Well, welcome to another live show. We've had just a few technical problems that we're just sorting out, and I'm looking at my screen to see if we are live on LinkedIn. But it seems that we’re live on one channel but not on another. You have to bear with me on this. It's unfortunate. If there's a problem, I'm going to have to speak to a company called Re Stream.

Anyway, Let's get on with it. Welcome. That's the point of LIVE. I can cut all of that out when I when I do the editing. Now, today, that kind of throws you out and that's it. It's not about the errors or anything like that that happens. It's never about the errors. It's always how you recover.

So you see me recover. Try and recover now. Right. But the point of today's show is about content and that the whole thing with content is that without it, things kind of fall apart. But the point is that we need to focus on content first. It's the foundation of everything that's going to happen from engagement and customers and prospects and everything is underpinned by content.

And if we go onto on to this stuff, to own this stuff to begin with and in terms of the show we've got, we're going to cover content and marketing. What's going wrong there is very specific and really, really important and we think what dark tunnel, dark social. I'm not going to read all of that to you, but you can read that yourselves anyway.

And but the point is, is that having a proper grasp on content will change your perspective on the companies that you're working for. It's really, really, really critical to the rest of our strategy to do with and to do with livestreaming or anything like that without good content, it will fail. It will just be a flash in the pan, nothing will happen, a damp squib.

Okay, so just to recap, our target market are business owners and CEOs, CROs, CGOs, VP of sales and sales people I’m really specific about this. This is not for marketing. Yeah, this is not for marketing people. And there's a specific reason, my view; marketing have had 25 years to get this right and they’ve failed. And I'm going to explain the reasons why and why content is such a critical part of this.

So if you understand this, this thing about content, if you get it right, it will change your future, honestly it will, and the reason you change your future is because you will have a better understanding of what it is your customers are actually looking for. Your prospects are actually looking for. So that it might sound a bit twee, but if your prospect is well educated by you, it's easier to sell to them and that the better, the more effective way that you deliver that is it reduces friction, increases margins, I get it, understand, understand there's less of a sale.

You don't have to put down that funnel that can answer the questions and handle the objections and take them through that part. It's I get it. I want it. Let's get on with it. That's the objective of all of this. This isn't about well, you’re in sales, get on with it. We'll work over here, do our stuff over here, and you can do your stuff over there.

Yeah. And that's what you that's what you kind of got to get to understand, is that I'm not saying sales go and do marketing. I'm saying sales have got to understand exactly what they're up to and why they're up to it, why they're doing it. It's really, really important. It's essential because, you'll like this, because it's of that now, Googling not now.

Watch me, but Google it later. Dark Funnel, Dark Social. These two terms that recent come around because marketers are saying that customers prospects don't follow a linear pattern, a linear path as described regarding the funnel top middle, bottom of the funnel, recycle it, blah blah, blah. You've heard it all before. Nonsense, dark social. Well, it's just like, well, actually the reason we say that is we don't really know what they're doing in social media.

Really? You mean to say that all those directors that you've been trying to coke who are not living their lives on social media, they're running companies. That's what you telling us. And then they're not actually there. Yeah, maybe something, something like that. So that logic dark social and dark funnel is for a reason. And the reason behind it is that people within marketing have been trained up taught, impressed upon by big tech MarTech to communicate B2C and all the B2C sites.

I'm generalising here with being hobby sites but all the B2B sites be B2B sales are underpinned, communicated, strategized as if they were consumer websites and consumer companies. But so you look at Hobby Site, hobby sites got banners, the top and the side skyscrapers and the ones at the bottom, the footers. Now why they got these banners on them?

Because, well, you write about your hobby. People are interested. They go to the website and get they get paid by the advertisers via AdSense. Google. So you think, okay, that kind of makes sense for them. But we're a business. Exactly. Your business. You wouldn't be putting somebody else's and remarketing adverts on your website. You wouldn't do that. You don't do that.

So bearing in mind that we've got this situation where you've got hobbies, you've got people buying stuff from hobby sites and all this kind of stuff, how is that supposed to impact you as a business? Have a look at these people. You know these people, you know who they are, what they do. Now. The interesting thing here, Zoominfo say, Zoominfo firm graphic data, yada, I put it into Salesforce and you can you understand the size and and profitability of the company, whether they whether they can afford you or not.

Cognism. Similar thing really, isn't it. If you look at that again. Cognism now use Bombara, Bombara are a company that monitors that they monitor traffic on on consumer websites, blend it with the data lake for business data. So now your your staff, you as salespeople you're being given this information. All is great. We've got all these mobile numbers now so you can now phone managing directors at home when they're at home on a Saturday morning , not that you would, but you know what I mean, the reason they've got their mobile numbers is because if people make a consumer purchase, that information goes somewhere, is picked up, scraped, they combine the consumer data lake information with a business to business data lake

information and reverse IP lookup such as Lead Forensics, Candii, DemandBase and so on, match the two together. Bingo. You've got everybody's information. You can find them any time anyway. It's a really upset your prospects; phone them on their mobile that they know they never gave you. So it's a big big problem so the content and drive is based upon the mentality is based upon consumer getting hold of consumer information.

And so it doesn't work. So it doesn't work. So sales people get it in the neck and figures of rubbish pipelines no good and you end up getting moved on. Look, there's no place we can, we can't really support you, we can't really fund you, we can't really carry you any longer. You have to. We're going to have to let you go.

You go. Okay. Everybody understands that. But what about the content? Because it's this stream is about content. What about the content? The problem with content is that when you when you produce content, when they produce content with marketing, produce content, copywriters tend to write short, scant few paragraphs, long content pieces. Now, the problem with that is that they need they need to be longer.

There's a method and I’ll come on to that next in the next slide. But this is it. There's a structure to that in the same way that a sales director or anybody in senior management would say to a salesperson, Sorry, service is no longer needed and you're being fired, why isn't the content fired for not performing? Nobody looks at it like that.

So what it’s just content isn’t it? No it’s not, this is the foundation of your business. This is the foundation of every single prospect you get. You speak to prospect. There might be mildly interest. Well, we’ll have a look at your website and have a look at the content, see what people they want to be educated, Gartner say they want to be educated, everyone wants to be on the Gartner Quadrant.

So therefore educate you call your prospects the way that Gartner tell you to educate your prospects because 83% I think is 100% because personally we they want to self educate before engaging with the salesperson. The only way they're going to do that is through content. So if the content will do what it should do, get rid of it, edit it, enhance it.

That's what Google expects you to do through sitemap software. It's within the sitemap software. It says, How frequently do you want us to come back and look at your content to see if it's been changed? Because you could change the heading, you can change the title, you can change body content, you can update it, you can change it because of the data that's in any, any reason doesn't matter.

But Google expect to come back and re crawl it. So because of that, Google have got a structure. And in terms of the structure, it's been around for a long time but still used. You go, well, what we've got to do well top right Yeah that's the kicker 15 to 1700 words, you could think, well, that’s quite long. Yeah. Yeah. 250 words a page.

Yeah. Six pages, give or take six pages of A4, 11 point. But you going have bullets, numbers and number lists and bullet lists and pictures and graphics. It's got to be a rich and engaging piece of content. Why? Well, Google would rank it if you wrote it and did that, Google would rank. They crawl it and index it and rank it and put it in their search engine.

That's what this whole Internet Interweb thing is all about, isn't it? You go, well, okay, So so what you're saying is that the four paragraph blogs that we've been knocking out are not really working. That's right. They're not working. And one of the fundamental things about people call them blogs. You're a business, you write articles, you don't write blogs.

You're not writing about woodworking or upcycling furniture. Yeah. you can tell what I see on Facebook, but you should have been. Yeah, you don't do that. You write articles because the articles that you're writing are there to educate the there to be thought leadership articles. And so, so there is a strategy structure sorry that says this what you should be doing, why aren’t you doing it comes back to content again comes back to you and what you want doing it's done is the point complaining about anything that's going on in your company.

This applies to everybody Director downwards. Don’t complain about it. Come up with the solution. But most people think no solution, no other solution exists because everybody does the same thing. Everybody does demand gen, lead gen, ABM,ABX, everybody does automation, you know, sprinkling a few and sprinkling a few few events here and there. Everybody does the same thing.

So how do you expect to beat anybody? And I mentioned in the last the last livestream, if everyone's doing the same thing, then surely to goodness, everybody would be turning over the same amount of money. Yep, Yep, 100% dollars, $144,000 (grand) per person per annum around the world, companies from 20 employees up to I think it was Infosys or Cognisys with 10,000 plus employees.

And so around the world certainly I think we've announced 30,000. with Infosys that they were a bit lower admittedly, but most that their employees live in Asia. So everybody's doing the same thing. Everybody is turning out the same amount. Everybody wants to do more done by a company. Increase your turnover, take on 50 more people and do 5 million a year more.

Nothing special. it’s still ¬£100k per person per annum. So what you want to do, clearly what you want to do is be in a position where you're producing this great content, but you're able to be different. You're able to differentiate yourselves from your competition. That's what this game is all about. So, you know, forget about being like everybody else.

You've been kind of put it nicely. There is no nice way, but you've been mugged, You've been sold a lie, you've been sold, you've been misled by big tech MarTech, have told their advocates who are the marketing people. This is what you need to do. They've told you what you need to do. You've gone off and bought it.

You're the ones with the software and SaaS and everything else, but not getting in any of the results. You're not getting the leads you want or the engagement you prospects. Why? It's no different with your company or the next company. The next company. Everybody's got same problem. So you go, Well, if we produce all this content, you know, we've been told that, but you know, no one's going to read it.

It's going to be too long. What it work with me on this, right? Say look, Star Wars. You know, we are we of course, we know Star Wars. Love it, Lord of the Rings, Alien it does, doesn't it Doesn't matter. These are blockbuster trilogies and not just trilogies. The series of films, people binge watch them. Why? Why do people binge watch Netflix?

Because its engaging none of this too long. Didn't read. If it's engaging, you read it. It's a bit like, could you imagine? Sending your kids off to university and the kids in America, if that lecture doesn't deliver in like 5 minutes, I'm out of here. It's one o’clock watching. If you don't want to learn. Don't do it. Same with content.

If your content is educational, if it's going to make a difference and bearing in mind your prospects want your content to be different, they want to learn from it. You're telling them that what's going to happen is it's going to teach them, it's going to change, their revenue is going to it's going to deliver an ROI, it's going to be a reason to do it.

But, but think of the pressure. This is this is what we're told. Yeah, we're told Tick-Tock, Instagram, Twitter, the whole social media thing is instant. You know, you've got to do a video that's like this and it's got to hit the mark within seconds. And if you don't, and then you've got to keep producing more and more and more and more and more, rubbish!

Not for business. I mentioned before about this, I did that that schedule on the left, three years ago, like I said, this kind of this journey has been about learning how things work because they weren't working and they're not working for people now and are still not working. And the point of this is that even with AI, there's a link below there and it's in the description.

But that link that URL for YouTube. I saw this guy the other day and he was saying, Oh ChatGPT, it's amazing, wonderful and everything else, and he said, We sell men's clothing. It was an English guy, lived in Italy and he goes, This is this is amazing. I'm going to I'm going to blast through this and show you exactly what I'm going to and I’m going to do it live.

So he went through went on to ChatGPT and said, Do you understand? This is what I want to do? Okay. Do you understand that? Yes, I do. And provide me with a 15 point outline that I can talk about men's clothing to do with funerals. It's pretty specific. Okay. So he gave the outline. Then he said, Now explain each of these outlines, the explain these in detail.

And so ChatGPT went through each one of them and gave like three or four paragraphs for each of the outline headings for this 15 point article on clothing. It's very special, is great and it can be any subject you can imagine. And then he said it wasn't throwaway at the end. So what you need to do, you need to add in to here, your table of contents, the top and your bullets, numbers, number lists and graphics and pictures and videos and links and internal linking.

And there is your visual content. And it got ranked within 2 hours. Wow. But we're not consumers! No you’re not. So the thing is why was the deal was so why go to all that effort to get gold from Google saying oh so we've got this, but we're talking about consumer here. So just consider this for a second.

So if the reason that you want to follow a Google template for all of your content is because you want to engage your prospects and it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn’t matter what continue you do, you are expected to provide rich content, not throwaway, scant bland stuff. Yeah. And the other part and problem marketers have for a long time said that you need to write for personas.

So you call this content imagine multiplying so thing on GB News saying that they were and the multi genders yeah, now that causes a problem if you're going to do persona marketing so it's just not deal with that let's deal with what is the problem within a business because the business has a problem. It doesn't matter who works for the business.

They have the problem. So looking at this primary, secondary, general, product, and how to buy. Primary content is your educational content your thought leadership stuff. That's what they're after. That's what they want to get their teeth into. The secondary content is podcasts, is podcasts and information, customer, customer stories, that type of thing. And you then got, there we go, customer stories, social proof, podcasts, videos, and so it's all secondary content.

So we also looked at your primary content and we're learning about this one. Understanding it, I think I want to see who your customers are these okay, I wonder what they're like as a company. So let’s, have a look at the CSR, ESG, whatever, and latest PR stuff. Oh, look, someone new joined. Oh, look, someone had a baby. I can't imagine every managing director really being that concerned about it.

But they are. That is information that is relevant to your business because it will be interesting to some people if it's even if it is just your staff, but there's a valid place for it for general information. The primary and secondary are key, you've then got your product, obviously, clearly, but you've had to buy how to install, how to implement it, how to understand what about best practices, all that type of stuff.

And also. FAQs And I think use that comes under your product. So finally you’ve got How to buy. When you show people how they can buy from you, you have got all the forms on your website. You can take an order digitally, can't you? Tongue-in-cheek, but you know what I mean. That's what the point of this is, if you’re going to be doing digital selling.

So if you've got all this, this is a structure, a logical structure for people and businesses to look at and go, we get it. We understand this. This makes sense. For persona marketing and blogs and so on, are a completely utter waste of time because whenever any content is produced by marketing, they chuck it behind an email form and then demand that you fill out that your prospects fill out a form with their email name and address and telephone number, everything else to give to marketing BDRs to go and phone up, which just annoys everyone!.

Nobody wants cold-calls nothing. I saw this thing on LinkedIn yesterday was it was a poll should marketing learn how to do telesales to to understand by you just thousands and thousands of responses to this poll and I proposed that and said Noooo don't do it, don't do cold calling at all stop BDRs hate doing it.

It's a soul destroying job. And every single person on the receiving end of a cold call hates it without exception. Nobody said, Oh, I had some great calls today, said nobody ever so, so, so so clearly there's is this mismatch that we have to get business but we actually don't really know how to do it. So and that comes back to here, this is really interesting book, you must get hold of it.

He's a Nobel Peace Prize winner and it's really, really key to everything you're doing in sales and the decisions that you make because it's thinking fast and slow. Thinking fast is instinctive, reactionary. So if you've been taught to do the same thing over and over and over again, which you have been for the past 20 years, by MarTech and the and the the markets that you've employed, you're going to think that what you're doing, the decisions that you make are reactionary, are instinctive because, you know, and the six series of videos, livestreams the same.

No businesses don't know. You're just repeating what marketing have said, which are repeating what? MarTech Instead of repeating what big tech have said who own the MarTech. Yeah, so and so thinking slow is simply evaluating and taking time out and being considered, making considered decisions based upon research and evaluation. It's not complicated and it gives you all these different examples.

The point of the different examples that it would give is because it makes you stop and think. And the most important thing on there, one of the things that jumped out at me. Page 66 I told you I read it - page 66, says It's repetition. Marketers use repetition. That's why we keep doing what we do, so in terms of content, where's it got?

Well, what, why? What should we be doing and why? Well, the fact the simple fact of this picture was MidJourney by the way, it’s A.I. generator. But this content is consumed everywhere. So someone's who’s got an iPhone, which means they've got words and audio podcasts and video and live. So all four, sitting on a train, going from A to B and that's the issue here.

Anything is possible anytime anyone can consume whatever they want, whenever it suits them. So we so it's like who who are we ever in business to turn around to go? We we just write documents. It's like really, says who, because people aren't just consuming documents quite the opposite in fact. People do more searches on YouTube than on Google.

So people want to watch their what do we engage? I mean, even with this, you know, if I made a mistake, like last last week, I showed how, look, you can you can plug in an iPhone and use that as a camera. And it cut my cut my audio, it’s live. This week we had a problem with transmission with a scheduled transmission.

I'm going to have a moan at someone straight after this. But but you get the point of this is it's live. People want to see this live they people want to see what's going on. And we've got a different way of approaching all of this. So if you look at, you know, what content, what we're talking about, when you loads I mean, video, podcast, livestream articles in the articles, you've got papers and documents and downloads and publications and, you know, slide docs.

Slide, slide docs are great, by the way. I've got one of those under, under downloads. It got a slide doc. You produce them in PowerPoint. So these are the documents that you give people in advance of afterwards. So it's a document about your presentation. I mean, like, you know, I've put some bullets up there, but I don't we don't always leave you seen I don't write them out if we don't see pictures like this one, I'm not gonna read them out.

But the point of this, if you've got some time, do a search on them on YouTube and find Yeti. Yeti manufacture cooler boxes and vacuum mugs and stuff like that, but they're pretty rugged and loads of other stuff as well. Like I think I think they do backpacks and so that but predominately they're well known for doing insulated products and we came across them on YouTube and watched one.

I think I've ended up watching about 50 of them they’re great they're all customer stories, loads of different subject matters all about their customers who use their their products. But you know, where's Wally? You know, the red and white stripes thing and the kids look for the Where's Wally in the picture. It's like that Where well, where's their product.

Is it, is it in the shop. Is it not in the shop. And sometimes you don't even see it because they're communicating about their customers. They're showing they’re demonstrating to all of their prospects, all their potential customers. Yes, it's B2C, it doesn't matter. They're showing how important and how interested they are in their customers. There's absolutely nothing stopping you doing the same thing.

Nothing. Your customers will love you for it. You do a great five, ten, 15, 20, 30 minute. It doesn't matter. Do a documentary about them, how they started, where do they come from, who's involved, what they do there. And by the way, oh yeah, we use XYZ software to do with this that and the other, you know, as a passing comment.

But do that produce it, put it on there, post out, share it around people. They go your company loves that customer. Look what they did for them. Worth a fortune longevity for four years. Yeah on your website for years you don't need them signing your praises, you just need to show that you're interested in them, that’s what selling is all about. So it's really worth a look.

Really be worth a look. And the other one. The other one is an illustration really. So. one-man-show here and I'm pressing the button and changing the view and I'm looking at screens up here and making sure that the the stream, the bit rate is okay and that the volume levels are okay. And with our move in my microphone one man show but if you've got two people that changes chemistry and you've got a bit of banter between them and they're talking about different things and introducing other things and introducing video clips and introducing this, then it becomes really watchable.

You we're in the UK, so you watch Graham Norton or if you're of an age Parkinson or you've watched breakfast TV or you've watched 6:00 one show, you've watched these different shows, the states have got all you know, whether it's Crowder or whether it's, you know, all the different talk shows over there. People love watching them. They'll go and sit in the audience, what do you think they’ll do online, constantly doing online.

And that's what this is about. This is all about content, all about a way of engaging and drawing your customers into you, but doing it in such a way that means that well, it’s not going to cost a fortune. Far from it, because what you're doing is, you know, if there's one or two or three of you plus a techie, whatever, that the fact that I can do that I'm doing this solo means there's not a massive cost in terms of human resources to do this.

But the reach is is spectacular. And that's what you've got to consider, that the reach is absolutely spectacular. One person could you know, I said before, you know, you could you could message however many people get into come watch it cost pennies. I'm not going to talk about that just yet because it's for next week. So so just to kind of finish off on this, this is this is a big deal and it's something you have to kind of think about, especially being a director, that you pay people whatever you pay them and you expect them to perform.

Of course you do in every area of the business you expect them to perform. You pay them a high salary for you to tell us what we need to do and to drive collectively we drive our business forward are they are telling you what to do, but it’s not the right thing. That's where it's really bad, really scary. I mean, if, for example, there's not there are other scenarios where the directors are going, you know, just me mad about marketing is never worked properly.

I'm going to drive this. I'm going to call the shots. In terms of marketing, all you're doing is acting as a fan boy or girl for the MarTech companies just repeating through repetition, going back to Daniel Kahneman, through repetition, doing the same thing you've been told to go and do for the past 20 years. So in my my view is a bit of a mission in terms of how businesses are attempting to move forward and the Big B kickers.

So if you will, average turnover $144,000 grand per person per annum and that's the average. Anything below that you've got problem. But Microsoft's a million Googles 2 million per person per annum. So there's some it's got a lot of scope for you, massive scope for you. So the point, you know, we've covered these aspects and the point is if you as an organisation and you as individuals because you can't back everything off to marketing and say it’s wasn't my problem.

It is your problem. It's always been your problem because whilst you've been told leave it to marketing, follow the marketing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's when it became your problem because marketing it, getting it wrong. You can write an article about your prospect or about a customer about the problems encountered, how they solved them, how your product actually worked and changed the way that they did things and improved X, Y, and Z and changed this ROI

You can write that, you can be as detailed as you like. You can write a business case marketing team. They don't sell, you sell, they're admin, salespeople have targets, Admin have KPIs, that's my view.

And they’ll fight, like I said last week, they'll fight to keep budget. Even the MarTech people will look to educate them how to construct an argument to hold on to budget so you can keep paying them. It's bizarre, really bizarre. And so let's assume so what you're going to do over the next seven days is look at and evaluate all of your content and what you're doing.

What's gated, not gated, what works, what doesn't work, what's been written, what hasn't been written, what could be written, you’ve got a week to do that and next week we're going to go through the stages and steps to get your business ready for digital selling, which means looking to reach out at scale. And that's really exciting because selling is a numbers game, right?

We all know it is. So who's going to manipulate and orchestrate the numbers. You've got know how to do it? It's still complicated and it's not expensive. Pennies. Pennies. Like two pound a day, £2 at 50 quid a month to do what you need to do because it's a specific logic to it. Yes, you can do pay per click and you can guarantee if you've got a ten grand budget that that ten grand budget will go.

It is unrelenting. It will take your money, but you don't get the leads. Look how many leads you've had over the past ten years. Look how much, how many, how many inbound leads you got from the website in ten years. Doesn't we know it doesn't work? Dark tunnel, dark social should be dark paper click. But anyway, so that's what we got lined up for next week.

I hope to say. I hope you enjoyed it. It's a bit of a bit of a strange thing to say. I hope you grasp what I'm saying that and that the first part of this is to understand what the foundation is of the business. And it has to be it has to be the content. The content must deliver.

What prospects are looking for first. Otherwise, there's no point having a conversation with you, because if you've got no information, you've got nothing to teach me, nothing to show me, nothing to give. You're no good to me. So if you present a logical, structured argument over multiple pieces of content, then that's what they want. That's what we have always.

That's how we have always purchased. We've always bought stuff like that, you want to buy a car. Usually the old salesman came up to me. I just happened to buy a car. You wanted a car, You looked at it. You looked at it for years. You didn't. You went and bought one before and you poured over the, you know, the technical stats and everything else.

The desire was strong enough. You wanted it. You want a sofa, You bought a new sofa because the spring was in your backside, you're fed up with it. So you want to bought new sofa. You're not going to apply the same logic to business. So we need to move forward. You need to move forward profitably. How do we do it?

And if you can deliver that like this and happy days your way. So that's it. That's it for me next week. That's what we're going to talk about next week. And communicating on autopilot. Massive, massive scale. I'm looking at growth and contractors have to get this happening quickly because it all it's all about speed and talking about speed.

It's about how your website performs, why it should perform, how it should perform in terms of your operations and The Content Stack. And of course, Google Analytics and not everybody's favourite subject, but without it you fail. And TAG manager Well, no marketer is going to like TAG Manager because when you know how long someone's been on a page, if they've been there, where do they come from, Where do they go to?

You go and actually that shows that you're content, rubbish, and they don't like it, but like I said before, you need to know you need to know about this, not to go and do it yourself. It's never about this. These six shows are not about teaching you to go and do it yourself. We can talk about that another time.

You don't want us to do it. Do you want your own team to do it? Get them trained up to go do it. But that that's it's important if you've got a complaint, if you've got if you're not happy with something, you must understand what's happening in order to know what to do in the future. So that’s it, bye for now.