Episode 67
Drive More Conversions With BOFU Content (No Keyword Research) ft. Lashay Lewis
On this episode of Distribution First, we're diving deep with Lashay Lewis on how the right content distribution strategies can boost your bottom-of-funnel results.
She peeled back the curtain on her masterful approach to bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content and how it's been a game-changer in her marketing strategy.
Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll discover in this episode:
1. The Power of Proper Channel Selection: Lashay kicks things off by emphasizing why choosing the right platforms can make or break your distribution success.
2. Strategic Paid Ads Usage: Dive into how Lashay uses paid ads to creatively retarget audiences and pull them down the funnel.
3. Quality Over Quantity: Discover why Lashay prioritizes the quality of connections and content over mere numbers.
4. Integrating Practical Content: Learn the importance of using hands-on tools like templates and checklists to provide real value in your content.
5. Focus on Conversions: It's not all about traffic volume. Lashay shares why driving conversions should be the ultimate goal of your content efforts.
***
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✉️ Email: hello@justinsimon.co
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Transcript
Hey, everybody. Before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for
Speaker:producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and
Speaker:strategy for one flat rate by visiting Hatch
Speaker:FM. All right, let's get into the show.
Speaker:Welcome to distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head
Speaker:and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I
Speaker:share playbooks, motivations, stories, and strategies to help you repurpose and
Speaker:distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you
Speaker:create.
Speaker:Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of distribution. First,
Speaker:I'm so happy to have my friend Lashay Lewis on the show. I can't
Speaker:believe it took me, I don't even know, 60, 70 episodes
Speaker:to get Lashay on. I feel too long. Too long.
Speaker:Really feel awful about it. I should have had
Speaker:Lashay on a long time ago. We've been hanging out together
Speaker:on LinkedIn across the Internet for a good long while. And so
Speaker:I'm so happy to have you on Lashay. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker:Thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm really excited about this one.
Speaker:Yeah, this is going to be fun. So we talk a lot about,
Speaker:obviously this is distribution first. So we talked about distribution,
Speaker:repurposing the back end of content
Speaker:marketing. Uh, what happens after we hit publish? A lot of times.
Speaker:And so for me, what I think is interesting is a lot of
Speaker:times when I talk to people about
Speaker:distribution, SEO is not typically
Speaker:what they think of when they think of distribution.
Speaker:What they think of is email or
Speaker:they think of social media and LinkedIn.
Speaker:And for me, SEO, Google,
Speaker:YouTube, those are one of the core distribution channels. I have three bucket
Speaker:strategy that I talk about with distribution. SEO being one of those buckets.
Speaker:And Lashay is an expert on BOFU content,
Speaker:bottom of funnel, driving people in, trying to get people to conversion
Speaker:and using that content and using things that people are
Speaker:already searching for and are already interested in to then convert
Speaker:them and get them to do stuff. So I think when we think about distribution,
Speaker:it's easy to go top of funnel. It's easy to go opinions and it's
Speaker:easy to try and create interesting content like this
Speaker:podcast and other things like that's what people think about when they think about
Speaker:content marketing. But I think a lot of times it's easy to skip out on
Speaker:the good stuff at the bottom. So I'm curious, why start at the
Speaker:bottom? I guess let's go there. Why start bottom of funnel to
Speaker:begin with versus? Hey, I'm just
Speaker:trying to get my name out there. I'm trying to build this company and trying
Speaker:to do this stuff. What's your reasoning behind that? The biggest reason
Speaker:is going to be the goals of the company, right.
Speaker:So depending on the goals of the company is going to
Speaker:determine where you start. So if a company is more interested in
Speaker:brand awareness or thought leadership or things like that,
Speaker:typically that's when you start more at the top of the funnel. And then
Speaker:if they're interested in, okay, I need conversions, I need demos, I need
Speaker:signups. That's when you start at the bottom of the funnel. So it really
Speaker:depends on the company's goals. But specifically for me, why I like to
Speaker:start bottom of funnel, because it's very easy for me to show my value
Speaker:because bottom of funnel is usually that last touch
Speaker:point before conversion. So it's not difficult. Well, I
Speaker:say that lightly. It's not too difficult for me to track,
Speaker:but you have to, as opposed to somebody starting at the top of the
Speaker:funnel. And we talked about enterprise software
Speaker:sales cycles, could be anywhere from three to six months. Plus, if you think you're
Speaker:going to follow that person for three to six months and figure out
Speaker:every little touch point they did, sad to tell you,
Speaker:that's probably not going to happen. Versus BOFU, they come into an
Speaker:article, they read it, they like it, and they
Speaker:get a demo button, they hit free trial button, they hit whatever that
Speaker:conversion point is. That's what's being pushed in
Speaker:the bottom of funnel piece versus, again, top. And sometimes middle of
Speaker:funnel are more pushed toward maybe the email list or getting
Speaker:a free this or template playbook, something like that. But I
Speaker:like to start bottom of the funnel because it's easier for me to show my
Speaker:value as a marketer that way. And do you
Speaker:think about it? I know the Chris Walker really made the whole demand
Speaker:capture versus demand creation like two buckets. Really?
Speaker:Really. Do you think of it in that way of like we're capturing demand
Speaker:with top and middle versus really, or creating demand at the
Speaker:top versus capturing demand that's existing at the bottom? I
Speaker:do kind of look at it like that, right? Because all keywords are
Speaker:not built the same. And there's a big
Speaker:misconception usually with in house marketers specifically, and I'm calling
Speaker:you guys out, vp of marketing and demand gen
Speaker:leads, usually. I'm
Speaker:not gonna say they don't know a lot about SEO, because some do are pretty
Speaker:well versed in it. But the ones that aren't, they're like, okay, you know, I
Speaker:found this keyword. It has 20,000 searches a month. Let's
Speaker:go after this one because, oh, look at all the search volume. And our competitors
Speaker:are ranking forward and every reason in the world to go after this term. But
Speaker:what they're missing is search volume does not equal search intent.
Speaker:Those are two different things. And again, depending on your goal,
Speaker:is going to determine which one you go after. So you can go after
Speaker:what is sales enablement. And that probably gets maybe like
Speaker:10, 15, 20,000 searches a month, right. Versus
Speaker:best sales enablement software for small teams, maybe
Speaker:50 searches a month, 150. Not a lot. But the
Speaker:traffic that comes in from a term like that is going to be very, very
Speaker:high intent and a lot of the time, Justin, what I find is
Speaker:that four to five, or
Speaker:rather, let's say this, usually six to
Speaker:nine Bofu articles will produce more
Speaker:conversions than 30, 40, 50
Speaker:top of funnel articles. And I'm talking about with search volumes of
Speaker:20,000, 50,000. And again, it's just that
Speaker:misconception of, oh, because it has more search
Speaker:volume. I'm going to get leads from this. I'm going to get sales from this.
Speaker:It's like, no, the smart thing to do
Speaker:if your goal is conversions, I don't want to just make it seem like everybody's
Speaker:dumb. The smart thing to do if your goal is conversions is to start bottom
Speaker:of funnel and bottom of funnel. It's less people in that buying
Speaker:pool. There's some sort of, like, statistic or something where it's like three
Speaker:to 5% of your market is buying. Like the three to 5%
Speaker:is in this bottom of funnel pool floating around. So it's
Speaker:not going to be as much search volume as something top or middle
Speaker:of funnel, but that intent is going to be there, and it's probably going to
Speaker:convert more than anything else on the blog,
Speaker:at least from what I found. Yeah, yeah. There's
Speaker:definitely, it's an odd mix in content
Speaker:marketing. I feel like there's a, there's a, a strong desire
Speaker:to just create a lot of things
Speaker:and hope those things work out
Speaker:rather than actually have a strategy. The more
Speaker:companies I talk with, the more marketers,
Speaker:unfortunately, that I talk with, the more I'm
Speaker:realizing that there's a real lack of
Speaker:strategy involves within a lot of
Speaker:marketing programs. And to me, it's like
Speaker:what you provide for the BOFU side is very similar to,
Speaker:like, how I think about providing a strategy around repurposing
Speaker:and distributing content. It's a recipe, so
Speaker:we can have this. You don't have to just go in blind
Speaker:hoping you make a good cake. Like, there's an actual
Speaker:recipe that you can use to make a really good
Speaker:cake, and if you follow it, you'll be
Speaker:successful. It's not guaranteed that it's going to be as
Speaker:pretty or as nice or as good as somebody
Speaker:who's done it. You know, been a baker for 25 years, but you have the
Speaker:strategy to make a good cake. And I think
Speaker:there's just a huge, there's a huge lack of thought.
Speaker:Maybe, maybe it's just like you said from a in house, like a vp,
Speaker:like, I think there is just maybe a, I don't want to say
Speaker:ignorance, but there is maybe some level of ignorance in terms of, like, what
Speaker:actually moves the needle versus saying, like, we're going to
Speaker:do content marketing. That means a lot of different things to a lot
Speaker:of different people. And I think
Speaker:actually doing content marketing and actually having a strategy,
Speaker:like you said, it can be totally different for
Speaker:totally different teams. Are you trying to capture demand at the bottom
Speaker:of the funnel to drive demos now? Are you trying to
Speaker:build awareness and a brand and try to do that for the long
Speaker:term? You're probably trying to do both
Speaker:in reality. And that's where a lot of teams get screwed up,
Speaker:is they're trying to do all of it with one piece
Speaker:of content. And that's the thing, right? Like
Speaker:one piece of content can serve multiple purposes. But again, it's
Speaker:like if the intent is off, it's not going
Speaker:to serve the purpose you wanted to. Again, if you want inbound
Speaker:leads and you're writing top of funnel, it's not going to serve the
Speaker:purpose. If you want brand awareness, thought leadership,
Speaker:more people in the email, more people to download this white paper. I hate white
Speaker:papers, y'all. And I'm talking as a millennial,
Speaker:as a buying millennial, that's buying software. So a lot of other millennials that
Speaker:probably hate white papers, I don't read them, but if you have like a playbook,
Speaker:if you have templates or things like that, to me that's
Speaker:more top of funnel. It's like getting
Speaker:people into your ecosystem versus bottom of funnel.
Speaker:They've already been pre educated, probably by your competitors,
Speaker:too. So. Right. It's like if we think about football, it's like the other
Speaker:team running all the way to the goal
Speaker:line and then you come in for the interception and run it all the way
Speaker:back for the touchdown, right? Like kind of like that's how
Speaker:bottom of funnel is. And I tell people all the time, it's like people look
Speaker:at content marketing as this black box where it's just like, oh, we're just going
Speaker:to throw things in it and see what sticks. It's like there's an actual
Speaker:strategy behind content marketing. And it's like once
Speaker:in house, leaders come to this realization. They're like, oh, shoot. Like,
Speaker:ooh. And they usually come to this realization six to
Speaker:twelve months after publishing a bunch of top of funnel stuff.
Speaker:They come to me and they say, well, Lashay, we've been
Speaker:publishing a lot of pieces and they have a lot of search
Speaker:volume, but we're not seeing any uptick in leads, any uptick
Speaker:in sales. It's like, what's the gap here? And the gap is
Speaker:that you're not focusing on high intent
Speaker:terms, you're focusing on high search terms.
Speaker:So again, once leaders start to understand that
Speaker:differentiation between the two and the value that one adds
Speaker:against the other, that's when they get the clarity and say, okay, we need
Speaker:a bottom of funnel strategy. And again, I'm not saying top of funnel is bad
Speaker:or anything, it just all depends on your goals. And again, if your
Speaker:goal is to get attributable inbound
Speaker:pipeline from your blog, bottom of funnel is going to be the
Speaker:way to go. Specifically comparison pages. And the thing with
Speaker:that too is you can build a strategy that isn't
Speaker:insane, that manages both of those things and do
Speaker:it really, really consistently and really, really well.
Speaker:Here's a high level example of how I would think about that. There's
Speaker:probably five to ten bottom of funnel pieces of content
Speaker:that are missing from 80% to 90% of
Speaker:people's company websites right now. Yeah, yeah. So if
Speaker:you created those five to ten, we know just by
Speaker:Pareto principle that 80% is going to drive or
Speaker:20% is going to drive 80% of the results. So let's just say those ten
Speaker:are in that 20% of the overall. You know, you could
Speaker:write 100 blogs, but we're going to just choose these ten. Cause we know they
Speaker:really work. Yep. And at the same time, we can do a monthly
Speaker:event, top of funnel, that drives and talks
Speaker:about all the problems that people are having, and then we can
Speaker:repurpose and distribute that on things like social and email. And now
Speaker:with literally a few blog posts at the bottom of funnel, a
Speaker:monthly event at the top of the funnel that you've repurposed properly, you
Speaker:have an engine that's running all across the funnel that drives
Speaker:people toward the same things that you want. Yep. And I think
Speaker:that's where a lot of leaders miss it. They're like,
Speaker:it's usually one or the other. They're like, okay, we're going to go extreme bottom
Speaker:of funnel. And again, if that's your goal, that's totally okay. Or
Speaker:they're like, we're going to go extreme top of funnel. But they try to go,
Speaker:it's like a scale. They like try to lean one way or the other and
Speaker:try to get that middle balance. It's like, no, in order to get
Speaker:the balance, you have to have balance, right? So it's like, if you do
Speaker:want to put together a content marketing program that kind of targets every bit of
Speaker:the funnel, lay it out, right? So maybe you do two bottom of
Speaker:funnel posts per month. One middle of funnel and one top of funnel. Like you
Speaker:said, it doesn't have to be a blog. It could be a webinar. And again,
Speaker:that webinar leads them into your ecosystem, and then maybe you send them an
Speaker:email about a bottom of funnel post that you did that drives traffic
Speaker:back to the bottom of funnel posts. And I found,
Speaker:anecdotally, at least when you're able to drive traffic
Speaker:to a bottom of funnel article outside, well, not even really
Speaker:outside of Google, because even when you run paid
Speaker:ads to bottom of funnel articles, anecdotally, I found
Speaker:that they rank better. So if you can take an
Speaker:asset you already own, like an email list and say, hey, we wrote this on
Speaker:the best whatever for whatever, and then you send that traffic
Speaker:to that blog, it's possible that you can get conversions from there too, right? It's
Speaker:not just all Google, Google, Google, right? It's your own assets
Speaker:as well. So I think that's where repurposing
Speaker:is really important. It's like, and I'm guilty of this, too,
Speaker:it's like when we create bottom of funnel pieces, we're solely relying on,
Speaker:like Google to bring in the traffic and things like that.
Speaker:But good bottom of funnel content should actually double as sales
Speaker:enablement. So it shouldn't just be sitting on the blog and collecting
Speaker:leads. Your SDR should have them. You know what I mean? Like they should
Speaker:be able to accurately convey your value
Speaker:propositions to a prospect on a call by looking
Speaker:at a bottom of funnel piece. That's how you know you have a good one,
Speaker:right? So it's like, again, it's not just about
Speaker:creating a bottom of funnel piece and putting it out there and hoping for the
Speaker:best. It's actually creating a strategy around it to make sure
Speaker:the odds play in your favor as it you know, results into
Speaker:driving inbound leads from that piece. Yeah. You can sway the odds in your favor
Speaker:more than not. Yeah. The more companies that I work with and the more
Speaker:content strategies that I dig into, I think there needs to be more
Speaker:clarity for teams around intent for that content
Speaker:and honestly, more conversations
Speaker:internally. It's easier for me now as an external resource to come into a
Speaker:company and see the things that I used to have to deal
Speaker:with internally, which is like the product team
Speaker:says, we need to do X, Y and Z pieces of content. And
Speaker:it's like, okay, you're creating that list is six,
Speaker:like six things that are very similar. And
Speaker:are we going like, there's those type of things. So it's having a
Speaker:strong view of the intent and seeing the intent across.
Speaker:One of the things I've been looking more into with folks as well is
Speaker:around the type of content based around the
Speaker:distribution channel. So for instance, really,
Speaker:really bottom of funnel content, depending
Speaker:on what it is, doesn't make a ton. So like a comparison, right. It might
Speaker:make sense to put that out on LinkedIn, but it probably makes more sense to
Speaker:rely on Google and your email list of people who are already actively
Speaker:signaled in some way, shape or form that they're interested in you or they're
Speaker:interested in your tool
Speaker:versus a channel like LinkedIn, where
Speaker:they're probably less interested in hoppy on LinkedIn to like see a
Speaker:tool comparison and more interested in getting help,
Speaker:getting information, getting a template, those more middle
Speaker:of funnel, top of funnel type of things. And so you have a really
Speaker:good point with that, but let me put a bug in your ear.
Speaker:So for one of my clients, we've actually been publishing the bottom
Speaker:of funnel articles on LinkedIn, and they do really
Speaker:good. You're publishing the article itself, not the article
Speaker:itself. My bad. So we take the link and you know how
Speaker:it kind of like generates a preview and things like that. Like, we'll so
Speaker:not totally like repurposing in the form of like breaking down the piece
Speaker:and turning it into a LinkedIn post, but we'll take the article
Speaker:itself, paste it into LinkedIn. A little preview comes up, give it
Speaker:like a, you know, description, you know, and then what
Speaker:I find is that they, if your LinkedIn audience is dialed
Speaker:in, those tend to do well on LinkedIn, too.
Speaker:Another thing I found is if you have a bottom
Speaker:of funnel piece and you're running paid ads, another good thing to do. If you
Speaker:have somebody that comes in middle of funnel, maybe top, middle of
Speaker:funnel, you can retarget
Speaker:that person with a bottom of funnel post. Again, this works
Speaker:better if they've been in your ecosystem for a little while and things like
Speaker:that. But I find that works really well. Doesn't
Speaker:just work well on LinkedIn, it works well with Facebook ads, too, especially if
Speaker:you have more of a story based bottom of funnel article.
Speaker:And I put this out on LinkedIn maybe like a week or two ago, how
Speaker:to combine SEO and case studies. When it comes
Speaker:to content like that, running ads to that type of story
Speaker:based content does extremely well. So
Speaker:I would preface that. I would say it's something worth testing,
Speaker:but at least from what I found from working with my clients, it does do
Speaker:well if the audience you have on that platform
Speaker:is the right segment that you're trying to target. You know what I mean? So
Speaker:it's like, if you're trying to target, you know what I mean,
Speaker:plumbers. And it's like you're on there
Speaker:looking for, you have people, electricians and things like that. It's like two
Speaker:different things, probably, horrible example, but y'all know what I'm trying to say. It's like
Speaker:you have to have that alignment with the followers and the
Speaker:audience and things like that. And it's like, this is probably getting to a whole
Speaker:nother topic. But that's why it's so important to focus on
Speaker:quality and not quantity. When it comes to everything, when it
Speaker:comes to blog posts, when it comes to LinkedIn followers, whatever it
Speaker:is, the quality is always going to outweigh the
Speaker:quantity. Hence why I get people that come to me and they're like, oh, my
Speaker:gosh, you know, you're doing so well. You have under 10,000 followers.
Speaker:Because I focus on the quality of the followers and not
Speaker:how many. And then from there, we kind of get into what people call
Speaker:vanity metrics. And I used to call them that, right? But I had to
Speaker:think a little bit. I said, you know what? It's not all vanity. Because
Speaker:sometimes, well, every time you have to start
Speaker:at the top to work your way to the bottom, right? So even
Speaker:with bottom of funnel articles, it works the same way. Every single
Speaker:time you publish the piece, it starts to
Speaker:rank, it starts to get traffic, then it starts to get
Speaker:conversions. And it's like, it's only vanity
Speaker:if you stay focused on that particular metric for too
Speaker:long. And again, it's like when people think, oh, search volume,
Speaker:it's only vanity if you're stuck there and you're like, I'm expecting for
Speaker:this piece to bring me inbound leads, and it's like when you see that it
Speaker:doesn't, that's when it starts to hit. But hopefully doing
Speaker:pods like this one will get it on people's radar. That don't wait six
Speaker:to twelve months to know that top of funnel doesn't work for driving
Speaker:leads. I'm telling you right now, I can save you six to twelve
Speaker:months right now. Absolutely, absolutely. I think
Speaker:knowing, I think really knowing the distribution
Speaker:channels, SEO, the intent behind
Speaker:why that. So like what you brought up with LinkedIn there and using the
Speaker:ads to retarget makes a ton of sense because you can narrow down and
Speaker:target exactly who's going to see that ad. You know what I mean? You can
Speaker:be more prescriptive versus in an organic
Speaker:feed, there's no telling who or how or somebody's
Speaker:going to see this particular thing. And I think that's the thing where people
Speaker:struggle, especially with organic,
Speaker:LinkedIn, even their emails, top of funnel, trying to get awareness,
Speaker:is they talk too much about themselves, it's too much about the
Speaker:company, it's too much about what we do, it's too much about
Speaker:our products. And I think that's a little bit of the intent.
Speaker:Confusion is those people, when you go to
Speaker:a social channel or sign up for an email list,
Speaker:you probably signed up for the email list because they gave you something of value,
Speaker:a template, a checklist, those type of things. A white paper, if that's what
Speaker:somebody wants. Not what I want, but maybe somebody out there wants a white paper
Speaker:right now. You've heard it from two millennials companies. We don't want white
Speaker:papers. Switch that up. No, I don't want a white
Speaker:paper. I want a template, a checklist, a buyer's guide.
Speaker:I want something simple and helpful. Yes, yes, yes. And again,
Speaker:I think that's the point. If people are creating content
Speaker:nowadays, you're not competing to create. There is so
Speaker:much content out there, it's unbelievable. And
Speaker:so the barrier of just creating something, even
Speaker:if you ranked number one. Hey, we ranked number one, Vanny match.
Speaker:Well, if that piece of content is kind of junky and doesn't actually like drive
Speaker:conversion and do much good, it's not like that ranking isn't
Speaker:actually valuable. And I have to tell this to
Speaker:people all the time. And here's something really cool
Speaker:that people probably don't know. I've mentioned it a couple times, but I don't use
Speaker:any SEO tools. So when I say any tools, I use
Speaker:ahrefs. But that's like for keyword research and just to kind of get
Speaker:a lay of the land of how things are in their specific industry.
Speaker:But when it comes to, like, on page SEO tools and things, like, I
Speaker:use zero tools. And again, it's because
Speaker:we all have access to the same tools. At the end of the day, that's
Speaker:not what differentiates you. It's like how you
Speaker:solve the problem, how you connect those problems to your
Speaker:prospects pain points. That's what's gonna differentiate you, not the
Speaker:tool. So I don't use any tools. And I still tell people, I tell
Speaker:my clients, I'm like, ranking means nothing
Speaker:if you can't get it to convert. And that's like, such
Speaker:people just don't take heed to that like they should.
Speaker:Again, it's the whole vanity metric thing where it's just like,
Speaker:remember, it's only vanity if you stay there. Because at
Speaker:some point, yes, you have to rank in order to get conversions. People have to
Speaker:see it. So it's a good leading indicator
Speaker:is what it is, right? So, and again, it's like,
Speaker:that's why I tell companies, like, we focus on the customer first
Speaker:and SEO second. So, and
Speaker:again, this comes from working across dozens of content marketing
Speaker:agencies, seeing them do it the wrong way. They're like, oh, rankings this and rankings
Speaker:that. We got to get this reporting, the traffic numbers. And I'm like,
Speaker:y'all are paying attention to everything except what the companies care
Speaker:about, which is inbound leads. You know what I mean? But it's
Speaker:like it takes a certain level of education.
Speaker:Again, because bottom of funnel is so nuanced and it's
Speaker:so different, then not saying top of funnel isn't nuanced to a degree,
Speaker:but it's like the nuancedness comes
Speaker:from where the information is sourced from, right?
Speaker:So if you have a top of funnel piece, it's not difficult to
Speaker:type in what is sales enablement and find a ton of other
Speaker:definition definitions around sales enablement and things like that. And this is
Speaker:another thing I touched on, where top of funnel content
Speaker:is more objective and bottom of funnel content is more subjective.
Speaker:Subjectivity creates nuance. Because instead of
Speaker:going to Google and searching for the thing that you're trying to look for and
Speaker:compile it and call that an article, you actually have to go to internal
Speaker:teams and get that alignment right. You got to talk to the product team. You
Speaker:got to talk to customer success, and sales and marketing brings that all
Speaker:together. And then that's when you have the alignment. Once you have that
Speaker:alignment, you can create collateral for anything. That's when
Speaker:distribution really revs up that engine, really turns
Speaker:on once that alignment is hitting. The problem is companies are trying to do
Speaker:strategy. They're trying to do all this stuff with no alignment. And again, it's
Speaker:because they're hiring freelancers to come in and say, okay, write this article
Speaker:on cybersecurity. And the person might not
Speaker:even be a cybersecurity expert or anything like that. So they're just trying to,
Speaker:like, pull things, and maybe they'll do a search for best
Speaker:cybersecurity software for enterprise teams.
Speaker:And they're looking at all the other results on Google, and they're like, okay, so
Speaker:I'm just gonna take what they say and compile it all together with our
Speaker:solution as the number one solution. But that's not the way to do
Speaker:it. In order to create a great bottom of funnel piece, you need
Speaker:input from every team. You need input, again,
Speaker:from cs, from product, from sales, and
Speaker:again, sales lets you know the pain points.
Speaker:CS is gonna let you know the benefits. The product team is
Speaker:gonna let you know how the product works contextually in their
Speaker:workflow. It's like all of these things are needed in order to create
Speaker:a good bottom of funnel piece. And it's like, you're not going to find that
Speaker:information on Google. Just not going to. Well, here's the kicker to that, Lashay. I
Speaker:think more and more the entire for content
Speaker:marketers, like, buckle up because that's the job.
Speaker:Now, top of funnel is the same way. Like, and the
Speaker:reason I say that is because you have to have at the
Speaker:top of funnel where teams go wrong, is no shared alignment
Speaker:on the pov, no shared alignment on the
Speaker:story, no shared alignment on the pitfalls,
Speaker:no shared alignment on the success, no shared alignment on the
Speaker:plan. All the things that would hook somebody in
Speaker:as to, like, why are, what all the pains,
Speaker:all those things. All those things you tease out at the beginning of the stage
Speaker:of a relationship to get somebody curious enough to even want to engage with you
Speaker:and your company, you have to have those in alignment
Speaker:so that you can repeat them all the stinking
Speaker:time at the top of the funnel. So then people are
Speaker:like, oh, you guys solve that problem.
Speaker:You know what I mean? How often do you have to talk about Bofu content
Speaker:before Bofu content equals Lashay? How
Speaker:much do I have to talk about repurposing distribution before
Speaker:it's, oh, repurposing distribution? I'm just going, I'm not even going to
Speaker:search anything. I'm just going to shoot Justin a DM and say, all right? I
Speaker:need help. We got a bottleneck with repurposing. Like, can you come in and help
Speaker:our company do? And that's so important.
Speaker:And it's like, I know my message was starting to resonate because I got tired
Speaker:of talking about it. I'm like, if y'all think y'all tired of me talking about
Speaker:Bofu, I'm tired of talking. But you know what it's like, that's when
Speaker:the message really starts to stick, and that's when you need to continue
Speaker:to push on that message. And again, it's like when I think of content repurposing,
Speaker:you are the first person that pops in my mind. It's like when people
Speaker:think about Bofu, I want myself to be the first
Speaker:person that pops into mine. Maybe I'm not the right solution for them, and that's
Speaker:okay, but I at least want them to come to me and say, okay, you
Speaker:need to do x, y, and z. I'm not the best fit for you, but
Speaker:this person might be a good, maybe they do BOFU
Speaker:on a freelance perspective, you know what I mean? So it's space for everybody,
Speaker:right? So I think, yeah, I think that's really important. And again, it's
Speaker:like when these companies are trying to hire freelancers and things like that to come
Speaker:in, it's just like they don't, the companies don't give the
Speaker:freelancers the tools they need to succeed, which
Speaker:was why my content marketing dashboard was
Speaker:born, because it really was derived out of pain,
Speaker:because I really wanted to work for this content marketing agency and I didn't get
Speaker:the chance to work with them. I didn't make the cut because I
Speaker:couldn't write good bottom of funnel content because my brain couldn't
Speaker:conceptualize, how do you write an article but
Speaker:not have to do a Google search? Again? Because me as a freelance
Speaker:writer, I was taught to find the target
Speaker:keyword, do a Google search, see what everybody else is talking
Speaker:about, and try to make it a little bit better than
Speaker:their stuff. And there's some truth to that. But what most
Speaker:freelancers do is they just compile the top ten results and put it together and
Speaker:say, okay, here goes your article. And the marketing leaders don't know any
Speaker:better. They're like, okay, we have an article. Let's throw it in this book black
Speaker:content marketing box, and let's just see what happened with sticks. But it's
Speaker:like if you give them the necessary tools that they need, because I'm not a
Speaker:subject matter expert in cybersecurity, but I've worked with a cybersecurity company.
Speaker:I'm not a subject matter expert in career development, but I've
Speaker:worked with a career development company. And it's because to me, in my
Speaker:opinion, like, strategists don't have to be subject matter experts
Speaker:in the thing. I'm a subject matter expert in
Speaker:Bofu. So if you give me the information that you need, and, like, we get
Speaker:the team on that, because we do, like, we do a workshop where it's like,
Speaker:I have a canvas laid out and we go through the product and the
Speaker:prospects and having that alignment between customer
Speaker:and product. So it's like, once we get through that, and you would be so
Speaker:surprised how many teams are like, okay, so do you have, like, a feature
Speaker:benefit list? Or they're like, oh, well, this person on that team, I think they
Speaker:have it, so let me go. No, I would not be surprised at all. Ashe,
Speaker:man, like, it gets crazy. It's like, I'm
Speaker:on calls with whole teams and they're just like, okay, so who
Speaker:has this thing? Okay, y'all got this thing over there, and it's like, it's
Speaker:almost like an awakening. They're like, ooh, our information is
Speaker:scattered. And it's like, if the people in house are
Speaker:having trouble getting this information, what makes you think that a freelance
Speaker:writer is going to be able to grab all this information? They've got other
Speaker:clients to deal with. They got. You know what I mean? So it's just like,
Speaker:I wasn't given the proper resources when I was trying to be a freelance writer
Speaker:to create good bottom of funnel content. So the point of the dashboard was to
Speaker:be able to consolidate all of that information. So if you do want to bring
Speaker:in a freelance writer, they don't have to be a subject. Well, they should be.
Speaker:That would help. But they don't necessarily have to be a subject matter expert
Speaker:on the thing because you have everything consolidated for them.
Speaker:They can learn the product at a deep level within two weeks,
Speaker:and then from there, that's when you get them to start
Speaker:publishing. Even then, there's still a little bit of bottom of funnel
Speaker:nuance and stuff like that. But the point is, right, it's better than just getting
Speaker:a random freelancer and saying, okay, write this piece and just look around our
Speaker:website for the stuff you need. Look on YouTube. Like, no. Have the collateral
Speaker:together for them. Yeah. Those alignment pieces are
Speaker:really so key, literally across
Speaker:every piece of content that you create. I can't think of
Speaker:a scenario where you shouldn't be doing this. But
Speaker:it is eye opening the amount of companies
Speaker:that completely skip over the
Speaker:pre, the research phase, if you
Speaker:will, to content marketing and go straight into creating
Speaker:and then wonder why it doesn't work. And it's like, of course this doesn't
Speaker:work. Of course it wouldn't work. You're literally just
Speaker:speaking to people you don't know
Speaker:and you don't care about, even though they're your customers.
Speaker:It's a kind of a wild reality. And the thing is, Justin, like, you don't
Speaker:know what you don't know. So there are one or two things. Either they
Speaker:genuinely don't know or they're trying to rush the process.
Speaker:I think both. It might be both. Yeah, for sure. And it's
Speaker:like everybody knows when you rush the process, that actually slows you
Speaker:down. If you were to just take a step back and be like, okay, let's
Speaker:get this out the way. It's a pain, but let's get it out the way.
Speaker:It's absolutely necessary for what we need to do. And again, like, when I work
Speaker:with companies, I tell them, like, this is the hardest part. Like the customer
Speaker:research, getting the different teams together. And that's the hardest part. Once
Speaker:we've got that together, oh, the bottom of funnel articles start flowing. Why?
Speaker:Because we have alignment. Then once you have that alignment, you can take that
Speaker:bottom of funnel article and repurpose it into something else with the
Speaker:data backed evidence that it converts. How do you know? Well, because you have
Speaker:tracking set up and, and that's probably like a whole nother tracking is a whole
Speaker:nother topic because I know people struggle with that, too. But if you have good
Speaker:tracking setup, you can see which articles are driving you the inbound
Speaker:leads. So if you know this does good as an article, why don't you repurpose
Speaker:it into an email? Right. Or why don't you repurpose it into a webinar?
Speaker:It just gives you that data backed information that
Speaker:you need to take the step forward. And again, even with me and teams, it's
Speaker:like they have to trust me to a certain extent because it's a lot of
Speaker:work upfront. But again, once they get through that, and here's
Speaker:another thing, usually smaller teams are,
Speaker:have the information together much better than larger
Speaker:teams, specifically like see through
Speaker:Series A, b
Speaker:maybe, but usually see stage companies very
Speaker:lean. They're just getting started. They have their information together. Teams are
Speaker:communicating with each other. They have cross functional communication. It's not siloed
Speaker:like a. I've worked with some bigger company. Yeah, it's like. Right.
Speaker:And it's like the bigger the company gets, the more
Speaker:communication becomes siloed. It's like, oh, the sales team only
Speaker:talks to the sales team and the product team only. But why?
Speaker:It's like we're all trying to hit the same KPI's. We're trying to
Speaker:get to a specific number. Why are we not trying to help each other do
Speaker:that? Yeah, it's, it goes back again. It's internal teams in
Speaker:alignment. It's one of those things where as somebody who led teams
Speaker:and did that in larger orgs and now working across a
Speaker:myriad of like, the more companies you work with and work for, just
Speaker:the reality of like, man, people are the issue. They're the solution
Speaker:and they're the issue. Yes, I was talking with
Speaker:Ross Simmons about this. Like, those soft skills are going to really
Speaker:come back into like, necessity
Speaker:for teams to succeed. Like, if you don't have the soft skills to communicate
Speaker:internally, to be able to pitch those ideas, to be able to share why,
Speaker:to be able to help teach people internally why
Speaker:and show them, like, all of those things are really going to, going to come
Speaker:back into vogue for, for marketers especially because I think.
Speaker:So this is the thing, right? Like talking through this, this got me
Speaker:thinking. Content and marketing is basically
Speaker:one thing now. Marketing is
Speaker:fueled by content in 2024. Yes,
Speaker:yes, yes. You can supplement it with ads, you can supplement it with other
Speaker:things, but you have to have
Speaker:content to do marketing. And in order to do the content
Speaker:well, you have to have all of the
Speaker:standard marketing, operating procedure stuff, positioning, messaging,
Speaker:benefits, features, understanding of all those things.
Speaker:And you have to know your customers and you have to know what problems they
Speaker:have and you have to know what pains they have. And you can't just rely
Speaker:on the sales team or the CS team to, oh, that
Speaker:they handle the problems. They handle those things. And
Speaker:then we're just ambiguously creating keyword content
Speaker:while they're down in the trenches dealing with the real stuff. Exactly.
Speaker:And I think that's the big misconception with why
Speaker:teams beef with each other because it's, I feel like, and I'm not in
Speaker:sales, I don't, I don't know, somebody tell me. But I, sometimes I feel like
Speaker:the sales team feels like, oh, we're held to these certain numbers and we got
Speaker:to hit x quota and we got to close x amount of
Speaker:people when it's like, oh, the marketing team, they just have to get, they aren't
Speaker:really tied as close to a number. And then the
Speaker:marketing team, and I could speak for myself, the marketing team was like, well, hold
Speaker:up. We're busting our ass on this side, too. Like, it ain't just, it's not
Speaker:all you guys, like, we have to. And I think the sooner
Speaker:we start to realize that the job of marketing is
Speaker:to drive qualified leads to the sales team.
Speaker:Our job is to make the sales team jobs easier. Right.
Speaker:The only way we can do that is if we know from sales what the
Speaker:prospects are telling them. So if they're like, okay, this feature slaps,
Speaker:and we love this, we probably know this needs to go into a
Speaker:bottom of funnel post somewhere. You know what I mean? But it's like,
Speaker:if you don't talk to the sales team, you don't know what they're dealing with.
Speaker:You don't know what they're struggling with. And usually when I talk to the product
Speaker:team, I just get, like, mixed reactions, like, oh, whoa, you need my
Speaker:help? Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that. I'm like, yeah, because you got to
Speaker:tell me how the product works, how it fits contextually in the
Speaker:workflow. It's like, give me an example. How would they use this in the day
Speaker:to day? It's like, all of this stuff has to go into the
Speaker:piece. The sales team doesn't always know what the
Speaker:product team like, these are different functions. They take different
Speaker:skills, and you know what I mean? So it's like, we all need each
Speaker:other for the broader vision, but it's like,
Speaker:companies and communication is so siloed, and again, it's
Speaker:like, oh, you know, well, I'm only talking to sales when there really should be,
Speaker:like, a slack channel. When you come out with a bottom of funnel piece, share
Speaker:that piece to the other teams. Be like, you know what, sales.
Speaker:Let me know if this helps you with closing a deal. Right? Cause maybe
Speaker:if that helps you close a deal, maybe we can repurpose that and put it
Speaker:on LinkedIn, or maybe we can do this, or do you know what I mean?
Speaker:It's just like data gathering and information gathering. And it's like, if you
Speaker:don't talk to the teams, you don't know what they're struggling with. What's
Speaker:the best way to drive that? You've got
Speaker:the marketing dashboard. Anybody can go grab it. Like, yes, I've got the
Speaker:dashboard crap. Now I got to try to get somebody on these
Speaker:calls. How do you facilitate? Because I think even with companies
Speaker:where there's good communication, where like, hey, I can go reach out to John over
Speaker:here, but John's busy and now my piece is stalled
Speaker:out. Yeah, that was another
Speaker:reason for the dashboard, because there used to be a thing where I
Speaker:would have to hold an interview per piece.
Speaker:So another thing I love about bottom of funnel is that you only
Speaker:need a specific amount or a certain amount of information.
Speaker:And it's interesting because now we're getting a little bit deep into it, but
Speaker:it's like bottom of funnel articles are almost
Speaker:repurposed within themselves. So we're talking about the same
Speaker:features, the same benefits, the same paint, but we're talking
Speaker:about it in a different context depending on the use case that we're talking
Speaker:about. But a lot of it is the same thing. It's just different positioning.
Speaker:So it's like once I get that core information down that I need from these
Speaker:teams, I take that information and repurpose it. So maybe it's
Speaker:like, again, going back to the sales enablement, best sales enablement
Speaker:software for enterprise teams, then it's like best
Speaker:sales enablement software for small teams.
Speaker:Those might have different features in them, but again, if I talk to the product
Speaker:team and they list all the features down, all the use
Speaker:cases, so on and so forth, I don't have to mess with them too, too
Speaker:much unless the product roadmap is growing and things like that, and they want to
Speaker:add things to this, maybe they add a new feature that
Speaker:opens up a new segment, maybe it opens up a new
Speaker:list of competitors. That's like the information I really need
Speaker:from them. But that's not, it's not like the company is updating the
Speaker:product roadmap every day or we come out with a new feature every day. Oh,
Speaker:yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like once I get that core information
Speaker:down from them, I really, you really don't need them too much from
Speaker:there. But, yeah, I think it's
Speaker:funny, again, because it's like repurposing within
Speaker:bottom of funnel. I use the same elements over and over and over.
Speaker:It's just about repositioning the
Speaker:elements based on who you're talking to. And when I, again, when I say elements,
Speaker:I mean like, oh, the benefits, the features, pain points, stuff like that. But
Speaker:it's really all about repositioning. Yeah. You don't have to get too, too much from
Speaker:them. Just get it down that one time. And then once you have
Speaker:it, you have it. Yeah, it's much more the,
Speaker:I break repurposing into two different areas, like macro and micro, macro
Speaker:being like typically the larger, like thematic, the type.
Speaker:So in this case, features and benefits. Yep. Pain points. Yep.
Speaker:These things you can repurpose over and over and over again throughout your content, especially
Speaker:bottom funnel, because they're not going to change. Somebody searching one
Speaker:thing and the next thing, like you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You actually
Speaker:shouldn't reinvent the wheel because the feature is the feature.
Speaker:What are you going to do? It's funny, one client that I started working with
Speaker:a couple months ago, we focused on solely bottom of
Speaker:funnel before. Like we're still working through all that. They
Speaker:have hundreds and hundreds of blogs that they already had. So literally we're
Speaker:going through and updating bottom of funnel content right now
Speaker:with the sole purpose of driving conversion. So
Speaker:they're getting traffic, they're getting good impressions, all those type of things. And
Speaker:now we need to make sure the information is accurate. Correct, has the right
Speaker:CTA's, all that type of stuff to drive conversion. That's another thing.
Speaker:See, you just see, now you got my brain running another
Speaker:thing when it comes to bottom of funnel because I know we talked about
Speaker:intent. There are two main things I see. It's like with top of
Speaker:funnel, I see people pushing their product too much. And then with
Speaker:bottom of funnel, I don't see people pushing the product enough.
Speaker:Interesting. Yes. So with bottom of funnel, and
Speaker:I'm not throwing shade to anybody, but if your bottom of funnel piece
Speaker:starts with oh, in today's marketing, dust yourself off and try
Speaker:again, like immediately. Right. Because when it comes
Speaker:to bottom of funnel again, the prospect is already
Speaker:solution aware. So you don't need to say, oh, what
Speaker:is sales enablement and how can sales enablement help your team? Like
Speaker:they learn that already. Now they're here to see you
Speaker:versus competitor. They're here to see best sales enablement for use
Speaker:case they're here to competitor alternative. Like that's what they're
Speaker:here for. And I tell people all the time, like when you do bottom of
Speaker:funny, you either need to lead with pain points or you need to lead with
Speaker:benefits and then those pain points and those benefits should tie back
Speaker:into the capabilities of the product. So it's like, again, because
Speaker:you triggered me a little bit when you said that.
Speaker:So I was just like, let me just get that off my mind before I
Speaker:forget. But yes, I don't see people pushing the product enough
Speaker:in bottom of funnel and they don't get deep with their product. If they do
Speaker:have their product and other products listed, it's like a little blurb
Speaker:about you know, oh, you know, we do this and we do that. It's like
Speaker:a little paragraph, but it's like you can get way deeper than that. Like, get
Speaker:more granular. Talk about, okay, this feature solves this
Speaker:pain point. It has this capability. Boom, move to the next. This feature solves this.
Speaker:And if you have a ton of features, one thing you can do, one strategy
Speaker:I like to do is group your features. So if you have high level,
Speaker:I call them, like, high level benefits. So to
Speaker:me, saving time and saving money is a high
Speaker:level benefit. It's not a differentiator, right? It's just like a high level
Speaker:benefit. But maybe you have features that fall within
Speaker:these pools, right? So maybe it's just like a feature that helps
Speaker:you save more time and help you save more money. Or maybe there's just.
Speaker:And again, this usually goes for if you have a ton of features
Speaker:that solve multiple pain points and you don't want to
Speaker:feature dump in the article, because that never works. Y'all don't feature
Speaker:dump. If you do want to include a lot of features, you need to group
Speaker:them properly by a high level benefit. So again, you
Speaker:find the high level benefit, and then you group the features under the benefit that
Speaker:it matches with. Because how many. I mean, how many sections
Speaker:are you trying? I mean, it's gotta be around five, right?
Speaker:Like, nobody wants to scroll, right? A bazillion
Speaker:feature sets in there. And again, I think that one of the.
Speaker:I use an example with my client. I gave them. It was funny
Speaker:enough, it was a pellet grill, like a smoker, to,
Speaker:like, cook smoked meats. And I was like, what you have to do
Speaker:is put your. It all comes back to the intent, right? You said, dive deeper
Speaker:into the feature. Dive deeper into the. Why? If you wanted to
Speaker:buy a pellet grill, you really want to
Speaker:know what is good about this one, what isn't
Speaker:in the reality? It's like, how much food can you put on there? How hot
Speaker:does it get? Does it burn, like, pros and cons, all of those things
Speaker:across different models or across different machines? That's what I
Speaker:actually need to know. What I don't need to know is the
Speaker:specific. This one has a dial feature. This one has a this
Speaker:and that feature. This one has that. It's like, no. As a buyer,
Speaker:what is all the information I need to be able to make a good decision
Speaker:to say yes or no. Yes. And I think that's where a lot of people
Speaker:miss the mark. And it's a whole nother thing. Some people don't even want to
Speaker:talk about their competitors. They're just like, oh, we don't want to bring attention to
Speaker:them. And I get it. Right. But here's the thing.
Speaker:If you talk, and again, this is about talking, the cross functional
Speaker:communication. If you talk to the sales team and they tell you, oh,
Speaker:we're losing deals to this person and that person, and that person, you probably
Speaker:need to talk about it again, because people are searching for
Speaker:the bottom of funnel terms anyway. Just because you don't wanna think about
Speaker:it doesn't mean they're not searching for it. And the only thing you're
Speaker:doing by not writing bottom of funnel content is you're letting these other
Speaker:companies control your narrative. Cause you better believe if you're not
Speaker:talking about yourself, they're definitely talking about you. And something I
Speaker:caught the other day that was really, really cool on
Speaker:capsule's website. So, capsule video, they do something really cool
Speaker:on the homepage. So they have like competitors
Speaker:listed out across the homepage. But it's like
Speaker:they list the thing that they do better than the competitor.
Speaker:So they say, twelve times faster than descript,
Speaker:eleven times faster than v, nine times faster than
Speaker:Adobe. Like, they're not even hiding the fact that we have
Speaker:competitors. And these could be competitors that they're probably
Speaker:fighting for deals on, or losing deals too, but they're very
Speaker:upfront about it. They're like, boom, okay, we're faster than this person, this person
Speaker:and that person. So it's like, I would encourage people to not
Speaker:be afraid about talking about your
Speaker:competitors, because it's not like you're talking about them and you're saying, oh, you know,
Speaker:this company. I mean, let me preface that too. You
Speaker:should not, should talk your competitors. I just
Speaker:wanna, I just wanna put that out there. Like, don't do
Speaker:that. The best thing to do is to explain what
Speaker:your competitors do well versus what you do well. Because what's gonna
Speaker:happen is the prospect, or the potential prospect is gonna come to the
Speaker:article they're gonna read. And what happens is if they are
Speaker:a better fit for, for the competitor, they're going to self select
Speaker:and honestly self deselect from
Speaker:wasting time from the. Sales team, which people do not
Speaker:understand the reality
Speaker:of helping the buyer make a better
Speaker:decision and helping sales have more qualified
Speaker:sales conversations. Yes. And that people,
Speaker:buyers today, like you said, with the competition, it made me real. Like, do you
Speaker:think they're not googling the
Speaker:competition or like reading or reading a review
Speaker:on YouTube or like, like watching a third
Speaker:party give a x, Y and Z thing about the three.
Speaker:Of course they are. Of course they are. They're making a decision, asking their
Speaker:friends. It's honestly a little bit dense of us as
Speaker:marketers to think that people aren't
Speaker:going to our competitors and reading about them and
Speaker:seeing, okay, who's the best fit? Even, let's take it for consulting to a
Speaker:minute. When people look for bottom of funnel, maybe they
Speaker:come to me first if I'm the first person that comes to mind. But they
Speaker:probably hit two or three other people up and they're like, oh,
Speaker:they're, you know what I mean? They're surveying the field. They're trying to figure out,
Speaker:okay, is this the best solution for us? Why are you different than the
Speaker:other person? And it's like, here's the thing. If you're differentiated
Speaker:enough in your features, you don't have to compete on price. I think
Speaker:that's another important thing too, because again, I work with some companies
Speaker:where their benefits are a little bit high level. They're like, oh, save money and
Speaker:save time. I'm like, no, no, no. What's the benefit
Speaker:of the feature? What's the benefit of them
Speaker:achieving the job to be done? Not just, oh, we're going to save
Speaker:time. And everybody says that. What data, what proof do you have to
Speaker:back up what you're telling them? And again, and I know you mentioned
Speaker:people coming to the article and like scrolling and things like that. And again,
Speaker:that's why I think when people list their features out in
Speaker:the article, I believe the features should lead with the capability
Speaker:or the benefit. Because again, if they're skimming and they
Speaker:probably have your page up and they probably have a competitor page up and they're
Speaker:skimming through and just leading with
Speaker:capabilities and benefits is just really, really good for skimmers.
Speaker:Cause it gives them a quick way to digest what you're able to
Speaker:do without having to read a 13 or 14 minutes piece. You know what I
Speaker:mean? Yep. So I want to, nobody wants to read the 13
Speaker:minutes piece. Nobody wants to read it. Right? It's boring,
Speaker:you know what I mean? And it's like they are trying to make a decision,
Speaker:but still it's like they might not want to read every
Speaker:tiny specific, you know what I mean? So it's good to make
Speaker:those headers really stand out and get the point across
Speaker:in as few characters as possible. That headline
Speaker:needs to make them want to read the rest of the piece. And when I
Speaker:say headline, I mean like the headers, h two, s, h three, the way you
Speaker:position those needs to make them want to say, oh, okay, yeah, that's my
Speaker:problem. Okay, let me read about this a little bit. This feature does this, for
Speaker:example. And that's another thing. I think people should
Speaker:always include contextual examples in their
Speaker:articles. Again. So this confused me for a long
Speaker:time. But the easiest way to understand, like, contextual examples is just to
Speaker:think, like, once you explain the feature, say,
Speaker:for example, let's say, imagine
Speaker:if taking, and again, this is where the product
Speaker:team comes in because they help us understand how the feature is used
Speaker:contextually. That's why I said every team has to
Speaker:be involved in this, because every, yeah, it's like every team
Speaker:has different information that has to go into this piece, but it all works together
Speaker:cohesively to get a conversion at the end of them reading that piece.
Speaker:And they may not even read that. They might just skim it. Because I've, you
Speaker:know, seen people on hot jar and we've, like, they'll
Speaker:skim it, read through it a little bit. Two minutes or so, boom, sign up
Speaker:for a demo, right? Because when it hits that hard, they're like,
Speaker:oh, okay, this is my company. Let me just reach out and see what they're,
Speaker:what they're talking about. And if you have alignment with the sales team, when they
Speaker:talk to sales, everything they read in that blog post is going to align from
Speaker:what they hear from sales. Yep, yep, exactly,
Speaker:exactly. All right, we're cruising here. I want to give some folks some
Speaker:tactical advice, right? Like, hey, we're,
Speaker:we're struggling with BOFU, or like, we've got a lot of what
Speaker:I would maybe think are BOFU articles, but what are my steps
Speaker:to step in here and actually start taking, like, in the next
Speaker:two weeks, I can do these things. The first thing I would
Speaker:say is to,
Speaker:hmm, attempt to get your team together
Speaker:and lay out who you're talking to so
Speaker:your Personas, lay out your ideal customer profile, your
Speaker:pain points, benefits, features, capabilities, and
Speaker:you can get one person from each team. Usually that's how I do it. Try
Speaker:to get one person from each team together and come together and lay out these
Speaker:things, like, make it like a feature benefit list and put that together.
Speaker:From there, I would start searching for bottom of funnel terms, and I tell people
Speaker:the way I like to find. Well, again, we talked about this a
Speaker:little bit before the episode, but my brain is just like a continuous stream of
Speaker:consciousness. I'm going to try to condense this down to tell you all how to
Speaker:do this, but the way I like to find bottom
Speaker:of funnel keywords. Is a bottom of funnel keyword
Speaker:usually describes what the product is or what it does,
Speaker:right? So start there.
Speaker:Another thing I like to do is something called the homepage test. If I
Speaker:scroll down your homepage and I can find two bottom of funnel keywords,
Speaker:usually I don't want to say they're on the right track. Like they know all
Speaker:about bottom of funnel and things like that. Usually it's an indicator, like they have
Speaker:a good sense on like who they're talking to and their product market fit.
Speaker:And that's another thing, side rant. If you do not have your product market
Speaker:fit, don't start bottom a funnel. It's not time yet. You got to know
Speaker:your value props, you have to know your competitors, you have to know where you
Speaker:fit contextually all this stuff. But I would say
Speaker:get alignment again, one person from each team
Speaker:or get as close to that as you can and start doing some bottom
Speaker:of funnel keyword research again, what the product is or what it
Speaker:does. Understand the different use cases. So you know, again, when you look
Speaker:type best sales enablement software for use
Speaker:case, right? So start to understand your use cases. Start to
Speaker:implement that into your keyword research. And then from there
Speaker:grab my dashboard and grab like, but seriously,
Speaker:like there are like two or three frameworks in there that
Speaker:can kind of guide you and help you along with knowing where
Speaker:each team inputs goes in the piece. So like,
Speaker:okay, pain points go into a specific section that comes from sales
Speaker:benefits go into a specific. So that's what
Speaker:I would say. And again, if a team is like really, really pressed, I want
Speaker:to say look for a bottom of funnel specialists. I'm not the only one, right?
Speaker:Like, you know, there are other people that are bottom of funnel spot. Maybe
Speaker:they do it from a freelance basis or, and different people have
Speaker:different opinions on what bottom of funnel is. I did a LinkedIn
Speaker:poll and I said, when you think about them, a funnel, do you think of
Speaker:comparison pages? And they're like, it was almost 50 and 50
Speaker:50 yes and 50 no. And people were like, oh, well, I look
Speaker:at knowledge based stuff as bottom of funnel. I
Speaker:look at just white papers as
Speaker:bottom of funnel. I'm like, I was getting all types of stuff and I was
Speaker:like, oh, okay, okay. So I think having
Speaker:somebody with a BOFU focus come in and help the team kind of
Speaker:drive that. Again, I use templates and frameworks because that's how my brain works
Speaker:and it helps people easily conceptualize what I'm trying to do because it is
Speaker:nuanced. There's a huge learning curve. It's complicated, but I find that
Speaker:templates and frameworks kind of help people conceptualize it a little better. So,
Speaker:yeah, that's my parting advice for people that want to start
Speaker:bottom of funnel, again, it is nuanced, but if you take the steps that I
Speaker:mentioned in this episode, you're going to be
Speaker:miles ahead of your competitors. Because again, one of the
Speaker:reasons that it's kind of easy to rank for bottom of funnel content, I'm not
Speaker:trying to make it seem my job is easy, but one of the reasons that
Speaker:it's kind of easy to rank for bottom of funnel content is because a lot
Speaker:of people don't do it right. So when you do do it right, it doesn't
Speaker:take that much to rank. So as people start to catch on and start to
Speaker:do it right, might get a little bit more competitive. But as of right
Speaker:now, it's not too, too difficult to rank for. If
Speaker:you do what I talked about previously in this episode, yeah, you're going to be
Speaker:on the right track. Are there specific? So you mentioned, like
Speaker:grabbing bottom of funnel keywords. What did you
Speaker:mean by, like, scrolling the homepage and seeing two keywords? Like, what's an example of
Speaker:that? You're putting me on the spot. I
Speaker:gotta see, like, what would you be looking for? I guess
Speaker:I'm looking for. So when I scroll the homepage,
Speaker:I'm looking for a bottom of funnel
Speaker:keywords specifically. So, like, again, what the product
Speaker:is or what it does. So let me, let me pull up and
Speaker:see if I can pull up an example. I think drift does this really
Speaker:good. So if you look in Drift's
Speaker:header, it says, one conversation at a time. Meet drift,
Speaker:an AI powered buyer engagement platform. That's a bottom of
Speaker:funnel keyword, buyer engagement platform. Right? So that's
Speaker:one. If I scroll down some more, I'm seeing like a
Speaker:bunch of, no, they've only got one. But I know they
Speaker:obviously, like, they have. Sure. I know what you're talking about them. You know what
Speaker:I mean? So it's like usually when I can come in and find that
Speaker:right away, I'm like, okay, they have a good grasp on
Speaker:what they're doing and who they are. Even if you go to gong, right? If
Speaker:you go to gong and you scroll all the way down into their footer, they
Speaker:have a ton of bottom of funnel keywords in their footer because they get it
Speaker:right. So it's like, I got you, you. Know, gong versus this and best this
Speaker:for that. And so, and again, that's how I usually
Speaker:decipher quickly if a company gets it or they
Speaker:don't. And if they don't, it's okay. We just got to, like, go through the
Speaker:alignment steps and things like that. But yes, that's the homepage
Speaker:test. My own made up homepage test. So if I, if I feel like we've
Speaker:got pretty good alignment, I've gone through and done the checklist with
Speaker:my team. What are the first few, like, pieces of
Speaker:content that we should be thinking about making? X verse
Speaker:y verse z? Should I be
Speaker:focused on? You mentioned, like, product for
Speaker:x use case? Like, are there particular pieces of content that I should
Speaker:be thinking about driving faster than others?
Speaker:Yes. Well, again, people have
Speaker:different meanings of what they think bottom up funnel is or what it means to,
Speaker:to them. That's what I mean. Because if you say, oh, go create bottom of
Speaker:funnel, they might be like, oh, all right, our knowledge base, we've got
Speaker:100 bottom of funnel pieces of content. So
Speaker:to me, in my opinion, I think it's gonna be the
Speaker:blog that you should focus on. Specifically, when I
Speaker:say bottom of funnel, I mean comparison pages. So best
Speaker:versus an alternative, and then even within
Speaker:that. So I heard you say versus, versus.
Speaker:So you could do competitor versus competitor versus
Speaker:competitor. And that's a strategy I like to do as well, because
Speaker:what you can do is take the search volume from two other competitors
Speaker:and inject yourself into the conversation. So if it's like
Speaker:gong versus clary and outreach is like, well, hello, what about us?
Speaker:You can do gong versus Clary versus outreach. And what's going
Speaker:to happen is outreach is going to collect the search volume that gong versus
Speaker:clarity was getting. But now they've inserted their self into the conversation, you
Speaker:know what I mean? So it's like little strategies and tactics like that that come
Speaker:from blogging. And again, once you
Speaker:kind of get a flow of the blog and things like that, and again, you
Speaker:don't have to publish a whole lot of bottom of funnel in order to make
Speaker:moves. So typically it takes nine
Speaker:bottom of funnel posts. And I'm not. Y'all. Just don't take it with a grain
Speaker:of salt. Typically it takes, this is a scientific. She's done the study.
Speaker:I've done this so many times, guys, like, based on my. Because I
Speaker:like to always preface based on my data, it takes around nine
Speaker:bottom up funnel articles to start driving pipeline.
Speaker:For a company I'm working with, they had a lead that had a
Speaker:chain of hospitals, like 70 hospitals, you know what
Speaker:I mean? So it's like. And then the cool thing about that is that it's
Speaker:enterprise software. Bottom of funnel
Speaker:works across product, led sales, led
Speaker:all types of things. You know what I mean? So it is versatile in that
Speaker:sense. But to me, if you want to start driving, inbound
Speaker:leads you 100%. First of all, need to focus
Speaker:on bottom of funnel. What I like to focus on is the
Speaker:blog, again, because people don't do bottom of funnel correctly, so it's
Speaker:not difficult to come in and get some quick wins. I love quick wins, right?
Speaker:I love to come in and redo a piece and it ranks in two or
Speaker:three days. And they're like, oh, my gosh, is this magic? Or like, no,
Speaker:people just don't do it right. So it's like when they come in and we
Speaker:do it right, they're like, whoa. Like, this is awesome. And it blows
Speaker:their mind that a keyword that gets 150 searches a
Speaker:month converts twice or three times as much as a keyword that
Speaker:gets triple the amount of traffic. It just blows their mind every single
Speaker:time. And I love it. I live for it. So that's my final
Speaker:question, tactically, because you mentioned SEO software for the
Speaker:teams that go in and they're looking in search console or
Speaker:they are looking in Semrush or an ahrefs or something like that,
Speaker:and the volume is ten or non
Speaker:existent, what's the advice to say?
Speaker:Because I'm sure you see, I'm sure. You'Ve seen a whole nother episode on
Speaker:search volume because some people might want to kill me for this,
Speaker:but I'm being totally honest. I've gone after
Speaker:keywords that have zero search volume and it
Speaker:converts like crazy. And again, these tools are
Speaker:just an estimate of what the search volume really is. Another
Speaker:thing, I just keep dropping gems on y'all. Another thing, the
Speaker:most overlooked keyword tool is Google itself.
Speaker:So if you go into Google and you start typing in best, and again, I
Speaker:keep going back to sales enablement. Example, if you type in best sales
Speaker:enablement software for, you're going to see the
Speaker:different use cases come up that people are searching for just because
Speaker:you put it into ahrefs or you put it into Semrush, or you put it
Speaker:into enter tool here and it says, oh, it only gets ten
Speaker:searches a month or it gets zero. You always have to take that with a
Speaker:grain of salt because I've written around keywords that get ten searches a month
Speaker:and we were getting 20 visitors a day. Right? And again, also
Speaker:with keywords, you don't just rank for the thing that you're trying to rank for.
Speaker:You also rank for permutations and things like that. So
Speaker:I think that plays a really big role into it, too. But yes,
Speaker:tactically, that's what I would do step by step. Like if you're like, okay, we
Speaker:got to get leads in the door. We got to just, I would do that
Speaker:step by step. Find the alignment, find the keywords. Either
Speaker:get a specialist to come in and help you put this together, do some more
Speaker:research, compile your own research and put that bottom of funnel
Speaker:piece together. You usually need about nine good pieces before you
Speaker:start to drive pipeline. And again, yeah, that's literally what I
Speaker:would do if I was coming in. That's how I do it when I come
Speaker:into companies, right? We just go and it's the same process every single time.
Speaker:Step one, alignment. Step two, keyword research. Step three, we
Speaker:write. Step four, we track like it's the same thing every single time. And I'm
Speaker:gonna, I'm gonna throw more at you because you're here and I'm curious what your
Speaker:take is on it. So you type in that thing,
Speaker:enterprise, you know, or sales enablement, four, and it comes up with
Speaker:seven different things. Is your plan. Then again,
Speaker:are we writing seven posts all for
Speaker:this and for that and for this and for that?
Speaker:So that's tough because
Speaker:different clients experience different things. With one of
Speaker:my clients, the thing that started converting for them,
Speaker:the ooh, ooh, hold up.
Speaker:Okay, so for two of my clients, their first
Speaker:converting piece was alternative. So if I had to
Speaker:rank within bottom of funnel, it's probably going to be
Speaker:competitor alternative and then it's going to be best
Speaker:software for use case. And then it could be like you
Speaker:versus this person. And another thing about the
Speaker:versus is this episode is going to go on forever. Another thing
Speaker:about the verses is if you type in google,
Speaker:your company versus another company, and you see g
Speaker:two and Capterra and all these
Speaker:other review sites and you're not up there, you
Speaker:immediately need to write around that, like immediately
Speaker:again, because that's other people controlling your narrative. Like
Speaker:g two is awesome, but I'm sure you don't want them controlling your narrative, right?
Speaker:You want to control your narrative. So if you see search volume
Speaker:that has your brand name in it versus somebody else, and you do not have
Speaker:a piece around that, that's probably the most
Speaker:important. After that, then I would go after competitor
Speaker:alternatives. But if you're good with like your name
Speaker:and versus competitor not having any search volume, nothing is there. At that
Speaker:point. I would start with competitor alternative again, then
Speaker:go down to best software for use case and then go competitor versus competitor.
Speaker:Got you. Okay. Yeah. So there's a little bit of a method to the madness
Speaker:of a little bit. It's some structure in his
Speaker:brain. Well, Lashay, it's been
Speaker:awesome dropping massive knowledge bombs all throughout this
Speaker:on bottom of funnel and how it ties in. I think the biggest thing for
Speaker:me, honestly, and I know we've got some cool stuff that we were chatting
Speaker:about before this, but I think for marketers to really
Speaker:understand that it truly does all tie together.
Speaker:It's not a segmented siloed strategy where we're going to
Speaker:focus only on bottom of funnel and has no impact at the top or I'm
Speaker:going to only do top of funnel as no impact at the bottom. Yup.
Speaker:All of these things tie together and I think building out
Speaker:a strategy that's manageable,
Speaker:reasonable, sustainable, where you can tie all those things together
Speaker:makes a ton of sense and I think teams can do it. I just don't
Speaker:think they know how. Yeah, well, that's what we're here for, right? That's what we're
Speaker:here for. Absolutely. So we're here to save the day.
Speaker:Awesome. Awesome. Well, Lashay, it's been a blast having you on and we'll
Speaker:definitely have to have you back because an hour went by like 15 minutes. So
Speaker:thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you so
Speaker:much. Awesome chess soon.
Speaker:All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution first
Speaker:and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you so,
Speaker:so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in this
Speaker:episode one way or another into your content strategy as
Speaker:well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that
Speaker:are going to help you build your brand ten x your content and
Speaker:transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe
Speaker:to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co.
Speaker:So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next
Speaker:episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time.
