AI, Authenticity and the Future of Marketing with Mark de Grasse

[00:00:00] John: Hey everyone, this is Mark Grass, the President of Digital Marketer, and this is the podcast that keeps you up to date on everything you need to know when it comes to digital marketing from the platforms you're be focused on to the Kanye's taxes and tools that are working today.

[00:00:11] John: Today I'm going so low and we're talking about why your approach to content is. Backwards. I've worked in content for about 20 years. had a magazine wrote certs and books probably produced around 20 to 30,000 pieces of content varying from video graphic design elements and articles and everything else you could possibly think of.

[00:00:30] John: I've done quite a bit. And what I've seen a development over the last two decades content and the same lesson being taught over and over and over again about content creation. And I think it's not wrong. It'll work uh, but it's backwards. So if you've heard this approach of content then this is the standard and we're gonna flip it on its head.

[00:00:49] John: And I'm gonna talk about how, to do that. And then I'm gonna talk about how our content marketing cert is focused on this approach. And we'll show you exactly in exhausting detail how to do it yourself. So to start, here's the standard lesson. All right? You wanna make some content, Let's go ahead and do a keyword search.

[00:01:06] John: We're gonna use one of a million different tools. We're gonna pull up some keywords related to your industry. Okay, these ones look pretty good. Let's go ahead and select 10 of those. Now, these 10 keywords are gonna drive the production of. Video, podcast or article. Let's go ahead and just look at what some of the competitors are doing.

[00:01:22] John: Let's put it into Google and see what the surgery drills show. And then let's put in some of your expertise and now you have a piece of content. So the reason this is backwards is because it's really taking the key word and using that as know, Keystone for everything else that you're doing in terms of content Problem is that it's extremely limited and doesn't necessarily take into effect all the other factors that you should be thinking about when you're creating content, which are market factors, customer avatar factors, competitor factors, your brand awareness factors, your offer factors, and your product factors.

[00:01:55] John: So there's all these different. That you cannot put into a single piece of content and you shouldn't put into a single piece of content. But what happens is when you base off a key word is you just create one piece of content and then you create another piece of content, And what these are, are just standalone pieces of content. Now they are useful and they could accidentally lead to a cohesive. Content marketing strategy, but they probably won't. What'll probably happen is you'll just pick something random and you'll create it and you'll put it up, and then you'll do the same task over and over again.

[00:02:26] John: if you've been doing this for years and you don't have a significant brand presence or a significant online presence you could see that it doesn't really work or it doesn't work most of. You are gonna have those hits and misses and so on so forth. But what we could do is do a much more scientific approach to content creation.

[00:02:43] John: And I'm gonna show you or tell you about kind of the framework for doing that. But first I think I'm gonna try to change your mind about how you look at content. let's think of something that everybody has probably thought about, which is your dream. real estate, everybody knows about real estate, great investment and you need somewhere to live.

[00:03:00] John: So we all think about where am I living and what could it possibly be? So let's pretend that you have a trickle of extra egg income to build your dream home. It's going to have everything you ever wanted in a home, but you're gonna have to build it piece by piece. So you picked great piece of land. it is a perfect, has all the potential in the.

[00:03:18] John: And then what you'll have to do is pour the foundation, build each room, install the amenities and the features. You want to make it comfortable, and then as you're doing it, you're actually adding value to that land. So now, instead of just having a piece of land, which is a fraction of the value, Usually you're gonna have a house on it and everything you add to that house adds more value to the house.

[00:03:37] John: So even after you built the house itself, you could add a pool, a jacuzzi, a guest house, a tennis court you know, you could do solar panels or water reclamation system or anything you want. And everything that you do typically will add quite a bit of value. The asset that you've built. think of that.

[00:03:52] John: So you got your dream home in your mind. All right. the land is your brand. It's completely empty. there's nothing to it, at least when you start. But if it's in a good location, you know that it's gonna be more valuable as you develop it. So this is you building your brand, building your revenue and your sales and everything.

[00:04:08] John: Your home in this analogy is your website, it's where your content lives, it's where you're gonna add most of the value and all of your work, all your assets, everything is gonna be located there. So home is your website and when you build your dream home, you're building an asset. Just like when you build your website and you build your content, you're building this asset that you could sell later on.

[00:04:31] John: And the reason why I use this analogy is cuz that's exactly what I did. I built a fitness magazine, which actually drove all the content that added to the brand and then I sold. The content. That's what was purchased when I sold my business. that's what I'm gonna show you guys how to do.

[00:04:44] John: that's how you wanna look at it. So don't look as content as an individual piece of content. Look at it as a piece of a greater. Strive to create value in your brand, in your business and everything else. So this, analogy, this real estate analogy and the stream home analogy is something that I use throughout our new content certification.

[00:05:02] John: And then I use it to kind of structure, not just your initial content marketing strategy, which is something that if you don't have a, really solid strategy that incorporates a million factors, which is why I talk about in certification then what you're doing is. Plopping a lawn chair on a piece of land, , or even maybe a fancy lawn chair.

[00:05:20] John: But you're doing something that isn't necessarily cohesive and gonna add a lot of value to the overall, piece of property or the asset that you've made. It's just gonna throw another little thing in there and then eventually you'll have a pile of junk. Well, most Keyes have is actually a garage, if you wanna think about that.

[00:05:35] John: Oh, they built. Nice garage and there's a bunch of crap in it, . that's your content strategy. But if, you really look at your target market and your offers and everything else that goes into a content marketing strategy, you could build a beautiful. Beautiful structure that just adds so much value to a brand and will bring you lasting value that you could eventually sell off if you want to, or you could just keep on building it.

[00:05:59] John: And eventually you'll have this amazing structure, asset that you could just appreciate and use yourself. You live there after all, that's what your content is, that your content is you. And so what does it say about you if. Totally disorganized and incohesive and doesn't really have anything really behind it that says, I thought about this.

[00:06:18] John: it's content historically has been kind of like a side note. For marketing approaches. But with everything that's gone on with the, privacy updates and even just everybody's perception of brands themselves, it's expected and it's not gonna stop. It's the future of marketing online and in general is content.

[00:06:35] John: So you wanna build a dream home, Then you need to start thinking about it and really put it into words and then execute it in a cohesive manner that makes it super attractive and makes a real asset for you to eventually sell or enjoy. So that's it for today.

[00:06:50] John: That was a solo. Rant you're gonna have quite a few of these in the near future. I hope you enjoyed it. We're coming out with the content certification early November. So look for that dropping very soon and I will see you there. So thanks so much for listening. Be sure to hit that follow up button so you get notified when all of our new episodes release.

[00:07:08] John: Please share this with that friend who is clueless about digital marketing, and don't forget to visit digital market.com where you can access all of our courses, certifications, and training programs. Thanks again everyone, and we'll see you next.