223. 5 Content Trends To Leverage In 2023 To Grow Your Business

If you do not have a YouTube channel today, you better think about getting one. That's where your prospects are digesting a lot of their content too. And the reason, the number one reason, there should only be one reason I have to convince you to be to have a YouTube channel. It's the second largest search engine in the world only to its parent Google. So why wouldn't you have a YouTube channel?

Hey, welcome back to Bullp Sessions. My name is Andy Neary and this is episode 223.

All right, today we are going to talk about the top five content trends for 2023. So if you're one of my faithful insurance advisors, listening in. Number one, thank you for taking the time to listen in. Two, if you're getting a lot of value out of these episodes, feel free to pass it along to your peers. And don't forget to go and leave a good rating. A five star rating always helps. So today we're gonna talk about the top five trends for content in 2023. Now, some of these trends come from my own research. I follow a lot of good platforms out there, like Think Media when it comes to creating good YouTube content. And just in a lot of my own research, some of the trends I'm seeing for this year I wanted to pass along to you. Now, a couple of these are actually my opinion. Cause I know what's worked for us, what's worked for our clients, and I wanted to pass them on to you as far as it goes for creating content. Now, before I get into the top five, tre.

Let'S level set. If I have to convince you right now that you need to create content in 2023, you're in trouble. You know, when I look at where we are right now in the sales profession, especially in the insurance industry, guys, everything is, everything has changed. It's not going back to the way it was. You know, I was just having this conversation with a client of mine who's reading the book Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blunt from Sales. Groovy. Awesome book. But I said, I asked him, I said, what year was that book written? He said, 2015. I said, okay, have they put an addendum in the book that tells you how to sell when a pandemic hits? No, Everything's changed now. There's still some principles and books like that that'll stand the test of time. I get it, they're phenomenal books. But my point is everything has changed over the last two years. And if your methodology of connecting with your prospects hasn't you're in deep trouble. And again, in the insurance industry, I see a lot of advisors who are pouting. They're almost stomping their foot like a child, waiting for it to come back to the way it was. It is not. If you truly believe things are gonna go back to the way they were, you're no different than the CEO of Nokia, the CEO of Blockbuster, who thought things would never change. I still remember the famous quote from the CEO of Nokia when they finally had to call it quits. He said, you know what? We did nothing wrong, but we still lost. That's right. You're doing nothing wrong right now. But if you're not adapting to how we create content today, to how we prospect, you're going to lose.

So let's talk about the top five trends for 2023. If you want to create content that resonates with your prospects, if you want to create content that leads to business opportunities, number one.

Video is still king.

If you're not creating video content, I think you're missing a huge opportunity right now. Now, I know for a lot of you, for if you're listening in, you might be hesitant just with the thought of video. We have clients who don't like creating video. Just the thought of hitting record makes them freeze. It makes them.

Get so nervous, they get robotic. I get it. But my challenge is to get better, put the reps in practice, do the work when no one's looking. Because video is one of the best ways for you to give your prospects education.

A good feel for your personality. And it's the quickest way to get a prospect to know you and like you before they've ever met you. So video is still king. And if you're not creating video content right now.

For your prospects, you're making a mistake. In my opinion, you're missing a huge opportunity. And, oh, by the way, a little nugget with videos. Vertical videos are going to be a good trend in 2023. So if you think about a lot of the videos that you see out on LinkedIn today, they're in what is known as the landscape format, the 1920 by 1080.

The vertical videos are gaining a lot of traction. I know when I post some of my vertical videos, which are the Tall, Tall, Narrow, they're getting a lot of good traction right now on LinkedIn. I just had a couple last, last month that got 3,4000 views that wouldn't have gotten any kind of viewership like that a year ago. So vertical videos are a really good Video to create. So if you think about your phone, if you do content with your phone, it's just putting your phone on, on the, on the portrait, the tall here, the vertical. Just create videos like that. That's a big trend right now. Trend number two, be authentic, be real. I know this is going to irk a lot of you advisors listening in. You want to be the subject matter expert. You want to be perfect, right? You want to have the perfect editing of every video. Nobody wants to anymore. They want you. They want you to be real. They want you to be authentic. And yeah, that, that even includes that CEO CFO you're trying to go after. They just want you to be human. So ditch the subject matter expertise.

For letting us get to know the real you. You don't need to hide behind a suit and a tie and the perfect hair, haircut. Just be you. Educate me. Be raw, be real. Be authentic. That is going to be a tough one for you to digest, but it is what is working today. One of the best things you can do if you want to create video, don't think about the editing, just thinking. Think about hitting record and stop and post. That's what people want these days.

So trend number two is be authentic and be real. And if you can combine it with trend number one, doing it on video, you're gonna have a hell of a formula for good content this year. So be authentic, be real. Trend number three.

Something we call searchable content. Create searchable content. What do I mean?

I want you to think about all the questions your prospects and clients have about what you sell, all the objections they have, all the hesitations they have. I want you to literally think about them going to the Google search feature, typing in a question and hitting search, because that's the content you should be creating.

I was at a workshop recently as a member of the Brand Builders Group, and Rory Vaden, one of the founders of Brand Builders Group, said something that was so damn good. He said, ditch clever for clear.

So many of you want to be clever when it comes to your content. Just be clear.

Especially when it comes to your communication.

Being in the health insurance industry, it's very easy to be clever with the way you communicate, to use words and phrases you understand. But guess what? Your prospects don't have a clue what you're saying. So ditch clever for clear and create content they're looking for. I'll give you a quick example. We have a client in the commercial insurance space and he sells commercial captives. So guess what? His first piece of content is Going to be here in 2023. Yep, you got it. What is a commercial insurance captive? A prospect might go and type that into a Google search. That's the type of content you want to create. By the way, it's not sexy. This is where you're going to hesitate. When you create that kind of content, it's going to seem boring. Cause you know that stuff already. That's the stuff you talk about every day. And most importantly, you're nervous about what your peers are going to think when you create that kind of content. It doesn't matter what they think. What matters is what your prospect thinks.

When we teach our clients how to create good content, we use what we know as the 3e rule. The content has got to be educational, the content has to include empathy, and the content has to be elementary. Educational empathy, elementary. You gotta teach, you gotta put yourself in their shoes, do not speak down at them or over them and communicate in a way a fifth or sixth grader would understand. If you can do those three things, your content will be extremely successful.

So the first three trends, video is still king. Vertical video is gonna be really good this year. Number two, be authentic, be real with your content. Number three, create searchable content. The stuff your prospects are searching for. Number four, if you do not have a YouTube channel today, you better think about getting one. I don't know about you, YouTube is the top place I go to learn every morning for the last five years. I start my morning with a cup of coffee and my YouTube and I am watching educational content for the first half hour of every day. That's where your prospects are digesting a lot of their content too. And the reason, the number one reason, there should only be one reason I have to convince you to be to have a YouTube channel. It's the second largest search engine in the world only to its parent, Google. So why wouldn't you have a YouTube channel? Again? I know why you hesitate. I'm hearing it from the agency principals already. YouTube, it's for the hacks. You know, it's a bunch of kids creating fancy content. Yeah. It's also where a CFO or an HR director goes and says, why the hell are my health insurance rates going up so much? Maybe they want to watch a 10 minute video on how to fix their health insurance cost. Wouldn't it just make sense to watch a video from you? So again, if you're poo pooing the thought of having a YouTube channel, you're missing a huge opportunity. And again, I hear the large firms the big boys in the industry saying, no, we can't control the content. Then again, you are missing a huge opportunity and you're shutting off a huge opportunity from your producers.

So if you do not have a YouTube channel, YouTube is huge. We are going all in on YouTube this year. We just changed our channel from an Andy Neary branding channel to complete game consulting and we are going all in on YouTube now. Trend number five.

This one's going to be tough to hear. Trend number five for content in 2023 is broaden your reach by going narrow. Huh? What the hell do you mean by that, Andy?

You want to create content that's locked in on the right prospect, content that drives business. Get known for one thing.

Quit trying to talk to everybody. Quit trying to create all different kinds of content. Become known for one thing.

Our content I'm sharing with you in this very episode is all around marketing, especially marketing in the insurance industry. The client I just referenced earlier, all his content is going to be around insurance captives.

What is the one thing you want to become known for this year? Maybe it's self funding, maybe it's captives, maybe it's direct primary care reference based pricing. And again, this is supposing you are one of my health insurance advisors listening in. But if you're not, if you're in sales of any kind, what is it you want to become known for? And just go to town on becoming known for that.

It's one of the questions we ask our clients when we work with them early on in the process. What do you want to become known for? Because if you try to speak to everyone, you speak to no one. A vanilla message gets listened to by nobody. Vanilla messages fall on deaf ears.

In fact, you want to imagine you're hitting the people over your prospects over the head repeatedly in the same spot with a hammer. Because you're talking about the same message over and over and over again. And I get this a lot from clients, Andy. I feel like I'm repeating myself all the time. Yeah, you are. Because you want to become known for one thing. So that's trend number five. If you want to broaden your reach, go narrow. Quit talking about or trying to talk about so many different things. The less you talk about, the better. You'll become known for those. And the more of a subject matter expert, you'll become known for those. So Those are the five trends for 2023. Number one, content is or video is king. You have to do video if you want to establish a good content strategy. Number two, be authentic be real. Quit trying to be perfect. Nobody wants a subject matter expert anymore. They just want to see you, the human. Number three, create searchable content. We don't need the sexy stuff. Ditch clever for clear. Just create clear content that teaches your prospects. Remember the 3e rule? Educational empathy. Elementary. Number four, highly consider getting a YouTube channel this year so you can become even more searchable. And number five, broaden your reach by going narrow. Quit trying to talk about everything under the sun. Become known for one thing. If you do those five things this year with content, your team's gonna hit it out of the park. I promise you. We're doing it at Complete Game Consulting every day, and it's working. We've been able to grow a business. We grew. We're gonna end up growing almost 80% in 2022 without spending one ad dollar or making one cold call. And it's because of our content. You can do the same thing. And you know what happens when you mix clarity with confidence. You do magical things, my friend. And content is going to allow you to do those magical things in 2023. Have a beautiful weekend.