187 | Transform Your Brand: Using Content Fortresses to Draw Your Ideal Client with Lyndsay Cambridge and Martin Huntbach

Are you tired of attracting the wrong clients? Want to know how you can set yourself apart in the saturated world of content marketing? In this episode, we delve into the world of 'Content Fortresses' with our guest experts.

Our experts, Lyndsay Cambridge and Martin Huntbach of Jammy Digital, break down the concept of a 'Content Fortress', a strategic approach to content marketing that attracts the right clients and repels the wrong ones. They share their insights, experiences, and methods to help you build a strong, unique brand that speaks to your ideal audience.

Here are some of the topics we covered:
🎯 The concept of 'Content Fortress' and its importance in modern marketing.
📚 Understanding 'Authority Content' and how it boosts your brand reputation.
🧲 'Attracting Content' - the secret to drawing in your ideal client.
🚫 The power of 'Repelling Content' and how it saves you from the wrong clients.
💡 'Education Content' - why it's crucial to educate before selling.
🎁 The magic of 'Bonus Content' and how it adds value to your clients.
🔄 The role of 'Process Content' in streamlining your work.
🌍 The importance of 'Culture and Opinion Content' in telling your brand's story.

Lyndsay and Martin are experts in content marketing and have built their business around these principles and have shared their wealth of knowledge with us. You can connect with them on their website, where they provide more valuable resources and further delve into the world of content marketing.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to revolutionize your content marketing strategy!

Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏

Transcript

Isar Meitis: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis, your host, and today we're going to talk about marketing and more specifically about content marketing. And the goal of marketing is to attract and nurture clients. That's why marketing exists And content is the tool that a lot of people use to walk people through the know, trust. Journey. So that's like a given and everybody knows that. But the question is how do you create really good content that truly attracts the right people? And like my guests today, say, as importantly, repel the wrong people. And that's an interesting concept by itself. So my guests today are Lindsay Cambridge and Martin Hunt Batch and who own and run Jammy Digital. It's a multi six figure content marketing agency. And they, what they say is it's for people who are not afraid to stand out, which I think is brilliant. And if you look at their content, it's really cool. It's really unique. Their entire website looks like a cartoonish, kind of thing, which again, very different, which you'll see from there very. Positive, vibrant vibe really shows who they are and again, attracts the right people and probably repels the people who are, don't, dive into that. So they definitely walk the walk and not just talk the talk. And we're going to, they're also the authors of. A book called The Content Fortress, and today we're going to talk about the eight pillars that put together a content fortress to be a strong fortress. Why the hell do you need that? And why is that vital to the success of your business? So Lindsay and Martin, welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator.

Martin: 2:36

Thanks so much for having us. We're really excited. Thank. Amazing

Isar Meitis: 2:40

intro. Awesome. Thank you. I've worked on that. Let's really start with why. So in before diving into what is the pillar pillars and how to put them together, what is the content fortress and why

Martin: 2:55

the hell do I need one? I. Yeah, so the content Fortress was born from necessity, actually. so when we were running a sort of general marketing agency, web design, logo, logos, branding, we found that we were attracting lots of, Kind of clients who we weren't the right fit for us, they'd get in touch. They'd either not be right, not have the budget, maybe they'd be too demanding. Maybe they'd just not be at a place in their business that they needed our help, and we were finding that we're spending an awful lot of time speaking to these people. Filter in through the good leads from the bad leads. And then at the end, we just got a little bit tired with the effort, the time and energy it took to get somebody to sign up with us. so we realized that we needed to, it's a good place to be where we're getting leads and inquiries. A lot of businesses. A struggle with that, and we have always been a big fan of content and creating content in order to attract traffic, leads and sales. So that was working for us. What wasn't working was the kind of clients that got in touch and wanted to work with us. So we just decided to go down a, an avenue of using content to appeal to our ideal customers and, and as a byproduct, repel the people that really weren't the right fit and. From doing this and committing to it, we were really able to transform our business, wasn't

Lyndsay: 4:20

we? Yeah, definitely. And then part of the big problem was, is when we were attracting anyone and everyone, it's not just speaking to the wrong people, we actually, took on some of the wrong people as clients. and that can anyone who's experienced that, we've actually done some of our own research on this. And, I think about. 84% of people have had a difficult client within the last year. we've researched over 500 business owners who explained this, their businesses. And anyone who's listening, who's experienced that, knows how much time it can absorb in your business and how much money that can actually cost you. not just from your, financial perspective and the time in your business, but also your mental health as well. It can really have an impact. so actually, prevent. Presenting bad clients is a very good, decision to make in your business. And, as a b a nice byproduct, it actually attracts the right

Martin: 5:09

ones too.

Isar Meitis: 5:11

I love that. I wanna relate to two different things that you said because I think they're really important. one is one of maybe my most successful podcast episodes, which actually I was a guest on somebody else's podcast and he took off, so I asked her to release it on my podcast as well is called You Want Less Leads. And people are like, what? No, I don't want less leads. I want more leads. I'm like, no, you want the least amount of leads that will make the most amount of money for you because all the others are a waste of resources. You're wasting marketing resources, you're wasting sales resources, you're wasting time, you're wasting money, and so you really want the least amount of leads. That will convert because all the rest is just a waste. And once you get into that mindset and you figure out how can I, and really I think what you have is the holy grail, which is how can I tweak my content Yeah. To do things. One is attract really my exact target audience, so all the rest are just not gonna fill up the form to talk to me because they know I won't be able to solve the problem. And the other half, which I literally haven't heard, Anybody do before. And I really like the concept is how do I repel? So not just I'm trying to attract very specific people. I wanna make it very clear to people who are not within my niche audience that I don't wanna work with you. Yes. So I really think it's fantastic. Yeah. let's dive right in. so I think the concept is clear. What are the eight pillars? Let's go through them one by one and figure out why. Each of them are necessary and how to actually create it in the most

Martin: 6:44

effective way. Yeah, no problem. So I'll go through the pillars first of all, so that you can get an understanding of they're all, how they all work and compliment each other. so the first one is repelling content. certain types of, so that's the beginning. The beginning. That's the beginning, absolutely. and it was quite deliberate because if you get into the rhythm of creating the other kind of content first, then you're going to attract lots of new leads and inquiries because of the, the concept. So it is important that you have a mindset of repelling before you do anything, and who it is from your previous clients, who you want to repel and who you wanna attract. And that's why it's the first one. and to compliment that, obviously we have attracting content. So there are certain business owners out there that have people they wanna reach, but currently they, that they're not reaching them for whatever reason. And again, we can explore more about that. We also have sales content, which is content you can create in order to pull people in right now and, and sell your products and services. And we've got pricing content, which talks about pricing within your services, products and services to make things really transparent. And then we also have process content, which talks about the processes that you use within your organization. We have guiding content, which is used to pre-qualify people and get them and their mindset ready to work with you, which is an interesting concept I don't see a lot of people talk about. And then we have opinion content. Which is about you being more open about your opinions and having something that you can stand for. And then culture, content, which is really how you can make people fall in love with you as an organization and have people, tripping over themselves wanting to work with you. and while obviously we can explore all

Lyndsay: 8:25

of that. Yeah, definitely. And he always does those ones because I'm guaranteed to forget one of them.

Isar Meitis: 8:33

Awesome. Really, let's really start going one by one and talk about what is the actual content you put in there, how you figure it out. What kind of content is it? Is it written? Is it video? Is it blog post? Is it like, what kind of content do you generate? And maybe even the relevant distribution channels for each one. And then I think we'll cover like the whole gamut of what people need to understand and like you suggested, let's start with repelling content. What is repelling content and how the hell do I know exactly who am I trying to repel and what's gonna repel them?

Lyndsay: 9:09

Yeah. so repelling content is the most simple, but other also the most therapeutic content that you'll ever make in your life. And it's essentially content that tells people exactly who you don't want to work with and who you aren't the right fit for. And there's two types of people really that you want to repel. there's people that. Generally aren't very nice people, that are treat you like an employee, say, or, don't respect your time and expertise. Maybe they're rude and unfortunately they are few and far between those people, but you actively do want to repel them. and the second type are actually usually very nice people. they'll pay on time, they'll talk to you respectfully, but they're not quite ready yet for your products and services. so we like to actually call these people damsel in distress. and I realize that's a term we've actually had more male damsels in distress in our business than females. However, this is what we like to call them because essentially they are very needy. They require a lot of your time, and energy. and you have to spend a lot of time communicating with them. so to give you an example, in our business when we did web design in our business, we had a, Woman who was made redundant from work and she had this redundancy money and she wanted to set up a business. so she, she was really excited to work with us. She was really lovely. and she gave us some money to build her a website, but because she'd never built a business before, we became her business mentor, so we were talking to about had sel a business address. Her how to get a business logo. Oh, get a logo. We were talking to her about all sorts of things. the millions of questions that you have when you set up a business and you're first starting out. So that absorbs so much of our time. And when her website went live, she was asking why she wasn't getting sales straight away and and it was she

Martin: 10:57

that they will come. That's,

Lyndsay: 10:58

yeah. And we felt terrible cause she almost had this expectation of, What? why? and it felt really bad for us because, we thought, isn't it obvious, but actually it's not to someone first starting out. so we wrote a piece of content that said why new businesses shouldn't invest thousands of pounds in a website. Even if they have that money, they should test out their ideas first. They should get to understand the market, all the things that you should do, in your business starting out. and we wrote that so it would prevent that problem from ever happening and again, in our business.

Martin: 11:29

Yeah, exactly. And, and it's, that's, so that kind of covers like the damals, the people that aren't the right fit for your business. but we found that quite a lot of repelling content would also come from frustrations, which is, if someone gets in touch and like that's a frustration, which is if that customer. as an example, bond us up and said, I'm not getting any sales. I'm not happy with this. Then that led to another piece of content that would be reasons your website isn't successful, which we published both of these articles. Because of a direct situation. So quite often what we'll do is we'll write a piece of content either for our business, offer a client, cuz we write content these days, that we would essentially say, What are all the reasons that you might fail at this thing? Even if you're paying someone, you don't have the right product. You don't, you're not promoting the content out there, you're not doing these things because it's important that we educate, our, the close audience, but the people who might think about getting in touch with us, we want them to be aware. If you are coming to us and thinking this is a, a magic, a ma, a magic pill, and it's just going to change everything, it still might not be right for you to hire us. And what happens is when we create this content and we say, don't hire us if you are this, it sounds really, scary, and potentially even arrogant. But actually throughout the content we say, here's why you shouldn't hire us because of this thing. However, if you do this and you do this, then great, as long as But it's just a way for us to take that kind of, next step of success and say, be aware that this needs to happen in order for you to get this result. and I think it just comes across as more transparent and even if people decide not to work with us, which is the point of the content at this point. Who's to say that they might not be in six months after we've educated them. I love

Isar Meitis: 13:15

that. I wanna touch on summarize this point. The goal of this content is to be very clear on. If you want the prayer requisites people need to have in place and the stuff they need to be willing to do in order for them to see results if and when they work with you. Yes. And so by doing so, you're a providing them some guidance on if you don't have, A way to distribute the content or promote the content, then don't hire us to create content for you, because it's not going to work if you don't have any marketing channels. you may have a website, but the website is worthless because nobody's gonna know it exists, so don't spend the money. So I love it. I think it's both an educational channel to an extent as well as a very clear, hoop that people have to jump through in order to say, okay, I knowingly. Jump to the other side of this because I got all the ticks in all the boxes. that they said that I need to have. Awesome. next is what kind of content? Attracting

Martin: 14:12

content. Attracting content. Attracting content, okay. Exactly. So this is a really interesting one because throughout business you naturally pivot. You pivot, you might, start taking on different kind of clients in different industries, in different niches. And sometimes you don't wanna have to start from scratch. You actually just want to start producing some content to say, oh, by the way, we serve this kind of person. We serve this kind of client. and in the past we've, we found it difficult initially to attract more corporate clients with bigger budgets. So what we've done in the past is produce content, when we're only working with small local businesses. We wrote a piece of content is why, larger businesses want to hire us to build their website and how this kind of client might benefit from working with a small logo design. You can imagine how it would apply, and we just fleshed out that content to say. Essentially you list all of the benefits of why somebody, what somebody would get after working with you and loop it into who it is you want to attract. it's a really powerful one because it goes against the repelling content, and a lot of the times it's about just communicating what products and services you have. results that you've got. You can include results and case studies of examples to get people to understand and to believe that you can serve them, you can help them, and you can do that through educational

Lyndsay: 15:37

content. Yeah, definitely. and, this worked really well for us actually because we've always, we've grown now, but the time we were a very small team. There was just the two of us, and we attracted some very big Clients, that would normally go for a much bigger agency because we created that kind of content that really spoke to them and said,"yes, you might think that a smaller team might not work for you, but if you've very experienced, having account managers that change all the time and not actually speaking to the owner of the business, you won't have that with us." And you really tackle the problems that someone has had in the past, maybe with someone different, and that's where you can position yourself as the, the alternative and this kind of content is really great for kind of small businesses and freelancers that wanna attract, maybe bigger businesses. and they can create something that really gets in front of them and speaks to the problems that they're having and how maybe they can help and how they're different. so it does re work really

Martin: 16:28

well. Yeah. As an example, one of our clients who runs a martial arts school, he decided to, rather than just create content about the the reasons your, children should take part in our class or how to do a roundhouse kick. he produced content, which is about how, a martial arts helps with bullying or prevent bullying. So it attracted an entire different parent demographic that we're interested in safeguard in their child in that sense, rather than, I want to kick, I want to learn, I want to be a power ranger or whatever. It was a way for him to to carve out a line in the sand and say, we are not gonna teach your child how to be a black belt and be a cobra kai. It's a case of here's No, that sounds cool. but it's a case of just saying, look and we're open to this new kind of person. and by really thinking about the individual benefits of what it is that you offer as a service provider within your products, the key benefits that people might not be aware of, that's a really. Good task to write down all of those hidden benefits that people don't initially think of, and then use content to explain what those, what they are. Brilliant.

Isar Meitis: 17:40

I wanna touch and highlight one very specific and important point, and then I want to give a twist on this that I literally heard this morning that blew my mind. the first thing is, in order to make all of this successful, you really need to understand who your target audience is. Because you need to understand what's gonna attract them. Meaning what are the problems that you can solve for them better than other people, which is everything that you're saying. and so it's all about really understanding who. Can you best serve in the most efficient way and what makes them tick? So that's kinda one thing that I'm hearing again and again in the background. The really cool thing that I heard this morning is there's a guy, he's a code writer in I think Pakistan or somewhere around Indiana. I don't wanna insult anybody of calling all these people the same thing, but I don't remember where he is from. And his thing is writing apps for Shopify. So that's his business. He writes apps for people who has shops and he. Used chat, G p T. So he wrote his own app that went and scanned, I think a hundred thousand Shopify stores. What they're selling, how they're selling, what's their price thing, what language they're using, what kind of audience they have, how many, how much, like all the data that he could scrape. And then he had Chachi PT go to each and every one and write a personalized message on what app. That could help them sell better. So going from a persona that you're talking about to a person, because the tools are capable of doing this today. And the tool that he built, did the scraping, wrote the thing, so invented an app for them and send them an email. Yeah. And then he had out of a hundred thousand emails sent, he had about. 15% that actually replied back and said, oh my God, this is awesome. The crazy thing is he didn't have a clue what he offered. He paid up those apps, and but the reason I'm saying all of this is we live in an era right now where you can go a step further. With actually less work. Yeah. So you can have a machine do the research for you on everything you want to know on your client, and then go mer more personalized. So it's not a persona anymore, but it's this company. So like an A b M play, but without having a big Ab M team. Brilliant. let's go next. So this was attracting content. The next one, if I remember correctly, was pricing or maybe sales. I

Martin: 20:06

may be confusing. Yeah, sales content. So sales content is my favorite personally. Lindsay loves repelling content. I love sales content. Sales content is the easiest way for you to get customers now. Okay, so what that means is when you have products and services, sometimes we have to think about really interesting ways to promote them. do I do a launch? Do I, reach out to like JVs and do I get them to send us clients? And it can all feel a little bit overbearing and scary. so sales content. Really sidesteps that which is it's content, so it's helpful, it's content, so you can share it on social media, you can repurpose it to Instagram carousels. You can do all of that good stuff, but it clearly articulates what your products and services are and who you help in the form of blog content, or we used it in the form of blog content. We've had some clients do as YouTube videos or as in a podcast for instance, there's plenty of examples where people use this kind of content. But it's quite an interesting cuz it has a helpful edge and this is the important thing. So rather than you copy and paste your sales page onto your blog, that's not what we're talking about. It's much a case of. As an example, when you launch a new service, you could write and everything you need to know about our new service, and it essentially is, people love FAQs and it's more like an FAQ than it would be a sales page. You could break down absolutely everything from that particular content because, nobody complains when you create too much content about your products and services. And the reality is that. We live in a time where everybody is preaching about providing valuable content. So there's just so many articles or videos or YouTube or podcast episodes out there, which is the top 10 ways to do this, how to land a job in three steps, and it's all very content value heavy. So when someone comes out with an article and says, I've got a new service, or I'm running a new event, or I've got a new, SaaS product. By creating this piece of content, it's actually really refreshing to actually say, here's everything you need to know about what we're doing. Because people like to know behind the scenes, people love behind the scenes content, and this is a hybrid between a sales page, an F faq, and a behind the scenes piece of content. And that's just. One piece of content that you can create for one service. There's just so many more,

Lyndsay: 22:31

isn't there? Yeah, there's there's so much more. It's really thinking about whenever you make a change to your product and service for whatever reason, there's always an opportunity in there to actually highlight that to your audience. So for every time we increase our prices, and people find this very bizarre, but every time we increase our prices, we shout about it. So we create a piece of content called Why are we increasing our prices? And. The, we, I mean we monitor this on our emails and the click through rate to that is insane. And essentially what you're doing in that piece of content is you are listing the amazing things about what you do in your service. That is all you are doing. there's an opportunity in there if you want. You can say, you can get in at my prices now, or you don't have to. but when, whenever we produce this piece of content, it is always performed incredibly well. because what you are doing is you're getting someone to read. All the amazing things about you in a way that they wouldn't do and sit down generally on a sales page unless they're, really interested in working with you. But, when you do it with this piece of content, it works incredibly well, and you can do that with any changes in your business. or to your products and services. You can do that with any change. There's always a kind of way that you can make it really interesting. People find this stuff really interesting. Even, everything you need to know about my whatever it is, you would think. do many people find that interesting? But actually they really do. and we know because we monitor this on it for our clients and ourselves. People click on this kind of content. they find it really interesting to see how your business is working, and understand more about it. And it does lead to sales,

Martin: 24:02

which is really good. Yeah, it does, especially when you loop this into your emails, because a lot of the times, one of the, one of the things that we always tell our clients is make sure that when you produce content, you're emailing it to your list, you're shouting about it on social media. Google love it when you've got real visitors on a site so that they can see how well it performs, how engaging it is. and this is why it's so important to take content sometimes. And if you only think about content from an SEO standpoint, I'm just gonna write lots of content and hope that Google reward me. I. Then you're missing out on so many other avenues because people are at various stages throughout the buying process. Maybe people are, maybe they were looking for you last year, but they're not searching for that thing on Google right now, but they are on your email list. So this is why we need to be looping those people in our audience and actually putting it in a very educational and transparent way, like producing content, like why we're increasing our prices, or what changes are we making to our product and why. Or everything you need to know about this product or this service. And one of the, one of my favorite ones is, you know how you can work with us. This is just a remarkable piece of content because all you're doing is listing your services, but within the intro, you essentially just say, It suddenly occurred to me that, you might not know all of the services that we offer, and rather than you jump on a call with us, we just thought, we've had someone reach out to us recently and they've asked us what services we have to offer. So we just realized that we've not put this in an article. So here you are. Yeah, there's,

Lyndsay: 25:34

there's so many people I follow on LinkedIn. I'm like, they say amazing stuff. I have no idea what they do. Yeah.

Martin: 25:39

Yeah. I

Isar Meitis: 25:41

wanna add something really cool that you touched on a few times that again goes back Breadcrumbs to across everything that you're saying. Yeah. Is the way you produce the content is from actual life lessons of things that are happening with clients, right? Yeah. So why would you change your pro, your product or your service because, oh my God, this is an opportunity for us to do this because there's a demand for our clients. You write this down, you create a piece of content around it. You had a client implement something. That you have given them in a different unique way you have a piece of, so one of the biggest problems that people have is, okay, but what do I create the content about? And the easiest thing, and the way I do this is I have a running sheet. I use, air table, but you can use anything like a spreadsheet or a notetaking app or voice notes. Like I do that sometimes as well when I'm driving. just. Every idea of stuff that comes up because a piece of content you've seen, because something that happens with a client because something happens within the company, write it down and suddenly you have a list that you will never, ever finish consuming. So just pick up the next one that is probably gonna be the most impactful in your eyes at that moment and create that piece of content. Awesome. So the next one is pricing. After. Yeah. Okay. Pricing

Martin: 26:53

content. Pricing content. You knew more than me then

Isar Meitis: 26:56

I took notes,

Lyndsay: 27:00

and so your pricing content is pretty much what it says on the tin. so it's essentially, advising people all about your prices. we are very much advocates. For putting prices on your website and making it clear what you charge. Not, you don't, we don't say that you have to be exact, particularly if you're a service-based industry. but giving your, your people on your website, your prospects, an idea, at least an inkling of around about what you charge, and creating content around that. so people have lots of questions and potential objections around. Your prices, they might wonder why you charge more than someone else or why you are more expensive than others in your industry. That's a question that you can answer through content. Oh, why You're too cheap.

Martin: 27:46

Yeah. why is it that you charge. 3000 when this other company charged 50,000.

Lyndsay: 27:51

Yep. And that's quite common in website design, cuz that goes from, one pound to a hundred thousand pounds. So Yeah. you can answer those kind of questions. and obviously, things like what can make the price of something go up, what can make it go down? So for many of us, we might be doing. Different projects and some might be more, costly than others. So you can talk about, okay, so if you are on this budget, this is what you can do to reduce that. You can, take this and this off. Or you can use, even if you are, a B2C business, you can say you can use this material instead of that material. That, all those kind of things that really help the customer understand everything they need to know about your prices and making them feel very comfortable before they get in touch with you about how much you charge and whether they can, they,

Martin: 28:35

they can afford that. Yeah. And this idea came from, a friend of ours, Marcus Sheridan. he wrote a book called They Ask You Answer, which is remarkable. I was just looking for them and, He, he, we've tried adding our prices to our website at times in the past, and then we've had feedback that he shouldn't do that because, we don't know what the client wants. so we tried, we've had our prices on and off, on and off constantly. It was only until Marcus started educating everybody and saying, look, there the competitors, They, if they do list their prices on the website, then they, chances are, they're the ones who are going to get the phone calls or get, because they're being seen as more transparent. and I think it's just a case of understanding that you don't have to give people, like Lindsay said, the exact pricing. we do now because we have packages and we've created a package that's perfect. There's a, there's always a package for someone. but some people don't. And the reason that's concerning is because if you don't give people an indication to how much you charge, then. five outta 10 calls, if you're lucky, might say, oh, I'm sorry. I've just spent half an hour on the phone with you or an hour on a call, and I actually can't afford that. I didn't know it was going to cost this. Therefore, you've wasted the time. So it does come back to repelling the people who are not right for you and attracting the people who are, it just means that whenever we send a proposal, it goes ahead. if somebody does want to request a pricing, even if they want something bespoke, they can see a kind of price range on our website and they can read any of the articles where we talk about the prices we charge, and, And even if they want something bespoke, we can make a bespoke package for them. We don't often do that, but, we don't need proposals because we talk ab We, most of the time people just decide, I know which package I want, I just wanna speak to you, ask a few final questions, and then move forward. It just makes everything easier.

Lyndsay: 30:26

Yeah, definitely. And if you, I just say, oh, sorry,

Isar Meitis: 30:29

go on. No, I wanna jump in with one, two important things that come out of this. One is transparency. And again, that goes back to everything that you said. The more transparent you are. And I think some of the next topics we're gonna talk about, like process, culture, and opinion. I. Are mostly transparency, like all the other stuff was mostly about the service, about the product, about the company. This is more about, okay, who am I? So the more transparent you are, the better off you are because people understand. But the other thing is just put yourself in the side of the buyer. Yeah. And think about when you doing research, if you can compare, you're not gonna just call company X. You're gonna look at 20 companies and then have a short list of five, and then you're gonna compare as much as you can con compare with the five. So you don't have to do five phone calls, you wanna do two or maybe three. And so if out of those 20 companies, 18 are gonna show pricing and you don't, the chances you're getting a phone call are much smaller because you're like, I don't know how much you charge. I have enough other options. It's not like you're the only one offering these kind of service or product. The other thing that I really like about what you said about what you did is how do you productize a service? The problem with services is that they're hard to. Put a price to them because okay, how many hours is it gonna be? Do you want, how many pages do you want on your website? How much content do you want us to produce? Do you want us to also distribute the content or just create the content? do you like, there's so many. What if questions in a service that's okay, just call us and we'll figure out what you want. And then the problem is, you have all these conversations that may not be productive for you and for them. So everybody's wasting their time. But if you can productize your services, say, okay, here's a bundle. Here's another bundle, here's a fifth bundle. Here's 10 bundles that I sell, but this is what I sell. So you pick. A bucket that you fall into, and that's very clearly states what you're getting. Now you understand what you're buying. So I think it's another great tip on how to take something that is less tangible and then again, less attractive and potentially a waste of time, and turn it into something that is very clear, very transparent and easy for people to decide whether it's for them before they pick up the phone or fill up a form. yeah, so this is. Pricing. The next, I think was guiding, am I guessing? Yes. Yes. Guiding content. Guiding content. Okay. So what's guiding

Martin: 32:46

content?

Lyndsay: 32:47

so guiding content is essentially where you help guide someone, to basically make the right. Buying decision for them. so it's extremely helpful content that, aims to not only just promote you, but also promote others in your industry, other options in your industry so that someone finds the right option for them. so we created, for example, we created kind of a bias. Guide on how to find the right web designer. And in that we discussed, very cheap web designers you might want to hire to massive agencies that you might want to hire to, to help you with that and everywhere in between. now obviously we weren't a very cheap web designer, we also went a massive agency. but we discussed those options and the pros and cons of those options. and also the pros and cons of hiring, a team like ours. And the aim of that really is to make sure that the people that come to you are the right fit. and they fully understand what it is that you do, the different options out there, and the fact that, you are the perfect match for them. and this always sounds really scary when you say, you're promoting are the people. You may even promote your competitors in this. And, but what this does is it shows people that you are not out to make. A quick book from everyone. You are there and you are very specific about who you want to work with and who you're the right fit for. but you're also really helpful as well because you're trying to help people just find the right company for them. so it's, it builds just a huge amount of trust, this kind of content and really does help a lot of people. so even if, someone actually uses it, and doesn't go to you straight away. They might do, down the line as well, which has happened to us quite a few times. Yeah.

Martin: 34:25

it's about guiding them essentially to make the right buying decision by sometimes saying, this is who we are and it might not be the right time for you. there's this concept that we, refer to as, I'm trying to remember the terminology that we use. It's the, it's the Troy, you know the Trojan Horse? Trojan Horse, yeah. So the Trojan Horse is a case of somebody getting very excited about working with you because they've read your content. They'll love what you do. They'll love your brand. They'll love your business. They'll love that you're transparent about pricing. All great. But this Trojan Horse client might be so excited that they say, yes, I want to work with you before they're ready. So this prevents that from happening, which is okay. So this is where you have to when you get a few, not red flags, but a few senses that they're getting really excited to wanna work with you. And they might not be. Thinking about it logically, it might just be an emotional decision, which is where guiding content comes in. Very helpful. Because when you publish it, we always say people don't care what you say. They care what you publish. And if you are prepared to say, no, we, this is important that you're aware of this before you work with us. Cause it might not work. And again, it does come back. re with repelling content, but it's a case of you drawing a line in the sand and saying, listen, it's important that we don't jump into this, without understanding all of the moving pieces. So for instance, say, bur us as a content agency, the guiding content would be, what to do before you hire a content writing agency. It would be make sure your website's built, make sure that you have a brand. Make sure that you. Your aware audiences and Yeah. Yeah, that your audiences. Cuz what we don't want to do is do all of that as well. It's a case of all what we do isn't that magic? you know that, that silver bullet, it's a case of you having enough content and enough knowledge in your industry to say, Let's make sure that we do this properly. and guiding content helps someone go from complete beginner, to intermediate, to then expert. Like I'm fully aware of exactly what you do. Yeah, and I've done some things leading into this conversation so that by, by the time they speak to you on that call, they're ready. I. The calls, like these are the shortest calls cuz they've done so much education. and we once signed someone up for a project that was worth over 10,000 with a 21 minute phone call because we had so much content leading up to that point that when they spoke to us, we didn't have to talk, we didn't have to say anything. They'd already consumed so much content, they'd already leveled up and leveled up so that they were. At the exact perfect stage to hire us, and that's what guiding content can help with. Yeah. Yeah. I like

Isar Meitis: 37:05

this a lot. I think one thing that's, very important about this kind of content, probably all of them, but this kind of content because the wor that's the world I know very well is. You need to communicate with them in various different ways, right? So one of maybe the best ways to do guiding content is being on podcasts. Cuz if you, cuz what we are doing right now, right? We're sharing what you guys are doing. We're sharing your expertise in a very clear, detailed, structured way that people consume our, oh my God, this makes perfect sense to me. Which can then guide them to read your blog and follow you on YouTube or whatever else you post content. But all I'm saying is having. Your content in multiple buckets, especially this kind of content. So some of it can live more on your website, some of it can be more in emails, but this kind of content really tells people why they should pick specific things and what considerations they need to have, which may or may need, may or may not lead them to you. Which sounds tricky, but it goes back to your beginning of. If it's not leading to me, I actually don't want to work with you. Yeah. so I think it's perfect. I really like the concept. next one, process,

Martin: 38:16

sorry, podcasts. I just wanna talk on that cause I completely agree with you. podcasts and various other content avenues are wonderful, especially when it comes to guiding content and repelling people. Because one of the things we talk about are, What about if somebody doesn't consume your content before speaking to you? There's this kind of, sometimes people say, there's a massive gaping hole in this concept, because if someone just picks up the phone and speaks to me, our books are calling my calendar and they've not consumed any content, then what are we gonna do? It's completely, irrelevant. we call these people content dodgers. they just wanna speak to you and they don't, take the time to consume the content. And the reality is this is where we have to, ground everything to a halt. And in the email when they send, we wanna book a call with you. We have a very specific wording pattern that we want to use. And we, hopefully your listeners will be able to implement this as well, which is, let's jump on a call, I'm free at this time, and we say we'd love to speak to you on call. it'd be really interesting to speak to you about the project and what's involved before we do that. I want you to consume, I want you to read these three articles. I want you to listen to this specific podcast episode. I want you to download this pdf f report, two or three. I want you to review our pricing information so that you are aware of how much we charge when we work with people. There's a few different things that you can include, isn't it? Yeah, and

Lyndsay: 39:37

it, and it sounds, I think when we explain that to people, they think, oh my gosh, do I really have to get someone to do that? Will they not find me rude? Every single time we've done this, we've just received an email of a huge thanks. because if someone wants to book a call with you and you get back to them and you say, that sounds brilliant. before we do that, and just to make sure that you have all the knowledge that you need before you, work with us. Here's our pricing. Here's a great podcast episode that describes, how to find the right, web designer or whatever it might be. and here's another piece of content, like a bias guide or something. They're just incredibly thankful. They're like, wow, this is amazing. and it shows them actually, you're not just trying to jump on a call to them to sell to them. and you are just providing huge amounts of value. so you look great, which is always really nice, but it's a way of Yeah. Stopping people from absorbing your time that haven't, perhaps, haven't, consumed any of your content before. Yeah,

Martin: 40:27

that's a little bit of a velvet rope as well. people are more excited about speaking to you and they absolutely. Cherish that time. Yeah. Because you have said, wait, before you give me money. I just want you to make sure that this is right for you.

Isar Meitis: 40:42

No, I think it's brilliant and for all the reasons that you mentioned. I'll say just one thing that relates to this is if you. Make sure. So I, you know what, I'll phrase it a different way. I, a guy that ended up being my business partner, before we became business partner, started using, so he was on my podcast. And just going back to what you said, he started using this interview. He said, this became my business card. Like when people wanted to work with me, I said, okay, go check. Go listen to this. Yeah. If you still want to talk to me and work with me afterwards, gimme a call. If not, okay, no problem. And if you find. That one, two pieces of content that really tell your story in the best way, all aspects of it. And it could be, 32nd video on TikTok. Probably not, but it could be on the right cases. Could be a blog post, could be an article you wrote on somebody else's, platform. Could be anything, but that really tells your story well. And you can now use that as the filter, then you really make people's lives, very easy. And we even done this on our website. We literally had a section on our website pretty close to the top, said, you shouldn't work with us if, and then you're not gonna miss that if it's on somebody's homepage. Because then going back to your repelling content, I wanna take the next three things and kinda bundle them together because I think they go together, right? The process, the culture, and the opinion. Yeah. Are more of, let me tell you who I am and who we are versus here is how we do business. Am I correct?

Lyndsay: 42:13

Yeah, definitely. Yes. Yeah. So very simply, process content is the process of how you work. And the reason this works really well is if you have a very specific way of working and someone doesn't fit in with that way, maybe they need something done tomorrow and you're like, no, cuz I ha I take eight weeks, then that's not gonna work. And it just prevents that. and, it also prevents that kind of, By remorse really when someone starts working with you, and they don't know what's going on, that can be very scary, for someone. so that's when you start getting emails going, where are we up to with this? Or what happens next in the process? If you ever get those kind of things, like what's the next step in this process? Or what's, what do I need to do next? What do you need from me? That's clear indicator that you need to create that kind of content that's outlined your processes there and then culture and opinion content are quite similar, aren't they?

Martin: 42:59

Yeah. they are, everything within the content fortress is linked and you use various different content and intertwine it. but culture, content and opinion content is born from your experiences the same way that process content is in sales, content is, it's a, it's born from conversations. And I think the entire thing is really only possible if you're having conversations with clients and you're trying to carve out a content fortress, before you've started your business, for instance. It's not really gonna work. and that's why it's important that opinion, content and culture, content for us to put our brand online and for us to say we believe in this being our website, we believe in this being our colors and our styles and the language we use. We have to have a clearly defined value and vision for our business. And sometimes that means having a strong opinion and talking about it like, I'm frustrated by these SEO companies doing this thing cuz it's not good, it's not good for the industry and it's gonna cost people money. That's good for culture and building your overall, the feeling around your brand. But it's also great because people will latch onto it and say, this person's real. They've got an opinion. It's not another faceless organization. It's not just another blog writer who's just writing content because they're told what to write. But it makes everything else easier or unnecessary. for instance, the reason that we can carve out the perfect product and, package it up and make it so that it's very simple, is because we've done this ourselves. We know the kind of clients we wanna attract. We know the kind of business we wanna run. We've just packaged everything up to say, this is what we would recommend if we spent 45 minutes on a call with you. And the only way that we can do that is from producing content that lives and breathes into the culture that we have and the idea that we have for our business and brand. But by having some opinions in there as well and getting people to understand that we genuinely do care. and calling out things that we don't like. It just builds that momentum and that energy around our brand, which then attracts our ideal client. So it sounds really, everything up until this point sounds very practical and specific. if somebody wants a prize, write an article, record a video, whereas this is the kind of the culture, content and opinion. Content seems more vague and fluffy. it's just becoming more and more. Important. Even some, sometimes more important than everything else, which is when I land on your website, when I read a piece of content, do I get a good impression of who you are and who you're not? And that's what content and culture. Content and having some opinions can really help you achieve it. Makes everything else easier, like packaging up your products, like charging a premium price. If you have that nailed, you can really

Lyndsay: 45:40

do a lot. Yeah, there's a reason we don't attract People that believe in hustle culture and waking up at 5:00 AM and going to sleep at 1:00 AM and working un expecting emails on weekends and things like that. Because the way we come across and we are very family orientated and so people, we don't ever attract those kind of people, because that, that comes across in everything that we do in our culture and our values and things like that. And so you do end up attracting very similar kind of, people with similar values to you if you produce that kind of

Martin: 46:07

content. Yeah. and just on that point as well, I think it's really important to say, and Lin Lindsay mentioned this at the start of the episode, which is, we know this from our audience because we speak to them a lot, but we also recently did this survey, which is, a report of how other businesses have had to deal with clients. So you've had to deal with concerns and deal with problems, like you mentioned, getting up early then, From this report that we did this survey, and we'll send you a link after it, but it's the statistics about how many people are affected by clients because they don't have this fortress in place because they're not producing enough content, they're not getting that the brand out there. And then, and I think it was seven out of 10 people have lost sleep due to difficult clients, which is just. Frightening. Just genuinely we were shocked by that one. And there's lots of other things, like Lindsay mentioned before, like 84% of people have had a difficult client and there was, a boatload of other stats that really surprised us. And this is why we're, if we sound passionate, this is because we dealt with this, we dealt with stressful clients and we needed to do this. And clearly from the recent report we've done, other people are feeling the same way. Yeah. so it is important that you, it's,

Lyndsay: 47:15

it's an example that content actually is an example of culture content, Has absolutely nothing to do When we created this report that has nothing to do with what we sell, which is content marketing. however, people have got in touch with us, to work with us, from the book and from this kind of things because this is what we talk about. These are our values. We want to help businesses lead less stressful lives. business owners lead less stressful lives and they're very similar to that, and they really lean into that and they're like, oh my gosh, you've actually just, said what I've been feeling all this time. and that is what gets people really passionate and really wanting to work with us. It's that kind of content that. They really connect with.

Isar Meitis: 47:55

Yeah. at the end of the day, people are looking for unique point of view or unique point of view on the market or unique point of view on life or unique point of view on whatever topic they're struggling with. And if you can give them that again, like everything else you talked about, it's either gonna attract them or they say, I disagree and I don't wanna work with this guy because he's an idiot. Which is still fine cuz you probably don't wanna work with that guy or gal. Martin Lindsay, this was phenomenal. Like really, obviously it's not the first time you're doing this and you understand your stuff and you really have. Very good reasoning and a very clear breakdown. So it's not just, oh, you gotta create content or you gotta create this kind of content. It's very well structured and very well explained. I really appreciate the time and I really appreciate your sharing the whole process with us. Thank you so much.

Martin: 48:40

You're very welcome. Thank you. That's very nice. Really appreciate it. And yeah, we just love this stuff, as you can probably tell. I can't, you can talk for hours.

Isar Meitis: 48:49

Awesome. Thank you guys. Thank you again.

Lyndsay: 48:52

Much. Thank you so much. Thank you.