Today's episode is all about boosting leads, SEO, and building authority through content marketing - but with a twist! Everyone hammers home the importance of content marketing that usually is designed to draw new customers to your business. What if you could create incredible content for your current customers, building trust and strong relationships, but also be used as a tool to drive new traffic to your business?
For detailed show notes, Justin Varuzzo's after thoughts on each episode, and lists you can use to take immediate action in your business, check out the website at http://www.marketingandservice.com.
Today's episode is all about boosting leads, SEO, and building authority through content marketing - but with a twist! Everyone hammers home the importance of content marketing that usually is designed to draw new customers to your business. What if you could create incredible content for your current customers, building trust and strong relationships, but also be used as a tool to drive new traffic to your business?
For detailed show notes, Justin Varuzzo's after thoughts on each episode, and lists you can use to take immediate action in your business, check out the website at http://www.marketingandservice.com.
Hey, Justin, Bruzzo here from the marketing and service.com podcast. Today, we're going to talk about content marketing, but with a twist that more up next on the marketing and service.com podcasts. So today talk about content marketing and how it pertains to customer service. But first, I think it's important to understand what content marketing actually is. If you're not already familiar with the term content marketing, the concept of this is that you create content. It could be written content on a blog. It could be a podcast. It could be videos on YouTube, but you create free content that pertains to your product or service, and you give it away for free. On one of these platforms. If you create a really good free high quality content, there's a great chance that you can capture new customers who will appreciate the free information that you've provided. And in turn, decide to do business with you. The reason that this occurs is because creating good free high-quality content helps do a few things. One, it could potentially drive traffic to your website. If someone goes to Google and they search something that they're looking for, your content could potentially be at the top of the list, and then they will click this to find the answer to the question or a solution to the problem they're having. The second thing this content marketing strategy can do is help build reputation. You want to be an authority in your space, no matter what it is, you should be the expert that everyone goes to and you should strive to be the expert that everyone goes to. So by creating this content, it really helps make you an authority and helps build your reputation as that expert. And by being that expert, it helps develop trust and trust is the fundamental element of creating long lasting relationships with your customer. Creating good content can also help build a fan base and audience for your information. Again, by having this audience, you could potentially funnel them into an email list, providing additional information that goes above and beyond what you're giving away for free. This creates an opportunity to build a funnel where perhaps you could funnel this audience into other paid products. Another consequence of creating this good quality content is that you are going to gain respect as that market leader. So reputation, respect, you're going to build traffic and you're going to build an audience. Just a quick example from my personal life of a situation where content marketing really paid off for a business. I had an issue with a washing machine that broke. And when I searched the specific model of the washing machine and the specific problem I was having, I found a step-by-step video on YouTube that really walked through exactly what I would need to do every tool I would need. And every part that I would to fix the problem that I was having conveniently, there were links to all of these parts in the video description, admittedly, out of sheer laziness, I just click those links. And I bought everything from this company. I knew nothing about them other than the fact that they certainly seemed like an authority on this particular issue. The video was very clear, made it easy to understand, and in the end they made good. I quickly received the product and I followed their instructions and was able to fix my washer for a fraction of what it would've cost to replace it. And this really is a classic example of a good have a good use case of content marketing, but content marketing is not for everybody. One thing that I've learned from some of my consulting clients is that they want to jump into a lot of things that they hear from prevalent marketers, things like content marketing, social media, but they miss some of the very basic fundamentals of building a digital online presence. So I'm going to put this content marketing strategy that I'm about to cover in more of an advanced place. If you are new to this business, if you're new to building a marketing strategy and you've not yet done fundamentals of building an online presence, like just a basic website, a my Google business listing and a Facebook page, then you should skip this podcast and save it for later time. I find that many clients get overwhelmed when they try to take on a lot of new things at once and then they never make good on the initial things that they were trying to pursue in the first place. It's very important that the fundamentals are in place before you move on to something like content marketing. So now that we know what content marketing is, and we can get that out of the way, I want to talk about the twist that I want to put on content marketing. So how do we use content marketing in terms of customer service? When you talk to most people about content marketing, they cover the things that I just covered. This is great. You're going to get new customers. You can drive new traffic to your website, but here's the thing. You know, that I'm all about the service element of any business. I feel like it's in service where you can create long lasting relationships with your customer, the new consumers today. Why do I identify with brands that share their values? They want to build relationships with brands. They don't want to just deal with the company. One-off they want trustworthy relationships with brands. They can go back to time and time again. That's why people are so loyal to companies like apple. For example, there's people who will just get a new phone every single year. They trust that the new phone is going to be better than what they had. And then it's going to work properly, especially when forking over almost$1,500 for a top end phone. So one of the things I want to suggest is the idea of content marketing, but not to drive new traffic to your website, but creating content that you can use for existing customers. So this may vary on your industry and whether you sell a product or a service, this may not exactly be for you. This is going to be really good for products or services that are slightly more complicated or have some type of technical aspect or something where it would be beneficial for the customer to have a little bit better of an understanding of how it works to maximize the value they're going to get out of the product. And again, decide a personal example of mine. I recently was looking into water, activated tape. What are activated tape is what you would see if you ever got a package from Amazon. It's a nylon reinforced tape with an adhesive on the one side, which is actually activated by water. And then you put that tape on the box. It quickly dries, and it makes an incredibly strong of packaging material. Although I was familiar with the tape because I'd seen it on many other packages before, I wasn't very familiar with the specifics as to how it worked. Did I have to lick the back of this tape? Was there some type of machine, what was the functions of this? So as I started Googling water activated tape, I found one company that made, uh, several products in that space. And they actually had a lot of tutorial videos for their different equipment as to how to maintain it, how to use it, how to thread the tape through it, how to refill the water, how to create custom settings. Now, what I learned is these machines can vary anything from a manual dispenser that ran about$150 or so up to very sophisticated machines that would cut pre lengths with presets very quickly. And those would run two, three,$4,000 for some of these machines. What's interesting about this is the intention of this content was to serve an existing customer. For example, had I bought one of these tape machines, it would have included a postcard that says, Hey, if you want to learn more about how this works, you can go to our website and you can watch this series of videos and we'll show you how to maintain it, how to clean it and how to operate it properly. But here's where things get very, very interesting. In my case, I was not an existing customer. I didn't have the equipment to maintain or to learn how to use. However, in my research phase, seeing these videos helped lead me down to the way to know that I did not need one of the expensive machines that the manual dispenser would have worked just fine. And it gave me the confidence to buy it, knowing that I was going to know how to use it after I got it. And then it would be appropriate for the task I was looking for it to serve. Now, in a traditional sense, this would be considered customer service content. You wouldn't think of this really as content marketing, but the bottom line is it was content marketing and it did land them a sale of both the tape machine and some accessories and some maintenance supplies. So this is why I say there should be some type of technical aspect. If you're selling toothbrushes, for example, uh, you probably won't get too far on videos on how to use your toothbrush. Most people already know how to use it, uh, but you could potentially use content marketing to talk about general gum health and teeth health, and maybe some articles on oral hygiene and perhaps particular dental problems people often have where if they might search for this, they would come up to your content and find you as a dentist. So you might think, is it worth the time to dive into this content? So someone might find it, here's the thing. First of all, you should have this content for your existing customers, because you want them to be confident in the things that they purchase. And you also want to make sure that you eliminate any buyer's remorse. This is an opportunity to continually reiterate that they've made a great decision with a great company, and they've gotten a great product. That's going to help fill the need that they were looking to fill. It's going to reinforce their decision and reaffirm their decision that they did the right thing by doing business with you. Another beautiful thing about creating this service content is the content ultimately becomes repurposable. And it's a word I want you to remember because repurposable content is really important nowadays. And what this means is that you can take the content that you great, for example, this little, how to video for a product or service. And not only can you use it for your existing customers, you can use it as part of an SEO strategy to get better search results on major search engines. You can use it on your website as a piece of content. You can use it on social media as a piece of content. You can repackage it in some other form of content. And if you don't believe me, just look at a look at the book industry. For example, look at someone like Dave Ramsey, the financial expert, here's a guy who has seven baby steps that you could write on a napkin. And he has turned this into a hundred million dollar plus business and has written 12 different books that are all based on just those seven baby steps. This is an incredible example of the power of repurposable content. He takes these seven ideas and repackages them over and over and over again, each time generating a tremendous amount of revenue for his company. Brian Tracy, another popular author writes about goal setting and achieving goals. And again, he's taken this very simple strategy of how to write goals and how to achieve goals and have repackaged it and how to grow your business, how to grow yourself personally, and a dozen other books that are all based on the same premise of how to set goals. The other beauty of this content is you start to build a library that becomes incredibly valuable to your business. Suddenly every time a customer has a question, you already have an answer prepared for them. And while it may be at the top of your mind, as your business scales up, it's going to make it exponentially easier to train new staff or new service employees to help them facilitate helping your customer. Imagine if you hire a new customer service representative, and now they have an entire library of problems and solutions that they can directly send to customers quickly and easily, that gives detailed step-by-step instructions. I mean, just think about it. How many times have you answered the same question over the phone about a problem with your product or service. And a lot of times it's not even a problem. It's just that maybe the customer wasn't doing something right, and a quick 32nd phone call resolves the issue. But what if you could mitigate those calls in the first place by taking problem? And for example, sending an email to your new customer after three or four days of closing the sale that says, Hey, by the way, we know a lot of customers might accidentally do this or that you may want to take this approach, check out the video below for step-by-step instructions on how to maintain your product. Let's say you're a software company, selling software as a service. Another great example of this would be the moment a sale is closed. You would send an automated email that would, I have set up instructions. These setup instructions would help the customer maximize their experience with your software. And I know this sounds like common sense, but think about it. A lot of businesses don't really do this. They assume you're just going to know what to do or that you're willing to figure it out on your own. And in a lot of times we do figure it out on our own. But the idea here is if you can maximize the experience that the customer has, you're going to build a better relationship. And now that you've created this content for your existing customer, you can easily use it without wasting any time at all on trying to acquire new customers. Now, maybe you have a product or service that you want to minimize the technical savviness that's required to use it, or you want to minimize a great deal of the problems. And this is not entirely uncommon, but I have to tell you that you're gonna run into trust issues. Uh, recently I had to make a decision on a new piece of software and I was dealing with a company that was more or less a, a industry standard. And I was skeptical because there were no forums. There was no place. I could really see what the issues were that other people were having. And of course, uh, companies are not so quick to show you and tell you about all the issues with their product, but the fact that I really couldn't find any information with people having problems. When I know all software has limitations and issues really made me hesitant to purchase the software. Had I had a volume of information about problems and the solutions and ensuring that customer service was responsive. Uh, even though all those problems existed, it would have increased my trust and confidence level exponentially to deal with that company. So just a few things to consider, depending this, again, this may not work for every business in every industry and every product and every service, but if you've got a product or a service that for example, uh, would require some type of maintenance, uh, if you're a service business that does something, uh, for example, let's say you're a plumber and you're installing a water softener. Uh, you should have maintenance emails that go out to these customers that remind them to put salt in their water softener, or reminds them that after a year it should get cleaned or anything else that might be prevalent for that particular service that you provide. If you have a product that needs to be cared for, you could send an email how to care for XYZ. Maybe it's how to clean it. Maybe it's how to store it. If there's anything unique or anything that you can provide information wise to your customer that can help them prolong the life of the product, or again, increase their value in terms of the experience they're having with your product. Then that is a great thing to do. Maybe there's some very common repairs for your product. You could certainly create a set of instructions on how to perform the very common repairs for a product. Again, this information can be used both on your website. It can be used to capture new customers to show them how easy something is to fix, and it can be sent out to existing customers. So you're creating this one piece of content that can be used again and again, maybe it would make a great little social post that says, Hey guys, what if you have one of these, did you know if this or this happens, all you need to do is this to make it all better. As I mentioned, a setup of a product or a service, uh, I use the software example before, uh, if you have anything that requires any type of setup, you should have step-by-step instructions that go above and beyond any other documentation that you send out or any phone calls or any in-person consultation that might occur to help a customer set it up again, just a brief reference that says, Hey, do at least these seven or eight things, because we want you to get the most value out of what we're offering you. And I think we've all been in a situation where we buy something and we don't quite learn how to use it properly, or we don't take the time to learn it properly. And we know it does a lot of things that we wanted to do, but we just don't have the time or the know how to set it up, to make it, do those things. And then we tend to have a little bit of regret either on ourselves that we didn't take the time to make it right, or you start to feel like you're paying all this money for something and you know, it's good, but you just don't have the time to get the value out of it that you need. Uh, this is a classic example of where this type of content marketing, uh, can, can help customers get the most out of your product or service. Uh, again, similar to setting something up, anything that requires any type of configuration, again at any product that you might have to configure to work with something else, uh, give those instructions, make sure they're readily available. Don't keep it a secret. Let it be known to everybody that this is how you do X, Y, and Z, whether they're an existing customer or a new customer, or just a prospective customer that just happens to upon your website through SEO, or because maybe a friend said, Hey, check this out. But by having that information front and center, you can help build the trust and you can help move the needle forward with that relationship with the new customer. So I just want to reiterate that this strategy of content marketing, either from the traditional content marketing viewpoint or from this new twist with service content marketing, it really is not going to function at all. If you don't have your basics in place. So if you don't have your social media presence, or you're not comfortable with your social media presence, if you don't have at least a basic functioning website, if you don't have a basic understanding of SEO and search rankings and search results, and how organic search results play into your strategy, then do not do this just yet. I want to plant that seed and it's something you should keep in the back of your mind, but you should really make sure those fundamentals are in place first, because you could create the best content the world. But if you are unable to be found on the internet, if there's no phone number, and if someone goes on Facebook or Twitter to try to find you and they can't find you, it will reduce the impact that the great content could potentially have on your business. So, uh, again, I, I, I tell clients when I'm consulting, make sure you have all these fundamentals in place before you jump into content marketing of any sort, especially in email marketing strategy should be in place before attempting any content marketing, mainly because you're going to find that a lot of your content marketing content is actually probably going to come from many of the emails you send. As you get into the habit of creating new emails, to help service existing customers or emails to help entice new customers. You're slowly going to build this library of that repurposable content that I was speaking about earlier. And naturally, as you start to do this new content marketing, it's not really that big of a deal because you're going to be able to pull the concepts and the ideas from your existing emails that you've sent previously, or from pages on your website that you've already set up. If you do have these fundamentals already in place, and you're comfortable with all those things, and you've not done any content marketing, this is definitely something you should jump into and you should jump into immediately. Especially if anything that we talked about today seems applicable to any product or service that you offer. And don't get caught off trying to build out some entire large content strategy. Just start with the most basic piece of content you can create. Think about what is the number one question I'm asked on the phone? What is the number one question that a customer asks about my product? What's the number one question that a customer asks about my service? Is there anything that a customer commonly does wrong that just this small piece of content would help fix and help provide better value for them with the product or service that you offer? Of course, this first piece of content doesn't need to be a book. It could be one paragraph. It could be something as simple as you should clean this product regularly, but don't use any harsh chemicals or cleaners just use basic soap and water to clean this product. That's a piece of content that would only take you a moment to write, but it could prove and valuable for the customer. And it could also, again, be repurposed as a video later on. It could be repurposed as a blog article on your website, and maybe it could be used as a tidbit for a post on social media. And just to clarify, we don't want to take the exact same paragraph and copy and paste it to every single location we can possibly find. In fact, that could actually have some negative effects on your search results. If you keep taking the exact same content and pasting it over and over and over again onto different platforms, you're going to take the gist of whatever it is and just rewrite it. If it's just a paragraph on how to clean something, keep that in the back of your mind. And then each time you want to use it, just rewrite the paragraph from memory. And then that way it's not going to be verbatim on every single platform, but the concept is going to remain the same over and over and over again. Also, just to remember, the content marketing is simply one tool that could be used to help drive traffic to your business. It's not necessarily the tool or the only tool, and it's certainly not guaranteed to revolutionize your business, but it's an incremental step into ensuring that you are creating the most value possible for your customer. Remember, it's about these relationships. You want a relationship with your customer that grows and prospers over time. Don't be afraid to communicate with your customers. Today's consumer wants to have a relationship. They want to deal and partner with businesses and people that they like and that they trust each time you provide them with an element of value. You're helping push the needle on that relationship and push the trust factor forward and ultimately strengthen the relationship between you and your customer. I thank you so much for listening to the podcast today, and I hope this has been helpful and insightful as always. If you have any questions, you can email me, justin@marketingandservice.com. You can visit my website, marketing hand service.com. And please, if you enjoy this, please rate this podcast and subscribe. Thanks so much for listening and have a great
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