Category Archives: Content Strategy

Auto Added by WPeMatico

AI, Analytics & Content Strategy: Andy Crestodina on the Future of Digital Marketing

AI, Analytics & Content Strategy: Andy Crestodina on the Future of Digital Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch welcomes Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media Studios, to explore the rapidly changing world of digital marketing. Andy shares practical insights on using AI for content strategy, analytics, and website optimization—while emphasizing the enduring importance of quality, relationships, and human creativity. The discussion covers everything from AI-powered audience simulations to the evolving role of SEO, and how marketers can cut through the noise to focus on what really matters.

About the Guest

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media Studios, a top-rated digital agency in Chicago. A recognized authority on content strategy, SEO, and web analytics, Andy is celebrated for his ability to make complex marketing topics accessible and actionable. He’s the author of “Content Chemistry,” a sought-after speaker, and a regular contributor to leading marketing publications. Andy’s hands-on approach and innovative thinking have made him a trusted guide for marketers navigating digital transformation.

Actionable Insights

  • The future of marketing will involve testing content and strategies with AI-generated audience personas before launching to the real market.
  • AI’s biggest long-term value is improving quality and performance, not just efficiency or cost-savings.
  • Human relationships, creativity, and high-touch service will always set great brands apart from “good enough” automation.
  • Content that stands out will be driven by strong points of view, original research, collaboration, and highly visual formats.
  • The SEO landscape is shifting: informational content will see less traffic from search, while commercial intent and “visit website” keywords remain essential.
  • LinkedIn newsletters and platform-native content are quickly outpacing traditional SEO for B2B visibility.
  • Marketers should use analytics for actionable insights—such as CTA performance, video engagement, and conversion rates—rather than generic dashboards or reporting.
  • AI can help uncover hidden data trends and quickly transform insights into new campaign ideas, but quality still requires human oversight and creativity.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

  • 01:10 – AI Personas and the Future of Marketing
    Andy predicts marketers will soon use AI-generated “synthetic audiences” to test ideas before launch.
  • 03:30 – Focus on Quality, Not Just Efficiency
    Why the real opportunity is in improving performance, not just saving time.
  • 05:48 – The Limits of AI in Design
    Where automation can help creative teams—and where pixel-perfect service still matters.
  • 09:39 – Content Creation: AI vs. Originality
    The danger of “good enough” content and why strong opinions and research win.
  • 11:21 – SEO’s Shifting Role
    How commercial-intent keywords and platform-native content are now the best route to visibility.
  • 15:40 – Analytics That Matter
    Andy’s favorite ways to use GA4 and AI for real business insights, not just reports.
  • 21:06 – The Coming Age of Automated Client Interactions
    Imagining a near future where AI agents help qualify leads, prep sales teams, and remove friction where clients want it.

Pulled Quotes

“AI’s real value isn’t just efficiency. It’s about pushing performance and improving quality.”
— Andy Crestodina

“Content strategy is about to have a great moment—as the tide goes out, strong opinions, research, and collaboration will stand out even more.”
— Andy Crestodina

John Jantsch (00:01.346)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Andy Crestodina. He’s a recognized authority in digital marketing, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media Studios and an influential voice on content strategy, SEO and website optimization. With two decades of hands-on experience, Andy is known for breaking down complex marketing tactics into practical, actionable steps, my kind of guy.

He’s a sought after speaker and the author of content chemistry and a regular contributor to leading industry publications. So Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Crestodina (00:38.136)

Thanks for having me, John. Glad to be here.

John Jantsch (00:39.438)

We have known each other about each other, whatever the definition is for many years. and I just discovered this the first time you’ve been on my show. So why don’t you come back like weekly now.

Andy Crestodina (00:45.259)

Mm-hmm.

Andy Crestodina (00:51.896)

I would never say no. I’d hang out with you all day, John, if I could.

John Jantsch (00:56.469)

So let’s, let’s jump into AI. mean, what the heck? What are we 41 seconds in? Where do you see it making the biggest real world impact for marketers today? I know that’s a pretty big question.

Andy Crestodina (01:02.583)

Mm-hmm.

Andy Crestodina (01:10.924)

No, I think about it a lot. I think that probably the future of marketing is lowering risk and cost by building synthetic members of a target audience and then testing content, pages, calls to action strategies with that AI persona. So, Sims, like running little, making a thing and getting feedback on it before you put it in the market, because I think it’s likely, it seems to me that we’ll look back at this era and say,

Wow, super primitive. You used to just make a thing and make it live and hope for the best and check it later. Probably not in the future. We’ll do it in a bit more sophisticated way.

John Jantsch (01:50.894)

That’s really interesting. You know, I hadn’t really thought about that, that idea, because I think so many people are focused on automations and efficiencies and getting rid of people, you know, even. But, I mean, you’re obviously, I mean, I, I’m really of the camp that it’s going to change some things around in terms of people, but I think it also is, you know, they’re already seeing it creating some demand in some areas for people.

Andy Crestodina (02:03.186)

No. Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:18.946)

that didn’t exist before. is the concern that, was it Sam Altman that said like 95 % of marketing or white collar jobs will be gone in five years?

Andy Crestodina (02:25.953)

Yeah.

You

Andy Crestodina (02:33.066)

Yeah, I think there’s, I’m going to stay out of the prediction game and wondering, but, I’ll tell you what I’m here for and have been from the beginning and you too, it’s, don’t, I don’t wake up in the morning hoping to save 10 minutes or half an hour. I want to do great work. I want to see the performance of that work. I want to know that I’m, that I’m doing quality work. I want to see the, the feedback and the performance of everything in the data.

So really everything I’ve ever done with AI, and this is hundreds of experiments, half by day on Saturday was building a custom GPT and testing it. But everything that I’ve done is really just been about trying to improve quality. And if it turns out to be faster, that’s lovely. But what we’re all trying to do is to drive an outcome. So I think a lot of marketers are overemphasizing efficiency and speed.

John Jantsch (03:09.026)

Yeah.

Andy Crestodina (03:30.641)

and missing big opportunities to use it to push performance.

John Jantsch (03:36.002)

Yeah. one of the, ironically, one of the, think one of the enemies of quality is that we got so much on our plate, right? And I think that even quality relationships, I mean, I’m finding that if there’s a lot of stuff that had to be done, but let’s face it, it was grunt work, you know, that had to be done. And I do think that some people are feeling like, Hey, if I get that off my plate, it kind of frees my head up. And, know, even like I say, for, for more relationship building and

I think that’s where quality is gonna come from, isn’t it?

Andy Crestodina (04:06.762)

Absolutely. So it will give you a free hand to work harder on those, you know, the conversations you’re having, prioritizing offline experiences, being part of communities, you know, just taking care of the people around you. But the one thing that I’ve been doing with a lot, and this was my very last call, talking to a client.

looking for opportunities to make these pages better, stronger, faster, more detailed and comprehensive. It’s for a higher ed program. And we just gave Chad to PT the persona and gave it the page and said, we’re looking to make this a more comprehensive page. Give us ideas. The very first idea was fantastic. It’s like, which program is right for you. What? Wait, how? And the meeting sort of paused. Like everyone kind of held their breath for a second and asked, like, did we not?

do that? Wait, we didn’t do that. Why didn’t we do that? And there were several others, like three or four things. Yeah, so AI-powered gap analysis is one of my favorite things, but they’re always best discovered through relationships and real-world human conversation.

John Jantsch (05:10.221)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:17.304)

So a lot of orbit media’s work is or has been designed or at least design was an element of it. How do you feel about the design creative process right now? I think there’s a lot of people trying to create tools that can automate a lot of things in that space. Where do you, do you, do you feel like, mean, there’s, there’s some really awful stuff coming out through that. mean, how do you feel about that space right now, where it is today and where you see it going?

Andy Crestodina (05:23.522)

Mm-hmm.

Andy Crestodina (05:40.792)

Yeah.

Andy Crestodina (05:48.226)

Well, design for interactive is a kind of a turning point happening now because these tools like Figma, where you’re designing it somehow in a context where it’s already responsive and the front end programming for things that web teams are building is sort of half done. Now, kind of like writing or image generation, the code generated by AI still requires a lot of review. No one’s just grabbing it and assuming it’s all

perfect, it’s not. So there’s a big gain there in the handoff between designers and programmers, but not, you know, there’s still plenty of work to do. The other one I think is in design. What do you hire? What do you get when you hire a web company? Partly you want service, you want someone to listen to you, you want accountability, you want a thought partner and you want pixel perfection. I don’t think AI is there. don’t think that if you, brands big and small.

want to work with designers to get the thing to look just like they want it to look. The state of AI for UX, it all feels like these long shot prompts. It’s just like, hope something good comes back and you can’t really ask it to fine tune. It’s just creating another one each time. don’t know. So design for simple things, design direction, great, but not for pixel perfection.

John Jantsch (07:19.054)

I’m going to question how much of the market actually wants or understands pixel perfection. mean, aren’t there isn’t there a significant amount of the market that’s like, that’s good enough.

Andy Crestodina (07:29.836)

I’m sure there is. It’s not mostly our audience. I had a 40 minute call with a client about how this circle, the brand is everything. And the edge of the circle needs to be a little bit closer to the edge of the box on both mobile and desktop. There are still lots of people who want their fingerprints on their design. I understand that. I don’t think that.

John Jantsch (07:30.894)

Yeah.

Andy Crestodina (07:56.094)

Visitors care that much about the number of pixels between the circle and the edge of the box but so yeah, if you’re looking for good enough or a great start or here’s the You know a giant step in the in a good direction. It’s awesome but but people really do like service and there’s a Special thing that happens like you said about relationships, you know when creative teams work together to solve problems with clients and and leaders

John Jantsch (08:26.348)

Yeah, I I personally, again, I wouldn’t put myself out there as being on the front line of image creation or whatnot with some of the tools, but some of the stuff I’ve done with it, I mean, every now and then it’s like, yeah, that’s okay. And then every now and then it’s just like, that’s like, that person has no face. How can I use that?

Andy Crestodina (08:43.96)

It’s changing fast. It’s changing fast. Image generation. I sort of wish I could go back and I would have put in the same prompt every month just to sort of see the evolution of it because it’s improving quickly. But yeah, don’t look too closely at hands. Text is still a problem. It’s getting much, much better. But halfway through here at 2025, there are long shot prompts, let’s be honest.

John Jantsch (09:00.696)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:11.618)

Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of maybe that’s good enough, let’s talk about content creation. I think a lot of people, that was probably the first use case for many people is, look, this can write this blog post for me. I think a lot of people are starting to find out that that’s just not going to cut it. In fact, there, you know, I won’t go as far as saying the old Google penalty thing, but I think that they’re being penalized in the eyes of everything that’s reading the content today.

Andy Crestodina (09:39.762)

Yeah, I don’t see a reason to write an article, to publish an article if AI can create it because your target audience can write that same prompt and get that same article. That’s in fact the last thing you should publish. So for the duct tape marketing audience and fans of yours and people who read my stuff, I think it should be obvious that the difference between AI generated, just garbage and

John Jantsch (09:45.356)

Yeah.

Andy Crestodina (10:05.72)

quickly made stuff in medium quality or the boring taste like water articles. And strong points of view, original research, deep content, like taking a stand, collaborative formats like we’re doing now. This stuff is going to be even more different in the future. I think that content strategy is going to have a great moment here as the tide goes out and all these marketers just look like it becomes really clear.

No one’s ever going to read that again. Whoever’s byline that was just lost reputation. So yeah, strong opinion, original research, collaborative formats, highly visual content. These will feel more different than ever. So it’s like influencers and video. These things will be, I think, more effective in the future than even they are today.

John Jantsch (11:00.76)

So as I listen to describe that, you know, the old game used to be, I mean, content and SEO or search visibility, certainly we’re very married together. And as I listen to you describe that, mean, it really, I mean, is keyword ranking just not really a thing anymore? It’s not important anymore?

Andy Crestodina (11:21.353)

Thank you for asking that. I’m seeing so much about this and I’m really excited to give this answer. Everyone needs to separate in their minds these two types of key phrases. People looking for answers are looking for articles. AI overviews will kind of give that person the answer. Click through rates to content marketing for search optimized articles will decline forever. It has been for five years anyway. commercial intent key phrases, what the buyer searches for.

Visit website intent key phrases. There’s still tons of them. Separate in your analytics blog posts from your sales pages and then check the changes to traffic and then check the changes to rankings and click through rates and engagement because people who are making big decisions want to look at a website. They’re going to click through it no matter what Google puts in their way.

John Jantsch (12:10.06)

Yeah, I think one of the pieces of that puzzle is that they’re still getting, in many cases, even this long drawn out, you know, long tail phrase is still being provided in increasingly AI overviews. And so the game then becomes like, okay, I’ve already filtered. I’m not going to go look 10 places. I’m going to maybe pick one or two of these. So, so the game then becomes showing up in those AI overviews or whatever that looks like. is there a different approach to that?

Andy Crestodina (12:29.464)

For sure. Again, perfect question, John. I love this conversation. There’s more to content than search. I see these posts. I don’t have time to respond to them all. I’m not in it to like start a food fight, but content marketing is dead.

Because of SEO, that was your only channel. Is that all you ever thought it was about? So this is my number one B2B marketing strategy for content today is of course the LinkedIn newsletter. It was, okay, I’ve been doing it like now for like five years, but the visibility of my content is literally 10 times what it ever was before. How’s that possible? Because I decided it was, you know, a sensible time to build on rented land, you know, because I, I saw this, the, the change is coming and adapted my strategy.

Because I’m now partnering with Big Tech, Google is not in business to help SEOs. But LinkedIn is in business to help content creators and publishers grow an audience on their platform. So no, our typical articles now get literally 10 times the visibility that they ever got before, even though click-through rates from search are down and declining. it doesn’t bother me a bit.

John Jantsch (13:49.346)

Yeah, of course, anyone who’s not familiar with your work, will say that part of, I think part of the reason, of course, consistency that you’ve provided, but also, mean, your articles go in, I mean, they’re basically master classes. And so, you know, I think that that certainly has something to do with the reason that you’re getting so much exposure is it’s just terribly valuable.

Andy Crestodina (14:12.588)

That means so much to me coming from you. Thank you, John. But hopefully then that reinforces the point about writing things by hand. I I include contributor quotes in every article. There’s almost no scroll depth at any article in which you can’t see something like a visual or screenshot or video. I do lots of original research. They’re carefully constructed, like very, very structured pieces with bullet lists and subheads and internal linking and…

And I’ve learned from people like you, like going way back to like, just be super direct and concise and get right to the point and eliminate, you know, omit needless words. You get it.

John Jantsch (14:52.62)

Well, I haven’t mastered that one yet, but ask, ask anyone who’s edited my, well, I had an editor one time that, on one of my books that said, you know, chapter is great, but it starts with a whole lot of throat clearing. I always remembered that one of my favorite quotes. So you do have been doing a lot. And I think that you just, you enjoy this, the getting into the data. You’ve been doing a lot with analytics.

Andy Crestodina (15:07.448)

I’ve been there. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:21.886)

and you know, maybe even suggesting that new ways to look at data, new, key indicators that maybe we haven’t been taught to look at what’s, what are some of your favorite kind of new ways that you think we ought to be looking at the data? Should we be able to unearth it?

Andy Crestodina (15:40.578)

Well, some of the most important insights waiting for you, literally sitting there just a few clicks away in GA4 are not the most visible. Like you got to go kind of build the thing. Yeah, it takes a minute. Some examples of useful metrics. What is it, or questions to ask and find the answer, then form hypotheses and take action. What is the click through rate on the call to action?

John Jantsch (15:50.166)

Right. Nothing’s very visible in JFR.

John Jantsch (16:04.888)

Right.

Andy Crestodina (16:10.624)

on your most on your key pages. You gotta make a path exploration, takes a few minutes. You gotta learn how to do that. That’s fine. How does embedding video change the engagement rate on articles? Are there URLs on your website that load with page not found as the title tag? What is the difference in conversion rates for visitors on mobile versus desktop?

John Jantsch (16:29.902)

Thank

Andy Crestodina (16:38.934)

Which of your articles is inspiring visitors to subscribe to your newsletter? Which URLs on your site have declining search traffic? We said a second ago. Are they sales pages? Are they everything? Or is it mostly just your content and articles and guides? These are all extremely useful things to know that can guide strategy and budgets. What’s the output from those calories burned? It’ll tell you.

But you got to know where to look. I don’t do almost any reporting in Google Analytics. I don’t build dashboards. I don’t just go look at it for its own sake, but I do analysis every day.

John Jantsch (17:19.734)

How much are you taking what might be raw data or at least what you can get out of GA4 and just taking it to AI and say, ask me questions?

Andy Crestodina (17:30.986)

there’s one or two use cases that you almost can’t do without AI. For example, if you make a report that shows traffic to your thank you pages and then add a secondary dimension for date plus time, export that and AI will make a chart for you showing which day of week people become leads. There is no Tuesday in GA4, but if you give that report to AI, it’ll show you. You can have it make a heat map matrix that show what time of day and day of week.

In a colorful little chart, people become leads, people subscribe to your newsletter, people watch videos, anything, any action, any event. So date plus time was useless to me before AI.

John Jantsch (18:12.13)

Yeah, that’s interesting. The, the, one of the things that I think AI is quite good at, you know, it’s basically a mathematician, right? So I think it’s quite good at, at analytics and finding stuff that you’re, I mean, it also sometimes makes huge mistakes. But I think that stuff you couldn’t even see with your own eyes, I think it really can, can surface pretty quickly, can it?

Andy Crestodina (18:34.828)

Yeah. And then John, the next step. you know, find for me the campaigns that had the highest engagement rates. Okay. It looks at 200 campaigns and finds these ones had highest engagement rates. Now craft 10 new campaigns based on those. The next step after the analysis, that’s why AI is really special. It’s because, you you could just immediately go from insight to action, or at least brainstorming.

John Jantsch (18:55.052)

Mm. Right.

John Jantsch (19:03.414)

Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. So where’s the noise that you think people ought to be tuning out? The buzzwords, the whatever agentic of the day is.

Andy Crestodina (19:14.968)

So in analytics, I’m exhausted by reporting and love analysis. In SEO, I’m exhausted by the SEO is dead or content is dead, but I love being discovered for commercial intent key phrases. In AI,

John Jantsch (19:25.421)

Yeah.

Andy Crestodina (19:41.826)

Boy, that’s a really just, you’re asking a really fun question. I believe that the responses are not nearly as good unless you have really like a conversation with it, that you’re chatting with it, that you give it lots more inputs, including personas, and that you are not just having it make stuff for you. I’m exhausted by the write this thing for me. I’m really excited by and motivated by the, what are the gaps in this?

What else could this do? Give me 10 ideas. How could this be better? So I think there’s shifts in every category and that there’s, you know, do this stuff long enough and you realize like, actually the fun stuff’s right over there.

John Jantsch (20:25.39)

So I know you don’t want, or you mentioned that you didn’t really want to be seen as like the crystal ball, but on, some of this stuff, but how far away are we from the idea where a client or a prospect is going to take an action on our website. And that’s going to trigger for agents to do certain things on our behalf and, know, maybe even have a conversation with that person and, and really

You know, there’s an element of removing humans from the entire interaction. I how far away are we from that? Or do you think that buyer behavior will dictate that we never go there?

Andy Crestodina (20:57.462)

Hmm.

Andy Crestodina (21:06.84)

I can easily imagine a CRM set up where when there’s a new lead that it goes and researches this person and brand and then takes the first step toward potentially disqualifying them and then handling some kind of automated conversation saying like, thanks for reaching out. We probably don’t fit, know, but maybe check out these other things instead. Here’s some alternatives. Here’s some, you know, possible providers.

But if the, but the sort of lead scoring thing, if it works, then it builds a whole guide. It does a bunch of research for you. looks at Dun & Bradstreet or checks out their LinkedIn profile. And then the rep gets this sort of like little coaching session with AI on how to talk to this prospect. And so again, that’s exactly what you said a few minutes ago, where is it going to make us more efficient in it by setting aside like these low quality leads and help us prioritize relationships?

John Jantsch (21:49.294)

Yeah.

Andy Crestodina (22:05.324)

by helping us really prep for this really high stakes conversation. there’s a bunch of little uses for AI in there, but yeah, probably every lead should have an appended little sales guide that goes with it with the six questions you should likely ask based on what’s happened with them in the news and who you’re talking to and what likely challenges are.

John Jantsch (22:24.876)

Yeah. And I think that that’s really going to be the key is we’ll remove friction where clients want friction removed, right? They want to do their own research. Maybe they want to get their own pricing, you know, things like that. We’ll remove that friction, but then we’ll get really smart at where do they, where do they actually crave human interaction? You know, not necessarily need it, but, want it. and I think it’s that sort of beautiful combination that is going to always be the tight wires.

Andy Crestodina (22:42.328)

and move around.

Andy Crestodina (22:51.944)

I think so. think that’s making people feel special, listening, showing them you care. I said it about design a bit ago, certainly in service. I’m not, I’m never going to stop caring and talking to people in my days like today. Eight meetings back to back. Love it. I’ll take it. I don’t mind a bit. I’m energized by these and conversations just like this one, John.

John Jantsch (23:02.616)

Yeah, awesome.

John Jantsch (23:17.506)

Well, awesome. Well, let’s not make it 20 years to the next time. Let’s have you back much sooner than that. Again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by. Is there anywhere you want to invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work?

Andy Crestodina (23:30.516)

LinkedIn, the blue button says follow, but if you find the menu and go to connect with me and just say, Hey, heard you on duct tape. I’d be more than happy to connect. And then we can, have an interaction and we can prioritize relationships and take care of each other. And that’s what this is about.

John Jantsch (23:48.462)

Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you soon out there on the road.

Andy Crestodina (23:54.21)

Thanks, John.

Content is More Than Blog Posts – It’s the Voice of Strategy

Content is More Than Blog Posts – It’s the Voice of Strategy written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch on Content as the Voice of Strategy

Content’s been around a long time, we’ve been talking about it for more than a decade. A lot of people still treat it as just another tactic, and think of it as a blog post here or social media update there. In reality, you can’t do much in your marketing efforts without a serious, strategic approach to your content. I’ve even started referring to content as the voice of strategy.

It may eventually be your emails, blog posts, and social updates, but it needs to have a more intentional approach behind it. How you use content to guide the customer journey is very significant. That’s why every business owner needs to tackle some core content elements before moving onto things like blog posts and podcast episodes that will populate your editorial calendar. You must start with using content to communicate your strategy in all elements of your online presence.

Let’s Start with an Example

To help you understand what this all means, I’d like to start with an example of a client we were working with. They were a lawn service company that already had a lot going for them. They had great processes, a well-trained team of professional folks, and customers who loved them. So our issue wasn’t about trying to establish them as better than the competition—they were already clearly hitting that mark on their own.

Our role was to make sure that everyone who visited their website or encountered their business on the internet knew they were the most trusted resource for someone looking for lawn care services.

So we started with their core message. We came up with clever messaging that communicated the idea that you’re gonna love to come home on mowing day. But we also wanted to incorporate all of the specifics about what made them a great service provider (a stellar team, the best communication, a top-notch system for delivering service). How could we empower them to be more than just a provider of lawn care services and instead become a resource for information about anything and everything a homeowner might want to know on the topic?

Once we had honed in on what we were hoping to achieve with our messaging, then we could get specific about the type of content we wanted to produce. And it’s not always about creating more content, it’s about creating the right content.

Go Back to Basics

It all starts with that core message and story. If you don’t have that locked down and clearly communicated on your homepage, if you don’t have the core pages on your website, if you don’t have a basic video, if you aren’t getting customer reviews then you’re missing the foundations of content marketing. You need to start with these before you dive into podcasting and webinars and other elements.

Storytelling

Storytelling should be at the heart of all your content. The concept of storytelling has become a hot topic in marketing circles over the past few years. If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to telling your business’s own story, it’s a good idea to build your story around these five points. You need to open up a dialogue with your customers:

1. Ask:Does this problem sound familiar to you?” Your customers aren’t interested in what you sell, they’re interested in the problems you solve. You need to be able to communicate that you understand their underlying problem.

2. Tell them:It’s not your fault.” It’s important for your business to show empathy for your clients. Acknowledge that you understand their problem, but that it’s not their fault they’re experiencing it.

3. Ask: “What if your problem was solved?” Next, paint a picture of what life could look like if your client’s problem went away.

4. Tell them the good news: “It can look like that!” Now’s the time to present yourself as the solution to their problem. After all, your brand understands the issue and is here to fix it.

5. Present them with a call to action. Once you’ve addressed the four points above, your prospect should feel pretty convinced that you get what they’re up against and have the solution they need. That’s when you come in with the call to action for them to reach out and speak to you about solving their issue.

Write out the story for your own business. It might take two pages or two paragraphs, but get it down on paper. From there, you can refine it and develop your core marketing messaging around it. Create a core statement for your homepage. Film a core video that addresses the points above. The homepage should be all about communicating this core story and building prospects’ trust in your knowledge and ability.

Core Pages

There are some pages that every business website simply needs to have. This starts with a great homepage. I’ve spoken before about the must-have elements for any homepage, and they include a scrolling journey that lists your services, tells your core story, and has trust-building elements.

Your site should also include individual pages for each of your services or service areas. Too often I see businesses with a great homepage who drop the ball and get vague on the details when it comes to what it is that they actually do. Once you win people over with your core messaging on your homepage, you want to seal the deal with the specifics about your goods or services, and then provide calls to action for them to reach out, schedule an appointment, and become a customer.

Review Funnel

Reviews are an integral part of any business’s online presence. Not only do they help with your ranking on search engines, today’s prospects are more reliant than ever before on the word of existing customers to offer social proof. Your website should have a review funnel for collecting reviews on third party sites like Yelp, Facebook, and Google My Business.

You should also be collecting first party testimonials. This doesn’t have to be an intimidating process; when someone writes you a nice email or letter about their great service, simply ask if they’re okay with you sharing it as a testimonial on your website. Or if you don’t have any kind emails lying around, consider reaching out to some recent customers who were happy with their service—people are often more than willing to say a nice word or two when asked.

The final piece of the review puzzle is writing case studies. Creating an in-depth profile of a happy customer—what their problem was, what your solution was, and what happened after you got involved—is another trust-building element.

Case studies and reviews help potential customers see themselves in those you’ve already helped, and can be a major factor in their decision-making process.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Content

Once you’ve created that foundational content, it’s time for you to turn your attention to those elements on your editorial calendar. Whether you’ve already created an archive of content over the years or are just beginning to strike out into blogging, building your content around hub pages is beneficial for both SEO and customer experience.

Hub pages allow you to rank for the highest intent types of searches and to provide industry expertise that establishes you as a resource for information. They essentially allow you to become like the Wikipedia for your area of expertise. You share a lot of useful content grouped around the subject areas that matter most for your business, and you become a friendly face and guide to your prospects long before you become a service provider.

These hub pages can address questions all throughout the customer journey. Let’s take the example of a basement waterproofing company. When a homeowner is thinking about hiring a waterproofing company, they likely have a lot of questions: How much will the services cost? Do I really need to waterproof my basement? What are the consequences of me not undertaking this home improvement project?

If you can build a page that addresses these early research questions, you get out in front of your competition from the start in prospects’ minds.

Plus, whether this content is already living on your blog or not, the hub pages allow you to structure it in a way that makes it more user-friendly. Rather than having to scroll through your archives and root around for the relevant posts, everything your prospect needs on the topic is right there. This hub page becomes a gold mine of information, so they read multiple articles, share their findings with others, and come back several more times as additional questions arise. This all signals to search engines that your content is highly useful and relevant, and soon enough you’ll see yourself rising in the SEO rankings as a result.

Content may not be king anymore, but it is certainly integral to your strategy. Once you’ve determined what it is that sets your business apart, it’s a solid approach to strategy that gets your messaging out to prospects and clients and helps differentiate you from the competition. Starting with your core storytelling message and moving outward from there is the way to build a content strategy that resonates with prospects and gets results for your business.

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SEMrush.

SEMrush is our go-to SEO tool for everything from tracking position and ranking to doing audits to getting new ideas for generating organic traffic. They have all the important tools you need for paid traffic, social media, PR, and SEO. Check it out at SEMrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing.

Why Problem Solving is the Golden Ticket For Your Marketing Efforts

Why Problem Solving is the Golden Ticket For Your Marketing Efforts written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

People are always going to have problems, so as a marketer or business owner, your job is to solve these problems for your ideal clients. This really is the key to business success.

Here’s the thing, problem-solving is easier said than done. You can’t take this lightly and can’t just go halfway with it because people will always look for better and faster ways to get what they’re looking for.

I’m not going to sit here today and tell you how to build your product, that’s your job, but I am going to give you helpful tips on how to market it.

Why people buy

It never gets easier to hear this, but at the end of the day, people don’t want or care about what you sell. All they care about are that their problems are solved, and your products or services are simply a means to an end.

Some of the most successful and satisfied entrepreneurs I know figured this out early on. They weren’t necessarily after all the fancy bells and whistles that could have come with their products and services at the beginning. Instead, they were obsessive in solving their customer’s problems. Once they figured out how to do that, they could add the “cool” factors.

Your customers don’t often know how to solve their problems, but they often know what those problems are, which is why they are searching for solutions like yours. Show them that you are the answer they are looking for and the experts equipped to make their pain points go away. As a marketer or business owner, that’s really all you need to do. Period.

How to discover problems

Do you have the answers to the following questions (this is a long list, but to truly be effective, you’ll want the answers to each and every one of them):

  • Who are you selling to?
  • What are their goals and dreams?
  • How do they gather information to solve their problems?
  • What are some things that are important to them?
  • Do you know what the biggest unmet need is in your marketplace?
  • What is the biggest pain point your customers experience?
  • How hard have you worked to try to solve their problems in the past?
  • Why is the problem so hard for them to solve?
  • Who else is trying to solve the problem and how are they approaching it?
  • What does success look like to them?
  • What might hold them back from buying a product or service?
  • How do they come to a purchase decision?

To truly get the answers to these questions, and understand them front to back, start your research by sitting down with current customers and simply ask them some of those questions directly.

Additionally, look at online forums and sites they visit and see what they’re talking about, and also take a look at your emails, look at your online reviews, and chat with your sales team to pinpoint common complaints or issues your customers are having. You’d be amazed at the amount of information that can come from those sources.

How to effortlessly include problem-solving in your marketing

Refocus your messaging

Your ideal customer should always be top of mind and it is imperative that your message is directed to them and resonates with them.

They want to see a message that revolves around solving their problems. It should be clear and concise so that they have little doubts as to how you can help them.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to focus on themselves, products, and services in their messaging. It’s important that you scan your content and refocus your message on your customers and the problems they want to be solved.

Create trigger phrases

This is a bit time consuming, but worth it. Break down the solutions you sell and the benefits of what you do. Map these back to what I like to call “trigger phrases.” These should be attention-grabbing statements or questions and should come from the point of view of your customer, not your own.

Develop an attention-grabbing headline

Take a second and write a bold statement that might be the first thing anyone who visits your website will see and test this headline with your ideal clients. Ask them to be honest and details in their feedback.

Online reviews can also provide valuable insight for writing these headlines. They can often write your promise for you.

Be educational and informative in your content

Be helpful with the content you create, even if it doesn’t directly discuss your products or services. Show that you are knowledgeable on the issues they are facing in a variety of formats. Content is essential to any business today so get started on writing blog posts, creating how-tos, recording videos, and so on. Through content, show them that you are experts in the field that will help to make their pain points go away. Providing actionable advice can go a long way.

Make your prospects’ and clients’ lives easier through content upgrades

As part of your lead generation efforts, provide valuable information through content upgrades that people can download by giving at the very least their email address. This allows you to nurture them with additional helpful information down the road, which will continue to remind them that you are there for them and have the answers they are looking for.

Be responsive to comments, emails, and social media

Remember, these channels should not be one-way streets, they should be conversation tools. By responding quickly and providing thorough answers on these platforms, you’re just giving them one more reason to trust you and see you as an authority in your field that has their backs.

Dive deeper than basic keywords

Keyword research is essential for speaking to and getting your audience’s attention, but to really have an impact, go further than the surface level keywords and focus on long-tail keywords to really get targeted and get to the root of their problems.

Personalize your lead generation efforts

While problem-solving in itself will help drive you towards success, to really make an impact in your market, you must be unique and creative in how you solve these problems because everyone in your industry is trying to address the same problems.

Are you focusing on problem-solving in your marketing efforts? Have you seen a change with this type of focus?

How to Fix a Broken Content Strategy

How to Fix a Broken Content Strategy written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Many businesses out there spend the last few months of the year planning their content strategy for the year ahead. They have color-coded spreadsheets completed, goals in the place, and the optimism that the next 12 months are going to be the best yet.

So, let me ask you a potentially awkward question: Are you on track to meet those goals? If the answer is no, don’t worry you are not alone, and there is still plenty of time to not only play catch up but to exceed the goals you originally set.

It’s OK to hit the restart button.

Through analytics and customer feedback, you should have insight into what’s working and what isn’t and should recognize the areas that need improvement.

If you’re stuck on how to turn your content strategy around, here are some tips to help you revitalize it.

Refocus your marketing message

When it comes to marketing these days, you must not only match your message to your ideal client, but you have to engage them and keep their attention as well.

Here’s something I’ve said for years, and will likely say it a few more times: Your clients and potential clients don’t care about your products or services (that’s not supposed to sound as harsh as it likely reads). What they really want is somebody to solve their problems.

If you can pinpoint what those are and succinctly explain how you address and solve those problems within your messaging, then you’ve basically won the golden ticket. Make it clear that you understand what they want and need.

Just remember, your messaging should not be about you.

Knowing your audience front and back will help you across the board when it comes to your content strategy. If you know how to speak to them and know what their trigger phrases are, you’ll be in a great place to move forward and take your marketing efforts to the next level.

Lastly, in addition to speaking to your audience with your messaging, be sure to also aligns it with your business goals, because at the end of the day, reaching those goals is what all of this is for.

Put the “must haves” on your website

When it comes to content revisions, it always surprises me when people don’t think to start with their website, the content hub. The role of your website is to help you:

  • Get found
  • Build trust
  • Educate
  • Inform
  • Nurture
  • Convert

To accomplish the areas above, you need to be sure your website has:

A promise

Add a promise above the fold on your homepage to show visitors that you understand the challenges they face. As mentioned in the previous section, you need to make them a promise that will solve their problems.

A call to action

Your call to action can be a number of things, including a request for more information, schedule a consultation, or download a free report. Just make sure it’s relevant and useful.

Video

In my opinion, this has gone from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” for small business. Video allows you to give people a real sense of who you are, what you stand for, and let people hear your story.

Trust elements

You need to have elements that build trust on your homepage, whether they are logos of current clients or testimonials for your audience to glance over. Make it easy for visitors to see them.

Content and content upgrades

Given the purpose of this blog post, this area should seem pretty obvious. To keep content on your website fresh, post to your blog frequently (have a blog feed on your homepage for easy access).

A content upgrade gives people the ability to download premium content in exchange for an email address or capturing a lead. If they download this content, it shows that they are interested in what you do. Use the information they provide you to nurture them through to the sale.

Core services

You likely have full pages dedicated to these services, but by adding short descriptions and images of each to your homepage as well, that link through to your service pages, you’ll also get additional SEO value.

Create a lead generation content plan

First and foremost, have a plan! So many people just wing it these days which often gets them nowhere. I find it helpful to create a theme for each month that all of your content can revolve around.

Each theme I use has a substantial topic related to my audience’s industry/pain points and represents an important keyword search term.

I also find it helpful to think about the themes as a book where each month represents a chapter in what will eventually make up a body of work by the end of the year.

Provide valuable information and use content upgrades to convert the readers of this information into leads. Try to personalize and add emotional components to your content as much as possible to really establish a connection with a reader. The more they feel that connection, the more likely they’ll be to convert into leads and eventually customers.

Also, keep in mind that you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel with your content. You can share relevant content from other sites on your social platforms to provide value to your audience. You can also repurpose content you already have, so, for example, if you have a podcast episode, transcribe it and turn it into a written blog post.

The more value you can provide on a consistent basis, the better off you’ll be.

Outsource your content

A big reason why content strategy falls through is that people run out of time and don’t end up creating the content they had planned on. Listen to me when I say “outsource that content!”

Of course, you should own your process and strategy but you do not need to create the content yourself. There are plenty of people out there that can do that for you. Some sites you can start with include:

I have a plethora of additional outsourcing tips that you can find here to help you get started.

It’s never too late to turn your content strategy around. Follow these tips, continue to track progress, and keep revising as necessary until you hit your goals.

If you liked this post, check out our Guide to Content Marketing for Small Business.