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Weekend Favs July 6

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Weekend Favs July 6 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Impresso – Create branded promo videos.
  • Optimage – Compress images automatically.
  • Rebrandly – Track and share custom shortened URLs.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

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Why A Solid Landing Page is Key to Effective PPC

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Why A Solid Landing Page is Key to Effective PPC written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Some marketers choose to send prospects who click on their paid search results to their website’s homepage. While this will certainly get them to a page with relevant information about your company, it is not the most effective option when dealing with search marketing.

Instead of sending people to a generic page, it’s far more effective to design a custom landing page with information and an offer tailored to the verbiage in the paid search ad. While landing pages serve a number of other purposes, one of my favorite techniques is to create one for PPC ads. Here, we’ll look at the many benefits to creating a solid landing page for PPC, and what elements go in to creating a winning page.

Increase Conversion Rate

Designing a custom landing page is one of the keys to increasing conversion rates on ads. Your ad copy should be for a specific product or offer. When a reader clicks on the link, they want to learn more about that certain thing, not be taken to a page that’s more generally about your business.

When visitors are driven to your homepage, it’s now up to them to root around for information that’s relevant to what they saw on the ad. Even if you have a great website, it’s easy for them to grow frustrated and impatient, looking for the information they wish they had right in front of them in the first place. That makes them more likely to give up their search and return to the SERPs.

A custom landing page, however, that addresses the messaging from the ad directly, presents the reader with everything they want to know. This is a lot more likely to generate an immediate positive response from viewers.

Keep Cost per Click Low

A landing page with a high conversion rate also works to keep your cost per click low. When more people convert, you’re generating more revenue from the ad campaign, which means that you’re getting more bang for your marketing buck along the way.

Earn a Higher AdWords Quality Score

There is yet another bonus to creating an effective landing page for PPC ads. When you achieve higher conversion rates and keep visitors on your site for longer, Google takes notice. They infer that the content on your website must be highly relevant to searchers, and so in turn improve your standing on their site. They reward good ads with better placement and show them more frequently.

How Do You Build a Great Landing Page?

So now that you understand all of the value that a solid landing page can bring, let’s talk about how to create one. (And if you’d like a look at what not to do when creating a landing page, check out this post.)

Focus on One Call to Action

Visitors to the landing page are coming there because of the offer you made or product you cited in your PPC ad. Your landing page should contain just one call to action, and it should be directly related to the offer or product from the ad.

Let’s say, for example, that you own a plumbing company. Your PPC ad touts your same-day service. People clicking that ad are probably not interested in the work you do installing environmentally-friendly plumbing systems as part of home renovations. They likely have an emergency situation and are in need of immediate assistance. Your landing page should have a call to action that drives them directly to your online booking system so that they can get on your calendar ASAP.

Keep the Page Clean and Simple

Because visitors are coming there with one express purpose in mind, they don’t need a whole lot of information to convert. Instead, a simple headline; one big, bold, relevant image; and a clear description of the details of the product or service you’re offering will do.

Going back to the plumbing example, start with a headline that says something like “Same-day plumbing services, 365 days a year.” The image should be a hero image—one of your plumbers in front of his truck, striking a bold pose that says, “I’m ready to solve all your plumbing problems!”

Then the description of the service should include what you’re offering (licensed plumbers for same-day service) and what is expected of consumers (there’s a flat-rate fee for your service).

If you’re looking for inspiration when it comes to designing your own landing page, check out these examples, gathered together by Instapage.

A solid landing page can help your PPC ads perform better, rank better, and generate more revenue for your business. By keeping your messaging narrow and targeted, you speak directly to the immediate needs of your prospects. And by building a simple, visually engaging page, you guarantee that you’ll catch their eye and hold their interest.

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Learning to Speak Like a Pro

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Learning to Speak Like a Pro written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Grant Baldwin
Podcast Transcript

Grant Baldwin headshotLots of folks seem to be teaching public speaking these days, and with good reason. While becoming a sought-after and highly paid speaker may be a dream for some, learning to present your ideas in a more effective manner is a good idea for all.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Grant Baldwin: speaker, author, blogger, podcaster and founder of the Speaker Lab Podcast and the Speaker Lab Summit. Baldwin and I talk about how public speaking can help generate revenue, both as a profession, as well as promotionally to increase sales.

Baldwin knows all about public speaking. Starting out as a youth pastor, he has since evolved his love for speaking. Baldwin has presented to audiences all over the country in conferences, assemblies, conventions and other events.

Questions I ask Grant Baldwin:

  • What are some of your resources and best strategies to improve public speaking skills?
  • How do I start to pick up business and land paid gigs? What are some tools you use?
  • Can you tell us a little bit about the training, workshops, and courses that are currently available?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why understanding your why, what and who is critical to building your business.
  • How practice really does lead to perfection—where to find smaller events that are perfect for practice.
  • What the pros and cons are to using an agency or bureau.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Grant Baldwin:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

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This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re looking to grow your business there is only one way: by building real, quality customer relationships. That’s where Klaviyo comes in.

Klaviyo helps you build meaningful relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers, allowing you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages.

What’s their secret? Tune into Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday docu-series to find out and unlock marketing strategies you can use to keep momentum going year-round. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/beyondbf.

 

Transcript of Learning to Speak Like a Pro

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Transcript of Learning to Speak Like a Pro written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

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John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing.

John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Grant Baldwin. He is a speaker, author, blogger, podcaster, and founder of The Speaker Lab Podcast and Speaker Lab Summit, and so guess what we’re going to talk about today? We’re going to talk about speaking and how to get into speaking, how to become a great speaker, and how to get paid to speak. Grant, thanks for joining us.

Grant Baldwin: It is an honor and delight to hang out with you, John.

John Jantsch: I’d love to hear a little of your backstory. Anybody who is a paid speaker and now a trainer of paid speaker, what was your path to speaking?

Grant Baldwin: That’s a great question. In high school I was really involved in my local church and my youth pastor had a really big impact in my life and so for a while I was kind of like, “I want to do that.” That seemed like a really cool gig and he was doing some speaking and I felt like speaking was one of those things that I had done a little bit of like in high school and felt like I was decent at it. It was never one of those things that I thought of a like a career type of thing. I think for most speakers, we never really even knew it was an option. It was never on the career menu so to speak.

Grant Baldwin: After high school, I went to Bible college and then worked at a local church for a little while as a youth pastor, and so in that context I was doing a decent amount of speaking. I was speaking to the youth group on a weekly basis and then from time to time I would get to speak in big church on the weekends. I think it was really there where I felt like, “Okay, I think I’m decent at this. I feel like this is something that I could do.” In fact, in college, I actually worked for a guy who was a full-time speaker and kind of got to see kind of the back end of the business. He was traveling all over the place and speaking and I was kind of helping with like the travel and the logistics and the contracts and just kind of, again, the back end side of it. I got to see a little bit of like, “Okay, this is actually a thing. There’s a career path there.”

Grant Baldwin: After we left the church that I was at, I met a couple of guys who were full-time speakers and just sort of learning about the business and so I started kind of going down that path. I started just doing things that allowed us to… just kind of speaking locally for free or beginning to reach out to potential decision-makers and clients and would book one thing and try to leverage it into something else. It took me about a year and a half to go from zero gigs on the calendar to being able to do it on a full-time basis. To fast forward, I’ve been doing it full time for about the past eight years or so, speaking a lot in the education market, doing a lot with high school and college students.

Grant Baldwin: Today, we do a little bit more with entrepreneurs and corporations, but really, really enjoy speaking. Speaking is an absolute blast. There’s a lot of ways that speaking can be used for entrepreneurs and their business, which you could do it on a full-time basis, but you could also…. John, you and I, we both have friends who they don’t want to speak full time. They want to do five, 10 things a year, and by all means there’s absolutely opportunities for people to do that.

Grant Baldwin: I got to a point a couple of years ago where I was speaking… I think I did about 69 events or so, and it got to a point where part of the challenge with speaking is it just doesn’t scale very well, meaning that you are one person, in one place, at one time, speaking to one audience, and while that’s great and there’s nothing that can compare to like that 45 minutes or one hour on stage, the nature of speaking means that you have to leave your family. You have to go somewhere. It’s dependent on you being someplace.

Grant Baldwin: I remember early on having a buddy tell me like, “Speaking is a very high-paying manual labor job”, meaning that we get paid way too well to travel and stand on stages and run our mouths, but again, the nature of it is you have to… it’s a manual labor job. You have to do something in order to earn that check, and so I wanted to do something that was… I still wanted to speak, but just wanted to create more of a business that was less dependent on me.

Grant Baldwin: We started The Speaker Lab, which you mentioned, and so now we do a lot with training speakers and helping speakers on the business side. There’s a lot of people out there that teach on kind of the performance side so to speak of how you create and deliver a good talk, and that’s something that we teach a little bit on, but a lot of what we try to teach on is the behind the scenes like, how do you actually build a business of a speaker? How do you find bookings? How do you know how much to charge? What do you speak about? How do you connect with decision-makers? That’s a lot of what we do today.

John Jantsch: Well, and one of the things I want to emphasize, because we are going to talk about the business of speaking for somebody who really wants to be paid and maybe have that be their primary source of revenue, but I think there are so many reasons to look at yourself as a speaker, get better at speaking because I think it makes you a better salesperson, it makes you more confident in everything that you’re doing.

John Jantsch: For me, I speak at an amount that people would consider as a full-time job, but I do it just as much because we sell books and we sell courses and we recruit people to our consulting network. In fact, when I first started speaking, it was the greatest way to get clients. I would go speak to a group of willing participants, show them how smart I was for 45 minutes, and inevitably two or three would come up and say, “Hey, we want to hire you.” There is so many reasons to get good at this and look at this as a legitimate channel, even just for lead generation.

Grant Baldwin: I would totally agree with that. In fact, one of the students that we work with, he was telling me recently in the past 12 months he had earned $372,000 from speaking for free. I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. How does that even work?” He said he speaks for free as lead generation for his coaching business, and so sometimes there’s kind of this misconception with speaking that, “Well, if you aren’t getting paid you’re not a real speaker, you’re not a professional speaker”, and that’s not true at all. Like you said, John, you can use speaking to generate revenue in a lot of different ways, whether that’s through selling books, or curriculum, or training, or coaching, or consulting.

Grant Baldwin: I know for me personally, and I’m sure you’ve experienced the same, where I’ve had a few events where I’ve actually generated more in back of the room sales than I had from my actual speaking fee. There’s a lot of ways that you could use speaking to build your business beyond just the “You went, you collected a check, and you went home.” Again, that’s great. That’s one way to generate revenue and to build your business, but there’s a lot of ways that you can use speaking to market other parts of your business as well.

John Jantsch: I actually look at it as a channel, just like I might PR our advertising, quite frankly. Let’s get into some nuts and bolts. I’m out there. Maybe I have a company. Maybe I want to be a speaker, so we’ll keep it a little bit generic. How do you figure out who to talk to?

Grant Baldwin: I think there’s three key questions that I always challenge speakers to answer, people that are interested in getting started in the speaking world. First of all, number one, would just be, why? Why is it that you want to speak? Kind of in a related vein there would be, how do you see speaking fitting into your business? Speaking is one of those things that for a lot of people it’s kind of like, “Well, I did it. I spoke at a local Rotary Club”, or, “I spoke at a conference for a friend and just did a little workshop and it was really fun and I just want to do more of that.” That’s great, like it is absolutely fun, but being really, really clear about why you want to do this and what the win is for you.

Grant Baldwin: Like we were kind of talking about there, John, do you want to speak in order to sell more books? Do you want to speak in order to travel? Do you want to speak to find more clients? Why is it that you want to do it because why you want to speak will kind of help dictate and determine the context of the types of events that you should be speaking at. If you want to sell books, for example, there’s going to be some environments and contexts where it’s a heck of a lot easier to sell books through speaking versus others. Understanding that “why” ahead of time really makes it easier on the marketing piece later.

Grant Baldwin: Once you understand the “why” piece, the other two questions would be, what do you speak about? Who do you speak to? These are super basic marketing questions, but again, a lot of times speakers, we just don’t think those things through. Again, it’s just kind of, “I like speaking. Speaking is fun, so who do I speak to? I’ll speak to humans. I want to talk to people. Anybody that will listen.” “What do you speak about?” “I don’t know. What do you want me to speak about?” You cannot build a business that way.

Grant Baldwin: I think about it like a book. John, you’ve written several books and so if you had a book that was being published… I know you’ve got a new book out and people were to ask you, “Where on the shelves of Barnes & Noble would your book go?” Well, if you were to reply like, “Well, it could go anywhere, like any section, and it’s for everybody”, well, it’s really for nobody, so you have to be super, super clear of, “This is who I speak to and this is what I talk about.” Once you’re clear on why you speak, what you speak about, and who you speak to, well, then it’s a heck of a lot easier to find potential opportunities and events and engagements versus trying to just stick your stake in the ground and saying like, “I speak to humans about everything”, because in reality you cannot find speaking gigs that way.

John Jantsch: Totally, totally right on, dead on, but I’ll throw in the caveat that I tell a lot of speakers, if you’re just getting started, go speak to wherever two people will have you because you got to get practice. That’s where you’ll find what works, what doesn’t work. Don’t get so hung up on that, “If my leads aren’t in this room I’m not going to speak there”, until you can get to the point where you can do that I think.

Grant Baldwin: Totally, totally, and I think like a way to kind of frame that is from a marketing perspective, I tell a lot of speakers, “If I were to go to your site and I’m considering hiring you as a speaker and it feels like it’s for everybody and nobody, I’m probably not going to be interested in you.” I remember early on, because I was speaking a lot in the high school and college market, that’s really what I kind of based my marketing materials around.

Grant Baldwin: Now, if that meant that I spoke at an event and someone saw me speak and they’re like, “Hey, do you also speak to corporations or associations or this totally different demographic?” It wouldn’t be like, “Well, no, no, no. I’m sorry, I can’t do that.” Well, if something came up, and again, if it was an opportunity for an at-bat and an opportunity to speak, then by all means. if I felt comfortable doing it. I think that’s a key, too.

Grant Baldwin: You don’t want to put yourself in a position where it’s like, “Oh, man, I’m talking to an audience that I am way over my head or talking about a subject that I literally know nothing about.” If it’s in the vein of, “Yeah, yeah, I could do this and I could do a solid job”, then by all means do that, but kind of in the upfront marketing communication you don’t want to be the person that’s like, “I can speak about anything to anybody.”

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers, and this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages. There’s powerful segmentation, email autoresponders that are ready to go, great reporting. You’re going to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships. They’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday. It’s a docuseries, a lot of fun, quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/BeyondBF, Beyond Black Friday.

John Jantsch: Once you’re out there and you’re starting to do it and you decide, “Hey, this could pay off. I could either get paid for this or maybe I am getting paid for this or I can get business out of it.” What are some of your resources… we could spend hours talking about this, but essentially, how should somebody go about getting better at it?

Grant Baldwin: Well, I think one of the best ways to get better as a speaker is you actually speak. This is the same thing that’s true with anything. You want to become better as a writer, you have to actually write. I’ve got three daughters, and so if I was teaching one of my girls how to ride a bike, we could watch TED Talks about riding a bike. We could read articles about riding a bike, but the way they actually learn to ride the bike is you have to get on the bike. The same thing is true with speaking, and so the more opportunities you speak, the better you become. I know the more comfortable you feel, you figure out what works and what doesn’t work.

Grant Baldwin: One of the kind of misconceptions with speaking is that professional speakers, they can talk about anything, they just make it up on the fly, they shoot from the hip, and the reality is is, John, we both know that they’ve got like one or two talks that they do and that’s it, but those talks are extremely, extremely polished. They are really, really dialed in. They have given those talks hundreds of times and told those stories hundreds of times so that they’re really, really focused and tight and it’s not something that they’re just kind of making up. Whenever you speak, you get some of that real-world feedback immediately from audiences. You start to figure out, “You know what? This part of the story worked really, really well and this part didn’t, and so I can tweak that and modify that.”

Grant Baldwin: Whenever you’re kind of staring at a blank screen and creating a talk, it’s all an educated guess until you get in front of an audience, and then you actually figure out what works and what doesn’t. I would start by trying to find some of those local events or trying to see what you could do for free, and even if it’s something like speaking at like a Rotary Club or a chamber of commerce or even a Toastmaster, just something where I’m getting some practice, I’m getting some at-bats that gives me the opportunity just to speak. Again, the more often you speak the better you become.

Grant Baldwin: I think today at this point, I’m a pretty decent speaker, not because I have some special gift that nobody else has, it’s because I’ve given hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of presentations. Over time, you get a better feel of what works and what doesn’t. You just start to feel more comfortable, and again, it’s true with anything. The more you can speak, even just for free, I think the more comfortable and the better you become.

John Jantsch: I think that “comfort” word is a big one because you see a lot of speakers when they’re first getting started, I certainly was this way, they’re very nervous and they’re thinking about what they’re going to say and whether or not the slide is going to work. That all gets in the way of you just being you, and so the more practice, the more comfortable you get. It’s such a huge deal.

John Jantsch: Let’s go to some practical things, too. Now, I’m starting to get some business around this. I’m starting to get known and people like my talks when I give them. They get highly reviewed. How do I go out and, as a professional, start getting that 2, 3, 4, $5,000 kind of paid gig? What are some of the tools out there for me to promote myself?

Grant Baldwin: There’s several different things that you can do to actually start picking up some business and starting to kind of generate that flywheel so to speak. Again, kind of going back to those three questions of why you speak, who you speak to, what you speak about, when you’re really clear, especially on the “who” question… Let’s say, for example, you wanted to speak primarily to accountants. Kind of a bonus fourth question would then be, where do those people gather? There’s a lot of existing events, associations, conferences, groups, clubs that gather on a regular basis that are looking for speakers. This is a really key point here, that it is much simpler to get your foot in the door with organizations and groups that are already looking for speakers versus trying to convince some organization that’s never hired a speaker that they need to hire one.

Grant Baldwin: It’s kind of like if someone… We’re recording this right now in the fall and it’s a beautiful day. I’m home here in Nashville, and so if someone came to my door right now and said, “Hey, would you like me to shovel your driveway?” I don’t have a need for that. You’re asking me for something that I just do not need versus someone that comes in January and it’s dumping snow. You’re providing a solution to a need that I have.

Grant Baldwin: If you wanted to speak primarily to accountants, one of the simplest things you could do is honestly just start with Google and start kind of just browsing around to figure out… looking up phrases like “accountants conference”, “accountants association”, “accountants conventions”, “accountant event”. I would look this up by state or region or province or territory as well. The reason being that is if you will look up like “accountants association” right now, you would probably find like some of the bigger national conferences, and oftentimes those bigger associations and groups are going to be bringing in bigger national speakers.

Grant Baldwin: When you start looking up… if you just looked up let’s say the Missouri Association of Accountants, they may not be able to afford some bigwig big name speaker with a $20,000 speaking fee. What they’re looking for is they’ve got, like you said, John, a 3, 4, $5,000 budget, and so they’re looking for a quality speaker but they can’t afford the $20,000 speaker. If you are someone who is within… I remember early on, I tried to look for like within a three-hour driving distance of where I was what some potential organizations and groups would be because at that point, again, if you find let’s say some association or conference or group that is bringing speakers in to speak to accountants and you are someone who speaks to accountants, again, you are providing a solution to a need that they have. That’s where I would start is even just using Google.

Grant Baldwin: Now, from there, there’s a lot of things that you can do in terms of finding repeat business, of building referrals from existing clients, of networking with other speakers and finding referrals. This is a big thing that a lot of people don’t think about, is they think speaking is very, very competitive and there’s a lot of speakers out there. The fact of the matter is, John, you and I are both speakers, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t refer business to one another because kind of this misconception is like once you or I go speak at an event, even if we do a phenomenal job, most likely that client will not hire us again for another three or four or five years because typically they have the same audience. The want the audience to turn over a little bit. They just don’t want to bring the same speakers back year after year after year.

Grant Baldwin: If I go do a great job at an event and they ask me, “Hey, we’d love to have you back in five years”, I want to maintain that relationship with that client, so why wouldn’t I go to the client and say. “You know what? I know you’re not going to have me back for a few years, but let me introduce you to my friend John. John would do a phenomenal job at this conference. You really need to talk to John.” There’s a lot of times where I have referred business to other speakers, other speakers have referred business to me because, again, we want to maintain that relationship with that client. If I speak this year and I refer John, and John shows up and he kills it, it makes me look good. I continue to build and solidify that relationship with that client.

Grant Baldwin: Again, there’s a lot of ways kind of long term that you can start to find gigs and book business, but again, I think just the hustle and grind of just digging through the haystack and looking for some of those needles there of groups that are looking for speakers to talk about what it is that you talk about to the associations or the groups that you would typically speak to, just doing that is a great way to get the ball rolling.

John Jantsch: What about agencies? Or I’ve run into a group recently called GigMasters, which is kind of an online tool or community that help folks get gigs. Is that an important step? Or is that really just more… is the agency route more just kind of personal choice?

Grant Baldwin: There’s pros and cons both ways. On the agency and kind of bureau thing, sometimes, again, another misconception here is, “All right, I want to be a speaker, I just need to find a bureau. I just need to find an agency.” It just doesn’t work like that. One of my neighbors here in Nashville is the President of Premiere Speakers Bureau, and he said it a great way. He said that, “Bureaus don’t create demand, they manage demand.” They don’t create demand, they manage demand, meaning if you can’t book yourself, why would a bureau be interested in you?

Grant Baldwin: Now, if you’re at a point where, “Man, I’m booking a lot of stuff and things are really going and hopping”, then that’s the point where most bureaus and agencies might be more interested in you. Again, if you’re someone that is like, “I’ve never booked anything on my own, I can’t get anybody to hire me, I’ll just find a bureau”, well, if you can’t sell yourself, what makes you think you think a bureau or an agency would be interested in you? Now, when you go to some of those third-party sites of, like you said, the GigMasters of the world, you may be able to find some opportunities there.

Grant Baldwin: It’s also going to be… it can be a bit of a meat market where you just have a ton of people… you may just hundreds and hundreds of speakers trying to pounce on a handful of opportunities there. You got to kind of sift through that, and so again, rather than, “I’m just going to wait for some of the right job listings so to speak to post on some of these sites”, I would rather be more proactive and going and trying to find some of those types of gigs. Again, sometimes speakers think, “Well, I put on my website that I’m a speaker”, or, “I posted a YouTube video and now I just sit back and wait for the phone to ring.” You cannot build a business that way. You have to be more proactive in going out and finding business.

John Jantsch: I tell you another thing that a lot of people don’t do that was… I’d tell you how I found all of my first, especially when I was speaking for leads, I would go to some of these conferences that were close by and go to the luncheon at the Remodeling Contractors of Kansas City were holding, go as a guest. That’s how you meet the program person because they’re there. They might not return a phone call or an email, but while they’re there and in the environment and somebody introduces you to them, then all of a sudden you are in the context of them trying to hire. It’s a great way, too.

Grant Baldwin: Well, yeah, and you bring up a great point there that one of the important things about the speaking business, and I think just business in general, is this is a relationship business. People do business with people they know, like, and trust. There are times I’ve done the exact same thing, John, where I may go speak and do like a free workshop because it’s something that’s within a couple of hours drive just to get my foot in the door. Just to like meet that client because you can exchange emails or phone calls, but when you meet someone in person, it just changes the dynamic of the relationship.

Grant Baldwin: John, you and I, we had exchanged a couple of emails I think and then we had met in person at a conference this past fall in the Portland area and it just changes the dynamic. When you meet someone in person, we were just talking beforehand of we’re both going to be at the same event in a few weeks, and it just changes that relationship when you’re able to meet, both speakers and potential clients there.

John Jantsch: Tell me a little bit about… obviously we’ve got people listening. If they’ve listened this long, they’re interested in speaking. Tell me a little bit about the training and the workshops and the courses that you offer at Speaker Lab.

Grant Baldwin: We’ve just kind of scratched the surface of some different things that are important for getting started, and again, for people on all different phases of the business of where they’re at. We do have that website that you mentioned, thespeakerlab.com, the speakerlab.com. We’ve got a podcast over there with over a hundred episodes that people can check out, all types of topics and interviews and those type of things, but then also we have a free email course people might be interested in checking out. It’s a nine-email course, just walking through, again, how to find and book speaking engagements. If people are interested in that, they can find that over at thespeakerlab.com, and right on the home page there they’ll give you a link to register for that.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Grant, great catching up with you here, and as you mentioned, we’ll see you in real life out there on the road.

Grant Baldwin: Looking forward to it. Thanks, John.

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Everything You Need to Know About Creating Strategic Content

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Everything You Need to Know About Creating Strategic Content written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Rachel Parker
Podcast Transcript

Rachel Parker headshotContent, content, content—are you sick of it yet? The problem is that the need for strategic content is not going away anytime soon. The good news is that if you understand the strategic part of content creation and amplification, you won’t need to produce as much.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Rachel Parker, CEO of Resonance Content Marketing. She is also the author of The Content Marketing Coach: Everything you need to get in the game … and win! Rachel and I discuss the best strategies and tactics involved in producing high-quality content.

Rachel knows all about content marketing. Throughout her 15-year marketing career, she’s developed a distinct talent for being able to communicate in the voice of the client. Rachel has helped well-known brands to connect with their customers.

Questions I ask Rachel Parker:

  • What exactly is content? And what are some suggested approaches for small business owners, or someone who just doesn’t have a lot of time, to produce quality content in a timely manner?
  • How do you make content the voice of strategy, versus just another tactic?
  • Do you have tips for creating content that people really want to share?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why a blog or frequent publishing is essential for any business.
  • How to really identify with your audience and, in turn, produce content specific to their needs.
  • What constitutes a good marketing strategy and how it affects your sales funnel.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Rachel Parker:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SEMrush.

SEMrush is our go-to SEO tool for everything from tracking position and ranking to doing audits to getting new ideas for generating organic traffic. They have all the important tools you need for paid traffic, social media, PR, and SEO. Check it out at SEMrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing.

Transcript of Everything You Need to Know About Creating Strategic Content

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Transcript of Everything You Need to Know About Creating Strategic Content written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by SEMrush. It is our go-to SEO tool for doing audits, for tracking position and ranking, for really getting ideas on how to get more organic traffic for our clients, competitive intelligence, backlinks and things like that. All the important SEO tools that you need for pay traffic, social media, PR and of course, SEO. Check it out at semrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing. We’ll have that in the show notes.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Rachel Parker. She is the CEO of Resonance Content Marketing and the author of a book we’re going to talk about today called The Content Marketing Coach. Rachel, thanks for joining me.

Rachel Parker: Thank you John. Happy to be here.

John Jantsch: I wondered if we could start today’s call off with a few stances of Musetta’s Waltz from La Boheme. Surely you sung that aria before.

Rachel Parker: I have. I have. Yes.

John Jantsch: Obviously I did a little research, and on top of being an SEO and content expert, you are a trained soprano.

Rachel Parker: I am, yes.

John Jantsch: But unfortunately I read with sadness that you don’t get to do that very much anymore.

Rachel Parker: Not very much. Mostly in the shower and occasionally in the car, but that’s about it these days.

John Jantsch: So let’s talk about content marketing, shall we? Set the table maybe for … I still get this all time. People like you and I talk about content this, content that, and people are still saying, “What exactly is content? Is that a blog post?”

Rachel Parker: Yep, good question. And there’s a lot of confusion over what content is and is not. I define content as any communication with your audience that is not selling. So that could be anything, I mean, literally anything from a birthday card to an ebook to your own university program. It’s connecting with your audience without pushing your product or services. And it’s as simple as that.

John Jantsch: Well, that’s interesting because why wouldn’t you include, I mean, at some point you move people through the journey to the point where they want to buy and you’re still producing content that I think has to convince them. Why you? I mean, why would you exclude? I get that content is not exclusively about pushing. It’s mostly about education. But at some point you’ve got to convert them with content?

Rachel Parker: Absolutely, and that’s one thing I tell people. To borrow a term from the dating world, we don’t want to run up in the friend zone. We don’t want to be, “Oh, I really like you for your ebooks and stuff, but whoa, purchase, hang on, hang on.” So yeah, we do want to think about guiding them through a funnel and we think about the top of the funnel stuff, which is our search attracting assets like our blog and our social media, and then moving them further down maybe into downloadable assets and into webinars. And yeah, eventually you want to have a one-on-one conversation with them and say, “Okay, here’s what we have to offer. Can we talk a little further about this?”

John Jantsch: Well, and I for years have actually taken it beyond that. I think that once they become a customer, there’s certainly a role for content in continuing the loyalty, getting them to purchase more, getting them to refer. And I think that’s where I think so many people just think it’s get the order, but I think its role is far beyond that.

Rachel Parker: Absolutely. I think the biggest problem with the traditional sales fun is that it stops when they sign on the bottom line. There is a whole world of relationship beyond that. I mean they could be recommending you to their friends. They could be, like you said, buying more product, upselling. I mean there’s a tremendous, there are tremendous opportunities beyond the sale.

John Jantsch: It’s probably the, especially when we’re talking about small business owners that are quite often very time strapped. What’s the answer there? Because I mean to do everything that people like you and I talk about is really time consuming. To do it right and particularly for the typical owner who certainly is making the sausages or whatever it is back in the ag shop too. So how do you kind of balance the fact that it does take a lot of work with the fact that it is so necessary?

Rachel Parker: Sure. And it does take a lot of work to do and to do well. I mean there are some people who think, “Oh, as long as it gets something out there, as long as I check off on my to-do list, post on Facebook, or publish blog posts.” But it needs to be done well. Especially for a small business owners who are one man, woman shops, it can be challenging.

Rachel Parker: One thing to do is you can look into outsourcing. You can bring in a freelance writer who can write those blog posts for you, someone who can handle your social media. That’s one way to do it. I think the worst thing you can do is just say, “Well, I don’t have time for it so it’s just not going to happen,” because that’s where we’re coming to in the marketing world. It’s no longer nice to have.

John Jantsch: Well, so let me ask you then. So that person that says, “Well, I either don’t have the money or the time to do it well, at least I’m doing something,” is … I mean, is that better than nothing?

Rachel Parker: Yeah, something is definitely better than nothing. So if all you can manage is one good quality blog post a month, then go for it. It’s not going to set your traffic on fire. But when you encounter potential customer and you say, “Please feel free to go to my website,” and they are seeing that quality content, that’s going to up your stock. So yeah, I would be the first to say that anything is better than nothing.

John Jantsch: How do you think … You mentioned the blog word. I mean is that … I’ve been blogging, gosh, 13 years now, and it’s changed dramatically the position or the role or what blogging actually is. In fact, we build most of the websites for our clients just using WordPress. We don’t really talk about it being a blog. It’s just a content management system. So do you believe that everyone needs that, whether we call it a blog or whatever we decide to call it, do you think everyone needs that kind of publishing ability?

Rachel Parker: I think it’s one of those things that everybody really needs. When we think about blog, we think about words on a page. But really you could do videos. You could do audios. You could record. You don’t necessarily have to have a formal podcast, but you could record audios on a platform like SoundCloud and just embed those and have that be your audio blogs. There are many possibilities.

Rachel Parker: But I think the blog is essential because the first thing is you own your website, which is something that you cannot say about your Facebook page or your Twitter account. That is your real estate. When people go to your site, I think they need to see some kind of publication that comes from you and that you own.

John Jantsch: So one of the things that I hear … Let’s back up to the strategy a little bit because we’ve been talking about, “Oh, you need to be producing content, you need to be producing content.” Well, you can certainly waste a lot of time producing content that either nobody wants to read or isn’t really going to drive people to know, like, and trust you. What do you say to people when they’re trying to get started? How do you make … I often refer to the fact that content needs to be the voice of strategy. So how do you make it the voice of strategy as opposed to just another tactic?

Rachel Parker: Sure. Your content marketing strategy absolutely has to begin with your audience. If you don’t know exactly who that audience is, then find out before you do anything. This is a challenge for everyone, but I find especially John in the B2B world, because I’ll ask people, “Who’s your audience?” And they say, “Well, midsize companies in manufacturing located in the mid west.” And then I say, “Okay, who in that company?” And they say, “Oh, well, the CEO would be great I guess, or the COO, or maybe a VP.” And they don’t know literally whose eyeballs you want on the other side of that content. So knowing your audience has got to be step number one.

John Jantsch: And it’s interesting about that is, it may, the answer actually may be all three, but they have different objectives and goals, which makes it even worse. So what do you tell people? One of the things, another question I get asked all the time is, “I don’t know what to write about. Where should I get ideas?” I mean, where do you send people to look for ideas about what would make sense for them to write about?

Rachel Parker: Sure. The first thing, again, once you know your audience, see if you can find out where they get their content, what books or magazines do they read, what websites do they go to, what Facebook pages do they subscribe to, and do a little snooping around and see what other people are doing in your industry. Then another thing you can do is just ask your audience. Set up a SurveyMonkey or something very simple via email and say, “Hey, what are the topics that are going to make your life easier, or that are going to help you do your job better? And how can we help with that?” So I would start with that.

John Jantsch: Yeah. There’s also some great tools that are available today too. My listeners will recognize this one because I talk about it all the time. I love BuzzSumo. When I kind of have an idea of a topic or a theme, I can go there and find very specific content, and that that has been shared and theoretically proven that people are interested. And that can be a really great way to stimulate some ideas.

John Jantsch: I think for a number of years we had the … we started talking about content marketing as though it were a separate channel. And I think a lot of people certainly look at it that way. But I think that it’s actually, in fact, I talk about it just being the air for marketing today that we really have to integrate. I mean, you can’t really do effective SEO, you can’t do very effective advertising, in my opinion, without content. You certainly can’t do much PR without good content. So, how do you think in terms of the other channels that you … that clearly you need to feed but need content to do that?

Rachel Parker: Yeah. Yeah, it’s an interesting point, John. I relate it to, there’s a reason why we don’t talk about color TVs anymore because that’s what it is. There is nothing else. I think the term content marketing may be fading away the next few years as it just becomes part of your strategy. Even companies that, these die hard oil and gas guys who I never thought I would see creating content, they’re getting on board and realizing that it’s got to be rolled into your strategy. As we do look at our sales funnel, we need to think about, “Okay, how are we going to feed people with content from the very first encounter through the decision making process, all the way to the purchase and beyond?” So it all has to integrate.

John Jantsch: One of the things that even the greatest journalists that can write just the most compelling story knows is that if nobody reads it, it’s probably not that effective. Are there some tips for creating, that you like to use for creating content that people just really want to share? They’re drawn to it and they, it’s almost like, “Oh, I have to share this”?

Rachel Parker: Sure, sure. Absolutely. Well, there has to be a promotional element involved first of all. As I like to say, if you build it, they will come only worked for Kevin Costner. Because just putting a blog out there is not going to send thousands of people to your site tomorrow. So we do have to promote it. And some of that might involve some dollars, might be a promoted Facebook post or promoted tweets or things like that.

Rachel Parker: As far as putting it out there, or as far as creating content that people want to read, look at, again, if you have a resource like BuzzSumo that shows you the kind of topics that people are sharing or the kind of, even the way the titles are phrased on different blog posts can make a tremendous difference in the shareability and in their likelihood to generate traffic.

Rachel Parker: And then as you progress in your content marketing journey, you’re going to see that you’re going to have your own data. You’re going to be able to look at your own blog posts and say, “Oh wow, this one got a whole bunch of shares. This one, not so much. How can I … What can I learn from this? And how can I roll those best practices into what I do in the future?”

John Jantsch: One of the things that I hear all the time is, a lot of times a company that maybe produces something fairly technical goes out and hires a marketing person, and then tells that marketing person to write some great content of about something of which they know nothing about and maybe can’t even really learn about that easily I mean. I hear that really all the time from writers inside of marketing departments.

John Jantsch: I mean, is there a way to get that information in a way that you could then inside an organization have you found? I’m sure you’ve worked with organizations where they hire you to write something. You’ve got to have a process for figuring out what the heck that widget is that they sell and what it does. So are there some tips on doing that?

Rachel Parker: Yeah. First of all, you need to get with the people in your … in the organizations that do know, that do have the information. Sometimes you have to be a little bit of a pest because content is the lowest thing on their to-do list. So to be a very, very nice pest, but to make sure you get some face time with them.

Rachel Parker: One tactic that I like to use that has worked really, really well for me, is, I’ll ask them, “Okay, explain this concept to me as if I were a sixth grader. If I were your little 9, 10, 11 year old kid and saying, ‘Hey, what is this? What are you working on,’ how would you explain it?”

Rachel Parker: And that really forces them to simplify and to get past the jargon and really talk about what this is and why it’s important and why people need to know about it. And then from there you can build on that very simple platform and get into the more technical details, depending of course on how technical your audience is, which is another consideration.

John Jantsch: Sure, sure. Yeah. I think a lot of times too, you go to an engineer and tell them they need to write a blog post and they freeze up instantly. But you tell them, let me see your sent email, they’ve probably written some tremendous blog post answers to very technical questions. They just don’t think of that as content. But then, to our first point, I mean that’s content too.

John Jantsch: Where do you send people who … Okay, one of the things I think is that writing has changed dramatically, particularly writing in marketing has changed dramatically. What are some of your favorite resources for where people could learn how to be a better writer?

Rachel Parker: Oh, there are so many sources out there. One of my favorites is Pro Blogger, Darren Rowse’s site. I always read their stuff. They have some tremendous ideas about being, becoming a better blogger, becoming a better content creator. Of course, Content Marketing Institute is another wonderful resource. HubSpot creates some wonderful content. They do a lot of … Oh my gosh, they have a huge team. They are constantly doing webinars and publishing ebooks to help you become a better writer, a better strategist, whatever it is you need. So those would be the three that I would recommend to start with.

John Jantsch: So when it comes to somebody trying to make decisions about, gosh, what should my priorities be when it comes to content, are there a couple pieces or forms of content that you think every, for the most part, every business needs?

Rachel Parker: Absolutely. And I would preface that John, by saying the worst thing you could do is to try to do everything. And then you start off and you’re doing everything under the sun, and then four weeks later you’re totally burned out and you throw your hands in the air and say, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Rachel Parker: I think to start with the big three, which would be a blog, email content, and social media. I think those are … That’s a good package to start with. And if you can only start with one, I would say it’s between email and blogging would be a place to focus your efforts. Email, email doesn’t get a whole lot of attention these days, but it’s still an incredibly powerful communication method because if someone’s giving you their email address, they’re basically saying you can come into the equivalent of my online house and talk to me. And that’s incredibly powerful.

Rachel Parker: Of course, you need the blog to attract search traffic. And then, as I like to quote Jay Baer, he said, “Content is the fire and social media is the gasoline.” Social media is going to give you a bigger platform for talking about these pieces of content. I would start with those three. And then later on, if you want to add video, podcasting, if you want to get fancier, you have that opportunity.

John Jantsch: I’m talking with Rachel Parker. We’re talking about The Content Marketing Coach, the book called The Content Marketing Coach. You do have a few resources at contentmarketingcoachbook.com. Tell us a little bit about Resonance. What do you do over there at Resonance?

Rachel Parker: At Resonance, we are a full service content marketing agency. Companies come to us who believe in content marketing. They know they need it. They just don’t have the internal resources to be able to do it, to be able to do it consistently and at the level of quality that they need. This is something that we find a lot of teams struggle with because they may have an ace marketing team, but they couldn’t keep it up if a product launch were to come along, or if something were to come along and they just totally soaked the rest of the team.

Rachel Parker: And then some companies come to us and say, “Hey, we have a great team in place. We just need help with a strategy.” So with those folks, we would get into a coaching program where we would help them put together a strategy, coach their teams to make sure that they are ready to hit the ground running. So those are the two ways that we help our customers.

John Jantsch: Rachel, thanks so much for joining us. Look forward to The Content Marketing Coach book being out there in the world, and hope to bump into you someday out on the road.

Rachel Parker: My pleasure, John. Hope to see you soon.


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