ETHAN BAIRD: 

On today’s podcast, we have Petrumarié Jacobs, she is somebody who I used to work with ages ago in my previous history and radio, and now we’re going to be talking  about things social media and marketing.

So PT how’s it? 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Ethan it has been great, it is great seeing you out here in the virtual spaces doing your  thing, but I have been good, I have been safe.

I have been sane for the most part of  it, so I am happy to be here. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Today we are going to be going to talk about a bunch of stuff relating to marketing, but  before we do that, let us just talk a little bit about you.

So tell us kind of, for somebody  does not know who you are, what is your background and what do you do currently? 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

I am  Petrumarié and I would always introduce myself, as I am helpful.

That is all I am. 

Nothing more to it, but that, that’s is all me.

Basically how it all started was I grew up  on a farm just outside Pretoria so; “Ek is van die plaas” – and as my bio says on all  my social platforms, I left the farm to chase the city lights.

That happened when I went  to varsity, at the University of Pretoria.

I did a stint there, I was a year in Mamelodi, moved to Hatfield, and then I joined TUKS FM.

That is where I fell in love with media  and went out of it got into the aviation space and then realised you know, I love data  analysis; I love everything that is happening in the news and being at the forefront of  anything crisis-related and then I joined a media-monitoring firm.

Then from there in  the media monitoring firm, there was a division that focused on social media  monitoring, so a little app.

We built it out in the last five years and I have been working  as the client and brand experience manager, for the social media monitoring system. 

So where it was always just a product is now a lone standing business and that has  been amazing to see. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

What is media monitoring?

PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Media monitoring; well that is a good question. 

Look at it this way: It is you put in a keyword and you bring in everything surrounding  that keyword in different places.

So, it can be in print media, broadcast media, as well  as online and social.

We try to give a 360-degree view and what we do, but it is looking  at how your brand is being perceived in those channels and how are people  mentioning you?

Is it positive?

Is it negative and what are the different nuances and  metrics you can get from it?

So it gives brands an idea of where they came from and  where they are going towards. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

So I’m assuming this is more for a bigger more established brand who has a lot of  traction online? I

s that kind of what I’m understanding of what this is it’s not necessarily  for like a small business might be out of their scope? 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

No, it can actually be for every business it could be for every business.

So how it works  with me I have clients that maybe get one mention, or three mentions a week or one  mention a month, or three mentions a month.

It does not really matter.

Then I have clients getting 20,000 mentions a day, so it varies.

But the essential thing of it all and  monitoring how your brand is being perceived and what the data says about it; essentially informs a small business to say, you know, “This is what people are asking  in my industry, not necessarily about me, but this is what they’re asking about my  competitors, or the industry as a whole and this is how I can answer to that need or  the pain points that I find in that space.”

So you don’t necessarily have to be big with  20,000 followers or have mentions about your brand every day.

You can be small and  just see how you can fill a need, based with data and information that you have  available.

So not necessarily small or big.

It is not just for big brands.

It is for any  person on the street.

 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

So this links to a discussion I want to have around customer avatars and the target market.

As a small business, we have been like slowly but surely figuring out whom we want to serve, whom we have served and what is the ideal client for us as a content  production company.

Can you talk a little bit about how media monitoring and the work  that you do, how does that inform creating and refining your customer avatar? 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Perfect so, of course, I come from a sales background, I come from a marketing  background, come from a media background.

So for me, I would always say, “Oh ja,  let’s assume I want to market to these people and whatever.”

The biggest lesson I  have learned over the years is do not assume, don’t make an assumption about things  – use data.

And what I mean with using data like if in your shoes, for example, is look  back at the tools you already have available to you.

So, for some people, it might be  Google Analytics, where you can look at historic data of who is actually visiting your  website.

You know what are the demographics, age, gender, location, that type of  thing, but also your social media channels.

Who are the people actually following you? 

Is it just your friends that you just punch your page to your friends, and they are  following you, and you are talking to them?

Or do you have something specific in mind?  Because remember, a customer avatar is potentially that audience that you want to  reach. You know the person that you want to go out to, not necessarily people you  already have, but it is important to understand the people that are already clicking on  your links and visiting your website. So from there, you can use the tools that you  already have available.

So, if you have Google Analytics, your own social media  platforms, where you can check that out.

But then, have a look at what are people  asking about your industry.

So what industry are you in?

So from there, you can use  platforms like Answer the Public; you can use Reddit and you can use Kora if you like  those platforms. 

I know it sounds very like old and “Goodness why must I go into those spaces?”

But  when you type in what you are offering is, let’s say shoes, jogging shoes, for example. 

You pop it into those systems and it will show you what has been searched around it. 

And what happens with that is that you can see exactly what are people saying.

So you want to engage with an audience that is already talking about your product or  your service and you want to see what are the pain points and what the questions are  they are asking.

You can use those keywords that they are using around your brand  for your SEO strategy.

You can use it to write content about your brand and what it is  that you offer.

And then from there, you can also have an idea of how can I be of help  – like how can I help you?

What is it that you want?

What is a problem for you?

And  this is how I come in to solve your problem.

Because in business, you are solving  problems and you have to make sales because if there is not a sale you can’t pay the person who has been the creator for your brand at the end of the day.

So from a sales  perspective try just as you would sell to a person why they should be choosing you/why  should they have a meeting with you, your social media and all of the content that your put out there for your customer avatar potentially and that you want to reach, it adds  to it – It’s an extension of it.

Because your social media is just a touch point of bringing  people in.

So never assume, have the facts and invest, invest your time.

Be consistent  in what you push out to attract that potential audience because the work you do on the  ground must also be the work you do on your social platforms as well. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Talking about speaking to your audience, something that we have noticed, especially  with small businesses, but actually, all kinds of businesses, is that when we speak to  our clients and they want us to do content or marketing for them – what they want us  to do is do adverts constantly.

You know speak to them: “What kind of content do you  want?”

“Okay, here are our specials; here are our services; here are our products.” 

And the reality is that that kind of selling, just puts people off right, if you are getting  hard sold at constantly people just switch off and stop trying to engage, and it’s more  about being of service making people understand that you know what you are talking  about.

Speaking to them in their spaces, giving them freely the information and value. 

So that when they are ready to buy your services, you have already created that  relationship. Right?

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Exactly, and I know if you get asked to push ads the whole time, you have targets to  meet.

So at the end of the day, you are meeting your target instead of focusing on. 

There is so many rules and so many experts and people saying, oh do this, do this, try that.

But what works for you?

Have you observed who is actually using your  product?

Who are the people that is actually in your store; who are the people that are  actually asking questions.

And that’s why I say “Answer the Public” is a great space  because you can see online people what are people asking about the brand and then  you target it, but with ads it does get overwhelming. Therefore, you must look at your  content, is your content educating people? 

If you go on TikTok now and someone shows you how to do this chuckles from  Woolworths, how to eat the caramel chuckles they have launched.

You are going to  go, “Wow, I need to try that.”

And this cake that they had for a moment the chuckles  cake where you can hit it and do all the things, that was educational.

So, that drove  more traffic than any ad they have been placing, for example on Instagram, about it. 

So it was literally people educating other people and on their platforms about it.

So, it  is nice to do ads, but also organically. 

Is your staff posting, or do you have an employee advocacy about what you are doing?

You do not necessarily have to deal with influencers that charge 30k a post, you know,  who are the people in your environment that are actually talking about you and using  your products, get them to do something.

So I would always say start with being educational, have an educational aspect, teaching people what it is that your product  does, or what makes it cool because your product or service is solving a problem and  might be difficult for certain industries.

If you take the time to sit back and look at what  content it is.

Unfortunately, you do have to post an ad if you want to reach different  people because no one will find you unless someone shares content or talks about  you.

But at the end of the day, word of mouth is fantastic and ads it is a difficult space  because it’s such a risk.

You are posting all these different ads for a specific amount  of money and you are not getting that sell back from it.

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Yeah and especially in our experience, to actually do an ad strategy really well, you  have to invest money and you have to get an expert that actually really knows what  they are doing.

Because if you are fumbling around on Facebook ads, trying to cobble something together from like two YouTube videos, honestly, you are not really going  to get the results but you don not really know what it is that you’re doing and then you  are spending a couple 1000 Rands on these ads that may or may not actually do  something.

I mean, ultimately all marketing is about talking to people, right like that’s really what it boils down to, at the end of the day. 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

People buy people at the end of the day, you are 100% on that. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

It is why people hire their friends in companies, right or hire people that they know; like  you might hire somebody for a task because you know them even though there is  theoretically a quote-unquote better person, more qualified person who could do this  for the exact same price, right? It’s about trust.

It is the same reason why word of  mouth is still so strong. For instance, if I ask a friend, “Hey, I want to buy a new  computer.

What do you recommend?”

Then they send me a link, I might just buy that  exact computer because I trust the person. 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

100% – And that is why Tik Tok is so brilliant for eCommerce on that platform because  it is ‘word of mouth’ with a visual accompanied visual.

I’m not saying everyone should  be on Tik Tok and be doing this.

I mean your businesses are different and it works  differently across the board.

The best advice I ever got is if you do not use your product  or you cannot afford your product, you cannot sell your product.

So, you know, if you  do a quote for example if you in the service industry and you do a quote and so oh this  is so expensive – is it expensive to you because you’re thinking about your salary and  what you can afford and if something like 30,000 is a lot for you, like okay goodness, I think I should give the customer discount before I even negotiate on price.”

That is  the wrong attitude to have, you have to go and say, they can afford this. 

This is why I am marketing to you.

But if you don’t use the product and you can’t afford  it, you can’t sell it and you won’t be able to communicate that value or deliver that  experience to a person, that is change for, you know small change for them – that R2  they have in their pocket but it is for you, it might be your entire salary at the end of  the day.

So, if you are in that space and you want to look at it, especially when you  work for luxury brands, for example, it might be expensive for you but if you understand  it and have that experience, it will help you sell it.

When I used to work in airlines, we  used to have experience days on the aeroplanes.

You had to experience business  class, you had to experience economy, Premium Economy and all of those to have  been able to create content and to craft an ad that would speak to that person that can  actually give 25k out for Premium Economy instead of 12k, you know.

Or for business  class 35k.

Ya, because you had to communicate with the experience you had and you  have to be used to it, you know.

So, ja give people who is selling your brand  experience, because that also adds to it. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

It’s interesting, because it is actually, a thing I’ve been thinking about a lot – to project  my own money issues onto clients, it’s tough, it really is tough, because I know what  my time is worth.

I know that realistically, if you need, like say, for example, one of the  products that we are offering is like a complete content production campaign.

We  produce, like a bunch of videos, a bunch of blogs like all the things you need for content  marketing campaign, that is the equivalent of hiring like two or three staff members to  do that, right.

But, then when you send out a quote, that’s a couple dozen 1000 rand you know, it feels like, “Oh gosh, what are they going to say about this?”

But if you are  speaking to the right customer, and this is something we are trying to get towards, but  if you are speaking to the right customer and you know that this is the kind of company or person that would buy something like this, they live it in a different world to you in  terms of what they think about money.

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

For sure, remember they have budgets that sometimes not their own and I can tell you  one thing, from all my experience people will give out more money for the creative  output than they give out money for analytics at the end of the day.

So, that was a big lesson, because you know I am in the analytics space so I am like selling why analytics  are so important.

And they are like, No, my agency did this creative thing and I thought  it was brilliant.

You go, the analytics are different and you have to verify it, for them it  is important, so people will spend money on what is important, for you it might feel like  a lot of money but if you show the effort, you will get that return, but phrase that I have  learnt, especially in sales, I never thought I would be able to sell or work with people but at the end of the day, it is relationship building.

You have to see it as relationship  building with your client.

You are starting with a phone call or if you did it through a  lead generation system or all of that; it starts with an email, it starts with “Hello.” 

Basically, and then, from that initial hello you can be dropped in the first sentences or  it can go into a meeting or it goes somewhere, but it is relationship building at every  point and then when it comes to pricing, there is always this phrase where I would say,  “I was wondering if you could help me, you know I have been working on this, this is the price.

It’s coming to this amount, would this fit in your  budget?

Does it make sense to you to put that amount to it?” and they would say, “I did not think it would be that much.”

Or “My budget I have in mind is maybe here, can  you help me work it?”

But the most important part is: I was wondering, can you help  me?

Because people will always help you.

That is why I say I am helpful, I will always  help you, except if you want to sell drugs, but at the end of the day it is about being  helpful, and feeling that you are taking care of the person in that relationship-building  process.

But also in your initial meetings have the question “How much are you willing  to spend?

How much is this worth to you?”

“What do you think the return of this type  of element be to your business?” 

And people are very open to discuss it because you know everyone runs off and says,  “Let me quote you, and if you take this quote by next week Friday I will give you 30%  off and it is stuck for a year or two years.”

You know you get this.

That means you are  leading by price and you are not leading by your solution at the end of the day.

And that is what you are trying to do, you are offering a solution to their marketing needs, ya.

ETHAN BAIRD: 

That is honestly a super point.

What I have been trying to do personally is trying to  negotiate not on price but on deliverables.

So say for example I quote R10 000 for this  project and their budget is R7 000.

Now instead of me saying, “Okay, cool, I could just  take 30% off.”

I would like to value my time and say, “Okay, maybe we cut back on  this deliverable and on this deliverable we scale it back slightly to get it down to R7  000.”

So my time is valued.

Especially when I was straight out of varsity, I would make  my price as low as possible, I would do anything for anybody and it did not really get  anywhere honestly and, just a funny story.

I had recently when I was sitting in a meeting with a consultant for a client.

So, the client had hired this consultant and they  were helping us make recommendations for the client.

Now, I charged the client  reasonably low because it was consistent work for my freelance.

But, we had already made all of these recommendations, me and my colleague, we had made all these  recommendations last year already.

We need to buy a better camera, we need X Y  & Z in order to improve the quality of your thing.

Then they hired a consultant at a  really high rate, who then told them the exact same, but now because the consultant  is charging them thousands of dollars, for this, they are taking it seriously.

Whereas,  because I was charging them hundreds of dollars, I was taken less seriously.

I might  actually have to cut this out of the podcast. 

PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

No, no, no, you can have it in.

Because you know why that is such a brilliant story? 

We’ve all been there, we’ve all been there.

When I first started, you know, going and  selling off this product of like we were the cheapest, we were always considered the  cheapest and had a lot of people saying, “’But, why are you so cheap?”

And over the  years, now it is a few years down the line, now I can a price.

Because I am charging  online items, of course, but I know that what I am giving is of value.

And, that’s why consultants; so in the news, we have all heard of these consulting firms that are  currently being cracked down due to Gupta links, and all of that. So, ja it’s exactly that. 

It is you walk in, you look the part, you are talking the talk and you are like, “Sharp,  R500 000 for this session.”

And now so what are you going to do?

You’re going, “Joh,  this person they are selling themselves, they must have, you know, they must it.”

So,  what do you do? They sold trust based on human psychology because we work, you know, our minds work brilliantly.

So if someone looks a specific way, dresses a specific way, there’s specific colours  that they are doing, their body language is carrying them in a specific way – that’s what  you are going to buy without thinking about what it is that you actually have.

So you will find clients, especially in a corporate space and agencies even, that have  multiple suppliers doing the exact same thing, but because one looks different or sells  them self, you know they have a hook, they will definitely make use of and never let  go of the one.

They will easily drop you and say, “Oh no, it’s too cheap anyway.

We’ll  rather spend all this money on this project and we know it is going to get done.”

So that’s a very important thing to do is, communicate value and say why you are doing  it at that and why is it, is it because you are a South African-based company, that’s  why you can because you do not outsource anything and you do us yourself that’s why you might be cheaper than the competitor.

But the consultant, there is a lot of  glamour about being a consultant, nothing against consultants I think they do a brilliant  job, you know.

I’ve been in those situations as well, they do really great work, but they  are taught how to do it differently and that’s why you have to make sure that if you  have a team of people, is that the person you put in front or the person that is the face  of your business is that they carry them self in that way. 

But that comes back to your brand experience and how it is your company culture, but  also the clients that you are approaching.

Do you have shared values and are you just  another supplier or are you a partner for them?

It’s a difficult space because I know  you want to sell stuff yourself.

But sometimes you do need a person that can maybe  even if you sit with a consultant saying the exact same thing, to carry that out for you because people will go to the relationships they trust, which brings us back to that  friends hiring friends type of thing, people hiring people, people buying people – because it might be relationships that have come over time – are very convincing  people that can some it up. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Yeah, because I mean, people buy with their emotions and them justify with logic after  the fact.

PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Yes, I have not heard that in the longest time and I kind of forgot about it.

It is so true you’re right. But it’s nothing, how can I say, as long as you do an honest job.

You do an honest job and you can close your eyes at night and sleep well, if you do get sleep – they say sleep is for the wicked lately, but if you know you did an honest job, the  world is not always fair, but if you wait a while, you know, and you play the long game  with a person staying in touch, staying in touch.

When that person that they paid twice  as much for fails they know where to come to. I have seen it when I cry at night, because you take your failures personal.

You go “Oh, I’ve failed. I’m the worst person.

I can’t do a sales.”

But then you realise, remove yourself from the business and it’s not  you.

It is the product maybe, but it’s not always the product, but the product is an all star and it will save you or is something someone will fall back on because they will remember you.

So if someone else fails or closes down, it gives you an opportunity to  get in there.

But play the long game; just like an investment play the long game, stay  in touch, be consistent and you’ll see that business coming back to you, especially in  those type of situations. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Awesome. Okay, this has been a great tangent.

I had some questions prepared, but  we’ve already run through quite a bit of our time.

But one thing we did wanna discuss  is relationship management.

So this is a topic you suggested we talk about and I’d  love to just dive into it.

So let’s discuss relationship management between a brand and  their suppliers. 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Okay relationship management between a brand and suppliers: so when you on board  or outsource anything, you know, if you outsouring creative or you outsourcing ads or you outsourcing SEO or you, you’re outsourcing your analytics.

It’s important to  have someone prove to you why you should take them on.

If there’s no track record if  there’s no, you know, solid thing that they can show you that works, you must go, it’s a bit dodgy, what were their results?

What were the things why did you choose them?

But when you manage that relationship and you on board the people, eventually, it’s important to treat them as partners. 

It’s just not great if you get treated like a supplier to say “I only need you when I need  this” or “I only want you if I need this output.”

It has to be a relationship, you checking  in, even if it is the supplier doing the work on it because, I mean, you want to keep the  business, so you of course, you are going to do the work that it does in order to keep  a friend.

But also make sure that each interaction you have is educational.

That if you  spoke to your client that “Joh, I actually just learned a lot” and then they will go, “Hey listen, I was wondering if I could ask you about this?”

And then you like “Aha! I’m being  trusted with some information.”

But a lot of corporates, you know, and also brands or  whatever you wanna call it, let’s say companies, your services may be 0.25% of their  entire job for the day or for the month or for the year.

So they might not give you that  attention that you need, you know, to understand – Okay, this is why you need to keep  me on as a supplier.

So you have to understand that they have a busy day, they have  a busy schedule and you the last thing on their mind for the stuff they need to deliver  on.

So when you are building that relationship, as in you are the brand, just give some  time, like have once a month some time for your suppliers.

But do not just treat them  as a supplier, have a partnership.

Because at the end of the day it is a win-win  situation. No one is there oust you, no one is there to, you know, get you out of the  business or tell you bad at your job, it is there to achieve the same goal and if you  communicate your goals from the beginning saying, “This is my goals and my deliverables that I need to deliver on a month, how do you help me?”

Then of course  people will see value.

And be quick, be efficient.

I know that is something that I hear  lately everyone just saying.

I have been hired to make this efficient or have our  campaigns be efficient.

But what is it, what does efficiency mean to you and if you as  a supplier understand what that efficiency means to a client, because they probably  have a performance appraisal that they have to account on that deliverable.

So then  you know how you can help people but ja, treat them as partners and not just someone  you call when you ‘dying’.

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Yeah, I think to summarise the entire discussion, it really is all about communication right, everything that we do, marketing all the different channels within all the different  people that you are talking to.

It’s about like communicating and being like actual  human being to other people, and not just seeing everybody as commodities. 

PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Exactly, and being helpful, delivering something that’s useful and being helpful.

So if  you’ve those two things together, I think you great success. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Awesome.  Petrumarié, thank you so much for the discussion today.

This was super  awesome.

How can people find you, should people find you, how do we do that? 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

Please do not find me – no, I am just kidding. 

You can come reach out to me on LinkedIn, it’s  Petrumarié Jacobs on Twitter it is  just  Petrumarié om TikTok.

I ja, a lot of the stuff, if you wanna see what I get up to and see where I really work and do all the things, you can go reach me there.

But LinkedIn, Twitter and all of those things.

So social media especially and then from there we can always take it to emails if you keen. 

ETHAN BAIRD: 

Perfect and I will put all your links to your LinkedIn and everything in the episode  description. 

 PETRUMARIÉ JACOBS: 

You are amazing, thank you so much Ethan this was amazing.

Thank you so much  Ethan, this was great. 

 

Hendrik

 What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our word for it.

Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals.

Discover its power, and confront its challenges, so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird from Baird Media. And let’s talk content marketing.

Hendrik

Stephanie, tell me how you got into the marketing business and content business, and specifically Canva.

Stephanie

So, when I launched my business in 2019, I was going to be a general virtual assistant that was going to absolutely take the world by storm.

Round about the same time, I also discovered Canva and I started creating my own content, which wasn’t so good.

Let’s just get that out there.

Being a virtual assistant, actually didn’t work for me at all. It was not something that set my world afire.

I was an executive assistant before that, so it made sense for me to launch myself as a virtual assistant and it didn’t work.

And then obviously Canva happened, and I started designing for myself.

I didn’t think, well, this is absolutely fabulous, so I might as well do it for clients as well.

And that’s October 2 that I started designing and that’s been going strong ever since.

So visual marketing is, absolutely, absolutely my passion at this point in time and I believe that every single business owner, be it online, or bricks and mortar, actually need to be visible on social media with marketing material, that they create themselves or that I helped them with.

Hendrik

So, do you have a design background?

If you say you were an executive assistant, do you have any design kind of experience?

Stephanie

Everything I do and everything I’ve learned; I have taught myself.

I have done the whole self-development route and all of that, and I suppose it also helps just having an eye for visual creation.

Nothing formal about my design experience.

Hendrik

I think we’ll get back to Canva on a moment.

And how easy it is to actually become a designer on that platform, but let’s talk about content first ,

You said one has to be very visual on social media platforms and so on.

How important is content for a company’s marketing?

Stephanie

Content is absolutely imperative.

No business can survive without advertising.

Whether it is a leaflet or an advertisement online or a billboard out on the road that we travel on, we need to be visible.

We need to create visuals that will enhance our content, because when you’re on social media, you’re literally scrolling through hundreds of posts.

That’s content.

Content is incredible because content tells your audience what it is you do, who you do it for, and what they’re going to pay for it and how to work with you.

Visual content enhances the plain copy that we share in print or on social media.

Hendrik

I read somewhere that a graphic can tell a story that a thousand-word article probably can’t, just through one glance at it.

Stephanie

Oh, absolutely 100%.

However, I have to just add there, that in order for a graphic to tell a story, you need to understand that less is more.

Because you’re going to throw a whole lot of things at a design, you’re going to be overwhelming whoever it is that’s looking at it.

And it’s going to tell your audience not to work with you.

Because as a member of the audience, I am now going to have to work harder at understanding what your content is all about before I can actually make a conscious effort to work with you.

And when it comes to disposable graphics such as on social media, the scroll very quick.

So, you have to be able to capture your audience in such a manner that they’re going to take those three seconds, just pausing long enough to actually see what your visual is about.

And that’s where your graphic actually tells a thousand words, means more than a thousand words or however you want to say it.

Hendrik

A picture paints a thousand words.

Isn’t that the…

Stephanie

That one!

Yes, that one.

Absolutely.

But you know what?

At the end of the day, creating graphics is for consumption by our audience.

Just as creating content, creating marketing material, is not for us.

It’s for our audience, it’s for the people that we want to attract into our world.

Hendrik

When we do business plans, we create avatars.

When we do podcasting, and we figure out who’s ideal listener, we create a detailed avatar.

Do you think one should create an avatar for your graphics?

Stephanie

Absolutely.

Maybe not for the graphics as such, but for the business that you’re attracting with, the graphics that you’re going to be using.

I don’t want to say it, but I’m going to say it anyway.

While I do subscribe to an ideal client or an ideal avatar, I don’t always design with an ideal avatar in mind.

And in the marketing world they say, you market to everybody, you market to none.

It’s very true, but when it comes to visual content marketing, visual content sharing, you are needing to appeal to a very wider audience.

So, you’re not just appealing to a specific audience, because you might be business-to-business.

Attracting the business that you’re wanting to work is different to attracting the person, the consumer, that you’re wanting to work with.

So, my business is very much B2B, as well as B2C.

When I create graphics, it’s keeping that in mind, that will attract a larger audience.

But yes, I definitely do agree, having an ideal client avatar is incredibly important as a marketer.

Hendrik

It’s only when you have an avatar that you can deviate from it, don’t you think?

Stephanie

Yes. Yes.

If you’re understanding exactly who it is that you’re working with or working for or wanting to work for, and with.

I remember when I first started my online marketing journey, I was incredibly resistant to creating an avatar to work with, because my imagination runs wild when I create visual content, but my imagination is not so wild running, when it comes down to creating something for a specific person.

So, I was very resistant in naming it and giving it a career and giving it a business and giving it a family.

And where do they live?

What do they do in their spare time?

So, an avatar for me was n alien concept.

But once I actually understood how important it was, it became easier.

And then it also became very easy at the same time, now, to not to be kept in a bubble, in just an avatar bubble so to speak.

Hendrik

So, let’s talk Canva for a little while.

Canva has really democratized design, hasn’t it?

It used to be; you need to have expert skills in Photoshop.

And what are all those fancy programs?

Stephanie

Absolutely.

Hendrik

And now it’s opened up for everybody.

I watch the launch recently of their new products and things.

So exciting, all the new things that are in Canva.

So give us an overview of Canva and how it helps somebody like me or a regular business person or even a layperson in opening up the world of graphics.

Stephanie

When you’re going to be working in Canva for your own business.

Canva makes it easy, as you quite rightly mentioned.

Photoshop is very difficult to understand.

There’s Illustrator, there’s InDesign, and a whole host of other very expensive tools.

Keep in mind, Canva is just a tool, so creating a graphic within Canva itself, starts with not needing to be a professional designer.

I am not going to let anybody tell me that a creative designer, that’s what I call myself, a creative designer cannot be a successful graphic designer for clients who work specifically in Canva itself.

Canva is free.

It’s an online drag and drop tool that makes creating your own marketing material incredibly easy.

Do you need to have an eye for design?

Ideally yes, but Canva gives you a whole host of templates that you can work from.

Now I have very strong opinions on templates, but at the end of the day, when it comes to creating your own visuals for social media, using Canva, you do not need to be a qualified graphic designer.

Because what is social media? Everything on social is disposable.

Once someone has scrolled past your visual, unless they actually go to your profile and have a squiz around there and see what’s going on, on your profile, only then will they see what visuals you’ve created.

So, everything is disposable when it comes to business documentation, a little bit different.

But once again, Canva both do to help you with templates as such.

Now let’s just roll back to templates.

I do not like templates and here’s why.

When we scroll through social media and when you work in Canva, you recognize a Canva template.

Recognising a Canva template, your brain automatically tells you, I have seen this content, even though it is entirely new content.

So, your brain tells you, I’ve seen this content, simply because I recognized the template.

So you scroll past and that is why I say start with the template, but then move away from using a template altogether.

Because templates can actually harm your business more than it can add value to it.

Hendrik

So, just to be clear, you’re talking about pre-designed, templates, as opposed to original templates.

So, if I use something that already exists on Canva and I just delete the text and put my own text in there, but the picture and the design stays the same, that’s what you mean?

It’s not, I’ve now created my own templates that I use for my own sort of thing.

Stephanie

A templates in Canva is a template in Canva.

Whether you change the photograph, the colours or the fonts, it remains recognizable as a template in Canva.

I regularly run a build confidence with Canva boot camp for my audience and I teach them.

The one thing I teach them is, when inspiration has left your brain, start with a template, but then take away and add other things and make it bigger.

Make it smaller, position it differently.

So that, at the end of the day, it’s not recognizable as a Canva template anymore.

Templates are incredibly valuable, because when we’re short on time and want something quick and easy and disposable, a template works fine, but then you run the risk of being scrolled over.

And in social media marketing, we do not want to be scrolled over.

We want to stand out, so changing the colours and the fonts and the pictures on a template, doesn’t change the template.

You’ll have to move things around completely, take things away, add other things in, to stand out as an authentic design.

Hendrik

Okay.

So what you saying is take an existing Canva template and squish it and squash it and  and mix it up so it’s not recognizable as a Canva template.

But at least it gives you a starting point for your own design.

Stephanie

Correct, hundred percent. Correct.

Hendrik

So, what if I were to design my from scratch, my own series of templates that’s based on my logo, my company colours, the kind of layout and I use that throughout a campaign.

So, everything is kind of familiar, but not because of Canva, but because of its built around my brand.

Stephanie

That’s brand recognition. Brand recognition is very important in visual marketing for the simple reason., your visual brand consists of but is not limited to your logo and your fonts and your colours, and that sort of thing.

But to create a cohesive brand awareness, as well as being able to be recognized as a specific brand, it needs to be kept in mind that consistency is key in that regard.

So, if you want to create a campaign, yes absolutely.

Create a set of templates that is recognizable as Baird Media or simply on demand visual content creation.

So, it’s all about showing who you are, what you do at a glance.

Hendrik

Would you recommend to getting a professional designer to design those kind of templates for you?

Stephanie

It depends on where it is that you’re wanting to go.

If you’re our brand is in transition, it’s not necessary to get a professional designer.

Let’s be honest.

Professional designers, they come at a premium price.

Canva be designers, such as myself, we kind of like give professional designers a run for their money, because the visuals that we create, the templates that we create, can sometimes

Literally throw a graphic designer on its head.

Yes, we do not have all the fancy tools.

And yes, it’s nice to be able to use a fancy tool to manipulate imagery in such a manner that it is absolutely, 100% not recognizable as a Canva design.

But at the end of the day, a design shouldn’t be recognizable for the tool that has been used in order to create that design.

Hendrik

That makes perfect sense.

Canva makes it so easy also.

I mean, you just use that resize function and you can take one design and it becomes a Twitter designer, you just have to tweak it a bit, obviously.

And it becomes a LinkedIn design and all that sort of stuff.

So that’s for me the pleasure of working with it.

As I say, I also take basic designs and then change them around sometimes and do strange things with them and then you just click of a button and you’ve got all your social media both for the month right there, and then.

Stephanie

Absolutely, it just makes so much easier because I’ve got an established brand presence.

Understand also, just because you have an established brand presence that you cannot tweak your brand.

Your brand has personality and as your own personality develops over time, so your brand needs to develop as well.

But at the end of the day, your brand at its core, is your brand at its core.

So, however you want to change, you can change it however you want to.

Hendrik

I must be completely honest with you, our current logo is just a Canva template that I’ve just put our name in and it works quite well for now.

Stephanie

It looks very well for now.

Hendrik

And it’s very readable.

That’s the one thing that I’ve seen, you know, when they take these combined pictures when you’re on networking groups and there is like 40 people on a screen and Baird Media stands out somehow.

So, there’s also something about visibility and we obviously want to do a major redesign and we’ve got some great ideas, but that for me is one thing that will have to stand out.

It’s still got to be readable from afar, there’s no point in it being so fancy that nobody can see what the hell you’re on about.

Stephanie

Absolutely, and someone at some stage in my design journey, shared that if you were to create a design in Canva and you size it down with the sizing tool at the bottom to 10%, which is the smallest it can go and you can still read what’s on the visual that’s effective design.

If you can still make out to see what is on the design itself.

That is an effective design because sometimes you scroll so quickly, and it’s literally a small little thumbnail like this, that it needs to stand out.

And if it doesn’t, by being made so small, they’ll have to start over again and it’s something that’s literally stayed with me all through the years.

And it’s what I base, all of my designs on. It needs to be easily readable.

Because not everybody give in to Mother Nature and wear spectacles. Some people are ain about it and they won’t wear spectacles, and they need to see what’s on your visual.

Hendrik

Yeah. So, do you have any Canva tips for us?

Stephanie

Don’t be afraid of size.

Do not be afraid to use the white space around you.

Let’s say for argument’s sake, say my screen.

If I were to move myself to the side, I create a lot of white space, don’t be afraid of white space.

And don’t be afraid to actually give your assets, your photos, and your text and all of that, room to breathe.

Room to breathe, literally, we know what it feels like to be in an enclosed space.

We can’t breathe.

We get all anxious and all of that.

Now think of your design in exactly the same scenario.

Everything is squished together at leads to anxiety, not only for the person looking at it, but for the text itself as well because there’s no room to breathe.

So don’t be afraid of size. Size always matters.

Hendrik

Let’s talk about the difference between paid and free Canva.

Stephanie

Free Canva will always be free, but if you use a pro asset on the free version, you can purchase that specific asset.

Everything on the pro version, is everything that you have on the free version plus so much more.

The most notable will obviously be the magic resize button and Canva does call it the magic resize.

You can resize your one design to any platform.

You can schedule content to eight different platforms.

On the free version you’ve got five gigs of cloud storage.

On the pro version you’ve got a terabyte of cloud storage.

It’s little things that really just add up.

If your audience is based internationally, the pro version will cost you in the region of 1299 US dollars.

In South Africa you’ll pay just under 900 rand for a year-long subscription to the pro version itself. 

And as I said on the free version, everything is free, always and forever, unless you make use of a pro asset itself.

Hendrik

We subscribe to be yearlong one, as you said, it’s about 900 and something, rand.

I think the value is just incredible because now they’ve added a ton of graphics, of photographs and they’re all free to use.

We use Unsplash and those sort of places for stock photography and those sort of things and we’re about to start building our own library, because as you say, you know, you see some of these stock images.

I was today again, I think it was an article on one of those South African newspapers about load shedding and they always use the same burning transformer picture.

They, you know, they don’t even change that and I go like, oh, is this an old article or is it a new one?

Stephanie

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And if I can just add in the for your listeners, or your audience.

When you use a stock image, use a reverse search engine. Tineye.com will reverse search the image, or the stock photograph that you want to use.

It will tell you in a couple of seconds, how many millions of times it has been shared in the past and that’s why it is so important to use your own on-brand photography, your own visuals all the time.

Hendrik

You were talking earlier about building your own brand.

You said, Canva is a great tool for that.

What are the tips you want to give us for that?

Stephanie

When you build your own brand on Canva, Canva Premium allows you to build a brand kit.

Now, a brand kit consists of your visual brand, your logos, your fonts, your colours, etc, etc. In the event that you don’t have that, you can create a brand document that allows you to refer back at any stage of your design journey to a specific look and feel that you want a design to have.

Now, having brand guidelines will allow you to easily save the document in Canva, while you have a new tab open, copying and pasting between the two tabs – very easy with in Canva.

So, creating your brand documents, your visual brand itself. it’s copy and paste across.

And as you see things that you like, you can simply just add it into a folder that you have identified as your brand assets, that will be used in all of your brand material going forward.

Hendrik

What I also like about Canva is you can have team members, different team members working on the same page and on the same designs.

So, I could get my designer to go like, I’ve played around a bit, this is kind of what I want.

Can you make it professional, do it, you know Canva-esque way?

Stephanie

Absolutely, absolutely.

Canva for teams is absolutely brilliant.

That’s for where you have two and more people (there’s obviously a premium price attached to that) whereas Canva Pro obviously is just a tad cheaper than the Canva for teams, but the team option makes it so much easier because you can literally sit and collaborate and work as a team on the designs. 

Hendrik

Stephanie’s business called Simply On Demand and for more information, visit her website simplyondemand.net.

For more links and info, including Stephanie’s LinkedIn profile, check out the show notes of this episode.

Hendrik

If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn. 

Also visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find all the links in the podcast description. Next time on Let’s Talk Content Marketing:

Nestene

What I had to come to grips with was that if I don’t have people around me that are even better than than me, then this is not scalable.

Then I just have a job.

I don’t have a business.

Hendrik

This has been a Baird Media production.

 

Hendrik:

What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our word for it.

Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals.

Discover its power and confront its challenges, so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird from Baird Media and let’s talk content marketing.

Ethan:

I’ve got Nestene Botha in the house.

We’re going to be talking all about scaling through collaborating.

Before we get into the main topic, Nestene you maybe give us an introduction to who you are and what you do?

Nestene:

Yeah, sure.

No problem.

Hi Ethan.

It’s awesome to be here with you today.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

So, yeah, I’m Nestene Botha and I run Explore Protech Entrepreneurial Haven with my co-founder.

We’re basically creating an entrepreneurial accelerator to help entrepreneurs around the world.

Not just stay alive, but also thrive in these weird economic times that we’re in.

Ethan:

Let’s talk a bit about your career history before Protech, what were you doing before that?

And then, let’s talk about the development of Protech as well.

Nestene:

Sure, no problem.

So, before Explore Protech started, I was in corporate accounting.

I also worked as a teacher at Masters level at various universities throughout, South Africa.

I still train part-time at some of them. So, yeah.

My background is in chartered accounting.

Ethan:

So what made you decide to tart up Explore Protech?

Nestene:

So, when Explore Protech started, I was running my own accounting firm and Covid had basically just hit.

I was faced with the facts where we were suddenly in an economic time that was similar for me to the depression, the Great Depression.

So, I predicted that about 50 percent of my clients just weren’t going to make it.

Like I had to work on those figures, and I couldn’t realistically keep my accounting practice alive, if there was going to be the case.

So, I had to come up with a way to help more than 50% of them make it in this post Covid economy.

The way I did that was by teaming up with teamwork specialist, Peter Hingston.

And he basically showed me how to build a community, how to scale through collaboration, and how to create more opportunity for all of us, helping keep those clients alive.

Ethan:

I find that an interesting approach and, in retrospect, it should be an obvious one but like, oh, my clients are going to struggle.

How do I help my clients?

Instead of, I think a lot of other people might think, was how do I get different clients, how to get more clients?

Nestene:

The thing is getting new clients is not that easy, especially if half of the market is going to be struggling anyway.

So, it wasn’t just my clients. It was all small businesses around the world that was going to suffer a lot, all of a sudden. So, coming up with that solution just put It made the most sense.

Ethan:

 In business, some of our best clients are long-term ones, the ones you stick with for ages, you become friends, family with over time, because you form this bond.

And then actually being proactive to help them, just from like a business perspective, is a really good way to like really solidify them as your client, you know?

Why would they go to somebody else if you’re the one who literally helped them when the world was ending?

Nestene:

Exactly.

It’s exactly that.

So, it’s all about the relationship and strengthening that relationship.

And that’s basically what Explore Protech is.

It’s a place where you can strengthen relationships with the right people.

Ethan:

Yeah.

And I mean Hendrik and I, we’ve joined Explore Protech, Hendrik especially as our guy who does the face-to-face stuff.

We’ve dived completely straight in because we’ve tried a couple different, you know, networking groups, those kinds of places.

And a lot of them, you know, they’re great and all but what I like about Explore Protech is that it doesn’t just feel like this is a networking group, it more just feels like this is a business community of other like-minded business people.

We do networking, we do other stuff as well, and I really like that.

Nestene:

Thank you so much, Ethan.

And it’s been amazing having you and Hendrik on board.

That’s exactly it.

It’s about creating home for entrepreneurs.

So, during that first days when Covid had first hit, I think a lot of us were feeling very unsafe, insecure.

Not knowing what to do, how we going to get through this.

And that’s why we called it Explore Protech Entrepreneurial Haven.

It’s home, it’s a haven, a place where you can hide from, you know, whatever else is going on and where you can find help and where you can find home and where you can be protected and be able to move forward.

Ethan:

Yeah. And entrepreneurship can be a really, really lonely road, especially post pandemic, when we were all just sitting by computers.

So having a group of people – what’s nice about is that you’re not trying to necessarily sell to them either.

I mean things might happen and business will come.

But it’s not like this pressure of like, I’m in this meeting, I have to sell x amount.

And if I don’t, this meeting was a failure.

Instead, it’s I’m in this meeting to meet people.

It’s almost impossible to fail, because I’m just here to meet people, to chat, to have fun.

Ethan:

Exactly.

So, everything we do, we always tell our tribe trying to make money with each other, not from each other.

So, I think that’s also kind of like a twist that we’ve brought in.

So, we didn’t start as a networking company. We literally started as a haven, as a community.

Networking is just one of the things that we created that our entrepreneurs can do in order to generate more business.

So, it’s one of the solutions we provide but we also do training.

We also provide visibility opportunities, collaboration, social type of opportunities, joint ventures things like that.

So yeah, it gets quite fun and that’s literally what we tell people, just come in but yourself, have as much fun with as possible.

It’s like you’re family and opportunity just naturally develops from there.

Ethan:

So let’s go into the main topic then, and this is a nice segue point, is about scaling through collaboration.

So from me and Hendrik’s perspective, I think we’re in that situation now where our capacity is almost already hit.

I have a day job, and Hendrik can only do so much during the day.

We both have very specific skills that, you know, aren’t every single skill we need in our business.

Hiring staff is risky, costs lot of money; there’s that kind of Catch-22 of need more clients to hire staff, need more staff to be able to get more clients.

So this idea that it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, but instead we can collaborate to scale, is super interesting for us.

So let’s talk a little bit about that and kind of how you think people should be thinking about collaboration.

Nestene:

Sure. That’s one of my favourite topics of all time because when I was trying to scale my original business, which was the accounting firm, I literally almost bankrupted my business twice, because of hiring the wrong people.

I mean, I tried everything.

I outsourced, I had independent contractors, I had in-house staff, I had teams, I promoted people, had partnerships,  profit sharing, everything.

It just never wanted to work out the way I wanted it to work it out.

So, my whole thing was I build my business in about six months.

I built it to a 1 million and turnover company, which for me was a great achievement.

I mean I’ve never been an entrepreneur before, so that was amazing.

But getting past that 1-million-rand point was impossible for me, because we didn’t have the right people.

So that is what makes a community like Explore Protech so special, because that’s literally what we teach.

We pick people because they share certain values, and they have a certain amount of integrity.

Or they have like a lot of Integrity.

Those are the types of people you can now build collaborative relationships with, and you can use them to scale.

So, I’ll give you an example instead of, when we wanted to scale or get help in the business.

For the first time we didn’t hire people in, we didn’t get an outsourced person.

We didn’t get an independent contractor, we literally went to some of the people in our community and we were like, okay, so this is the opportunity we want to create for everyone in this space.

We’re willing to give you this amount of profit share. Are you in?

Are you going to help us do this?

And the thing is, because those people didn’t come in cold, we already had a relationship of like, six months to a year together.

We’ve already seen each other like, in action in entrepreneurship.

So we knew we could work together.

It wasn’t coming in cold, those relationships that don’t have to start from a cold place and it just, it works so well.

So, even these days when we were planning our next step or our next move, what we’re gonna do next, we have so many resources to invite into the party.

Because we have 75 people in our community that are like some of the best entrepreneurs in the world and we can literally just go to them and say, hey, I need help with this.

Would you like to help?

And we can set it up.

It doesn’t matter what you said up.

If it’s a profit -based, if it’s a joint venture, if it’s an outsourced agreement, it’s an energy exchange maybe.

There are different ways that you can save these things up.

But the reason why it works is because you’ve built relationships with those people.

You’re in the same community, everyone’s working towards the same goal.

It’s just for me, I don’t think there’s any other way of scaling successfully.

Like, for me, this is the way, it’s magical.

It’s amazing.

Ethan:

What I really love about that as well s that, obviously everybody has very specific strengths and then when you kind of running your own business, you’re typically forced to do things that aren’t your strong suit because you don’t have the resources, or you just maybe are too nervous to outsource it correctly.

So, you end up doing everything, all the team ends up doing everything. And the reality is, if I had my way, I would just be editing video and audio all day.

That’s it.

Like, I could just do that forever and I’ll be super happy with it, and I’m going to do it really well, because that’s my thing.

But now I’m an entrepreneur and now I have to do things like talk to clients, market, all these other things that like, you know, I can do but in an ideal world, couldn’t I just exchange all my energy with, like, producing amazing media for someone and then they can do some sales for me or any millions of combinations like that.

And I think that if all entrepreneurs had the ability to just do the thing that they were really good at while having the other aspects of the business handled or these other project handled, the rate at which they could scale would be so incredible, because they actually just doing the thing that actually wanted to do.

And it’s not just being good at it.

It’s also wanting to do it.

If you had a taught me that part of my business was you have to do cold calls, I would do you like one a week. Because it would be a hell of a job.

Do that one called call, probably mess that up and then I hate myself for the rest of the week.

That would be it.

If you told me that my core business involved producing a bunch of podcasts, I could do a bunch more of those because I want to do it, right?

So there’s also that aspect of the collaboration, is that like, it allows people to like, narrow down on the thing that they really love.

Nestene:

And it’s so valuable.

I mean, for example, me and Peter, we’re the creatives, the visionaries, we are so horrible at admin.

If I need to book my own meetings, I end up double booking us, there’s the chances of me double-booking, as if I’m booking, the meetings is like 90%.

But because of some of the joint venture projects, we’ve been involved in in the tribe, we’ve gotten to know some of the virtual assistants, and we’ve seen them in action.

So it’s so valuable, because then if you know you want to outsource cold calling, for example, you can just hire Janine.

That’s literally what she does for a living.

And it’s not just that we’ve seen her say that she does that for a living.

We’ve seen it in action because we’ve worked with her on a joint project.

That’s why it’s so important to do joint projects with people, where you literally come in and it’s exactly that – everyone does what they’re good at. 

And all of a sudden, everyone has like less work, we’re going five times faster and we’re all making money together.

That’s just the way to go.

Ethan:

There is also that huge amount of trust that you need to let go of, someone handing something in your business.

Like, last week, we sent out our camera guy and a director whom I hadn’t worked with yet, but Hendrik knows and trusts, to go do a video shoot for a client. and I must admit the whole time it was going on, while I was doing other stuff, I was in two minds.

On the one hand, it’s great that I don’t have to do this.

We’re scaling.

There would be a capacity limit if I had to do this every time.

But other hand, I’m really nervous because I know if I’m going to be there, I can at least feel like I’m in control.

But if I’m not and just trusting professionals to do their thing, it takes a bit of time to let go.

So, as you said, the other great thing about doing joint ventures and collaboration is that you can get a feel for someone, before you have to really take that risk of letting them into your business and potentially into your clients, talking directly to your clients.

Sometimes, as well, the huge amount of trust that you have to have for someone before you can let go to that degree, which you have to do, if you want to scale.

The whole point of running a business isn’t that you do everything.

Nestene:

No.

The whole point of having a business is that you get to set on the beach with margaritas.

Everyone else does everything that keeps you alive.

Ethan:

Exactly.

Otherwise, we’d be freelancers, right?

Nestene:

Yeah.

There’s also a difference between being a freelancer and just working remotely.

If you’d rather want to be an employee, just do that then.

But if you’re in business, might as well be in business properly, you know?

But that’s also exactly what you say.

That trust is so important and it’s very important not to let go and to trust someone fully until they’ve proven to you that you actually can.

They know what you want them to do, and they will do it properly.

And that’s again why these days I refuse to do business with anyone cold?

So, if they’re not in the community, I’m not hiring you.

If I haven’t seen you perform on a joint venture project where it’s like I’ll do this, you do that; this person does that and let’s just see how we work together – if I haven’t seen that, how am I supposed to know that I can trust you with this task?

How are you supposed to know that I can trust you with this process?

Because you might not even know exactly what I want.

You know that trust and communication is so important.

So that’s why we have to practice collaboration.

No one has taught us. In school we didn’t have a subject called collaboration.

It’s like this big, massive secret that everyone has kept from us for so long and I’m just so happy that Peter helped me discover it because I’m, I never knew about this.

Ethan:

It’s one of those things that should be obvious, but isn’t, you know?

There’s like so many things in business that are that way.

Like last week we were discussing the power of building relationships.

And you said that it took you a while to realize, when you’re talking to someone, a potential client, you’re not trying to sell necessarily.

You’re trying to build a relationship first and then you sell. eels so opposite to the instinct of always be selling, got to hand out business cards, got to do the thing, got to constantly be pushing your brand message over and over again, when the reality is that it’s just not how the world works.

People are so flooded with advertising messages, that if you just another one of those, it’s just Gone with the Wind. You know?

Nestene:

 Yeah. Definitely.

In this day and age, you have to realize is there’s probably a million people doing exactly what you do, right?

So, the answer to differentiating yourself and getting people to go with you, is not in more advertising, more marketing, stronger sales people.

I’s literally in giving people a chance to experience what you can do for them.

Because if you were hiring someone, you would expect the same.

You would want to first see.

What are you and what do you do?

Okay great.

Can you show me how you do that?

Let’s work together a little bit.

Let’s exchange some energy.

And then, when we’re like dead certain, you know, I pay you x amount, I earn this amount.

Then we can work out the numbers, which is what I’m good at, the counting pot.

So literally now, for every decision, I know exactly how a person is going to perform, because I’ve seen it.

So that gives me so much power in terms of decision-making.

I can literally go, for every R250 that I pay Somerville, I know I’m going to make like a thousand rand.

If I give her this exact task to do and she does it exactly like she did before, and then it becomes like a no-brainer.

You know?  That’s business.

Ethan:

The weird thing also that rock my world feel a little bit, once I clicked it, is that you also don’t have to be the best.

I know this is going to sound weird. I’m not saying don’t be good, but there is literally always going to be someone who’s better than you at the thing that you do.

It’s just impossible. 

There’s 7 billion people on the planet.

The chances of you being the very best in something, you probably a millionaire at that point anyway, because if you’re at that level and you’re known for being at that level, then you don’t need more business, most likely.

But it’s a little bit freeing to know that. It’s not necessarily about being the absolute best possible podcast editor in the world.

It’s about building relationships, being good, consistently striving to be better, but really, it’s about the relationships.

Nestene:

It’s not about being the best. It’s about being friends with the best of the best.

That’s why Peter also told me, if you’re the smartest person in the room, there’s something wrong with the way that you selected the people in the room.

When you’re friends with a best of the best – and I struggled with that a little bit in the beginning.

Because I’m an overachiever, you know, if there’s one thing I know is, that I can work anyone under the table.

So I have the ability to be the best but I had to come to grips with, was that if I don’t have people around round me that are even better than me, then this is not scalable.

Then I just have a job.

I don’t have a business.

Ethan:

Yeah and also, someone being the best doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the most fun or enjoyable person to work with either, right?

I’d much rather work with someone who values me as a customer or, say if I pay someone to do something, I’d much rather work with someone who I know is going to value my time, is going to give me feedback, is going to explain to me how much everything’s going to cost and keep it that way; instead of somebody who’s like the best possible person but has shady business practices.

It’s not the only measure of how good you are, your technical ability at something.

It was a really hard lesson, because y field is very technical, it’s very easy to measure how good you are against other people.

Nestene:

I totally hear you, Ethan, and I think that’s also something that has been quite interesting to a lot of us in this network.

Do you know how much your ability to be the best improves when you’re actually friends with someone?

Because that makes you one to write them the bast copy in the world ever.

You understand them so well that you can know exactly what they need, exactly how to get it for them, and it’s like your goals are so aligned.

You can afford to put two hundred percent into every single job.

So, I know one of our other members, Steven Levy, built a very strong relationship with Steven Westwood.

Steven Westwood is a copywriter from the UK.

Steven Levy is the leadership coach from South Africa.

Steven Westwood basically overhaul Steven Levy’s entire website.

And Steven Levy was like, wow, he would never. ever hire any other copywriter ever again, because it was just so amazing.

It was like, Stephen Westwood knew exactly what he needed before he needed it.

He knew exactly who his target client was, and he did like the best job ever.

And because they already spoke on WhatsApp every single day, it’s like that idea, when you’re like, don’t worry, we have a doctor in the family.

Don’t worry, we have an attorney in the family.

Now, you don’t just have to have those people born into your family, you can add them to your family. T

hat is what’s so powerful.

Ethan:

We’ve all read it in the marketing books, we all know it, but I think it’s important to drill this down, about why we need to be building these relationships.

How often do you ask a friend for a recommendation?

And then when they give it to you, you just immediately go with that one?

Most of the time, right?

Like if you say, I need a web developer.

Nestene, you do business, you know some good web devs.

You’re going to recommend one that you like and then the person is most likely just going to go with that because they trust you, you trust them.

So it’s also about building up these networks of trust.

So that, you know, once you’ve collaborated with somebody and done a really amazing project with them, they can have the ability to very confidently recommend you.

Because it’s not a small thing to recommend somebody.

If I recommend ou a service and then you have a better experience, ow, I feel bad now, I did something wrong.

And now you also may be trust feel slightly little bit less because now you worry about my decision making.

People don’t make recommendations lightly.

They really don’t.

And we all know that word-of-mouth is still so incredibly important to getting new clients.

I think especially for small business, most people’s big-ticket clients that come in, a lot of those are still from word-of-mouth.

Nestene:

Yeah, for sure.

And in this day and age, then you literally you can, at your fingertips, you can go into Google and you can Google how many copywriters are in my area.

I want to have this done and they give you like this whole list of people that you can choose from.

I am much more likely to recommend someone that I have worked together within in a joint project or that has served me in some way.

Which is literally why I can’t understand why more entrepreneurs aren’t involved in joint projects.

You know, having fun, creating collaborations together, doesn’t have to be this massive thing with all these legal contracts.

Just do something together.

Have an event together or exchange a little bit of energy.

You know, I’ll do your podcast for a week, if you do my books for a week and we just try each other out.

Then once you’ve tried someone out, you can exactly know what to say to other people, to get them to actually use that person’s services.

Because you would have experienced it first-hand.

So for me, whatever you can do, whether you create a lead magnet you can give away, whether you have a call with someone and give them some coaching, whether you exchange energy, whether you’re involved in a joint project, whatever you can do to have people experience your services, you just have to do it, because word-of-mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool there is. A

nd what gets you word-of-mouth?

Effective word-of-mouth only comes from if someone has experienced what you can do, because then they can refer you.

Ethan:

Yeah. I mean I can give an example. It is weirdly enough, if it had happened like a week or two later, it would have been part of Explore Protech.

We got Marlon August, who is part of the community, we did an energy exchange with him.

So he did our entire wire frame for our new website, helped craft the whole brand message.

He has a podcast.

We went into his podcast and gave him a very detailed report about all the different things that needs improvement.

What he’s done well, etcetera.

We did an additional re-edit of one of his episodes and kind of ran him through our system. It was a really amazing experience for both of us.

Because it felt for me, like I was talking about earlier, like, I was exchanging podcast editing credits for website credits.

The thing I’m good at for the thing he’s good at, so I was building the website but editing a podcast, which felt really, really good.

So it didn’t feel like something else that I’ve been in the past, especially as a freelancer, which is spec, which is honestly, soul destroying.

It feels so bad.

Someone tells you, oh, you want to do some work for me?

Well, what about you do this free project first and then we’ll see how it goes.

Terrible.

But you’re so desperate has, especially if you’re new to the industry, that you do these things, but ultimately, they don’t really lead anywhere, because the kinds of people who do that aren’t ultimately the kinds of people that you want to be working with.

But instead of doing that, it is a proper energy exchange.

Marlon put a huge amount of effort into our wire frame.

We put a huge amount of effort into his podcast.

Everybody left happy and now I know, if somebody wants to build a brand message, I know who I’m going to recommend them to, because they did ours and we were very happy with it.

Nestene:

Absolutely amazing.

I just love that story.

That is literally everything that collaboration is about.

It’s just multiplied by the amount of people that you exchange energy with.

Marlon is such a special person.

Actually, the first thing that he did when he joined Explore Protech was, he was like, I love this community so much. Let me just help you guys.

I will build a wireframe for your website.

And he put us through all of his services, because he knew at that point, we couldn’t afford it in normal capital, but we could afford it in social capital.

So he literally just helped us so much.

And in return, we started marketing him to the whole world because we were like, yeah, he did it for us.

I mean, go look at our website.

It’s fantastic, isn’t it?

Yeah, so and that got him so many referrals, which is again, you know exactly what you’re saying, exchanging referral credits, which we’re good at, for website credits, which we’re really bad at, but he’s fantastic at it.

So yeah, there’s so many different ways to collaborate.

I just love it.

Ethan:

And you can’t buy it referrals.

Truly, I think people are selling actual referrals aren’t really selling anything because the reality is, if you are referring someone to someone else, there’s a huge amount of trust, and you can’t just buy trust like that, you have to really earn it.

Nestene:

Exactly!

These people can see in your eyes if you’re like, guys.

It’s Ethan is like the best podcast producer in the whole entire world, and you don’t say anything else, they can see in your eyes like you’re not that confident.

Maybe you’re just saying that because, I don’t know, because you’re selling referrals, or you’re part of a forced referral network.

But if you’re like, guys, like oh my goodness, Ethan just did our podcast, and it is so amazing and like the service was so excellent.

And the quality is just like – I would never do another podcasting episode by myself ever again.  listen to it and then let him do your podcasts as well. 

It’s two different things.

Ethan:

Okay. So, I think that wraps up our main discussion.

I think now would be a good time to chat a bit about if somebody isn’t part of Explore Protech, it’s a selective group.

You can’t just hop on in.

But if there are people interested in finding out more, maybe scheduling a date with you guys, how does that work?

Nestene:

So, literally you can just take our booking link and book yourself a call into our calendars.

Me and Peter will welcome you with open arms.

And then we’ll put you through the dating the tribe process, which is a process where you get to check out the tribe, see what we have to offer, meet some of the people, see if you gel them, and then they get to do the same.

And then at the end of the week, if we both agree and we want to make it official, then we invite you into our community.

Ethan:

And as somebody who’s part of the dating process, I can tell you it honestly feels very cool to not just get in immediately.

There’s something really nice about the fact that it’s like, you can come, you can look, but like, you’re not in until you’re in.

And the reason for that, is because you’re truly cultivating a very curated community.

And there’s such a diverse array of people and business owners and stuff.

So, I don’t think people need to worry about, oh, is my industry going to fit in?

It’s more about what are your values.

What are your morals?

How are you culturally?

If you’re a good person, you should be fine.

Nestene:

I love that so much, Ethan. And that’s exactly it.

If you’re a a good person, if you’re fun, authentic, and caring, and growth minded, then our community is for you.

And that’s also the thing, we build relationships with actual people.

So, Ethan, you can tell me tomorrow: Listen I’m not doing podcasts anymore.

I decided I’m going to sell plants now and we’ll be like, you know what, plants is the new thing.

We’re going to help you build this freaking plant business because we’re friends.

Ethan:

Exactly.

So if you’re coming, they’re looking to pitch your heart out, then maybe go somewhere else.

If you’re coming to meet a community of people, then this is the best for you.

Nestene:

Thank you so much, Ethan.

That’s absolutely stunning.

Hendrik:

If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn.

Also visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find all the links in the podcast description. This has been a Baird Media production.

 

Transcript

Hendrik Baird: [00:00:00] What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our word for it. Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals. Discover its power and confront its challenges so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Beard from Baird Media, and let’s talk content marketing.

Jason Soobramoney joining me here on Let’s Talk Content Marketing.

I’m Hendrik from Baird Media.

So Jason, you’re in a very small town.

Tell me a little bit about your history, where you’re from, where you studied, how you got to where you are today.

Jason Soobramoney: I started working straight out of high school.

I did a few art jobs until I ended up in shipping and I wasn’t shipping for close to four years.

But in that time, I was still looking for other avenues to make money, so I picked up copywriting from freelance work, so I did that as well.

So that’s how I started getting my journey into digital marketing.

After about four years of [00:01:00] that, I joined a startup agency called Whirlwind and drew with the company.

It was a company that was also doing copywriting and wanted to get into seo.

And you know, when you grow to a company like that, that is taking on seo, they think they know what SEO is.

When you start doing it, you realize that they have no idea.

So it was kind of those things like you learn by doing.

And so I learned online marketing and digital marketing the online way through YouTube, through reading.

Different articles, online courses, so had a bit of upside.

Now I’m with the big agency, you know, international agency as well, which the ball game’s completely different.

Those lessons that you learn, those basics doesn’t matter the size of business.

They really do carry on for different sizes and different types of industries.

Hendrik Baird: Content marketing obviously is a sub genre of marketing or a subsection of marketing.

How do you define content marketing?

What is it?

Jason Soobramoney: Content is just creating content and content says can be really broad.

Making a blog post as content, making a YouTube video, [00:02:00] our podcast that we do now, it’s all types of content that can really reach people.

It’s better creating something on any different platform that speaks to your users.

Hendrik Baird: And how does it differ from advertising or some of the other marketing pillars.

Jason Soobramoney: Advertising is like, okay, I’ll be scrolling and I’m gonna throw this in your face like you see popup ads or you have certain items that you wanna market and you see on, on TV advert.

That’s kind of intrusive.

Like you going after that Content marketing is that in a sense, but it’s more broadly it’s creating content that where users are looking for something specific and you hoping that they find you.

Hendrik Baird: Why should one do content as a marketing method?

What is the value of it?

Jason Soobramoney: Well, versus having just a product, a lot of people, they’re doing their research first.

You know, they’re not seeing something on TV and being,

Hey, I like that product.

I’m gonna go out and buy it.

Or they’ll look at that and okay, I’m gonna do my research.

What is this?

They’ll be Googling,

Hey, have you seen reviews about this?

Or, what does this actually do?

And most of the time we actually just have a problem that you’re searching for a solution for.

This can be as a, you know, as a [00:03:00] business, as a regular, go the street.

So that’s why content marketing is very important cause you be able to create that content that not only promotes your product, but answers questions.

Field or just get a brand out there like, Hey, you are answering questions that the guy off the street is answering and that’s how they find it.

Services a thought leader in that industry.

Hendrik Baird: So, so how would you know what those questions are that they’d be looking to answer?

Jason Soobramoney: First is always do your research.

Know your product.

You know, you find a solution.

I mean, if you know, you identify the problem and then you find the solution.

So if you are selling a product, you’ll know all the.

Things that it’s fixing.

I think a lot of people, when they’re doing content marketing, especially, they focus so much on the features of what their product does, but they completely forget the benefits.

Like mentioning, Hey, this product can automate this, or this product can fix this problem.

But you’re not answering the the benefit of, Hey, this product will give you more time to do A, B, C N D, or it’ll make your processes run smoother.

So I feel like that’s a very important thing of the [00:04:00] content marketing is too.

Obviously you do know those problems, but by showing that, hey, this is how would actually change your life, versus, Hey, your product is only doing, certainly, these are the features.

Hendrik Baird: I think it’s an important point you’re raising there because if you’re just going, hey, buy my product, buy my product, you’re basically doing advertising in a sort of content form manner, aren’t you?

Instead of finding out what the issue is that they need, what are their pain points really, and how does what you do or sell solve that?

Jason Soobramoney: Exactly.

I mean, you take Red Bull for instance.

Red Bull is an energy drink, they’re famous saying red Bull gives you wings.

Doesn’t really give you wings, but it’s not just about giving you energy.

Look at how they market themselves, things that they sponsor, look at their ads.

It’s like the promise is different.

They’re not just giving you energy.

I’m giving you energy to go out and do things.

Same with, I mean using Monster Energy.

The same, look at the things they sponsor.

They sponsored rally car racing.

A whole lot of extreme events, just like Red Bull does.

Again, the promise was like, I’m not gonna give you energy.

I’m gonna give you energy to do this.

That’s a thing what kind of gets lost with a lot of evidence, like, Hey, my product gives you [00:05:00] energy, and then stops there.

Like, Hey, go out and do more.

So the promise is a lot more different and that’s kind of what people need to start marketing resource pain points and show that, hey, my product’s not just fixing a problem, but it’s actually changing your life.

Hendrik Baird: So content comes in many different shapes and sizes. In your opinion and experience, which one works the best?

Because I know people don’t like to read and lots of people like videos, and TikTok is becoming very, very popular.

Where do you think is the sweet spot?

What works best?

Jason Soobramoney: I always say this, go where your customers are, and you might have a big video, maybe a brand where, hey, your customers are made video watches if you taking it from there.

So maybe you have a certain service or you’re selling a product.

Your users are, Hey, I’m Googling how to do certain things, and your product shows up.

I feel it’s so underrated cause of the ease of it, of to be on multiple platforms.

You can take a LinkedIn post, that same LinkedIn post can be copied and paste onto Twitter, copy and paste onto Facebook.

Yes. Your market is maybe not necessarily there.

But I mean, the effort it takes to stop [00:06:00] taking the same content and posting it everywhere your users are.

Cause you never know, Hey, maybe that one LinkedIn user comes across your piece of content.

They’re like, okay, that converts into a sale or converted into your interest.

So especially in this day and age, a lot of people like video.

But then even on the video platforms, TikTok has skyrocketed in the last couple years.

I mean, if you ask people what TikTok was five years ago, nobody knew.

Now it is a very, very prominent platform, mainly because of the ease of it.

I mean, it’s not like with YouTube, which has been there again for some time.

TikTok gives you the tools to edit your own content Within their profile, they identified, Hey, people liked videos.

But what’s great about it now is we know we got YouTube shorts, you’ve got Facebook reel, the short form content that’s batching TikTok.

People are taking the same content from TikTok and posting it on their Facebook reel, posting it on YouTube shorts.

So it really is just being with your marketers, which is everywhere, and it’s so much more simpler than it was going back five, six, even 10 years ago.

Hendrik Baird: So talking about new media, I mean, podcasting is only about 20 years old and it, and it [00:07:00] has really grown in leaps and bounds, especially over the pandemic.

And you’re saying short form content is very popular.

Podcasting, more long form content.

And it seems as if it has a really good listen through rate as opposed to video.

People sort of watch a little bit and then they get bored and off they go to the next thing.

And I think it’s about podcasting.

You know, that you can multitask and drive to the, like you used to with radio, switch it on in your car and listen to something or do the washing or gardening or whatever.

What is your opinion of podcasting as a content strategy?

Jason Soobramoney: Well, if you look at, you’re talking about radio radio’s been around what couple of decades.

And it’s still going strong. It’s something that is a stock standard.

Like say people listen to their cars.

Podcast is just the next step.

Podcast is a bit more different cause you can actually look for content that you enjoy and enjoy listening to versus listening on the radio and waiting for a searching time slot.

So like I said, you know, you doing your gardening.

If you feel more productive in your gardening, listen podcasts,

Hey now you don’t have to wait for a specific one.

You can go out and [00:08:00] look for it.

And I think why podcast has also grown quite a lot in the last couple of years is because it’s like, it’s very re marketable and you can repurpose that content.

Like if you are recording it, like a video aspect of it, you can take again, a short part of it and put it onto YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and just marketing your own content without having to remake more content. Just repurpose it.

And so I feel that’s where podcasts in this day and age, it’s getting a lot of traction.

Cuz you look at the guys who are most popular, I mean you take a YouTuber like Logan Paul, who you know, he is, got his own podcast now called Impulse, I think it is.

And people listen to it. He gets famous people on there and most of their traction doesn’t come from people going onto YouTube and watching the podcast or going to channel watching the podcast.

It’s all these little micro videos that they make that market it.

And when those videos pop up on somebody’s feet, oh, that’s pretty interesting.

I enjoy that.

Minute and a half or four minutes that I’ve heard of this.

Lemme go in deeper.

So again, with the way searches, you can really [00:09:00] find that pretty much on any platform that you’re willing to find around.

So I think that is why podcasts especially, are becoming majorly popular in the modern age.

Hendrik Baird: I wrote a book about podcasting and that’s called Become a Podmaster: everything you Need to Know to Master the Art of Podcasting, it is available on Amazon, so if you wanna go check that out, it’ll tell you everything you need to know how to podcast, uh, from A to Z literally.

You mentioned something really important that that’s repurposing content.

Copy and pasting something. I mean, it is one way of doing it, but if you have a podcast, you can, for instance, like you say, make snippets of it or use it as the source material for other content.

And I’ve also written a book about that if you want to read a bit about that.

It’s called Purposefully Repurposed for Profit. It’s also available on Amazon. So tell me, Jason, do you have any tips or tricks or suggestions that somebody perhaps in a small business would find useful when we talk about content?

Jason Soobramoney: Put yourself on the forefront.

I think people like listen more to a person than [00:10:00] a brand, and I think that’s very important.

If you’re especially a small business owner, be on the forefront of your content. I mean, if you, again, let’s say for instance, an e-commerce site, post videos of you reviewing the products, actually’s, having your site such a great way.

To really get your content out there.

And even if you are looking at stuff like affiliate marketing, which isn’t very popular because of, you know, all these video platforms, you get other people to create content for you.

I think in TikTok especially, there’s so many videos out there, people using products, but you don’t see their faces ever.

You know, it’s not, not the usual marketing strategies you usually see where people have to have a face.

Now you’ve got that on there where people’ll just have a bit of a soundtrack.

Couple words on the screen and they have market to their product.

So I think especially with content, you know, it is again, being there with your marketers and trying to give as many answers as possible to the questions that your users may be asking.

And that’s why I’ve always mentioned the business owners or people hire up is because they ask your industry experts as a [00:11:00] marketer and myself, I can do as much research as I can on any particular business, on their competitors, et cetera, but that industry specialist will always be the client.

They’ve known their business for much longer, and they know their clients.

I think it’s very important for small businesses because also overlook how simple it is to create content.

You can create a five minute video.

You can have Facebook post just showing like, I mean if you are a service expert instance like an air conditioning company, you just show pictures of an installation that you did on Facebook and you’re creating content which is engaging people, it’s cost you nothing.

Facebook is free and it just cost you a few minutes to upload and post and there it is.

And I feel like that’s kind of where this internet pages, especially with older POCs, I’ve got a few of all the POCs and trying to explain what we do is so difficult because they’re like,

Hey, I’m in the yellow Pages.

What more do I need?

And you have to teach them and they think, okay, let’s do a website.

They wanna go for whatever looks technologically great.

But it is really, it is super simple these days.

I mean, you can market a business.

Without creating a website, because I mean, Google [00:12:00] Map profile is super simple.

I mean, that’s a really basis, but again, Facebook, social media especially is so great for just creating a simple content and it doesn’t have to be indepth research again.

I mean, that does help once you have a basic plan out like that is great starting research and reach more people, but just showing your business and showcasing it in the smallest space.

Again, simple photo or even our Facebook posts or even customer reviews is such a great way to build content, do small case studies.

Hey, we helped this client achieve this result where they had this problem.

Really simple content to create, which doesn’t take a lot of time and effort, but it is really super impactful.

Cause one thing I’ve also realized, and this when building content is to make an emotional connection.

I’m not too sure if you’ve heard about this YouTube channel called, but Dad, how do I.

Yeah, what is it about?

It actually came out in 2020. I’ve got the stats here.

Just so anyone listening, social blade.com is a great website.

If you wanna see the stats of YouTube channels as YouTube users. It tells you how much money [00:13:00] they’re making, how many subscribers they’re building on.

So it came out in April of 2020 and in their first month he had 1,630 subscribers within the first month.

Based off one video, which is how to make a tie.

And it was because this guy, I mean he’s an elderly gentleman, and he was like, what would you be asking your father, Hey, how to make a tie?

That’s what he does on his website.

He creates an emotional connection with mainly a males, you know, without Greg up and households, and you start realizing, hey, some of them didn’t have fathers that they ask questions to.

And he faced that emotional connection with him and within a month he grew such a big fan base.

I think it was 9,000 something views within the first month.

So, which is amazing for, and now he’s up to like 42,000 subscribers in two years, if not more, and then up to 4.7 million views.

So creating that emotional connection with people is really, really so important.

Hendrik Baird: The link for that will be in the description, so it makes you go click and that [00:14:00] sounds really interesting.

So what type of content do you create for your clients and what sort of clients do you work with?

Jason Soobramoney: Well, I work with clients from all different industries, from simple mom and pop shops, which is your basic family owned businesses to some of it more public traded businesses.

In the medical field, we create mainly with site content, with blog content, few videos and social media posts.

I feel, again, that’s really super impactful cause we are now going to wherever the users are.

Hendrik Baird: That’s really important Point is, is not everybody is on the same platform.

I mean, oldies like me, these days tend to hog Facebook and, and the younger crowd seems to be on TikTok.

I know the elders are also going like, no, we gotta get onto TikTok now.

But people get so intimidated, especially startup companies that need to get out there and, and need to get their message out there.

They get so intimidated by content, like it’s overwhelming. And they tend not to approach somebody like yourself because they think it’s gonna be very expensive.

Is it expensive or is that just a myth?

Jason Soobramoney: It depends where [00:15:00] you go.

I think with the level of what every digital marketing agency can provide, it does vary in price because there are some base services that.

They may have an internal software that they use, a certain reporting that they use.

I do recommend it for any small businesses.

Start out on your own. Just put the basics, creating content, and once you feel like you’ve plateaued and you understand a little bit of it, then start seeking more help.

But it relatively isn’t that expensive.

It just depends where you go and what you’re looking for.

Your package.

If you want someone to create those TikTok videos for you, that’s gonna cost a lot.

But if you’re just gonna take a, I mean a smartphone and do it yourself, I mean, a lot of TikTok do that.

There’s another one called Daniel Mac.

Phones up to people that nice.

Ask what to do for a living.

Literally record it all on an iPhone.

That’s all he does and all he needs, and with the TikTok platform, he can do that.

So if you can even create the content yourself, really go for it.

Unless it is something that’s like further outreach and if you feel like what you are doing is not effective.

[00:16:00] If you do that with an agency, it is great cuz they come with a lot more reporting and that experience.

But if you’re starting out and you feel you don’t have the budget foot, there is so much that you can do on your own.

Like I said, it’s simple Facebook post.

It doesn’t take a lot though, at a bonus of having an agency comes with that experience that they do have and the resources they have in terms of building out resources for you and the amount of metrics that they can give back to you, that’s gonna make.

Says to you in terms of how much traffic are you getting, how many leads are you getting, and looking at that data and interpreting the data in a way that says, okay, this is where our strategy is failing us, is where it’s doing great and where we need to pivot, or where we need to improve.

So it can be expensive, but if you’re small business, it doesn’t mean you cannot do it at all without an agency.

Again, there’s so many ways to make simple content.

It’s more of a matter of attrition than being popular. There’s people who have constantly made content.

That has now the test of time and are making a lot of money on a YouTube.

Just gotta put content out there. The more content [00:17:00] you put out, the better you get.

Hendrik Baird: There’s two words that I stress in my book on podcasting.

The one is passion.

You have to be passionate about what you’re doing because it’s gonna show. And the second thing is consistency.

It doesn’t help to make something, you know, an and then and, and it’s not only true for podcasting, it’s true, like you say, for all content that you make.

You can’t just post onto LinkedIn once in a while when you feel like it.

You’ve gotta consistently be there.

One for the algorithm to see you, and two for your clients to go like, oh, this guy’s actually active.

Or, you know, doing something all the time.

That’s a really important point. The other point that you’ve raised here, which I just wanna ask about is data.

How much do you trust the data to point you the way forward?

Jason Soobramoney: A hundred percent.

I use data in every move that I make with all my decisions, but again, it comes to the experience of understanding the data.

Sometimes you’ll see something that, It doesn’t make sense.

It could be negative.

Like for instance, we talk about balance rates, how far somebody came into your site and left or pass on the page.

People can be like, [00:18:00] oh, have a high balance rate.

That’s super negative.

Sometimes it’s a good thing because if they’re bouncing within your site, it can lead to like, Hey, My site navigation’s good cause they’re living within my site.

They might not like my content, but my navigation’s intuitive enough.

I have enough avenues for them to keep checking and looking for what they want.

And then you can obviously work back and try to give them those answers.

But I mean, that’s a negative.

That’s actually, it can be accepted as a positive.

So that really comes on with, again, experience and understanding the data that you’re looking at.

There’s something else, like you can also look at something like session rate, if your session rate is dropping.

Pages position, I’m sorry.

Shopping.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing cuz they’re finding you to search.

They are coming to a site, they found the page and they go to maybe a next page, which is your conversion page.

Then they, you’ve done your job versus seeing somebody’s gone through 50 pages on your site.

So coming with data just comes with understanding it, but it really is very important to underst to look at your data when making decisions.

[00:19:00] You can trust your gut as much as you want, and sometimes it does pay off, but the dot will lose all the way.

Hendrik Baird: I know somebody on LinkedIn was saying the other day, you know, you’ve gotta look at your posts and see what has worked.

And it was only do it that way.

But I also said to somebody, sometimes I just post what I like because it is, is that honesty and it is finding a way to create a connection with somebody.

You were saying earlier that emotional connection that you need to have.

I did a post recently about gratitude and a lot of people,

Well, one person commented, but a lot of people liked and engaged with it in, in some way.

Like, you know, it speaks to people.

I don’t quite understand though, if you do something like that, how does that translate into money?

How do you monetize your content?

Jason Soobramoney: Monetize your content?

Well, again, depends on your industry and what you’re looking to do.

So if you are an influencer and a content creator, you are looking for something that’s different from businesses.

You’re looking for increased views.

Because that’s how you make money with, you know, certain platforms, certain amount of views.

As a small business, how converting to money is firstly, you’re [00:20:00] getting your brand out there.

You’re pressing yourself front of mind.

All those top of users, top of funnel users are, people are doing research.

They are not ready to make a purchase yet, but they’re looking around, so you wanna get out in front of them before anybody else.

So by creating enough content that shows you as an expert and answers questions that they may have, because I mean, how many times you’ve just been at home and you’re wondering, oh, how do I do this?

And you’ve Googled if you have a plumbing issue, how to fix a broken pipe, and you go find, find a certain how tos you find YouTube videos.

You try and you fail.

And you’re like, oh, uh, now I need to find somebody.

But if you found out how to buy a industry professional, you’ll be hook.

Okay, I remember that.

I looked at this service near me that posted this.

Maybe they can help me.

And that’s how you self converged me into these by showing that an industry leader, and you know what you’re talking about, but it also puts you front of mind of a lot of views that you wouldn’t necessarily do.

I have felt so much content.

In the past nine years, even from freelance [00:21:00] work where it is a blog post that has reached so much traffic and starts becoming the high in high converting content because they looked at it, they were intrigued, it taught them something and showed, Hey, this product or even this industry or this business, they know what they’re talking about.

They’re an expert.

Not always will they convert on the same day.

And that’s something that people need to understand with content creation.

Not everybody’s knee jerking. I mean, if you want knee-jerk reactions, you know, you, you are looking for page searching and more advertising than anything else on Google, but it’s more of a marathon than a sprint.

People will look at the content and maybe take two, three weeks before they even make a decision.

And that’s sometimes where people, again, looking at data, see I’ve got so much of traffic on this page, but no one’s converting.

And then you see in a couple months when the maybe industry has changes and there’s been some sort of trend or some issues happened, all of a sudden conversions are flying.

Why?

Because people knew about your business three months, four months before they even were ready to purchase.

[00:22:00] So that’s why creating content is so important.

It does just put you in front of minded users.

Hendrik Baird: I think a lot of people, when they bulk at the idea of the cost of it, they, they don’t really realize.

The longevity of it, like you say, my example is I’m in another incarnation, I’m a hypnotherapist, and I specialize in helping people to stop smoking.

I had somebody approach me this week who had read a press release I had written the beginning of last year.

And she had done some research and found some videos also from last year, and you’re like, no, I really like who you are and what you do.

Can I make an appointment?

And I go like, could grief, I didn’t know that content was still out there, nevermind that it’s, that it’s actually still bringing people in.

So, and I think people miss that point, that this is a longer term investment.

You know, it’s not just for today, this is for next week, next month, next year.

As you say, people are not always ready to buy straight away.

But as long as you have them top of mind, by feeding them some awesome, helpful content, they’ll certainly come back.

Jason Soobramoney: Exactly. And you never [00:23:00] know when that person will be looking at the content.

As you said, you know, somebody looked at it and it came out last year, but you never know when users down the line are gonna have a problem.

That they need solved or have a question that they want answered.

So creating as much content, it could be a year before that content sees any traction at all, I guess suddenly happens in the industry or happens in, you know, the real world.

All of a sudden you’re now the expert because you was the best and helped a lot of people.

So that’s why people always chase P P C a little bit too much versus the SEO side of which is creating content because PPC as well, it’s.

You can justify the results. I spent X amount this week and I got X amount leads back.

You see it instantaneously, you can make changes.

EO is a bit harder because your content sees results months, sometimes even years later.

So it’s really hard to quantify for a lot of people, which is why content sort of gets a backseat in marketing strategy because again, PPC is easier.

Again, for business owners.

You, you don’t understand that something’s gonna take six months to work.

You want [00:24:00] results today, and that’s what a lot of people sell.

I mean, PPC is great and it serve a purpose of getting instant results, but it has to go work over hand in hand with your content creation and your a C O work.

Hendrik Baird: So that’s also why you, you need to consider content as part of your bigger marketing mix, so that you have things that will deliver today and tomorrow, but then also have this longevity in the content side of things that will get people to you later on.

How do you make sure that the search engines understand what you’re saying and they can push you up in the rankings?

Jason Soobramoney: Well, it’s so many factors.

Google’s constantly tweaking their algorithm and I feel like for many people at G seo, myself included, it’s frustrating cuz you’ll have content that’s ranking well and all of a sudden you see there’s a walk.

There’s been a bit of a dip.

Cause before search engines or building content or showing content, For their crawlers, which is, you know, those little crawlers will go through sites and look for certain things and Google’s what they’ve really done very well versus other search platforms, which there still are many [00:25:00] that are being used like Duck Go.

There’s still against so many, depending what parts.

World drives while they have their own versions of search.

But what they do is they try to create content for users.

So there are the fundamentals that need to be a certain amount of keywords, certain amount of keyword phrasing, page speed, image alter’s, all the technical stuff that goes in it, but some of the biggest stuff with content, which will helps you rank as your relevancy, how relevant your content is.

And how fresh it is, depending on what the topic is.

Because all kind, if you’re looking for stats for 2022, if you see something for 2018, you’re really gonna by.

And then another thing is your backlink profile, which is something that is again, with where content has sort of.

Being losing its way and what people understand it to be.

Especially with things like guest blogging.

I mean, I think you’ve seen it, you on LinkedIn, how many times have people messaged you,

Hey, I can sell you a thousand links.

That’s very bad practices for anybody listening.

Do not listen to them.

Block, delete, whatever you do, but your background profile does pay a big [00:26:00] part in your s e O.

So building relationships with other customers, having those referrals, even if it’s pure, know your, I mean, uses your customers.

That’s another thing that people always underestimates the power of reviews.

If you sing five star reviews or four star reviews on a product, you’re very happy with it, and I feel like that is, again, having.

Customer feedback as part of your content strategy is so powerful. If you are reviewing the products that you are selling, you’re giving an honest review.

Even if it’s know you, you don’t give it a five star review.

You selling or shouldn’t give it a five star review.

That honesty and making emotional connection with people really does go a long way.

Hendrik Baird: Yeah, my business partner, every time I say, Ooh, look at this microphone, or look at that, he says, let’s look at the reviews first.

And then sometimes it comes back like terrible.

Good price, but terrible product.

Yeah.

So reviews are obviously very important.

Tell me if anybody wants to see the kind of content that you create, where would they go to look?

Jason Soobramoney: Well, because I’m basically doing a lot more client work.

I’ve only started building my own content out recently.

So currently [00:27:00] I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter.

That is just my advice to anybody in digital marketing that I’ve started building out.

Cause I’ve also realized, again, talking about it, as I said, people prefer to listen to a person than a brand.

It’s helped me as a marketing specialist with my own company, when people are like, Hey, I’ve seen you on LinkedIn.

I have all my clients on LinkedIn.

They say, okay.

They trust me more.

Cause they’re starting to see, okay, he’s posting what digits from marketing, like he must know what he’s talking about.

Let’s trust him.

So currently I’m only on LinkedIn cause obviously I can’t share my client work with everybody.

I, I could, I would make some money off him, hopefully.

But currently on LinkedIn.

And then I’ve also just started the Twitter accounting again, just to share some advice, uh, try to share things that have helped me, I feel in the digital marketing space too much as, Kept to themselves.

Nobody’s sharing enough and having a conversation. There’s a joke, I think it was somebody tweeted out, if you want a hundred people to tell you how to do your job, start changing digital marketing.

Cause there’s so many people out there that think they know.

So that’s kind of what I’m trying to start Promoters.

Cut through all these black hats, the SEO [00:28:00] and content marketing strategies, and just start getting as much advice as can for mainly small businesses as people starting out in the industry.

Hendrik Baird: I will put Jason’s LinkedIn link in the description.

Please go and check out his profile and what he does and how he does it, and make contact.

And, uh, start a conversation. I think that’s the main thing.

When we did a training course earlier this year or last year about, uh, LinkedIn, she said The moment you get a, a new connection, get them offline and chat with them.

It’s no, you’re just having hundreds of connections and, and you dunno who those people are.

So I’m gonna put Jason’s LinkedIn within the description and please have a conversation and ask your questions and see what he does and, you know, get some advice there.

Thank you so much Jason.

Uh, that was very informative and thank you for your time.

Jason Soobramoney: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Hendrik Baird: Cool.

If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrick on LinkedIn.

Also, visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find [00:29:00] all the links in the podcast description.

 

 

Hendrik

What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content Marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our word for it. Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals.

Discover, its power, and confront its challenges, so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird from Baird Media.

And let’s talk content marketing.

Hendrik

Frederika Fourie.

Thanks for joining me.

Tell me what is your background, your training.

Who are you?

And how did you get into the marketing racket?

Frederika

So yeah, I definitely didn’t think that I would end up in marketing when went to university.

I studied visual studies in my postgraduate year, which is basically a combination of art history, philosophy, and anthropology.

And it’s one of my great loves in life.

Unfortunately, it’s not the most employable field.

I really struggled to find a good job after graduating.

So I ended up becoming a barista and then traveling overseas as an air hostess for all those kinds of things.

And then when I came back to South Africa, I found a job at an agency as a community manager, which was this, you know, intuitive kind of thing to do, because I always had blogs and I’ve always been, I guess a natural content generator.

And then, yeah, I just started with community management and got some briefs to do the content for those communities and slowly, but surely got more exposed to content and ended up working at an agency for about six or seven years and did quite well in content.

We won in 2018 the Assegaai for most effective use of content for a campaign that we did with Clover Crush called The Crush Goodness Campaign.

I got my award, and I was like, I’m ready to go, go for it.

And then I started, I started looking for a job on the corporate side of things and I was employed at  Milling machine has a marketing administrator you are.

Today, I’m the marketing manager here and my other things, I manage all the content published by the company.

And then I also have a little side hustle hat’s quite content oriented called Ideo Zine.

It’s a Zine about idioms and yeah, we publish a physical little zine every two months and generate the most of the interest and engagement through our Instagram page.

Hendrik

So, for any listener, who’s not quite sure what are we talking about, content marketing- could you just give a brief description, how content marketing, perhaps differs from regular marketing?

Frederika

So, for me, the big difference between content marketing or this two big differences, between content marketing, which is a subset of marketing versus advertising, which Is to me another subset of marketing, which is often confused.

But they’re also closely related.

So, advertising in its most traditional sense which we still call above the line advertising, its top like billboards, radio, television ads.

And those kinds of things.

And then content marketing is where you generate content, it’s what we call a soft sell, so we don’t push the product down someone’s throat.

It’s about creating content that is valuable. All and insightful based on your target audience and their needs.

So above the line or traditional advertising, and that kind of cohort of marketing, I always feel like that marking is speaking at you.

You know, it’s a very one directional kind of type of communication with your target audience and then with content marketing, it really is a lot more about enticing your reader and providing them with valuable information, at least,  information that they want or need and through that information, gaining their trust and building their relationship with your brand because if your content is something that they turn to frequently, they will end up preferring your brand or your brand will be top of mind.

So, yeah, that’s how I feel in a nutshell, its traditional marketing, or advertising speaks at you, and content marketing doesn’t speak at you.

It provides wisdom, it provides knowledge. 

And you choose to listen, you come to it.

It doesn’t necessarily come to you.

Hendrik

Okay.

So I think you’ve already mentioned some of the value that that content marketing has in that it draws an audience in, instead of…

So, it’s kind of pull marketing in a way, isn’t it?

It’s not push.

You’re not pushing your message on to somebody, you’re trying to pull them in and win them over with quality content.

Isn’t that what you want to do?

To educate them in the process so that they can like and trust you?

Frederika

Yes, I think you’re absolutely right.

But I think something that in my early content marketing career, I lost sight of that I think is worth discussing is yes, it’s pull marketing and you are pulling your audience to your content, but I think often we tend to lose sight with content marketing, that it is still a marketing function and that it should still generate revenue.

Which basically, I mean, you can generate revenue through if you have a big enough website or social media account or podcast, you can have a body of advertisers. But ultimately the point of content marketing is to generate a sale and that, to me, is where the real art of content marketing lies.

It’s traveling that line between being useful and gaining someone’s trust and then closing the loop and driving through the sale.

Or at least, you know, getting information from someone if you’re not making a sale.

Hendrik

 Is what you’re really saying is the call to action becomes really important in your content marketing strategy, not so?

Frederika

Absolutely.

Because, you know, content marketing is more affordable than your more traditional channels of marketing, right, or advertising.

So because of placing 10 billboards or 10 print ads or one television ad can generate a lot of content marketing.

And if you manage that creativity and you generate content that really entices your very specific target audience, then that call to action becomes very necessary, because you have now, not always, but sometimes you opt out of your traditional marketing channels, especially if you’re a small business and then you opt for something like content marketing.

But you have to make sure that that content marketing still carries its weight and still you generate it’s worth through that call to action, which I think is also very important metric o measure the efficacy or effectiveness of content marketing.

Hendrik

So, one thing I’ve read about good content is that it has to be evergreen.

It has to have a long shelf life because you want people to, you know, be exposed to it over a longer period of time and that’s some of the value of content as opposed to an ad.

An ad appears on television. It’s 30 seconds and it’s gone. Whereas if you have an article or a graphic or whatever, it can last a long time and can pull your audience over a long period. 

Is that true?

I am I making this up?

Frederika

Yes.

Also, when my early days when I started in content, I think we only ever thought about evergreen content or what is was then started being called, was “always-on” content.

I mean, it depends from marketing strategy to marketing strategy, but you would normally have an always-on content strategy with content pillars and that’s your 24/7 365 days a week type of content.

Just to quickly get stuck on what content pillar is.

I don’t know if your listeners are completely comfortable with that word.

But so content pillars are basically the types of content that you choose to cover through our content marketing.

And those pillars are based on the target audience research that you have done.

So, you basically want to research your audience, understand what is valuable and important to them and then figure out what content you can generate to address that need or that want of your specific target audience and that is a content marketing strategy.

And one of the key things in that content marketing strategy becomes then your content pillar.

So, for example, if you are selling something like an online frozen food solution, the likes of You Cook and those guys, you will probably have a content pillar where you talk about health and nutrition.

And you will probably have a content pillar where you talk about recipes; and you will probably have a content pillar where you talk about your favourite chefs; and each of those content pillars will tie back to your product.

So, if you talk about your favourite chefs maybe you have recipes that emulate some of their most famous recipes.

If you talk about health and nutrition, you might have an offering where that content is linked to your healthy, nutritious meal offering, etcetera.

So, you kind of get the idea: content pillar drives a specific goal, and then links back to that call to action, back to your product, to make sure you are actually generating revenue.

So that can be always-on one thing that’s not tied to a specific campaign and then you might have your specific campaign.

Let’s say you want to launch a new type of product, or you want to launch a new brand, or you want to just create a general awareness campaign. o me that content marketing is so, so, so important; to me at ties the heart and the brain of your brand and the consumer together.

To give you an example – When I just started working in advertising, there was a famous drinks brand by a famous airy company, that was launched by a media stunt.

So they, basically, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners will actually remember this, well, they had aliens who landed all over the country and primarily in Joburg.

And the media was abuzz with this alien landing, you know, and like it was still early days of social media, so people were a bit more gullible, you know, some people were solidly convinced that they might have been aliens landing.

So I’m sure a lot of your listeners remember this event, but I will pay good money to the listener who can remember the brand behind that stunt.

And I think if that brand, who I will not mention right now, I think f that brand was smart with that specific campaign and they built on the stunt with content, it would have stuck with the audience a lot better.

So, you know, like hearing about it ahead, and understanding and appreciating that brand, the heart would have been tied together by the content, which they to my recollection, they didn’t do a terrible amount of.

Hendrik

So, I think what you’re referring to is, what you call repurposing content.

I want to get back to that in a moment.

But if we talk of the various types of content that you can put out in a marketing campaign –  in your experience, which ones work the best.

Frederika

I don’t think that there is a best type of content that I can give to all your listeners to take care of.

Hendrik

Like blog articles are the ones to do or podcast, any one of them?

Frederika

No, not at all.

I think it’s about understanding your audience, understanding where your audience spend the time.

So, in other words, if I’m trying to sell something to my mum’s cohort, podcasting will not be the platform to do it, right?

Because she doesn’t even know what a podcast is, but she loves Facebook, and she maybe loves listicles.

And if that’s your target audience, you need to understand Facebook and listicles.

Let’s go.

Let’s do that.

So ultimately, it’s about understanding your target audience, understanding where they spend their time, and then you’ll understand what type of content marketing will work best.

But what I can say about that, is normally, and this ties back to your point, that we are inching towards – it’s better to not just have one type of content marketing.

You want to have multiple types of content marketing and they build on each other.

They are repurposed from an original piece of content, right?

So, let’s discuss some repurposing techniques of which podcasts are a very trendy new technique.

So, if we look at different kinds of content and how you can repurpose it, for example, let’s say you did do a blog post. t’s text heavy.

Even if you put some pictures in between, it still a lot of reading that needs to be done.

The way that you can repurpose that and it works especially well for seeding it at onto social media platforms, is to turn some of those sound bites (we normally call it) into a visual post.

So, you have a quote or a line, something that will catch the readers eye and you put that on an image.

And you can reshare that when your post goes live, but you can also reshare it in future, you know, and regenerate traffic back to that blog post.

You can also turn a blog post into an infographic.

Something that’s one of my favourite things to do, is to turn dense, difficult to understand content into an infographic.

You might need to make from a designer.

So, you want it to be strategic about what content you choose to donate to an infographic because there’s an additional cost potentially. you can turn a static, like a presentation into a video with a voiceover where you explain the information in that presentation.

So, it’s not only about blogs.

There are so many types of content that your personnel probably generated inside of the company, you don’t always have to look outside the company as well, for an external writer to write some content about your business that they probably don’t even understand that well.

I would say (foot note or side note) rely on your employees to help generate the types of content that can be repurposed, is to literally take old posts and update them when they become relevant again.

For example, let’s say you were selling generators before lockdown when load shedding was rampant and then Covid came.

And one of the only good things was load shedding, right?

That it was cancelled, so we didn’t have load shedding for like, almost two years.

And then, as the economy picked up again, and everybody went back to work, load shedding started happening again.

So, this is a good time to then revisit those old articles which spoke about generators and load shedding and update them and republished them for a new target audience for whom it will be relevant again.

And something else you can do is a roundup post.

This works really well.

Let’s say you posted an article about how-to do-good Facebook content.

And you posted an article about how-to do-good Instagram content and Tik Tok content and YouTube content.

We have six articles about social media content.

It’s a very good idea to then publish another article where you round all those different types of platforms up and you link to those articles on your blog because SEO (which is actually a whole separate discussion) favours that linking within your website. And then one of the most difficult types of repurposing content, but I think it has a lot of value.

So, if you have the time and the resources, is to repurpose all your blog articles, for example, or all your slide shows, all the research you’ve done, repurpose that into an eBook.

Because if you want to establish trust and authority, an eBook is a wonderful way to do it. Ad then, of course, last but not least, repurposing blog content, or, you know, long form content into a podcast.

Because the great benefit of a podcast is you have a captured audience and they’ve come to you, they’ve chosen your podcast, all you have to do is make sure that it remains useful enough and entertaining enough to them, that they actually listen to it.

And once you have a repeat visitor, you’re on your way to success.

Hendrik

So that brings us neatly to podcasting.

Tell me your opinion about podcasting and if your mother doesn’t listen to, do you listen to it?

And, and do you think it has value within the content marketing realm or sphere? What do we call it?

Frederika

I would say, you know, podcasts again, I sound like a repeating record, right?

But podcast, like any other platform, you need to understand where your target audience is there or whether it’s not there.

If your target audience is starting to move to podcasting, like in South Africa, podcasting is still a relatively new platform.

I would say go for it. If you can see people are really starting to get into podcasts, you can be an early adopter, you will have a greater chance of success, as opposed to coming onto the platform later.

You’re gonna have to work a lot harder to carve out your space on the platform.

But, to answer your question, I love podcasts.

My absolute favourite podcast is Stuff You Should Know. And it’s a very good example of how content gets re-appropriated or repurposed, because it’s based, or it originated, when, I think it was that how to – remember those old  TV shows, how to, or how things are made – it was the sister website of that show.

And then they obviously had hundreds, if not thousands, of articles and then, you know, they got these two very harming guys to just talk through how things work, you know?

Stuff you should know about eggs!

And I think have over 1500 episodes already.

And I think that’s a very good example of how, if you’re getting to the game early and you understand your audience, you can really succeed in podcasting.

Because the nice thing about podcasting is we are a driving country, right?

We all have cars and we travel quite vast distances because we are such a large country. And for example, I live in Johannesburg, I commute to Pretoria, I spend all that time on the road listening to podcasts.

The great magic with podcasts is that, you know, people can consume that content when they can’t really consume other content. 

So, I am part of the millennial generation which I’m so tired really of hearing and saying, but for example, radio doesn’t do very well with us.

But podcasts do extremely well.

So, if you know that your target audience is either Millennial or Generation Z, then you guys…I always get confused between Z and X even though they are opposite ends of me.

But anyways if you know you’re targeting anyone younger than 45, it’s worthwhile exploring podcasts as a content channel.

Hendrik

I must say, the big takeaway from everything you’ve said so far is, you need to first understand who you are talking to.

You need to understand your target.

And if it is a 60-year-old woman, who is only on Facebook, then you have to work your campaign to get to that person where there are already consuming the content.

It’s no use trying to find them on Tik Tok where they obviously are not. 

So that really is a very important point for our listener here today to take away.

Let’s end up with any tips or tricks or suggestions, you might have for the listener.

Some trade secrets you might want to share with us.

Let’s say there’s a small business who really is desperate to get their message out.

How do they do that?

What shortcuts, if they are any, or what magic formula is there for them to follow?

Frederika

Okay.

So, my I number one lesson with content marketing is patience, you need to be patient and you need to be committed and consistent.

I you’re inconsistent, you’re going to get inconsistent results and I think that becomes discouraging to a small business owner.

But if they just stick to it and they focus, they will reap the benefits of content marketing.

And then, as we said earlier, make sure that your content has a call to action at the bottom, you want to generate revenue with that content that you have worked so hard on.

Another tip I would give (that we also mentioned earlier in the podcast), use your resources that are already available to you.

If you are really passionate about the business and you are eloquent and you can write a bit, do it.

You can do it.

You can make your own videos.

You don’t always need an expert.

Or let’s say, you don’t always need an expert in content, but you need an expert in your field because that’s where the value comes from, right?

I would say, always always always quality over quantity.

Post once a week or twice a week, but make sure that that content is actually worthwhile for the reader, because if they land on a page with content that isn’t valuable to them, they’re just going to click away and that is the potential lead or sale that you have now lost.

So, make sure your quality is your first priority.

And like, some people would kill me for saying that, but I feel quite quality even over SEO.

Because SEO a bot r article. And I would say, take the time, learn what SEO is, use it as best you can but never sacrifice quality for SEO.

Yeah. And then I’d say the very last and I guess the most important and it ties in with that consistency, is you can’t just consistently post.

You need to critically look at the performance of each post.

You need to understand, you need to look at the right metrics and understand if a post really is performing well or not.

And try and understand, trying to find that pattern in your content, which posts tend to perform better than others.

Maybe how to content performs better than others.

How to content performs better than summary kind of FYI posts.

And then you know, really build your content around that, and see that to all the other types of content that you have.

I think that’s about it. I mean, there’s a million tips, but tip one is start,  step two is stick to it.

Step three is having a call to action and the rest will be fun.

Hendrik

That sounds like great advice. So, the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof.

Where can people go to see the kind of content that you are producing for the company that you’re working for?

Frederika

So, we unfortunately produce a lot of B2B content and internal content.

We also have a website for Pridemilling.co.za. and we have all kinds of B2B content.

But also some consumer-facing content, especially for our bird-loving consumers out there.

We have some tips on how to feed outdoor birds, how to attract outdoor birds, the best types of seeds for different types of seasons. 

So, there’s a small slice of the pizza is on the website.

You’re on the race.

We do behind the scenes.

Hendrik

And if people want to chat to you, maybe about content or just connect with you, how do they do that?

Do you have any contact details, perhaps a LinkedIn page or something?

Frederika

You can find me on LinkedIn Frederika Fourie.

They can also email me at Frederika Fourie Marketing.

If they have any questions or looking for advice or just wanting to chat though.

So I guess the two best channels to find me.

Hendrik

Fantastic.

I will share that in the description of this podcast, so make sure you get in touch with Frederika and thank you so very much for spending the time with me here today.

Your insights are truly valuable and I really appreciate it.

Frederika

Thank you so much and I thank you for your time and thank you for having me.

Hendrik

If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn.

Also visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find all the links in the podcast description.

 

[00:00:00] Hendrik: What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our work for it.

Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals, discover its power and confront its challenges so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird from Baird Media and let’s talk content marketing.

Deborah Olaleye, digital marketer and social media strategist from Johannesburg joining me, uh, right now here on Lets Talk Content marketing.

Deborah, let’s talk Content marketing.

First of all, how did you get into this?

Tell me a little bit about your history and your journey up to this point.

[00:00:42] Deborah: I studied marketing.

Diploma marketing at the University of University of Technology before Transparency, university of Johannesburg to finish my advanced diploma and become a nurse.

I’m actually, I’m looking forward to doing my Masters in marketing next year.

I got into the [00:01:00] marketing field as a result of my interest in helping business owners because my parents as well also into business, and they always struggle to get customers for their products.

Now, I’m currently working at GoWP while having my own side job.

So I’m working at GoWP as a virtual assistant.

So at GoWP I’m doing three tasks and one role of a project manager, marketing assistant, and also an an administrative assistant.

So it’s been fun so far because I get to like hard marketing, so administrative and managing period at the same time.

So it’s, really a great experience for me so far. 

[00:01:36] Hendrik: That’s fantastic.

Obviously you work a lot with content, being a digital marketer and on social media, how do you define content marketing? 

[00:01:43] Deborah: Content marketing generally is just a way of writing content and to get engagement, people engage in boost the visibility of a brand.

So to me, getting engaged entails more than just writing, right?

Content marketing needs to be very short, precise, and clear.

As we [00:02:00] have, um, generation of readers who are always looking for the main point from what you’re trying to tell out to them.

So even marketer affairs studies to, to see this point and study the audience, they’re going to lose, uh, that set of audience.

So kind marketing is just a way of putting our content out there to get people engaged and re-engaged at the same time. 

[00:02:19] Hendrik: First of all, tell me what does a digital marketer do and how does content marketing fit into that? 

[00:02:24] Deborah: Okay.

A digital marketer is someone that does marketing online, like internet marketing.

So content marketing fits into this aspect.

It because we are marketing to people online who we can see face to face, we can only get them remotely online.

So content of marketing is just a way of writing content, like blog post review case studies to get this online audience engaged to a particular brand.

So like you want to, uh, market a product, you try to come up with a story that this audience can relate with.

So digital marketing and content marketing work on hand without the [00:03:00] content.

So digital marketing cannot fly. 

[00:03:02] Hendrik: Okay.

If you’re a small business owner and you’re just starting out and thinking, how do I market my business?

What do I use?

Can you explain what the value of content marketing would be for somebody like that? 

[00:03:13] Deborah: For small business owner that I just started out, content marketing is very, very important because the audiance is you’re trying to sell to, you does not know about your product ’cause you’re just starting out.

Content marketing is a way of telling your audience what your brand is all about.

So you try to make your content very short and it tells a story about your brand that this audience can quickly view, and maybe it can be in video form or recent content where they can quickly, okay, get a grasp of what your brand is all about.

So it goes and it hand, it informs them about your service offering.

And then to get these new customers reengage, the old ones that you already have offline that you’re trying to bring online. 

[00:03:55] Hendrik: Okay, so there are different types of content, video and written [00:04:00] articles and graphics and so on.

In your opinion, which one works the best and why?

[00:04:05] Deborah: I always like when there is a proof to things, so just as I said, like as a small business owners, people can trust your brand.

If there’s nothing can like, relate to or prove that people can see.

So to me, content is something that contains everything that can keep me satisfaction.

So to me, something that I can like quickly get immersed with, like get connected to without me going to like, reading on and on and on before I get to understand what you’re trying to solve.

So that would be something sort of like testimonies and reviews even if you’re a small business just starting and you don’t have people that have testified to your product, at least you must have used your home brand yourself for you to like, come up with something to tell people that yes, this brand is truly working the way I said it is.

So if it was, in my own opinion, testimony and review would be the best concept for me to believe [00:05:00] your brand is truly what you said it, it’s because people has already testified to that.

I studied why working.

I would work, why study, so without previous experience, people won’t believe that I truly have this experience in this field, so they won’t have anything to do with me if I don’t have anything to prove.

So in terms of content, testimonials and reviews will be the best for me. 

[00:05:20] Hendrik: Okay, TikTok, can we talk about TikTok for a moment?

You’re talking about short things, you know, you don’t wanna read long articles.

Is TikTok a great way to get your business out there in short content form? 

[00:05:32] Deborah: Ah, yes. Yes.

It’s really a great way because now we, at this generation that we have now, the generation said, they’re really online trying to have fun.

So you just have to like meet them where they are.

Make your content very short and make it fun.

Don’t make it look too dull.

Just because you’re selling, um, insurance plan doesn’t mean you have to always talk about, just try to bring fun creativity into it and get ’em engaged.

Let ’em know the reason why you want them to use this.

So make it [00:06:00] very short and tone at the same time.

So TikTok is really a great way to put out a content to the audience. 

[00:06:07] Hendrik: And what about podcasts?

What do you think the value of podcasts are for, for content and, and marketing purposes? 

[00:06:13] Deborah: Podcast is really educating, it’s really a great way where you can tell people like an in depth of what your trying to say.

So even where I’m currently working, we use, um, podcasts as a content marketing strategy, where we bring in business owners to talk about the live experience, what motivated them to start their business, and how overcome their problems and the solutions that they applied.

So, um, podcast is really a way to like, get people, bring a story out of them and, um, come up with solutions that the listeners can also like, relate with.

So it’s really good. It’s a great medium. 

[00:06:50] Hendrik: A word you’ve been saying a lot is story.

It’s not just about buy this, buy this, buy from me, I’m the best buy from me.

There’s gotta be a story because people engage with [00:07:00] stories, whether you tell it in a podcast form or in a short TikTok video, but what is the secret of a good story?

[00:07:05] Deborah: The secret of a good story is the way you put it out there like, you start with attention grabber, which is a problem because everyone is looking for a solution to a problem.

So the secret, a good story, the one that comes with a problem that you first of all explain your problem and then you come up with a solution.

So that’s a secret to good storytelling. 

[00:07:28] Hendrik: If you don’t know how to make a podcast, and I’m talking to my listener now, listening here, and we’re talking a little bit about, about content and podcasting.

I’ve just written a book about the topic called Become a Podcast Master Everything you Need to Know to Master the Art of Podcasting, which you can find on Amazon.

So whether it’s a podcast or whether it’s an article or a TikTok video, how do you repurpose this because, I think a lot of people just put one content form out and then that’s it.

They don’t realize that there’s so much you can do with it. So you can turn your, your blogs into TikTok videos and your TikTok videos into [00:08:00] something else.

What is your opinion about repurposing content? 

[00:08:03] Deborah: Okay, and when it comes to repurposing content, like an article you are trying to sell on Amazon and trying to like let people know about that, so you can repurpose the content by bringing out like the main points you want your audience to like, get connected to, because in your context you don’t say everything because you still want your audience to go back to your article or your book that you’ve written.

So you try to bring out part of that article that you’ve written that your audience can quickly like connect to and grab what your book is all about and then motivate them to like take the necessary steps.

So in repurposing that you just need to like come up with the idea of making it a simple call to action content.

Like, maybe you’re writing a triage story of yourself, of how you started and how you handed.

So you can just bring something in between the content, like how you [00:09:00] started. ’cause there’s always a gap, like a summary.

So we are repurposing, it has to always be a summary to grab the attention of your audience to take, because in everything a marketer does, we are always trying to look for a way to make them take the necessary, we’re trying to put in the call to action, so we are trying to make them take the next steps.

So just bring a summary of what the audience.

We get from reading your article or your book.

So we repurposing your content by bringing a summary, not just like introduction.

Introduction is not even gonna work because a lot of people don’t even have time to read your introductions.

They’ll just want to go into, okay, if I to read this book, how is it gonna hand?

You don’t have to give the spoiler, just like, tell a little bit, give me a little bit of salt of, of what I need to get from this book.

So we repurposing it by making it short.

Going straight to the point, make it accurate in summary, not in full details, so, so that they can take the next step to where you [00:10:00] want to lead them to.

[00:10:01] Hendrik: So what you’re saying is like you have a book and you then want to make an infographic and you take seven pertinent points, like really interesting content from your book.

But just seven brief points and then put a link back to your content to say, look, if you want to learn more, go and read the book, here it is.

Or go and read the article, or whatever it is that you’re repurposing.

Is that what you’re saying? 

[00:10:21] Deborah: Yes, exactly. 

[00:10:23] Hendrik: Ja, because also, I mean, people on different platforms and not everybody’s on on Facebook anymore.

Some people on TikTok, some people on LinkedIn, some people are just on the websites.

You’ve gotta find your audience where they are and then do your best through your content to bring them where you want them to go, not so.

[00:10:40] Deborah: Yes, yes. 

[00:10:41] Hendrik: Okay, so there’s somebody listening here now and they’re going like, my goodness, content is so hard to create.

If I could just have some tips or some suggestions or some tricks, what would you tell them?

What, what are those tips or suggestions and tricks that they would find very valuable? 

[00:10:57] Deborah: Okay.

Uh, for me, I always walk with [00:11:00] something that I call CCPC when I’m trying to write content, it’ just clarity, concise, precise and creating, because we are in a world where Creating writing content, doesn’t just go.. Now, talking about clarity.

The content you’re trying to write out, let it be clear for the audience to understand not writing something that it’ll take your audience like minutes for them to understand what you’re trying to let them know about your content.

So just make it very clear.

And then when I’m talking about concise, concise, make it brief and precise, accurate and short.

So creativity, add to it.

Don’t make it too dull.

Make it clear, short, precise, and creative. 

[00:11:46] Hendrik: Short, precise, and creative.

I like those three words.

Really good.

So, so give that acronym again.

You said in the beginning.

[00:11:53] Deborah: CCPC, meaning clear, concise, precise, and creative. 

[00:11:59] Hendrik: [00:12:00] Excellent.

That’s a great tip.

Thank you very much for that.

So, I mean, you obviously create some content and you do some digital marketing and social media and so on, where if people want to go and see what does Debbie do, how does she do it, where do they go to see that? 

[00:12:11] Deborah: Okay.

Uh, you can see that on GoWP because that’s where, um, currently working.

So that’s where I put out my content that I work with. And so I can see that on GoWP social media pages like the Facebook GoWP, Facebook at GoWP Services on Twitter and GoWP on LinkedIn.

And for my own personal blog,

I just started a small marketplace where, small business owners can get to sell their product.

So I’m writing blog posts on the importance of a marketplace for small business owners, so they can get to see that.

Um, www.connectsmet.com/blog. 

[00:12:46] Hendrik: Okay. And we’ll put all those links in the description of the podcast so you can see exactly where to go, and click on that and go and check out what, uh, Debbie does there.

Tell us your contact details, and if somebody wants to get into contact with you or use your service or even ask a question, how would they [00:13:00] get hold of you?

[00:13:00] Deborah: Yeah, they can reach me on my LinkedIn profile, uh, will be in the description and also you can reach me on my email, Debbie for Deborah, dolaleye@gmail.com and on my business line admin@connectme.com. 

[00:13:17] Hendrik: Debbie, thanks so much for sharing this time with me. 

[00:13:20] Deborah: You are welcome. 

[00:13:21] Hendrik: Thank you.

And of course, if you want to learn more about, uh, repurposing content, well, get my book purposefully repurposed for profit. How to, um, save time when you are doing your content strategy simply by repurposing a podcast.

I’m Hendrik here for Baird Media and you’ve been listening to Let’s Talk Content Marketing. 

If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn. Also visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find all the links in the podcast description.

 

INTRO

 What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our word for it.

Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals.

Discover, its power, and confront its challenges, so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird of Baird Media and Let’s Talk Content Marketing.

Hendrik

 Mary Garner speaking with me here tonight on the podcast recording of Set’s Talk Content marketing.

So, you seem to be the expert.

It says content marketing executive that sounds very fancy and and important but let’s get back to the prehistory first if you don’t mind.

So how did you get, what was your journey like?

Mary

So it was very organic, very natural.

So I when I was in college I studied media with a focus on journalism, particularly print journalism and then also online.

So at the start of my career at the very beginning, when I was interning, I wrote for online and then also print.

And then when I graduated, the magazine, I was interning at hired me as a content manager.

So content management systems CMS manager but also content manager overall.

So mentored intern  8 writers, I actually did a guest lecturer at my old College where I was part of a campaign to recruit intern writers.

And I actually, I gave a few people at start, in their careers, one of them’s a comic book writer now and one’s  successful author.

So it’s really nice to be able to help people at the start of their careers.

But anyway, I digress.

So, content marketing became a very natural part of selling your content online because journalism is not so much just about reporting.

It’s an industry that supports the ad industry and magazines make money by reaching audiences, specifically target audience.

So when you reach his high if you can show with your web analytics that you get a certain amount of traffic per day, then you can sell more ads based on your website.

And so the whole objective from the start of my career was about marketing content.

And when I realized that I wasn’t going to make, you know, real money with journalism.

I just sort of focusing on content marketing and so and I’ve been doing that for almost 12 years now.

So that’s been my whole career.

Hendrik 

So marketing obviously has a very large kind of massive beast and content marketing, one aspect of that.

So what is it and how does it fit into that overall marketing east, if I can call it that.

Mary 

Content marketing is the strategic approach to gear content towards a specific targeted audience.

So, whatever that audience is.

So you create stylized content that has longevity, that has a storytelling arc, that engages users or audiences, target audiences, over a long period of time.

And what this does is that it plants the story of the brand, the conversation of the brand into the subconscious of the person and this obviously relates to the marketing principle of keeping things personable.

And this is why content marketing is so effective because it uses communication and storytelling to sell.

Hendrik 

So, what is the value of content marketing for a business?

And how does it differ from advertising or, you know, the other pillars of marketing?

Mary

Well, the value is that it forms part of the whole marketing strategy and very specifically here we’re talking about digital marketing.

And as I said, as I said before, it’s about speaking to the customer and speaking to the audience and maintaining a narrative of, you know, the classic use cases and pain points of the customer.

In business, when you focus on solving people’s problems, they come to you and they spend the money with you because they’d like to solve a particular problem.

And then content marketing supports that.

Hendrik

I read somewhere that if you’re like somebody has a nursery and you want people to come buy a plant, then you obviously have to write articles around, you know, plants and herb gardens, or all those sort of things, which as you say, solve issues for people.

So that you can then look like the expert and you become top of mind.

And then, when they need a new plant for the garden, they rush off to your nursery, because, you know, they’ve read so many of your articles and they sort of become friends with you without you having to have actually engage with them except on a content level.

Mary 

Yes, it’s natural.

It’s subtle.

And it’s a very important point that you make about being an expert.

You do have to establish yourself as an expert in your field with these attempts to strive to, because people, when they trust in you and they trust in your brand, they’re more likely to spend their money with you.

Hendrik

You also said earlier: longevity.

That’s an important word, isn’t it? You can’t just write content for today and tomorrow; it’s got to have along shelf life.

How do you do that?

Mary 

There has to be an arc to the storytelling. Everything has to link up.

So there has to be an overall message.

So, what is our brand about?

What problems are we solving?

You know, how are we helping our customers get through, whatever they need to get through?

And so, there will be a single thread that connects all of our articles.

And then each article on its own, as you mentioned, should have longevity, it should within a significant period of time remain relevant to the topic.

Obviously I’m speaking very broadly now because we’re not speaking about anything specific but I guess that is just the structure that we keep in mind when we consider what are we doing with our content marketing strategy.

The main idea has to be mapped out before any brainstorming happens, before we do any paid ads on social media, before we do any PPC ads and all those things. That only comes after we figure out what is our message.

You know, what are we doing for our customers, and how are we solving the problems.

And then we maintain that through it, at least for if we looking at, you know, 12 months.

So, we have a 12 month plan.

What are we doing for the first three months and how does our messaging connect from the first few months into the six into the – at 12.

And at the end of the year, we could actually do an amazing round up.

We can do a video, we can do a whole campaign, end-of-year campaign, while for our whole story comes together.

Hendrik

So you’re touching an important, something I’m very passionate about, repurposing content, because we tend to make one piece of content, and then think that’s the end of that.

And we don’t realize how much value there is in repurposing it. How do you go about that?

How do you decide which content is the best to repurpose or which mediums to, or formats to repurpose?

Mary 

So I think with the repurposing, what’s important is to keep everything consistent on each batch because different people use different platforms more often than not.

So some people are just LinkedIn, some people are just YouTube, some people are just Instagram, eels or Tik Tok.

So what we have to do is we repurpose our content for each channel.

Say we do one podcast, so we do one Expo where we have like a panel talk.

So we’ll take certain excerpts and certain, you know, text copy for LinkedIn and maybe a video for a reel.

And the most important thing, I think when it comes to repurposing, is to keep it short.

So when information is concise and digestible and it has a main point, it’s easily planted in the subconscious.

So even if a person is just scrolling past and they see something that’s like, you know, people, there’s so much going on online and everywhere, it’s very difficult to grab someone’s attention and have then just sit, but it’s much simpler and more consistent if you can continuously remind people about your brand and what you doing again and again and again and again.

And the main point is not to convince people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer.

Converting people, t’s great, that’s advertising’s problem, right?

Marketing- what we want to do is we want to reach the people who are already interested because that target market is there.

The research has been done.

You know, when we know that in industries with three billion US Dollars, we know the audience is there. What we’re trying to do is we try to find them, right?

So when we talk about the problems that they have, and when we run ads, or continuously you have a consistent campaign with our social media posts, we talk about these pain points, they will remember, and eventually they’ll come back to it. So, it is a long-form strategy.

It’s not an instant solution. And I think often with business, especially small business owners, there’s this idea that, you know, as a marketer, as a digital marketer when you’re coming, you got to solve no problems immediately.

But especially with content, it takes time to build up the narrative.

Hendrik 

Which, in your opinion, is the best kind of content to put out as your source content?

Mary 

Videos.

Hendrik 

Videos?

Mary

Absolutely, yeah.

Hendrik

Why?

Mary

With research, what I found online and it supports of my own, I guess my own bias, for the way I consume media and information.

The easiest way for me to engage with content is through video and then stats online really support this.

And if you have a video on your landing page, you have a higher engagement and we have a lower bounce rate when you have a video in your landing page and what’s really cool is that you can actually put the subscription box up in your video as well on landing page.

So people on your landing page and the video, the first thing that they say is a video that, it’s short video with a person smiling, that talks about, with the reason why they came to your site.

So if you are selling pesticides, organic pesticides, for example, for gardening. And that video speaks first about why your pesticides are effective and why organic pesticides are better for the environment and it really speaks to the person, then they’re more likely to stay there then if it’s just the static page with information and lots of text.

Especially with online.

What we see what’s happening with Tik Tok, for example, the engagement with Tik Tok is so high, because of the video’s.

They come in and they come on a loop and they showed in the entertaining and obviously with the reels as well. So, yeah, videos: the future.

Hendrik

That’s really interesting.

And you mentioning Tik Tok.

You know, for oldies like me, it’s I’ve no idea how to do that.

I’ve now started to Tik Tok and I see you can do up to 10 minutes, but it is the shorter videos, the quickies that people are more interested in because you can just browse browse browse, you know, scroll scroll, scroll down them.

Do you think business are really getting into Tik Tok?

Or is it just for influencers?

Mary

Anything new is always adapted by younger demographics at first, but I just use Tik Tok as an example, because video content has existed before Tik Tok.

So we have the short videos, we’ve always had videos on Instagram.

We’ve always had YouTube and now we’ve eels and we’ve got stories.

So video content is everywhere.

We can do it on LinkedIn, we can do it on Facebook, we can put it on our YouTube embedded and put it on our website.

It’s just that video, like our conversation now, it’s so much more impactful than if we were for example just texting each other or emailing each other back and forth.

The way it’s so easy for us to disseminate information between us on this video chat or just like you know seeing each other.

It’s a lot more effective,  its a lot more powerful and it sits in the subconscious a lot stronger than just copy.

Hendrik

What tips or tricks or suggestions do you have for a listener who’s maybe a small business and is really struggling to get into the content marketing?

You know, posting things regularly or writing blog articles.

What advice do you have?

Mary 

Start with a plan.

Start with a content plan.

So that’s the main idea, but then also an actual plan, like a schedule.

You can use an application like Loomly, which is really great for scheduling.

It gives you a great overview of the whole month.

If you’re posting to Instagram, you can do a future grid first, so you can actually see how the tiles are laid out and how the content will be laid out.

And you can start to create patterns for your social media, and then again, with the scheduling what you have is consistency.

So if you’re looking to engage audiences, what audiences really enjoy, what humans enjoy, is routine. S

ay is every Monday, they know they get a certain kind of post from you, they will check in and they will appreciate that every Monday you do maybe a mentoring Monday post.

They know that they okay, on a Monday, they get to see that and if they can rely on that from you, then they’ll keep coming.

But if you are thinking of doing social media for example, or getting content out or blog articles, and very sporadically you write one article here and one article where it’s, yeah, you’re not going to see any results, and you won’t see increased engagement with that.

Hendrik

 And at what point do you call in the services of a professional like yourself?

Mary 

At the very start.

At the very start.

The marketing budget is often the one that is left behind, and it’s because it’s like, you know, it’s hard to tell if I’ll be getting a value for money.

A good way to tell what’s happening with your marketing budget is to look at the analytics.

So if you are hiring a content person/social media person or you’re hiring an agency, make sure that you always ask them for the analytics, so that you can see what the rate is for acquiring new customers.

So, if you have a certain, like ad spend, you know, this is speaking very broadly, like, how much are you spending and then using the analytics compare.

How much you spend against how much traffic you’re actually getting to your site, so that’s Google ads for example. But yeah, you need you need professional help from the beginning and if you start off, I think, without pros, you’re going to get a lot of stumbling blocks and eventually, like down the line, you will hire someone and then they’re going to have to work with like the scraps of sort of like what you’ve done.

So it’s better to start off proper.

It’s much more expensive to hire your own digital marketing team, but the easiest way is to go by referral for agencies.

So, I would definitely recommend an agency if you are a smaller company.

And then also put them on sort of a contract basis or a review basis to see what they do in three months.

And then also educate yourself because there’s no way you can ask the right questions of an agency and find out if they’re actually doing what they’re supposed to be doing if you don’t know what’s happening.

So you gotta educate yourself if you small business owner, you know. 

Large companies, they have whole teams to run those things but yeah.

Hendrik 

That’s really good advice. One of the big stumbling blocks for a small start-up is budget. You know?

Like that’s why people tend to try and do everything themselves and then as you say, stumble very quickly.

How expensive or how cheaply, how affordably, can you do this or do you start slow and build up?

Or do you go the whole hog?

What is your advice?

Mary 

Definitely start slow and then build up.

So whatever your budget is, whatever you can spare, you give it faithful in most regards.

You know, the less you spend, the less you’re going to get.

And if you’re spending less, you need to lower your expectations.

If you’re hiring someone who’s just finished their college degree and they intern somewhere for something like six weeks, they can’t give you the results that someone who’s been doing it for 10rs can.

So you negotiate, you speak to agencies and you say okay, I’ve got R 5000  a month.

What can you do for me for R5000 a month?

What results can I see from R5000 a month? How can I compare that?

How often can I view analytics?

Can you explain these analytics to me?

And if they can’t answer those questions for you, then you know.

Okay, so you’ve got if you want to shop around.

The first agency you find is very specifically might be good for a certain field but not good for yours.

So you got to have a look around and the base is referral and LinkedIn is amazing for that.

Hendrik

Mary, it has been great chatting to you.

Thank you so much for joining me here today on Let’s Talk Content Marketing and you can find Mary on LinkedIn, Mary Garner.

If you want to find out a little bit more about how to repurpose specifically a podcast, I wrote a book about that it’s called “Purposefully Repurposed for Profit” and it’s how to start with a podcast and turn that into a ton of content and that is of course available on Amazon.com. And look out for the new book, “Become a Podmaster: Everything you need to know to master the art of podcasting” coming out in early 2023 also on Amazon. If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn.

Also visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find all the links in the podcast description.

 

Ethan Baird:  So, on today’s episode, we’ve got Prenessa Nalliah today. 

She is someone who I have been chatting to for a while and has been part of the networking meeting group that we’ve been having called Media Mind, and Prenessa has a wealth of really interesting marketing information that she has been gifting us in the Media Mind group, so I figured let me pull her in on a podcast, chat to her about her career history, where she’s at and get some advice for small businesses. 

So Prenessa, can you introduce yourself?

Prenessa Nalliah:  For all the listeners, I am Prenessa Nalliah. 

I am a Fractional CMO. 

So, what that means is that small businesses, SMMEs with probably up to about 50 to 100 employees in total, will come, reach out to me and ask me to fill any marketing skills gap that they may have. 

So, this could be anywhere from strategy, people management in terms of their marketing department, establishing the marketing operation, constructing and monitoring campaigns, optimising things, and using data analytics to build smarter dashboards that can help make better business decisions.

Ethan Baird:  Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about your career history. 

Where did you start off and how did you get where you are today?

Prenessa Nalliah:  So funny story. 

I actually started by studying architecture at the University of Cape Town. 

Going into that, I was rather introverted, and I felt that I needed to balance out my analytical mind with my creative mind.  So, architecture presented that opportunity to do so, being one of the four key professions that, culturally, we are encouraged to go into.  It’s medicine, law, engineering or accounting. 

I was always good with numbers, did not always enjoy them though.  I enjoyed people more. 

Having the ability to engage with something that was not as predictable as a formula, as a calculation. 

You say something, you would never know if you are pushing a boundary with someone or not. 

You only know when you get that feedback. 

So started off there and a lecturer sat me down and he said, “Look, do you really want to be an architect?” 

And I said, “Truthfully, I do not think so. 

I want to be a sustainability expert. 

I’m very passionate about retrofitting, sustainable technology, and then also just designing passively. 

So, I want to do what I can to contribute to the development of housing, schools and hospitals across South Africa and India.” 

And he said to me, “The thing is if you really do not want to be an architect, it’s not one of those careers where you can wing it and get by.”  A

nd so, it just so happened I was working at a… 

I was shadowing at a firm, an architecture firm, where the moderator for our final exam came from that firm. 

There was a bit of friction in the departments at that time and he failed me in my second year. 

So being a distinction student all my life, that really knocked me down. 

And it forced me to take a long, hard look at what do I want to do, what do I want to be, what really makes me happy, what lights me up, what is going to make me feel good? 

And the answer to that was working with people, going out and helping people, transforming lives. 

So, with my student allowance, in my third year, I was repeating my second-year majors, doing my third-year minors, and I went out and I said, “Well, let me go and do a fundraiser. 

Let me try and see what it’s like to lead a team, learn some people skills, get more than just a piece of paper, if I make it through this gauntlet.” 

And yes, so during the course of that, I just kept it hush-hush for a couple of months.  In the process, we were teaching fashion-model training, but we didn’t have any restrictions on height, weight, nothing like that at all. 

I just wanted to help people see themselves in a different light, take that confidence and then go out into the world to do better at whatever profession they wanted to follow, and teach them that there was so much more to modelling than what media, mainstream media, presented it to be. 

So, through that process, we actually prevented the suicide of a young lady and I got feedback about it in email, and I felt this really strong moral responsibility to keep it going. 

I was willing to walk through fire.  Culturally, defying your parents’ wishes for you at that age is not necessarily the best thing. 

I think, for me, that was the start of recognising a power within myself to help people, transform people, and say, “Look, change the trajectory about which you are living your life.” 

And for me, it became very quickly, am I hurting anyone?  Am I harming anybody?  No.  Okay, cool. 

Am I stopping the next person from doing what they want to do? 

No.  So, I did not really see any reason for anybody to stop me from achieving what I wanted. 

And it very quickly became clear to me that my two key strengths in a business context would be connecting with people, and then connecting people with each other. 

And that sounded like marketing to me, connecting a brand with an audience, connecting a stakeholder group with the actual brand, the positioning of the brand and what it stood for, its values, its mission. 

So, I quickly changed tack. 

I went into a BA of Corporate Communication, and I thrived. 

I was still running this fundraiser, kind of UFO, in the business world at that time. 

We knew we were not an NGO, but we were not a private company either. 

I was almost just running a fashion show as a sole proprietor. 

I was the youngest person on the team at that time, leading people probably three, four times my age. 

I met great people and we started attracting sponsors, major sponsors, like City Varsity Cape Town, African Pride Hotels would sponsor venues for us and see what we were doing with kids. 

So, we started transforming lives in terms of taking people who the system in our country would not have given a second look.  

We started transforming those lives to the extent that those people were able to put themselves through tertiary education by working in the fashion entertainment industry. 

So, it became full circle, that people were starting to do and be better through our intervention. 

So continued all the way up until 2019 and in that time, I had done a marketing internship at an FMCG company. 

I saturated the internship very quickly because, as you know, when you are working and studying, your development is probably twice the pace of your peers that are just studying alone. 

So always being a busybody and balancing the two, and then doing my internship, still running my own brand in Cape Town, so commuting between Durban and Cape Town. 

Six months into a twelve-month internship, I saturated it.  It was agreed by everybody I was teaching more than I was learning, and so the best thing to do would be to give someone else an opportunity and for me to take a step back. 

I went directly into a management position at a fine art company about six weeks later. 

I had a six-month contract there, and then went into a family business launching the concept of a good-news company. 

So, we wanted to really just spread positivity, help people take their attention away from all the bad things happening in our country at that time. 

It was quite hectic, the change in our political landscape, evidence of state capture coming out and all these different enquiries. 

So, the news was a dismal thing to follow in South Africa at the time. 

Resource capacity changed. 

Six months later I found myself working for Microsoft Partner and I was working in the marketing department and did a bit of training, internship, all the while still running my brand in Cape Town, so lots of commuting. 

And yes, then I spent a year there, came up, went into an agency for two and a half years, so that took me to about May, June last year, 2021. 

And ever since then, I took a step back and I’ve been running my own fractional CMO agency.  So, we have a group of super specialists in specific niches that we work with and we specifically serve SMMEs, and now what we’re doing is disrupting the fabric of the agency landscape in South Africa.

We’re proving that it’s possible to deliver that top-notch quality service and transformation for SMMEs in the marketing department, but without that hefty fee starting at twenty, thirty grand a month. 

And so, what that has become is we are now serving clients across the world. 

So, we have clients in the USA, clients in the UK and quite a few countries in Europe.

Ethan Baird:  Brilliant.

Yes, that’s a super interesting journey to get to where you are today. 

Very, very busy person. 

Very busy person.

Prenessa Nalliah:  Yes.  I think it’s a challenge when you love what you do. 

You actually look around you and you see it is very hard to pick that one thing. 

So, I’m a firm believer that you go and explore and see what you are capable of doing. 

And if it does not work out, if it is not sustainable, can you hand the opportunity over to someone else? 

I think that is a key part in what has made us so successful. 

That is why the Media Mind group means so much to me is because we are always sharing what we know and what we have with each other.

Ethan Baird:  Speaking of sharing, let us talk about some marketing tips and advice for business owners. 

So, your target market SMMEs, what are some of the misconceptions that they have about marketing?

Prenessa Nalliah:  The first, greatest one for me is that marketing is easy. 

It’s because of the advent of social media and all these tools and knowledge that is at our fingertips. 

Marketing is unfortunately one of those professions where a lot of people come in and self-diagnose. 

You would not go into a doctor’s room with a couple of symptoms and say, “I have this condition.” 

You would go in for the test and say, “Doctor, please tell me. 

You are qualified, what is wrong? 

And what is the next step from here?” 

Marketers, most often, are not treated with that kind of respect and authority in their profession. 

Very often people believe that because they get caught by the trap of running a Google search and then reading the best SEO articles thereafter, that they understand what it takes to be great marketers. 

And so, they say, “I need someone to come in and do marketing.” 

But then they start telling the marketer what to do and how to achieve the goal. 

And the marketer, with all of this wealth of experience and knowledge, suddenly has no idea, “Okay, well, how do I navigate? 

Now I need communication skills because I know what to do in the marketing field, but the client is not actually enabling or empowering me to do that.” 

So, it ties in with one of the things we recently spoke about in Media Mind which was non-marketers making marketing decisions. 

My advice to all business owners as SMMEs, whether you are a corporate actually or whether you are an SMME, is really to guard against non-marketers being the ultimate decision-makers when it comes to marketing strategies. 

You have to take some kind of risk and have an appetite to test things out, but most importantly, you have to trust the marketing professionals. 

And if you do not trust them, then I do not think you should be hiring them in the first place.

Ethan Baird:  An issue that I have seen, very first hand, is when the upper management gets ideas, or sees a course, or reads a book.

You want your management to know what you are doing.  You do not want them to know nothing, but sometimes you almost want them to know nothing because then they can leave it to you. 

I have seen this issue crop up a lot where upper management gets an idea in their head, and then they cast it down to everybody else, and then everybody needs to jump, and it completely disrupts their marketing cycle and disrupts the daily tasks that people have been working towards. 

So how do we deal with that?

Prenessa Nalliah:  I think it is such a good follow-on because that is why I mentioned communication skills in my previous answer. 

So the benefit of coming from a corporate communication background and genuinely having a love for people, combining that with my philosophy in life which is to leave people and places better than when I find them, it is like this trifecta where you have to look at every communication episode, every encounter that you have, whether that is the upper management, as you say, getting these ideas and filtering it down, you have to look and say that each person in this organisational structure is employed for the purpose of acting in the best interests of the business in their respective field. 

So, when you trust a marketer, when you employ a marketer, you also, as a business owner, have to look and realise you are not just employing a marketer who is an order taker, depending on this…

Especially if you are hiring a marketing manager, that person is coming with experience. 

They have been the order taker.

They have seen the mistakes and they have learnt. 

They have got experience that is valuable to you. 

Trust them. 

Give them enough resource and enough of a framework with which to build up your marketing. 

The communication skills, especially in South Africa I find, but also now with this global village concept where we are borderless businesses, is this diverse culture we see. 

So east, west, and then the African culture, Indian culture, Middle Eastern culture, all blending together in a business environment is such a wonderful dynamic because there is an opportunity to really understand each other’s culture. 

The way that we all respond and react, it is different.  It is informed by different heritage, by different decision-making frameworks. 

Even your gender can influence the way that you respond in a situation like that. 

Your self-awareness, your personal development and where you sit on that spectrum, it all influences how you push back, if you push back, when, and what your motivation is going to be. 

So, my advice to marketers who find themselves in that situation is to just take a step back and try and ask what the goal is. 

What are we actually trying to achieve? 

This idea that you have, is it more important for the idea to come to light and to be given life, or is it more important that we meet our original objectives which could have been laid out and usually are laid out beforehand? 

What you often find is I call them popcorn ideas. 

They will change from week to week, and it makes it incredibly difficult for the marketers to sustain their ability to deliver results. 

So, if you are not clear with the results and you constantly have these great ideas but you do not have a process for working them through the business and seeing which ones get resources, then you are running in circles in terms of your marketing as a business. 

The decision-making process for any and all ideas is absolutely critical to the business moving forward.

Ethan Baird:  Brilliant. Yes. 

I think there is a bit of bravery that needs to also occur with this kind of stuff, especially… I do not know. 

I think people sometimes have the fear of, “If I push back, something bad is going to happen.” 

The reality is that if you do not push back and if you just go with everything, then ultimately you do not get the results that the client or the manager or whoever is looking for, and then bad things do happen. 

So, you do have to advocate for yourself.

Prenessa Nalliah:  Absolutely.

  I think in that situation, like I say, I read somewhere once that manners will get you much further than intelligence, in intellect or even resources, like money. 

And it’s so true because people will think about their experience. 

You can put me against someone else and, like I say, we are a relatively new agency. 

Our philosophy is, “Get things done.” 

And we have been pitted against…

We have had to pitch against a couple of solid, award-winning agencies, and oftentimes we win based on credibility, track record, actual results that we are producing. 

We go in and we pitch for the trial and say, “Let the results speak for itself.” 

Just on the basis of, again, non-marketers believe that certain awards put you at that top one percent. 

The reality is they do not because it depends on which award you are winning. 

Many of them you have got to apply or nominate yourself or it is actually just a marketing ploy. 

It is a list-building strategy. 

Good marketers know list-building strategies, apart from awards, genuine awards where you have got nothing to do with that submission and it is bestowed upon you, that is genuine award and it is worth touting to your audience and saying, “Look, I have won this award.” 

There have been times where, because of the way that we push back, we have come out on top in that relationship. 

It is not to say that we kind of sit back and take anything from a non-marketer, but we understand what is important to the non-marketer, the business owner. 

It is to say I want to be the best at this particular industry.  I want people, when they think about options in this industry, in this product range, I want them to think about us. 

And so, your job as a marketer is to do what it takes to get there. 

If you are going to stick very rigidly to a certain framework to do that, you are going to become obsolete very quickly. 

You are going to say, “Because of this model and this award, we have done things this way.” 

And you know for a fact, because it has always been done this way, it is probably one of the worst things you can say in marketing. 

So, from that regard, just from our experience, we look and we say it is really about being dynamic, being flexible. 

The golden term in, I think, this area of business is agile. 

If you are agile in every element of the way that you work, approach work, approach people, I think you are going to get a lot further than just sticking to the way things have always been done.

Ethan Baird:  Perfect. 

So, what are the marketing trends that you are seeing currently? 

Where do you think things are shifting towards? 

Can you maybe give a bit of your predictions based on what you are seeing now?

Prenessa Nalliah:  Sure. 

So, I think there is two main lanes to this and the one is keeping with this theme of non-marketers making marketing decisions.

I just had a conversation with one of my former colleagues briefly on LinkedIn about it. 

The advent of No-Code, and it is a beautiful thing, and it is also a very dangerous thing. 

It is to some extent enabling non-marketers making marketing decisions because they believe what they see thanks to No-Code and thanks to the ability, but there is a lot of work from programmers that goes into making this resource available. 

They believe that it is easy. 

It is quick.  It is simple, and that is disadvantaging the people who are the technicians, who are the programmers, who write millions of lines of code to be able to make that functionality available. 

So, I feel like in terms of the non-marketers making the marketing decisions, I am seeing this advent of No-Code but it is coming with a whole lot of marketing spiel. 

It is coming with, “Look at how great No-Code is.” 

But we’re not then, as responsible professionals in the marketing space, advocating and educating our clients and saying, “Look, No-Code is great, but in moderation.” 

That is the golden rule, everything in moderation.  Anything that you enjoy, you have to look there is a time and place. 

So, I think agencies in general, we can do a lot better to educate our clients on certain tools. 

It depends on your level of transparency with your clients, in terms of how you would like to share, what tools you are using and to what extent.

I do think that when you discuss a tool, you have to talk about both the pros and cons. 

The other trend that I’m seeing just in terms of the marketing operation and the marketing process, a lot of people again hiring junior talent because it is cheaper. 

Your cost to company is a lot lower for a marketing intern but then there is no marketing leadership in the organisation and that is particularly why we are focusing on a fractional CMO offering. 

To hire a CMO full time is probably upward of sixty to ninety thousand to get a solid CMO at my level with ten plus years of experience. 

And there is no way SMMEs, unless they just raised proper, serious funding, are able to afford that. 

If you are bootstrapping, the business owner probably does not make that much. 

So, in order to combat that, we are giving that experience and expertise from as little as…

It works out to $200.00 US, £100.00 British or R3 000.00 South African per month and just to have access to that kind of strategic knowledge, we pride ourselves on keeping our knowledge, A-game knowledge, just knowing what is out there, knowing about these trends as we speak, this trend of hiring fractional talent needs to actually take on. 

We are seeing it now that we are having conversations about it, but it is a trend that I think more of us can talk about and as agencies, more of us can offer fractional input to help grow the demand for marketing services in a more intelligent and sustainable way. 

So, in terms of hiring junior talent, if there is no marketing leadership, it is happening but I would caution SMMEs against it. 

It is a dangerous move and if you do not have someone to manage that junior marketing talent, understand the language, teach the language, again, like I say, you are running in circles.

Ethan Baird:  Yes.  S

omething just from a small business perspective that always blows my mind, someone will be like, “Okay, I have got this business. 

It is my business I have been running for the last five years.  I need to get on social media, so I am going to get my niece to run my social media account for me.” 

Okay, they are young. 

They understand technology so they can do it, and they do not really realise how much power they are putting into the hands of someone who is not experienced enough to handle that power. 

People do not realise that posting something on social media may as well be posting something in a newspaper.  It has got more weight than you realise. 

So, you were talking about No-Code and we live in this cool era now where tools and we have access to things that used to be hundreds of thousands of dollars kinds of things, things that were locked away in vaults that only large companies had proprietary access to. 

Now we are getting all these amazing tools and devices and things that…

So, it is democratising that, but I think it is causing this chain reaction where people think that because of how available it is, because of how easy it is to get access to things, it devalues how difficult it is to actually…

Or how much expertise you actually need to run that.  For example, I cannot do Google AdWords properly. 

I do not offer Google AdWords because I know how to do it. 

I can log onto Google AdWords and then I can make an ad. 

I can watch a YouTube video and I can make an ad.  That doesn’t mean I can run an AdWords campaign. 

So, I think there is this thing of just because things are cheaper, just because things are easier to get access to does not mean that you do not still need somebody with expertise to handle that for you.

Prenessa Nalliah:  Absolutely. 

I think you have hit the nail on the head for me and again, it speaks to why I value Media Mind so much is because that saying we rise by lifting others, that is really what it is about because in Media Mind [which has 00:21:44] valued everyone sharing a bit and piece of their own journey and then offering something of value that others can choose, whether they use or not, there is no imposition in that group. 

That is something I would encourage other marketers to come and be a part of, to get involved in the conversation for sure. 

Like you are saying, it comes full circle. 

You hire a junior who has got no experience because you, in your mind, know what the bull’s eye is for your marketing department. 

Unfortunately, you do not know enough about marketing language that this person might have studied to actually communicate to that person what the bull’s eye is clearly enough. 

So, they start working and they give it their best effort, but they are giving their best effort paddling in the wrong direction. 

And then suddenly you judge this person on their competency and their dedication and all these other things that it is just a misalignment, miscommunication. 

It was a bad leadership decision. 

And then conversely, some people will also actually go and hire too senior talent in the organisation that is all strategy that cannot take action, because they have had so much experience only in the strategic pool. 

So, for me, that is one reason why I enjoy working on the accounts, touching the campaigns, touching the data flow, seeing how everything works, setting things up. 

I touch every part of the marketing department and the operation, and I will always make sure that the quality requirements are very clear for our contractors and for our staff to adhere to. 

So, everything that is going out to our clients is always quality checked and I think that I am seeing more of that in our Media Mind group, the processes being put into place, people celebrating, “Hey, as an agency we have a bigger role to play in where businesses are going.” 

You have seen it with SEO, the average dog-groomer is becoming a specialist in all different types of breeds because of SEO. 

And we are not balancing out where the machine should guide, and the human should guide the way that we function in business. 

So, I really love the fact that LinkedIn has blossomed as a professional community and the key select groups, I think, where we connected as well, Freelance South Africa, these are quality groups on quality platforms where we can connect and actually get value out both ways, for agencies and for the SMMEs.

Ethan Baird:  I have been working in radio for a long time before doing this. 

I did audio postproduction in radio and one of the things that was really frustrating and I could see the difference between one manager versus a different manager was the lack of a good brief. 

So, I have all these skills, I have been doing this for a couple of years now. 

Every single day I can produce things. 

There are awards that show that I can produce things, but if you give me a one-sentence brief, I am going to have to just interpret that in the way that…

Just filter it through my own interpretation and produce you something, and nine times out of ten, the person is unhappy with the result, whereas a manager, and usually a more middle manager who did the work at some point and now…

Or at least oversaw the work, can say, “Okay, here is a storyboard.

Minute one, it needs to do this, then it needs to go into this music, then it needs to go into that. 

Please compile it in this way for me. 

You can take creative liberties in these parts.” 

And then I could shine as a junior audio producer. 

So, I think it is that same thing that needs to come across with all aspects of businesses. 

You have to empower your junior team, or just anybody in your team, and if you do not know what you are talking about, you cannot empower them, so you have to find somebody who knows what they are talking about to help empower your team.

Prenessa Nalliah:  A 100%. 

I could not have said that better because it goes back to what we were saying about leadership in your own team as well and you have to… 

And even you as a head of the business, I think there is quite a few business owners that get caught in the circle and the loop of their own ego where you say, “I am the head of the business and I am at the top of the business, and therefore what I say goes because I know the business. 

I know the market.” 

And sadly, team members, not just in the marketing department, are going to come and ask, “But how do you know that? What data?” 

Exactly.

It is about data-driven decisions, and data is so ingrained into business operations, particularly in our post-COVID…

We are going towards this post-COVID business existence where hybrid and remote work, it is normal. 

This is what people expect now, and you go, and you say, “Do you have data?” 

Whether you recognise or you see or you want it or not, you have data. 

Use it.  Use it. 

Why wouldn’t you? 

And when you are using it, make your entire operation better. 

Do something meaningful with the data that is there anyway because through remote work, the data is being collected and if not by your business itself, then certainly by Google. 

You can pop onto Google Analytics as an example and certainly there is a wealth of information there about how your market and the consumer marketplace is actually reacting and engaging with you. 

There is so much you can do with that to keep adding more value and it just creates that cycle between what you set out to achieve as a business and then how you go about achieving it.

Ethan Baird:  Agreed. 

So, this wraps up our discussion for today. 

Thank you so much for your time, Prenessa. 

The final thing I want to just find out is how can people get a hold of you, tell us a little bit more about your company. 

Yes, if somebody wants to work with you, how do they do it?

Prenessa Nalliah:  Sure. 

So, I am sure this will be in the show notes, but I am available on LinkedIn. 

That’s Prenessa Nalliah on LinkedIn. 

There is only one of me so should be pretty easy to find me and I am always open to people asking me marketing questions, business questions, whatever it is. 

Look, my job is to connect you with the people that you need to achieve your goals. 

So, by all means, reach out now and I will help wherever I can.

Ethan Baird:  Thank you so much for your time, Prenessa.

 

Prenessa Nalliah:  I really appreciate it.  Thank you, Ethan.

Ethan Baird:  Okay, so today I am chatting to Tatenda Ziyambi. 

He is a person I worked with ages ago at Tuks FM and we reconnected recently on LinkedIn, realised we were both in the marketing space, so I decided to let me bring him onto the podcast, let us talk about what he is involved with and just chat all things marketing. 

So, before we talk about the main topic, can you maybe introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your career history?

Tatenda Ziyambi:  Thanks for having me on, Ethan. 

I am in digital marketing. 

So I started studying law, still trying to finish my law degree right now, but I then did a bunch of short courses in digital marketing and once I left university, I worked in radio for a little bit, or not a little bit, three years, that was a pretty long time, and then I made the jump into digital marketing.  

So currently I am in charge of a couple of brands, I think, here in Zim. 

So, one of the biggest ones probably, I think, is Black Label and Castle Lite we do. 

The agency I work for, we handle all of the digital properties and just the general marketing.  So that is a Spark Notes version of what I do, just my history and what I am doing right now.

Ethan Baird:  Awesome. 

So, I think what would be super interesting is to discuss these big brand marketing campaigns and what they entail. 

So, let us talk about…

Okay, you have got a brand, let us say for example, Black Label, one of these huge brands, how does an agency like yours plan and execute a marketing campaign?

Tatenda Ziyambi:  Okay, so we have pretty much what you would call a 360 approach to it, so that is where there is your traditional media, your newspapers and so on and so forth. 

You have got your digital properties as well, and now you are having all kinds of media that is also coming through which falls technically under the purview of digital, for example, WhatsApp. 

That is now a really big thing and trying to get people to sign up through WhatsApp and trying to extrapolate data from that and trying to understand what you can do, which was a little tricky at first because it is getting to understand WhatsApp privacy, my number and so on and so forth, but that is how we approach it. 

We have got a 360-degree approach to it. 

So typically, when… Let us just say a brief comes in. 

So, it will be disseminated from the account executive down to someone like myself who is a digital marketing executive. 

So, I will focus on the digital stuff and they will focus on the other aspects, whether it is TV, print and so on and so forth. 

So, it is a pretty all-encompassing or time-consuming thing because you would imagine, you get this thing and these campaigns, minimum it is six months.  So, you are literally just stuck doing that for…

You have got your planning phase, then you send it to your client, your clients may not like what you do a lot of the time, you have that back and forth. 

So, you usually get these briefs about two or three months before it starts, so you are pretty much looking at about a six- to nine-month window where you have got one campaign and that is all you are pretty much doing, hence that is pretty much how we approach it.

Ethan Baird:  So, I am involved mostly with small businesses. 

So, we do smaller campaigns for start-ups and that kind of stuff, and the budgets with those kinds of things are reasonably small, obviously, because people have limited budgets for marketing. 

With these big campaigns, what is the kind of spend that is required to make these things actually work?

Tatenda Ziyambi:  Oh man.  Good question. 

I guess, because I think in particular with what happened with COVID, I think we were very lucky that, I suppose, the clients that we have are some of these legacy brands, so they were not necessarily adversely affected by it, but some of the other smaller clients that we have, I think if I could give a ballpark figure, I think when things were all well and good, so if you have a national campaign, you could easily have a minimum budget of, I do not know, $300, $400 000.00 US, I do not really know what that is in Rands, but I am sure you can then work that out. 

And then, for some of the smaller guys, it might be between about $50 to $100 000.00 US. 

So, what now then happens is that okay, it is COVID and businesses are bleeding money, they cannot spend as much, so now they come to Mr Digital and pin all their hopes on me to try get the message out there, which was all well and fine because that is the way that we are trending. 

Then I think for a digital marketing campaign right now, I suppose if you are going to do the usual channels, like your YouTube, your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, the Google Ads and so on and so forth, we could easily use somewhere between about minimum of about ten grand up to upwards to about twenty. 

That is not the exact, just always depends, but digital, I suppose, ten thousand to twenty thousand. 

Then if it is national, it might be easily somewhere between $300 to $500 000.00 US.

Ethan Baird:  Yes. 

So basically $100 000.00 US is R1.5 million, something like that. 

That is super interesting because one of the things that I know that small businesses struggle with is getting a return on investment on platforms like Google, Facebook, etcetera, because you do have to spend a reasonable amount to get the return that you are looking for. 

Let us say, okay, I am your client, I have got $20 000.00 US, I want to spend it on a digital marketing campaign. 

How are we splitting that up?

Tatenda Ziyambi:  Well, I suppose…

Well, maybe let me change that up a little bit because the market that I am in right now, Zimbabwe, it is wildly different from whatever you might have learnt in whatever course or degree that you may have done, because you pretty much just have to… because it is going counter-intuitive to what I was saying, that is what I was saying, but you almost have to have a real sense of what the market wants and needs, so if, for example, Client A comes to me and they tell me, “Okay, I have got this expensive cologne or perfume brand that I want to do a digital marketing campaign for here in Zimbabwe.” 

I will be like, “Well, they do not really have the disposable income or the money to spare to buy your products.” 

So, I would usually…

And again, this is counter-intuitive as a digital person, I would then tell them, “No, you are better off going to where they can now be buying their things, whether it is an Edgars, Woolworths, where the people are actually going to be who have got the money to buy it.” 

But if we have something that we feel that okay, we can really run on Facebook or Google and so on and so forth. 

Facebook is by far, by and far, the most-used platform in Zimbabwe.  I would not know about South Africa but from what I see from the stats, on the ad spins in Africa, I think it is by and far the largest platform that most people use.  

So, you want to put at least about, give or take, 30 to 40% of your budget towards Facebook and Instagram.  If you are able to have a big enough budget, say it would be twenty grand, then the other…

You could place another 20 to 30 on YouTube because a lot of people are on YouTube nowadays, and then the rest is now just a mix and match and so you would like okay, depending what it is, it is probably going to be something that is on Twitter people might like, or you might…

Or if it is something more business oriented, you might focus on LinkedIn, but that is how I would typically attach it.  Facebook, Google or YouTube, they typically get you better results as opposed to if you want to do something specifically like on Twitter, but that is for the Zimbabwean market, so I hope no one takes this as gospel and tries to use it in South Africa or Egypt.

Ethan Baird:  That actually speaks to a broader truth which is that there is no one-size-fits-all marketing campaign. 

I think people want to believe that you are going to do one thing, you are going to pay this amount of money and then you are going to get this amount of return, and the reality is that it is a lot more complicated than that. 

I know that from our own experience, we have tested a bunch of stuff just for our own marketing and we could just run a generic Facebook campaign and get zero results, because that is not the platform that is required for this product or service or whatever the KPI for this campaign is. 

And that is where getting experienced marketing people on board is really important, who know the market and who know this industry. 

And something that we struggle with sometimes is that I do not want to take on a project where I do not know that I am going to be able to deliver on it, and if you are going to come to me and you are going to tell me, “Okay, I have this product that you know nothing about and I want to market it to this audience that you know nothing about,” ultimately I should not be doing that campaign, or I should be finding someone that understands the market that could run with the campaign.

So, speaking about Zimbabwe, there is specific socio-economic factors in Zimbabwe that are different to South Africa, that are different to Egypt, that are different to every other country. 

To summarise, you really just have to get the people who understand the market and who understand the product on board before you spend a bunch of money.

Tatenda Ziyambi:  No, for sure, and if I could just jump into that. 

It is not that you might not necessarily…

You can be a person like myself who may not know about the market or anything like that, and in truth be told, [inaudible 00:08:49] especially when… because we get a bunch of people come to us pitching their new product and so on and so forth, and they tell us, “Okay, we want to launch this and we want to use digital.  We want to use this channel.” 

So, we will typically tell them, “Okay, look. It is going to take us maybe at least a month or two for us to do some focus groups, some proper marketing research.” 

But now a lot of clients do not really want to invest in that marketing research and that is now like, “Okay, if you are going to do this, you are going to have to pretty much more or less just guess.”  I would like to say guess, guess and sort of like, “Okay, if this product I am guessing likely A, B, C, D.”  

And that is perhaps where experienced marketers will come in because they know they have done this. 

But the one thing that I will always implore clients to do and maybe I am sure you probably might do, but that marketing research, it is so key because you can get a lot of insight just doing the initial ground work, trying to find out what people want, how they feel about it, where they probably would…

Where the target market is likely going to be found.  So that is a fight we have a lot of the time, even with some of our existing clients who want to launch new products and we say, “Okay, cool. 

You ideated this.  Can we have a look at your market research for this? 

How did you come up with it?” 

And a lot of the times, they are going to say, “Oh no, one of our bosses saw some YouTube video their kids told them about somewhere in America and we want to do that.” 

And that is marketing in a nutshell for you. 

It is always just about if you do not have the research, you are pretty much just going to have to guess, or like you said, you would rather not touch it because you then do not want to not deliver on something.

Ethan Baird:  One thing I have been curious about. 

So obviously you are involved in digital marketing. 

Traditional marketing still exists, and you said you do 360 approaches as an agency.  So, for your market specifically, let us talk about Zimbabwe, what is the role of traditional channels in the marketing mix in Zimbabwe nowadays?

Tatenda Ziyambi:  So, I think what you are seeing is a bit of… because obviously with your prints, print is slowly but surely dying a natural death. 

So I think what tends to happen now, if you are looking at print, for example, before I move onto the other ones, if they have got some earlier [inaudible 00:10:59] who are able to quickly realise that they need to get their business online and so you are pushing your website and then you are pushing your socials, like your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on and so forth. 

Then the certain print media houses that we know that we see, they have actually got a strong online presence like that, then obviously it is just another talk about can we place our ads on your website, can we have an infomercial thing on your social media pages? 

But print is, just generally speaking, I think in Zimbabwe is one of the last few countries in Africa where I think actual prints, like printing newspapers, I think the…

I am trying to remember what the circulation numbers with The Herald, but they are still pretty high. 

They are still pretty high, but it is way down than what it used to be. 

Radio stands undefeated.  I think as long as you have got a very strong personality and you know some of the [inaudible 00:11:51] programmes are going to be always listened to, let me say the freedoms that you guys enjoy in terms of what you can say on air, but still you have got some people who have got a large enough following who are on radio that you would want to advertise with radio and TV as well. 

In our case, we only really have one television station, so it is not like you really have too much of a choice, but you know that certain times, like the eight o’clock news or in the morning with the news programmes and so on and so forth, you know that there is going to a big audience watching you, a lot of our clients want to have their ads placed on there. 

That is, it.  In Zimbabwe, radio is the biggest, followed by TV and then print, depending on how big their online presence is, it is also on a decline. 

But yes, I guess we will see in a couple of years where they stand.

Ethan Baird:  And then how do you measure the return on investment for these giant campaigns?

Tatenda Ziyambi:  Well, I think obviously the one thing that you cannot necessarily run away from is sales because I think Zimbabwe, more than any other country right now, considering the economic conditions that we are under, what companies just want is to see sales and what we usually will typically then ask our clients is then to say, “Okay, cool.

We are going to start our campaign on this date so please can you just…”  because they will usually give us a bit of an indication of what their average sales are in about a month and comparative to the previous periods. 

And then once we start a campaign, after the first month we will then have a sit down and we will have a look at how the sales figures are working. 

I know one of the big things that we really want to do is push digital in Zim, but the unfortunate thing is digital… I think people are very resistant to it.

Ethan Baird:  Okay, awesome. 

So, then I want to talk a bit about what do you think is the future of marketing and digital in Zimbabwe.

Tatenda Ziyambi:  We have this joke that we have as digital marketers here in Zim that any sort of digital innovation that you see that is now being popular in America and then I guess South Africa, probably South Africa, Egypt, will probably be one of the first African countries to get it.  We are perhaps ten years behind that. 

So, it is always like a constant game of catch-up as it were.   Because I think one of the best examples I can give, I think when we first got, I do not know what the technical term is, but data, like 3GP, all of that stuff. 

I think in SA you guys probably had it around what, 2005, 2006?  It took us all the way up until 2010 for us to get that. 

So just to give you a bit of context.  So now when you see all sorts of nice innovations, it is like you see these things like where people scan certain things and then you have got virtual reality, you have got the metaverse, it might take a while before that takes place, takes a hold in Zim. 

But my hope and my belief is that once Zimbabwe fully embraces the digital revolution as it were, that this is how things are going and this is how most businesses should be, if the right investments are made in the different types of infrastructure that are necessary to facilitate that, then I think Zimbabwe can really go far because I think we are still slightly behind in a sense where we are still more or less relying a lot on the tried and tested things, like your traditional media, because you know that is what may work and then if you try anything too new, digitally speaking, it is either going to be a hit or, more often than not, it can be a miss because people either do not know how to use it, they do not know how to… 

I think the best example I could give was when, during the pandemic, we had Clubhouse and audio rooms. 

We tried so hard with a lot of our clients to do things along those roles, but the market just was not really responding to that and a lot of the time, unfortunately, you see that it is not like people in Zim are not on it, but when you have got mass-market products and mass market, that means having access to the right kinds of phones and having data to be able to participate in things like this, a lot of people from a mass-market perspective, they do not have that. 

So, I am hopeful that once that is available, once the right investments, like I said, have been made, then I think digital marketing is obviously the future. 

It is just a little slow, but you just have to have patience with it and eventually, like I said, things should work themselves out. 

But yes, that is pretty much it.  Whether that is five years or ten years from now when I can say that we are at least on an even footing with you guys in South Africa, it is hard to say but we will see. 

We will just have to see.

Ethan Baird:   Awesome.

Tatenda, thank you so much for your insights today. 

Super interesting, especially in terms of planning big campaigns. 

It is an aspect of marketing that not a lot of marketers have access to, so very valuable. 

If anybody wants to find you, how do they do so?

Tatenda Ziyambi:  Oh, it is pretty simple, Ethan. 

I am not one of these people who goes and uses some funny names like @knothead64. 

All you got to do is just type in Tatenda Ziyambi on most things, that is Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and you will just find me there. I am all over. 

I even got on TikTok the other day actually.

Ethan Baird:  Okay, Tatenda, thank you so much for your time. 

We really appreciate it.

Tatenda Ziyambi:  Alright cool. 

Thanks Ethan. 

 

HENDRIK:  What is at the heart of content marketing? 

Why should I even do content marketing in the first place? 

How do I get the best results from it? 

If these are some of the questions you have, do not take our word for it. 

Let us talk about content marketing with industry professionals. 

Discover its power, and confront its challenges, so that you can stand out from your competition. 

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird from Baird Media and let us talk about content marketing.  

MEGAN KRONBERGER:  My name is Megan Kronberger, and I am the owner of Marketing Lifeline. 

And what does that mean? 

Yes, we literally are a lifeline to many businesses, with regards to their marketing. 

But why I say that, is because our main objective is to help small to medium sized businesses establish a marketing strategy.

We see companies over and over. 

Go into the market with the logo and website, but they have not really given the market message media much thought. 

So they find they get stuck, frustrated and overwhelmed. 

Their marketing does not seem to work.  And so we really help them establish a strategy, to ensure they get their message right.

They identify who their target market is, and identify the right media to position themselves on. 

So how do we do that? 

I do build strategies for companies. 

So in some cases clients will come to me and say, “Please help me with my marketing strategy.” 

Perhaps they do not have time for it. 

On the other hand I also mentor or coach. 

And I guide business owners, mostly start-ups. 

But also some established businesses through a twelve-step process, and help them identify a marketing strategy for their business. 

And then from then they are equipped, or like I prefer to say empowered to go to market, to get their website done. 

To go and start with social media. 

And all the actions and activities that they start implementing are based with an intention. 

That we have established during the marketing strategy process. 

So that is essentially what I do in a nutshell.

HENDRIK:  Awesome. 

Can you give us an overview of the things you need to keep in mind to develop a good marketing strategy.  

MEGAN KRONBERGER:  So that is a great question in terms of what we need to keep in mind to develop a marketing strategy. 

Because I think the main problem most people have is that they are not even aware …

They need a marketing strategy. 

Most businesses feel that they have an idea, and now they just need to get that idea to market.

But unfortunately developing a marketing strategy is just as important as establishing your business plan, as well as establishing your product. 

Because that is essentially your vehicle to go to market, and get to the right people so you can essentially make sales. 

So most importantly, number one for me is always the market. 

Is your product even relevant? 

If it is, who really wants it? 

And that is a key thing for us to do down digital. 

We really need to define our audience, and as some call it, niching. 

So most importantly it is to start with the market.

So what is the market wanting, and are we going to deliver that? 

Secondly is your messaging. 

So you have defined your offering, you have defined your products or services relevant and who you want to position this product in front of.

But how are you going to position it in front of them? 

What is it that they need? 

Because people are not into buying products or services anymore. 

They really are buying into the benefits, or what is in it for them. 

So very, very importantly, stop focusing on what your product can bring to the market. 

But rather focusing how your product or service can fit into their lifestyle, and help improve their business, their lifestyle and the benefits to them.

So a very, very important process as well in the marketing strategy. 

And then finally the media.  So yes, we need to show up on media, but it is also, where do we show up? 

Just because everyone is positioning themselves across all platforms, it does not mean we have to do that.

We also have to see what is relevant to our audience. 

Where is our audience wanting to catch information? 

And then once we have defined which is the media we want to be in, that then pulls everything together, so we can start establishing an implementation plan to then really start driving leads and essentially getting in sales.

So, that would be the key steps for me in developing and thinking about your marketing strategy for success. 

And I think the main pain point that came to me was, clients would come to me feeling very frustrated and overwhelmed as to what they are doing, and what they need to do, or what they are doing is not working, etcetera.

So I would say as a kind of a more general, and maybe not very specific to an individual, but how I’ve helped most clients in the last four to five years is, clients will come to me saying, “My marketing is not working.” 

So firstly establishing, well … 

What to you is marketing? 

And they would say, “My Facebook ads.”

And that is when I will say, “Well, unfortunately marketing is not Facebook ads.” 

For me that is a form of advertising or implementation. 

Marketing is really the crux as we have just spoken about.

What is our offering, who is it for, how are we establishing our messaging, and where are we going to place this thing?

So, that would start the process. 

So then we would go in and do a quick audit online and see, well shucks, your website talks about one thing. 

Your Facebook posts are talking about another thing.  You know, how are you positioning yourself?

And normally it is like, “I do not actually know.” 

I sell face cloths, you know.  So for me it is not about selling facecloths anymore. 

It is about taking the selling out of anything you’re really doing and really understanding who it is that we want to service, and how are we going to be relevant to them?

So, essentially starting out there looking at where they are going wrong, identifying the gaps and then as I say, taking literally twelve steps back. 

Starting from the very beginning and that is research.

So we start from the very beginning, and we start defining where are we actually going to position our product and is it even something we want to do? 

Are people even looking for face cloths? 

What are people looking for? 

Are they maybe not looking for a different type of fabric?

Are people not using face cloths anymore from a hygiene factor or whatever it may be. 

And then I take them through the process and through this process, my slogan says, “It is all about education.” 

So making the clients aware of what it is that they are not doing. 

Number two. 

Empowering them so they actually understand shucks, marketing is actually a process, marketing is not my Facebook campaign.  

I should not be doing Facebook ads without an intention or objectives. 

And then obviously elevating their brand. 

Because being equipped with the knowledge, to know what it is that they need to consider and ask questions, now they are able to go to market,  and have, and make, and create better results. 

And so that in a nutshell to just pinpoint, that is essentially what I do to help my clients with.  

HENDRIK:  So, can you talk a bit about how you do your follow up strategy and maybe some lessons you have learned of your experience?

MEGAN KRONBERGER:  Interesting. 

I was in a networking group, and one of the ladies actually … Her business is Fall in Love with Follow Up. 

Which I think is quite relevant. 

Because, follow up is probably one of the hardest things. 

And I do not even like to actually call it follow up, because then it just sounds like hard work, right?

But yes, follow up is absolutely quintessential. 

We want to gather all this information as we go through the process and we get all these amazing leads, but then how do we maintain them and keep them engaged?  

So I may be a bit more traditional. 

But I like nurturing my needs rather than doing a follow up. 

I think there is obviously a definite space for follow up, but I would rather say, “How do you nurture your leads?” 

How do you …

Once people have engaged with you, whether it is through a lead on your website, whether it is a one-to-one or a networking event that you met them at.

Whether it is somebody that is connected with you through a blog, or whatever it may be, how are you maintaining those leads, and how are you nurturing them as I like to say. 

Rather than to follow up. 

But absolutely. 

So, what I do is I have a CRM system which I use, called HubSpot and essentially, I pull all my leads into there, because I have a number of leads.  

Lead magnet. 

So I have three alone on my website. 

So I use my assessment as one. 

I have a download. 

I have a video, and I have a call. 

So actually have four on my website. 

I also have landing pages, I have campaigns. 

I have campaigns running on Facebook.  

I have connections I make on LinkedIn. 

So, I think you have to identify where your leads come in. 

And then channelling these leads through some type of system. 

Yes, I started on Excel too which is a system. 

But you have to have some form of system. 

You have to have somewhere where you can put all your leads into. 

Because essentially that is the start of your sales funnel. 

So we need to then …

What are we going to do to get them to go through to the next, and the next, and the next phase, to build that life trust process.  

So, I put them into my CRM system and then I have an email merger campaign that will slowly but surely feed them information. 

And that is how I continue to engage with them and obviously from another perspective which is also a follow up for me, personally, is being consistent.

So they have liked and followed my pages. 

So, I need to show up.  It is not just about also the follow up, but actually showing up and continually engaging with them online, and giving valuable content.

So that is just in a nutshell how I would kind of consider follow up. 

Is rather how we are nurturing our leads, and how we are keeping them engaged in our businesses.  

HENDRIK:  How do you plan, and then measure a campaign?

MEGAN KRONBERGER:  So essentially building your marketing strategy, you are building a plan. 

So with that plan, then comes measurements. 

So, A, did we do ten blogs this month? 

How many leads did we get? 

What was the cost per click? 

What was the cost per lead? 

But everyone says, “Yes, but how do I measure?”  

Well, unfortunately if you are not planning, you are not going to be able to measure. 

So, just to take a step back. 

So, once you have got your marketing strategy in place, that will set a plan so that you do not have to feel overwhelmed. 

Because typically what happens, people will get to Facebook on a Monday and go, “Shucks, it is marketing Monday today. 

What am I going to post? 

I do not know, I better put something out there.” 

Well, that is not how we should be planning our marketing. 

Because that is exactly why we put out the wrong content. 

So I kind of plan three-to-six-month content plans which most businesses can do once they have got their strategy in place. 

It becomes quite simple.

And rather having that plan, so we can even now amazingly go onto our system like HootSuite and pre-plan. 

So we can actually put our posts onto the relevant platforms for the next three months. 

And we can change it as we go, but the reality is that is what we need to be doing.

Because with a plan, you are equipped and you are empowered, and you know what you need to say.

 So you can get on doing what you do, and let the content run. 

Because that is essentially what our plan allows us to do. 

So that also alleviates that stress, and that frustration, and that feeling of being overwhelmed with marketing. 

So I think that is the key thing, is yes, we need to set time aside in our diary to do our plan and to put it in place, and to spend a day, half a day in a week to write our content for our plan in advance.

So yes, once we have set our plan, we now hopefully are working at least a month in advance. 

We can start analysing, we can start seeing on Facebook through insights. 

I mean there is basic …

There are tools we can use, but there is also stuff at our disposal on LinkedIn, on Google Analytics, that we can go and see which posts have got better traction, which posts got more engagement, which posts got more shares. 

Who is viewing our posts, what are people saying about our stuff. 

And then that is a very important factor too. 

Because a lot of people feel again overwhelmed and saying, “I am not sure what is working.” 

Well, unfortunately nobody is going to tell you that. 

You have to go and do the measurement to make the changes, to see what works best for you.

So also very, very important is keep a plan in place, and then measure so you can make the necessary changes as you need to. 

Most important thing to me, you know. 

I just encourage, whether you have a small one-man business to a large enterprise, you should be allowing a marketing strategy to guide any marketing activity you are doing. 

Even if you are a one-man business and you are in a network group, what is your strategy in that network group?  

We all need to know what it is, what our objectives are. 

So I encourage that.  And so I created the twelve steps to marketing success. 

It is either in a twelve-week program which goes through quite quickly to be honest, which is ideal for a startup, so somebody who has got a business idea or concept and they would like to get it to market, I highly recommend you start there. 

Because once you are equipped with that, I promise you it will open so many doors. 

And the clarity that people get.

They come into this program with one idea, and they leave with a totally different idea, because just from through the process, they have established, and they have got the clarity they need. 

So that would be one of the key things. 

Alternatively if twelve weeks is not in your favour, I have a weekly online meet. 

We meet for an hour on a Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. till 11:00 a.m. 

It is a monthly membership of R375.00, and I give you learnings every week and that is why I think it is a great investment for your business, both start-ups to established. 

We learn new things; I learn new things. 

I teach you, new things. 

You learn from other people as it is a group session.

So that is pretty much on the cards to help and empower. 

That is my main objective. 

The marketing lifeline is literally here to help, and empower and educate small to medium size businesses about this marketing thing that everyone seems to rather feel overwhelmed with.

I would rather want to break it down into bite size pieces, and just really help you in your business.

SPEAKER 1:  If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn. 

Also visit the Baird Media website, to look at the range of content services we provide. 

You will find all the links in the podcast description. 

Next time on Let’s Talk Content Marketing. 

NESTENE:  Do not assume. 

Do not make an assumption about things. 

Use data. 

This has been a Baird Media production.