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

producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and

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

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

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

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

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

create.

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

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

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

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

Really feel awful about it. I should have had

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

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

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

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

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

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

repurposing the back end of content

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

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

times when I talk to people about

distribution, SEO is not typically

what they think of when they think of distribution.

What they think of is email or

they think of social media and LinkedIn.

And for me, SEO, Google,

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

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

And Lashay is an expert on BOFU content,

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

and using that content and using things that people are

already searching for and are already interested in to then convert

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

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

easy to try and create interesting content like this

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

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

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

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

begin with versus? Hey, I'm just

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

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

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

So depending on the goals of the company is going to

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

brand awareness or thought leadership or things like that,

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

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

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

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

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

because bottom of funnel is usually that last touch

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

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

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

funnel. And we talked about enterprise software

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

funnel are more pushed toward maybe the email list or getting

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

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

value as a marketer that way. And do you

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

capture versus demand creation like two buckets. Really?

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

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

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

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

not built the same. And there's a big

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

you guys out, vp of marketing and demand gen

leads, usually. I'm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what is sales enablement. And that probably gets maybe like

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

best sales enablement software for small teams, maybe

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

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

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

that four to five, or

rather, let's say this, usually six to

nine Bofu articles will produce more

conversions than 30, 40, 50

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

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

misconception of, oh, because it has more search

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

convert more than anything else on the blog,

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

definitely, it's an odd mix in content

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

to just create a lot of things

and hope those things work out

rather than actually have a strategy. The more

companies I talk with, the more marketers,

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

realizing that there's a real lack of

strategy involves within a lot of

marketing programs. And to me, it's like

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

like, how I think about providing a strategy around repurposing

and distributing content. It's a recipe, so

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

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

recipe that you can use to make a really good

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

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

pretty or as nice or as good as somebody

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

strategy to make a good cake. And I think

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

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

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

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

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

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

of different people. And I think

actually doing content marketing and actually having a strategy,

like you said, it can be totally different for

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

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

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

term? You're probably trying to do both

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

purpose. If you want brand awareness, thought leadership,

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

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

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

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

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

more top of funnel. It's like getting

people into your ecosystem versus bottom of funnel.

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

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

team running all the way to the goal

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

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

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

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

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

strategy behind content marketing. And it's like once

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

ooh. And they usually come to this realization six to

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

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

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

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

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

that you're not focusing on high intent

terms, you're focusing on high search terms.

So again, once leaders start to understand that

differentiation between the two and the value that one adds

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

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

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

goal is to get attributable inbound

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

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

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

insane, that manages both of those things and do

it really, really consistently and really, really well.

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

probably five to ten bottom of funnel pieces of content

that are missing from 80% to 90% of

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

you created those five to ten, we know just by

Pareto principle that 80% is going to drive or

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

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

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

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

event, top of funnel, that drives and talks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

outside of Google, because even when you run paid

ads to bottom of funnel articles, anecdotally, I found

that they rank better. So if you can take an

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

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

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

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

as well. So I think that's where repurposing

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

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

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

But good bottom of funnel content should actually double as sales

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

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

be able to accurately convey your value

propositions to a prospect on a call by looking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

clarity for teams around intent for that content

and honestly, more conversations

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

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

with internally, which is like the product team

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

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

like six things that are very similar. And

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

strong view of the intent and seeing the intent across.

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

around the type of content based around the

distribution channel. So for instance, really,

really bottom of funnel content, depending

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

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

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

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

interested in your tool

versus a channel like LinkedIn, where

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

tool comparison and more interested in getting help,

getting information, getting a template, those more middle

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

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

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

of funnel articles on LinkedIn, and they do really

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another thing I found is if you have a bottom

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

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

funnel, you can retarget

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

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

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

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

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

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

to combine SEO and case studies. When it comes

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

based content does extremely well. So

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

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

well if the audience you have on that platform

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

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

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

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

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

you have to have that alignment with the followers and the

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

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

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

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

is, the quality is always going to outweigh the

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

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

Because I focus on the quality of the followers and not

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

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

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

sometimes, well, every time you have to start

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

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

time you publish the piece, it starts to

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

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

if you stay focused on that particular metric for too

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

months right now. Absolutely, absolutely. I think

knowing, I think really knowing the distribution

channels, SEO, the intent behind

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

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

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

be more prescriptive versus in an organic

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

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

struggle, especially with organic,

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

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

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

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

Confusion is those people, when you go to

a social channel or sign up for an email list,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

much content out there, it's unbelievable. And

so the barrier of just creating something, even

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

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

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

actually valuable. And I have to tell this to

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

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

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

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

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

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

use zero tools. And again, it's because

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

not what differentiates you. It's like how you

solve the problem, how you connect those problems to your

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

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

my clients, I'm like, ranking means nothing

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

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

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

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

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

see it. So it's a good leading indicator

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

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

and SEO second. So, and

again, this comes from working across dozens of content marketing

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

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

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

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

like it takes a certain level of education.

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

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

but it's like the nuancedness comes

from where the information is sourced from, right?

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

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

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

another thing I touched on, where top of funnel content

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

Subjectivity creates nuance. Because instead of

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

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

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

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

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

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

distribution really revs up that engine, really turns

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

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

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

on cybersecurity. And the person might not

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

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

cybersecurity software for enterprise teams.

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

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

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

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

input from every team. You need input, again,

from cs, from product, from sales, and

again, sales lets you know the pain points.

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

gonna let you know how the product works contextually in their

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

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

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

think more and more the entire for content

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

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

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

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

on the pov, no shared alignment on the

story, no shared alignment on the pitfalls,

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

plan. All the things that would hook somebody in

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

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

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

and your company, you have to have those in alignment

so that you can repeat them all the stinking

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

like, oh, you guys solve that problem.

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

before Bofu content equals Lashay? How

much do I have to talk about repurposing distribution before

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

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

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

our company do? And that's so important.

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

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

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

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

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

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

think about Bofu, I want myself to be the first

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

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

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

this person might be a good, maybe they do BOFU

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

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

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

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

freelancers the tools they need to succeed, which

was why my content marketing dashboard was

born, because it really was derived out of pain,

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

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

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

conceptualize, how do you write an article but

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

writer, I was taught to find the target

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

prospects and having that alignment between customer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

on the thing because you have everything consolidated for them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

together for them. Yeah. Those alignment pieces are

really so key, literally across

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

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

it is eye opening the amount of companies

that completely skip over the

pre, the research phase, if you

will, to content marketing and go straight into creating

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

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

speaking to people you don't know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It just gives you that data backed information that

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

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

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

another thing, usually smaller teams are,

have the information together much better than larger

teams, specifically like see through

Series A, b

maybe, but usually see stage companies very

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and did that in larger orgs and now working across a

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

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

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

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

come back into like, necessity

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

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

to be able to help teach people internally why

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

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

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

thinking. Content and marketing is basically

one thing now. Marketing is

fueled by content in 2024. Yes,

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

things, but you have to have

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

well, you have to have all of the

standard marketing, operating procedure stuff, positioning, messaging,

benefits, features, understanding of all those things.

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

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

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

they handle the problems. They handle those things. And

then we're just ambiguously creating keyword content

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

And I think that's the big misconception with why

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

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

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

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

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

really tied as close to a number. And then the

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

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

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

we start to realize that the job of marketing is

to drive qualified leads to the sales team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the best way to drive that? You've got

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

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

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

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

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

out. Yeah, that was another

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

would have to hold an interview per piece.

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

need a specific amount or a certain amount of information.

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

it's like bottom of funnel articles are almost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

software for enterprise teams, then it's like best

sales enablement software for small teams.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

there. But, yeah, I think it's

funny, again, because it's like repurposing within

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

It's just about repositioning the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a couple months ago, we focused on solely bottom of

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

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

going through and updating bottom of funnel content right now

with the sole purpose of driving conversion. So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting. Yes. So with bottom of funnel, and

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

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

again, like immediately. Right. Because when it comes

to bottom of funnel again, the prospect is already

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you triggered me a little bit when you said that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

me, saving time and saving money is a high

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

benefit. But maybe you have features that fall within

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like, nobody wants to scroll, right? A bazillion

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

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

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

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

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

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

buy a pellet grill, you really want to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

caught the other day that was really, really cool on

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

on the homepage. So they have like competitors

listed out across the homepage. But it's like

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

So they say, twelve times faster than descript,

eleven times faster than v, nine times faster than

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

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

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

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

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

be afraid about talking about your

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

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

should not, should talk your competitors. I just

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

that. The best thing to do is to explain what

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

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

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

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

and honestly self deselect from

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

understand the reality

of helping the buyer make a better

decision and helping sales have more qualified

sales conversations. Yes. And that people,

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

think they're not googling the

competition or like reading or reading a review

on YouTube or like, like watching a third

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

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

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

marketers to think that people aren't

going to our competitors and reading about them and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of the feature? What's the benefit of them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

skimming through and just leading with

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

those headers really stand out and get the point across

in as few characters as possible. That headline

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

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

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

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

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

always include contextual examples in their

articles. Again. So this confused me for a long

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

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

for example, let's say, imagine

if taking, and again, this is where the product

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

say is to,

hmm, attempt to get your team together

and lay out who you're talking to so

your Personas, lay out your ideal customer profile, your

pain points, benefits, features, capabilities, and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

do this, but the way I like to find bottom

of funnel keywords. Is a bottom of funnel keyword

usually describes what the product is or what it does,

right? So start there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

fit contextually all this stuff. But I would say

get alignment again, one person from each team

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

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

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

type best sales enablement software for use

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

implement that into your keyword research. And then from there

grab my dashboard and grab like, but seriously,

like there are like two or three frameworks in there that

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

each team inputs goes in the piece. So like,

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

benefits go into a specific. So that's what

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

at knowledge based stuff as bottom of funnel. I

look at just white papers as

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mentioned in this episode, you're going to be

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

grabbing bottom of funnel keywords. What did you

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

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

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

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

I'm looking for a bottom of funnel

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

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

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

good. So if you look in Drift's

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

decipher quickly if a company gets it or they

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

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

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

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

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

content that we should be thinking about making? X verse

y verse z? Should I be

focused on? You mentioned, like, product for

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

be thinking about driving faster than others?

Yes. Well, again, people have

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

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

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

100 bottom of funnel pieces of content. So

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

blog that you should focus on. Specifically, when I

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

versus an alternative, and then even within

that. So I heard you say versus, versus.

So you could do competitor versus competitor versus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

from blogging. And again, once you

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

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

moves. So typically it takes nine

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

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

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

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

bottom up funnel articles to start driving pipeline.

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

chain of hospitals, like 70 hospitals, you know what

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

enterprise software. Bottom of funnel

works across product, led sales, led

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

their mind that a keyword that gets 150 searches a

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

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

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

question, tactically, because you mentioned SEO software for the

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

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

and the volume is ten or non

existent, what's the advice to say?

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

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

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

keywords that have zero search volume and it

converts like crazy. And again, these tools are

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

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

most overlooked keyword tool is Google itself.

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

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

enablement software for, you're going to see the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You also rank for permutations and things like that. So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

seven different things. Is your plan. Then again,

are we writing seven posts all for

this and for that and for this and for that?

So that's tough because

different clients experience different things. With one of

my clients, the thing that started converting for them,

the ooh, ooh, hold up.

Okay, so for two of my clients, their first

converting piece was alternative. So if I had to

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

competitor alternative and then it's going to be best

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

versus this person. And another thing about the

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

about the verses is if you type in google,

your company versus another company, and you see g

two and Capterra and all these

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

immediately need to write around that, like immediately

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

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

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

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

a piece around that, that's probably the most

important. After that, then I would go after competitor

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

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

point. I would start with competitor alternative again, then

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

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

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

brain. Well, Lashay, it's been

awesome dropping massive knowledge bombs all throughout this

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

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

about before this, but I think for marketers to really

understand that it truly does all tie together.

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

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

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

All of these things tie together and I think building out

a strategy that's manageable,

reasonable, sustainable, where you can tie all those things together

makes a ton of sense and I think teams can do it. I just don't

think they know how. Yeah, well, that's what we're here for, right? That's what we're

here for. Absolutely. So we're here to save the day.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Lashay, it's been a blast having you on and we'll

definitely have to have you back because an hour went by like 15 minutes. So

thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you so

much. Awesome chess soon.

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution first

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so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in this

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