The Power of Content Marketing with Marcus Sheridan.

In this week’s podcast we have the brilliant Marcus Sheridan who is the author of one of my favourite books – “They Ask, You Answer”. We are going to be talking about how this concept came about, why it is so important and how we can use this in our businesses going forward.KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTMake sure you are talking to your customer through your content. Show them what they want to see.Don’t over-complicate your content.Focus on the questions that your buyers want to know.The 5 subjects customers research – price/cost, problems/negatives, comparisons, reviews/ratings and the best thing.The mistake most companies make with their content, is to talk about answers that are not even in the buying funnel or they are the top of the funnel – you have to start at the bottom.The questions at the bottom of your buying funnel are the questions you get asked all the time.You should aim for 75% of your content to be focused on the 5 subjects that customers research.Be brave with your content – you don’t have to follow the rules and worry about what your competitors are doing!Teaching equates to trust. Trust equates to sales.Be honest and transparent with your customers.Over 80% of all people will not go to a restaurant if they don’t advertise their prices in their online menu.Over half of people will not buy what is in their basket if they can’t find a discount code after seeing the code box.When discussing pricing in your business, help your customer to understand the market place in general.The more specific companies are in talking about cost and price, the better the results become – more leads.Give your customers an educational experience.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Customers are unlikely to purchase the first time they see your product or service, but if you are helpful, supportive, answering questions and giving knowledge, they will take that and remember you to purchase in the future.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSAn Introduction to Marcus 02:06Sales Initiative vs Marketing 09:22Revenue from Action 17:15Content Creation 20:23Answering your Customer’s Questions 26:30Being Brave with your Content 32:20Being Honest with your Customers 36:30Educational Resources 47:10Transcript below Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How has your week been? I hope you've had a really good one. If you've been following me on Instagram, you'll see that my garden has been finished. If you're not fallowing me on Instagram, you might think, why am I talking about my garden? Well, basically, I have had some contractors in, and they have done my gardening, which is really exciting. And I've been putting on Instagram, and I got so much interaction that was wonderful. So I've been sharing the updates in there, and it was finished as I'm recording this, so a few days ago, by the time you get to listen to this. So, yeah, it's exciting stuff. So that's what I've been doing with my time. So I hope you've had a good week.Anyway, this week we have a great interview for you. Now, you will know, because I've said it before, that one of my favourite books I've read for marketing is a book called They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. And I was so very lucky to be given some of Marcus' time in order to bring him onto the podcast, to talk about how this came about, why it's so important, and how we can use it in our businesses going forward every day.But, honestly, if you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it because it gives you some really interesting ideas on the importance of content creation, and you know I go on about that all the time, but also about the types of things you want to address in your content creation. So I really recommend that you go and buy that book. It's a really good one. I'll link to it in the show notes. An Introduction to Marcus But let me tell you a little bit about Marcus. So Marcus is a sought-after international keynote speaker, and he's known for his unique ability to excite, engage, and motivate audiences. In 2017, Forbes named Marcus one of 20 speakers you don't want to miss. And he's being dubbed the web marketing guru by The New York times, and featured in Inc, The Globe Mail, Forbes, and more.As the finder and president of the Sales Lion, which recently merged with IMPACT in 2018, Marcus has established one of the most successful digital sales and marketing agencies in the country. Within his speaking company, Marcus Sheridan International, Inc, he gives over 70 global keynotes annually. Well, he probably did before lockdown happened. And Mashable rated his book, They Ask You Answer, as the number one marketing book to read in 2017. Forbes has listed it as 11 marketing books that every CMO should read.So, honestly, this guy wrote a book that kind of changed how we viewed content marketing. And I am so very honoured to be able to bring him to you, to the podcast, and be today's interview. So I hope you enjoy.Okay. I am really, really excited to welcome today's guest to the podcast. Marcus Sheridan, welcome to the podcast.Yeah, Teresa, it's a pleasure to be here. And hopefully, we'll have a fruitful conversation for our listeners today. So I'm excited about it.I am really excited about it, because I think my listeners know I listen and read books all the time, and I always get something from there. But you know, when you just devour a book and go, yes, yes, and yes, and yes?Right.That's what I did for the entire thing. So to get you on to talk about it is just brilliant. But before we do, can you just give a little bit of an overview for my listeners in case they haven't heard from you before, just kind of who you are, and how you got to do what you're doing today?Well, I started actually right out of university as a pool guy, believe it or not. I fell into a business in 2001 with two friends. And I didn't ever think I was going to sell swimming pools, but that's just how it ended up after school. And things were going okay until 2008 when the market crashed. It looked like we were going to lose our business, and I talked to three consultants at that time, they all said the same thing, "You should file bankruptcy, Marcus."The issue though was, if I had done that, I'd lose my home, my two business partners would lose their homes, my 16 employees at the time would lose their jobs, so we had to figure out how to really get back over that edge. We didn't have much money, we didn't have any money, we didn't have any [inaudible 00:04:50] time for the most part. And it was a really, really scary time in my life. But it was during this period of time where I essentially dove into all of the stuff that you and I today know as inbound marketing, content marketing, social media.And, for me, really, it started at HubSpot's site, and that's where it started to click for me. What I had in my simple just pool guy mind was, Marcus, if you just obsess over your customers questions, and you're willing to address them honestly and transparently, you might save your business.And so that's what we did. I brainstormed every single question I had ever received from a customer about pools. And I said, I'm going to write an answer in an article or video format once a day, until I stop, right?And to make a long story short, we ended up becoming what is essentially the Wikipedia of in-ground swimming pools here in the US. And today, it's the most traffic swimming pool website in the world. And we went on to have ... We were having so much success in terms of lead generation, and our brand became so national in many ways that we started manufacturing fibreglass pool shells as well.So, today, we have fibreglass pool, [inaudible 00:06:06] river pools dealers, franchisees now, it's a franchise now, all over the country. We have dealers everywhere. We're was the fastest growing manufacturer in the US. And so that's been one major section of my life, and it's all because of the crash of 2008.The other side of that, because what was happening, I started to write about it personally, like here's some things that I'm doing, these are working pretty cool. I figured everybody should know this stuff. And it turns out that I was doing stuff that just people had done. But they were obvious to me, this philosophy of They Ask You Answer led me to the 1000 mindset, I was like, I'm going to answer every question. But if you actually lean into that, you're doing stuff that's innovative, it's all get out.And so I started writing about it. And then suddenly, I had events say, "Could you share that at our events?" Somebody would say, "Could you teach me how to do that?" So that led to demand to build out a consulting company, which has today become IMPACT, which is a almost 70-person firm in the US digital sales and marketing. So I have that and couple partners there.And then I have a speaking company, and that's really what I do full time when we're not suffering from pandemics. And so, I have given about 60, 70 keynotes a year really just all over the world, the last 7, 8 years, something like that now. And it's really been amazing. It's been the most amazing ride, but all because of the crash of 2008.I mean, that story is phenomenal in so many ways. That, first off, you said you went into it straight from university.Yeah.Because when you read, it almost feels like it was such a long time ago. It almost feels like you must be double the age you are because it feels like so much