In this interview with Keith Reynolds from Publi.io, a content marketing agency, we discuss the 7 key points of a successful content marketing campaign. Every small and large publisher needs to grasp, then implement, these concepts if they want to fully realize a positive return on investment in content marketing. Publi.io offers an online masters class in content marketing as well as direct consultancy. To learn more visit Publi.io and be sure to connect with Keith Reynolds on LinkedIn. (Follow Publi.io on Linked In)
Transcript of What is content marketing
Introduction to Publi.io and Keith Reynolds
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (00:00):
So, Hey everybody, it's Mike with Serr.biz Search engine ranking rules. And today we're speaking with Keith Reynolds from Publi.io P U B L I .io regarding content marketing and how it relates to search engine optimization, but also some insights that Keith has. Keith, I'm gonna let you talk about yourself, because you're better at it and than I am <laugh>.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (00:26):
Well, thank you so much. It's great to reconnect and appreciate the opportunity to be on your, your show. I wish you all the best with it. Thanks. So thank you. Yeah, so I've been in marketing my whole career. I got involved with my first website back in the mid nineties and I've written and produced over a hundred websites over the years. And what I found that I really love to do is help people figure out their content strategy, you know, who's their audience, what kind of content do they create so that they attract people and they represent their business properly. And and I've come up with a formula that I, I work with people on to help them think that through. And we have also a class and worksheets and my, my partner that I work with some of the training on calls, 'em fun sheets. But it it's gathering all the information so that when you go online, you, you have a good idea that this is gonna work.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (01:30):
Okay. I think couple things first name drop a little bit. Who, who have you worked for that people are gonna recognize and, and, you know, give yourself some credibility?
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (01:41):
Sure. So I started my early career working for IBM. I was with them for seven years. Amazing place to start your career. You get great training. I've also worked for apple. I've worked in their business to business part of their retail operations. So I sold the app, apple products and services to area companies up where I live. And I have also then been in the agency and consulting world. I've worked with companies like Kodak and Vodafone and a number of other, you know, midsize companies you probably haven't heard of, but we help make 'em famous in their space.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (02:22):
Nice. Right. Well, that's what local business marketing's all about right. Being
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (02:26):
Through that. Right,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (02:27):
Right. Being famous within your space.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (02:31):
Yep. And you can do that either by location, which is a lot of what you do with local. Right. But you can also do it by the focus of your business. So it might be that you have an area of expertise. And so instead of being local, you've got a global audience, but you're very narrow in what you're, you're good at. Right,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (02:50):
Right. Which with the expansion of the internet and the endless stream of opportunities for marketing and advertising, you kind of have to get niche in your, your, your approach.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (03:02):
Rich is in the niches <laugh> yeah.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (03:04):
Rich is in the niches. So you were showing me earlier your kind of seven point concept related to your masterclass and some of the consulting that you do. Hold on a second. Let me turn off this other phone,
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (03:22):
No matter how advanced technology we get, we're still gonna have phones.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (03:26):
Right. alright. What was I saying? Okay, good. So you've worked for some, you know, some pretty solid companies produced a lot of results for those companies. And now you're running LIO and offering a master's class as well as are you doing one on one consulting as well? Like do you know, they don't have to take your class you'll you'll
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (03:50):
So I've, I've always believed that no matter how many people are on the internet, you probably need 50 or 500, hundred or 5,000 people. Right. And there's over 4 billion people on the internet. So when you create content, you want it to be to, to matter, like, to be an interesting book, right. Or, or a great movie, it, they know their audience and you don't appeal to everybody. So the, the key is to start with who's your audience and what's your objective for that audience. And, and so, you know, that really ties into SEO. What I've learned a lot from my work with you that SEO is really about finding those keywords, those questions and the concepts that your customers are interested in. If you can represent yourself as an expert in that mm-hmm, <affirmative> either by location or by focus that it, you can build an audience on the internet because of that scale, because there's 4 billion on the internet, you can find that 50 or 500 or 5,000. Right. And, and that can consistency and quality really count because people are surfing very quickly and they want to know that you can help them. And if they do, you know, the internet behavior is they lurk. And if they think that you can help them, they're gonna reach out to you. So, right. So content marketing also known as inbound marketing is about putting your expertise out there and all of the elements that are gonna connect with somebody.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (05:28):
Yeah. a hundred percent agree. That's part of like why I'm doing what I'm doing here. It's this is more about getting you referrals cuz folks I'm, I'm not really open for consulting at this point, but Keith is so let's let's, you know, let's go over that seven points that you were talking about ear earlier related to content marketing and how you, you use your content and your expertise to drive people to your website, to get them, to contact you, to make a purchase of your products or sales. And also just on goal notes, you know, it's not always all about just making the sale. It's it's about that relationship and that trust because someone may read your stuff like it and take some information that's useful, but what will often happen is, you know, they'll wind up referring you to someone else that's right.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (06:23):
They, I think one of the key points that you're highlighting is that the internet is a give to get kind of place. And if you're generous with your material and your knowledge and you approach it, like you're training and helping people you are because there's 4 billion on, on the internet. And because people have interests in specific things, they may not be buying, but they can certainly come along and learn something and refer you to somebody else. And then maybe six months or a year or two years down the road, they remember you. Right. And so if, if you establish that kind of presence on the internet you'll, you'll be attracting people and it it's really comes from a place of generosity.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (07:10):
Yeah. Nice phrase generous with your, your time and your content in your per productions. Whether that's a blog post or what have you, right. Sorry. So your publishers MO let's take a look at this.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (07:24):
Sure. So I came up with this idea after having built a, a website for a company at the division of a company and we, they had a million dollar product. There were, weren't very many companies that were gonna buy their product you know, at a million dollars, but we found 57 sales qualified
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (07:47):
Leads. It was literally a million dollar product.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (07:49):
It was literally from including the software, the installation, the maintenance contract the, their clients. So it was a you're right. It was a packaging management system. If you think of like a big company like Johnson and Johnson or general foods that sells in 140 countries and has 47 products. And then each country has a different label. And, and every time you make a change on a package, it would it would create another skew in their system, right? So keeping track of all the labels and packaging and legal requirements, it's a nightmare for a global company. And this company had a end to end process management for companies that had hundreds of and thousands of skews and had to keep track of them. And then when you, you know, take a, take a product offline, you've gotta remove it and take it out. And, but yet keep track of it because the, there may be a regulator that is gonna refer back to you and want to know things.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (08:52):
So all of that process is huge. So it was a very expensive product. So when you find 57 customers, right, you've now got a pipeline filled with 57 million in potential revenue. Right. And we did that by creating an online magazine about packaging. And we started, you know, we, we basically were, are journalists that covering the packaging industry and make telling interesting stories about packaging. And you established yourselves as the authority as we established. Right. And I did it in the background for my customer, right? So we, we had their head of marketing was doing public speaking about this. We were doing webinars that we, you know, pushed from the website. And, and the, at the end of the year, they sold the division of the company for eight times the original offer. And one of the key drivers was the acquiring company wanted to buy that online and magazine cuz it had generated all the leads.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (09:58):
Nice. And my, this was 2015 and my head was like, boom, wait a minute. That that's just like Sumner, Redstone doing an a media company deal with Disney. But instead of selling advertising, we're trying to get leads. There's an economic value proposition to creating content on the internet. And, and you can value that at an enterprise level, not just how, how much sales pipeline you have. So I came up with the idea that a publisher, what a publisher does is very similar to what you need to do now on the internet. And that's build an audience and then monetize it. But instead of sell an advertisement, you're putting a lead in the pipeline. And if you know, how many people that you, how many leads you need to close a deal, you can actually figure out how big an audience you need for your website.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (10:51):
Right. Right. And, and you have as in bucket, number seven here, an ROI model, but let's start at the top. Okay. I'll start at the top. All right. So this website we created for, I was working for an agency. I was the account exec strategy guy on the project. And the project was called chief packaging officer and packaging. People are not, you know, they're not on the fast path to becoming a, a CEO. They get measured on saving a 10th of a penny on cardboard. You know, they are engineers. I mean, it's an amazing industry having dove in and worked in that space for a couple years. That was pretty amazing to learn. But when we came up with the idea of the chief packaging officer, it had resonance with people because, and this is the name of the, the magazine, the name of the magazine with chief packaging officer.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (11:45):
There's no such thing or there wasn't at the time. And, and so we, we kind of made a splash and we were catchy, right. So we, we had this north star idea and it really communicated that that PE people in packaging are very valuable. Right. It's that last moment of truth in the consumer's hand, if there's a, a recall on a product, because it's mislabeled, it can drop the stock price by 20%. Right. Right. So all of these reasons why packaging is valuable and, and yet they're the Rodney Dangerfield of, of a company. Right. They, it, it really resonated and that's, they've them, some limelight put 'em in a limelight. Exactly. And that's,
North Star Idea for your content marketing
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (12:26):
That's interesting that you put the, you, you put the guy who usually gets just overlooked and it's just like, oh yeah, put it in a package by, you know, make a box word,
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (12:34):
Joe, make it a box. Right. And so that's the kind of thing you can get really created with a north star idea. I've, I've worked with somebody else that, you know, they were an integrator of marketing automation systems. And how do you differentiate themselves? Well, they turned out that they really like being a coach. So the content that we end, the content strategy we came up with was everything was like a playbook. And they talked about things in, in teamwork and coaching and it, it totally changed the way they talked about the company. So it's really important to have something that you believe in yourself and is gonna connect with your audience from that you build an editorial strategy. So that typically in a publishing industry, that would be a content calendar. Right. And we would on the content calendar, come up with names and titles of articles and videos. And we use SEO research, the keyword research to understand the keywords and concepts and questions that people ask. And then we write art about those driven off
What is your editorial strategy?
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (13:36):
The research. So let's just, you've been talking in, in just you know, bigger corporate terms, a million dollar product. Right. I just wanna reel it back a little bit. And as we go through let's let's talk about this in the context of say a, a, a local barbecue shop nor or restaurant.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (13:56):
Perfect. And I'll say also yesterday I spoke to a group of people who were working on their personal brand mm-hmm <affirmative>. So they, some of them were consultants. A couple of them were in transition and I did the same thing and said, okay, I'm an individual. How do I, you know, have a personal brand? And how do I have a content strategy for that? So let's let's today, let's do it on the barbecue. So the north star idea might be the Connecticut cowboy, right.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (14:29):
Come up with what's the barbecue, right? The con is this the name of the restaurant the Connecticut cowboy could
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (14:34):
Be, or it could be that it's a, just a barbecue restaurant located in Connecticut, but I just was coming up with that, pull it outta my ears,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (14:43):
Start Connecticut.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (14:45):
And then your editorial strategy might be that, you know, out of this idea of generosity, you might give some of your recipes away, right. And you might have a whole channel on barbecue that, you know, goes out to the pit. And we interview the pit master whenever they're doing a, you know, a pig roast or whatever, and getting secrets and
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (15:06):
Got it. So con Connecticut cowboy, and our content's gonna be all about the Connecticut cowboy. Maybe we AC actually have a host or the restaurant. Owner's got a cowboy hat and bingo, what have you. And so he's kind of our focus where she is. And we're gonna give some recipes away, which people love. Right? Like I, how many times you've been at a restaurant and I don't ever do this, but I've been with people who are like, Hey, can I get that recipe for, and some restaurant owners are like, no off. Right. Keep, come back and buy it again. But some other one successful, really successful restaurant owner. I knew back in Maryland yeah. He, he share the recipe and be like, yeah, there you go. Absolutely. You know, cause there there's little secret sauce that he does, you know, but like here,
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (15:49):
Right, you leave a couple things out, but in general you do teach people and then you develop loyalty. And so an editorial strategy for a, a barbecue business is obviously gonna be different than someone else. And, and yet it can reflect the, the values and, and the ideas of the, of that restaurant owner. Right. And then you can use that plus your your SEO research and maybe some customer interviews and you start coming up with ideas for videos. Right. Right. And who knows, maybe you'll even catch on and become an internet meme. Right, right.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (16:23):
<Laugh> well, one thing I've been, I've been finding like with dirt killer who on doing, you know, the, is in the video is people are in the videos were sort of ending. And is there anything else you'd like us to talk about? And if somebody will ask me a question related to the video and I'll answer it in the comment section, but then I started asking commenters, is there something else you'd like to learn? And people are responding back. And so that's also contributing to my editorial calendar, what we're going to be working on next and what's what's priority. And so, yeah, so just, you gotta get started is the first thing, have your north star idea, as you said, then your editorial strategy and it doesn't have to be perfect all the way mapped out, but a general thing. Yep. One thing I do wanna say on strategy is commitment. <Laugh>, you know, because you gotta commit to get stuff out there. I recommend for all small local business owners that they try to publish something at least once a week. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> at the very least, you know, at the very, very least once a month. And if you can't commit to that, you probably gotta commit to hiring somebody,
Publishing, Promotion and distribution
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (17:30):
You know? Absolutely. You know, that's a great point and we're gonna get to that when we get to ROI, I model. All right. So let, let's go on from the editorial strategy, right. That's based on a calendar. Once you start putting things on a calendar, you can figure out who you're gonna hire, who's gonna do the work. Right. Right. And so, so then once you've, you've created the content, you've gotta distribute the content. And I view social media sites as a place, not to put your content, but rather to tell people that you have content and to come back to you, and I'm a big proponent of an idea called a content hub, right? Where you put all of your content on your website and get all the SEO value. But then you go out to LinkedIn or Facebook and you might, if you have a 20 minute interview with somebody really interesting, you take a, a 32nd clip of that and you put it on Facebook and say for the full interview, come back to my website.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (18:29):
Right. And you can do that with, with your articles too. Like you put a teaser out there, drive people back because and, and, and how that relates to SEO is because you got the click and presumably you have Google analytics and, you know Google says that they don't use the, that information, but, you know, dwell time. How long is somebody on your site? How, yep. How often are they engaging on your site? Whether they're coming, you know, through Google or they're coming someplace else, Google has access to that information and it makes your site sticky. So then that's an important factor in, in SEO.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (19:10):
It helps them understand that there's value that, that it, their, their logic is if somebody comes and spends five minutes on a site, and the average is a minute or 30 seconds, that, and you get enough of those five minute visits, they're going, Hey, this is right.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (19:27):
I mean, Google says they don't track it and they're, they're not, and that they're completely independent from one another, but my personal opinion is Uhhuh. Sure. <laugh> cause why would, why would Google not use that information is, is my overall opinion. And so for the SEOs who want to go hater on me, okay, there's the comment box, but that's just my personal opinion about it.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (19:48):
I, I think also it's, they may use it in the aggregate. They may also use it to assign a value to you, but they're not looking at your business and publishing that information.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (19:59):
Yeah, no, they're not publishing it. I just, it
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (20:01):
It's it's, I think it's probably used too, but I mean, why else, you know, in your Google analytics, you see that information, why would they give you that information? If they're not using it? It just doesn't make sense.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (20:13):
Right. Right. So, anyway, sorry to jump in
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (20:16):
There. No, that's all right. So we're up, we're up to number three, right? Bucket number three, right. And that's putting your content out there. Email is another way that you can publish your content and sending out your email newsletter, and then having clicks to come back to your website. And, you know, the, the bottom line is you always want to have a little another offer when someone arrives. So if they read a blog at the bottom, give them something else to do. Maybe they'll take a second click. Right? Right. So that's bucket number three. And I used to have bucket number four and bucket number three, all in one. But I, I separated it out because for most businesses, and my experience is more B2B. I, I have some consumer experience, but much of your of the, the business that you drive comes from your ability to participate in, in a community, even for that barbecue, right?
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (21:15):
You, you contribute to the, the, you set up a, a, a booth at the, at the county fair. You contribute to local organizations and you give big discounts to nonprofits. If they use you for catering, being involved in the community is the essence of being in business. And so I separated it out. The other thing I realized is that nobody wants to talk to a salesperson, but everybody wants to be interviewed. And so if you attend these events and you say, Hey, we're doing a, a local we're doing our annual clam bake down at the barbecue pit, and we're gonna be interviewing small businesses. We'd love to have you come down to our event. And, and we'd like to interview you for our show, right? That's a pitch that people love, and they don't think of you as a salesperson, even if it's your salesperson giving, making that offer. So hold on,
Community and events are a great source for generating content
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (22:10):
I'm gonna wrap my well small business. So like, just back back to Connecticut cowboy,
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (22:16):
Connecticut cowboy,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (22:18):
Right. Connecticut cowboy is doing a, you know, pit at some, you know, school fundraiser, whatever for, you know, their, their kids. There you go PTO and they, you know, volunteered and they're giving away an afternoon a barbecue in that situation. I mean, the pit, the, what they would probably do on that, with that interview model that you just talked about would be, yeah, the chef's cooking and talking and so forth, but the, the interview really would be the review. Like, Hey, how'd you like that?
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (22:52):
It could be that, but it, it could also be something let, let's go back to B2B, even though you're a consumer organization, you, you know, most of your revenue comes from people coming and eating at your restaurant, but you might do catering and you're doing the local fundraiser and a, somebody comes by your site and you find out that they're the owner of the local plant and, or the they're, they're the general manager of the local plant. And wouldn't it be great because, you know, they do catering instead of saying, Hey, we do catering. You want my menu? Buy my stuff. I mean, my buy my stuff, you say, we have a taste off competition and we wanna, I, what, I'm making this up as I go along here, but right. And we'd love to have you on our, on our social media. Can I in, can I interview you after you eat the, eat our barbecue, right. Or whatever you invite them to become part of your content is the key point. Right. Okay. And now you're building relationships and that's different in, in community and events work than it is in, in publishing things on social networks. And I found it to be enough of a difference, but generally they're, they're both the same publishing promotion, distribution, community events is all about your outreach.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (24:05):
Right. Okay. Got
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (24:07):
It. All right. So then the next one bucket number five is marketing automation. And there are tools like HubSpot sharp spring Salesforce plus Pardot. Yeah. There's probably
Use marketing automation for your content marketing
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (24:22):
50 of 'em
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (24:23):
Marketo. There's millions of 'em and you know what? They all do the same thing, right? Some are different this way. Some are different that way. At the end of the day, you need some basic functionality, like email marketing, drip campaign marketing, which is a series of emails that go out automatically landing pages, chat bots,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (24:43):
Right. All these. So let's, let's just take the drip marketing and tie it back in with Connecticut cowboy. Alrighty. Right. So I've got somebody there they've tasted it. They let me interview 'em they loved it. Yada, yada, or even they said well, the, the it's a little too vinegar. What else? You got whatever anyway, days with them on a personal level. So, and you could probably be like, Hey, well, if you like that you know, here's a coupon code. Just go to this QR code right here, over on my, my POS, you know stand here to scan this QR code, enter your email, and you'll get an automatic coupon. So now they're in your system. And if you've got a that's key automate system, well, now they're in there and you can set up a drip campaign. That's going to email them once a month just saying, Hey, you know, come on, you didn't, you, you know, you used your coupon, you didn't use your coupon, or here's the latest recipe, or here's the next event we're gonna be at. And so that's what you're talking about with automation. And that's probably one of the easier automations to set up, especially for like a restaurant, right. Once it's set up, it kind of just is. And then that same thing could also actually just be permanently applied at the restaurant there's PE, especially in the waiting room. Right? Like, and
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (26:00):
That's what one of the keys of marketing automation is no matter where your lead comes in from you wanna quickly convert it into that marketing system and then treat them all the same way. Now you might have different segments. You might have your corporate catering versus your, your regular customers. Right, right. And, and so, but at the same time, they're all coming in and being segmented in your marketing automation system, your CRM. And, you know, you can say to your gen, your, your manager, who does the call follow ups for catering, here's a list of 10 people give them a call. Right. And right. And now, so what marketing automation does is it, it makes it so that you can do a lot of work without a lot of labor. Right, right. Send, you're not sending one email to everybody, the system, you configure the system.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (26:50):
And based on what you're trying to accomplish, you set up your email campaigns to run in the background as much as possible. So there there's a labor saving element to marketing automation. The other really cool thing is that because all of the links that you're sending out are, are cataloged. And you know, that this, you know, this set of links was coming back from LinkedIn. This came from our barbecue Suare at the county fair. And these, you know, from the QR code and these set of links came from our email campaigns. At the end of the month, you run a report and you see, wow, that county fair was a, was a home run. We we've got $300,000 in sales.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (27:38):
Well, if, if you can tie it in that successfully with the back to cop, you know, you can do that more. So with an, a true online e-commerce purchase type situation, it's not as easy to tie it in and on the restaurant level where they, you know, if they've got, if they've got a coupon, but yes, yes. I, the point is just that you can see some, you can leave, see some stats on it. Correct.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (28:06):
And you, you may not, in some instances be able to get it down to that individual person, but you can make, you can, if you, if you're familiar enough with what you're doing to generate your business, you can get at least an, you know, a good guide of, of this traffic's coming from what things are working. And the goal is using that information is very much like what a media company or publisher does when they buy Nielsen data. This is your data helping you improve your work in the future. So that's the difference in, and I just was making the key point for marketing automation. It's helping you scale and do <affirmative> less with, or do more with less labor, but it's also the information that you get back. That's so important,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (28:50):
Right. And paying attention to that and thinking about it. So, all right, so that's five, six sales model
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (28:57):
Sales model. So train your sales people, train the person at Connecticut cowboy to say, Hey, if you loved our recipes, sign up our barbecue cookbook, put, give us your email address and you'll get a PDF of a cookbook. You have, you know, after you make the cookbook and make it into a PDF, you have no production costs and people will love it. And right. And if your, but if your sales people don't know to offer it, you're never gonna get the distribution. So,
Train team in sales and your content marketing offers
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (29:25):
So in the, in me, in the Connecticut cowboy scenario, that salesperson is your cashier. Yes. And your food server, correct. Primarily, but then also bus boy too, cuz they often interact and, you know, busser, et cetera, or just everybody on, on the team should know about these offers and just, you know, so if somebody's, you know, they, they had some barbecue. Then they went over to the bar and they got a beer and they're talking about it and they're God, I really love that recipe. The bartender should be no to say here's the QR code. Just download it now, get you know exactly.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (30:00):
Right. And, and then that bartender also because of their unique placement with customers they may start to hear that you know, this customer owns a business in town or this customer is you know, a school teacher. Right. And, and so you might then have a, an affinity program for, or for schools. And that bartender is trained to say, oh, you're school teacher at, you know, Hillview elementary. Here's our, here's a little QR code. You can blah, blah,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (30:34):
Blah. You can on the, the, the staff as well and say, Hey, if you're talking to somebody and they, they become a customer and we know that you, you told em about our catering, we'll, we'll cut you in, we'll give you a bonus, whatever we do, all kinds of take care of people, right. Yeah.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (30:52):
Right. And an ROI model. So what is all of this cost you as an entrepreneur and what is your return? Right. And I, on our website you can see right here on our website we have ROI calculator and it's a spreadsheet that I created about five or six years ago. And we were proposing a marketing program to a company and they came back and said, we have a board member that doesn't really understand how this is gonna work. Right. It's like, Hmm. So I have one tab on the spreadsheet that lists everything that we're gonna do down the left hand side and has months across the top. And you plug in how much money you're gonna spend each month. Right. And the spreadsheet, you build a, a marketing budget. And the second tab is here's the traffic to leads to proposals, to sales.
ROI Model
Publi.io ROI calculator for content marketing campaigns >>
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (31:49):
Right. Right. And now I can look at that's in sales, that's called the waterfall. Right. And I know that a hundred, a thousand people coming to my website can yield a hundred leads, which could yield 10 proposals, which could yield three sales. Right. So for every thousand people that come to my website, I can expect three sales and a good sales oriented organization knows those numbers. Right. Right. Any, anybody that's in charge of sales has to know those numbers. Well, the ROI model to do content is, well, how much is this content gonna cost me? And what do I think I could get? And I mean, I've literally been in situations for B2B where you tend to have high ticket sales items. It's like, wow, you mean I could get two sales and I'd pay for the whole program for the year. Bingo. Now for a, a restaurant, you have a marketing budget. You can look at wow. If I, if I stop doing this in my list of things that I do for marketing and sales, and I tried something different, do I think I could get two more sales? Right. Set might only be worth a couple hundred to a restaurant, but there is a, a, an ROI model on your marketing, no matter whether you're a restaurant or a B2B company, every
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (33:09):
Right. Every, every company who's spending money on marketing should have a ROI model so that they know very intellectually, very con concretely what their goals and objectives are and working within that and where they want to increase or decrease. Absolutely. That's right. I totally agree with that. Yeah. And
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (33:27):
So it's kind of a back of the napkin, you know, at a smaller business it's back of the napkin and when you're dealing with a big business, it, it tends to be more formalized. But if you're, yeah. So at the end of the day, if you are a business owner and you're delegating all this out, what you really care about is the ROI model.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (33:48):
Right. Right. Yeah. Boss, boss wants boss wants, she made money,
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (33:55):
Let the team go off and work on all these other things. Right. And, and so what, what marketers tend to do is focus on number one, through number four, and then you get the it department to do the marketing automation. And then you got the VP of sales to do the sales model. And the CEO cares about the, the ROI model. And what I've learned is that content marketing is, requires all seven of these. And it means that you have to take a team approach to being successful.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (34:27):
Right. And whether you're just starting out, you know, you're gonna do all these things. That's right. If you're totally brand new and totally entrepreneur, and it's just you, you know working but it's good for you, even if you're just starting out to know all these things, cause eventually you're going to grow and you're gonna be an effective owner. If you understand all of those parts so that you don't get hoodwinked and well said, had your hands dirty, you, you can more effectively hire and delegate work to people. And then all you do, you know, all you have to do is sit back and do well that as we know, it takes its own tool. And it ain't
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (35:05):
Quite that easy, but you're not quite that easy. Right. You know, you're, you are hitting the nail on the head in terms of the value of this. And, and I literally was standing at a whiteboard working with a client. And at the end of the meeting, they agreed to spend like $250,000 because we talked, we just sat around the table and talked about these and the executive who was signing off on it was like, yeah, I'm in.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (35:29):
All right, perfect. That's what you want.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (35:32):
So now I've probably given this talk 200, 300 times in the last four years. Right?
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (35:38):
Okay. So this is the publisher's Mo and these are just really good, solid general information concepts now and that's what Keith's company does. And he's got lots of good information on his site. Let's toggle back to full screen if we would. Sure you were sharing. Okay. So, all right. That's pretty cool. The publisher's Mo I liked how you laid it all out, some really solid concepts now. And there's, you know, people can just go to your website and check that out and they'll be links in the, the section below. So feel free to, you know, follow those and get in touch with Keith, additionally, you have a, a master's class, right? That goes really in depth on this. What
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (36:29):
I'll say in that, that generosity of the internet, there is the ROI model you can download for free, and there's a book we have for free, and you can also buy our other book on Amazon for, for 12 bucks and 12 bucks. So I I've really tried to give away a, a lot because an educated consumer is my best customer, right. And, and yet at the same time I have I do consulting and it's very high end it's market research, SEO research, and then using these seven buckets to help develop a strategy. And that can take 90 days and it's, you know, it's not cheap. So we broke it down into a class where, okay, if you agree these seven buckets you don't have a huge budget, but you wanna learn it. We have worksheets that you can fill out and take that those seven buckets down to the next level and, and do some exercises and understand and come up with your north star idea. And then we help. We have worksheets to help you figure out what your, your editorial strategy is gonna be. So each of these elements, we drill down and I used to use 'em in my, in consulting. And this summer we spent the time to turn it into a class. So for $1,500, you'll get access to all the worksheets. I've got a seven to 10 minute lecture for each of these buckets, just like we went through here. And then all of the worksheets we have so 70,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (37:56):
So 70 minutes for your seven different sections. So, so, you know, 70 minutes of some video and, and so forth. So basically in an hour, calling an hour and a half to be able to read and, you know, oh, download and blah, blah, blah. So like for an hour and a half, you're gonna get some really a solid information. Can people, if they, well, then
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (38:15):
The, the key is now the worksheets right after you, once your brain is around, what we're talking about out the worksheets is where the, the actual work comes in. I think I said earlier when we were talking my, my team is encouraging me to call 'em fun sheets. Cuz when I call 'em worksheets, it's like, ah, nobody wants to do work, but you right. You can't do this stuff without thinking it through. And I'm, you know, if you're gonna invest in having a business and you don't think this through then, you know, don't complain when you're not successful. Th this is kind of the basic elements of how to think through a marketing plan and we've put them online into, into Google sheets. So you just can fill out and add your own information. And then my team is available to, you know, coach you through that as
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (38:58):
Well. I was gonna be my next question. So like if somebody does sign up for it and they get stuck, they can contact you. And, and now is that live support or is it 24 7 or is it scheduled or yeah. You wanna see
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (39:11):
Something really cool. Let's see if we can do this. All right. I'm gonna go back to screw. All right. So here is the, the guts of the masterclass and you, you, it, you take a class by watching videos and then taking a quiz and each section like here's the bucket 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And if I look at bucket, number one, there's a video you can watch and some you market as complete and you'll get a quiz. The other thing that we've done to answer your, your question is our polio learning center. And we're starting to play with the name of maybe calling it polio X, but it is an actual place that you can log into.
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (39:58):
And when you sign up for the class, you'll get a user ID and you sign into the class. And now we have live office hours, one-on-one sessions, special events and lectures. So we might have you do a talk on SEO, okay. And a resource library where we can store materials and articles things for you. All right. And, and so think of this as sort of like walking into the lobby of a, of a, a, a college campus. Right, right, right. And there's things that are going on. And so right now we have the selecting, the right marketing automation and CRM for your business session going on and I can join it live,
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (40:37):
Oh, this meeting's happening right now with the, some of your other people
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (40:40):
And no, well, it's, I actually, I set it up to be able to show you and I make myself the presenter and there, I am talking to you and you as a student have just arrived and, and can take my class.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (40:51):
Cool. And that's all just part of the, the fee. And is this an annual subscription or is this a lifetime? What is
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (40:58):
It the way that we're, you know, we're up just getting this up and running right now, the way we're thinking about it is when you buy the class, you get three one-on-one sessions and three months of access to this, and you're going to meet other people that are also working on their content strategy. And you can, strategy is a really creative thing and you have kind of brainstorm ideas and you want to be able to test them out with people. And what I'd love to do is build a community in here where you get to know the people that are in the, in the class with you in the masterclass with you. And we're all going through this journey together to make our content strategy work. Right.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (41:36):
Right. Well, yeah. Brand sums, always good. Like, you know, the Connecticut cowboy, right. We just came up with that, gave us a context and framework to have our discussion. So Keith, this sounds really good. I mean, I already knew this about you and your content, and that's why you know, I invited you to come have an interview and thanks for, or, you know, giving me some of your time to do this. I think we're gonna basically wrap it up there. If anybody getting CLO any closing words
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (42:05):
<Laugh> for me. Yes. well, I think one thing I love about this job is that about that third session and people get getting to know these concepts, people feel stuck, content strategy tends to be like the hardest thing to even do it. And I love the, the, that breakthrough moment. The aha, when somebody like says, I wanna be a coach, I mean, and our whole content then can hang off of the, that north star idea. Right. That breakthrough moment is my favorite part of doing this. All right. That's my
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (42:39):
Closing word. All right, everybody. We were running out of time today. So this was Keith Reynolds with Publi.io P U B L I .io and content marketing. He's got a master course, but he's got point any of free information that you can use to increase your content marketing, which of course plays into search engine marketing and search engine optimization. If you're really big. Awesome. But you can also deploy some of the concepts really all the concepts, even if you're just a small local business with one or two employees, even if that's just you and your wife or spouse, or what have you. Absolutely. So I really
Keith Reynolds | Publi.io content marketing agency (43:16):
Appreciate the opportunity to think that through with Connecticut cowboy, I'd never, that was fun. Never done it for a small business. And then all of a sudden in the last two days, I've had two opportunities. So thanks a lot, Michael.
Michael Zittel | Serr.biz | SEO expert (43:26):
Yeah, you bet. All right, everybody, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below, feel free to reach out to Keith. Thanks for watching. I'm Mike with Serr.biz Search engine ranking rules.
