My guest today is Phil Singleton who will share great insights related to lead gen. Phil runs a boutique web design/internet marketing agency that helps businesses build websites from the ground up and establishing them as publishing platforms so people can use them to publish content and become authorities in their niche and draw people in by teaching them through content marketing.
Here are the highlights of my conversation with Phil:
Phil’s coolest sales experience as a customer and bought Jan Jantsch’s book, Duct Tape Marketing
Phil’s definition of Content Marketing
A way to establish yourself or your business as an authority in its niche through different approaches such as blogging, social media, podcasting, or being interviewed, etc.
It’s more than just producing content. The bigger issue is to really get 2-10x out of your content marketing investment by figuring out who your ideal customers want and how they’re searching for things on the internet.
Use a tool you can use like BuzzSumo to see what kind of topics are trending in a particular area then marry those hot trends with the way people are searching and produce 10x content.
Why companies fail at generating leads from their content:
- People still bring it back to an advertorial tone or message.
You have to buy into the idea that teaching is the new selling. Many businesses are still in an advertorial mode when it comes to their products and services. Figure out and put your best content and your best ideas out there. Be comfortable with giving some of your best ideas on a regular basis.Don’t worry you gave away one or two great ideas and think you don’t have any value anymore.
- Keyword research
You want the content you put up to show up in that search so that your information comes up when they’re looking for information on this type of product or service. Google is a part of every single purchase process there is. Buyers do their research and get reviews before buying a product or service. Be sure you’re baked into that search activity into your marketing plan and assets or you lose that opportunity.
How to capture information and maximize them:
- Invest in content marketing and do it the right way.
- Make sure your website is the referral source for all your best content and all your content marketing activities.
One of the mistakes small businesses make is they take their best content and put them up on the social media places where it dies since there is no trail back to their website so there is now way to capture them on a lead form. Make sure everything you’re doing comes back to your source:
- You can offer them something awesome so they get into your sales automation system.
- You’ve got your re-marketing systems in place so they once they come back to your website, you have the chance to chase them back on Facebook and display advertising ads while fresh in their mind.
Content Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- Consistent blogging
Find a way to publish 2 or 4 times a month.
- Social media presence
Have somebody help you write stuff you want to write about and publish to your website. There are tools you can use to automate publishing and then they’re posted out to your third party social media channels so you’re able to maintain that presence.
- Blog post series
Come out with say 10 blog post series that each one of these can then turn into a stand-alone blog post. And then at the end of that series, stitch these all together into an eBook that can then be used as your call-to-action that people can come back to at the end of ten weeks. Then you can also use that to republish onto the Kindle platform. Create a nice author page and use back links so it feeds you RSS feeds on the website.
Just by coming up with a strategic marketing plan, you’ve now just become an author and elevated yourself as an authority in your own niche. You’re just doing the work once but you’re getting multiple benefits out of it.
- Systematize these things and make it part of your discipline.
Part of being an effective content marketer is committing to it and doing it over time. You can’t just work on one or two blog posts and expect to get a return on it. You have to work over time.
- Get involved in committing to an online reputation management strategy.
If you show up on Google and one company has got 50 reviews and the next company has only one, that guy with 50 reviews is going to steal it every single time. Make it habit to make sure you’ve got your business profile setup. Online review sites are changing the whole buying process so be able to make it a part of your plan. Reviews end up making people push the purchase button. Ask your happy customers to go out there and say nice things about you. Be able to display you have a huge army of people that say you are the person, it helps people make the decision and you have control of that.
Phil’s Major Takeaway:
Stop thinking of websites as a business brochure. Think of it as a revenue-generating asset and something you need to invest time and money in. It’s true many small businesses will say most of their business comes from referrals but they could lose some of that referral business they thought they got in the bag because they never got to them and went to somebody else who had 50 reviews or had a great website. So think of your website as an asset or as a top selling person in your organization. The more time you treat it as an investment, the more return you’re going to get out of.
Episode Resources:
Connect with Phil on www.kcseopro.com for SEO and inbound marketing stuff and www..kcwebdesigner.com for Google-friendly web design.
Visit www.seoforgrowth.com and get a 3-bundle eBook pack including SEO for Growth by John Jantsch and Phil Singleton
Hinkle Hardscapes (An example of a successful content marketing that Phil helped with)
Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch
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