136. Content That Sells with Peter Butler and Scott Bywater

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Nobody gets talker's block. We all get writer's block. Right. So in terms of the process that, that I use when I talk to clients, you go through and define the topics and then interviewing the builder and taking that away as a transcript. So then everything is very much in your voice with your tone and all that sort of thing. Only made to sound better.

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Peter Butler from Smarter Websites. Peter, welcome to the show.

Okay, good to be on the show, Will.

Great to have you. And we've also got Scott Bywater from Copywriting that Sells. Sorry I got ahead of myself there. Scott. Scott, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks, Will. Great to, Great to be here.

Yeah, very good to have you on. Now, you've both been on the show before and you've been around the APB rewards program for a number of years now, I believe, or at least in the ecosystem, you've decided recently to join forces. And that's why I accidentally had the slip of the tongue there, Scott, and said Content that Sells, because you've got a brand new service that you've packaged up together called Content that Sells. I'm interested to hear more about the concept and why it's important for builders out there. Wants to dive in. Peter, do you want to go first?

Yeah, look, I'll launch off. So Scott and I have actually known each other for 15 years and been working with, in the last couple of years with builders. And so we'll build the website and all the aspects and we need a copywriter. So who's the person for that, Scott? Obviously. And the fact that we're working together all the time, you know, the content that sells was born from that.

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that that's, that's great. And I think the, the other thing, one of the things that really struck me, cause I, I come from a very, you know, direct response sort of based based background. But years ago I read, I read a book called they ask, you answer and he talked about the fact that he was selling swimming pools. But the same principle applies to, to builders that if someone had absorbed 30 or more pieces of content before a sales meeting, the conversion rate jumped up from 10%, which was the industry average, up to 80%. And I think that the reason for that is because people are buying these days very much based on trust and they can do, they're doing a lot of research when they go online. So whereas previously I've been in marketing since the Yellow Pages days and I used to have a client and he would obsess about his Yellow Pages ad every year and that's all he had to do. And if he got that right, then the phones would ring all year round. So things are very different now. Right. Yellow Pages has disappeared and what is the consumer doing? They're going online and they're searching for all sorts of things in relation to building and that's where you really want your content to be.

Peter, you might be able to fill the gaps in here. What, what problem is the builder facing that makes them want to consider content marketing as a service?

Well, a lot of with the builders, it's a geographical based business, all said and done. You know, the geographical areas will vary the circumference of area, but it's local marketing. So there's incredible power with SEO and geographical marketing. Like Google want to showcase business websites. They actually want to, you know, if you went back sort of seven, 10 years, if you googled coffee shop, you could come up with a coffee shop in Turkey. Well, that's really not going to give a good user experience because the, the person's looking for a local coffee shop. So this geographical based SEO is incredibly powerful. So the opportunity for a builder to create content and then with the SEO, it's geographically based. So that's going to show up to people searching for custom home builder renovations in their local area by the suburb name. It is just incredibly powerful opportunity. I mean, I could labor on more about that because everything we do online is to please two entities. There's people and search engines. Yeah. So search engines are going to give us the people and it's the relational aspect of connecting with those people and that's what Scott brings to the party. So the content that we produce is not, it's in your voice and I'll let Scott talk more about that. So it's quite unique about that builder's speciality, their niche, their nuances, all of that. Their voice is within that content.

Yeah. Scott, I'd like your opinion on this because what Peter's talking about is, and I love it, you're talking about the technical side of marketing, online SEO and, you know, getting yourself found when someone searches for a builder in your area. But how does content marketing solve other problems for builders? Scott, from a personal perspective.

Yeah, I think the big thing with builders is often, and we see this with the Sourci report, that a lot of builders rely on word of mouth and referrals to generate their leads. And word of mouth and referrals are, let's face it, one of the best ways to get leads. But where the, where content marketing really comes, comes into it, it's is, it's, it, it does the same, it does a very similar role as what referrals do because you're going in there with trust. So for example, if I, if I, if you write a book Will, and I read that book, I'm going to have a lot more trust. Like, you know, obviously the book that, that Russ and Sky sky have written for apb, I'm going to have a lot more trust after reading that book than if I hadn't read that book. And the same applies with, with blog posts. So if I find you online and I'm like, like you go to Brian Stannards from Stannard Family Constructions to his website and all the blog posts that are on, on his website. If you go there and you read 10 or 20 or 30 of those blog posts, you're far more sold on doing business with him than the guy who's just got a, got a Google Ad.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The barriers are down. It's almost like when somebody meets Ryan for the first time, rather than shake his hand, they want to give him a hug because the content's relational. Yeah, it makes a massive impact.

Well, that comes to another part though, Peter. The Ryan Stanard in particular does video content as well and creates that personal connection through camera.

Yeah, yeah, look, it's a whole other level. And you know, with the content that sells, there's three different levels of packaging, you know, based on activity of what we do and price points to suit the builder. But, you know, Ryan is playing at a very high level and you've really got to admire Ryan's stance. You know, he was sharing with me not so long ago that when Covid hit, rather than cutting his marketing budget, he actually invested more. And he totally owns his space now because you can imagine with Google, you know, there's so many results are showing and if people are cutting their budgets, cutting their activity of new content and all of that? Well, all of a sudden he's sort of taken over on the search page. I can't help by doing hand motions to show that I'm going techy. Sorry. But yeah, so he has totally dominated that space and he's still holding it now because he's consistent in his marketing approach.

I don't want to de. Emphasize the search aspect of content marketing, Peter, because I think it is very important, like you've emphasized there. But, Scott, I'd like to hear your thoughts on what other types of content or aspects of content marketing can have, you know, really powerful effect for builders.

Yeah, I think the whole, the whole key with content marketing is to enter the conversation going on in the customer's mind. And a guy called Robert Collier, who wrote the Robert Collier Letter book, said it years ago, you know, the key to advertising is to enter the conversation going on in people's minds. So this isn't obviously advertising, but it is. It's a different types of type of advertising where we are becoming our own media company. So the key in terms of content, no matter where it is, it doesn't matter if the content is on, is on, you know, Facebook, if it's on Instagram, if it's on a blog post, if it's on LinkedIn, if it's on Twitter, no matter where it is, the key thing is that it actually enters a conversation that's going on in their customer's mind. So right now I've been interviewing, you know, a number of builders and we've here for their content. And one thing at the moment is builders going broke. Right. So you're going to create a blog post specifically about, you know, builders going broke will get, you know, will most likely get a lot of attention because that's something which is front of mind. So in terms of what content is going to work best, the best way to think about this as a builder is what are the questions that you're getting right now, what are the objections, what are the frustrations, all of that sort of thing. Think about those conversations that you're having on a daily basis and bringing those in to your, you know, to your content.

Yeah, look, that's a really good point too, Scott. I just want to share a conversation that I had with, with actually one of our cl. So we built the site, they've got the CRM and so they had been doing a lot of new builds, but their passion's actually in the renovations, extensions, and that's been their sweet spot for many years. We spoke to them about the content marketing. And they were hesitant to push forward. Caught up at a social event. And I sort of reiterated, look, if that's your passion, if that's where you want to drive your business, then that's the content that will be produced. That's the conversations that you'll be having with Scott, you know, bringing that into play. So that, then that content is what's found. And yes, me going techy search engines, but it's also the relational aspect. You know, like I said, we do think for two entities, people, search engines. So, you know, picking up on what you said, Scott, if that's where he wants to drive the business and there's sufficient business in that particular geographical area, then that's the conversations that people will be having and you know, the content will be produced around that. That makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sounds like there's a balance between understanding what the search engines people are finding via search engines and then also more recency factor like Scott, you mentioned in terms of like understanding what your customers are worried about at this particular time.

You know, I'll let Peter take that because he really understands the search engine, the search engine play in depth, which is why we're such a good, a good combination. Yeah, but, but maybe you can just elaborate in terms of how important it is from a, from a search engine perspective, Peter, in terms of the topics and that sort of thing.

Yeah, look, quite often people will ask me about, you know, the keywords and all of that aspect and it's absolutely vital. It's important. But it's more on point that the conversation, the content be conversational, that be on topic, you know, as we've already outlined. So it's almost like the, the if this particular client wants to focus on renovations and extensions or whatever. And once he should be focusing on that being the content marketing aspect, if that's his passion. And then we match up the keywords after the fact because if that's where he wants to drive his business, that's what his content should be about. And we sort the SEO to be in alignment. The SEO is almost secondary to the conversation. Makes sense.

Because a lot of it also depends, Peter, on obviously I go to the page, am I going to stick on the page? You know, am I going to, you know, how long am I going to stay there? And I think the, you know, the importance also of the uniqueness of the content. So it's not going to sound like, like, you know, obviously we've got things like ChatGPT these days and you know, like there's a lot of, you know, which is, is. Is naturally going to create a lot of very average content where you sound like everyone else. So it's really key to ensure that your content as well, is unique and it's based on your, you know, if you've had 20, 30, 40 years in the building industry, then you've got something to say, you've got opinions, you've got views about the way things should be done, about the way they shouldn't be done. And it's really important to get those, get those views across in an, you know, in a, in an authentic way which really resonates and connects with you, you know, with your target audience. I think that's really critical as well because it's like, yeah, like, like there's, there's thousands of books out there. Right. But there's only so many that have stood the test of time. And we want to be applying the same concept with our blog posts and focusing on, you know, on the quality of that while also integrating all the, the search engine optimization to appeal to the, you know, the tech side of things.

Yeah, and look, there's actually something that's sort of big at play there too, Scott. Just picking up on what you're saying, and I think the uniqueness of your interview process and the way you create that content in their voice and you sort of mentioned, you know, authenticity and. Because then when, when the builder is having a conversation with the person. So, okay, so the consumer's there, they've taken in that content, they've digested that, they're starting to get confident, they're opening up and they're getting insight into the knowledge, the experience, all of that. There's a real consistency when they shift from that online realm to the actual face to face conversations and the phone conversations. It's consistent because otherwise it actually shines through. And that's the danger of ChatGPT, because you can input a little bit of data and tell it to create this content, but then there's no connection between the, the actual person, the voice of that person and that content. And, and I can pretty well spot ChatGPT content. You know, there's spoofy words in there, so, you know, having that connection, that authenticity of voice to the content and the conversations is just absolutely important.

Yeah, What I'm hearing you saying is that the content almost accelerates that initial sales conversation. When you actually get to the point of having a conversation, they already know who you are.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The barriers are down, you know, and I'm sure we've all been in positions and especially businesses who, you know, meet people who have had a bad experience because they're walking in the room with their arms closed. Right. You know, they're guarded because of a previous experience. So this is just taking away all of those fears, those concerns. You know, they read the media, they hear the media builders going broke, all of this, these elements. And so it's. What's the term, you know, it's just removing those fears. So they're comfortable, they're confident.

Yeah. And I think in the building industry that's more important, I think, than your, than your average industry, because there is so much skepticism out there in the market. Like before I got involved in the, in the building industry, you would always just hear, yeah. Horror stories and negative things. So if you're going into it with that and you're just seeing a, let's say a Google Ad and then you call the builder, you're naturally going to be guarded. Whereas if, if instead your entry point is, I've read 20 blog posts and, you know, I've. I joined the CRM and I got a whole heap of emails, then you're going to. There's going to be far more trust there. And I learned this, you know, back in. It's actually the way I started my business was for. I wrote an email every weekday, I think, for like for a decade. And that's how I built credibility, built a reputation. I'm pretty sure that's. That's actually how I got Russ on board as a client. Almost be going back probably 17 years ago now, was via, you know, via content and building that trust. And it's amazing. You can, you can sometimes get someone and they've been on your list, like Jackson Digney from Enduro Builders. He was on my list, I think, for, you know, somewhere. It was years anyway, and eventually he reached out and now we've done well, Peter and I have done some great work with him now. So. Yeah, I know content works because. Yeah. And I've done it myself.

Well, testimony. I was on your list for 15 years and we actually knew each other for that amount of time. And then I only met Scott in person about a year and a half, two years ago at an APB Brisbane member dinner event. So I was like, oh, you're much taller than what I knew you to be.

Digital world works in mysterious ways. I'm going to throw it to you, Peter.

Yep.

This is a question we regularly get through our coaching clients and just the builders generally out there. Where do I invest my money when it comes to marketing and where do I start? Because I know there's, there's a bit of a push and pull. It's like, do I create content now? Do I invest in SEO even though I may not see benefits for a period of time there? Or do I put everything into paid advertising? What do I split it up? There's lots of decisions to be made for builders that aren't experienced in marketing.

Yeah, look, a really good question. So, so first let's bring clarity to the content marketing. Because content marketing done effectively. The smarter content that sells methodology is coupled with plug, is coupled with SEO. So, you know, they work together. You know, there's the content, fresh new content and the contents, then SEO'd. And there's also a social media distribution aspect. So it's not only playing the game with Google, but it's, you know, leveraging from, from social media. And we've seen some pretty epic results already. Now the distinction between the content marketing SEO and Google Ads. Google Ads is like a tap. Once it's set up, you can turn it on, you can reduce the spend, turn it off if you've got sufficient leads at will, effectively. Very simplistic explanation. However, if you don't invest sufficiently into Google Ads, then don't play there like, because if your budget is too limited, then you're not going to get the turnaround. You know, we've seen that time and time again where, you know, because there's a, with ads, there's a management fee and then there's an actual Google Ads component. And so if the ads component investment is not sufficient, you're not going to get the results. Now going back to the organic SEO content marketing, it's a longer burn, but it's also got longer legs because you're then going to start ranking for multiple keywords. And this is the thing that people need to understand is that it's not just showing up for random keywords, there's specific keywords, renovations, suburb, name, you know, and it might not be your home page that shows for that search term because it'll be a special page set up for renovations, that suburb. And what happens is that when people go to that page, because that page, if the copywriting is done by Scott or if it's good, then they're going to stay on that page longer. Right? So what happens then? The side spin of that, because they're staying on the page longer, you get brownie points by Google. If they stay on the page longer, they're more likely with a well set up page to click through to another page. Guess what? More brownie points with Google. And so then you're on page one in Google. You might be down the bottom at position eight. And then you climb the search engines, you're at the top for renovations, that suburb. And the aim is to be for renovations in neighboring suburbs as well. So then all of a sudden you've got eight pages on Google for different suburbs. So you're getting more traffic, more visitors, more credibility. And with the content, the relational content marketing, you're establishing that solid relationship with people. So your conversions to calls and actual bookings and consults is going to be higher. That all ties together.

It does. I want to hear Scott's thoughts on this as well.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think one thing to consider is the quality of the lead. So years ago I started to dissect some of my leads and lead quality and where they came from. And I looked at leads that were opting in. They were on my blog and they were opting in versus they were seeing an ad on Facebook and opting in. And when I, when I crunched the numbers, the leads coming, and this is downloading a free report and eventually doing business, the leads coming from the blog were at least 10 times more valuable than the leads coming from just seeing a, seeing a random, you know, a random ad. And I've done a number of buyer Persona interviews for builders over the last, you know, over the last year where I actually, what I do with the buyer Persona interviews is I'll actually interview the builder's clients and work out around the, these five buying rings and work out what's instigated the decision and the decision criteria and the buyer's journey and all that sort of thing. And there's just so much depth that goes into that buying decision. Like when you, when you talk to buyers and you understand their buy what, what they're doing, they're doing a heck of a lot of research in that. Yeah. In that process to, to deciding like some people are even, you know, walking around and you know, talking to builders on the ground or talking to their staff, like literally walking around the suburb and talking to them. They're going on Google, they're going on Facebook groups, they're looking up blog posts and websites. So the depth of research with a build is so extensive. So I look at it and I go there's really two ways. Number one is, is like content marketing. Number two is get them to download a, you know, a report. Yeah. And Keep in touch with them via email, which is again at its essence, content marketing. And obviously your, your website needs to be really solid too because that's a, that's a foundation of the whole, you know, of the whole infrastructure.

Yeah, I'm interested to hear you've, you've both lent away from paid advertising for the most part focusing on the organic aspect of content and SEO. I'm interested to hear and push back to some extent on Facebook ads and the importance of Facebook ads in this ecosystem with where, where organic reach, especially on social media is particularly non existent for businesses these days. What, what do you think about that, Peter?

Organic reach? I would beg to differ with a recent client and I won't name them because they, otherwise they're going to get a flood of traffic and it's unqualified traffic. So that wouldn't be appropriate. But I could, you know, with their organic reach from social media posting, we've seen a 4200% increase in reach and the client made a point of. Well, yeah, but I'm not getting many likes and comments and understand the point. However, the outcome of that social media post is to actually drive traffic to the website. So we've done a social media post from the content marketing, there's a snippet and there's a link back to the website to read the full story, find out more, free report, whatever the link is. So we've driven massive amounts of traffic back to the website and isn't that the ultimate aim because the website you own, you control the customer journey, that user experience. But in regards to Facebook ads and all Google Ads, look, there's certainly a place for it. Absolutely. But I'm just so strong on the organic and strengthening your position there. It's absolutely an avenue that could and should be investigated. But you know, our strength is in.

Driving that organic traffic and will, I'm not agnostic with, with any particular medium like what, what we want to essentially be using is we want to be using the, the medium that, that works. And I think paid ads can be incredibly, incredibly effective for a lot of businesses and I think they can be effective for builders as well. So, but, but it's, it's how you're actually using them. So if you're, let's say you're running Facebook ads where there's, there's no intent. Right. So people are, people are going to Facebook ad and there's no intent on it, well then it's probably unlikely to be that effective. If it's not done, if it's not done properly and there's no trust built. Like if you go Facebook ad directly to your website, the chance that someone's looking for to build a home at that exact moment and then it's going to go to your website and subscribe with zero trust is quite low. So, so then the question becomes, well, how do we actually use paid ads within the whole ecosystem? And one thing that I haven't really seen tested yet, but let's say you're running, let's say you're running Google Ads, you know, to a, you know to a, to a page and then you could have retargeting with Facebook and you could potentially retarget to the content. Right. Because I don't know what the peter would know better than I would be. But I know Google Ads cost a lot more than Facebook ads because they're intent driven. So you're paying a lot for that click on Google but then you can follow them around on Facebook for a lot less cost and you can build that trust over time potentially with content. So and then getting them to join your email list and then moving on. So I don't think it's like, it's like if you can imagine a football team and you've got, you know, paid ads, you've got content, you've got all of those sort of things. It's not like, hey, we don't, you know, we don't want a defender, we just want all attackers. You need, you know, consider everyone in the team and then decide which team members are going to have, you know, the priority in. Yeah, in rolling out that game.

Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more with that.

Yeah. Like you said Scott, the multi touch it takes for someone to be in a position to want to build a home and trust a builder can take, you know, they want to have multiple touch points across every channel possible. So if you have the budget then getting yourself out there across multiple channels is going to be effective. For example, we see that the more we spend in Facebook ads, the more search traffic we get for free because people are recognizing your brand and searching for you based on that.

So yeah, yeah, look, absolutely. And we've seen some stats, we've noticed a trend lately where if people are cutting back on their Google Ad spend that the organic is affected and technically that shouldn't be two different beasts. But all said and done, it's Google and yeah, but we have seen that trend.

Google control the game, don't they?

They do play the game with Google and Google will play the game with you.

Okay. I'm really interested to hear both your perspectives on this question. It's about what makes a compelling piece of content? What makes a piece of content more likely to encourage someone to sign a building contract. And I know you're going to both have different perspectives on this, so let's start with the personal side. Scott?

Yes, I mean, what makes a compelling piece of content? I think the number one thing is it needs to. And that's where the end of the conversation going on in the customer's mind comes in. It needs to resonate with the reader. So the most important thing I always say before you write a piece, there's a, he's arguably the best modern day copywriter is a guy called Gary Benz Avenger. And he said you should spend 40% of your time on research, 40% of your time on copy, and 20% of your time on editing. I find I probably spend even less time on the copy, more time on the editing. But, but, and why I say research is because if you understand that your customer, their fears, their pains, their desires, their beliefs at such a deep level, you know exactly where to enter that conversation. And then obviously, if you've got great content that you, that you can share and resonate and hits and hits them, hits, hits them in between the bullseye and they're like, wow, I've never heard anything quite like that. And the, the nuances to it is important too, because, because amazing copy is great. But if I'm talking about knee pain and you've got back pain, it's probably not going to achieve what I want it to achieve.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, Peter, now the technical side, okay.

Brace yourself, phrase yourself. Not really. Look, structure of the content readability is one thing. I mean, Scott handles that, you know, with the content he produces. But when we insert it into the website, you know, we've also got to consider that, you know, the old headlines, sub headlines, bullet points, you know, there's a thing. Scott will probably attest to this. I hope so. Double, double readership path where, you know, people can tend to scan a piece of content and if it's easy to digest, with headlines bolded, some bullet points and so forth, and they're interested in the topic as Scott's just outlined, they'll go back and take that content in. And again, our aim from the website side, the technical side, yes. Is keywords. And it's inevitably diminished the power of that. But, and we apply those keywords and sometimes we increase the keyword density. All that is is how many times that keyword appears in the content without it being spammy and not readable. But the metadata, and this is where people shut off straight away the metadata is not hard. Right. All it is is the first few words that Google read when they come to your content, whether it's a fixed page or whether it's blog content. The metadata is just the first few words they use, read, sorry. And the Google go, ah, I know what this content's about. And then they scan the rest of the page. But the outcome of all of that is that we want them to do something, right? So the content's ranked in Google. The web page has showed up, they've read the content, double readership path, gone back and digested that content. But what do we want them to do next? We want them to take an action. And so that's either to, you know, book an appointment, request a free report, any number of actions to convert them from an unknown prospect into a known prospect. And that's important. That's really important.

And from a technical aspect, Peter, I know you build websites in WordPress. There are tools and plugins that people can use to basically get a checklist to make sure their articles and their pages are optimized for search engines. Right?

Yeah. Correct. Yep, yep, absolutely. You don't want me to give away any of my secrets, do you?

I think you probably just Google it and you'd find it pretty quickly.

But if you hold it back. Yeah, look, our tool stack. I'm a bit of a toys tools geek, and so, like, our tool stack for doing SEO is the best of the best. There's so many things with SEO and a lot that people shut off, but a lot of it's actually easy to understand. And that's the feedback I do get. So, oh, my God, for the first time ever, I actually understand what this is about. I'll give a short example, a thing called Nap Protocol. Sounds very confusing, right? It's not. It's name, address and phone number. So whatever your name and address and phone number is in Google verbatim to the comma to the space should be in every directory listing on the planet. Because then Google connect those two and go, oh, my God, look at that. They've got, you know, 50 business listings, and they recognize them as being the same. You know, you vary the comma and it'll vary that. So that's something that a lot of people get confused about. But it's not confusing. Not really, according to me.

Talk to Peter about it if you're confused. Scott, throwing Back to you. This question's about how frequently builders should produce content. Because I know there's a lot of builders out there going content marketing. It sounds like a lot of work creating articles, videos, social media posts. That's going to take up all my time. I don't have any time as it is. So how often the builders need to create content?

Yeah, I think, and this would be, I'd love to get Peter's nuance view on this as well, but I think, you know, a minimum of once a month you really want to be out there producing, you know, producing content. It's, it's the, I guess it's a. Yeah, in many ways it's more regular the better. But we all businesses have constraints. We've got minimum. Yeah, we've got budget constraints, we've got time constraints, particularly if you're, if you're a builder, it's not like, you know, walking around looking for extra things to, extra things to do. So. Yeah, so, so that's, that's really what it, what it boils down to. And that, that's, that's one of the reasons why we also decided to, to start smarter content that sells. Because, you know, like, I know what a big fan that, you know, that Russ is. I know how well it's worked for, for Stannard and I know how build, how busy builders are. Like, you know, in reality, most builders aren't going to go, oh, I'll just, I'll get home at, you know, at, at 7:30 at night and rather than spending time with my kids, I'll whip up a blog post and, and, and send it out every night. It's, it's unlikely that that's going to, going to happen. So.

Yeah, yeah, look, I couldn't agree more on the frequency. I mean, look, when I'm asked that question, I've been asked hundreds over the last 16 years. So you know, my response is pretty standard. Like quarterly as absolute minimum, preferably monthly. If you can do it every couple of weeks, do that. And if you can do it weekly somehow, then do that because you can't overproduce content. You can't. You know, people are going to read this at some point in time depending on how effective your organic SEO is, but this is going to support that anyway. Now the other question I get asked quite often is how long should my content be? Well, preferably five to 600 words at a minimum, up to 800 as an absolute minimum for short content, 250, 300 words. Any less than that, unlikely to get ranked well with Google. But you know, five to six, 700 words is optimum. You could also create what we call cornerstone content. So that's that epic topic that you might talk about often the thing is that these conversations are already in the builder's heads. They have these conversations, it's almost like, and I think for a lot of business owners there's probably 60 conversations that we have as a nominal number where we flick the switch and we go blah, blah, blah. And we're not even thinking about what we're saying because we've said it so many times. Imagine if we can take that out, get that into raw content as regular content. Now back to the cornerstone content. That's like where it's 1200 or 1500 words long and that might have four or five different subjects, sub subjects within that. So that's your epic cornerstone content. And you can then create smaller content pieces from that on the website. So directly addressing, you know, one of each of those four or five topics and then you link it back and that's SEO. And now I'm going techy again, can't help myself. But then it's all interwoven because what happens with the search engines, they come to your website and they literally follow all the links and read all the words. You know, it's called crawl, but literally that's all they're doing is reading the content, following the links. And if everything's interlinked, they go, oh my God, this is an authority site. They will give it favor. And if we circle right back to what I said at the beginning, it's all about user experience. When we personally go to Google searching for something, we want to find the answer, we want to find more information. And it's up to Google to give us the best match with that. And if they're not, guess what, we might go to, God forbid, Bing or some other search engine. So Google want to showcase business owners websites if they're producing valuable content.

And I think the whole thing here is to like because there are a lot of people, one of the big issues people have is like, you know, what, what, what am I going to write about? And yeah, and in addition to what am I going to write about is just, you know, the whole writer's block syndrome. So the real key here is, you know, like, is that everyone, nobody gets talker's block. We all get writer's block. Right. So in terms of the process that I use when I talk to clients is, you know, we would, we would go through and define the define the topics and then into, and then interviewing it, interviewing, you know, the builder or, or whoever I'm working with and getting, and taking that away as a transcript. So then everything is very much in your voice, with your tone and all that sort of thing. Only made to sound better. So it's, it's getting those raw materials which are really authentic to you, and then taking it, you know, taking it from there.

Yeah, I loved your insight there, peter. Around the 60 conversations that the builder is having with their clients and just taking that out and producing that into content. It's probably mostly subconscious but really valuable stuff.

Cool, thank you.

I know when I started to do daily emails, one thing I used to do is because I thought, oh, how am I going to do daily emails? I read a, I first listened, I did a seminar years ago and then I came across an Internet marketing guy and he's like, write them daily. So I decided to do that and, and I just, with my phone, whenever I had an idea or, or whatever, I would just jot it into my phone and I had like, I would have had three to five as many emails as I ever want as I ever needed while doing them daily. So when you, when you make that commitment that you're going to do regular content, whether it's, you know, whether it's through us or whether it's you doing yourself, however you're doing it, but just there's, I think, all the reticular activating system. Right. So when you, when you decide you want to buy a, you buy a new car and you, you, you set on a, you know, on a, you know, on a particular brand, you'll see that particular car everywhere. And the same thing happens when you go, I want to create regular content. You watch how many ideas that just pop into your brain out of nowhere and just have somewhere to take those notes and you'll find that you're not limited on, on how much content you can create.

Yeah. And, but I think just picking up on that, you're not limited by the ideas that you have for the content, but then getting, you know, the time to create the content. Yeah, absolutely.

Is the issue. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, ideas. I've never found ideas for any business is will, will. Will hold you. Yeah, Will hold you, Will hold you back. So.

Yeah, I like your statement about writer's block. Nobody gets talker's block. Yeah.

Some people do, but builders don't.

No, you are correct.

Speaking about time investment, what would the time investment be for a builder looking to create content?

With you guys, I'll probably take this because I'm sort of in the front end with it. So it's pretty limited in terms of what's required. So we would generally do a, you know, a 90 minute session up front to identify, you know, just, just to zone in on all the emotional hot buttons, the fears, the pains, the desires, the beliefs, that sort of thing, to have an understanding of the client and also to, to then say which articles are we going to create, you know, create blog posts for or video scripts for. And then from there, once we've, once we've done that, we would have another session where we do the, where we do the interview. So that, that is general. I mean, obviously if you're on one of the, one of the higher packages, we will do the interviews throughout the year. So, so we might end up doing, yeah, we may end up doing three or four 90 minute interviews throughout the year. But apart from that, everything's taken care of. All you've got to do is obviously check the copy, make sure you're happy with it, you know, make any edits and then it goes across to Peter and his team to produce from there.

Yeah, yeah. And then like while Scott's kicking off that interview process and I've got to say I've been through it myself, it's just fantastic. And the matrix and the content ideas and the way he frames it, absolutely gold. But while Scott's doing that, we're doing the benchmarking of the website. Like we do not start any project, have never done without benchmarking the website. Like I need to know how many pages are indexed and all the SEO stuff before we touch a thing. Like I can't get bragging rights right if I don't know where it started. And so we benchmark it, then we start to do all of the full optimization in the background while Scott's working on putting that. So the website, and I suppose I like, you know, in the building industry is if you, if you don't have the foundation right, then it's just hard work building on top of that. So we make sure that's right. Then the content comes in and depending on the package level to do with the distribution because you know, the, the package includes blog posts which are optimized. So obviously loaded to the website, social media content that is then produced and approved and we've got a call approval system and then that's loaded into a platform that then distributes that social media content. And then there's the email marketing side of that. Depending on the client's CRM, we'll integrate the emails into the CRM. So there's a lot of pieces and then there's also the highest level package with the videos. And we coordinate with the videographer. Scott produces the script. But the lag time, depending on the level package, you know, the sort of bronze, we can have a turnaround time within sort of four to six weeks and we're off and running. The silver package could be four, six, eight weeks and the goal package could be that same time depending on availability of the builder to do the video content. But the one thing we do do, and we've recognized this because the builders we've worked with, we've gotten feedback and we've gone, okay, well how is this going to be better for you as much as managing it? And one of the feedback we had initially was doing a video session all in one go is a big day, it's a big ask. So we've taken that on board and we've gone, okay, well let's separate that into two sessions. I do a session now and another in six months. And so we're sort of customizing it along the way. But the other thing is, let's say that it takes six weeks to kick off to actually get the content produced optimized on the site. The 12 month program finishes six weeks after the end of 12 months because the program starts when the program starts. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. Yes. So I think, as you can see, there's quite a bit of. Yeah, there's quite a bit of thought that's gone into the whole process. I know when we first thought of it and we mentioned it to Russ and he kept asking me, he goes, when's it going to be ready? When's it going to be ready? And it was very much. Peter and I were like, yeah, we just really wanted to make it thorough and as. And as seamless for the builders as possible. So it's like we just want to take as little time from the builder and just get. All we really need from, from, you know, from, from the builders that we work with is, yeah, is just the input, is just their brain is essentially what we need. And the way I try and do it is like no homework, nothing. Everything happens on the call. And you'll find that once you've got a question to answer, it's very, it's very painless to answer it because you probably answered it a hundred times before. You just. And all of this thing like, yeah, it's always what I say when you do a speech or a presentation or whatever, it's like, yes, prepare. But you've been preparing for this. Yeah, for this, for this moment. For like 20 years or something with all of your experience. And it's very much the same with the content.

Yeah.

Peter, I think you were touching on this when you spoke about setting up like doing all the benchmarking initially. But a question I would have if I was looking at this service as a builder is how long is it going to take for me to see results? And what, what does success look like? Like, what do results look like?

Okay, good question. So look, ironically enough, yesterday we were checking on a site builder site that we've been doing. Organic SEO. No, content marketing. Straight out, organic SEO. And a part of the benchmarking is we find out how many keywords they're ranking for. This particular builder had only two keywords. So is anybody finding his website? No, not with only two keywords. And it also depends on how many people are searching using those keywords. So I did a check yesterday. He's now got 44 keywords ranking. Right now the thing is with Google and organic search, like you're not known at all. Then you get into the top 10 pages, then you get into the top three and then you get onto page one. Now page one is what's going to give you the traffic. You know, Scott's got a line on the build a content marketing page. Something about being on page two is, I can't remember some interesting line. And so the point is being on page one. But it is a journey. Now this builder has now 44 keywords and he's got about eight of them on page two in Google. I get really excited about that because he is so far along the journey now that's been four months right now he needs to get to page one. Now why that's taken longer than I would like, but it's still a good result is because there's no content marketing aspect. So it's organic SEO. Yes, we're getting results. Yes, he's going to get more traffic. It would have been fast tracked with the content because that's what Google wants is, is fresh new content directly in alignment with what people are searching for. So look, it's a 12 month program and nobody can guarantee what it's like with Google. But it's a solid strategy. That's the point. And it's not about massive volume, it's about quality of people. Because what's the builder's biggest pain is quality Leads, you know, if we refer back to the source report, I think it's 48.5. Was complaining about the quality of the leads. So these people are going to be qualified. You know, I was at a member dinner event quite recently and a builder was sharing with me how he'd been spending all this money on various marketing aspects. And he said, and I only got, and it cost me 30 grand and I only got $1 million property out of it. And I was like, sorry, isn't that a good investment? Like 30k for a million dollar property? You know, but you've got to track the numbers, you've got to track the stats and we provide reporting so you know exactly what's happening as well, because you need to know that. And, and the reality is builders aren't going to sit there and study reports. So they've got to be simple graphical representations like, okay, I've got increase in traffic and yes, I've had five leads come in and I'm looking to qualify one of those soon. If they have a crn, they'll be able to, you know, see those stats clearly.

Cool. Well, I think the three of us probably chat about content marketing for a few more hours, but I think we could. Builders are short on time and we like to keep these somewhat under an hour. So just thought we could wrap it up with some final advice on builders looking to get more into content marketing. I'll start with you, Scott.

Yeah, I think the big thing is just to, you know, to think of it very naturally, you know, so all, all content marketing is, is answering your clients biggest, you know, biggest fears, biggest pains, biggest desires. Yeah. Addressing their, you know, their biggest false beliefs. That's essentially what it is. And then creating content based on that in a, you know, in a professional way, that's going to move the, that's going to build trust. Because essentially if we boil it down, if you, if you look at all, if you look at all good marketing, it's based on building high levels of trust. And that's essentially what, what content marketing is.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, look, it's all relational. Absolutely. And you've just got to start, you know, people get caught up and, and perhaps over analyze and, and you know, I totally understand you've got to get an roi. And although we might be pioneering a system here as such, the model is not pioneer. I mean, this is not new. Content marketing has been around for a long time and you know, we've been sort of espousing its value for quite a number of years and you know, now focusing in on the builders and the thing is they've got such solid content and they've got a good client spend as well. You imagine if you were trying to do this in a niche where the dollar investment of the product was a lot lower, you know, the payoff might not be as great. But you know, for builders, this is a solid strategy.

Yeah, I think that's a great point, Peter. It's, it's a proven strategy. And, and our data also points to the fact that content marketing across the board helps builders charge higher margins as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because all said and done, because of the relational, because you're getting the voice, you're literally doing a front or the bottoming, the positioning, the relation, the conversions for the builders is just top level. It just is.

And I think a really good way of looking at it is put yourselves in the shoes of the customer. So the next time you're doing something or you're buying something that is sizable, notice what you do and notice the conversation going on in your mind. So for example, we went to Greece last year and I don't know how much research, I didn't do that much research, but research online that my wife did for that trip, but it was massive. You know, she's on. Yeah, and she's on all sorts of platforms on TikTok and Google and Chat GB. Like I don't know if it was Chat GPT then, but that's for this trip that she's planning next. But you'll find, you'll probably find that you're doing massive amounts of, you're absorbing massive amounts of other people's content marketing.

And the thing is, for us, I mean, it's a really good point, Scott. When we look at our own buying patterns and our own buying habits, we don't base all of our decisions on price. In fact, probably way down the scale. You know, it's on whether it meets our needs, the quality, the longevity, all of the other aspects of a buying decision. You know, price is, is almost secondary if all of those other buying signals are high.

Yeah, it's a great point. Well, you've got me on board. I was already well on board with content marketing before this conversation.

But you've done the paperwork.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. In terms of next steps, we've got a brand new rewards listing for smarter content that sells. For any APB members listening to this podcast and you guys have got a free report, I believe. So if you listeners go to smartercontentthatsells.com report they should be able to download that. Is that the best place to go? Peter?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Smarter content that sells.com Aureport and they can get the report that'll give them some insights into this before they're ready to have a conversation. They'll be sort of pre informed, which is always useful. And that's, you know, exactly the model that we advocate for builders with their own clients. So at least they're pre informed.

Perfect. Well, Peter Scott, thanks so much for coming on Professional Builder Secrets today. I've had a fun time. I hope you did as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. No, that was great.

Thanks, Will. Thanks for having us.

Yeah. Appreciate the advice and I know a lot of good value for builders out there. So thanks for coming on. Also, a big thank you to our listeners out there, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day. Before we wrap things up, here's a short message from our sponsor, Smarter Content that Sells. Appb's co founder Russ Stevens believes there is one marketing strategy that attracts higher quality leads better than any other. To find out what that is, head to smartercontentthatsells.com that's smarter content that sells.com au.