Simplifying Content Creation: Mastering Content Repurposing | Sarah Noel Block

On this episode of "The Small Business Show", we dive deep into the world of content marketing with our special guests, powerhouse content strategist Sarah Noel Block and host Swire Ho. Starting a small business comes with its own set of unique challenges but marketing your business in this increasingly digital age needn't be one of them. With the myriad possibilities of digital content strategically crafted targeted storytelling can provide your business a competitive edge like no other.

Sarah Noel Block, a content marketing strategist with a talent for crafting impactful marketing campaigns, unpacks the diverse aspects of content marketing. Being a critical asset to diverse business fields such as facility services, construction, medical, real estate products, and SaaS companies, she brings her expertise to the table detailing the key role that customer understanding plays in the creation of resonant content. Making a name for herself with her work in the 2018 Best Construction Blocks category, Sarah sets out to help small business owners make the most of their content marketing efforts.

Contact for Sarah Block
https://www.sarahnoelblock.com/media-page

The Small Business Show is the official podcast for Garuda Promo and Branding Solutions. For more information visit

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Transcript

0:15

Running and growing a small business. The Small Business Show is the official podcast of Garuda promo and branding solutions. Hello everyone. You're listening to the Small Business show. My name is Swayer Ho. You can also call me the Promo Guy. My guest today is Sarah Noel Block from Tiny Marketing. Sarah is a content marketing strategist for facility services, constructions, medical and real estate products, and SaaS companies. She works with Timestrap Marketers in Midsize B, two B industry to provide high impact marketing without increasing headcount. Sarah uses her test and proven framework to streamline content marketing, social media and email marketing through Smart System. She won third place for the best construction blocks 2018. From the construction marketing ideas. How are you doing, Sarah? I'm good, how are you? I love to dive deeper today with your expertise in content marketing. Before that, love to find out more about how did you get into this industry and what do you like most about what you do. How did I get into marketing? I have been in marketing from the very beginning. 2008, 2007 is when I got into marketing. It was just something that I always wanted to do. I've always been a lover of storytelling and there's so much of that involved in marketing that it was a no brainer for me. And I love being able to take what I've learned about customer, like an ideal customer avatar and creating a full story arc around that to make it like your offer really sellable. That's very interesting. Love to ask you more about content marketing. It seems like it's a buzzword right now. Everyone that I know who are somewhat related to marketing are talking about content marketing. So what is exactly content marketing and what do you consider content marketing? If I just forward someone else's blog onto my feet? No, I don't think content marketing is a buzzword. It is the core of marketing now content marketing is educating your audience and teaching them how to solve their problem in whatever way that you want. So whatever medium you want. So whether that's blogs, YouTube, social media, podcasts, all of that is content marketing. It's just a matter of adding value and building that know like trust factor. So what would you consider in your experience as good content marketing strategy? You mentioned, you know, finding the avatar. Can you walk us through the process by finding the avatar? Kind of the research that you have to put in to make sure that the content is relevant for them? Yes. So I'm glad you asked that question. I was telling you before we went live that I just topped off a client call, which is why I was sprinting to this one and that's exactly what we were talking about. So what I do is I build out an ideal customer avatar first before anything else, so I can understand the customer, their pain points, their fears, their wants, and most importantly, their journey. So what kind of content do they need at each stage of their customer journey? What pain are they going through on each stage of the customer journey? And that's the real guide for content marketing. You start with that one customer and then you build out a super simple funnel like this is how I'll gain awareness with that particular customer. What kind of content will they need when they're trying to make a decision on what company to go with that's mid funnel content. And that usually takes place in the form of a lead magnet or a webinar. And then you go down to the bottom of funnel content and that would be your email list, your sales page, things like that. How many avatars should we have or would you encourage us to start out with just one? Obviously I'm sure that you get that question a lot. Are we missing out if we only focus on one avatar? I think that it's best to create your marketing thinking of one particular avatar. Now for bigger companies you often sell to committees, especially B two B's. You're selling to a committee of buyers. So you need to understand your core, the buyer, their avatar, that's first and foremost. But you need to understand the influencers and what kind of content they'll need to overcome any challenges in buying from you. Yeah, that's very interesting. Especially you work with SaaS company so that is a long cycle process. Sometimes for B two B you might need to obviously connect with the decision maker who ultimately say yes to the contract. And you probably need some sort of content for the technical people right there. It's got to be there maybe actually the user friendly. So that will be same avatar but different type of content. Is that what you normally would do? Let's use that example, let's roll with that and say that we're talking to a B two B, SaaS company right now and they sell to a buying committee. Let's say it's HubSpot. HubSpot is the company. So probably their primary buyer is in the marketing department, let's say a marketing director. So that would be their customer. Avatar is the marketing director. And then you'll want influencer personas to understand what kind of pushback will the It team have because they're the ones that need to implement this and they might need to train other people. So then you create content around that. You just want to start spitballing workshopping. What are they going to push back on and then create anything that you can to alleviate that. And then who else will be involved? The CFO? What kind of questions are they going to have about the money and the return on investment? Then you might have if it's a smaller company, the CEO needs to sign off in the end, what are they going to care about? Probably sales. So how will your software affect sales? How will you improve sales or how will you streamline processes so the company saves money, workshop all of those things? What are these challenges that people are going to push back on and create content around that so your internal person can use that to sell for you? Yeah, I really like that example. You have different person in mind for the team, kind of like sales, the ultimate decision maker. Maybe the CEO, maybe the owner. But I like to connect with the secretary and executive assistant because I know the executive assistant don't carry money as much as CEO. But then they do want it to have the person they like to work with. If I have the best price but they hate working with me, then probably I wouldn't go that far similar to your example. So the technical people needs to be okay with your product. So then they will say to the CEO or the decision maker, these guys are good, they pass all the tests that we need to do on product. Yeah, exactly. So you'll go through that process and you might find that the secretary is an influencer in this, that this is the person who the CEO relies on to do the research. And if you irritate that person when they're in the research phase, you're off the list. So you need to make sure to create for them too. Yeah, I want to actually backtrack a little bit and talk more about the avatar. For a listener who might not yet be familiar with the word avatar, what is it and how should we begin to create our own avatar? Yes. So it's basically a profile of your ideal customer. You can do this a lot of ways. So this is my process is I'll survey my customers, the top 20% of my customers who I basically want to clone them. I love them so much. So I surveyed them to start to understand how they found me, what pain points they're having at each stage in the funnel, what kind of content they like to consume, things like that. I'll send them a SurveyMonkey survey on that. So I gather that information. I'll interview my very favorite customers so I can hear from their mouth the reason that they choose me and what they were going through when they decided to start looking for the solution that I provide. So I'll interview them. So first survey, then interview. And then you can start bringing AI into it and competitor research where you can use a series of prompts in Chat, GBT and Bing AI to fill in the gaps that you haven't been able to get through competitive research and your customer research. Yeah, it's funny that the last guest that I had on last week talked about actually the same thing is that you need to connect with your client and especially people. Your top ten are people who I would assume that spend the most money with you or they love you the most or they are your repeat customer. And Sarah, I think you have a really good point too. What if you could clone your best customer? What if, let's say 20% of your client give you 80% of your business? If you can clone actually one of them, then you actually increase yourself versus if you go all marketing to everybody. Because a lot of times when I hear in marketing I want to target everyone. We're a software company, everyone needs to use software or whatever. Fill in the blanks that you have. So you actually say we should focus and we should connect and then fill in the blanks. Maybe I really cater to certain demographics or certain age group, for example, and then we cater to those people and focus on just that. There are millions of people you can sell to and then you're talking to nobody because your message is so diluted. Instead, it's so much easier to look at your favorite customers and answer a couple of questions like which clients are the most profitable? Do the services I do for them, are they sustainable? Are they something that I want to continue doing? And do I like them? Do I want to work with more people like that? Take those people and create that profile of them and make it super easy. So all of your content is speaking to a very specific person, all of your outreach. You can profile them in LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, put their exact details in there of your customer avatar and have a full list of other companies and leads that you should target later. I really like that, especially you mentioned, do you like working with them? A lot of times we get stressful, we pour our hair out. Look, just look at me, right? Because you are working with people who might or might not appreciate your work. What if you could find out your avatar and really to put your personality or your working style in there, you know that these people work well with your work life balance, work well with your way of communication. Because sometimes there is going to be a mismatch and you have to understand, especially for a small business, there will be a good fit and sometimes there will not be a good fit. So keep that into consideration and in your avatar because you're creating it. You can dictate anywhere that you like. In there exactly you want them to be what easy to work with and they appreciate your work and they find a ton of value in what you do. Those are the people you want to clone. Let's clone our favorite customers. So once we do that, and I think we are setting up for this question, once you identify the avatar and then you identify what they need, what their pain points are, you talk about Ten X, your content marketing strategy. Can you touch on that a little bit? Yeah. So create a Cornerstone marketing that you are willing to commit to doing once a month or once a quarter. So let's say your Cornerstone piece would be a podcast episode. So let's say you're interviewing a series of influencers and you spend 60 minutes once a quarter doing that. Chop that up into enough episodes so it is going out every other week. And then you can repurpose it into shorts, reels, TikToks, YouTube clips, all your social media and email. And you can essentially batch create all of your content for the quarter within a couple of hours. Makes it so much easier. You're always showing up, but you're able to spend your time doing other things because you've batched it and you've scheduled it so you don't have to deal with it again. Yeah, I really love that example. Sarah. I think I'm on to something. I I too want to be consistent, showing visibility right on the platform. I like LinkedIn, but it's time consuming, right? Doing the podcast and doing the editing, it's just time consuming. But if I know with a topic in mind for my avatar so right now if I know that they care about certain topics that they have, maybe I go do the content that they want. I know content that they would like to consume. And then I don't give them everything all at once. I slowly, slowly give them one by one. Yeah. So then when they see swire or when they see your company, they will click that email open right away or they click that post right away. So that's a really great point there. Yeah. Focus on the pain point that you solve for that one person. Keep it super simple. And it really works because there are thousands of people that are exactly like your favorite customer with the exact same pain point. What kind of question or what kind of strategy do you advise us to uncover that pain? Because a lot of times I know you have pain, but I might be guessing. But unless it's coming directly out from the avatar, you don't really know their pain. How do you get people to share about what they're going through that are challenging to them? Yeah. I would ask what made you look for this service in the first place? Was there some sort of trigger? Was there an event that happened that made you realize that you needed this service? And those are questions that will pull out what their pain points are. Because while they might not hear, hey, what are your pain points? That's what will come out. That's what their answer will be. Yeah. I think that's the key to success. Right. So a lot of us are in the commodity based business. Even if you're a SaaS company, you somewhat can be considered a commodity because obviously you have competitors out there. If you only compete on price, then you'll be a commodity. But if you can uncover the pain point using HubSpot example. Right? So if you're able to connect the marketing company and then also the technical people so now you become the needed solution. I need them, I need to buy. This exactly to use you. But it takes time and sometimes we want to skip that. We just think of doing like a Google ad and then it will translate to sales right away. Yeah, think about it this way. You have no competitors when you are selling to one specific customer avatar and you have your unique value proposition that's through all of your marketing and your content, you are a market of one at that point. Okay, let's talk about money. Right? So does it cost a lot of money to do? And if you have a tiny team or in a case the small business, it might only be the owner itself or maybe a small team of people doing that, how does that work budget wise? And how do you create a system that they can lean on for getting this done? Yeah, so my whole tiny marketing framework is around this because the majority of the people I work with, it's the owner that is doing the marketing or they have someone that is a stand in for marketing that just is dealing with it. You could either bring on the tools that will do everything that you need or you could outsource to someone and make it super easy. So the first thing I would do is whatever that core content is that you have chosen, create a template for it. So it's super easy to replicate over and over again and put that in your project management tool and put that in your Google templates so you're able to just replicate it really fast. And let's go with the example that it's a small business and it's an owner that has to implement all of this. If they took one week every quarter and decided this is my marketing week, then they can put together that core piece of content and if they used a tool like Descript, they can cut it into all of those videos and they can edit their podcast and they can push it out to buzzsprout all from one location. So that makes it super easy. You can use a tool like Toasty AI and upload your wave file into that and it'll create the articles, the show notes, pages, pull quotes and chapter highlights all for you. So you can do all of this on your own within a week. Hang on, Sarah. I'm writing all this are those are really interesting because as a podcast host, I have actually a lot of footage from the guests that talk during the show that I know my client will be interested. So what I'm thinking about doing for my own with all the contents that I have been doing this podcast since for two years now, is I will find out their pain point. Each of them cares about different things. And if they're my top 20 client, I can afford to spend time to think about them. I'm not thinking about transactional. So if I know that they care about, let's say, for example, employees retention or they care about if they visit the engagement for the trade show, I would pick out specific content for them. So now I can chop it up with the tools that you just mentioned and then send it to them periodically. My goal is not have them think of me as a salesperson is I want them to think of me as a partner like Swire really do listen to what we care about and actually going out there to create the content specifically for us. So he actually a consultant that we should listen to. Yeah. And think about how much relief do you have right now knowing the pressure is off you. You don't have to sell to everyone anymore and you know exactly what to talk about. It makes it so much easier knowing who your person is and what challenge you're solving. That brings to the next question that I have. I think if you have B, two B, email is still a strong tool and I think you touch on a little bit of it to send them relevant content. Talk to us more about the simple three step formula for welcoming email sequence. Yeah. Your welcome sequence should be the first thing that your new subscribers see. Oftentimes I'll sign up for something and then I'm left cold. And then out of nowhere they'll email me and I'm like, I don't even remember who you are. You need to have a welcome sequence or you're going to be forgotten and use it as a way to indoctrinate them into your community. Any new subscriber is essentially saying, okay, I want to be part of you, I want to be part of your community. So the first thing I like to do is send them a gift. So here is some sort of free thing. It might be a book, it might be digital DIY bundle with like 100% discount. Something like that is the first email. The second email is I will want to give them a virtual tour of my life. So I will send them my website information, my podcast information, just different ways they can interact with me and what they would learn in those interactions. And then the last thing I like to send them is this is how I solve the problem, my specific problem that I solve for people exactly like you. So it's more of a sales oriented email and then they can transition to a nurture sequence or an evergreen sales sequence. How would you space them out? Does it depends on the business that you're in? The welcome sequence I would put at most a day apart. Keep them pretty sequential so they know what they're getting they know what's happening. It's not going to last forever. So this will be like a more general approach. Obviously, a company would deal with maybe different type of client, but this will be general information, a gift and something about you or your company. And then the last one is this is maybe a case study of how using a product or services can solve our previous clients problem. Yeah. So gift first. Next one would be a virtual tour, how they can hang out with you online. And then the third one would be yeah, how you solve the problem for your client. A case study would be a great way to do that. You could embed testimonials or video testimonials from your clients would be great. In the third one, from your point. Of view to hearing in front of a client, especially on LinkedIn. Right. Let's focus on LinkedIn. How often should you be posting, and then what kind of content would you encourage us to do? Yeah. So on LinkedIn, I think it's less important to post and more important to interact with other people's posts. So I will post probably three times a week on LinkedIn, but I'll make sure to set aside 15 minutes every day to interact with people on LinkedIn and comments on their posts. And it'll give you so much more traction than going on your soapbox and doing your own posts all the time. What would you say we should reply? Is it like the generic one that you're welcome, congratulations, or how do you look for and what would you like to say on the comment? No, don't go generic. I'm sure you knew the answer to that. Give something insightful, because when you comment, you're going to show up in the feed of the people who already commented on that post and that other person's post. So you want it to be valuable enough that people follow you. Every time I spend those 15 minutes commenting on other people's posts, I get a ton more followers because I'm essentially doing a post. But on someone else's post. Yeah. And if you're listening right now, do look up Sarah's LinkedIn profile. She does have a lot of followers. And once you have more followers, then your message can go to reach a lot more people than you normally. Yeah. And if you're looking to grow LinkedIn, definitely do a newsletter. The newsletters grow so fast. Every time I send out a new newsletter, I get a traffic alert on my website, just like, Boop, your traffic is up today. Okay. But the newsletter that you do on LinkedIn will obviously base back on your avatar and then your ideal client, what they're going through, and then you put your thought into it and then send out is it a monthly newsletter that you do? I do weekly. Okay, wow. But you can choose. So what else would you suggest? And I know we talked about a lot onto it. You mentioned podcasts, you mentioned videos. What are some of the ways that you can suggest us to repurpose our content to grow audience? Because if you talk to a small team, especially if it's just the owner themselves, they might not have time to do it. They may only have a little time to do that. And it seems like you're kind of forced to create something new, to create something trendy. What is the best way to repurpose the content that you already have? So let's say your company spends a decent amount of money on doing a research report every year. So you have this research report and that's probably your main lead magnet because people want to access that information. So take that research report and repurpose it to high heaven. So something that I do for my clients is I go through their reports and I create a content plan around it and they end up with like 30, 40 different content ideas from that report. Now all of these different elements will go back to that lead magnet of the original report. So you get more eyes on that too. And you're feeding the marketing monster. So all of your channels are getting content on it. So what I recommend is taking something meaty and going through it and creating a content plan to be able to repurpose it. And you can do this super simple too. Like if you hosted a virtual summit, for example, you have 30 master classes from experts. Take those videos and you can turn those into clips, shorts, all of that. You can also use that same app I told you about, Toasty AI, to turn those into articles. So you can repurpose really easily that way too. Yeah, I really like that. I think I started to do some of that you just mentioned because in the promotional product industry, there are different organizations that gives out annual report and they do the research of the effectiveness on different items. I know some of our clients, they like the numbers they want to know. 85% of people use that. 72% of these people like that. So I actually use those percentage that they have and then I create my own article or put in my thought into it. Now if you, for example, give people a pen, 85% of people will use it. Sounds more educated and I actually tagged the research company for that. You're not just speaking out from your mouth, you are doing your research. And then now I am connecting with my followers and my audience to give you this report because I took the time to research that. And not only that, then, now you'll be seen as an expert for your industry because you have access to those reports and that's why people who are reaching out should listen to you more. That's kind of very interesting that you just pointed out, Sarah. Yeah, let's take that research report and run with it because it doesn't just do that, it gives you an opportunity to talk, to influencers and get their opinions on the research report results and then you can create a whole series about that. You get tons of media coverage because other people want access to that data. And Google, it has eat to be able to rank high in Google and one of those elements is experience and expertise and a research report will be able to provide that. It's original information that you can't get anywhere else. So it definitely has lags and is well worth the money. Sarah, I think this is an important question and I think there are different personality. There are people who are better on camera, there are people who have a good voice, right? They love to be on podcasts and we also have writers there. So how do you say we should do? Should we focus first on what we are good at first? Or do you think that we need to be all around, we have to be on video, we have to be on podcasts and we have to write an article. What are your thoughts? You don't have to do everything, just think of it, just be a minimalist about it and whatever medium you prefer in your content creation, go with that and you can still repurpose it. If writing is your thing and you don't want to be on video and you hate your voice, that's cool too. You can still repurpose it into emails, social media, you can compile them into an ebook or a larger guide. There's still so much you can do with it. I'm not a writer by using grammarly and chat GBD as a big helps and boost to my credibility. But I can talk, right? So whatever medium or platform that you like to use, think about people, like to dig into your mind because there are people calling you every day asking you questions about what you do. So obviously your input and your value is very important. Maybe somehow to find the best way that you can to put this down or repurpose it with some data or sometimes I've seen influencer, they jump on a trendy topic and give their tick on it. If you play video games right now, there are people who commentate other people playing video games, they love that and think about that way and you could be as creative as you like. After the pandemic I see a lot more people being more engaging and they repurpose content in a way that I'd never thought of before. Yeah, the pandemic changed so much. I think that we care more about connecting with other people. So I think that's part of where it came from. People started creating more so they can connect more and then they had all this content they're like might as well. Repurpose it and then I also want to do that too. I do see. That some of us feel that we're kind of weird and strange. I'm weird and strange. But if you show your personality and then if you really know what you're talking about, there are many people who are connected to your personality out there. Maybe in your local yeah, maybe in your local area, then no one cares about what you do. But it's a big world out there with the streaming platform. Sarah, you and I connected virtually right now. We're having a conversation. There are actually a lot more people who are drawn to your energy. Maybe you're weird, they're drawn to your weirdness. Think about your content strategy and think about your avatar and to put out the right content. Yeah. And that's definitely something that you want to take into consideration as you're creating your brand messaging so other people can't or your brand voice and tone so other people can replicate. It is be you. You want to attract and repel, which sounds weird, but you want to repel the wrong people. If you start working with someone and you're a weirdo and they're like, oh, no, not for me, it's not going to be a good interaction. You're not going to enjoy working with them. You want to repel the wrong people. Yeah, I like that. I actually use the podcast and the video that I put on LinkedIn actually to kind of filter down and to let people know that this is Swire Ho and this is the way that he talks. And so actually that would filter some of the not good fit people already. So don't worry if you are doing just your goal is to connect with your avatar. And then like Sarah said, if you survey the avatar, there's a reason why they buy from you and then do more of know if that's your calling for your avatar. Do more of that. And there are always other people who are not going to connect with you or may never buy from you. So you're going to be happy with that too. Yeah. So long. That's fine. Sarah, I think it got into the point that listeners have individual questions that want to ask you. For people who want to reach out, what would be the best way to connect with you? Yeah, they can go to Saranowellblock.com and let's see, right after this, I will create the URL Sarahnowellblock.com Smallbusiness show and they will be able to find me everywhere. Okay, if you're listening, I'll put all the links to the show notes. Sarah, thank you so much for coming out today. I learned a lot from you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends or colleagues who might benefit from the conversation. Any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you. Talk show is live stream both on YouTube and LinkedIn.

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