Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Kyler Canastra and Josh Saxon, on lead generation tips for content marketers:

Kyler Canastra 0:02
Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I’m Kyler Canastra, co host of the Content Mixpodcast brought to you by multilingual Content Agency VeraContent. My host co host Shaheen isn’t joining us today. But I’m here with a very special guest, Josh Saxon. Josh is an expert in all things content marketing with a wide range of experience in social media, content writing, translation, SEO, PPC, web design, email marketing, and many other areas. Having previously worked at VeraContent as the head of production, and later the director of marketing and business development, in between many other kinds of content marketing roles, Josh now works as a freelance content marketer, originally from the UK, Josh now lives in Madrid, my previous home, where he works with brands across the United Kingdom, Spain in the US. And today, we’re going to talk about how to use content to get more leads, which is something we’ve been collaborating with Jonathan here at Varick content for the past year or so. So without further ado, I’m gonna welcome Josh to the show. Welcome, Josh, good to see you.

Josh Saxon 1:03
Thanks for having me.

Kyler Canastra 1:04
Know, thanks for joining us, it’s really, it’s always fun to like, you know, have people that I don’t know, but also really a good opportunity to have people that I’ve worked with before I come on the show, just to have a conversation, share their expertise about everything related to content marketing, and you definitely have a lot to share. We’ve been collaborating, like I said, in the past year, over the past year, and it’s been very fun experience, I’ve learned a lot along the way. And you’ve been very helpful to our overall goal at varied content. So we figured why not have you on the show and kind of share your insights about how we can gain use content and really to gain more leads. But before we start the episode and dive into that topic, I want to give the audience a bit more context about you. So could you just start out by telling us a bit more about yourself and how you ended up doing what you’re doing and doing it from Madrid? Because as I said, you’re originally from the UK? Yeah, that’s, that’s right.

Josh Saxon 1:56
Well, good to hear that I’ve been helpful. And while you pick my brains here, but yes, I’m originally from the UK, from just outside of London. And I started my career as a newspaper journalist at my local newspaper. I did that for a few years. Then I went into entertainment journalism in London. And then as I got a bit older, I did things more like digital marketing, content, marketing, that kind of thing, because journalism is great fun, but it’s not, it’s not, it’s not always where the money is. So kind of looking looking for things where I could improve my financial situation a bit more. So just kind of learned lots of different things like you have more content marketing and digital advertising, that sort of thing. And then I was in my early 20s. And I saw a lot of my friends. But then the more I suppose, traditional route, they went to university, they don’t have gap years, and they traveled. And I kind of went into quite a heavy career from a young age. So I just wanted to just get a little taste of that. And I had plans to travel Europe, and I came to Madrid sort of over a decade ago, and I’m still here. So I’m the world’s worst traveler. You didn’t make it to make it very far at all. No,

Kyler Canastra 3:17
Madrid definitely has that alert. I have to say it kind of Yeah. When I got away, I think for a lot of people have very similar story to linear Madrid. And now you’re Yeah, a decade later, you’re still there. It

Josh Saxon 3:28
just Yeah, I was just I just really liked the sort of lifestyle here. And I did the sort of traditional sort of, you know, traveling gap year things I teach teaching English. And I work in an Irish pub for a bit. And then I just Yeah, so that was fun. And then I just kind of got got back into, into sort of content marketing while I was here. Yeah, worked worked for several, several different companies. And then till recently, just just before the pandemic, I decided I wanted to go freelance, a bit, just kind of, I suppose I had very specific ideas of, of how I wanted to work in content marketing, both in terms of GMP, the product I wanted to offer the services I wanted to offer and how how it worked. So that was my main sort of inspiration to to be freelance. And yeah, but fortunately, I did that, I think just before the pandemic, so I was where I think a lot of people were just kind of scrambling to work working from home. I’ve kind of just just got it all set up. So you had a

Kyler Canastra 4:27
good intuition, then then.

Josh Saxon 4:29
Maybe, yeah. So So yeah, I’ve been doing that since. Yeah. Well, my concept of times during the pandemic is totally out the window. So yeah, a few years now. And I’m very happy to have been happy doing that. I’m serving just just a small roster of clients or finding clients at a time. Doing Yeah, mostly, mostly content marketing, sort of long form articles and blog posts with us. gigabit with the intention of I think educating their clients and present in presenting the client as a, as a sort of authority and expert in that industry. As well as, yeah, short form posts, which which would have more of a kind of human interest kind of style of interview, some of our staff and then network, which works really well to repurpose that on social media as well. And help kind of build that community. So

Kyler Canastra 5:28
yeah, I feel like, you’re thanks for sharing all that, your life. And I feel like for the average person to hear that, like trajectory, they’re probably like, that’s not really normal. But I feel like with a lot of content marketers I met, many of them have experienced in journalism, which really plays into, you know, the whole storytelling of content marketing, and how that’s so important. And building that community through storytelling. And also, a lot of people who live deprived and live work these odd jobs of the dance teacher and working in Irish pub, like these type of things, like really helps communication skills and knowing about how to adapt to different cultures, I feel like, it’s very interesting to hear that because I feel like it’s a similar pattern. I mean, look at Shaheen, she was a journalist. And now she’s working in our company in content marketing. So it’s definitely interesting to see that trajectory. And you mentioned basically some of the work in services you’re doing now. But could you elaborate a bit more about like some of the brands like what kind of brands are you working with? And how do you usually collaborate them? Because obviously, you make your own schedule, you’re kind of building their, their brands and in your own, I guess, process that you probably have, you know, trademarked at this point.

Josh Saxon 6:32
Yeah, so it’s, like I said, it’s for five regular clients. In totally different industries. One of them is waste management. One of them’s and architects, obviously, do stuff you guys in content marketing. And that another one is a marketing platform. So they do kind of overlap, which is nice. And there’s a lot of things that I sort of develop and learn one client that I could maybe use with another ones if you have a lot of overlap. But yeah, they’re all they’re all sort of, in terms of the, the, the sense, the package of services, I offer each one, they’re all a bit different, which my view is quite nice, because I have, that there’s a kind of variability in what I do day to day. But at the same time, I can, I’m still able to kind of structure it the way I want to. I didn’t, I feel like a lot of a lot of traditional jobs will say, No, two days at the same. And in my experience, that’s either completely untrue. But they is very, very boring, you just speak to different people maybe, or just means it’s just chaos. So I feel like I’ve found like a nice balance as the, you know, offering different different services, but I’m still able to keep my days quite structured, so I can be efficient and productive. So So yeah, in terms, there were there were quite different. And they will work in different different ways, in terms of collaboration. So like I said, there’s one client, that I do a lot of more human interest stuff, I just talked to a lot of people in the network. For example, they just made a big charity donation. So I was able to talk to that, to that charity last night, and get some get some nice quotes from them. So this is what this is all really, this is content that I can use on their blog, on their social media, I’ll probably send a press release to local newspapers as well. So it’s, so it’s kind of got a lot of legs, I can get a lot of mileage out of that one piece. And then you have an I’ll take that and convert it into several pieces of social media content. So. So that kind of collaboration is really important, because and that’s where I think my journalism history really comes into play. And kind of, again, knowing how to pitch local newspapers helps as well. And I think, just kind of on the topic that you just mentioned, I think we, you know, having an interview skills, I think is really important for content, because you might go at a piece of content, and you have an idea of what it is, maybe maybe even what the title of it is and the angle. But I think until you actually start speaking to people and you and you and you get the depth of what they’re about, you’ll find I think a nugget in there that you didn’t you didn’t see you can you can actually hang the whole piece on and I think it’s really and that really helps as well I think in in the kind of the other side of it, which is when you’re creating content you’re you’re creating for a user and you really want to know what they’re looking for. And I think sometimes that’s not that’s not always obvious. That’s not always obvious, especially to to clients who feel that they’ve got a really good idea what their product and services but they don’t actually understand the the emotional drivers that are going to make that user convert into a customer. I think you know, maybe a good example as insurance, they think they might think that all the all the different features of the insurance and everything you kind of get is really what motivates people in that respect. But usually it’s about security and physical or emotional things. So when you’re writing the content, you need to have that in mind. It’s really about their family, about their about about how they feel, and insurance is a, you know, kind of boring product. But the the reality of what drives people to buy that product. So I think that that takes some that kind of journalism skill that I would use in creating stories, I would also try and use to talk to people talk to clients, or clients of my clients to kind of find out, so I might write a piece on it. But I’m also finding out a little bit about why they might use that service. And that actually, then I could take that, and then I might have five or 10 other articles I can do. But I think I think the ability to aggregate compensation for people with some is really important as well.

Kyler Canastra 10:57
Yeah. So it’s like, I was just thinking to you, like, it’s really good that you have these journalism’s COFA seems like you also need to have like, like, a degree in psychology or something like that, to really understand like, the emotional aspects of it. And which kind of leads me to my next question, which was, I feel like you have a lot of life experience that led you into where you are today, and your, your professional trajectory. But in terms of like, specializing, we’ve mentioned before, that you do SEO, where you’re doing PPC, all these things, and a lot of our listeners, sometimes they you know, they’re experts themselves and content marketing, they’re people who are, you know, inspired to maybe kind of follow a path that you’d have done in your life most like making your own business and doing that, how did you learn and specialize in those areas? of SEO? Like, did you do courses? Did you just learn from experience?

Josh Saxon 11:45
It’s yeah, a lot of it was from experience, I was quite lucky. One company I work that the way they structured their company was that the marketing and SEO departments were totally separate. Which is, which is quite unusual, because there’s just so much overlap in what those two departments are doing. But they were they were quite sort of siloed. So basically, it didn’t feel like it made sense. But it meant that I had to focus exclusively on SEO for the whole time I was there. So just kind of that was maybe that that helped me basically become an expert in that one thing. So in I think for the company’s benefit, it wasn’t fantastic, but the mind personally enabled me to, to work that way. And then then I just just develop that part of my, my career as, as I went freelance. So it’s really just been, and that’s kind of why it was the right time to go freelance I felt like I had, because I wanted to offer, you know, a kind of, essentially package of services to people because people, maybe a larger company is looking for one expert in that one thing, but usually they want you to solve a range of different problems. So I feel like if you if you can write content, if you know, about SEO, and local SEO, and then some level of maybe Google ads, Facebook ads, and email marketing, that kind of that that kind of covers a lot of bases. And I felt I had good experience and all of those different things. Yeah, mostly for mostly from from work experience. And then I think I’ve just got a little bit of like an obsessive personality, like, if I don’t know something, I’ll just, I’ll just kind of go down a rabbit hole on it. And I find that you don’t, I don’t think you really have to have. I mean, I’ve never bought any of these expensive courses, you know, $800 SEO course, or obviously, you could do a university course, I’ve often found that you could, you could buy like a $15 course from Udemy, or something like that, or Skillshare, or one of these things, and it’s still pretty comprehensive. Or you can just you can you can buy a book that will cover cover most things. And then it’s about fitness about doing it. And I think that’s that’s the that’s the cool thing about like learning SEO or content marketing, you can create your own website pretty pretty quickly, pretty cheaply. And just practice, there’s there’s nothing really stopping you from doing that.

Kyler Canastra 14:19
Yeah, if a lot of it’s like experienced bass, I feel like that’s like, inspiring to hear, right? Because I feel like a lot of people get obsessed with I have to do this course and they have to do this, this and that in order to get a goal but a lot of it’s, you know, taking the risk, and also just having, like motivation to do that. And I feel like learning a language for example, you’re not going to learn unless you actually try to speak the language. You have to really put it into the doing part. As you mentioned, it’s really important. I would say

Josh Saxon 14:45
I would say that. Yeah, what you just said is what you feel like you have to deal with this. And part of that part of that feeling you have to do those things I think is partly like imposter syndrome. You look around you and just just naturally you want to see people that you feel like Got a lot more experience with venue and stuff. And that’s, that’s great, you know, you shouldn’t be the smartest person in the room you should be surrounding yourself with people you can learn from. But I would get out of your head that you need some sort of special special talent or, or two or three years specific training before you can start. Now, I mean, training and education and whatever courses you can take, and then just obviously blogs and things put you in the right direction. And you’ll start learning what books you should be reading and that sort of stuff. And learn as you go. But definitely start because you won’t really start with a split like driving a car, isn’t it? Like, if you can read the, you know, the Highway Code as we have in the UK, you can read it, but it doesn’t mean you can drive a car, as you start, just start driving the car first, even sort of after you’ve passed your test, you haven’t really learned to drive yet because you haven’t had enough sort of dangerous situations where you have to learn stuff. So yeah, you have to do it really?

Kyler Canastra 15:59
Yeah, from being someone from a very cold part of United States definitely learned a lot when you get out on ice, the first few things are out of it. That’s true. A lot of it you have to practice, like the theory that goes behind it. But then a lot of really what matters the most is the practice. Yeah, I imagine and I’m not gonna beat around the bush anymore in terms of the topic, but I imagine a lot of people hire your services, because they want more Leads. They feel like that’s, you know, the biggest motivation for all of these things in terms of content strategy, organic or not. So could you describe, in your opinion, how content marketing can be used to generate more leads, especially for people who maybe don’t understand the direct connection there?

Josh Saxon 16:38
Yeah. So I think, one A, one of the most important things about content marketing is, like I said, with the kind of journalism connection there, you really want to drill down and find out what what drives people to make decisions, what their pain points are. And that should really be the basis of how you’re generating content. So I think, you know, there’s, this is good, I suppose the common common mistake a lot of people make is they feel like, people are interested in locks in all the different features of the business. And there’s sort of that they’re not really, they’re not really explaining the benefits, because I think they maybe feel it’s very obvious, but I think, yeah, you have to lay it out. But you also have to do your, your research. So I think you’ve got, essentially a buyers journey with anything. And you, you can obviously be, I suppose quite quite specific about it. And I suppose directly towards the end of the customer journey, where you’re going to be perhaps with a pay per click campaign, you’re going to be competing on keywords that are that have a high sort of commercial intent. So people that are looking for an agency that they’re using keywords or agency services, pricing, that sort of thing that are quite far along, though, they seem more or less ready to convert already. If you can catch them a little bit earlier, and you’re already on their radar, while they’re doing their initial research. That’s, that’s where content marketing, I think comes into play a lot. You’re you’re answering a lot of questions. So you know, one of the, I think one of the best sort of, you know, the most obvious piece of content, you can create this, I’m gonna start with how to these things do very well on search engines on YouTube, as well, that’s, you know, YouTube as a search engine thing, how to is the most commonly searched race. So, so yeah, that’s that’s basically it. And you’re doing a bit more than that as well. I think you’re building trust with people. Exactly. You want to establish yourself as an authority and an expert in what you’re doing. And I think that’s, that’s it’s definitely worked for me as well. When I’ve been I’ve been looking for services. And I think I think I mean, as a father now, for example, you can see that this content marketing is huge in the kind of parenting industry, because I’ve got questions like every day,

Kyler Canastra 19:02
you’re constantly learning.

Josh Saxon 19:04
These things do not come with an instruction manual, you have to be constantly googling. And then often I find myself on the Pampers website, you know, so I go to the supermarket, Pampers is top of mind. And maybe consciously or subconsciously, I like pampers a little bit more, because they they helped me with something, right.

Kyler Canastra 19:21
They’re brand new, trust me, he’s out of shape. And I trust Yeah. And I feel like I always tell people when they asked like content marketing, like what’s the mission or goal or objective of that? And as always, I think for me, personally, I think of the whole storytelling aspect, and then a world that we’re more digital, we’re always like, looking instead of googling things, looking for information, we will just want to find a brand that really we can trust and feel like they are hearing our needs, even if like you said, I got an assembly and pampers has, like, you know, good how to for parents in different like tips and tricks. So even though you’re not directly by Pampers, you’re going to be using their website and then kind of building this trust, like you said, maybe subconsciously, but that’s the whole plan. As the brand really needs to position itself in a way that shows that they care what the power of language does here and the sense of events content,

Josh Saxon 20:08
like you said, I mean, people hire me because they want results at the end of the day. Of course, I think content marketing is sort of notoriously difficult to track in that respect, versus let’s say, Google ads, which is just, you know, luxurious in terms of how you can demonstrate the return on investment there. You’ve spent this much money and you and you weren’t this much in, in sales or leads.

Kyler Canastra 20:31
Exactly. Yeah. Speaking of results, so this is always a question I get, we always hear all the time is, what is more effective organic SEO strategy or paid ad strategy? And I feel like it’s the question the chicken or the egg? What comes first? So in your opinion, your experience, I know, this is not really a black and white question. I also hate that I’m asking it because again, it’s hard to really, I guess, conceptualize, or like say this in a general way, because I think it really depends on the brand and their stage of growth and where they’re at, and their budgets, etc. But in your opinion, which of the two would you recommend brands? Starting with?

Josh Saxon 21:08
Well, like you said it Yeah, it’s totally totally depends. That is, yeah, that is probably the digital marketers go to answer. It depends. Because if that’s so, you know, so that’s the benefit of working with someone that can recommend something that’s suited to your specific industry, your business, your budget. But I think yeah, so just, I mean, just to give you a, you know, a bit of a less of a wishy washy answer, you know, so it depends on your industry, for example. So I think Content marketing definitely lends itself to some industries better than others. If you think about it, there are some services that are much harder to create content for. For example, a plumber. Let’s say I’ve got a problem in my house, I’ve got a leaking pipe but I don’t really care about plumbing, I just want the problem solved. My customer journey is going to be fairly short. I’m going to Google plumbers in my area and I’m going to click the first result. I might look at a few different websites but I don’t think I’m going to heavily get involved. And after the problem is solved, I no longer care. So when you’re a landlord or kind of domestic plumbing service, content marketing is going to be a lot harder. So I’d probably recommend them going with Google ads or other Pay Per Click ads. But then I would also recommend local SEO. And that actually involves a lot of content as well, you should have a lot of content on your website with local keywords and that sort of thing. So with a client like that, I’d probably say let’s go with Google Ads first. But I mean, ideally, if they’ve got the budget, you do both. Because I think there’s not a great analogy, but I, I would sort of compare content marketing or SEO, for example, organic SEO as more of a long game. So I sort of equate it to index fund investing. You’re not looking to get rich quick, but it’s pretty stable and you’re gonna get results. It’s probably going to take you at least nine months until you see any decent results. But as long as you’re consistent with it and don’t jump ship and you keep up with it, you’re going to see some results over the long term. And then, Google ads is maybe a little bit more like picking stocks because, certainly if you don’t know what you’re doing, you might pick some keywords that aren’t very profitable, but you still spend some money on the clicks there. It would still take you a bit of time to get good at it. You might lose some money, but then you might gain a lot of money. So it’s a little bit more, I suppose, risky as such. But you could see results a lot quicker.

Kyler Canastra 23:57
A lot of it’s trial and error as well. Like with your career, you got to take a risk sometimes in order to see how it pans out.

Josh Saxon 24:05
And to get good at Google Ads, you really need the data, and to get the data, you need to spend some money. So for clients with very, very low budgets, that might not that might not be something that they look at. Or, you know, will look at it after a month and be like ‘where are my results?’ That kind of line is probably not a great one for spending money on Google Ads. So yeah, it really depends. But ultimately, I would say if you can do both and do both, if you’ve got the resources and, and, and the time to the time and the money to do it. Because you know, organic SEO is still not It’s not free. You still got to pay people to do it and to invest the time. But I would say I would say both, really and they if you do both the wonderful thing is they can support each other out Um, you know, I’m talking specifically about Google ads. Here is you can do a lot of keyword research through your Google ads, and you can, and you can find out what keywords work pretty quickly. And then that can inform your organic strategy, because you can be like, Okay, well, this particular keyword is actually bringing in conversions, I should definitely have actually definitely invest in it, you know, 1500 word article about this. And then you can be really like, getting a lot of great Google real estate, because they can type in that keyword, your ads, but then you also the first organic result as well. You’re you’re really sort of improving your chances of getting those clicks and circulation. So yeah,

Kyler Canastra 25:40
now you mentioned data of the importance of data, right? Is that the best way to track content? And if so, what areas? Are you really looking to see in terms of tracking data? Because I’m sure the data then will help you refine your strategy as you go along? Know, it’s like the numbers, you see the trends you get, I guess maybe What trends are you looking for? What areas are you actually like? Investigating? You get to see? Yeah,

Josh Saxon 26:04
so yeah, I think this is, this is the big, a big part of the job as, as a content marketer, Digital Marketer, it’s, it’s sometimes an area that, that I think writers might overlook, because they’re writers, and they tend to be more creative in nature, and not so so much with the graphs and the charts. But it’s definitely worth it’s definitely worth trying to get good at that. And really, because, like you said, people hire me for results. And if I can’t present them with a report that kind of explains, you know, why, why maybe we didn’t do so well here, you know, you have to look at that data and try and work out why. And that and that way, you know, so sometimes you have a good idea of what’s going to work. But sometimes you’ll be massively surprised about that, like, yellow one client, for example, I have a pretty good idea that people would be interested in the human interest stuff and how the company works and what what a day in the life is like, for the people that work in that in that industry. And then pictures of trucks, machinery, and stuff on Instagram, I was like really a people is that that was my just, you know, not really having a great idea of how that industry worked. But people love pictures of trucks. And that is totally wrong. So you know, you have you have to look at your data, you know, you have to look at your Facebook Insights there and see what’s getting what’s getting the clicks was getting the comments. I think comments and shares are a little bit more indicative of what’s what people are really engaging with. And that’s, you know, yes, but especially shares because that’s what’s going to really increase your reach. And yeah, get get you the results you’re looking to get there. But so obviously, yeah, with going back to Google ads, I think track tracking your leads, and having good conversion tracking, which is, which is, you know, not not that easy to do very well. But you want to make sure you’re collecting as much information about your about your users and clients as possible. And trying to find out exactly which keywords people are clicking exactly which ones are getting the conversions, and then you can, and that’s how you can have a much better idea of where you should be spending your budget. Basically, by the end of the month, you should be able to present your clients with like, here’s the work I did, here’s, here’s what I learned. Here’s what we’re doing. And this is what worked, what didn’t work. And I think the I think learning how to put to make a good report is, is really good for web clients, obviously. Yeah, they’re looking, they’re looking for results. And yeah, you should, you should be able to explain to them what their what their return on their investment is and what they’re getting for their money.

Kyler Canastra 28:48
Exactly. Now, you mentioned like a report, for example, Google Analytics. Now, these are some of the most probably more useful tools when you’re trying to implement a lead generation strategy and actually understand how you’re performing. So in general, besides these two are the other tools that you would recommend for people to be using when they’re doing a lead generation strategy. And also, in terms of like, the type of content as a tool. Are there certain, like content types, such as ebooks, white papers, or case studies that you think are, like essential tools in this process as

Josh Saxon 29:17
well? Okay, yeah. So in terms of tools, yeah, Google annex has been one that’s gonna that’s going to tell us a lot about what what content is getting the most sort of traffic and clicks. But that, you know, that that in and of itself, doesn’t doesn’t necessarily mean that’s not the whole picture. So you might have a blog post that’s doing fantastically well. But then then you might look at Google Search Console, for example. And then that will show you the kind of things people are searching to get to these posts. And you might find these search terms, it’s completely irrelevant to what you do. So you’re, and then then you’ll realize okay, so we’ve got quite a big bounce rate here. So people people are coming onto this article and disappearing straightaway. That’s that’s not great for your SEO to be boost to be increasing your bounce rate now. So it might actually tell you that you’ve got a fantastic post is getting a lot of traffic, but you need to get rid of it, because it’s because it’s not doing you any good. So Google Analytics alone isn’t, is going to get you there. So yeah, Google Search Console will go in, and you can connect those two tools, let’s give you a bit of a better idea of who the people are, that are coming onto these posts. And then you might use things like ABX testing. I think that’s, that’s something I think Facebook ads is really good for, because it’s much cheaper than is cheaper than Google ads, right. So you can target people in the interest in, you know, in an industry or people that are likely to buy your product. And you can, you can run two different ads, and compare which one got the most clicks and had to have the highest click through rate or conversion rates, and then you can that can inform your or your content strategy. You’re gonna want to get CRM as well, because a big part of content marketing is when you’re, and that kind of leads into the next part of your question being essentially lead lead magnets, so ebooks, white papers, you said reports, this kind of thing. A big part of that is you’ve got a fantastic piece of content that’s much more a veto than anything you might offer for free via social media or your website, your blog, or wherever, and you will be offering that in exchange for an email address, that then allows you to continue that conversation with that client, you might you might sort of put them into into an email nurture sequence, where you’re giving them perhaps more more content, more more value, and building that trust even more. So by the time they’re at the end of the buyer journey there, you’re top of mind, and then they know who to come to, in terms of those different lead, lead magnet types. ebook is probably the most common one, a shorter book that’s that’s, that’s giving people a bit more information. And that will probably end with a big sort of cool call to action to to get in touch to your your products or services. And again, you would give or take the lead managers for that. White Papers, I feel are quite effective with more like b2b marketing, okay. So like when you’re when you’re when you’re a business marketing to another business, where that that that particular potential client or user is heavily interested in what you do. And again, somebody like that, that that you can, when you’re when you’re managing different aspects of someone’s marketing, you can, you can usually take a report or white paper and use that as a press release as well. So you can get even more value out of it. And we’ll also be talking about ebooks, white

Kyler Canastra 32:55
papers, case studies, as case studies are

Josh Saxon 32:58
fantastic, I think to help with sort of a little cameo from my my dog. Case studies, I think, a really fantastic way thing to put to keep on your website. Right? Because that is that really, I think helps with conversions. And again, I think those case studies, I think, when they’re written well could be really, really compelling. If, again, if you focus on like to how you’ve really transformed the lives or the businesses of the subject of these case studies, and you focus on that, sort of sort of the the user put themselves in the mind of archaic, and this is how I feel if I, if I work with these people, though, those are great things to have on your website, in, in and around the areas where you’re sort of close to closing them. And I think again, that’s where data comes into play, you want to you want to look at your website, and you can use Google Analytics. And as you can see, kind of the customer journey. And you can see, for example, you might find that a lot of people always visit the about page before they get in touch that you’d always want to know who they’re dealing with before they before they get in touch. That’s a really important bit of information because you realize that they that’s, that’s something that you should actually have. And you should you should, you know, you can work it, you can actually get people to that stage a bit quicker. You want to make sure that’s actually quite a prominent part of landing pages to find out about about the company. So yeah, I think case studies and when placed in the right area can be really effective.

Kyler Canastra 34:33
Yeah, for sure. And I definitely feel like in my experience, maybe more like ebooks and white papers are more for like, generating interest. While like the case studies. I feel like I see that people want to see that when they’re like in conversation about like a potential service. They’re like, Do you have a case study that we can look at because they want to see how the results are going to be in like what you’ve done for other companies that are similar to theirs. So definitely like kind of, like you said, the customer journey and so unfortunately Yeah, each phase because each piece of content kind of filled a certain aspect or like kind of has its place along the way, which is so important, I think in terms of really nursing a lead that you have.

Josh Saxon 35:12
Exactly, yeah. So yeah, again, I think, as I saw an example, recently, I think with the contact you’re offered, you really want to be offering as much value as possible. I think it’s something like a sort of 9010 split in terms of how much you’re just giving value and how much you’re trying to sell your services. Though I just just from personal experience with planning a wedding. So I was I was looking for photographers. And one particular photographer had, you know, essentially some content marketing on offer, but it was just his price list. He wanted my email address in exchange for a price list, which didn’t feel like he was offering me any value. He was like, he just, he was just gatekeeping his prices. Exactly. And I didn’t do it, because I felt like, Okay, well, I’m not there yet. And I just feel like as soon as I give you my email, you just got to aggressively market to me, because you’ve not really, I feel like pricing something you can at least give an idea of on your on your website. So I know whether or not I’m gonna waste my time. So that felt like ineffective content marketing, you weren’t, you weren’t really solving a massive problem for me, I could find out pricing elsewhere. It’s not that hard. Whereas I think if he, if the piece of content was something about getting the excuses or weddings or emotional thing he could have actually got me excited about about, you know,

Kyler Canastra 36:31
the DSLR.

Josh Saxon 36:33
His Yeah, that could have been maybe case studies, they’re usually used as a as an ebook, which would be, you know, the best places to take wedding photographs in this location, for example, something that will get me excited, and will help me trust them. But yeah, that particular just just the PDF with your prices. What wasn’t?

Kyler Canastra 36:53
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Saxon 36:58
And yeah, and you have to build trust, because people shouldn’t, you shouldn’t really be given up your email address for anything. No, because you’re gonna get some you’re gonna get some emails. And you know, you want to do want to try and keep your inbox fairly clean. So, so yeah, that was just one that didn’t work. It didn’t, it didn’t offer me any value, it was, it was only valuable for them to get my email address.

Kyler Canastra 37:19
It’s almost like, if they know more about me, then I change the prices that they offer me that makes sense. Like, it kind of just really a lot of trust issues, the whole process in terms of just sending me a price list, I don’t know where that’s coming from, or anything like that. And I feel like they’re not being, like transparent about their pricing, which I think people will really look for. Now. We’ve come to the end of our interview, and I have $1 million question I guess, asked, which is kind of to wrap it up. But besides getting in touch with you, which we’ll talk about how to do that in a second. For any brand organization, like looking to generate more leads? Where Where do you suggest they start? What would be the first thing they should do?

Josh Saxon 37:58
Okay, so to start, the first thing, or the thing that I think is most important, and something I actually overlooked in my career as not thinking was that important that is going back to what we said previously about creating like a buyer persona. So you know exactly who it is, that you’re writing for, I think that’s, it’s very easy to assume that you know how to create this content, because you know, your business and like that it can be done, simply simply by finding out more about the business. But you ideally, you want to be having interviews, in depth interviews with real people to find out to find out what makes them tick, you want to, and then you want to create, essentially a document, that’s, that’s who this person is, to like the nth degree, you want to really create a kind of, so you can really picture in your head, who it is, what their problems are, exactly what a typical database is, like with this person, you know, what they complain, to the PERT to their partners about, you know, think things like this. So you can really help you can really create content that that really they wouldn’t want to read. So I think that is that for me would be the place to start. Before you do it, before you do anything hadn’t had that first. Take, take the time to do those interviews. And find out how to write you know, what people want to want in terms of,

Kyler Canastra 39:18
it’s a really fun exercise to do as well, it kind of makes you really think out of the box. Like I said, once you’re caught up in your own ending with anything in life, once you’re caught up with what you’re doing, you feel like you understand it fully or you understand, you know, who’s going to be receiving this information or whatever, I know I’m fine. But when you actually do the exercise that makes it really think outside the box and push yourself in different ways to actually try to understand and to work with.

Josh Saxon 39:41
Also the the people that you’re interviewing, like potential clients or past clients. They don’t always know exactly what drove them to decision and you have to unpack that a bit from my journalism experience as well. I remember there’s something really stuck with me. I remember doing about an hour’s interview with I was buying community news. So you just had to have lots of contacts and people you knew in the community to get to get news. I mean, that was I mean, this is a long time ago. Now this is really that’s just how we didn’t really have internet was fairly fairly sort of young. In those days, we didn’t really have. We I remember, when I first started in the news, we have a one computer that was connected to the internet, but we have to share. So you have to get out there and you have to interview people, I remember sitting with one person for like an hour, we had a cup of tea, this is very typical sort of thing we would do. And she was there’s not really much going on. And then at the end of the interview, she got up and said, I must go, there was a there was a fire at the garden center that I don’t have to go and that we’re going to help out with some of these if she didn’t think that was she didn’t think that was important thing that I might be interested in knowing about and I hadn’t I hadn’t found out about it. Until that moment. So it was sometimes like you can you can have an interview, and you really have to ask a lot of questions and kind of make them feel relaxed. And you know that that’s quite an important quality, I think in doing a good interview, and then you’ll then you’ll find that the sort of nuggets are really sometimes incredibly obvious things that I didn’t think to mention, that can can shape your whole content strategy.

Kyler Canastra 41:18
Exactly. It’s kind of like the same exercise of like, when you do the buyer persona, you don’t you don’t know what the first thing is because you don’t think that way. But then the people that like you said, like the person you’re interviewing, they don’t even know either what’s kind of important, they kind of just assume everything is normal for them. I guess it’s like kind of pulling things apart, and kind of really looking deep into every aspect to actually get a better general understanding exactly who you want to target. Now, I mentioned Well, I think anyone that listens to podcasts on a regular basis knows that this podcast will have an accompanying blog post where they can find more information about Josh and probably a link to his LinkedIn. But if people wanted to get in touch with you directly if you have it, let’s say or how what’s the best way to get in touch?

Josh Saxon 41:59
I don’t I don’t have a website. Actually. I have LinkedIn. So Ashley was axon on LinkedIn. It seems green. I think there’s probably there’s another Joshua was that there’s a few Joshua’s accent is one that’s some voice artists that that seems to seem to always pick me to the top post of organic results. So not him. Me. Yeah, I screen and I’m I’m a freelancer I’m I work as an individual. But I have essentially a brand which is related to content marketing, relates because I think that’s just the heart of again, what I’m what I’m trying to do is you’re creating content that really relates to people rather than directly aggressively markets and advertisers. And by relating to people, you’re, you’re helping to build that trust. And by the time they’re ready to become that convert. You’ve nurtured them. So yeah, that’s related to content marketing. My, my brand, I suppose, personalized.

Kyler Canastra 42:54
And we’ll do our best to include this in the blog post that goes along with this episode. And as I expected, this was a very, very interesting conversation. It was an absolute pleasure to have you on the content mix today, Josh. And I want to thank everybody for listening in. And for more perspective on global content marketing. And to learn more, how to get in touch with Josh directly, be sure to check out very content.com/mcs and if you’d like to get in touch with us, or if you have any interesting topics for an upcoming episode, feel free to reach out to us at MCs at Varick content.com. And as always keep tuning in to our podcast and more perspectives on topics related to content marketing. Thanks again, Josh, for your time this morning. And we hope to see you all soon and hope to have you on the podcast again in the near future. You never know. Thanks for having me. It’s been fun. It’s been a pleasure. So thank you and thanks everyone again for tuning in today.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai