Content Marketing: How to sell with stories for startups and founds by Sarah Noel Block Ep. 607

Howdy. Welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Matt Bertram. I'll be your host for today. I have a special guest, but before we get into it, I just want to kind of tee everybody up if they haven't been listening to the last couple episodes. I've had some excellent guests on really looking at like startups, founders, how to build your brand, how important your brand is. I know I've talked a lot about personal branding. For those of you that know me, the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, this podcast before that, I talked a lot about personal branding with Build Your Brand Mania. Also, for any of you watching, Rise of the Personal Brand was my second book. It's really how different influencers made their way to build their own brand based on expertise, authority, trust, experience. These are all things that tie into Google. Google's indexing everything now. Your brand is more important than ever. But a lot of people ask me, well, hey, for small businesses, for startups, I don't know where to start. Maybe I don't have any money. How do I build that? So we have Sarah Noel Block here today to talk about how to tee yourself up, whether it be B2B, B2C, as a founder, as a startup, to build your content and to start your storytelling with no marketing or little marketing. All right. Sarah, thanks for coming on the podcast today. Thanks for having me. Well, why don't you just tell everybody a little bit about your background as we kind of get into it? And then we'll get into maybe some different kind of strategies and kind of set the table for everybody on how to start looking at building your personal brand, storytelling, content, marketing, that sort of thing. Sure, sure. I am the founder of Tiny Marketing, where I work with mainly with founders that have zero marketing department on creating a lean marketing engine that's generally content-led because it's all about stories. And I started all of that because I

was a one-person marketing department for a seven-company group. And I had to figure out how to do it when I had hardly any budget at all and no resources. So I had to get real scrappy. And that's what I help my clients do. I love it. I love it. I think that, you know, everybody talks about the big brands when you talk about branding and like what they can do, but how does it relate to me is so key. So you talked about lean. Could you describe lean in your mind, how you define that? Yeah. Stay skinny with it. You don't have to be everywhere. You don't have to do everything. Pick one dream client that you want to clone over and over again and create your marketing engine around that. You're going to have one main channel that you're on. You don't have to be on Instagram, Facebook, everything. Choose one core content. You don't have to, like if you have a podcast, you don't have to have the video up on YouTube and repurpose it in a thousand different places. You can just choose one core content, one core channel, and one core lead generator, and that can drive your business. So when I, when you said lean, my head went to X accommodator, XY accommodator, and basically like the, the, the, the lean, the lean strategy there. Um, this is just literal lean. Like I, I think how, how I look at it is you shouldn't be on channels that you're not actively on because social media, you're meant to be social. So like, if you're just pushing content, you're not on the platform, you don't understand it, you're not engaging it and everybody's trying to be on everything. And then there's really no character, um, you know, authenticity to what you're doing. Um, it's not really effective because what you're trying to do is, is build a community, build, um, you know, people that are engaging and listening to your content, right? Like, and you can't do that on all the

platforms. I mean, certainly you could set up some syndication, um, but there should be maybe like one or two main platforms that you use, but yeah, I mean, if two might be too many, the complexity gets harder, start with one. So let's maybe give a example, give a, just a, a past example, maybe of, uh, a founder or startup you worked with and, and maybe a good effective case study and kind of what the direction or execution was for them. Yeah. Let's lean into the example that you talked about. We'll talk about like one channel. Why, why that you can't build a community in every single place and repurposing your content for the sake of showing up on those platforms is really inauthentic. You're not showing up. You're not responding to those comments. You're probably not even getting comments because no one knows you exist because you're not engaging. Choose the one channel where your dream client hangs out and focus there, build your relationship there, but you'll appreciate this as an SEO strategist. I say still have the profiles on all of the other platforms. You want to save your URL on those platforms. You want to save your username on those platforms and create the right kind of bio and pinned posts. So they know where you spend your time and it's not a complete waste. So you get the SEO juice from having those profiles, but you're sending them to that core channel that you're at. So make sure your bio is crystal clear. Your location is the actual channel you hang out on and then pin posts around your core offer. What's your lead generator is like you have a quiz that will teach them X, Y, Z and how to schedule a fit call with you and then just hang out on the other channel. So I've done this for, well, I have a recent client that I've been working with who is a consultant for marketing agencies. And I helped her do this too, where she was spread really

thin, trying to be everywhere. She doesn't have a team, so it didn't really work out for her. She didn't have channel managers. So I helped, I built a custom LinkedIn playbook for her and we moved right there. And now 40% of her business is coming from LinkedIn where no business was coming from social before just because she was spread through too thin. No, I think that that's, that's fantastic. I mean, from a SEO note, um, the, the March update of last year, March updated this year. Um, you know, it's, it's super interesting. So, uh, Google, because it's looking at all the channels, if you're not posting and kind of consistently at least somewhere, um, like maybe you've take a hiatus from that you're focused on the business, but it doesn't look like there's any activity online. There's no blogs, there's no social posts, anything like that. Like I was working with a business. Okay. Old client, um, came back to me and basically their, uh, their business. That was their core business became their side business. Okay. Okay. And they, they, cause so they took like a full-time job and, but they had, they had this, uh, home services company, uh, that, that, you know, they still had, but they weren't doing anything. They weren't really posting. Um, website hadn't been updated March update last year, totally tanked all their traffic. Google knew cause I started talking to him. I was like, what happened? Right. Like what happened? And it just, it fell off. Well, he wasn't actively doing anything online. He wasn't engaging with people and, and Google could kind of see that and said, we don't know if this business is still around. So it lined the data lined up after the fact, uh, with it being like a part-time business and he hadn't done anything. And now he's like trying to kickstart stuff again. It was, it was, it was really interesting to see, um, how those algorithms interact. And, and I would tell you, you know, there are tricks on LinkedIn,

certainly like how the algorithm works, what you're talking about, how to engage to, to get the algorithm going, to get those signals going, but that's not going to drive business. Okay. Like you can, you can get visibility, peak visibility for, for a second, but it's, it's going to drop off again. If, if you're not providing something of real value to somebody you're, you're not actively involved in that. And I know so many people that are posted on so many channels that are not generating any business, right. But they have to be there. So, so there's this balance of kind of checking some boxes. Certainly there might be even some syndication that you could do to, to, to create some evergreen posts. Um, but, but know that every channel is different and how you engage. I really liked that idea of set, setting a call to action to let people know where to go and where you spend your time. Um, and, and also I think a lot of people, this is my pet peeve right now. Everybody's generating so much content. You got AI, you got all kinds of stuff. Like it, it's just web spam. Okay. It's on social media. It's just online spam and the algorithms know it is that you're just creating noise, but no value. And when you actually really start having a conversation, you really start engaging people, the algorithms work in your favor. Okay. And, um, I just, I think that everybody out there is, is so focused on creating content. They're not focused on creating quality content, speaking to their user. And when you sit down and really get involved with it, engage with it, share who you are, add the value, you know, to, you know, the blog, to the, to the social media platform that that's when things start happening. And, and I think that's a great story. I mean, tell, tell me, okay. So let's say we have, um, we, we have a great product. Okay. Like, you know, we have a great product. Uh,

we don't have a lot of budget. Um, we want to, okay. Start building either a personal brand or a brand for a company. Um, like where would we start? What will we be thinking about? Like, give me the lay of the land. If like, we're dead, dead start, we have a great product, but nobody knows about it. Okay. So you already have the product. Yes. You already have the product. So there's too many things going on, right? Like, and even like, I talked to a lot of, uh, founders or companies that are trying to build a marketplace, like building marketplaces are two sided, very difficult. Okay. Um, you know, and that's why I've seen some big platforms. They start up with bots on one side. I'm not saying it's, it's the right thing to do, but it's so hard to build two platforms at the same time. You have to have separate teams, dedication, stuff like that. But, but let's say first you have the product. Now there is the thought process and I've read, what is it? The content Institute, that guy, I forget his name, but essentially he's like build a community and then sell into the community is certainly like one strategy. So maybe we'll talk about both. Talk about if you have a product and then you want to get the word out and then talk about, you have nothing, you're waiting on product development. Maybe if you're a startup or a founder and you want to start building, um, value and, and, and kind of, uh, you know, mind share in that, in that space as maybe a, uh, a trusted advisor expert, or just get the word out, uh, before you have the product. Yeah. So let's talk about both. That's interesting. Yeah. I'm an advocate for building the community first listening, doing a lot of listening and figuring out what they want and creating around that because you have built in buyers. So that's how I did it. I started by testing. I had a list of all

of the things that made me kind of unique in my marketing perspective. And I started testing out content pieces around that to see what would resonate with people, what got people over into my world. And I started there. And that's when I realized like my experience as a one person marketing department is what really resonated with people. So many people raised their hand and like, Oh, I'm in that position too. And I don't know what to do. And then founders followed. Like I'm stuck in this marketing role and I never wanted to be a marketer. I just wanted to do the thing. So that's how I did it though. It was testing, failing, testing, failing, and then finally finding what worked now. Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry. What were you saying? Oh, I was just going to product first, but you ask your question first. Well, um, I, I actually really liked that. Um, because a lot of people, once they have a product, right. And they're living on a credit card, I don't know what, what the analogy is, right? They're trying, you know, if they're not selling anything, they're not making any money. I think that building businesses on the back of other businesses, like spending out businesses, or, you know, uh, if you, if you're privileged enough to raise capital, which we, we, we've talked about that on this podcast. Um, you know, you have a little bit more of a runway, right? But I think if you have that product and you have to make money and you made the leap, it's like a light switch. I don't like light switches. I like transitions. Um, but, uh, you, you fall into the, the mode of like, I have to sell, sell, sell, sell, and you're not taking the time to do the market research. What is the right go to market strategy? What is the right target persona? You know, what is that customer journey? So, so looking at the data, that's the beauty of digital marketing. Um, you get to see

almost instantaneously how your marketings work, what people want, how the algorithms engage with what you're doing. And so taking the time to, to, to perfect that message, um, is probably a much more effective route. Um, because you don't have the pressure yet of, Hey, I need to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. And you know, people feel that when you gotta, when you're, when you're pushing something, right. And so smell desperation. Yeah. Yeah. So you want to, you want to know what resonates, who that audience is like, even in like, um, hiring and stuff like that. Like, um, I remember like you want to know people before. So, so I was a headhunter in a past life, but essentially you want to know the right people before you need it. Right. And so building the community and building the audience and then having a product to add to it as, as somebody that, um, is already part of the community. Cause certainly like if you're, if you're like building a community on Reddit, for example, and then you're just like pushing stuff, I mean, they will like shame you out of the groups. Like it's what I've heard. I'm not a Reddit person, but I have read that. Like, that's not where you want to go to push stuff, but, and certainly when you're doing the posts, there's probably like a, you know, one to five, one to three ratio of like adding value, talking about yourself. But yeah, I mean, tell me, okay. So you have the product. I agree with you. I think if you have the luxury to be able to build the audience, to build the brand, or you're already in the community and you have a product solution that is a product market fit already, right? Like, cause there's actually a need there. I think a lot of people have a product and then they figure out like, how do I shove it into something, right? Exactly. It's a lot easier to build that community. Listen, find out what they need

and then build the product. Yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah. Okay. So tell me a product first. How would you do it? Yeah. So you got overzealous and you created the product before you had a customer in mind. So the first thing that I would do is start hypothesizing on who would get the most value from this product and create a customer avatar based off of that. Look at all of their challenges and the transformation they want, who would get the biggest impact from your particular product, and then launch a pilot group. So sell it in a pilot where you can solicit feedback and you can reiterate and make changes. So you can start understanding who that customer is, if it actually resonates with them, or if that hypothesis was wrong and you need to pilot with another group and then expand from there. But I'm a big beta pilot person before you go big. Yeah. I mean, I, I think that, um, even if you want to relate this back to SEO, like certainly if like when we do SEO keyword research, we can see what people are bidding on keywords for. Right. So that gives you an idea, but also there's a lot of people that are using AdWords that are just indiscriminately spending. I see it all the time. So, you know, sometimes you hope the herd is right. All right. To, to a certain degree, but, but a lot of times too, there's a lot of really high volume keywords. Maybe they're a little bit difficult to hard, difficult, and you don't know if you really want to, uh, invest in that. Right. Cause you don't get any traffic till you get to the top of the, the, the, the search rankings, not just first page top of the search rankings. So, um, you know, you want to make sure that, that, that audience is going to respond to that. So using social media, using Twitter, maybe running some ads, seeing how to get that message, right. Seeing if it's the right

target audience, certainly like testing it out and like having a go-to-market strategy, you're just hypothesizing until you really test it live. And so starting with a small group before you blow, blow all your powder on, on whatever it is you're going to do and just hope it's right is very scary. That's why I think digital marketing gives a lot of small businesses or startups, the advantage over big businesses. They have a big moat. They're doing traditional marketing. Um, they're maybe starting to dip their toe in digital marketing and there's only like one or two people competing maybe on what you're trying to do. And so if you come in with a broad research, it's resonating with the audience and you can start to speak to those algorithms, you know, you're, you're, you're going to get a lot, you're going to get a lot more yardage quicker, right? Yeah. I think it's easier too, because you can pivot fast. You don't have as many people to answer to. So you can be really agile when you have a small business and make it, make it work. Like you are in a position to fail when you have too many cooks in the kitchen. Oh, that's, that's a good one too. Like, you know, really, I think that things get siloed as you get bigger, uh, and, and departments don't talk to each other. Uh, and you don't know what the right arm and the left arm is doing. So having one person over it and as you grow, like having that kind of accountability, but okay, let's, let's dial it back to, okay, you're a one person. Uh, well, do you want to talk about the pro the, the product strategy first, or you want to keep, keep going on, on the current logic? I just want to make sure we, we cover all the basis for, for anybody listening. So, uh, well, we talked about both community first and product first. So what's the next question? Okay. Okay. So, um, let's say that, um, you're

a one person, um, yeah, like you've been hired, right. You're, and there's so many generalists out there, right? Like, or they, they're, they're a graphic designer or I don't know, they're a PR person or something like that. They come into a company and, um, they're one person, they have to do it all. They have to figure out how to run that. They have to figure out how to do the social. They, they got to figure out the SEO. They got to figure out the content strategy, the emails, everything. So if, if that's you and, and, and there's a lot of those people, I think listening like, and, and you, you're just drinking out of fire hose. Um, how do you start to, to craft this? Um, you know, what, what are the things that you should be thinking about? And then, and then we can go into kind of different kinds of content maybe after that. Yeah. So you kind of touched on what the big problem is that happens in organizations like this, that we're siloed and we're not talking to each other. So the first thing I do is have a stakeholder interview where I bring in all the department heads and I interview them to get their perspectives before I build out the strategy of what we're going to be doing. So that's step one, because they are all touching the customer at different points in the journey and they have unique insights that no one else knows because nobody's talking about it. So when we bring them together, gather all of that data, that's a great place to start. And then you get buy-in from all of these departments who are saying, ugh, marketing doesn't work. All of a sudden they're like, oh, I get it now because I was invested and I was part of the process. And then the next thing I do is I talk to a couple of our favorite customers, the ones that we want to clone. And I interview them and I pull all of

this data together before I build that streamlined strategy that we'll do. So we're only showing up where we need to show up. We're only focusing on the things we absolutely need to do because as a one person department, you don't have time to do all of the things and you're going to suck at a lot of things if you try to spread yourself too thin. You know, one of the things that I think about a lot and that I've heard a lot is there's so many people that are, well, tacticians, right? Like they have a lot of tactics. They know how to execute stuff. Also, there's a lot of small businesses, startups that there's this urgency, right? Like the runway is short, right? And so like we've had a lot of clients over the last 25 years come to us as well that come to us almost in a panic. Okay. Like I'll give you one, one quick story. We took a, um, a service-based business here in Houston. Um, and they were actually a pool company. I won't, I won't throw out the name, but essentially they had under 30 pools. They basically came to us, hell Mary, if this doesn't work, we're shutting down. Okay. Yeah. That's no pressure and no pressure. No pressure. I mean, you know, and over the last 10 years, we've grown them to like 4,000 pools. Okay. Um, and they're in a much different place. They've left us once they've come back. Like, um, the kids have taken over the, the, the, the parents business. So we had to resell. Like we, we have a relationship, um, with this company, but man, that is a success story that, that we, we hit it out of the park, but they had, they even went and spent money on radio ads, TV ads without even telling us. Like, I mean, there's, there's been a learning process for everybody through, through, throughout this, but man, so many businesses come to us. They hire agency when they know they can't do it

themselves and they're past the certain point of success. Everything I'm hearing from you is front end planning, understanding the customer. You can't do any of the tactics, any of the execution. You can't do any of that stuff until you know what you're doing, or you could be wasting your time. You could just tread water. You can just be making a bunch of noise. And so many businesses, like one of the things that we had to establish, um, this is probably like seven, 10 years ago. Okay. Was the first month. Sometimes we'll get some execution in, but we really need to plan. And people are coming in going, all right, new client. We haven't been able to figure it out in whatever time, like it's one week or two week into it. Like, and they're like, where's the results. Right. There's like, there's, there's this like setting the expectation component of like, here's what we're trying to do, but getting them to buy into the process, the methodology you're going to, you're going to, it might take longer to get going in my opinion, but you're going to cover so much more ground. You're going to be so much more effective. You're going to be able to sell more, more quickly because you're doing all the learning like compressed and cost wise. You're not spending a bunch of money to figure it out. Like you're, you're going to the existing customers. You're going to all the stakeholders. You're get like when, with sales and marketing at bigger organizations, talk to each other. Marketing is trying to figure out that broader message. Sales knows they know what the stories are. They know what to say. They know the data to do it. And those top salespeople sometimes like keep it all to themselves. Right. And maybe someone on the other end of the, uh, other side of the country, um, or a new rep somewhere needs to know those stories. And so sales needs to get with marketing. Marketing needs to figure out what the stories are,

needs to disseminate it out. But this is the thing. Most companies, especially if you say, you know, SMBs down, um, small, medium-sized businesses down. Um, they want to go, go, go. Right. Especially if you're a startup or your founder, go, go, go. What I'm hearing. And, and I believe it to be true as well. Slow down, figure it out. Also, I think the, the brand message of who you are, what your company stands for in today's environment is as important as anything else. Like you need to know what you're doing because you're even attracting the, the right kind of people from a hiring standpoint. Right. Yeah. And for context, before I even bring anyone on as an ongoing client, that's the first project is I have the, that stakeholder interview and I build out the strategy based off of that before I ever even consider bringing you on as an ongoing client. What if someone comes to you and says, we already have our target persona. We already have our customer journey. Um, we just want you to execute. Like we need help executing. How do you, how do you handle that? I say hire a freelancer then I'm, I'm a strategist. I figure out what you need. And oftentimes people think that they know what they need, but they're not coming from it with the perspective of a marketer. They, um, they're, they're coming from the perspective of I'm a founder. I believe that this is my hypothesis on what will work, but you didn't actually have those stakeholder interviews, those customer interviews and find out what people actually need and see value in your product from how they make their purchasing decisions. You know, I would tell you there's a very good parallel to building out websites and SEO to, to doing that research first. Um, before you even build the website, I can tell you also, there's a lot of companies out there and there, there, there's a, there's a quite a number of web developers that listen to this podcast as

well. And they want to learn how to do, uh, SEO and make the websites rank. But man, I have not met in 10 years, like more than on one hand, a web developer that really understands SEO and the foundation of SEO is building the right site architecture. And before you build the site architecture, it's like a blueprint. You gotta, you gotta understand what the customer needs, but it's, but it, it's two customers. It's what the business needs, right? To communicate their story and then who they're targeting. Cause I can tell you so many times, um, people think they want to rank for a certain keyword or they think that they have competitors in the real world that they're the same competitors online and the data tells a different story. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I've experienced the same thing because during those stakeholder interviews, I, I uncover what they believe is happening, who they believe their competitors are, how they think their customers think about them and how they make buying decisions. But then I have the customer interviews and a whole lot of truth bombs come out that weren't that nobody was aware of before. One of, one of the things that I heard in, in like two interviews ago, um, uh, the guy that does the venture capital stuff, he, he said something to me that I had to think on, but it's absolutely right. Okay. Let's hear it. So he said, if you've built a brand or you built a company, okay. And you're doing all the things you need to do to grow wherever you're at in the cycle, right? Like, so wherever you're at in the cycle, if you have a sales team, if you're a one person marketing firm, whatever, and you start flattening out on sales. Okay. And, and you're doing everything that you can write, but it's, it's flat. Okay. There needs to be a brand reset. There needs to be a strategy reset because what I can even like look into what you're saying and kind of

parse out is like the customer or the, the client is selling to themselves. They're looking in a mirror, they're selling to themselves and there might be a subset of people that will buy that, right? They'll buy that. But the greater majority of the need that they're probably trying to serve might be a little bit different and, and they got to incorporate that into their strategy. And so if they're constantly selling to them in the mirror and, and there's, there's certainly probably a, a, a large enough subset to build some type of business to be hopefully sustainable, but most businesses fail, um, where they're selling to themselves in the mirror, you gotta, you gotta peel that layer of onion back. You have to look at what the customers are saying, incorporate that and get that messaging correct. And so, you know, from a sales standpoint, if you're flattening out the data, whoever you're selling to, whatever you're selling, whatever the benefits of whatever that is, the, the emotional connection, whatever you're doing, if you flattened out, you got to reevaluate everything. You got to go back to the beginning. Yeah. You got to talk to people. You got to look at it. And I don't think, um, enough people are willing to do that. Like I had to really think on that. You're absolutely right on that. I, when I start seeing flattened sales in my own business, I start having more conversations with my ideal customers and finding out, like, I'm not trying to sell to them. What I'm trying to do is understand them and what it is they need. Maybe the market has shifted. Like if the economy starts getting worse, people are making less money. They might want a group offer as opposed to a one-to-one service so they can financially afford it. Or maybe like the pandemic, we were all really isolated. They might want a community element to your offer. There are a lot of things in our world that can shift the way your buyers are thinking and making

decisions and regularly having those conversations and asking them what challenges they're having, what they wish your, your offer looked like, and then adjusting. So it actually meets what they need. Your sales will get a lot better. And having those conversations will also accelerate your sales because they're like, Oh, if you do that, I'd be really interested in that offer. Let me know when that, when that happens, man, I would tell you the feedback process is, is so key. Um, I think the feedback process is so key. I can tell you from a SEO standpoint, uh, when you're trying to generate, uh, MQLs, uh, marketing qualified leads for, for a client, um, you know, if you're getting the wrong type of customer that's raising their hand and that's interested, you got to keep tweaking that messaging because it's, it's attracting that certain type of person for whatever it is. So you gotta, you gotta say, okay, how do I change that messaging? And really SEO is amplification of, of the core of the content of whatever it is you're sharing the message, the value, whatever you call it. So, so let's say we've done the stakeholder meeting. We know what the target is and like, just use, you know, let's just use a, a target persona that you have, like any, any, any kind of case study you want to share or whatever. And let's say, okay, we have, we have all that. We know who it is. We're going after X, Y, Z. This is what, you know, what we found like, okay, we built the content strategy. Let's talk about the execution of it. How do you build a content calendar or, um, what, what are some, you know, actionable tips? Like if you, if you believe you have that, how do you start formulating, uh, that the content creation process and what are some of those, um, metrics you should be looking at to see if it's working in line with what you thought when you planned it out? Yeah. The first thing

that you want to do is figure out what medium you want your content to be, what's your core content going to be, and what's the cadence that you can commit to. Because if you say, okay, this is going to be a weekly show and it's going to show up every week, you just wait and then you don't show up. You're going to lose a lot of trust with your audience. So make sure to start smaller, something that you know you can handle, even if it's once a month that you're hosting a webinar, for example, and then stick to it. And then you can progress as you have your systems down and it gets a little bit easier. So do that first. And then your content, when you're creating that content calendar, start with the questions that you're getting really often. So I like to comb through sales transcripts and see what questions come up a lot, what objections come up. And that's a great place to start on your content creation. And then you can fan out from there. I love talking about objections that people have. And if you're selling a product or a service, that's a one-to-one offer, you want your content to be more why and what content, as opposed to how content, which would attract more group and digital product buyers. Informational. So you want to stay on top of the funnel, informational, kind of add value. Um, okay. So is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I was saying is with the why and the what explaining, it would be more about the overarching strategy. Yeah. For the reason to go in a certain direction, whereas people who want to educate themselves are looking for more how content, and that would be great for like a SAS or something where they have to be, they're learning or they have to work on the thing. Okay. So no, actually you're saying reverse. So you're saying bottom of the funnel content, transactional content of someone already knows they have a problem and

you solve it or, or, or like where, like if you, if you let's use like a funnel analogy, right? Like top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, you know, bottom of the funnel. I think a lot of people miss the middle of funnel. Um, uh, you know, I think a lot of people maybe either focus on all transactional or all kind of informational. Uh, certainly Google likes, you know, a balance, but, but informational. I mean, so if you have no content, where are you, where are you starting with, with building out? Like, like just, you know, Hey, we have all this stuff we want to create content for. What are you building first? All right. Let's talk about the funnel. So top of the funnel, they need to discover you exist in the first place. And they are probably not problem aware, solution aware, nothing aware. They just need to know you exist. They're probably Googling about themselves and the experiences that they're having. So pain points are a good place to put the top learning education problems that they're going through on a daily basis that they're probably Googling to find the solution for, or they're searching on Tik TOK or LinkedIn or whatever platform they like to find the solution to whatever they're dealing with in the moment, but it's going to be very them centered. So keep it high level at the top. Now, middle of funnel, they are problem aware and they are probably have a list of possible solutions at that point. And the problem aware people are going to want deeper content, more about what that solution can look like, different options for that. That's where case studies, sales pages come in right there. And then at bottom of funnel, that's where, that's where it gets more personal and you have your calls. That's usually where the calls are. And the content for that would probably be more one-to-one where you're having Trent, like the one-to-one emails, DMs, that's where that content comes into place. Oh, and middle

of funnel would also be a good place to put webinars and workshops where people are more problem aware and you're teaching them the solution to it, which would lead them to that bottom of funnel one-to-one call. Got it. So if you, you should have these questions out there, you've should have done the pre-research. I mean, you can also use, you know, people also ask in Google is a good place to start, uh, answer the public, uh, great place. Uh, if you're technically savvy, SEO minion has the ability to, uh, kind of scale down the, uh, people also ask. Um, so there's a way to figure out what those questions are, but yeah, if they have a problem, you got to hook them because that's what they're searching for. You're trying to get in that conversation, uh, in their head. Okay. So, um, now we're to, okay, we, we know what we're doing. We're creating content. Um, what are all the things if in your perspective, and certainly this can lead into some of the services you offer, but what are the things that a small business startup, you know, it could be B2C could be B2B, but like, what are the bare minimum things, right? If you're a one person marketing shop, maybe it's one channel, what do you need to have? Like certainly make maybe email newsletters. If you're B2B it's LinkedIn, you know, if you're B2C, it might be another platform. Um, you know, do you have to have, uh, you know, a virtual event? Like, I mean, tell me what are the must haves if you're, if you're starting from scratch, you're starting to build just general content, but what are the assets you need to have for that funnel to convert from a, uh, uh, you know, uh, content, content piece standpoint? Yeah. If I were going bare, bare, bare minimum, what I would do is choose that one channel that you're going to be on. So I work with B2Bs that would be LinkedIn. And then my content would be

borrowing other people's audiences. So podcast, guesting, doing webinar swaps, hosting panels, things like that, because one, you're borrowing the other person's audience. You're starting from scratch. You don't have an audience yet. And two, you are getting those new leads. You're feeding your email marketing funnel and you're able to nurture them from there. So that would be my bare minimum of what I do. Yeah. You know, it's funny. Um, my, uh, former cohost, uh, who now has a huge supplement company, uh, we, uh, built him a brand. Uh, we first got them on other podcasts. Uh, we have some really good data around that tapping those other audiences, encouraged him to start his own podcast. So he started his own podcast with a cohost that had a lot of already, uh, a community, uh, followers around him, wrote a book with somebody else tapped into that. And then what we did is a, um, uh, conference. Okay. Where you interviewed all these other people and everybody pulled people together to, to build like a really, um, nice content base, uh, expert level content. Was it like a virtual summit? Yeah, it was a virtual summit. So, and pulled together, I think he did, I don't know, 20 something interviews and then we chopped them up, uh, into kind of education segments or, or kind of like, you know, based on whatever the customer journey is, what people are looking for curated that content to, to, to different playlists to tell that story. And, and we did it in, in a reasonable matter of time that after we had all that premium content, we could then, you know, amplify that with paid ads and, and, and use SEO and then brilliant strategy, build, build a content straight for that. I mean, we went from, you know, like, uh, uh, uh, uh, what is it called? A lifestyle business to a, uh, significant business and, and, uh, um, in, in the millions, you know, That's the way to do it. I always recommend my clients start with collab

content. So they're borrowing other people's audiences. They build that base and then starting their core content after that. So, so here, here's actually a interesting question. Cause, um, you know, I was at a talk and, uh, I forget her name, man, but she, she broke down exactly how the LinkedIn algorithm worked, um, how to post, how to do everything. And one of the things she said that LinkedIn didn't like was she said, never share anybody else's content. Okay. She said, never. Right. And I'm like, you know, and, and there was like different tactical things that she was saying that it's like, okay, like, this is how the algorithm works and you're not an expert, right? You're not an authority. If you're sharing other people's content, like I see where she's coming from and that's like her frame of reference. And if you, if you met her, you would know, like, you know, she is alpha the lead, like, right. And she is the, you know, the influencer, that sort of thing. But, but I do think that, you know, incorporating, especially early on other, other people's content, um, memes and, you know, sharing things that, that, that elicit a response and, and, and also getting involved in other conversations and like any, any kind of, uh, brands that I'm associated with, like, you know, become like, if I support the brand, become a quasi influencer, I, I share stuff. I, I, I send it to people. Like if it's valuable to somebody, like I'm actively participating in the community, um, I'm curious where you, you fall on that because I've seen, you know, I, I, I, I see two different standpoints of that. And, and, and even in SEO, you always got to balance, like what's perfect for SEO, right? Like what's perfect for the search engines and what's right for the people. Yeah. So two different things here. So with the sharing content, I believe what she means, and I could be wrong. Cause I wasn't at that talk. Is hitting the share button

on someone else's post and reposting it to your content. She doesn't want to do that. Yeah. LinkedIn hate that. Yeah. But engaging on other people's content, that's really great for you because that will get you in their feeds and it's even better to do it within like the magic hour, within the hour that you're posting your own content and then your posts will get seen more. The audition period. Yeah. So why, why do you think LinkedIn doesn't like you sharing other people's content because they're leaning on LinkedIn needs content right now. They're trying to build their content machine and they, they want to prioritize preferred content, but the algorithm is saying it hurts you to share other people's content. I have no idea. I am not going to try and guess what LinkedIn is thinking, but I know that they have hated that for years. Anytime I have reposted something, it's gotten next to no impressions. A trick. If you have an old post, okay. And you do get somebody to share it, it will get your posts going again. Uh, from a standpoint, um, uh, kind of a pro tip there. All right. So we're kind of at, at time here. Um, uh, Sarah Noel block, uh, Noel, sorry, Sarah Noel block. Um, great to have you on. And I know that, uh, when people search for you, they need to search for your full name. Um, but what are some, some good ways to get in contact with you? I know you have another podcast out there. What are some ways that people could find you and get in contact with you and maybe talk a little bit about some of the services you offer. That'd be great. Yeah. So you can listen to my show, the tiny marketing podcast, and that's everywhere where I talk about lean marketing for zero to two person marketing departments. And you can go to my website, Sarah Noel block.com and we'll do slash unknown. And that'll take you to all of my links. I hang out

on LinkedIn, but right there, you'll find everything you need. Oh, offers. Yeah. If you went to work with me, you can join the tiny marketing club, which is piloting right now. And you will get one-to-one and group service. So you will get the strategies and, and systems that you need to build your own, um, lean marketing strategy that will make selling really, really easy, honestly. Well, awesome. No, I am starting a small business coaching program as well. So, um, maybe we can, uh, have you a guest on to, to, to talk about some of that stuff. Um, you know, uh, I think what you're saying certainly resonates. Uh, if you like Sarah's approach, please reach out to her and engage her, um, Sarah, thank you so much for your time, uh, and being on. Thanks for having me until the next time. Bye-bye for now.