Eric Sui: Can you guys hear me okay? Good? Great. Set this over here.
My name's Eric Sui. I'm going to talk about content marketing. I think there's a lot of marketing in here, a lot of sales and sales talk. So I'm gonna talk about how they all align and how it's been working well for us, and see if the slides are working, because I haven't had a chance to mess with it, so here I am. Great.
So, as Scott mentioned, some of our clients are Uber, Amazon, Lyft, and the interesting thing about us is all of our clients, every single client we have, is on inbound. So I've had my team challenge me on this before. It's like, [inaudible 00:00:45].
Everything's content marketing for us. So yes, we are ... We do have a sales team, we [inaudible 00:00:56], but everything so far, just for building that team, has been through inbound. So we've reversed what the ... What helped those people do it. So, quickly, I have a podcast with ... It's my first, my second podcast, with my co-host Neil Patelle, and this is called Marketing School.
So, it doesn't matter if this talk ... If [inaudible 00:01:17] this is something everybody can listen to, it's every single day. This podcast gets about 640,000 downloads a month, and then I have another one called Growth Everywhere. This is where I interview a lot of founders in terms of tech, and then people that invented the credit card stripe we have on the back of your credit card, a lot of [inaudible 00:01:37] people. That one I've been doing for a little over four years.
The first thing I wanna talk about really quick is, before we even get into anything I think, with content marketing, it's really important to understand that there's traffic temperatures, right? If you think you can Google us later, you can take a picture of it, but you have cold, warm, and hot traffic. Cold is basically, people who don't know who you are, that you've never engaged with those people before, they don't care about you. This is a lot of the stuff that you see promoted on Facebook, for example, so people can be trying to drive you to the product page, that's not the way how you do it, right?
Instead, you drive them to a blog post first, or you drive them to a podcast first, you build a relationship with them first, [inaudible 00:02:17] website, you're able to be talking to them.
Content marketing to me, is an opportunity to bring people into your world. When you're able to bring people into your world, you can [inaudible 00:02:29] you can get them on your email list, you can do whatever you like, you can have your sales team jump on them.
It's really important to think about the three stages of the funnel, right? Instead of just thinking, we're gonna do white paper, we're gonna do a webinar and try to close them quickly. Usually I think for a lot of you guys your sales cycles are longer, and [inaudible 00:02:45].
So think about it this way, think long-term, and you're gonna win. In the middle, you have warm traffic. This is where drawing your list already, maybe these are really [inaudible 00:02:58], then you can drive them to a webinar, you don't say, come spend an hour or two with me and then come buy my stuff. Instead, you start something small first, and then you go further down the funnel. Then maybe you can get them to spend a dollar, maybe you can get them to spend $10, whatever it is exactly maybe has something smaller up the funnel, and then after they commit, you should re-target those people, and these people are your your hot traffic, and these are the people that are, while they're taking out their credit card, they're more likely to buy from you.
That's ... If you think about this, there's a ... The best example of this out there is the company called Clickfunnels. I don't think a lot of you have heard of Clickfunnels but Clickfunnels has rates, no venture funding, and they are on their way to over a hundred billion in revenue this year, and it's all just based on the marketing machine, completely boost [inaudible 00:03:50], it's just good marketing, it's good content. As a matter of fact, they did a conference about a week or two ago, and the CEO of that company spoke on stage, delivered great content for 90 minutes, just caused a ruckus, and everybody was [inaudible 00:04:06] afterwards, and he sold $3 billion worth in 90 minutes. So it's not a scam, just good content, he's up there all the time just delivering good stuff.
That's traffic temperatures. What I wanna do is I wanna go back and talk about podcasting. I'm not necessarily saying all of you need to start a podcast, but all of you need to have some kind of content foundation to begin. So whether it's, you're good at blogging or if you are good at, oh, I don't know, video? Start with a foundation first, and then you go further down. I'll give you a framework you can use afterwards, okay?
This is Growth Everywhere, this is our ... This is over four years, we've gotten a little over $4.3 billion downloads, which is fine. But that led to this podcast, Marketing School, which has 8.6 billion downloads, and it's been a little over a year and a half so far. It's been great, in terms of the ... If you guys [inaudible 00:04:58] it leads to clients that actually ... It shorts the sale cycle by a long time because ... [inaudible 00:05:07] ... The reason it shorts the sale cycle is because they know you already, they trust you, and this is a really intimate form of content marketing.
It's got to the point where last year, I remember I was speaking at a conference in Amsterdam, and we were doing Q&A, and a girl raised her hand and she was like, "To be honest, I'm a big fan of your podcast, I listen to you in the shower." That's pretty intimate. When you get that intimate with somebody, it's much easier to buy because they trust you as a friend. So I think for anybody here, if you start a podcast, whether ... If you're writing the company, you should start a podcast, 'cause if somebody leaves on your keep, you're kind of screwed.
Also, if you're an individual, too, starting a podcast, I think we all have something to say here, right? I just really like podcasts, there's ... I just talk about it all day, I do a lot of podcasting so I jus think it's, in terms of the [inaudible 00:05:59] across the board, it's been fantastic. I wouldn't have been able to meet the people that I've been able to meet without podcasting.
A lot of you are probably thinking, well that's easy, you had this audience in the beginning, but some of these things are [inaudible 00:06:13], the story that I always go back to is, when I first started this podcast, Growth Everywhere, that's the first one [inaudible 00:06:21], I was spending 6 hours a week ... I was actually doing the work. I was interviewing, I was writing the show, I was posting everything, I was doing everything [inaudible 00:06:31], I was spending 6 hours a week on it.
After the first year, I was probably getting 9 downloads a day. That's ... Data's right there, I should just give up. But I kept getting emails form people saying, I don't know why you're not getting more listens but the stuff that you're putting out there has really changed my life, and I think you should keep going. I call this the unsolicited response rate. The URR [inaudible 00:06:53].
Whether it's people Tweeting at you or it's people emailing you, if they're really liking it, if they feel like they're getting something, you should keep going. The reason I kept going is also 'cause I felt like I was cheating because I was getting to talk to amazing people for free. Free mentorship. Typically these are people charging you [inaudible 00:07:12]. I get to talk to them for free for 30 minutes or one hour or so, so that's a no brainer. [inaudible 00:07:20]
After the second year, I still was spending 6 hours a day on end, terrible use of my time, probably should have been delegating it faster, I was only getting 30 downloads a day. Still [inaudible 00:07:32]. You just keep going and keep going, and things sort of compound, and then that podcast [inaudible 00:07:38], and that led to the second podcast, which is, I think, we're aiming to get to 2 million downloads a month but we're at 640 right now. It just takes time. It's just like that with content marketing, with sales, you wanna hit numbers [inaudible 00:07:50].
But if we're trying to build something for the long-term, 'cause we wanna make sales easier, you gotta make marketing and sales work together. Content marketing is just one of those things that really, you can build framework around it, and it's the entire business. Because ... when I was at [inaudible 00:08:07] two weeks ago, I was looking at this flight and thinking, yeah that makes sense. The new vote is having some kind of brand, a podcast helps you build that kind of brand.
That's the first thing. When it's video, podcast, whatever it is exactly, if you can build a brand, whether it's a personal brand or a company brand, not just stand behind the scenes all the time, you can leverage that, put it together with sales, and you're gonna be good. It helps us so much when our sales people bring this into the conversation, 'cause we have so much content we just keep funneling content to them and continue to be useful instead of saying, hey I'm just following up here, can you buy my stuff? No. Be useful.
Podcast listening, these are trends that ... It's not like ... You're not seeing hot instant growth immediately. But you see slow and steady growth across the board. So 2008, probably about 9% and then in 2016 about 21% of the population, I think most people in here have all listened to a podcast, and I know there's people that listen, they tell their Amazon Alexa, play their flash [inaudible 00:09:10].
It's ... A lot more people are listening to it, and [inaudible 00:09:13]. Slow and steady growth, that's cool with me.
This is the podcasting host that we use, called Libsyn, and Libsyn says that 36% of the entire population, at least where they're hosting, has listened to a podcast. It's just getting bigger and bigger. I'm driving a point here. I don't think I need to explain anymore, just getting bigger and bigger. It's worth it to jump into it, and you might think it's too late, but now's still a really good time.
This image right here, this is actually from the company I was talking about, Clickfunnels. With Clickfunnels, the CEO's name is Russel Brunson. He got a number one podcast, just by doing this. This is the MP3 stick with 365 episodes of his podcast in there. What he does is he runs Facebook ads to this [inaudible 00:10:02], and he says, hey I will give you this for free, and if you just pay for shipping, pay $9 for shipping, you will get this for free. And then he has all these other things that are tied to it. You can buy the transcripts and you can buy this portions app or whatever it is.
His whole thing with running apps, I think a lot of people here, you're running ads, maybe you wanna make a little money in the front end [inaudible 00:10:23]. But this guy is cool with breaking even. He's even cool with losing money on the front end 'cause he makes so much money in the back end with his marketing company.
A lot of people, I mean, they have their marketing [inaudible 00:10:38]. What he did was, he started driving Facebook ads, he would spend $15 for acquisition here, and he would actually make money on the front end of it. So for every $15 he could spend, he would make ... He would get 5 subscribers to his podcast, and then at the same time, he would make $32. This is not even including all the all the length and the make of the back end. Whether it's through bundling [inaudible 00:11:01] software, [inaudible 00:11:03] that he has, that's how he makes all his money.
If you can be creative and you can do something like this, you're gonna win. Because he did this for a long time, and he got his podcast to number one on Business Tonight. So it's right up there with [inaudible 00:11:18], all these other people that you can expect to see, number one.
Think about [inaudible 00:11:23]. This is how you would do it. If you're actually gonna do this podcasting stuff, there's a tool we use called Libsyn. This is our podcasting host, it allows you to send simultaneously, publish to YouTube, to SoundCloud, to iHeart Radio, to Linkedin, just a bunch of different things at the same time. It's been [inaudible 00:11:48] for us. Libsyn is great to get started, it's $20 a month. If you're gonna get started on podcasting, I'm gonna stop talking about podcasting now, but if you guys started with it, you're gonna suck, it's okay. You'll get better eventually. I think I'm barely decent now. I still suck. Anybody can do it.
The other thing is, I think ... Who actually publishes content to their blog right now? A good portion of you. This is what works really well when it comes to Google. This is called a Hub and Spoke model. A lot of people when you [inaudible 00:12:23], you're going out there, you're publishing content. This is not what you're looking for, this is a [inaudible 00:12:27] post. We wanna get PR. [inaudible 00:12:30]. This is what you're looking for. You are looking for consistent traffic, you're looking for things to build on top of each other.
I'm gonna show you how you can actually do that. This is the Hub and Spoke model. The idea is this: You have one main Hub page, this is the overview, This is explaining what the topic is, and then you have multiple spoke pages that are tying [inaudible 00:12:58] and they're making everything stronger. I like to think of it this way. For anyone who has loved Power Rangers before, the idea is you have these little robots, they're flying on their own. But you need this. You need them to combine together to make this mega[inaudible 00:13:18] right? That's the same idea with he Hub and Spoke model. That's what makes them really strong, that's how you make it very noticeable to Google.
Here's a really good example. If you Google conversion rate optimization, or if you wanna make a post on sales enablement, if you wanna make a post on SDR salary or something like that, conversion rate optimization, this is quality right here. The ranked number one for the keyword conversion rate optimization. So the question is why? This is what it looks like, it's simple. It's the same idea here. They have an overview page that explains what conversion rate optimization is. And it links to all these different chapters and all these chapters interlink to each other. Same deal for my podcast co-host Neil Patelle. If you Google online marketing, he occupies not one but both number one and number two positions. So the number one and a number two positions when it comes to Google, number one can get up to a 40% clicking rate.
If that keyword has a volume of about 10,000 or so, that's 4,000 visitors. But if you're number five or beyond, the clicking rates drop a lot more which just means less traffic for you, less leads, less revenue for you, it sucks. This is what you wanna be doing. That's the Hub and Scope model, that's the first thing, but you also have to think about how you make those individual spokes stronger, too, or even your blog posts. You can think of your blog posts that you have as spokes, and you can make [inaudible 00:14:36], just use what you have already. You don't have to re-invent the wheel, you don't have to create a bunch of brand-new content.
Abraham Lincoln, this post on Wikipedia, the reason why Wikipedia does so well across the board is because the content continues to get [inaudible 00:14:58] add to it. So this post right here, Abraham Lincoln, it originally started with 13,000 words and then it jumped all the way to 24,000 words in 2017. That's over a 10 year period, people just continue to add to it over and over and over. That's how you can win with content.
You don't necessarily have to create new content all the time. I think a lot of us, those of you who might be working in content marketing agencies out there, yeah we gotta keep publishing fresh new content all the time. What about the stuff that you have already? I think you just ... an analogy to use here is if you go buying a car, you don't just buy it and then drive it for one week or two weeks and then you're done. I guess ... Anyway, moving on to the nest one. This is what we did for [inaudible 00:15:43] blog post right here.
This is ... We have this blog post called 10 Companies With The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns. [inaudible 00:15:49]
[inaudible 00:15:51] We removed some companies, we added some companies, we added maybe two or three paragraphs of text.So what happened was originally, this post in 2016 was getting about 700 visits a month. After we added a paragraph of content, it jumped up by 4 times, it jumped up to 2800 visits a month. Keep in mind, if you're trying to buy this [inaudible 00:16:13] on Google, you're paying ten, twenty, thirty bucks for [inaudible 00:16:16].
So quote unquote "free traffic" is how you can do it. Just upgrade the content you have already. For us, [inaudible 00:16:23] free consultations, that's ... As a marketing agency, that's our thing. We're looking for free consultations for people that need help.
And then 2018, we're continuing to reap benefits from this. It's gone up to, it say 5400 here, but last month [inaudible 00:16:42] jumped up to about 6300, so it continues to go up high and higher and higher, just by upgrading our content. It doesn't take rocket science. You just need frameworks that you have, use the Hub and Spoke model, make a [inaudible 00:16:53] and then you do this, and [inaudible 00:16:57] or just produce fresh new content. It doesn't have to be like that all the time. And frankly, we don't all have the time to do that all the time.
And make sure, if you wanna make a case for [inaudible 00:17:08]. You wanna make sure that you traffic [inaudible 00:17:10]. You can see, everything's green across the board. Percentages before and after, every single time, just keeps going up, just keeps going up. It's a freaking no-brainer.
Here's the framework that I wanna talk about. Really simple, you can screenshot it, I don't know if this slide's gonna be shared. Here's the idea. Whether you start with podcasting, whether you start with videos, whether you start with blog posts, you start with this framework in the top right corner. You just ask yourself these questions as you go down. You can share this with your team, paste it somewhere, tape it up [inaudible 00:17:45]. If your content is outdated, just go in and update it. If you feel like it can actually be re-formatted into other places of content ... There's a girl called Shaleene Johnson. She has these horses. She starts with Facebook live, 'cause that's her element. She starts with Facebook live, she likes those, I think she makes them individual videos, and then she makes them into blog posts and them she makes them into social media images. You have to use some kind of framework, otherwise nobody's gonna do it. Checklists, frameworks, [inaudible 00:18:12].
For us, one thing that we do to repurpose our content was that Marketing School, because we published every single day. What we did was said, okay well if we're gonna do that, we should have someone writing our show down, we should transcribe the content. So what we did was we made another cycle on MarketingSchool.io, we just dumped the content there. Because frankly, Neil and I just don't have any time to manage this, we just threw it on there to see how it'd go. What happened was, we didn't build any links to this site. [inaudible 00:18:46]. Without going too far into it, the two main things that [inaudible 00:18:52], content and links. We have the content we wanna cover, didn't build any links, and this site starting going up and then gets about 5,000 visits a month, which is not bad for almost no additional work.
Started asking ourselves, or I guess I asked myself because Neil doesn't really care that much about it, I asked myself, what can we do to do more? What we did was we threw this same exact content onto SingleBrain.com. SingleBrain.com has a much higher SCO score, or [inaudible 00:19:27], whatever you wanna call it. We just moved it over there, and then our traffic shot up by 20,000 just the next month. Our traffic continues to skyrocket right now. In December ... We're decent for a marketing label site. We had about 50,000 visits in November, so ... and we [inaudible 00:19:47] 100,000 this month. I wouldn't be surprised if we get 250 to 300,000 visits on the block but, just do stuff like this and it starts to compound, you should figure out how you can make the most of your content.
[inaudible 00:20:03] The other thing is, I know we're running a little close on, short on time, but ... In terms of the content link, some of you always ask, or [inaudible 00:20:14], how long should a content be? If they're doing blog posts, how long should it be? I have some data for you, data's good. This is a graph, this is a study done by SerpIQ. This was done a couple years ago. They show that the top three results generally should be at about 2500 words or so. I'll give you some data right here.
Podcast co-host Neil, he's got two marketing blogs that get over a million visits a month. All he does on his blogs, he just publishes 2,00 to 4,000 word posts. We're talking almost every single day, actually. He spends of money on content, and he follows this framework and it's working really well for him. That's how he's ranked number one for online marketing, that's how he ranks number four for SDO. Number three for affiliate marketing, whatever it is exactly related to marketing, he's got that covered. It's because he's invested this amount of money to do that. And he gets so many leads, and I think a lot of us could use more leads.
From there, if he's had [inaudible 00:21:11], so if you wanna build this framework, you can get up to a million visits, there's so much you can do with it. From a re-targeting standpoint, from a building a bigger and better relationship with people, from building a brand. That's what you wanna be able to do with content.
[inaudible 00:21:28] very popular in [inaudible 00:21:32] space. His site is [inaudible 00:21:34]. His study shows here that we have [inaudible 00:21:38] 2,000 words or so in general. And I can tell you that once we started doing the non-reform content, that's how our traffic started to compound. Again, you start to add these all up, these tactics together and you're able to really start to see things move in the right direction.
Next thing here is on, this is Google search consoles. I'm not sure how relevant this is to most of you, but Google search console is a free tool that you can use. You can't ake your existing content right now and all you need to do, go to Google search console, and then you are basically gonna sort your pages by the highest impression count, [inaudible 00:22:14].
Basically what you're trying to do is Google is already showing your pages for the search result pages, all you have to do is write a better title and write a better description and you can get more traffic. I'm happy to explain this forum later, but I'm gonna get to each of the ways you can do this, it's for free, if you have traffic out there already. If you're getting at least 20 to 30 visits a month from Google, it's worth you trying to do this at least once a month or once a [inaudible 00:22:39] at the bare minimum, because you're [inaudible 00:22:41].
Most of us are used to going to Linkedin, I think we're all used to using the tools Linkedin has as well. So what I like about Linkedin is that recently it's gotten a lot more powerful, and [inaudible 00:22:56] but, there's a lot of people writing this longer-form content, these posts on Linkedin. I think it's funny 'cause a lot of people are writing this inspirational stuff like, with the credit card debt and that's how I saved my company and that's what it's all about. There's some genuine good stuff, and [inaudible 00:23:15] does this really well.
You can see here, you can use or free, and you just write some content. Look at the number of, most of you probably can't see it, there's 4200 likes on this post, and there are 371 comments. So that level of engagement is extremely high. The good thing about Linkedin is when you post there, it stays for a couple days. It's not gone like Facebook, it's not gone like Twitter. It will stay for a couple days if you do a good job of engaging people. If you can add value, [inaudible 00:23:43], motivational. Try to think about how you can actually add value, and this is what [inaudible 00:23:50] did right.
See my [inaudible 00:23:53] was talking about how people are making fun of Linkedin [inaudible 00:23:58], this post has 100,000 likes, 1800 comments, 8,000 shares. [inaudible 00:24:05]. A lot of people aren't really thinking about it that way right now. But if you can have some kind of framework, again if you think Linkedin is your jam, and you like [inaudible 00:24:13]. Just keep doing it. Or you can keep doing that on [inaudible 00:24:18] for example.
Think about where your audience is first, and then start creating content there. I think a lot of people, they're just, it's ... It seems like content is just this daunting thing and it's gonna take too much time. Sure it's gonna take a lot of time, but at the end of the day, it's still worth it because you do it because other people aren't willing to do it.
This is one of my friends, Jane, she did the same thing. She wrote a post, 187,000 people have checked out her profile, and she got 10 million views on her post. She got some leads from it, she got a lot of people that were looking to work for her too. That's how you make Linkedin work for you. You don't necessarily have to pay out the gat.e Be strategic about it, add the right people to your network, write good content, I know it's a really simple thing to say they have great, good content, but genuinely add value to people. Then you can get what you need.
I really like this one. Earlier this week I was at a marketing conference in San Diego, [inaudible 00:25:12] live events have been really all [inaudible 00:25:16], I think a lot of people here do it already. Even if you're just an individual sales rep, individual contributor, doesn't matter, I think live events are the best thing. [inaudible 00:25:26]
Any time I'm traveling somewhere ... When I was in San Diego, we had a dinner on Tuesday, we had a [inaudible 00:25:31] event on Sunday. Those things are [inaudible 00:25:33]. Because you're connecting great people first of all, and you're not really looking for return, you're just connecting people [inaudible 00:25:40]. Live events, I kind of ... I've doubled with Niel for Marketing School live, it's this is a live event right here.
I think I'll talk more about dinner [inaudible 00:25:56]. I wasn't really trying to get any business out of these things, but people tend to do business with people because they like them. We threw a dinner last year, and then that led to a $200,000 contract. And I did one recently led to a $150,000 contract. Not bad for spending some time with great people and going to events that I wanna go to.
[inaudible 00:26:20]. I think ... I always get this question about [inaudible 00:26:25]. If you think about the theme for this talk, really, is you're gonna out in the time and [inaudible 00:26:30] two or three years, but it's all gonna be out eventually 'cause people are gonna know who you are, and people are gonna like you, people are gonna know you, they're gonna trust you, that's what it's all about.
That trying to get the sale all tied [inaudible 00:26:44], just try to be useful to people. We talked about the dollars already, but I think the long-term relationships is more what I'm after now. The less I think about the dollars, the more I think about connecting great people, the easier it becomes for me.
[inaudible 00:27:02] but if you guys have questions, I think you can go to the mic, I think we have about four minutes here, I'm happy to answer any questions you have about marketing, sales, whatever. [inaudible 00:27:13]

Speaker 2: [inaudible 00:27:20]

Eric Sui: Yeah, so the question is what's my opinion of repeating content on the same domain. So this is duplicate content [inaudible 00:27:29]. If you Google Nat Cutts, he used to be the head of [inaudible 00:27:34], you'll find that you're not gonna have any issues unless your content is being [inaudible 00:27:42] hundreds or thousands of times. In my cae, I only took it once, and basically [inaudible 00:27:47].

Speaker 3: [inaudible 00:27:57]
[inaudible 00:28:18]
[inaudible 00:28:31]

Eric Sui: A, I think that's a good tip. B, you can just look at the content you have already, [inaudible 00:28:45]. For those of you that are creating content and have trouble [inaudible 00:28:51] on Facebook, you can spend a dollar a day [inaudible 00:28:56] and then from there you can just repurpose it into a shorter-form post [inaudible 00:29:01].

Speaker 4: [inaudible 00:29:10]

Eric Sui: I think as long as you're consistent, it's fine. I would say the longer form, the better. If you're gonna do [inaudible 00:29:31] you're probably not gonna get ... IT's really competitive right now, we're talking millions of blog posts being published every single day, [inaudible 00:29:40].

Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:29:52]

Eric Sui: The question is, if you don't have time to create content, what are my thoughts around [inaudible 00:30:06]. Generally when you syndicate content, it's not your original thought, so it's not gonna go that well. I have seen people that try to syndicate podcasts, for example, where they do short notes. They just don't do that well because it's not the original person creating it. [inaudible 00:30:23]
And a lot of us think we don't have anything interesting to say but the reality is, we do.

Speaker 6: [inaudible 00:30:31]

Eric Sui: Yeah. The question is how do I turn my podcasts into blog posts [inaudible 00:30:41]. I use this tool called Rev, it's Rev.com. Rev has the API that you can use, and then it will automatically, they will have people transcribe the content you have, and you have [inaudible 00:30:51].