How to Improve the ROI of Your Content Marketing Strategy

Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):
Hey B2B DM gang. I am excited today because I’m going to get the opportunity to share with you the results of a case study that I did with content marketing on LinkedIn, which resulted in a 726.9, 3% improvement in engagement. So make sure you listen all the way through to this particular episode, because it’s gonna be vitally important, uh, because Dr. Pele’s with me, and he’s going to share a little bit about LinkedIn and the impact that you can have quite frankly, to sales and revenue on LinkedIn, Dr. Play welcome.
Dr Pelé Raymond (00:29):
How are you, Jim? It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
Jim Rembach (00:33):
It’s kind of funny because I’ve actually known Palais for many years. And so he was actually on my podcast a couple of times, the fast leader show, which I have run for so many years, and now I get to bring him on the B2B digital marketer podcast. So I’m excited. So based on that, you know, we have this, let’s just, I don’t want, I don’t want to say dichotomy, but we have this, you know, colorful, um, interest in, in regards to customer experience leadership and digital marketing. So if you could kind of give the listeners to the B2B digital marketer podcast, a little bit of context on who you are and your experience.
Dr Pelé Raymond (01:10):
Well, thank you for that introduction. Uh, Jim, I have to also add that. Not only have we known each other for awhile, you have actually visited my house here in Austin and eaten African soup with me and my wife. So we are brothers. Okay. This is, we crossed the threshold when you did that. No, it’s a, it’s a pleasure to be here. Um, from a sense of context. I think anyone who’s listening to this show should be asking themselves the question of ROI return on investment. When you think about all the time you spend on social media all the time, you spend on your website on LinkedIn and so on and so forth. How many relationships are you building? How far is the reach of your content that you’re sharing? How far is it actually going? And what results are you getting? I mean, literally, can you cut these things if you can, and it’s positive. Awesome. But if he can’t count these things or you don’t even know where to start, then I’m, I’m sorry, but I have to use the analogy I like to share, which is that’s a strategy of hope where you do a bunch of hard work and you hope it works right. Or maybe you’re driving your car, you’re going forward, but you have blindfolds on, so you can’t see what’s working and what’s not. So I think the question of ROI is the critical question. We all need to be asking in B2B.
Jim Rembach (02:28):
Oh, most definitely. And let’s put this in context. This doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a solo preneur, um, if you work within an organization and you’re, um, you know, a sales business development rep, or even a marketing, um, you know, demand gen, um, th this applies to everyone. And so I refer to it. What you’re saying is my digital activity ROI. So because we have all kinds of activity that we’re doing digital in the B2B world, it’s significantly now today than it was pre COVID. So what is your digital activity ROI? Uh, and we actually put together a digital activity assessment, then we’ll make sure that we make it available in your show notes page. And you can even go to B2B, dm.com and do a search for, uh, assessment. Um, and you’ll be able to find it and what it is it’s a quick, uh, it’s a really quick 10 question survey, a survey assessment, um, quiz, whatever you wanna call it, to give you an understanding of some of the things that you may be missing that are needed today. So, and I think part of that missing piece in what you’re, you know, what we’re talking about is people understanding content, content management, content, selection, content promotion on LinkedIn. So if you could give us a quick understanding and education on how your content is going to get shared with LinkedIn, because there’s also a difference between what I put as a post and an even what I do is in groups, right? A lot of people will say, groups have been rendered quite meaningless, um, in LinkedIn. And maybe you can add some insight to that.
Dr Pelé Raymond (04:02):
Yeah, no, that, that’s a good point. I, you know, is it okay if I go back to the question of what is content and maybe how I became a part of that, because I’m going to answer that from the context of my experience with content. Is that okay? Perfect. Okay. So thanks for that permission. Cause I’m going to take you way back to Africa. I’m going to take you on a journey to the Nigerian Biafran civil war. In the late sixties, I was a young child. Bombs are falling, right? We’re hungry. Literally millions of children are dying of starvation. And I was one of those children and my mother and I, we were living in refugee camps and running and from, from the war and she couldn’t feed me. She couldn’t keep me from, from danger. And so, you know what she did, she sang to me, she sang songs and those songs did something magical to me.
Dr Pelé Raymond (04:50):
They made me happy. And it was from that happiness that I learned, two of my life’s most important lessons. The first one is that happiness can drive away. Fear. Happiness can drive away. Hunger and happiness comes before success. Not the other way around. We all know so many people who are successful and they wake up on the wrong mountain. They’re not happy, right? So that was my life’s first lesson. The second thing I learned is the lesson of content. And that’s why I wanted to share that story. You see what my mother did was she diverted my attention from the difficulties, the pain, the fear, and she focused me on something different, something positive. And we survived because of it. You know, if you think of, if you’re taking your children on a long drive, right. And everybody’s driving and the kids are asking, are we there yet?
Dr Pelé Raymond (05:38):
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? What do you do? You give them a great story. You give them a game to play. You sing songs that content diverse their attention from their, their pain and their suffering of the drive and allows them to get through it. That’s the same thing we do with content, with content on social media and in any selling situation, everyone is afraid to be sold. Nobody wants you to sell them anything. Stop. Don’t sell it to me. Even if you go to a, if you go to best buy and you see that sales person coming to you, you’re like, okay, I gotta get outta here. Don’t sell me stuff. Don’t sell me stuff. What content does is it diverts our attention from the fear of that sales process and allows us to relax. You know, the most powerful forwards in English language are once upon a time we relax.
Dr Pelé Raymond (06:28):
We are ready to listen and to share it, to build a relationship. And that’s what content marketing does on LinkedIn and elsewhere. But on LinkedIn, it’s most powerful if you’re a B2B, okay? That’s where business people are. So given that context, content marketing on LinkedIn is essentially this, share yourself, share your knowledge. Don’t hide it. So many people are afraid to give away the nuggets and the kick kingdom. And it’s like, Hey, what am I going to have left to charge people money for it? Don’t worry about it. Share the best stuff you have because that is doing the work of attracting your clients to you in the first place. You’re helping people relax and come to you instead of you having to beat down all the doors and try to go to them. So use your content as a tool to get ideal clients.
Jim Rembach (07:18):
Okay. I’ve got to push back on you. I’m sorry, because, and this is why is because you said, this is what content is and this is what it does, and this is what it can result in. And I say, Oh, that’s not true. Maybe that’s what the good content does because I would dare to say, especially when I talked about, you know, groups, you know, kind of being meaningless and you know, a lot of people not spending time in there anymore is because it isn’t good content. It is, here’s buy my stuff here. Here’s my offer. And then, you know, people are putting in all this activity, um, and not getting any ROI and not understanding why or don’t care because maybe my job and my responsibility is to post, you know, big deal. What’s the ROI on that if nobody’s checking on it. Right?
Jim Rembach (08:05):
Um, so I think there’s a significant opportunity to separate yourself from all the rest. But the problem is you’re getting sucked into this vortex with all this flood of noise. And you and I have had this conversation before, and I actually did a post with an analogy about, you know, this vortex and getting sucked down with all the other crap. And you were like, it’s a visual, but you know, that’s not very inviting, but it’s true. How do we create content? That’s different. It goes back into how does LinkedIn work so that your content, your good content can be seen and then therefore shared.
Dr Pelé Raymond (08:38):
Yeah, no. What a wonderful question. The question of creating great content has a lot of answers. I mean, literally there’s a whole course in that, but let’s just focus on a few things. Great content is content. People want to voluntarily engage with why? Because the number one currency on LinkedIn, I mean, and frankly on any social platform is engagement. They want people there. They don’t want you going off of their platform. They want you to see their advertisements. They want people to pay for advertisements and they want you engaged on the platform so you can experience them. So let’s just start from way up there. Good content is content that people want to voluntarily engage with. Now creating good content is not as easy as just putting out whatever you want. I’ll give you some examples. If you post line and you’re talking only about yourself, yes, you might be the only one looking at that content.
Dr Pelé Raymond (09:42):
You have to talk about other people. I have this thing, I call it the, the buyer to seller continuum. If you’re talking about yourself, the seller crickets, but if you’re talking about the buyer, the buyer is going to show up consistently. So that’s one little tip on your profile on LinkedIn, on the content that you share, whatever it is, consider your ideal client and be talking about them because the psychology is, if they hear that, they’re the ones being talked about, they show up. But if you’re talking about yourself and how great you are, they’re gone. That’s number one.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Number two is think about that
Dr Pelé Raymond (10:20):
Algorithm of LinkedIn and other social networks. The algorithm is like a radio station. You know, I have kids, you know, Jim, you have kids and we know how our kids come home and say, Hey dad, dad, um, Ariana Grande is the best thing in the world, right? Because Ariana Grande is on the radio station. Well, it’s just the psychology. When millions of people are exposed to this show, they think that whoever’s on. It is like the next thing since sliced bread, right? The best thing. But the truth is, and as a musician, I know this, there are thousands and thousands of people as good as Ariana Grande, maybe even better who are not on the radio station, but we respond psychologically to that. It’s called social proof and we are just like all over it. We will buy anything. Now LinkedIn has an algorithm that works the same way.
Dr Pelé Raymond (11:12):
When LinkedIn looks at your posts and a lot of people are buzzing around it. Who, lots of people are engaging with it, loving it. All of a sudden the radio station meter goes up and he goes, yup, that’s a good one. We’re going to spread that one even further. And boom, what used to be a post you’d put out? And only three people would see it. I like to say my best friend, my wife and my mama, right? When, when it’s more than three people, when it’s like 3000 people who see your posts, now you’re cooking. And you know what that does. It earns you followers. If your content is good. And the more people who follow you, I didn’t say connection requests. I said, followers, the more people who follow you, the more opportunities you have be a thought leader, as they say, if you think you’re a leader and you look behind and nobody’s following you, you’re just taking a walk.
Jim Rembach (12:00):
Yeah. And I want to stop. I want to stop you right there because I think that’s beautiful. And I want to add onto what you’re saying, because it’s critically important because I had mentioned at the beginning of that, uh, there was a case study where I, myself, uh, improved, uh, had an improvement on my LinkedIn activity, my ROI of 726.9, 3%. Now what that represents is it got more shares. It got more looks, it got more comments. And that content, uh, was therefore now getting exposed to significantly more people. And here’s the numbers, right? So because of that increase your, that content reach, uh, was 3 million, 637,800. That’s massive. That’s how many people were now possibly exposed to that content. But here here’s a, here’s another thing to make it even more impactful. If I was to convert that or to use paid admins in order to be able to get that kind of reach, it would have cost me $15,788.
Jim Rembach (13:08):
Wow. And in order to cost me now, people could possibly say, it’s priceless. It cost me my time. I didn’t pay to have that kind of reach and a 726.9, 3% improvement. That is massive. We’re going to talk about how I, how I did that. Again, stay, stay in with me here because I’m actually going to give you an opportunity to get an over shoulder, look on how I exactly accomplish that so that you can do it for yourself. And we’re going to talk about that, but we want to talk a little bit more with play Dr. Pillar, that’s a stage name
Dr Pelé Raymond (13:42):
Too. Well, you got to call me Dr. Palais. Just kidding,
Jim Rembach (13:46):
Because he is extremely talented, uh, in a lot of ways and yes, yes. Um, his music, you can find that on the internet. And we’ll talk about that in a second. Um, because I, I think for me, when I look at, you know, the journey of where, you know, you’ve come to where you are getting into this whole, you know, um, algorithm analytics, um, you have a book that you’re currently working on right now may already be on out, depending on when you listen to this. If you could talk a little bit about that book, the title and the contents.
Dr Pelé Raymond (14:17):
I know, thanks for that, Jim. Um, the title of the book that, uh, is, is almost finished is called social velocity and social velocity is something I’m so passionate about because it is actually a reaction and a rebuttal and a rebellion. Wow, that’s three hours, dude. We’re cooking today. It’s a rebellion against what I call mass marketing and spammy connection requests. And everybody just wanting to sell you something. Now it’s all about speed with these. And with the way it works, I interviewed Seth Godin once and he said, he calls that hustling and I’ve adopted the word hustling to describe speed. Now there’s the problem with speed. You can be going very fast and achieving nothing. You can be, you know, knocking on doors and begging people that become your client all day. And it’s just like being on a treadmill or a hamster wheel.
Dr Pelé Raymond (15:15):
That’s the problem with speed. So when you think of the definition of speed versus other elements, such as velocity, okay, velocity and speed are actually very similar except for one thing, speed has nothing to do with movement of a different, from a place to place from a location and direction. Point of view, you can be going very fast in one spot and moving nowhere. Velocity is defined as that movement in a specific direction, actually changing in location. And when I thought of that definition from physics, I was like, that’s what we need to achieve on social media. That’s where the name social velocity came from. In fact, going back to Seth Goden, Seth is the guy who introduced permission marketing, why that was his rebellion and rejection of interruption marketing, which was advertising on TV. You’re watching your TV show and boom, some guy shows up and interrupts you.
Dr Pelé Raymond (16:10):
He introduced permission marketing and it just blew up and everybody took it over, but here’s the problem. We’re all doing permission marketing. Now we get opt-ins when you get the opt in, you send them the email and you send them 5,000 emails, bro. You vomit, and we don’t want to do that. So what I’m proposing is really the next thing. The next level after permission marketing is social velocity, where you slow down, you build relationships, you increase your reach and you analyze your results. That’s the three R’s of social velocity and that’s what the book is all about.
Jim Rembach (16:43):
Okay. So, and that’s exactly what happened with my case study. Um, all of those things were impacted. So with that increase, you know, I already mentioned something about the reach, right? Um, and also the relationships, you know, I received more connection requests and, you know, because of, of that content. And so what that means for me is it’s been a learning path and journey and I’m now being able to replicate it and it’s consistent. And, and I think that’s critically important as well because we all from a social perspective get exposed to, and we think about the quick hit, Hey, I’m going to go viral thing, but that’s just not the way that it works. So if you can talk a little bit about growth in regards to that, that content component and where a lot of where you see most people in regards to their content quality. Um, cause I do also think the maturation process, when you talk about Seth being permission-based, that’s kind of where we now have gotten into the story based marketing, right? And you even re have written about that. Um, but if you could talk about where most people are, because this is what I see, 98% of the, of the content that I see out there is the stuff that’s causing the vortex and pulling people’s good stuff down. So how do we fix that?
Dr Pelé Raymond (17:54):
Yeah, no, you, you make a great point about people need to needing to just pace, you know, slow down, you know, get, get with the delayed gratification thing because it really does make a difference. You know, you can’t ask for marriage on a first date. Um, you really do need to pace it, go for coffee first, right? And the way you go for coffee and the way you, you, you divert attention from the fear of, of, of selling and all that stuff is by focusing on content. Now, what is content doing? Content works only when it’s consistent. If you post today and never post again for a month and then maybe post every day for two, two weeks, you’re destroying how content works, because content is all about building expectation with your target audience. First of all, we got to define your target audience, but that’s a different part of the conversation.
Dr Pelé Raymond (18:48):
If you think of the Oprah Winfrey show, it comes on on Tuesdays at 7:00 PM every week. Guess what happens once people tune in? They’re like, Oh, it’s six 30. I gotta go do it. I gotta go get that. So consistency is a powerful thing in your content marketing strategy. Another thing is you got to count, you can’t just put content out and not know what’s happening to it. You’ve got to be able to look at that content and say, okay, here’s how many people reacted to it. Here’s how many people followed my content back to my website and bought something. Here’s a graph that shows me what’s happening over time. And here’s, if I say what’s my best post ever click a button. And there it is, that helps me make decisions. So I can improve. As Peter Drucker said, you cannot improve that, which you cannot measure.
Dr Pelé Raymond (19:39):
So counting is so important with cut with content, two more things. I’m going to say, conversations your content. Isn’t just there to make everybody happy. It does a lot of things. It educates, it builds interest. It builds desire for your product and even sells. But the most important thing your content is there to do is to create the opportunity for conversations. Why? Because conversations create clients. Got it. And then the last thing is community. So many people think, Oh, I got to do this all by myself. I can. I’m like, no, you’re not an Island. Okay. No one is an Island. And what community does is it gives you a sense of, Hey, wait, that person’s doing pretty good. Let me learn. And then community is also for people to give you feedback. Here’s what you’re doing. All of these things, getting feedback from the data analytics and getting feedback from people equally important. So that, and these are some quick content ideas to get people going.
Jim Rembach (20:41):
And all of those things were important for me to be able to, you know, get that 726, nine, 3% improvement. That is massive. I mean, it’s my, you know, you and I have been around, we’ve talked about this for a very long time when it comes to digital marketing. I mean, you know, me back 20 years, I remember, you know, building websites before Google. Hello, I’m an old guy. Right. Um, it’s just, uh, it’s just amazing when you, when I start looking at how things have just transpired and, but here’s the reality.
Dr Pelé Raymond (21:13):
You mean you were around before there was only Google, there were other search engines like Yahoo,
Jim Rembach (21:19):
Yes. Ask Jeeves and all these. I mean, I mean, there was one, there were some search engines that were really just list-based than had a box. I mean, it, that I was pre-Google both, but however, all of that, you know, knowledge, I mean, for me, um, starting in March, 2020 has totally shifted. We’ve had 10 years of velocity happen in regards to transformation when it comes to B2B digital marketing. Now here’s the problem. 98% or more of the folks can’t react to that, but they must, it’s a survival thing right now. Uh, so if I, if I start looking at, you know, the, the reach and I start thinking about the impact and I started having their own community and all these other things, they are vitally important. Um, that consistency is vitally important and, and you have to have the structure to be able to do it.
Jim Rembach (22:15):
And here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re that solopreneur looked at entrepreneurial that startup, uh, you’re working within an organization, your department team, or if you’re a provider of services, doing it for other people, you can learn the benefit and value of that. And here’s what I also found things that I thought would be most successful as I’ve gone through and done this a couple of times, you know, everybody’s like, Hey, video, video, video, video video is going to be the thing that’s most shared and the stuff that’s not the case, that’s a fallacy. Um, you know, and then it becomes the, well-off the quality of the video. There’s a whole lot of factors that go into it. Like for example, I had a friend of mine who shared a video and then they have these very, very small subtitles at the bottom. Like, okay, you’re trying to drive the old people like me away. Cause I can’t read that. So when I start thinking about all of these, it comes to me to ask the question is what does a B2B digital marketer need to be asking themselves?
Dr Pelé Raymond (23:13):
Well, I think, I think th th there are many things to ask, but I think the bottom line is what are you doing right now that is producing the results you want and what are you doing right now that is wasting your time and your money and your, your, your efforts and how can you do less of that and focus more on the things that work, and then bring that into a content marketing context. Why, because content marketing truly is the future of marketing. You sell directly to people and, and, and really expect results like you can when you’re selling indirectly. And content marketing is an indirect sales and marketing process. So I think they should be asking themselves, what’s working. What’s not, and how can I involve content marketing? And then when you look around, you’ll see that LinkedIn is probably a great place to start.
Dr Pelé Raymond (24:09):
Um, and that, that gets into issues of, you know, how is your brand showing up right now on LinkedIn? And what do you need to do to build that foundation first, before you put content marketing on top of it? Because I’ll tell you one thing, if your foundation doesn’t make sense, when people, when you attract people to you, when they see that your website and your profile and all those things, don’t really make sense to giving them any value they’re gone again. And you just wasted your time again. So there are a bunch of layers to that question, but I think let’s start with, what’s working, let’s do an analysis, let’s look at the numbers and let’s do more of what’s working, and then let’s find out what’s wasting your time and money, stop that. And then let’s start thinking about content marketing
Jim Rembach (24:52):
Most definitely. And so what we’ve done at the B2B digital marketer is created a lot of resources. You’ll even get access to that over the shoulder. Look on how I got that improvement of, I got to say it again, because it’s just a shocking, there don’t forget that that’s important because it was almost 727. So to me, um, all you have to do is go to B2B, dm.com/content marketing. So there’s going to be links to this particular podcast. There’s going to be links to be able to access that webinar. We’re going to do it both, you know, live and on demand. And again, it depends on when you’re listening to watch. Um, and so you can see exactly how I did it, and because it follows the process that Dr. Play has given me the opportunity to be able to use. And I’m learning a couple of multiple things, but one is what I thought isn’t necessarily true because here’s the thing.
Jim Rembach (25:50):
I may be 80%, right? I said, I’m an old guy. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but the world has changed, you know, March, 2020, we, ain’t not, you know, April, 2020, I should just say it wasn’t April fools. It was a new world and I either needed to react to it or not. Uh, and so I found that so 80% of what I know, you know, may be true, but it’s the extra 20 that is really the differentiator. And it is for you too. So you need to make sure that you’re staying up on things and those, and that data will tell you when they shift. Right. So if I’m, if I’m looking at, you know, what I am doing right now and what I’ve been doing, I think it’s also important for us to really, you know, if you can get a little bit more specific answer to the question, what should a, B to B digital marketers stop doing?
Dr Pelé Raymond (26:38):
Hmm. Well, I would say if you’re doing, um, do you want me to focus on content marketing or digital marketing overall? I am not sure. I’ll let you answer you just say, okay, wherever I want to go, okay. I would say start way at the top and say, am I doing outbound marketing, or am I doing inbound marketing or both? If you’re doing outbound marketing, that means you’re advertising and so on and so on and so forth. Take a look at the return on investment on that. If you’re spending thousands of dollars, like we all have and waking up and getting zero results, stop it, stop it quick because the truth is, and I really believe in inbound marketing, because that is content marketing, inbound marketing attracts people to you. You know, so many of us make the mistake of only selling to the 3% who are willing to buy right now. Chet Holmes wrote a book. Um, the, the, the ultimate sales machine, I believe it’s called where he said at any given time in a marketing or sales context, only 3% of people are willing to buy right now, there are 67% or so more people that if you could just have some delayed gratification, slow down the speed on the hamster wheel and just wait and just feed those people with stories and context and content over time, you could convince that, convince that 67% to come to you. Okay,
Jim Rembach (28:03):
Let’s be clear. Let’s be clear. The other percent that you’re not putting in there, they’re never going to buy anyway, like 30% are never going to buy it. And then I also want to add context to what you’re saying is because there was some statistics that came out post COVID statistics that said within that search part of the buyer journey. So they’re, they’re researching their solutions and opportunities. Um, options is that the search phase has increased in activity by 130%. Now you may sit there and say, Oh, well, when COVID kind of goes away, it’ll go back down 130. No it ain’t. Yeah. We have new behaviors in our world. So what you’re saying has massive magnitude. And so you need, we absolutely need to apply what you’re talking about.
Dr Pelé Raymond (28:47):
Absolutely. And, and, and just to, to wrap up that question, you asked, which is what should people stop doing and what, you know, what should they start doing? Stop selling seriously, stop selling. You know, I know people say, always be closing and you’ve heard, we’ve heard all kinds of acronyms to talk about always selling, stop selling, and start serving. There’s a difference when you’re only selling to the 3%, how much are you going to really get from that 3%? But the 67% they don’t require being sold to they require service. And that’s the difference. So I would say, number one, take a look at whether you’re just doing outbound, pushy stuff and see if it’s working, if it’s working, go for it. But if your return on investment is low, stop that then come on over to the inbound side where you’re pulling, you’re bringing, you’re attracting people to you using content and work harder on the 67% over time.
Jim Rembach (29:44):
And I’ll add onto that is especially in B2B. There’s an important thing that needs to be understood is that even when you do make a one-to-one connection, it’s highly likely that that’s not the person who will make the decision and then therefore paying you. It’s not the way. So even for us, like my CFO has to be part of the decision making process. My CFO is also my wife.
Dr Pelé Raymond (30:09):
There you go. But in my world, she’s my CEO. I’m just the chief technology officer.
Jim Rembach (30:18):
I hear ya. So I met, my wife is actually a CPA. So I mean, she’s on the right seat on the bus. Right. But I think she’s like my friend, John, um, we worked for a software company for many years. I don’t know if I need to check with John. Um, but he had both roles, CFO and CEO, um, which, because he was an accountant. Uh, so, all right, so I’m sitting here and I’m looking at what I’m currently doing and what I’m currently spending. And I’m looking at my budgets, right? And we were talking about, we’re talking about that a little bit as far as what we can spend. And who’s the decision makers. If I am currently looking at what I’m currently spending, where do I need to probably take money from? And you may have already answered this, but I want to be a little bit more succinct. Where do I need to take money from and apply it to
Dr Pelé Raymond (31:02):
Well, okay. So if we’re looking at shifting from outbound to inbound, that’s a no brainer because I can tell you right now, you will be spending anywhere from five to $10,000, okay. On a social network every month, if you’re just advertising. And that doesn’t guarantee you any customers, because you still have to do the work of conversion. When you bring those peop the funnel, when the funnel comes to you and you have meetings, the conversion rate might not be what you’re looking for. So if you’re moving from $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month to a different model, as you said earlier, Jim it’s pennies on the dollar. This is literally almost nothing comparatively, right? Because for a hundred dollars a month, for example, or even half of that, you could begin a process of content marketing, where you hire a team to do the content for you.
Dr Pelé Raymond (32:00):
Even, you know, you’ve got to find the right people and things like that, but you could actually not have to do it yourself after a while, and just pay about a hundred dollars a month and get great content that has great engagement that represents your brand, working for you in the real world. Look, I like to call content marketing the development of assets, because if you stop advertising right now, guess what else stops your flow of business? You start paying the money. Everything stops with content. It’s the other way around. You create something once and over time, people discover you based on it. I’ve had people who came to me and paid me for my courses and for my, my offers based on content I put out months ago, I didn’t even know it was still selling me. You know, it’s, it’s kind of like the music industry.
Dr Pelé Raymond (32:50):
To be honest, I learned this from the fact that back in 1998, I actually had a record on billboard magazine, uh, billboard chart, number 29, Alexander, O’Neill go check it out. Um, billboard on the top R and B 100, whatever charts back in the day. And you know what, Jim, I still get checks today, 1998. This is 2021 who would, who wouldn’t love that kind of mailbox money, right? That’s content marketing, because you can create something, a nice post, a video, a really helpful article, something that helps people and just put it out there and people will find it, Google, LinkedIn people will find it and they’ll find you
Jim Rembach (33:34):
Well. Uh, okay. So, and again, people say content is King. You know, they talk about that, but I don’t want to discount the quality of your content. And I think I started going down this path and I didn’t really do a sync job about it. And I will share this in my overload over the look on the webinar. So again, you can go to B2B, dm.com/content marketing, and you’ll be able to get access to that. Uh, is when I first started and I look at the quality of my content, it’s kind of like people say in pot, in the podcasting world, Oh, don’t, don’t listen to my first 10 episodes.
Jim Rembach (34:10):
Don’t do it, don’t do that. But you know, it’s like, we, you know, there’s a learning curve. Right. And what I was creating, what I thought was quality content. I realized wasn’t when I started looking at the data, when I started looking at the engagement, when I started looking and I’m like, Oh my, and then I started get all, thank goodness, getting the opportunity to see other people whose content was being engaged with. And I was like, dang. And I started adopting those things and lo and behold quality content group. It just didn’t pop out. Yeah,
Dr Pelé Raymond (34:43):
I agree completely. Um, you have to be serving as, as we’ve said, and, uh, it’s easy to start by just being focused on yourself and that doesn’t work as well. You don’t, you don’t engage people by only talking about yourself and your products.
Jim Rembach (34:57):
So if I was to say, um, you know, when, when, when, when we look at the marketplace, uh, we talk about the increase in the search phase. We talk about the consistency. You know, we talk about, you know, quality. We talk about, you know, um, all the relationship piece, um, when you start looking at this is essentially a formula of success. How do I equate and put in all the pieces for velocity? You know, is, is this something that I can do in a short period of time? Is it something that’s going to take me months? I mean, what are we talking about here?
Dr Pelé Raymond (35:35):
Um, from a time, uh, timeframe, point of view, you can get started within a couple of weeks and start to see serious traction on your content, but that traction does not necessarily equate to customers. You have to have a funnel, you have to have a process where people can go, okay, I like your content. I saw it once. So some consistency kicks in when they see it again and they see it again. And then they say, Hey, I want to take up, take you up on this offer. You have, that takes me to your website and so on and so forth. So there is a process I would say, think about a 90 day process. Okay. Think about a 90 day conversion process from no content to having content that is creating clients. That would be my timeframe recommendation.
Jim Rembach (36:22):
I think that’s a really good point. Uh, so what you’re referring to and some of the tools that I provide to some of my clients and, um, my students, uh, in digital marketing is something referred to as a convincer strategy. Now you were talking about that 67% and the remaining will never buy from you. And you know, how do you look at that? And I got how many percentage on this front end, that’s where convincer strategies come in. And when you’re creating content, you must be able to understand that conceptually. And what that means is some people, if you give them the right information at that beginning point, they don’t need to go into a whole lot of explanation. They’re ready. So they’re going to decide fast. Then you have a group of, and percentage of people that need to see it a number of times now, for them to say, okay, well, I’ve seen this for example, 10 times, you know, and I think I’m ready to move.
Jim Rembach (37:12):
And then other people are timeframe. People I’ve been seeing this over a period of time for the last 12 months. I think I’m ready now. And then other people there’s that group that we had talked about and said, they’re not going to buy from you anyway. So don’t worry, but you do need to understand that because I think one of the things that when you start talking about that outbound paid and that inbound content, you know, and having the organic and all of that, those, you have to have those together to have some also consistency in your revenue expectations. And I think that’s what we’re really talking about is how can I, you know, predict, you know, what my income is going to be, and it isn’t it that is formulated. Um, and I could really be promoting and pushing things from an ad perspective, you know, because I’m running a campaign, but then you also need to know, yes, if it’s good, I’m going to give it some improvement or increase, but then it’s also gonna fall. How, how do I stabilize all of that? Um, so when you start looking at it from an overall content strategy, uh, and I am Sam mature, and I’m going to get into a situation where I’m doing, cause I do advocate paid an organic, I mean, because I’ve heard you talk about it. Um, if let’s say I’m going down the path, I have my 90 days, when do, when do I potentially infuse our input, some paid components in there. So I can start getting some consistencies and my revenue expectations.
Dr Pelé Raymond (38:33):
I asked a good question, which I unfortunately is so different because of everybody’s different kind of business and different kinds of customers. And it’s hard to get an answer to that one without really studying each type of customer. But I would say that there is wisdom in having a marketing mix. Okay. There’s wisdom and having a mix of strategies working together. Um, but you can’t make good decisions in the absence of data. Okay. And people, actually, people that actually have decent data on advertising, uh, on outbound efforts, they have good data because you can just, if you’re doing LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube or whatever, you can go in there and see the numbers, you know, that’s great data, but people don’t have great data within bond marketing. And traditionally it’s a strategy of hope, throw it out there and spray and pray that somebody is going to help you spray and pray. Doesn’t work. You got to have the analytics so that it’s measurable and you can make decisions about it.
Jim Rembach (39:42):
Okay. I do want to circle back because it’s, I think for me, I, um, gosh, I get torn a lot of times and it goes back to that ROI component and you talk about my own content in my own, um, things that I post and they’re on my, um, account, they’re on my profile versus groups. Do I need to be messing with groups? Should I, should I be using groups? What should I use groups for? What should I expect from groups? Because some of the groups that I’ve been in, I’ve just gotten out of them because it’s, it has no value.
Dr Pelé Raymond (40:18):
I don’t really know why LinkedIn’s groups struggle so much because Facebook has developed the ability for groups to be successful in useful. People make a lot of money by creating groups of people on Facebook. In fact, there are many LinkedIn marketers and coaches and consultants who have Facebook groups for their LinkedIn activities. It’s just crazy. So I don’t really know why LinkedIn has not built more power into their groups. So yes, I would agree with you. Uh, groups really don’t work that much for much on LinkedIn, but what does work though at the end of the day is your profile and your own personal posting. Why? Because, you know, we are our brand, right? Everybody talks about that. Even if you’re in a big company, you are the brand of that company at the point of connection and interaction with customers possible customers. So make the best use of your brand by sharing useful and helpful information that changes lives and make the, it makes people want to come back and learn more about you or your company. So I think, um, you know, the answer to your question would be, if I were just to boil it down is yes, are struggling on LinkedIn. I wouldn’t bother with them that much. Okay. But use them, if you need to have a few people and you guys know for sure you’re going to connect with each other, but as a business development strategy, not so much
Jim Rembach (41:46):
Play, I’ve had a fun time with your name, shared a lot of insights. And just to remind everybody, I am going to give you an over the shoulder look, uh, on how I actually, uh, experienced a 726.9, 3% improvement, um, which would have cost me $15,788 to get that type of improvement from people looking at my content. And I used Dr. Play’s methods. Um, and I also have some tools that he has, uh, that I’ll show you. I’ll also be able to share with you the convincer strategies and several things so that you can be more effective with your LinkedIn content, but Dr. Play, how do folks get in touch with you
Dr Pelé Raymond (42:24):
Two places? No, actually three let’s make this really comprehensive. The first is if you want to just hang out and learn about, you know, the stuff I’ve written, I’ve got set seven books, I guess, coming with social velocity and music, and just kind of have fun. Go to Dr. pele.com. That’s D R P E L e.com. I’m always on LinkedIn. I’m like anyone else. So at the, my handle is D R P L E. After the standard linkedin.com for slash I N Ford slash then the R P L E. And then there’s velocity jam, which is my software and, uh, community that I have, uh, helped to build. Um, that really helps you implement content marketing on LinkedIn and YouTube and other places. There’s one more thing. African soup is at my house on Sunday nights and Jim you’re invited
Jim Rembach (43:18):
And I would welcome the opportunity to come back for that. It was fantastic. And one of the things for me, when I’m thinking of soup, traditional soup, I’m going to get a bowl and a spoon. That’s not what it was. That’s exactly right. So I will be highlighting within my over the shoulder look, uh, velocity jam. I’m going to show you how you could do this by yourself. And I’m going to show you what velocity jam actually does. Uh, and if you actually want to get more details, go straight to that, and you can also go in and get access to all the tools and our webinars. You can go to B2B, dm.com/velocity jam, uh, and I’ll show you that as well. All right, Dr. Belay, thanks again for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, and we wish you the very best.
Dr Pelé Raymond (44:00):
Thank you so much in so much fun.