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Drive More Conversions With BOFU Content (No Keyword Research) ft. Lashay Lewis
Episode 6730th April 2024 • Distribution First • Justin Simon
00:00:00 01:08:32

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On this episode of Distribution First, we're diving deep with Lashay Lewis on how the right content distribution strategies can boost your bottom-of-funnel results.

She peeled back the curtain on her masterful approach to bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content and how it's been a game-changer in her marketing strategy.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll discover in this episode:

1. The Power of Proper Channel Selection: Lashay kicks things off by emphasizing why choosing the right platforms can make or break your distribution success.

2. Strategic Paid Ads Usage: Dive into how Lashay uses paid ads to creatively retarget audiences and pull them down the funnel.

3. Quality Over Quantity: Discover why Lashay prioritizes the quality of connections and content over mere numbers.

4. Integrating Practical Content: Learn the importance of using hands-on tools like templates and checklists to provide real value in your content.

5. Focus on Conversions: It's not all about traffic volume. Lashay shares why driving conversions should be the ultimate goal of your content efforts.

***

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✉️ Email: hello@justinsimon.co

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Transcripts

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Hey, everybody. Before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for

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producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and

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strategy for one flat rate by visiting Hatch

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FM. All right, let's get into the show.

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Welcome to distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head

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and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I

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share playbooks, motivations, stories, and strategies to help you repurpose and

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distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you

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create.

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of distribution. First,

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I'm so happy to have my friend Lashay Lewis on the show. I can't

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believe it took me, I don't even know, 60, 70 episodes

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to get Lashay on. I feel too long. Too long.

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Really feel awful about it. I should have had

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Lashay on a long time ago. We've been hanging out together

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on LinkedIn across the Internet for a good long while. And so

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I'm so happy to have you on Lashay. I'm so happy to be here.

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Thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm really excited about this one.

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Yeah, this is going to be fun. So we talk a lot about,

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obviously this is distribution first. So we talked about distribution,

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repurposing the back end of content

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marketing. Uh, what happens after we hit publish? A lot of times.

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And so for me, what I think is interesting is a lot of

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times when I talk to people about

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distribution, SEO is not typically

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what they think of when they think of distribution.

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What they think of is email or

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they think of social media and LinkedIn.

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And for me, SEO, Google,

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YouTube, those are one of the core distribution channels. I have three bucket

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strategy that I talk about with distribution. SEO being one of those buckets.

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And Lashay is an expert on BOFU content,

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bottom of funnel, driving people in, trying to get people to conversion

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and using that content and using things that people are

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already searching for and are already interested in to then convert

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them and get them to do stuff. So I think when we think about distribution,

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it's easy to go top of funnel. It's easy to go opinions and it's

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easy to try and create interesting content like this

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podcast and other things like that's what people think about when they think about

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content marketing. But I think a lot of times it's easy to skip out on

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the good stuff at the bottom. So I'm curious, why start at the

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bottom? I guess let's go there. Why start bottom of funnel to

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begin with versus? Hey, I'm just

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trying to get my name out there. I'm trying to build this company and trying

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to do this stuff. What's your reasoning behind that? The biggest reason

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is going to be the goals of the company, right.

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So depending on the goals of the company is going to

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determine where you start. So if a company is more interested in

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brand awareness or thought leadership or things like that,

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typically that's when you start more at the top of the funnel. And then

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if they're interested in, okay, I need conversions, I need demos, I need

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signups. That's when you start at the bottom of the funnel. So it really

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depends on the company's goals. But specifically for me, why I like to

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start bottom of funnel, because it's very easy for me to show my value

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because bottom of funnel is usually that last touch

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point before conversion. So it's not difficult. Well, I

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say that lightly. It's not too difficult for me to track,

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but you have to, as opposed to somebody starting at the top of the

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funnel. And we talked about enterprise software

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sales cycles, could be anywhere from three to six months. Plus, if you think you're

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going to follow that person for three to six months and figure out

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every little touch point they did, sad to tell you,

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that's probably not going to happen. Versus BOFU, they come into an

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article, they read it, they like it, and they

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get a demo button, they hit free trial button, they hit whatever that

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conversion point is. That's what's being pushed in

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the bottom of funnel piece versus, again, top. And sometimes middle of

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funnel are more pushed toward maybe the email list or getting

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a free this or template playbook, something like that. But I

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like to start bottom of the funnel because it's easier for me to show my

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value as a marketer that way. And do you

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think about it? I know the Chris Walker really made the whole demand

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capture versus demand creation like two buckets. Really?

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Really. Do you think of it in that way of like we're capturing demand

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with top and middle versus really, or creating demand at the

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top versus capturing demand that's existing at the bottom? I

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do kind of look at it like that, right? Because all keywords are

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not built the same. And there's a big

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misconception usually with in house marketers specifically, and I'm calling

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you guys out, vp of marketing and demand gen

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leads, usually. I'm

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not gonna say they don't know a lot about SEO, because some do are pretty

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well versed in it. But the ones that aren't, they're like, okay, you know, I

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found this keyword. It has 20,000 searches a month. Let's

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go after this one because, oh, look at all the search volume. And our competitors

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are ranking forward and every reason in the world to go after this term. But

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what they're missing is search volume does not equal search intent.

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Those are two different things. And again, depending on your goal,

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is going to determine which one you go after. So you can go after

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what is sales enablement. And that probably gets maybe like

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10, 15, 20,000 searches a month, right. Versus

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best sales enablement software for small teams, maybe

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50 searches a month, 150. Not a lot. But the

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traffic that comes in from a term like that is going to be very, very

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high intent and a lot of the time, Justin, what I find is

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that four to five, or

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rather, let's say this, usually six to

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nine Bofu articles will produce more

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conversions than 30, 40, 50

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top of funnel articles. And I'm talking about with search volumes of

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20,000, 50,000. And again, it's just that

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misconception of, oh, because it has more search

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volume. I'm going to get leads from this. I'm going to get sales from this.

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It's like, no, the smart thing to do

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if your goal is conversions, I don't want to just make it seem like everybody's

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dumb. The smart thing to do if your goal is conversions is to start bottom

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of funnel and bottom of funnel. It's less people in that buying

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pool. There's some sort of, like, statistic or something where it's like three

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to 5% of your market is buying. Like the three to 5%

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is in this bottom of funnel pool floating around. So it's

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not going to be as much search volume as something top or middle

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of funnel, but that intent is going to be there, and it's probably going to

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convert more than anything else on the blog,

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at least from what I found. Yeah, yeah. There's

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definitely, it's an odd mix in content

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marketing. I feel like there's a, there's a, a strong desire

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to just create a lot of things

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and hope those things work out

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rather than actually have a strategy. The more

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companies I talk with, the more marketers,

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unfortunately, that I talk with, the more I'm

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realizing that there's a real lack of

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strategy involves within a lot of

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marketing programs. And to me, it's like

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what you provide for the BOFU side is very similar to,

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like, how I think about providing a strategy around repurposing

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and distributing content. It's a recipe, so

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we can have this. You don't have to just go in blind

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hoping you make a good cake. Like, there's an actual

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recipe that you can use to make a really good

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cake, and if you follow it, you'll be

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successful. It's not guaranteed that it's going to be as

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pretty or as nice or as good as somebody

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who's done it. You know, been a baker for 25 years, but you have the

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strategy to make a good cake. And I think

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there's just a huge, there's a huge lack of thought.

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Maybe, maybe it's just like you said from a in house, like a vp,

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like, I think there is just maybe a, I don't want to say

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ignorance, but there is maybe some level of ignorance in terms of, like, what

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actually moves the needle versus saying, like, we're going to

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do content marketing. That means a lot of different things to a lot

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of different people. And I think

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actually doing content marketing and actually having a strategy,

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like you said, it can be totally different for

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totally different teams. Are you trying to capture demand at the bottom

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of the funnel to drive demos now? Are you trying to

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build awareness and a brand and try to do that for the long

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term? You're probably trying to do both

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in reality. And that's where a lot of teams get screwed up,

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is they're trying to do all of it with one piece

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of content. And that's the thing, right? Like

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one piece of content can serve multiple purposes. But again, it's

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like if the intent is off, it's not going

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to serve the purpose you wanted to. Again, if you want inbound

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leads and you're writing top of funnel, it's not going to serve the

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purpose. If you want brand awareness, thought leadership,

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more people in the email, more people to download this white paper. I hate white

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papers, y'all. And I'm talking as a millennial,

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as a buying millennial, that's buying software. So a lot of other millennials that

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probably hate white papers, I don't read them, but if you have like a playbook,

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if you have templates or things like that, to me that's

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more top of funnel. It's like getting

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people into your ecosystem versus bottom of funnel.

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They've already been pre educated, probably by your competitors,

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too. So. Right. It's like if we think about football, it's like the other

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team running all the way to the goal

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line and then you come in for the interception and run it all the way

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back for the touchdown, right? Like kind of like that's how

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bottom of funnel is. And I tell people all the time, it's like people look

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at content marketing as this black box where it's just like, oh, we're just going

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to throw things in it and see what sticks. It's like there's an actual

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strategy behind content marketing. And it's like once

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in house, leaders come to this realization. They're like, oh, shoot. Like,

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ooh. And they usually come to this realization six to

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twelve months after publishing a bunch of top of funnel stuff.

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They come to me and they say, well, Lashay, we've been

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publishing a lot of pieces and they have a lot of search

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volume, but we're not seeing any uptick in leads, any uptick

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in sales. It's like, what's the gap here? And the gap is

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that you're not focusing on high intent

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terms, you're focusing on high search terms.

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So again, once leaders start to understand that

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differentiation between the two and the value that one adds

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against the other, that's when they get the clarity and say, okay, we need

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a bottom of funnel strategy. And again, I'm not saying top of funnel is bad

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or anything, it just all depends on your goals. And again, if your

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goal is to get attributable inbound

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pipeline from your blog, bottom of funnel is going to be the

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way to go. Specifically comparison pages. And the thing with

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that too is you can build a strategy that isn't

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insane, that manages both of those things and do

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it really, really consistently and really, really well.

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Here's a high level example of how I would think about that. There's

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probably five to ten bottom of funnel pieces of content

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that are missing from 80% to 90% of

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people's company websites right now. Yeah, yeah. So if

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you created those five to ten, we know just by

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Pareto principle that 80% is going to drive or

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20% is going to drive 80% of the results. So let's just say those ten

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are in that 20% of the overall. You know, you could

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write 100 blogs, but we're going to just choose these ten. Cause we know they

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really work. Yep. And at the same time, we can do a monthly

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event, top of funnel, that drives and talks

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about all the problems that people are having, and then we can

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repurpose and distribute that on things like social and email. And now

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with literally a few blog posts at the bottom of funnel, a

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monthly event at the top of the funnel that you've repurposed properly, you

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have an engine that's running all across the funnel that drives

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people toward the same things that you want. Yep. And I think

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that's where a lot of leaders miss it. They're like,

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it's usually one or the other. They're like, okay, we're going to go extreme bottom

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of funnel. And again, if that's your goal, that's totally okay. Or

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they're like, we're going to go extreme top of funnel. But they try to go,

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it's like a scale. They like try to lean one way or the other and

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try to get that middle balance. It's like, no, in order to get

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the balance, you have to have balance, right? So it's like, if you do

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want to put together a content marketing program that kind of targets every bit of

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the funnel, lay it out, right? So maybe you do two bottom of

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funnel posts per month. One middle of funnel and one top of funnel. Like you

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said, it doesn't have to be a blog. It could be a webinar. And again,

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that webinar leads them into your ecosystem, and then maybe you send them an

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email about a bottom of funnel post that you did that drives traffic

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back to the bottom of funnel posts. And I found,

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anecdotally, at least when you're able to drive traffic

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to a bottom of funnel article outside, well, not even really

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outside of Google, because even when you run paid

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ads to bottom of funnel articles, anecdotally, I found

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that they rank better. So if you can take an

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asset you already own, like an email list and say, hey, we wrote this on

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the best whatever for whatever, and then you send that traffic

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to that blog, it's possible that you can get conversions from there too, right? It's

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not just all Google, Google, Google, right? It's your own assets

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as well. So I think that's where repurposing

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is really important. It's like, and I'm guilty of this, too,

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it's like when we create bottom of funnel pieces, we're solely relying on,

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like Google to bring in the traffic and things like that.

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But good bottom of funnel content should actually double as sales

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enablement. So it shouldn't just be sitting on the blog and collecting

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leads. Your SDR should have them. You know what I mean? Like they should

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be able to accurately convey your value

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propositions to a prospect on a call by looking

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at a bottom of funnel piece. That's how you know you have a good one,

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right? So it's like, again, it's not just about

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creating a bottom of funnel piece and putting it out there and hoping for the

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best. It's actually creating a strategy around it to make sure

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the odds play in your favor as it you know, results into

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driving inbound leads from that piece. Yeah. You can sway the odds in your favor

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more than not. Yeah. The more companies that I work with and the more

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content strategies that I dig into, I think there needs to be more

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clarity for teams around intent for that content

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and honestly, more conversations

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internally. It's easier for me now as an external resource to come into a

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company and see the things that I used to have to deal

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with internally, which is like the product team

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says, we need to do X, Y and Z pieces of content. And

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it's like, okay, you're creating that list is six,

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like six things that are very similar. And

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are we going like, there's those type of things. So it's having a

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strong view of the intent and seeing the intent across.

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One of the things I've been looking more into with folks as well is

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around the type of content based around the

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distribution channel. So for instance, really,

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really bottom of funnel content, depending

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on what it is, doesn't make a ton. So like a comparison, right. It might

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make sense to put that out on LinkedIn, but it probably makes more sense to

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rely on Google and your email list of people who are already actively

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signaled in some way, shape or form that they're interested in you or they're

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interested in your tool

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versus a channel like LinkedIn, where

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they're probably less interested in hoppy on LinkedIn to like see a

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tool comparison and more interested in getting help,

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getting information, getting a template, those more middle

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of funnel, top of funnel type of things. And so you have a really

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good point with that, but let me put a bug in your ear.

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So for one of my clients, we've actually been publishing the bottom

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of funnel articles on LinkedIn, and they do really

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good. You're publishing the article itself, not the article

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itself. My bad. So we take the link and you know how

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it kind of like generates a preview and things like that. Like, we'll so

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not totally like repurposing in the form of like breaking down the piece

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and turning it into a LinkedIn post, but we'll take the article

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itself, paste it into LinkedIn. A little preview comes up, give it

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like a, you know, description, you know, and then what

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I find is that they, if your LinkedIn audience is dialed

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in, those tend to do well on LinkedIn, too.

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Another thing I found is if you have a bottom

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of funnel piece and you're running paid ads, another good thing to do. If you

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have somebody that comes in middle of funnel, maybe top, middle of

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funnel, you can retarget

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that person with a bottom of funnel post. Again, this works

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better if they've been in your ecosystem for a little while and things like

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that. But I find that works really well. Doesn't

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just work well on LinkedIn, it works well with Facebook ads, too, especially if

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you have more of a story based bottom of funnel article.

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And I put this out on LinkedIn maybe like a week or two ago, how

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to combine SEO and case studies. When it comes

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to content like that, running ads to that type of story

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based content does extremely well. So

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I would preface that. I would say it's something worth testing,

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but at least from what I found from working with my clients, it does do

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well if the audience you have on that platform

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is the right segment that you're trying to target. You know what I mean? So

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it's like, if you're trying to target, you know what I mean,

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plumbers. And it's like you're on there

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looking for, you have people, electricians and things like that. It's like two

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different things, probably, horrible example, but y'all know what I'm trying to say. It's like

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you have to have that alignment with the followers and the

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audience and things like that. And it's like, this is probably getting to a whole

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nother topic. But that's why it's so important to focus on

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quality and not quantity. When it comes to everything, when it

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comes to blog posts, when it comes to LinkedIn followers, whatever it

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is, the quality is always going to outweigh the

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quantity. Hence why I get people that come to me and they're like, oh, my

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gosh, you know, you're doing so well. You have under 10,000 followers.

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Because I focus on the quality of the followers and not

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how many. And then from there, we kind of get into what people call

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vanity metrics. And I used to call them that, right? But I had to

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think a little bit. I said, you know what? It's not all vanity. Because

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sometimes, well, every time you have to start

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at the top to work your way to the bottom, right? So even

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with bottom of funnel articles, it works the same way. Every single

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time you publish the piece, it starts to

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rank, it starts to get traffic, then it starts to get

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conversions. And it's like, it's only vanity

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if you stay focused on that particular metric for too

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long. And again, it's like when people think, oh, search volume,

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it's only vanity if you're stuck there and you're like, I'm expecting for

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this piece to bring me inbound leads, and it's like when you see that it

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doesn't, that's when it starts to hit. But hopefully doing

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pods like this one will get it on people's radar. That don't wait six

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to twelve months to know that top of funnel doesn't work for driving

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leads. I'm telling you right now, I can save you six to twelve

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months right now. Absolutely, absolutely. I think

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knowing, I think really knowing the distribution

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channels, SEO, the intent behind

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why that. So like what you brought up with LinkedIn there and using the

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ads to retarget makes a ton of sense because you can narrow down and

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target exactly who's going to see that ad. You know what I mean? You can

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be more prescriptive versus in an organic

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feed, there's no telling who or how or somebody's

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going to see this particular thing. And I think that's the thing where people

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struggle, especially with organic,

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LinkedIn, even their emails, top of funnel, trying to get awareness,

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is they talk too much about themselves, it's too much about the

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company, it's too much about what we do, it's too much about

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our products. And I think that's a little bit of the intent.

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Confusion is those people, when you go to

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a social channel or sign up for an email list,

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you probably signed up for the email list because they gave you something of value,

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a template, a checklist, those type of things. A white paper, if that's what

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somebody wants. Not what I want, but maybe somebody out there wants a white paper

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right now. You've heard it from two millennials companies. We don't want white

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papers. Switch that up. No, I don't want a white

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paper. I want a template, a checklist, a buyer's guide.

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I want something simple and helpful. Yes, yes, yes. And again,

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I think that's the point. If people are creating content

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nowadays, you're not competing to create. There is so

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much content out there, it's unbelievable. And

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so the barrier of just creating something, even

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if you ranked number one. Hey, we ranked number one, Vanny match.

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Well, if that piece of content is kind of junky and doesn't actually like drive

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conversion and do much good, it's not like that ranking isn't

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actually valuable. And I have to tell this to

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people all the time. And here's something really cool

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that people probably don't know. I've mentioned it a couple times, but I don't use

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any SEO tools. So when I say any tools, I use

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ahrefs. But that's like for keyword research and just to kind of get

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a lay of the land of how things are in their specific industry.

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But when it comes to, like, on page SEO tools and things, like, I

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use zero tools. And again, it's because

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we all have access to the same tools. At the end of the day, that's

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not what differentiates you. It's like how you

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solve the problem, how you connect those problems to your

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prospects pain points. That's what's gonna differentiate you, not the

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tool. So I don't use any tools. And I still tell people, I tell

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my clients, I'm like, ranking means nothing

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if you can't get it to convert. And that's like, such

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people just don't take heed to that like they should.

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Again, it's the whole vanity metric thing where it's just like,

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remember, it's only vanity if you stay there. Because at

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some point, yes, you have to rank in order to get conversions. People have to

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see it. So it's a good leading indicator

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is what it is, right? So, and again, it's like,

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that's why I tell companies, like, we focus on the customer first

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and SEO second. So, and

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again, this comes from working across dozens of content marketing

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agencies, seeing them do it the wrong way. They're like, oh, rankings this and rankings

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that. We got to get this reporting, the traffic numbers. And I'm like,

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y'all are paying attention to everything except what the companies care

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about, which is inbound leads. You know what I mean? But it's

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like it takes a certain level of education.

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Again, because bottom of funnel is so nuanced and it's

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so different, then not saying top of funnel isn't nuanced to a degree,

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but it's like the nuancedness comes

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from where the information is sourced from, right?

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So if you have a top of funnel piece, it's not difficult to

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type in what is sales enablement and find a ton of other

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definition definitions around sales enablement and things like that. And this is

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another thing I touched on, where top of funnel content

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is more objective and bottom of funnel content is more subjective.

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Subjectivity creates nuance. Because instead of

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going to Google and searching for the thing that you're trying to look for and

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compile it and call that an article, you actually have to go to internal

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teams and get that alignment right. You got to talk to the product team. You

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got to talk to customer success, and sales and marketing brings that all

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together. And then that's when you have the alignment. Once you have that

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alignment, you can create collateral for anything. That's when

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distribution really revs up that engine, really turns

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on once that alignment is hitting. The problem is companies are trying to do

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strategy. They're trying to do all this stuff with no alignment. And again, it's

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because they're hiring freelancers to come in and say, okay, write this article

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on cybersecurity. And the person might not

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even be a cybersecurity expert or anything like that. So they're just trying to,

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like, pull things, and maybe they'll do a search for best

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cybersecurity software for enterprise teams.

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And they're looking at all the other results on Google, and they're like, okay, so

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I'm just gonna take what they say and compile it all together with our

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solution as the number one solution. But that's not the way to do

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it. In order to create a great bottom of funnel piece, you need

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input from every team. You need input, again,

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from cs, from product, from sales, and

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again, sales lets you know the pain points.

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CS is gonna let you know the benefits. The product team is

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gonna let you know how the product works contextually in their

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workflow. It's like all of these things are needed in order to create

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a good bottom of funnel piece. And it's like, you're not going to find that

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information on Google. Just not going to. Well, here's the kicker to that, Lashay. I

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think more and more the entire for content

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marketers, like, buckle up because that's the job.

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Now, top of funnel is the same way. Like, and the

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reason I say that is because you have to have at the

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top of funnel where teams go wrong, is no shared alignment

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on the pov, no shared alignment on the

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story, no shared alignment on the pitfalls,

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no shared alignment on the success, no shared alignment on the

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plan. All the things that would hook somebody in

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as to, like, why are, what all the pains,

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all those things. All those things you tease out at the beginning of the stage

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of a relationship to get somebody curious enough to even want to engage with you

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and your company, you have to have those in alignment

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so that you can repeat them all the stinking

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time at the top of the funnel. So then people are

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like, oh, you guys solve that problem.

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You know what I mean? How often do you have to talk about Bofu content

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before Bofu content equals Lashay? How

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much do I have to talk about repurposing distribution before

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it's, oh, repurposing distribution? I'm just going, I'm not even going to

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search anything. I'm just going to shoot Justin a DM and say, all right? I

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need help. We got a bottleneck with repurposing. Like, can you come in and help

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our company do? And that's so important.

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And it's like, I know my message was starting to resonate because I got tired

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of talking about it. I'm like, if y'all think y'all tired of me talking about

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Bofu, I'm tired of talking. But you know what it's like, that's when

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the message really starts to stick, and that's when you need to continue

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to push on that message. And again, it's like when I think of content repurposing,

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you are the first person that pops in my mind. It's like when people

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think about Bofu, I want myself to be the first

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person that pops into mine. Maybe I'm not the right solution for them, and that's

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okay, but I at least want them to come to me and say, okay, you

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need to do x, y, and z. I'm not the best fit for you, but

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this person might be a good, maybe they do BOFU

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on a freelance perspective, you know what I mean? So it's space for everybody,

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right? So I think, yeah, I think that's really important. And again, it's

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like when these companies are trying to hire freelancers and things like that to come

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in, it's just like they don't, the companies don't give the

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freelancers the tools they need to succeed, which

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was why my content marketing dashboard was

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born, because it really was derived out of pain,

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because I really wanted to work for this content marketing agency and I didn't get

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the chance to work with them. I didn't make the cut because I

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couldn't write good bottom of funnel content because my brain couldn't

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conceptualize, how do you write an article but

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not have to do a Google search? Again? Because me as a freelance

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writer, I was taught to find the target

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keyword, do a Google search, see what everybody else is talking

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about, and try to make it a little bit better than

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their stuff. And there's some truth to that. But what most

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freelancers do is they just compile the top ten results and put it together and

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say, okay, here goes your article. And the marketing leaders don't know any

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better. They're like, okay, we have an article. Let's throw it in this book black

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content marketing box, and let's just see what happened with sticks. But it's

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like if you give them the necessary tools that they need, because I'm not a

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subject matter expert in cybersecurity, but I've worked with a cybersecurity company.

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I'm not a subject matter expert in career development, but I've

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worked with a career development company. And it's because to me, in my

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opinion, like, strategists don't have to be subject matter experts

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in the thing. I'm a subject matter expert in

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Bofu. So if you give me the information that you need, and, like, we get

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the team on that, because we do, like, we do a workshop where it's like,

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I have a canvas laid out and we go through the product and the

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prospects and having that alignment between customer

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and product. So it's like, once we get through that, and you would be so

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surprised how many teams are like, okay, so do you have, like, a feature

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benefit list? Or they're like, oh, well, this person on that team, I think they

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have it, so let me go. No, I would not be surprised at all. Ashe,

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man, like, it gets crazy. It's like, I'm

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on calls with whole teams and they're just like, okay, so who

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has this thing? Okay, y'all got this thing over there, and it's like, it's

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almost like an awakening. They're like, ooh, our information is

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scattered. And it's like, if the people in house are

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having trouble getting this information, what makes you think that a freelance

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writer is going to be able to grab all this information? They've got other

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clients to deal with. They got. You know what I mean? So it's just like,

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I wasn't given the proper resources when I was trying to be a freelance writer

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to create good bottom of funnel content. So the point of the dashboard was to

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be able to consolidate all of that information. So if you do want to bring

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in a freelance writer, they don't have to be a subject. Well, they should be.

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That would help. But they don't necessarily have to be a subject matter expert

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on the thing because you have everything consolidated for them.

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They can learn the product at a deep level within two weeks,

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and then from there, that's when you get them to start

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publishing. Even then, there's still a little bit of bottom of funnel

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nuance and stuff like that. But the point is, right, it's better than just getting

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a random freelancer and saying, okay, write this piece and just look around our

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website for the stuff you need. Look on YouTube. Like, no. Have the collateral

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together for them. Yeah. Those alignment pieces are

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really so key, literally across

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every piece of content that you create. I can't think of

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a scenario where you shouldn't be doing this. But

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it is eye opening the amount of companies

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that completely skip over the

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pre, the research phase, if you

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will, to content marketing and go straight into creating

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and then wonder why it doesn't work. And it's like, of course this doesn't

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work. Of course it wouldn't work. You're literally just

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speaking to people you don't know

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and you don't care about, even though they're your customers.

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It's a kind of a wild reality. And the thing is, Justin, like, you don't

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know what you don't know. So there are one or two things. Either they

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genuinely don't know or they're trying to rush the process.

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I think both. It might be both. Yeah, for sure. And it's

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like everybody knows when you rush the process, that actually slows you

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down. If you were to just take a step back and be like, okay, let's

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get this out the way. It's a pain, but let's get it out the way.

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It's absolutely necessary for what we need to do. And again, like, when I work

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with companies, I tell them, like, this is the hardest part. Like the customer

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research, getting the different teams together. And that's the hardest part. Once

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we've got that together, oh, the bottom of funnel articles start flowing. Why?

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Because we have alignment. Then once you have that alignment, you can take that

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bottom of funnel article and repurpose it into something else with the

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data backed evidence that it converts. How do you know? Well, because you have

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tracking set up and, and that's probably like a whole nother tracking is a whole

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nother topic because I know people struggle with that, too. But if you have good

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tracking setup, you can see which articles are driving you the inbound

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leads. So if you know this does good as an article, why don't you repurpose

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it into an email? Right. Or why don't you repurpose it into a webinar?

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It just gives you that data backed information that

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you need to take the step forward. And again, even with me and teams, it's

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like they have to trust me to a certain extent because it's a lot of

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work upfront. But again, once they get through that, and here's

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another thing, usually smaller teams are,

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have the information together much better than larger

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teams, specifically like see through

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Series A, b

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maybe, but usually see stage companies very

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lean. They're just getting started. They have their information together. Teams are

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communicating with each other. They have cross functional communication. It's not siloed

Speaker:

like a. I've worked with some bigger company. Yeah, it's like. Right.

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And it's like the bigger the company gets, the more

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communication becomes siloed. It's like, oh, the sales team only

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talks to the sales team and the product team only. But why?

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It's like we're all trying to hit the same KPI's. We're trying to

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get to a specific number. Why are we not trying to help each other do

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that? Yeah, it's, it goes back again. It's internal teams in

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alignment. It's one of those things where as somebody who led teams

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and did that in larger orgs and now working across a

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myriad of like, the more companies you work with and work for, just

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the reality of like, man, people are the issue. They're the solution

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and they're the issue. Yes, I was talking with

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Ross Simmons about this. Like, those soft skills are going to really

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come back into like, necessity

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for teams to succeed. Like, if you don't have the soft skills to communicate

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internally, to be able to pitch those ideas, to be able to share why,

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to be able to help teach people internally why

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and show them, like, all of those things are really going to, going to come

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back into vogue for, for marketers especially because I think.

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So this is the thing, right? Like talking through this, this got me

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thinking. Content and marketing is basically

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one thing now. Marketing is

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fueled by content in 2024. Yes,

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yes, yes. You can supplement it with ads, you can supplement it with other

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things, but you have to have

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content to do marketing. And in order to do the content

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well, you have to have all of the

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standard marketing, operating procedure stuff, positioning, messaging,

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benefits, features, understanding of all those things.

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And you have to know your customers and you have to know what problems they

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have and you have to know what pains they have. And you can't just rely

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on the sales team or the CS team to, oh, that

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they handle the problems. They handle those things. And

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then we're just ambiguously creating keyword content

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while they're down in the trenches dealing with the real stuff. Exactly.

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And I think that's the big misconception with why

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teams beef with each other because it's, I feel like, and I'm not in

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sales, I don't, I don't know, somebody tell me. But I, sometimes I feel like

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the sales team feels like, oh, we're held to these certain numbers and we got

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to hit x quota and we got to close x amount of

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people when it's like, oh, the marketing team, they just have to get, they aren't

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really tied as close to a number. And then the

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marketing team, and I could speak for myself, the marketing team was like, well, hold

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up. We're busting our ass on this side, too. Like, it ain't just, it's not

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all you guys, like, we have to. And I think the sooner

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we start to realize that the job of marketing is

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to drive qualified leads to the sales team.

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Our job is to make the sales team jobs easier. Right.

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The only way we can do that is if we know from sales what the

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prospects are telling them. So if they're like, okay, this feature slaps,

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and we love this, we probably know this needs to go into a

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bottom of funnel post somewhere. You know what I mean? But it's like,

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if you don't talk to the sales team, you don't know what they're dealing with.

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You don't know what they're struggling with. And usually when I talk to the product

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team, I just get, like, mixed reactions, like, oh, whoa, you need my

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help? Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that. I'm like, yeah, because you got to

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tell me how the product works, how it fits contextually in the

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workflow. It's like, give me an example. How would they use this in the day

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to day? It's like, all of this stuff has to go into the

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piece. The sales team doesn't always know what the

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product team like, these are different functions. They take different

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skills, and you know what I mean? So it's like, we all need each

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other for the broader vision, but it's like,

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companies and communication is so siloed, and again, it's

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like, oh, you know, well, I'm only talking to sales when there really should be,

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like, a slack channel. When you come out with a bottom of funnel piece, share

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that piece to the other teams. Be like, you know what, sales.

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Let me know if this helps you with closing a deal. Right? Cause maybe

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if that helps you close a deal, maybe we can repurpose that and put it

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on LinkedIn, or maybe we can do this, or do you know what I mean?

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It's just like data gathering and information gathering. And it's like, if you

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don't talk to the teams, you don't know what they're struggling with. What's

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the best way to drive that? You've got

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the marketing dashboard. Anybody can go grab it. Like, yes, I've got the

Speaker:

dashboard crap. Now I got to try to get somebody on these

Speaker:

calls. How do you facilitate? Because I think even with companies

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where there's good communication, where like, hey, I can go reach out to John over

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here, but John's busy and now my piece is stalled

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out. Yeah, that was another

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reason for the dashboard, because there used to be a thing where I

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would have to hold an interview per piece.

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So another thing I love about bottom of funnel is that you only

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need a specific amount or a certain amount of information.

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And it's interesting because now we're getting a little bit deep into it, but

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it's like bottom of funnel articles are almost

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repurposed within themselves. So we're talking about the same

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features, the same benefits, the same paint, but we're talking

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about it in a different context depending on the use case that we're talking

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about. But a lot of it is the same thing. It's just different positioning.

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So it's like once I get that core information down that I need from these

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teams, I take that information and repurpose it. So maybe it's

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like, again, going back to the sales enablement, best sales enablement

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software for enterprise teams, then it's like best

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sales enablement software for small teams.

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Those might have different features in them, but again, if I talk to the product

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team and they list all the features down, all the use

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cases, so on and so forth, I don't have to mess with them too, too

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much unless the product roadmap is growing and things like that, and they want to

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add things to this, maybe they add a new feature that

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opens up a new segment, maybe it opens up a new

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list of competitors. That's like the information I really need

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from them. But that's not, it's not like the company is updating the

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product roadmap every day or we come out with a new feature every day. Oh,

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yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like once I get that core information

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down from them, I really, you really don't need them too much from

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there. But, yeah, I think it's

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funny, again, because it's like repurposing within

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bottom of funnel. I use the same elements over and over and over.

Speaker:

It's just about repositioning the

Speaker:

elements based on who you're talking to. And when I, again, when I say elements,

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I mean like, oh, the benefits, the features, pain points, stuff like that. But

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it's really all about repositioning. Yeah. You don't have to get too, too much from

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them. Just get it down that one time. And then once you have

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it, you have it. Yeah, it's much more the,

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I break repurposing into two different areas, like macro and micro, macro

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being like typically the larger, like thematic, the type.

Speaker:

So in this case, features and benefits. Yep. Pain points. Yep.

Speaker:

These things you can repurpose over and over and over again throughout your content, especially

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bottom funnel, because they're not going to change. Somebody searching one

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thing and the next thing, like you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You actually

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shouldn't reinvent the wheel because the feature is the feature.

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What are you going to do? It's funny, one client that I started working with

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a couple months ago, we focused on solely bottom of

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funnel before. Like we're still working through all that. They

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have hundreds and hundreds of blogs that they already had. So literally we're

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going through and updating bottom of funnel content right now

Speaker:

with the sole purpose of driving conversion. So

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they're getting traffic, they're getting good impressions, all those type of things. And

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now we need to make sure the information is accurate. Correct, has the right

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CTA's, all that type of stuff to drive conversion. That's another thing.

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See, you just see, now you got my brain running another

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thing when it comes to bottom of funnel because I know we talked about

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intent. There are two main things I see. It's like with top of

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funnel, I see people pushing their product too much. And then with

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bottom of funnel, I don't see people pushing the product enough.

Speaker:

Interesting. Yes. So with bottom of funnel, and

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I'm not throwing shade to anybody, but if your bottom of funnel piece

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starts with oh, in today's marketing, dust yourself off and try

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again, like immediately. Right. Because when it comes

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to bottom of funnel again, the prospect is already

Speaker:

solution aware. So you don't need to say, oh, what

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is sales enablement and how can sales enablement help your team? Like

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they learn that already. Now they're here to see you

Speaker:

versus competitor. They're here to see best sales enablement for use

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case they're here to competitor alternative. Like that's what they're

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here for. And I tell people all the time, like when you do bottom of

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funny, you either need to lead with pain points or you need to lead with

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benefits and then those pain points and those benefits should tie back

Speaker:

into the capabilities of the product. So it's like, again, because

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you triggered me a little bit when you said that.

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So I was just like, let me just get that off my mind before I

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forget. But yes, I don't see people pushing the product enough

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in bottom of funnel and they don't get deep with their product. If they do

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have their product and other products listed, it's like a little blurb

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about you know, oh, you know, we do this and we do that. It's like

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a little paragraph, but it's like you can get way deeper than that. Like, get

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more granular. Talk about, okay, this feature solves this

Speaker:

pain point. It has this capability. Boom, move to the next. This feature solves this.

Speaker:

And if you have a ton of features, one thing you can do, one strategy

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I like to do is group your features. So if you have high level,

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I call them, like, high level benefits. So to

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me, saving time and saving money is a high

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level benefit. It's not a differentiator, right? It's just like a high level

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benefit. But maybe you have features that fall within

Speaker:

these pools, right? So maybe it's just like a feature that helps

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you save more time and help you save more money. Or maybe there's just.

Speaker:

And again, this usually goes for if you have a ton of features

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that solve multiple pain points and you don't want to

Speaker:

feature dump in the article, because that never works. Y'all don't feature

Speaker:

dump. If you do want to include a lot of features, you need to group

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them properly by a high level benefit. So again, you

Speaker:

find the high level benefit, and then you group the features under the benefit that

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it matches with. Because how many. I mean, how many sections

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are you trying? I mean, it's gotta be around five, right?

Speaker:

Like, nobody wants to scroll, right? A bazillion

Speaker:

feature sets in there. And again, I think that one of the.

Speaker:

I use an example with my client. I gave them. It was funny

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enough, it was a pellet grill, like a smoker, to,

Speaker:

like, cook smoked meats. And I was like, what you have to do

Speaker:

is put your. It all comes back to the intent, right? You said, dive deeper

Speaker:

into the feature. Dive deeper into the. Why? If you wanted to

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buy a pellet grill, you really want to

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know what is good about this one, what isn't

Speaker:

in the reality? It's like, how much food can you put on there? How hot

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does it get? Does it burn, like, pros and cons, all of those things

Speaker:

across different models or across different machines? That's what I

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actually need to know. What I don't need to know is the

Speaker:

specific. This one has a dial feature. This one has a this

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and that feature. This one has that. It's like, no. As a buyer,

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what is all the information I need to be able to make a good decision

Speaker:

to say yes or no. Yes. And I think that's where a lot of people

Speaker:

miss the mark. And it's a whole nother thing. Some people don't even want to

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talk about their competitors. They're just like, oh, we don't want to bring attention to

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them. And I get it. Right. But here's the thing.

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If you talk, and again, this is about talking, the cross functional

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communication. If you talk to the sales team and they tell you, oh,

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we're losing deals to this person and that person, and that person, you probably

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need to talk about it again, because people are searching for

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the bottom of funnel terms anyway. Just because you don't wanna think about

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it doesn't mean they're not searching for it. And the only thing you're

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doing by not writing bottom of funnel content is you're letting these other

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companies control your narrative. Cause you better believe if you're not

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talking about yourself, they're definitely talking about you. And something I

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caught the other day that was really, really cool on

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capsule's website. So, capsule video, they do something really cool

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on the homepage. So they have like competitors

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listed out across the homepage. But it's like

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they list the thing that they do better than the competitor.

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So they say, twelve times faster than descript,

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eleven times faster than v, nine times faster than

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Adobe. Like, they're not even hiding the fact that we have

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competitors. And these could be competitors that they're probably

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fighting for deals on, or losing deals too, but they're very

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upfront about it. They're like, boom, okay, we're faster than this person, this person

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and that person. So it's like, I would encourage people to not

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be afraid about talking about your

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competitors, because it's not like you're talking about them and you're saying, oh, you know,

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this company. I mean, let me preface that too. You

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should not, should talk your competitors. I just

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wanna, I just wanna put that out there. Like, don't do

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that. The best thing to do is to explain what

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your competitors do well versus what you do well. Because what's gonna

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happen is the prospect, or the potential prospect is gonna come to the

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article they're gonna read. And what happens is if they are

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a better fit for, for the competitor, they're going to self select

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and honestly self deselect from

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wasting time from the. Sales team, which people do not

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understand the reality

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of helping the buyer make a better

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decision and helping sales have more qualified

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sales conversations. Yes. And that people,

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buyers today, like you said, with the competition, it made me real. Like, do you

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think they're not googling the

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competition or like reading or reading a review

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on YouTube or like, like watching a third

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party give a x, Y and Z thing about the three.

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Of course they are. Of course they are. They're making a decision, asking their

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friends. It's honestly a little bit dense of us as

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marketers to think that people aren't

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going to our competitors and reading about them and

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seeing, okay, who's the best fit? Even, let's take it for consulting to a

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minute. When people look for bottom of funnel, maybe they

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come to me first if I'm the first person that comes to mind. But they

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probably hit two or three other people up and they're like, oh,

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they're, you know what I mean? They're surveying the field. They're trying to figure out,

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okay, is this the best solution for us? Why are you different than the

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other person? And it's like, here's the thing. If you're differentiated

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enough in your features, you don't have to compete on price. I think

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that's another important thing too, because again, I work with some companies

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where their benefits are a little bit high level. They're like, oh, save money and

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save time. I'm like, no, no, no. What's the benefit

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of the feature? What's the benefit of them

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achieving the job to be done? Not just, oh, we're going to save

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time. And everybody says that. What data, what proof do you have to

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back up what you're telling them? And again, and I know you mentioned

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people coming to the article and like scrolling and things like that. And again,

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that's why I think when people list their features out in

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the article, I believe the features should lead with the capability

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or the benefit. Because again, if they're skimming and they

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probably have your page up and they probably have a competitor page up and they're

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skimming through and just leading with

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capabilities and benefits is just really, really good for skimmers.

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Cause it gives them a quick way to digest what you're able to

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do without having to read a 13 or 14 minutes piece. You know what I

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mean? Yep. So I want to, nobody wants to read the 13

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minutes piece. Nobody wants to read it. Right? It's boring,

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you know what I mean? And it's like they are trying to make a decision,

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but still it's like they might not want to read every

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tiny specific, you know what I mean? So it's good to make

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those headers really stand out and get the point across

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in as few characters as possible. That headline

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needs to make them want to read the rest of the piece. And when I

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say headline, I mean like the headers, h two, s, h three, the way you

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position those needs to make them want to say, oh, okay, yeah, that's my

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problem. Okay, let me read about this a little bit. This feature does this, for

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example. And that's another thing. I think people should

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always include contextual examples in their

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articles. Again. So this confused me for a long

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time. But the easiest way to understand, like, contextual examples is just to

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think, like, once you explain the feature, say,

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for example, let's say, imagine

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if taking, and again, this is where the product

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team comes in because they help us understand how the feature is used

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contextually. That's why I said every team has to

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be involved in this, because every, yeah, it's like every team

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has different information that has to go into this piece, but it all works together

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cohesively to get a conversion at the end of them reading that piece.

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And they may not even read that. They might just skim it. Because I've, you

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know, seen people on hot jar and we've, like, they'll

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skim it, read through it a little bit. Two minutes or so, boom, sign up

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for a demo, right? Because when it hits that hard, they're like,

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oh, okay, this is my company. Let me just reach out and see what they're,

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what they're talking about. And if you have alignment with the sales team, when they

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talk to sales, everything they read in that blog post is going to align from

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what they hear from sales. Yep, yep, exactly,

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exactly. All right, we're cruising here. I want to give some folks some

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tactical advice, right? Like, hey, we're,

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we're struggling with BOFU, or like, we've got a lot of what

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I would maybe think are BOFU articles, but what are my steps

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to step in here and actually start taking, like, in the next

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two weeks, I can do these things. The first thing I would

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say is to,

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hmm, attempt to get your team together

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and lay out who you're talking to so

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your Personas, lay out your ideal customer profile, your

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pain points, benefits, features, capabilities, and

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you can get one person from each team. Usually that's how I do it. Try

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to get one person from each team together and come together and lay out these

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things, like, make it like a feature benefit list and put that together.

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From there, I would start searching for bottom of funnel terms, and I tell people

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the way I like to find. Well, again, we talked about this a

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little bit before the episode, but my brain is just like a continuous stream of

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consciousness. I'm going to try to condense this down to tell you all how to

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do this, but the way I like to find bottom

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of funnel keywords. Is a bottom of funnel keyword

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usually describes what the product is or what it does,

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right? So start there.

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Another thing I like to do is something called the homepage test. If I

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scroll down your homepage and I can find two bottom of funnel keywords,

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usually I don't want to say they're on the right track. Like they know all

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about bottom of funnel and things like that. Usually it's an indicator, like they have

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a good sense on like who they're talking to and their product market fit.

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And that's another thing, side rant. If you do not have your product market

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fit, don't start bottom a funnel. It's not time yet. You got to know

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your value props, you have to know your competitors, you have to know where you

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fit contextually all this stuff. But I would say

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get alignment again, one person from each team

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or get as close to that as you can and start doing some bottom

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of funnel keyword research again, what the product is or what it

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does. Understand the different use cases. So you know, again, when you look

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type best sales enablement software for use

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case, right? So start to understand your use cases. Start to

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implement that into your keyword research. And then from there

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grab my dashboard and grab like, but seriously,

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like there are like two or three frameworks in there that

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can kind of guide you and help you along with knowing where

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each team inputs goes in the piece. So like,

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okay, pain points go into a specific section that comes from sales

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benefits go into a specific. So that's what

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I would say. And again, if a team is like really, really pressed, I want

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to say look for a bottom of funnel specialists. I'm not the only one, right?

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Like, you know, there are other people that are bottom of funnel spot. Maybe

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they do it from a freelance basis or, and different people have

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different opinions on what bottom of funnel is. I did a LinkedIn

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poll and I said, when you think about them, a funnel, do you think of

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comparison pages? And they're like, it was almost 50 and 50

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50 yes and 50 no. And people were like, oh, well, I look

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at knowledge based stuff as bottom of funnel. I

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look at just white papers as

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bottom of funnel. I'm like, I was getting all types of stuff and I was

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like, oh, okay, okay. So I think having

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somebody with a BOFU focus come in and help the team kind of

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drive that. Again, I use templates and frameworks because that's how my brain works

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and it helps people easily conceptualize what I'm trying to do because it is

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nuanced. There's a huge learning curve. It's complicated, but I find that

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templates and frameworks kind of help people conceptualize it a little better. So,

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yeah, that's my parting advice for people that want to start

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bottom of funnel, again, it is nuanced, but if you take the steps that I

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mentioned in this episode, you're going to be

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miles ahead of your competitors. Because again, one of the

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reasons that it's kind of easy to rank for bottom of funnel content, I'm not

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trying to make it seem my job is easy, but one of the reasons that

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it's kind of easy to rank for bottom of funnel content is because a lot

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of people don't do it right. So when you do do it right, it doesn't

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take that much to rank. So as people start to catch on and start to

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do it right, might get a little bit more competitive. But as of right

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now, it's not too, too difficult to rank for. If

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you do what I talked about previously in this episode, yeah, you're going to be

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on the right track. Are there specific? So you mentioned, like

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grabbing bottom of funnel keywords. What did you

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mean by, like, scrolling the homepage and seeing two keywords? Like, what's an example of

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that? You're putting me on the spot. I

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gotta see, like, what would you be looking for? I guess

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I'm looking for. So when I scroll the homepage,

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I'm looking for a bottom of funnel

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keywords specifically. So, like, again, what the product

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is or what it does. So let me, let me pull up and

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see if I can pull up an example. I think drift does this really

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good. So if you look in Drift's

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header, it says, one conversation at a time. Meet drift,

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an AI powered buyer engagement platform. That's a bottom of

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funnel keyword, buyer engagement platform. Right? So that's

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one. If I scroll down some more, I'm seeing like a

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bunch of, no, they've only got one. But I know they

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obviously, like, they have. Sure. I know what you're talking about them. You know what

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I mean? So it's like usually when I can come in and find that

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right away, I'm like, okay, they have a good grasp on

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what they're doing and who they are. Even if you go to gong, right? If

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you go to gong and you scroll all the way down into their footer, they

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have a ton of bottom of funnel keywords in their footer because they get it

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right. So it's like, I got you, you. Know, gong versus this and best this

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for that. And so, and again, that's how I usually

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decipher quickly if a company gets it or they

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don't. And if they don't, it's okay. We just got to, like, go through the

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alignment steps and things like that. But yes, that's the homepage

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test. My own made up homepage test. So if I, if I feel like we've

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got pretty good alignment, I've gone through and done the checklist with

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my team. What are the first few, like, pieces of

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content that we should be thinking about making? X verse

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y verse z? Should I be

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focused on? You mentioned, like, product for

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x use case? Like, are there particular pieces of content that I should

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be thinking about driving faster than others?

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Yes. Well, again, people have

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different meanings of what they think bottom up funnel is or what it means to,

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to them. That's what I mean. Because if you say, oh, go create bottom of

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funnel, they might be like, oh, all right, our knowledge base, we've got

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100 bottom of funnel pieces of content. So

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to me, in my opinion, I think it's gonna be the

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blog that you should focus on. Specifically, when I

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say bottom of funnel, I mean comparison pages. So best

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versus an alternative, and then even within

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that. So I heard you say versus, versus.

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So you could do competitor versus competitor versus

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competitor. And that's a strategy I like to do as well, because

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what you can do is take the search volume from two other competitors

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and inject yourself into the conversation. So if it's like

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gong versus clary and outreach is like, well, hello, what about us?

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You can do gong versus Clary versus outreach. And what's going

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to happen is outreach is going to collect the search volume that gong versus

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clarity was getting. But now they've inserted their self into the conversation, you

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know what I mean? So it's like little strategies and tactics like that that come

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from blogging. And again, once you

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kind of get a flow of the blog and things like that, and again, you

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don't have to publish a whole lot of bottom of funnel in order to make

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moves. So typically it takes nine

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bottom of funnel posts. And I'm not. Y'all. Just don't take it with a grain

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of salt. Typically it takes, this is a scientific. She's done the study.

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I've done this so many times, guys, like, based on my. Because I

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like to always preface based on my data, it takes around nine

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bottom up funnel articles to start driving pipeline.

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For a company I'm working with, they had a lead that had a

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chain of hospitals, like 70 hospitals, you know what

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I mean? So it's like. And then the cool thing about that is that it's

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enterprise software. Bottom of funnel

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works across product, led sales, led

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all types of things. You know what I mean? So it is versatile in that

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sense. But to me, if you want to start driving, inbound

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leads you 100%. First of all, need to focus

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on bottom of funnel. What I like to focus on is the

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blog, again, because people don't do bottom of funnel correctly, so it's

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not difficult to come in and get some quick wins. I love quick wins, right?

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I love to come in and redo a piece and it ranks in two or

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three days. And they're like, oh, my gosh, is this magic? Or like, no,

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people just don't do it right. So it's like when they come in and we

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do it right, they're like, whoa. Like, this is awesome. And it blows

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their mind that a keyword that gets 150 searches a

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month converts twice or three times as much as a keyword that

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gets triple the amount of traffic. It just blows their mind every single

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time. And I love it. I live for it. So that's my final

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question, tactically, because you mentioned SEO software for the

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teams that go in and they're looking in search console or

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they are looking in Semrush or an ahrefs or something like that,

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and the volume is ten or non

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existent, what's the advice to say?

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Because I'm sure you see, I'm sure. You'Ve seen a whole nother episode on

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search volume because some people might want to kill me for this,

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but I'm being totally honest. I've gone after

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keywords that have zero search volume and it

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converts like crazy. And again, these tools are

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just an estimate of what the search volume really is. Another

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thing, I just keep dropping gems on y'all. Another thing, the

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most overlooked keyword tool is Google itself.

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So if you go into Google and you start typing in best, and again, I

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keep going back to sales enablement. Example, if you type in best sales

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enablement software for, you're going to see the

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different use cases come up that people are searching for just because

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you put it into ahrefs or you put it into Semrush, or you put it

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into enter tool here and it says, oh, it only gets ten

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searches a month or it gets zero. You always have to take that with a

Speaker:

grain of salt because I've written around keywords that get ten searches a month

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and we were getting 20 visitors a day. Right? And again, also

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with keywords, you don't just rank for the thing that you're trying to rank for.

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You also rank for permutations and things like that. So

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I think that plays a really big role into it, too. But yes,

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tactically, that's what I would do step by step. Like if you're like, okay, we

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got to get leads in the door. We got to just, I would do that

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step by step. Find the alignment, find the keywords. Either

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get a specialist to come in and help you put this together, do some more

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research, compile your own research and put that bottom of funnel

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piece together. You usually need about nine good pieces before you

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start to drive pipeline. And again, yeah, that's literally what I

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would do if I was coming in. That's how I do it when I come

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into companies, right? We just go and it's the same process every single time.

Speaker:

Step one, alignment. Step two, keyword research. Step three, we

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write. Step four, we track like it's the same thing every single time. And I'm

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gonna, I'm gonna throw more at you because you're here and I'm curious what your

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take is on it. So you type in that thing,

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enterprise, you know, or sales enablement, four, and it comes up with

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seven different things. Is your plan. Then again,

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are we writing seven posts all for

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this and for that and for this and for that?

Speaker:

So that's tough because

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different clients experience different things. With one of

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my clients, the thing that started converting for them,

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the ooh, ooh, hold up.

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Okay, so for two of my clients, their first

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converting piece was alternative. So if I had to

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rank within bottom of funnel, it's probably going to be

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competitor alternative and then it's going to be best

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software for use case. And then it could be like you

Speaker:

versus this person. And another thing about the

Speaker:

versus is this episode is going to go on forever. Another thing

Speaker:

about the verses is if you type in google,

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your company versus another company, and you see g

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two and Capterra and all these

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other review sites and you're not up there, you

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immediately need to write around that, like immediately

Speaker:

again, because that's other people controlling your narrative. Like

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g two is awesome, but I'm sure you don't want them controlling your narrative, right?

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You want to control your narrative. So if you see search volume

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that has your brand name in it versus somebody else, and you do not have

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a piece around that, that's probably the most

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important. After that, then I would go after competitor

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alternatives. But if you're good with like your name

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and versus competitor not having any search volume, nothing is there. At that

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point. I would start with competitor alternative again, then

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go down to best software for use case and then go competitor versus competitor.

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Got you. Okay. Yeah. So there's a little bit of a method to the madness

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of a little bit. It's some structure in his

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brain. Well, Lashay, it's been

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awesome dropping massive knowledge bombs all throughout this

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on bottom of funnel and how it ties in. I think the biggest thing for

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me, honestly, and I know we've got some cool stuff that we were chatting

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about before this, but I think for marketers to really

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understand that it truly does all tie together.

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It's not a segmented siloed strategy where we're going to

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focus only on bottom of funnel and has no impact at the top or I'm

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going to only do top of funnel as no impact at the bottom. Yup.

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All of these things tie together and I think building out

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a strategy that's manageable,

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reasonable, sustainable, where you can tie all those things together

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makes a ton of sense and I think teams can do it. I just don't

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think they know how. Yeah, well, that's what we're here for, right? That's what we're

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here for. Absolutely. So we're here to save the day.

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Awesome. Awesome. Well, Lashay, it's been a blast having you on and we'll

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definitely have to have you back because an hour went by like 15 minutes. So

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thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you so

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much. Awesome chess soon.

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All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution first

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and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you so,

Speaker:

so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in this

Speaker:

episode one way or another into your content strategy as

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well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that

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are going to help you build your brand ten x your content and

Speaker:

transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe

Speaker:

to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co.

Speaker:

So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next

Speaker:

episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time.

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