5 Minute Business – Mark Middo
Content marketing. It’s the buzzword of now. Content marketing this, content marketing that.
But here’s the problem: If you’re doing content marketing in hope that it goes viral, you are not going about marketing to “reach people when they are actively trying to solve a problem, with their wallets.”
As we discussed during PreneurCast037, and I wrote in my first book:
The key to effective marketing is not large headlines, bright colours or an eye-catching image. Sure these things will help attract attention to your ad, but the aim of a marketing campaign is not simply to have people notice the ad, the aim is for them to notice the ad and then purchase from you. The first step means nothing without the second. The key to successful marketing is reaching the right people with the right message using the right advertising at the right time for your business.
I’ve since refined this to be:
All you need to do in business is find a group of people with a problem, figure out where they proactively go to search for a solution (with their wallet), and do everything you can to position yourself there.
Simple as that. Nothing more, nothing less.
The people you want to reach are searching on Google, and yes some people are still looking in the Yellow Pages.
The so-called content marketing strategy that most people use is the modern version of billboard advertising… Plastering your message everywhere, in hope that one person, one day, after seeing your content 7 times, decides that the stars are aligned, opens their purse.
However, as I was reading one of the chapters of Mark Middo’s new book, 5 Minute Business, he indirectly gave another take on it.
It’s not explicit, but
Can you find the one take on Content Marketing, that made me open my mind?
Here’s the excerpt from Marks book…
The 5 Minute Business Book Excerpt:
Up until about the past 10 years or so, content has only come to you filtered through traditional media like TV, radio and newspapers. The problem with this was that you would only receive information that either had some kind of hidden agenda behind it, or was negative in some way. As I mentioned at the beginning of the book, nothing on mainstream news is put up there to benefit you at all. It is only there for either of two reasons: to make money or to drive fear. This lines up perfectly with the theory that greed and fear are the two things that make the world go round.
Try and think of the last time you heard something positive on mainstream news. I bet I can guess exactly what it was. It would have been a 20-second clip about a fireman saving a cat from a tree, and it would have been right at the end of the news, just before the weather. These little feel-good stories are just injected in there at the end so they are the last things you remember to give you a reason to watch the next night. As I said earlier, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a huge advocate for not consuming any information from mainstream media whatsoever.
Here is a simple scientific explanation of why you should avoid it. As humans we have a neuron in our brain called the ‘mirror neuron’, which mimics exactly what we can see another person doing but within our brain. So, for example, if I see someone crying, the same neurons that are firing in their brain (negative emotions) would also be firing in my brain as if I were crying myself (even though I wasn’t). As a lot of spiritualists would suggest, this is our empathy.
Empathy is a very important human characteristic. If I saw a friend crying, I would feel for them and comfort them in some way. I could positively influence their feelings because I show my empathy towards their issues and help them get over their troubles.
However, by watching the news I am firing off these negative mirror neurons with no way that I can have an impact on people whom I am mirroring emotions for. If I see bad things happening in Kenya, the people affected aren’t in my sphere of influence for me to be able to make a positive emotional impact on. This then creates an emotional weight in my brain that I do not release and I keep just adding to through more and more negative news. This keeps you using the lower part of the brain because it activates your emotions.
If you are sceptical about this, I urge you to try it for one month. No reading newspapers, watching the news on TV or listening to commercial radio. I can absolutely guarantee you that after one month your head will be clearer, you will be more driven, focused and you will be able to learn 10 times faster than you have ever imagined. The best part is, because you won’t be wasting time filling your mind with junk, you will have much more time to dedicate to what it is you are trying to achieve with your 5MB. Instead of spending an hour watching and reading mainstream news each day, invest that time in reading news about your topic of your 5MB or researching how you can market it better. This is an investment in yourself and is something you have control over, rather than an investment in negative world issues that you have absolutely no control of.
There is something so liberating about hearing a conversation about a terrible story that is going around mainstream media and knowing absolutely nothing about it. It happens to me all the time and the first time it happens to you, I hope you will think about this exact moment as you raise a cheeky smile.
By now you can probably see where I am headed with this.
Yes, with the explosion of the Internet and social media, the power has shifted from the mainstream media outlets, right back into your hands. I explained earlier how Google has given the power back to the people by giving preference to bloggers in its search rankings and this is no coincidence. Perhaps Google knows that a huge part of the fall of the Industrial Revolution is the fall of mainstream media. It won’t be long until you have complete control over what you watch on TV or which articles you read. It will just be a choice of what information you choose to consume over the Internet.
What does this mean for your 5MB?
It means that you now have more power than ever before. Through the advent of platforms such as YouTube, WordPress, Podomatic, iTunes and the hundreds of other content platforms out there, you now hold as much power as every TV presenter, network boss or CEO. By leveraging these platforms to create valuable content for your 5MB, you will begin to position yourself as a key person of influence in your chosen niche. People will start asking for your advice, they will want to start paying you for your time and advertisers will want to pay you to have ads on your site, you will start getting invited to speak at events and attend industry parties, along with heaps of other amazing things. If you’re selling a service with your 5MB, I would highly recommend reading Daniel Priestley’s book Become a Key Person of Influence.
Creating content for your business has replaced sales calls, newspaper ads and direct marketing. Many of the more traditional business type people will argue that cold calling and cold marketing still have a place in the world, but trust me, that crap is dead. Look at it this way: a few years ago, John, the shoemaker, would have bought the BBQ that Greg, the salesman from Barbeques Galore, was trying to sell him. This is because Greg would have had superior knowledge of all the features that the BBQ had and he would have known which words to use and how to close the deal. But now, John, the shoemaker, has already done his research on Google. He has found an article from a local home handyman site that tells him that Greg’s BBQ isn’t the best value for money. He can get nearly exactly the same BBQ for half the price from another store. It is a common occurrence these days that the buyer has more information on the product than the salesman.
So what you need to do is take a step back in the process and become the person who provides the buyer with the information.
If you ask anyone who has ever ran any business where most of their leads come from, they will tell you that 80 per cent of the time they come from word of mouth. Well, word of mouth is now on steroids. Yes, word of mouth is now hanging out with Lance Armstrong. Through creating content you have the opportunity to create a word-of-mouth machine that generates more qualified leads than you can handle. Does that sound game changing enough for you?
Content adds value to your castle in so many ways. Here are my top five:
• The more updated content you have on your website, the higher your site will rank overall on Google. This is a no brainer and obviously means free exposure for your business.
• The more blog posts you create on your site, the more bait you have out to hook people back into your castle.
• Content is a huge factor in the psychology of influence. By providing content you are building trust and therefore showing that you are an authority in the field. Authority is one of the key laws of influence. The longer you go on creating content and putting your thoughts and opinions out there, the more of an authoritative figure you will become.
• You are also activating the law of reciprocity through providing value to people. Because you have provided them with something through the form of valuable content, there is a subconscious seed planted deep in their mind to some day repay you for that gesture.
• Content also adds remarkability to your 5MB. People love to tell their friends about things to not only to help them out, but it also makes the person feel good because they have a position of power by holding the information over their friend.
For example, I love telling people to read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Why? I have absolutely nothing to do with the book, but it subconsciously gives me a position of power because I am telling them something that they didn’t already know. As soon as you create valuable content, you are giving yourself the opportunity to be remarkable. This is true word of mouth on steroids.
I will give you a very simple, personal example of how creating content has worked for me before. I did some research using the Google Keyword Planner to find some keywords around restaurants. I saw that Facebook marketing for restaurants was getting a lot of searches, so I wrote a blog article called ‘Five Hot Tips on Facebook Marketing for Restaurants’. I gave away as much value as possible in this blog article and it took me nearly half a day to put together. Ten years ago this would have been called ‘giving away my intellectual property’.
But this value came back to me tenfold because I had many restaurants sign up to my online course after opting in to my email list after they landed on the blog post from Google. I created several leads from people who were not only from the industry that I was targeting, but who were actually asking Google for help. And Google kindly pointed them in my direction. How is your cold call list looking now?
This is just one example of the hundreds of different ways that you can provide value to people through content. You could start your own weekly TV show on YouTube where you review products or give practical demonstrations or you could launch a monthly radio show on iTunes where you interview guests from your chosen industry. It doesn’t matter how you start, it only matters when you start.
At the beginning of this chapter you will discover how to pick the best type of content for you to start with, you will then learn about the content trifecta and the best practices around creating all three. Then, in true 5MB style, you will pick up the tools to hack your productivity and content creating abilities, allowing you to create content in quick time and on a very strict budget. You will discover some of my favourite game changers and how to use them to turn yourself into a key person of influence in your niche.
So enough of the chitchat – let’s get into it…
Inside 5 Minute Business you will discover growth hacking secrets like:
Hacks to create and profit from world class brand for $297
Hacks to get you a $50,000 website for $13
Hacks that get Google to instantly send you “buyers with cash”
Hacks to network yourself into the inner circle of any industry
Hacks to convert website visitors into consistent cash
MARK MIDDO is a Growth Hacker and renowned Freedom & Lifestyle Advocate. Over the past 10 years, Mark has helped boost online revenues for some of the largest companies in the world, including Formula 1, MotoGP and McDonald’s.
Mark’s secret? Growth Hacking.
Growth Hacking is the practise of taking an unconventional and innovative approach to lighting a fire under the sale of any product online or offline. Find out how Mark growth hacked his way from the 9-5 slog to developing and selling his own online product for a 6-figure sum in under 3 months.
Content Marketing, The Preneur Hierarchy & A 5 Minute Business is a post from: Preneur Marketing Blog
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