repel the clients you don't want to work with, and then the clients that want to work with you and you don't want to work with as well, what sort of comments do you get from them about that content? Do they thank you? Do they say I understand your process and now I know how to proceed forward? Have you ever gotten those sorts of comments that validate, from the positive side, that the content is actually attracting the right customers other than, obviously, new business?
Speaker 3:I think the best thing and this is honestly, it gives me goosebumps every time we talk about it but the best thing is that the level of respect that people have for us because they don't want to deviate from our process because our methodology works. It gets traffic, leads and sales and better clients and the content we produce for us does that. So they know well, if it's worked for me, it can work for me as well. And people love the idea of I want to do right by Martin and Lindsay and it feels weird saying that, but people want to when they're the consumer piece of content about the framework.
Speaker 3:And bear in mind, it's not just we prefer clients to do this and I prefer this kind of business, and it's not about us, it's all about the process. In order to become successful, you should follow this process and if you don't follow this process then your chances of being successful are less and if you do follow the process, then it increases. So people don't want to deviate from the process because they trust us and we're putting enough content out there to have that validation and that trust and respect that when we actually start to communicate the perfect method in order to get traffic, leads and sales through content. Then people say, okay, we're not going to question what it is that you say, and it makes our business so much more enjoyable and a happy place to be. Whenever we speak to clients, they're not saying, okay, where are we up to with this? What's the process? Why did you publish this content? What's this got to do with me and my business? Because they just respect us and know that we know what we're talking about.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. You don't want to be in a place and I'm sure many of us have been there where your clients saying so, what's happening now, what's happening next, where are we up to? And it's always a really awkward kind of situation. You know you should be kind of applying that pressure to your clients where you're asking them where things are at, where this is our process, where we are with it. You know those kind of things because that's what your job is. You know you're there to kind of help them be successful.
Speaker 4:So you want to make sure that you're not on the back foot and that your client thoroughly understands and respects your process and how you do things and knows that it will work. And clients love that as well. They love that structure, because it's the most horrible feeling when you're investing something and then you're like what's happening now? I don't understand what the next step is in the process. So it's really good for both parties to have that thorough understanding of what exactly is going on, what the next step might be and how the entire process works, and that just is transformational for our business definitely.
Speaker 1:It almost sounds like, and I'm just looking at my own business as well and I can see that I need to create more. I need to create my own content fortress here, but Rome wasn't built in a day, right? That being said, you know, it seems like there's sort of this gap in that there's a lot, especially in B2B industries, that want to produce content for thought leadership, there's an SEO aspect, but they're seen as the expert. But yet when people go to work with them, if they have this content out that says this is how I work, right, which also helps repel the clients they don't want to work with.
Speaker 1:It's almost like people want to be told by experts what to do. So they're listening to experts and, as you do, they're reading your book, listening to you. When they come to you, they already know that you're the expert. It's almost more efficient for you to tell them this is how I can make you the best solution. Therefore, that content in parallel also helps repel those clients that don't have the budget, don't have the time, don't want to buy into the process. What have you? I'm assuming that do you find with a lot of your clients not all of them that that's the missing link in their content is that whole onboarding or process, or this is how we work or this is how we make you successful. These are the next steps. Do you find that this is a missing piece or that a lot of clients have it, but it's not created in a way that can also help repel, as it can help make that customer journey even more successful?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that is a major problem and I think people think about onboarding after someone has become a customer and they think about OK, well, I'll explain everything in the process and my onboarding email sequence which is great, it's really good to have one of those, but you never want someone joining or becoming a customer without really having a full understanding, and it's amazing how many people actually do this. You think, oh well, someone would invest $5,000, $15,000 in a website without having a full understanding of how everything works. But they do, and there's countless of cases of this and it's good that people have a full understanding up front how it all works. Rather, once they become a customer and then they're bombarded with information of how the whole process is, and that can feel quite overwhelming. I think we've all experienced a very overwhelming onboarding sequence before, where you're like this is the third email I've received this hour. What's going on? And you kind of have to really take that all in. It's better to do that all in front.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I also think that people come from content creation from two main angles, which is I need to create more content in order to get more traffic, leads and sales. And then you have some people you mentioned thought leaders, for instance that already have a wealth of knowledge, experience and authority, where they feel that they're in a position of I don't need to justify my products and prices, I don't need to justify the way I do things and what it is, and then what happens is somebody invests money with them because they've got that authority and, before you know it, they might become disappointed because it's not exactly what they wanted and, before you know it, that reputation starts to reduce because it wasn't clear originally. You don't know exactly what you're getting. People are buying because you are an authority and, before you know it, you've got some people that might not be completely aware of what they've bought, might not have thought it was a group program versus a one to one, an in-person one, and all these questions start to come up, and the biggest difference that we found as well is, rather than someone buying from you and then finding out that there's a long, that there's going to take, a more time and it's going to take a more money.
Speaker 3:In the process, we actually found that the more education that we put up front and the more time that we spent saying here is the process, here is the price, here is the structure, here is who we work with, here is who we don't work with, then the actual sales calls were reduced by I think it was about at least 80% of the time that we spent beforehand was reduced because we put a content fortress in place. So I think before we did this, we were talking to people for between an hour and two hours every single time because they were asking us basic questions about our process and things and those aren't sexy things to talk about. But when we actually implemented a content fortress, we were speaking to people and I think the number that always pops up for me, the number that I remember, is 22 minutes. So we'd managed to go from two-hour phone calls and lots of email exchanges to a 22-minute Zoom call where they just said to us yeah, we don't need to know your process, we know your process, we don't need to know the prices. We kind of guess where we sit.
Speaker 3:What we do need to know is this specific thing about our product, our service and how that integrates within our business. So it was more specific and we got off that call and it was 22 minutes and they'd already asked us for an invoice. We'd not even sent them a proposal, which is what we were doing before. We were speaking to people, then we were sending them the proposal, then they were getting back to us and lots of email exchanges. This person was so pre-qualified and so comfortable with us that they were comfortable enough to ask us for the invoice during that 22-minute call. And that was the biggest realization, which is why are we doing so many sales calls? Why don't we just educate people up front and save ourselves the headache of convincing people that we're the right fit for them?
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense. And if you're wondering for those listening, do you have a process documented for everything that Martin and Lindsay have been talking about? To repeat again, the process is in the book Content Fortress, and in fact, one of our online commenters realized that after they commented and went on and bought the book. So thank you for that. Oh, thank you, and it's really funny because I have this thing where I find, just from my own personal experience as a consultant, that those that have the most no-like and trust in me they've consumed more of my content. They are almost qualified when they call me and we usually have a brief meeting and then, boom, they're a client. What I found the difficult client meetings I have are the ones that don't have the no-like interest. They might have just seen a YouTube video reached out to me without really knowing everything else about me and I haven't done enough to educate them. And I was thinking, well, maybe I'll do a qualification where they have to sign up to a $20, 30 minute call, which really actually cheapens the value here.
Speaker 1:But I think your approach makes a lot of sense, which is before the call, and it's almost like for you to schedule the podcast interview like hey, what are we gonna talk about? What is my audience gonna learn? What am I gonna learn? In a similar way, before the call. Hey, just wanna make sure you understand. Number one this is the time it's gonna take. Number two these are my expectations for you. Number three I am not an agent, I am a consultant. Do you understand and agree in that? That's what you're looking for. So I suppose that there's a lot of things I could be doing as well and I could see how, by doing that, you're gonna get less, potentially less sales calls, but the conversion rate of the sales calls you do get increases exponentially. I'm assuming that's sort of the experience you've seen as well. Correct?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, and you're right. There's such a huge difference between people that have been on our email list and consumed our content and then people that have just come to us directly. We like to call them content dodgers the people that haven't read our content kind of dodged it. Or people that pick up the phone sometimes and expect to kind of speak to you for an hour randomly, and people that avoid your content like that, and that's why it's good to have in place that before you speak to anyone, you need to pre-qualify them. No one should be getting on a call surprised at how much you charge or how long it takes or any of those things. Those things should not be surprises at all for anyone, and that's when we think of ourselves as customers. That's what we want as well. We don't want to go on to sales calls to find the price. We want it straight away.
Speaker 1:Well, that's basically another question which is is there TMI to much information you can put online? So there's debate. I have a solution sales background, traditional B2B software sales where there is no list price. It's how do we provide a solution and maximize the budget of what our clients have to get the best value for our company? So I am one that doesn't put prices on my website. There are others that do, is there? I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Because yes, if you have the prices out there, then that's probably one of the biggest ways in which you can propel the clients that don't have enough budget. But is there, I guess, my two questions number one, your thoughts about putting the price and information out there in public, and then number two is there too much in public? Are there things that you still want to keep close to your vest, that you only want to reveal in a phone call? Or really, the more transparent and open we are about everything, the better.
Speaker 3:I think it depends on your business goals. We've tried it both ways. We've tried well, we've tried it many ways. Should I say One? We've tried without any prices at all. You know, speak to us and what happens is that people generally don't trust you. So when you give them a price, the thing is that too expensive? Is that too cheap? How would I know? There's that question mark about it, which is why we care about what people publish rather than what they say.
Speaker 3:The second thing that we've tried is giving ranges. So actually giving a range, to say, the typical, you know, content plan that we put together is this much. However, it might be a little bit less so it might be a little bit more, depending on what you need. At this point now, what we've done is we have let this be a product first price. So our packages. Now, when we write content for clients, we crafted the framework and the process to say this is exactly what you need in order to achieve your goals. Therefore, this is the price that it costs. So if the product is packaged up in a way, if it's packaged pricing, then you can clearly see that this is the framework. So this is the price that we would charge. However, you know that's not gonna work for everyone, so you might have to give people ranges and things like that. It's just that we wanted to just keep testing and keep testing and testing so that we can, you know, answer questions like that, and we just found that the best way to do it is to, when you have someone book a sales call, you send them a price and it says we charge between five and 10,000 pound, for instance.
Speaker 3:Generally, people subconsciously think oh well, it might be somewhere in the middle there, and then that gives you some wiggle room and you can actually have a conversation with people. But we've just found that it's just far easier for us to put the exact price of our package. That's what we found. I don't think that there's a way that you can give too much information. You can clearly articulate what's gonna be involved. You've got what makes the price go up, why you can get a website for 15 pounds on a software and why somebody might charge 15,000. You need to not be laughing at those people that say why would I pay you when I can get WordPress for free? You need to actually communicate what the difference is and actually really, really break it down, and this is something that you know. Every question you're always going to get the question how much does it cost? And you may as well have some content in order to educate people. Even a little bit is better than nothing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, even if it's, you know. I mean, we at one point said our website's between five and 30,000. Now, obviously that's a vast, vast difference and so, but it gave people an idea and people with a budget of 300 pounds thought, well, that's not right. So it just prevented us at least from talking. And if you find yourself, you know, talking to people with a drastically wrong budget, then that's where it can be worth doing something like that, because you think, well, at least it prevents me from talking to those people and prevents them from wasting their time as well. So you know, you've really got a budget on the sales calls that you're having and the quality of those calls, and is there some content that you need to put in there to maybe make those calls better? And, you know, speaking to the right people.
Speaker 1:All makes total sense. And, Martin, just you said something really powerful early on in the interview, which I think was once you published the content. It carries some sort of authority or validity and therefore, if you're going to have the conversation, share it anyway, in which case it becomes public information. Why not publish it on a website so it has that authority and validity to it. Would you agree with that point?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. It's just really interesting. You know, if you do get an email from someone, they say wait a second, why do you charge what you do? Like I don't understand, like I'm not questioning your methods, but what is the situation? Why do you charge this and they charge that? Well, great, that's an extra piece of content. Why we charge what we do? One of the pieces of content we created early on is why we are so expensive. That was actually the title of the article. Why was so expensive? And we actually ranked number one in the world for that term the years. It was just why we're so expensive. Nobody searches for it, but it was just funny because, so few people talk about why they're more expensive.
Speaker 3:They shy away from it, they're scared of talking about it and in reality the reaction that we got to that kind of piece of content was actually you've broken everything down in that piece of content and actually I don't think you're too expensive at all and if anything, you're probably too cheap.
Speaker 4:It's just a way of highlighting how good you are. Why are you so excited? You know, writing that piece or creating that piece of content is really, you know, attractive to a lot of people to look at and they want to look at it. But essentially it's basically of getting people to look at your content and read or, you know, understand why you're so brilliant. So it's quite, it's quite a nice piece of content to create.
Speaker 3:And you can continue to go down that journey, like one of the pieces of content we love to create is why our prices are going up.
Speaker 3:Because if you speak to a client on the phone and they spoke to you six months ago and they see that the price has changed and you didn't really talk about it, or that if they spoke to you a while ago, or they got an inkling of how much you charged 12 months ago and then they want to hire you now because they're in a position and you've changed the goalpost, that's not good.
Speaker 3:That doesn't feel good when they've been thinking about hiring you and wanting to work with you for so long. Because you put out this amazing content actually communicate prices and changes within your business. It's the most effective thing we've ever done, which is why we have launched this new product or service, why our prices are changing, what's changing in jammy. We actually sent out an email this week which explains why jammy digital is changing and what we're changing to. And that's the thing that gets the biggest engagement, because nobody ever talks about it and as long as it relates to their goals and their objectives, then you can communicate a lot about your business. That means that people are prepared for when they speak to you. It's all about preparation and guiding them to make the right choice for them at the right time for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, really brilliant advice. And I'm just, you know, as you're talking, I'm just going back. You know, I have an old blog post about how to send a complaint to LinkedIn and it's, you know, no one talks about it, right? And so I have, like you know, probably hundreds of comments of all these people's issues with LinkedIn. I literally get emails from people that think that I am LinkedIn because they read that blog post and they assume that's, you know, like, the other day, I got one about, you know, a class action lawsuit against LinkedIn, and please explain what this is about. Like, I don't know, right, I'm not an LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:It's actually quite hilarious, though, once the content's out there, the impact it could have and that meaning that, you know, I think, as a lot of us that are listener marketers, we just think about that.
Speaker 1:Content marketing and I know, you know, part of what you talk about in content fortress is definitely aligned with that, and you yourselves are, you know, a content marketing agency, but it's also that other type of content for middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel educating, for, you know, making sure that we get more high quality sales calls, that we convert more. I think that's, you know, that's really where your book fills this big gap that I see, because everyone is just like more traffic, better. But as you know, and as I know from that experience, that is not necessarily the case. So this has really been a fantastic interview. You know, obviously if people want to get started building their own content, for just first thing they should do is buy the book. But can you give any other advice? Just to sort of summarize what we talked about, what are the first steps that people listening, if they want to implement what you've talked about after buying your book, what are the first steps they should take to sort of, you know, implement all this advice you've been talking about?
Speaker 3:I think a good thing to do is to actually just go over the last few clients that you have looked at and give them kind of a score, you know, out of 10, who is it that's perfect, who is it that's less so and actually think about what could have prevented that from happening. What situation happened in the business I mean, this isn't a new thing. We recently did a survey for over 500 people and asked them about their relationships with their clients, and you know everyone's facing the same problems that we were facing. We just didn't know about it. People aren't talking about it, because everybody's producing content just for the sake of traffic, leads and sales, but everybody seems to be dealing with the same situation. We were seven out of 10 people who sleep due to difficult client situations.
Speaker 3:So this is a problem that needs to be fixed, and I don't want to say that lightly, that this is a nice thing to do. Here are five ways for you to go and create more content and get better clients, but actually this is a problem for most businesses. Therefore, it is a priority for you to put a little bit of a fortress in place and think about the key problems that you've had recently that have led to difficult situations maybe refunds, maybe unhappy, maybe buyer's remorse. Actually think about those key problems and think about creating that content first. So a lot of time people are thinking I just need to create top of the funnel, get traffic to the website and then deal with the problem later. But actually if you start further down that funnel and you start tackling some of those problems and making your life a little bit easier, then that will allow you to create a more happy, successful business.
Speaker 4:Yeah, another thing as well is that for any change in your business, whatever change it might be, as Martin said, you know, raising your prices or adding a new service, or even changing your service or product for whatever reason make sure you create content around that, because, one, people do find it very interesting as long as you frame it in a way that's helpful to them, and, two, it's a great way to get sales because you're directly shining a light on what it is that you do and you know how good you are.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and we do have a. For anyone who's watching who sends us an email, they can access a free mini course that we've only recently built. So anyone feel free to send us that and you'll get access to seven part mini course. It's completely free.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic. What is the URL for that?
Speaker 3:So if you just email Martin at jammydigitalcom, I'll be able to send you a direct link and you don't have to pay anything for it.
Speaker 1:Well, there we go, martin at jammydigitalcom Perfect, well, thank you very much. That's really awesome to to offer that up. I'm glad we interviewed you when we did then, so that our listeners and our viewers can take advantage of that. So I also just want to clarify, though, and I should be showing myself in the video. I also want to clarify, though, you know, and to clarify for everyone listening that content just doesn't equal blog. It can be FAQ, it could be email. When you're talking about content, it's really creating a, a published resource that you can point people to, that you create once and use everywhere to better optimize your business.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Video is huge. You can't ignore video, the content, just any content that you can create in order to pre-qualify people and attract your ideal clients. The better, the more the better.
Speaker 1:Well, there you have it. I almost think that the more of that top of the funnel traffic you get, the higher the need for this type of content becomes, because naturally and I you know, I'm just thinking of my various fractional CMO clients, and one is a supplement provider so the more visibility they get, the more questions they get about. Well, I have this condition Is it safe to take your supplement? Almost every day, we get an increasing number of these things. So now we need to create the content in advance on the product page so that we don't get these inquiries right, and hopefully it either accelerates the buying process or if they were never going to buy from us in the first place, then it would be, so it really is a win-win for the customer as well. It really is.
Speaker 4:Absolutely yeah, and there's things obviously like chatbots now that can scan your website for that kind of content and can answer people's questions automatically. So only if it's on your website, though, already. So that can be extremely helpful, for if you're getting those kind of questions very regularly, that content already there can be used in so many different ways. With more automations and things like that, you don't even have to be the one sending it out, so that's always nice.
Speaker 3:And it's funny because when you create the content, we have a client, a SaaS client, who hired us to create content for SEO reasons, and now they don't talk about SEO, they just talk about how useful it is for the customer service team in order to pre-qualify people and send that content over to them. So it's really interesting actually how your relationship with content changes from selling to helping. It really really does work wonders. If you have that end customer in mind, it can work wonders.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Amazing. So once again, content fortress. Martin Humback and Lindsay Cambridge sold at fine bookstores everywhere. We got the email address. If you want to get that free mini ebook, just email Martin at jammedigitalcom. Where else can people go to find out more about the amazing things and maybe to be inspired from your repelling content as well?
Speaker 3:So Lindsay's huge on LinkedIn. She puts a lot of effort into LinkedIn. I actually started producing on my YouTube channel and on TikTok as well. So a few different platforms, depending on your like.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then obviously our website, jammedigitalcom, and we've got our blog on there, which, as you can imagine, is quite active as well.
Speaker 1:We'll be sure to put all that as part of you know, in the show notes and everything, and, before we go, always like to get questions from the audience because I record a podcast in parallel. I don't actively try to get questions, but we do have a question coming in from Tara and, as you can imagine, in every interview I get, there's going to be a question about AI, and this is a very general question, but I think it's still a question that marketers and businesses everywhere are sort of struggling with, and this is how you are using AI in your content creation process. What I love is that obviously you've been creating content you first organically created for your own business, found success, created, you know, a content agency, for lack of a better word. How do you see AI? I'm assuming that you've at least experiment with tools, maybe use as part of your process. Where do you find the greatest value in AI and maybe where are the areas you recommend you don't use AI for?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, absolutely. We love AI. We love it for so many reasons. We'd love it if it was good enough to create the kind of content that we do for our clients. And we would love it because you know you think to yourself okay, if it could produce content that would rank on search and deliver more traffic, leads and sales, then great, we could double the amount of content that we push out and we could double the number of results and we could get the rankings sooner. But through all our trialing and testing, it's just not there yet and I think a lot of people probably watching this have realized that it's just not as. It's just not there and maybe it will be one day.
Speaker 3:But when you think about using a robot in order to communicate your internal processes, that's tricky. And when you talk about your stories and how you can build momentum and connection with your audience, that's very tricky. So there's an awful lot of work that you would have to put up front in order to facilitate an AI tool and if it's having a good day, you might get lucky and you might be able to extract some of that and reframe it. But actually it's not always reliable. It does actually help when it comes to things like using AI to read content back to yourself. We love websites where it's like okay, I've just written this piece of content, I'm going to read it back to myself. I use an AI for that. I also use it to repurpose some content. When we've created a piece of content, our clients want to be more successful by sharing their content Great, well, let's give them the resources, the tools, the training in order to make that happen. So original content is tricky, but there are definitely ways for planning and repurposing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's definitely good to use as an assistant to help you, especially when you're stuck, you can't find a word for something. But yeah, those kind of things where you're thinking, you know, if with every piece of content we want to make sure we're adding something new, we're not just regurgitating what is already out there, if you're just regurgitating what's already out there, there's not really much point in you creating that content. You know you can see that content in 10 tips or 10 ways to do this and then someone else does 11 ways to do that and you know it's not actually that different. So you want, with every piece of content we create for our clients, we're always including their stories, their anecdotes, things that have happened with their clients. We always like to work in case studies that have happened with their clients to actually explain things and explain how they do things Using their original research.
Speaker 4:Some of our clients have done massive research that we've included in their content. Those kind of things. And an example if you ask to chat to GBT to come up with examples, it'll give you Apple or Disney or whatever. But actually you know that actually resonate with your audience and you have to think about that a little bit more and do research. There's so many things I think that it can't yet do yeah, that it's not quite there, but it's really good and we use it a lot for repurposing content. So once you've got that content already finished, you can then repurpose it, say a blog post, into a LinkedIn post or into a Twitter thread and those kind of things. We actually wrote a blog post on this how we're using AI in our agency because that was one of the. I think we did that back in January because that was yeah, we thought that was going to be a big question and it was. I think it's got quite a lot of traffic, that blog post.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's brilliant. It's funny because I think, as content creators, with the emergence of AI and seeing what it can do, I think it's almost raised our expectations of what we wanted to do. And I am also finding why can't AI do this yet? So, for instance, I'll give you a great example so I'm creating the social media post, doing repurposing. It's like, well, how do I repurpose my podcast? And it's like, well, yeah, I can use AI to repurpose a transcript to give a summary, but I want to use AI to intelligently extract quotes from the interview.
Speaker 1:So I, you know Jasper's example, one tool I use, and they have like a, you know, 2,500 character limit, but a 15 minute transcript is like 3,000, 5,000 characters. So, immediately. So I, you know, I go into Jasper chat. I'm like, please introduce me to Jasperai template that will take up to 5,000 characters. And it spits out a template. It doesn't exist, right.
Speaker 1:And then I'm trying to like, you know, I'm trying to like split up character count and it's like, wow, this is actually taking way much more time. I can just, I literally should just hire someone, a virtual assistant, to actually go through the actual transcript and pick it out, because AI is not doing the trick. So I think that there's still a huge potential and I think that tools are going to get smarter at building out those use case scenarios. But but yeah, I agree with you for for smaller menial tasks, the repurposing, that's a really, really great, and obviously content ideation as well. So, yeah, great advice for everyone, great question as well. And well, I think that's a great way to you know in the interview, martin Lindsay, any other advice, whether it's on the AI or the content fortress?
Speaker 3:I think just keep using your experience to create better experiences for future clients and, unfortunately, is your responsibility and you can just create an amazing content plan that can protect you and deliver better clients for the for the long term.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think for me it's always keep an eye on what will be content worthy. You know anything that you do in your day. Any client client asks a question, a prospect asks a question that you've never had before. You make a change in your business. Just keep a notepad and just jot all these things down because they are really interesting to your audience and they make great content, even if it's just something you post on social media. It's something, it's a habit that you have to get into and I'm constantly on the lookout, for you know it would dismay great content.
Speaker 1:God. I think that a lot of people listening may think you know, content fortress. Oh, with every backlink, I'm creating more of a fortress which protects me against the competition, and that becomes a mindset. And what you're talking about obviously is a very, very different, a different way of looking at it, but it's that mindset that says, okay, how do I better, how do I better get the word out to attract better clients and repel those that we don't want to work with? And it sounds like a daily thing of with every client call, with every client interaction. But I love that quote, martin. You know, use your experience to create better experiences. That's quite brilliant. So, thank you so much. I think you've given people a lot to think about, not just to implement, you know book, to read, a framework, but also really a mindset that if they can make part of their DNA, it will vastly improve their business. So, thank you so much. I look forward to talking to you again in the near future, hopefully, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for having us Thank you.
Speaker 1:We love that. All right. I really hope that you love that interview, like I did, and see your content in a different way. I hope that you like it for SEO, content to engage, but also content to serve as a form of gatekeeper. I thought was really really refreshing. Definitely, if that interested, you go ahead. Buy the book, highly recommended. And I also want to remind you, for those that don't know well, when you listen to, this one is being published.
Speaker 1:I will be at Vid Summit in Dallas, texas. So if you're at Vid Summit, please find me, would love to chat with you, buy you a beer, whatever it is. I will also be at Adobe Max the following week in downtown Los Angeles. I am an Adobe Express ambassador and I love the community of Adobe Express ambassadors. Give a shout out to Phil Palin doing great stuff. He'll have some exciting announcements soon if you follow him but also learning about the latest and greatest that Adobe has and meeting some wonderful speakers and learning as well. So if you're going to be at either of those events Vid Summit or Adobe Max please reach out. And that's it for another exciting, scintillating episode of the digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schaefer, signing off.
Speaker 2:When it comes to coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping, and see you next time on your digital marketing coach.