Join host Brett Deister as he engages in an insightful conversation with Keigan Carthy, founder and vision manager of a digital marketing firm specializing in content solutions for B2B, SEO, and PPC for local businesses. The episode emphasizes the growing significance of short form content and storytelling in content marketing, highlighting how brands can effectively connect with their audiences. Keigan shares valuable strategies for leveraging video content and social media platforms to enhance marketing efforts, while also discussing the importance of understanding the "why" behind a brand's message. Additionally, the duo explores emerging trends for 2024, including the rising popularity of podcasts and interactive content. Grab your coffee and get ready to discover actionable insights that can elevate your content marketing strategy.

Takeaways:

• Short form content is essential for storytelling and engaging customers in 2023 and beyond.
• Understanding your business's 'why' is crucial for differentiating from competitors in crowded markets.
• Utilizing a dollar-a-day strategy for social media boosts visibility to your ideal audience.
• Creating compelling video content requires a clear framework of hook, body, and call to action.
• Retargeting ads and value-driven content are key to converting viewers into paying customers.
• Podcasts remain an underutilized medium for building authentic connections with audiences in marketing.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Invisible People
• Habitat for Humanity
• Dennis Yu
• Jake Paul
• Rudy Mauer
• Lauren Tickner

💬 Want to get involved? Leave us a comment, give us a 'like,' and follow us for more insights. Join our Locals for lively discussions, and if you've got questions, email us at bdeister@digitalcafe.media!

👕 Check out our merch: www.digitalcafe.store

🌟 Review the Podcast if you loved this episode and share it with fellow marketers who could benefit from a treasure trove of podcasting wisdom. Tune in to "Digital Coffee: Marketing Brew" and let's brew up some success together!

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host Brett Deisser.

And this we're going to be talking about mostly about content marketing, a little bit about AI because it's always on top of mind to everybody.

How to use the dang thing but also video content, local SEO, not the big SEO, but the local one and so much more.

But with me I have Keegan with me and he is the founder and vision management of digital marketing firm that specializes in content solution for B2B, Nseo and PPC for local businesses.

He has generated over 4,50 million impressions and over six figures in revenue for his clients.

So welcome to the show Keegan.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yes, and the first question is all my guests is are you a coffee or tea drinker?

Coffee for sure.

Do you have any like a specific brews you like or you just like.

Just give me Starbucks and leave me alone.

I'm, I'm Tim Hortons because I'm in Canada and religiously like iced coffee up here.

Gotcha.

Yes, I have heard of Tim Hortons.

Never had it because I haven't been to Canada yet.

It's, it's worth it.

I bet it is.

But I gave a brief summary of your expertise when you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do.

So we know like you said, we specialize in video content solutions for B2B and on the local side, more on the SEO, but starting to mix in social media.

Some of our clients include Invisible People, Habitat for Humanity, Dennis Yu, we've worked with Jake Paul, Rudy, Rudy Mauer, Lauren, Tick Mary, the list goes on and on.

Nice.

Well the biggest thing it's been like kind of like the short form content wave and a lot of people still aren't necessarily writing that.

At least people that we see in the B2B side it's more kind of like the image and infographic stuff.

But having short form content, even like a podcast clip format, it really allows you to tell your story because from our experience it's kind of people buy from your why not really what you sell?

Because all markets are pretty saturated.

It's really rare to kind of find that blue ocean.

So at least on the trend side it's more or less kind of jump on the short form wave and then tell Your story tell why are you company do things, that sort of thing.

So the why, I mean, I feel like that's the hardest part to understand for small businesses, but also large businesses too, like understanding the why people should buy from you.

Why are you better than the millions of other or thousands of other competitors?

So how do you, how do PR pros and marketers start to figure out the why?

Well, what we do specifically is we kind of build something called a topic wheel for a client.

So essentially it's just a visual representation of kind of their interests, their expertise, and then they'll interview people a lot along those lines.

And you kind of just want to craft the show around like you as a person because like everybody has their own story to tell, how they got to where they are.

And if you can highlight that, that's what's really going to separate you.

Because for me at least there's a thousand other digital marketing firms.

But really, why are people going to buy from me compared to the other ones that you know, have like VC funding or have been in the game longer?

But it's no, it's because I tell my story.

I'm vulnerable, I'm authentic online to my customers.

Gotcha.

And so how can businesses effectively use storytelling in their content marketing to engage and connect with their audiences?

First off, if you have next to no real online presence, all you should be focused on completely is, like I just said, your why.

Then from there you're getting people engaged, you're starting to get to know you, then you can dive into your expertise.

So you want, you talk about your story of why you started the company, how you got to where you are, and then you dive into like your ad strategy, your SEO strategy, et cetera, et cetera.

You kind of bring people along a journey that doesn't feel like they're being sold because that's kind of like the ads that we see a lot.

It's like vsl customer pain point, book a call or that's all you're seeing.

But if you can kind of transition, be an actual person and act like you care or actually care, then you'll be golden.

So it's almost like you have to first start crafting your origin story, I guess is the best way of saying it, and then you go on to figuring out the selly but not too silly type and then your expertise, and then hopefully you'll find the revenue at.

The end of the rainbow pretty much.

So kind of what my opinion is is people will pay for implementation, but you should be putting all the information out for free.

So if you follow everything, give away a ton of value everywhere, all over the Internet and people actually implementing their business and see result, eventually they're going to come back to you.

It's almost like what Alex Tremors, he does where he gives away a ton of value, but eventually down the line, people will come to him once they've scaled to a certain point because they know, like, trust him because of all the values given away.

He's talked about his wine, how he's done things, he's talked about his story.

That's just one example of kind of how this works.

And then moving on to like the video content.

How can PR marketing pros have their video content stand out from the others?

Because everybody's trying to make content, whether it's good or bad is well up to your consumers.

But I think everybody should know if you first start out, it's probably not going to be good.

So how can they start out?

I mean, stand out?

Biggest thing would be, is the issue with organic is you're not getting in front of your clients, prospects, et cetera.

And so that's, you're not really going to stand out.

It's not a blue ocean.

It's extremely saturated, what we use for our clients.

If people want to build their personal brand, it's called the dollar a day strategy.

So say you and me take the clips from this episode, right?

I'll take the clips, I'll post them on my social media, I will boost it for a dollar a day, for a week to get in front of my ideal client, audience, et cetera.

That's how I'm going to stand out above my competitors.

Because if I'm posting a clip a day that's 30 times in front of my ideal prospect versus organic, praying to God that they eventually come across my content.

And then what strategies can businesses employ to create compelling content and effective video content for their marketing efforts?

So we call it like kind of the three by three grid.

So that's why.

How.

What the why, obviously we just talked about, that's telling your story.

The how is how you do things.

How what does your fulfillment process look like?

That's kind of area of expertise.

All the sauce, all the value.

And then the final part of that, that's kind of more of like the call to action sort of thing.

So if you incorporate all three properly, you take people along a journey and you create a synergy where it's like, like I said, people don't feel like they're being sold Instead, they're kind of walking themselves towards that process of buying.

Phil, you could tell a lot of people on LinkedIn how to sell to people without selling to people.

Because I think we all get a lot of those emails where it's like, hey, I could help.

And I'm like, I just met you.

How about we like, like let this sit for a while and I see who you are and you see how I am before you just start to sell your products or services that I may or may not actually need or one.

Exactly.

And then you, you talked about the three grid.

Is it sometimes where you have more whys and hows and does eventually the three grids move to a different, like different questions, or should you figure out how to balance that out between the three different grids for video and content creation?

So it's like anything you kind of.

Nobody ever knows what's going to work.

I've never met a marketer that can tell me what's going to convert.

If I did, I would hire them immediately.

But it's like you just, you know, you create everything and you see what works and resonates and actually converts into what, like dollars.

So it's like, you know what, you start with the framework.

If you find stuff that works, you keep creating content on top of that and then just kind of go from there.

But it's just the basic framework that you can use that kind of creates that synergy I was talking about.

Then from there you should be analyzing your content.

If that works, make more of it.

And I mean, should, should the goals be different depending on how you create the video content or the why or the how, should each of them have different goals and how do you actually measure that if you're doing different goals for different videos?

So in regards to the goals of kind of like the why, how, what the why that you just kind of looking for brand awareness.

If people are going to convert, they're going to convert no matter what.

But now you're just kind of building.

People like, want to know you, like you, trust you.

And then once you move into how, that's when you're looking for the actual conversions and then how we track that and how they should track that.

Everybody should have Google Analytics on their website.

That should be the number one thing you do.

If you're posting content as well mentioned a dollar a day, so you should have a pixel on your website.

So you're able to track everything, user engagement on the website, et cetera.

You're also able to run remarketing Ads towards those people that visit your social profile, the website, et cetera.

And then for short form content, how can brands look to create the engaging ones?

Because everybody can create short term or short form which can't be short term video.

But how do you create that engaging aspect of it?

Cause I've seen a change in like how it's actually made.

Usually it was just someone talking with some subtitles and now they're doing like cuts and transitions to other things with memes or something like that.

So how do you create that if it's always changing?

So you gotta follow the framework of a good 60, 90 second video.

That's hook body, call to action.

Whether that call to action is book a free call, Follow me for more, save this for later, et cetera.

That's a framework that you should start out with no matter what.

Then on the editing style it's always changing because our attention spans suck.

So you have to keep people engaged especially if the content isn't that great.

And, and honestly most people's content isn't that great that people are going to watch for 60, 90 seconds at least.

Millions of people.

So on the editing style you can do a bunch of things like you do B roll.

Obviously the captions as kind of like the basics everybody uses.

But it's same sort of thing, you test and you see what resonates for us.

It's the simple style that works, just basic captions.

Let the content speak for itself.

Like you said, I've seen people add game plan underneath videos so when the viewer stops watching, they're watching whatever gameplay on the bottom, that sort of thing.

So basically different types of editing process for different types of industry because you've talked about gameplay and gameplay is vastly different from like a talking head podcast type of a thing.

So I mean could let's say for example someone has a product, could they do like an explainer with the unboxing or with showing off the product for short form type of content where it kind of gives the user both experiences without too many videos going on between them.

100%.

I mean it's again testing thing I keep coming back to like if you're B2C, the product unboxing and the UGC style content is what's going to work rather than just a CEO talking about why they should buy their product.

Service based and more founder led business that's a completely different animal because it's like know like trust as I mentioned.

So it's kind of dependent on what industry you're in, what Your goals actually are.

And then obviously with the rise of video content like we all, like we all know, every marketer knows in PR Pro knows about this.

But how can businesses leverage the YouTube, the TikTok, the short forms, the reels, the shorts, the and everything else.

How can they actually enhance their content marketing efforts when using all these different types of platforms?

Create a ton of content.

Because if you're creating a handful each a month, it's never going to convert, it's never going to meet your goals.

Basically I like to say throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks.

Shotgun blasts.

It always works I think with new style or new type of format for people because like I said, we're all figuring out what actually sticks.

And a lot of times when you're trying to figure it out, usually shotgun BL is probably the best effort.

Exactly.

And then the how, how.

Well how do you connect with your audience through social media?

Because I mean that's the other part is that you can create this content but if you're not connecting then you're just basically shotgun blasting with no purpose.

So to connect with an audience it kind of comes down to like engaging with them.

But again it kind of depends on what your goal is.

Like if you're a service based business, your whole goal is to drive people from social media into clients.

So those people are the ones you really care about.

So connecting with an audience isn't really that important.

But More like the B2C side, a lot of people are going to be commenting that sort of thing.

But having like a dedicated social media manager to either dm, a ton of people that follow you being like, hey, thanks for the support.

Engaging back in comments, that sort of thing is kind of the best way to engage because the way everything's going.

You mentioned you want to touch on AI, but as AI becomes more and more prevalent, it's going to be the human touch is what's actually going to separate people.

So I think engaging with an audience in that way is what's really going to make people stand out.

Speaking of that for AI kid, could it help with the three great part that you talked about though?

The why, the how, like that type, could it help with creating video content or creating ideas for video?

And what other ways could you imp AI to better help your content marketing strategies?

At least for what we do we really emphasize the human touch and the person.

So AI doesn't really help too much.

The way that we use AI in house is more on like the post processing side like for this podcast, we use software called Swell AI.

We use like descript for all of our videos.

That just kind of helps clean everything up in regards to like the actual video content, in my opinion.

And my advice would just be be a person and just stick to that.

That's the best thing that you can do.

Could it help to write questions for like podcasts as well?

Obviously I'm saying that you should still look at it and make it, make it look like it's flowing and that you wrote it.

But could it help that as well?

From.

I've tried, I've played around a little bit with like chat GPT and making questions.

It provides a good framework, but I don't think it's there at this point in time.

Like you still, you still need to do research on a guest for it to actually provide good questions.

So as an example, digital marketing short form content, it'll come back with a handful of industry specific questions, but then you need to tailor it accordingly to the guest so it doesn't sound like you're just asking questions that ChatGPT threw together in 30 seconds.

So I mean, what I'm also hearing is that also know your subject matter before you actually start doing it.

Because if you're like, yeah, that sounds like a good question and guess it's like, no, I don't know what you're talking about.

You're like, oh, exactly.

It's, it's only as good as the person providing the prompts got you.

And then how, for the ad side of it, how can you optimize actual ads, let's say for video ads.

So we talked about that.

How can you optimize that for the most effective way to use ads?

Because we all know social media, it's great for the organic if you can get the organic, but Facebook, it's like if you don't do boosting your post, you're getting nothing really impressive.

Exactly.

So the easiest way would just be to analyze all the time.

So analyze how it's doing.

So like I said, we start out with a low cost testing strategy, usually for a week, gather that data and then we see what's working.

So if it's hitting our KPIs, then throw more money at it.

My advice to optimize ads would just be create a ton of SOPs and be super checklist oriented.

If the ads do not meet that criteria, kill it.

If they do, keep throwing money behind it.

So I mean, everything's about the goals.

Like what are your goals?

What are you trying to hit.

And then from then you can figure out, well, this is not doing well.

So let's pivot to something else.

Correct people over complicate ads.

It's honestly pretty simple.

It's just, is it hitting the goal?

If yes, more money.

If not, kill it.

Simple as that.

Gotcha.

Which I mean leads to what's the most effective advertising strategy to get the most optimized ads.

For us, it's a low cost testing strategy with a ton of creative so we can crank the volume up, won't burn through ad budget, and then we're able to see, okay, can we put more money behind this?

Great, we can.

Now let's create more content about.

About that that's working.

Then put the money behind that.

So we always have evergreen content that's driving us leads, sales, etc.

And it's evergreen content for B2B different from B2C.

Because evergreen content could be like this podcast, for example.

It's going to live on forever.

You can do a ton of different things with it.

So should between each industry, is evergreen content going to vary a little bit or is it still the same between different types of B2B2B2C?

If it continues to hit your goal, then it's evergreen and will run forever.

There's ads that we're running that have been running for over a year, but that's just because it continues to work.

So why kill it?

Same thing.

It's like if you're B2C, you're selling a product and it continues and continues and continues to make an roi, there's no reason to kill that.

And then how can you create content to convert?

Basically converts into like business results.

Like we talked about like the different types of goals.

But I mean, what are like the beginning stages of this?

Because I feel like it's great.

The end result is like, oh look.

But like what are some of the steps to create those actual results for businesses?

There's a couple different things that can go into it.

The stuff that we really specialize in and that we see that works is like I talked about that.

Three by three we create that synergy.

But then oftentimes people aren't jumping to buy the service, right?

But you know what, they're watching the content, they're visiting the social media profiles, the website.

So then what we'll do as part of the funnel is we'll create retargeting ads, drive them to either like a long form YouTube video, a free training, a webinar, something that has like a value Some sort of value associated to it, drive them there, then they're more likely to buy after that.

So that's kind of what we like to do.

We kind of have the ads as like the top of funnel and then we drive them further into the funnel using retargeting and remarketing.

And is a brand voice, like extremely important?

Before you start all this process down, should you just start and be like, okay, what is our brand voice?

Before you start anything else in regards.

To like the brand voice and obviously you're kind of going to want one or two people in regards to being in front of the camera.

But in regards to messaging, that has to be the same across everything.

Whether that's that person going on podcasts and talking to the website copy to the all the value stuff in the middle of the funnel, the messaging has to be the same.

And in regards to like the brand voice and the person should be pretty similar, at least consistent.

Do you see more short form content being utilized more?

Do you see more brands, more businesses trying to do.

I mean, you said it's not as good or people aren't doing as much this year, but you see, do you see next year becoming more prevalent with brands actually trying to start short form content?

100%.

I think because the barrier for entry for online business is so small, anybody can whip up a marketing agency, be a personal trainer, a coach, et, people are going to be pushing that more and more.

But I think that's a good thing for the people that understand actually how to make that work.

It's just going to push them further ahead of the competition.

And do you think brands are going to start using podcasts more?

Because it's still not a very crowded space regardless of what people actually think.

No, I 100% agree.

It's podcasts.

It's very.

Not a lot of people have them.

And I'm guilty of that.

I just launched mine.

I've been a guest hundreds of times, but I have a personal one.

But I do think that we're moving more towards that because this is an easy way to make a connection to my audience, your audience, and to you, host, guest, whatever.

And I think coupling that with a good content strategy of like the know, like trust a podcast is a great way because it really emphasizes authenticity.

It's really hard for me to sit here and bullshit for an hour.

People are Going to see right through that.

If I am.

True.

I mean if it's a video podcast, obviously it's a little bit harder audio.

You could probably do it, but you eventually get found out through social media because everybody's like, wait a minute here.

Exactly.

All.

All right.

We already talked about video, but do you see any other content actually rising up that we may not even heard of?

There's something I don't see rising up.

There has some been some stuff that we've worked on, kind of like interactive BSLs.

There's a couple different platforms like Tolstoy Lightspeed where you can create like a full interactive experience, whether that be in a course, have that as your VSL on your website.

I don't see that taking over, but I do think that's an option that's pretty unique.

Is it like a choose your own adventure from the old school days?

That's exactly what it went.

It.

What it is.

Sorry.

So basically be like, we did it for Lauren Tickner and it was just like a full lead magnet.

So it's basically like are you doing over XYZ a month?

If you click yes, you go further into the video.

If no, okay, here's my podcast with Grant Cardone and our free training and then continue to go down the funnel.

If you click yes, do all the objection handling within there.

The the rest of the everything that you need.

And with all this video content as well.

Do you see live streaming actually doing much?

Because I know live streaming was popular like five years ago with you.

Facebook was trying to get people to live stream.

Everybody was trying to live stream.

I mean we still have Twitch and Twitch was still around with Amazon.

But do you see live streaming kind of moving the needle or is it still like kind of those.

If you have time and you actually have a good personality, it's great.

But if you don't, you probably should stay away from it.

B to B.

No, me personally, I don't see the ROI on that.

I could be talking out of my ass, but I don't think that would be that effective.

B to C maybe like I've seen TikTok like Lotus as an example, one of the car brands, they had a social media manager who was like super on the trends and I think maybe like big brands, if they did something like along those lines, I feel like it could convert really, really well.

And so where can people find you.

Online at Keegan Car Feet anywhere or to find the company website Vision Management.

Co.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

No, but I want to thank you so much for having me.

I really enjoyed the conversation today.

All right, and thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

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All right, guys, stay safe understanding your video content and how to effectively use it for your brand.

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