How to create more content | It's ok if you don't know | stick to this method and you will win

It's you already. Start your marketing plan. Let me know if you need anything, but more than that, figure out, and that's the last and most important thing, how everything is connected. If you're going to a conference and you didn't video anything, nobody knows. It's like a, what's the saying that a tree falls in the forest in South America, would anyone know about it? You have to stay consistent with Connecting the dots. Hello, welcome back to another episode of The Business Storyteller. My name is Nir Zavaro. Today I want to talk, I have a bit of a rant for you guys and here goes. I wanna talk about creating your marketing plan for 2026. By the way, that works if it's monthly, quarterly, whatever your thing is. Ready? Very simple. Please know everything that you don't know.

Easy.

Know everything that you don't know. What do I mean by that? So many people, I go on all these calls, we discuss things. Everybody has an opinion. Now I know If you're an accountant, if you're a lawyer, if you're a doctor, you study. So that means I can't tell you how to do your job. I'm not qualified. Guess what? If you are doing finance, you know jack shit about certain things in marketing. True, you learn how to write. It does not make you a writer. So one of the interesting things is every time we go on these calls and it's great, everybody has an opinion, but I do suggest That first, try and learn from people who've done it. Then make assumptions that you can test. But the most important thing is, if you don't know, just fine.

You don't know.

Stop telling us what we should do because it's not what you feel. It's not what you think. It doesn't resonate with you. I once had an important client call. Where the CEO explained to me that she doesn't get it. She doesn't feel the ads we've created. Well, guess what? There were shaving knives for razors for men, for beards. She wasn't using them at all. The ads, by the way, went pretty good. If you understand that everything we do is based on the messaging, The ideal customer and client, things that we need to understand with you, from you. Then everything else are assumptions that we can test. But there are also things that we know for certain that work.

On a client meeting yesterday, he's doing unbelievable things on YouTube, killing it, millions of subs, not a small account.

But when he talks to marketing people, they will tell him, nobody watches YouTube.

Second, second largest engine, search engine at the moment, still after Google, owned by the same company as you probably know. What's interesting is today in a lot of homes on the TV remote, there's a YouTube button. More than that, at the moment, every household has an option to cast screen, use that button, or more than that, that the kids are actually watching YouTube is channel. My girlfriend hates it when I say it, but I love watching YouTube. She often comes back home and sees me watching something. So, and a how-to.

I watch a lot of talks, a lot of explainers, a lot of things. I learn stuff. YouTube is still growing pretty fast because it's becoming another channel on your TV. Yet people will explain to this guy, nah, I don't want to put any ad spend on that. But what if we decide to test? What if we make assumptions? Now, assumptions are great, and I love playing around the budgets and trying different things. In a conversation we had also last week, one of the asks was brand awareness. Again, lovely. You are a business, I am a business, and most of my clients need to generate growth, revenue, bottom line. That means that we need, we must take a look first and foremost at the ledger. But what if we decided that our focus is to create better content? I know it's crazy content. Look at my newsletter, which I enjoy and I love. I started it because I did it for myself. I wanted to do weekly newsletter and get better. It's been going on for, I don't know, like 18 weeks now. Before, it was a bit all over the place. I didn't know until I found my voice. So that means going back to your 2026 plan, you need to create a lot of content so you can get better, so you try different things, so you have the ability or the option to improve and understand what works. The moment it works, then you double down on that. Then you can talk about budgets and ad spend. We're at the point, in my opinion, at the moment where we cannot keep doing the same thing, hoping for the same outcome. 2 posts a week doesn't cut it. And I'm seeing this now as I'm posting a bit more and a bit differently. All of a sudden, things are moving along.

The leads are changing.

They're more concise. The people want to come. They know exactly what they want. And we're doing the same thing with every client I have. So understand what are your 5, maximum 5 pillars. These are the topics you want to talk about, and you won't talk about other things when it comes to your business, the business page, what you as a CEO or some of the founders might talk about. Once you understand that, break them. Every topic, every pillar becomes subtopics. All of a sudden you have like 20 pieces of ideas of content, things you can talk about over and over that you also enjoy talking about.

Same as I enjoy talking about marketing, branding, storytelling, sales. Once you have these, probably 20 pieces, topics that you can talk, start repeating them.

If you record a 3-minute video, that will become your blog post. You can chop it up, then they become posts on LinkedIn, for example.

Then you can do the same. So have an image, that image will go on every social platform.

You cut the video into shorts, you use them for search engine optimization, as blog posts, as articles. There's so many things you can do.

But we agreed that we don't know a lot of things. We agreed that we're willing to test. And why not test more instead of testing less? Once this is understood, once you understand that lead gen is the most important thing, brand awareness will support it.

And awareness will happen if you post 20 times a month trying to improve your craft. And in some cases, if you guys do not have a marketing team and you do not have a content writer, that is fine. The CEO knows it. Everything. Just ask them for the pillars, ask them. And if it's you, please sit down. It will take you less than 30 minutes. Sit down, 5 pillars, subtopics, you'll have the 20 and you're ready to go. If you duplicate it enough times and attack each subtopic from a different angle, you will have almost 100 pieces of good relevant content to test. I think we also need to understand that Everybody loves these buzzwords. So the ideal client persona, customer persona, which is great. But in some cases, you are able to also think about your IMP, ideal marketing persona. These are the people who might enjoy your content, learn your content, leverage your brand, the brand awareness part, and they will help you reach more things. We are now working with a company The data analysts are a relevant IEP, and the reason is because they sit next to the decision makers. In some places, we're working with producers because they are the ones who will go to the client and offer that service. In other cases, we're helping people understand how to invest better because these people will then talk about us, refer us, like, comment, share, do everything so the right set of people might see. As I mentioned earlier, we were talking about YouTube, for example.

Please reconsider everything else and do the same because some people love LinkedIn, some people can't stand it. You'll be surprised how many relevant people could be on your Facebook. And we're now doing some ads for 50+ on Facebook, very specific niche in the US for people who have a lot of money for investments. I think it's the best channel.

Everything starts with you knowing what you like, want, able to talk about, and you're willing to talk about it all the time. You guys won't shut up about it, whether it's a brand or a personal CEO, CMO, whomever it may be. Once that is covered, good luck, my friends. You've got it secured. For me, I'm now focusing on my 2026 plan more about enjoying, more about committing, more about doing, and not so much about, ah, I'm not sure. And again, part of my building in public is I talk very candidly about all these things. So if you are ready to start your marketing plan, let me know if you need anything, but More than that, figure out, and that's the last and most important thing, how everything is connected. If you're going to a conference and you didn't video anything, nobody knows. It's like a, what's the saying that a tree falls in the forest in South America, would anyone know about it? You have to stay consistent with connecting the dots. You go to a conference, you take a video when you spoke. 2 weeks ago I did an event.

It's a nice event.

It's in Hebrew. It's not even in English. And the most important thing is, Not the talk I gave to 50 B2B marketing managers, but rather the fact that afterwards I knew who to send it to and say, hey, I just did this. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Guess what? That is now getting me meetings with relevant clients in New York. Connect the dots. And if you're doing something on LinkedIn, it has to be in another place. If you're doing a blog article, if you guys are running a meeting, record the meeting. If someone said something important, And most of your meetings are online anyway, so that's easy.

Try and figure out how everything is connected.

If you're using content a certain way, if you're using your language a certain way, that's your branding language, tone, voice, words you like, words you don't like. If you're using them, how are you ensuring that everything stays circular?

And if you're running a very good marketing plan, do you know what happens the moment the lead lands?

You have a list of what you need to improve, what you need to change week over week, because if you don't, then you are stuck, my friends.

Once we have that consistency, we're starting to see growth. I focus a lot on customer journey, on sales, on the pitch.

Last month we decided to work on a very specific meeting. We restructured the whole pitch. Guess what? Deal, probably the biggest deal they have signed over the last 2 or 3 years, few tens of millions. The reason is because we decided to focus. We already got the lead. Now we need to ensure certainty. We need to make sure that the client understands, the client wants, not to oversell, offer value. And now we're taking this back, restructuring the customer journey. The next client that comes in will get a better experience. And lastly, I think talking to your audience and talking to your client creates some sort of, I wanna say a communication channel, but it's not always, but sometimes they start reaching out. And over the last few weeks, it's been interesting because the newsletter— and again, I'm doing this for myself so I can get better— I'm getting more replies on the email from people saying, hey, thank you very much, this is great. So I've decided to take a look at everything I've written over the last almost 80 weeks, and I noticed there are a lot of good tips and tricks. Wait, what else can I do with it? So I'm taking the quotes I have and I'm turning them into something on Twitter. I'm taking all the posts and restructuring them for LinkedIn and stuff like that. But more than that, I realized I can take all the big pieces, combine them, restructure, and guess what? That would become a new book. Everything you do can repurpose. Everything you do can stay connected to anything else. It sounds like a lot of work, but if you are not willing to talk about your business all day long, it's a problem. As always, And, uh, I'm here if you need anything. Let me know if you have any thoughts, if you have any improvements, if you have any tips. But more than that, if you have any questions, please ping me. I'd be happy to help. I'm now collecting a few good questions. Thank you everyone. Hopefully we'll start recording when I come back from the US. That will be probably mid-December, and I'm looking forward to doing some live events in Chicago and in New York.

These are exciting times. Stay epic. See you next time, guys.