 As people, we have options. We choose where to place our attention. Welcome to the We Are Slam show where we share marketing agency insights, best practices, and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I am the co-founder and chief strategist at Slam Agency. We have offices in St. Louis, Missouri and Miami, Florida, servicing clients all over the world. And today we're going to talk about inbound marketing, content marketing, what these things mean, how they work together, and how you can use them to drive real business results on your website. Now, a lot of the content that I'll be sharing today comes from this book that I'm a huge fan of. It's called They Ask, You Answer. And this book really, I think, is the definitive. And there's a lot of amazing books on the subject, but I think it's one of the definitive books on inbound marketing, on content marketing. And this book was written by an agency owner named Marcus Sheridan, one of the thought leaders in this space, the space that we know as inbound marketing. So what is inbound marketing? Well, it's easy to define. It's the process of attracting rather than chasing customers. Now, in the old world of marketing and advertising, you had what was what some refer to as this bullhorn, right? This bullhorn that you're just like blasting your message to the masses. And your objective is to interrupt people and then try to sell them your product or service by way of repetition. That's advertising. That's the old world. And it just doesn't necessarily work anymore. And the reason being is that as people, we have options, we can turn off commercials. We can fast forward through commercials. We choose where to place our attention, whether it be on our mobile devices or on our computers or TVs. And a lot of times we're multitasking. So what might have been like the best option 50 years ago in terms of advertising, which is like a television commercial is not having the effect it once had in terms of repetition because we're multitasking. So there's a lot of things that are not necessarily ideal when it comes to this idea, this old world idea of outbound marketing. So inbound marketing is the act of attracting customers rather than chasing them. So what is content marketing? Content marketing is the act of teaching and problem solving in order to earn your buyer's trust. Now we talk a lot about knowing your buyer. And if you don't know your buyer, then this next part isn't going to make sense because you have to know, what are my customers thinking? If you know your buyer, then you're able to educate them and solve their problems in a way that earns their trust through content. So here's an example that Marcus uses in the book. And it's the example of CarMax and how they really came onto the scene in a way that was more about earning their trust of used cars buyers as opposed to just doing business as usual, just following the status quo. So think about it for a minute. 20 years ago, pre CarMax, what was the process? What was the experience as a buyer and buying a used car? If you bought cars back then, then what you know is that going to a lot and buying a used car was not a very fulfilling experience. There was always this idea that I was going to get ripped off, or maybe I was going to buy a lemon and really I just didn't enjoy like going as a buyer to the car lot and haggling with somebody over price, right? And then at the end of the day, maybe I buy the car and then I'm regretting my decision. So these were all problems that I had as a buyer, I being the used car buyer of that time, that CarMax number one understood because they did their research and they knew their buyers being the used car buyers. They knew the types of thoughts and emotions and feelings that were going on inside their heads. And as a result, they're like, okay, this is what's going on inside their heads. This is how they feel. And now we need to do something about that. So what did they do? They introduced several things. Number one, no haggle pricing, which means that whatever price they listed is the price that you would pay. If the car was listed at $25,000 and all you had to pay was $24,999, then guess what? You wouldn't be able to buy the car because it's no haggle pricing. The price that is listed is the price that you pay. Secondly, they instituted a flat commission structure. What does this mean? Essentially, this flat commission structure meant that you sell a car regardless of the price and you get this commission. And so what this did was it allowed buyers to begin to trust the salespeople to do what was best for them, knowing that they weren't going to just push a higher car in order to make a little bit more money. They also instituted number three, a five day buyback guarantee. That meant if you left a lot with the car, you signed the contract, and then within five days you started to get remorse, maybe it wasn't the decision for you, maybe you just wanted to return the car. Then guess what? They allow you to do that. They also began to, if you're on site, walk customers through their inspection process. Back then, nobody was really talking about, on the used car lot, the inspections that the cars would go through. So CarMax made it a point to walk every buyer through the process. Okay, this is important. Walking them through the process. Here's what happens when we buy a car. We inspect it. Here's the things we look for. Here are the things that we replace and fix and how these cars measure up to our standards. That's important. Thank content. That's important. The process. What's the process that I go through? Number five, they were the first to offer vehicle history reports. Today, this is just something that every dealership does, every used car dealership does. You want to see, you know, where the car has been, who's owned it, you know, what state it's been in, has there been any repairs or, you know, accidents that the car has been in. All of this stuff is something that pre-CarMax just wasn't available to the buyer. And post-CarMax, it's everywhere. And then finally, they've offered the Kelly Blue Book value with every listening. This was something that also was not done on a regular basis with used car lots. And they really transformed the way that people sell cars because guess what? The KBB, the Kelly Blue Book value, is listed now. And it's a household name. It's listed now everywhere you go, right? So why did they do this? They did this because they wanted to educate and solve problems in order to earn by your trust. And as I told you in the beginning, this is the essence of content marketing. Number one, understanding your buyer in a way that you're able to educate, teach them, and solve their problems through content in order to earn their trust. You know, 70% of all buyers already have their mind made up about you, about the product or service that they need to buy before they even land on your website. So how can you as a marketing director, business owner, VP of marketing founder, how can you begin to create content that educates and content that solves problems in order to earn buyer trust for your customers and your buyers? Well, here's how. Marcus Sheridan in the book calls it the big five. Number one, pricing and cost. You have to talk about what costs go into your pricing and how your pricing is determined, whether it's for a product or a service. This is important because if you know your buyer, you know that they're going to Google and they're searching for this type of information. If I'm on your site and I click the pricing tab and all I see is like contact sales or contact for more information, guess what? I'm leaving your site as a buyer and I'm going to go somewhere, whether it's an inferior product or service or not, that shares with me the information that I'm looking for, which is pricing. Number two, problems. You have to address any potential problems that your buyers might come across with your product or service. So as a marketing director, you know what problems are consistently being asked about. And so what do you do? Turn these problems, turn these weaknesses that your brand has into strengths. You do this through content by getting out in front of the story. Number three, versus and comparisons. These are important. You see this all over the internet now, but it's still very important. This product versus this product. Give me an honest assessment. Your product versus the competition. I want to know. I want to see that comparison. I want the checklist. That's the type of content that you should be creating in order to educate and to create buyer trust by solving their problems. Here's the thing though, you have to be honest. It has to be an honest comparison. If there's certain areas where your product or service doesn't measure up, be honest about that. Your buyer is going to find out. If you're the first one to tell them, guess what? You're earning buyer trust. And finally, number four and five, reviews and best in class. If you're a thought leader in your industry, then you should be saying, okay, here's a review of the products or services in my industry. And here is what I think you as a buyer should be doing for this use case or this use case. Think about like the motor trends car that you report. This is a publication that has established thought leadership in this space. So they're able to create that list. Another really cool thing that you could be doing in your business is highlighting all of the other companies that are doing things well, put them in a list and then create an article that says, listen, this company is really amazing because of these things. This company is really amazing because of these things. Our company is really amazing because of these things. Remember, you can't be all things to all people. So really highlight the areas that you are amazing at and highlight the areas where the competition is amazing. Guess what? This builds trust and I guarantee you will increase sales for your business because you're the one offering this information in order to earn by your trust. That's content marketing and it's really the way that we should do inbound marketing. It's no longer this game of push, push, push, interrupt, interrupt, interrupt. It's more about how can we attract customers through relevant content, content that earns their trust. That's the show for today. If you enjoyed it, be sure to let me know in the comments wherever you are, subscribe, rate and review. And if you want to learn more about this, they ask you to answer process or more about content marketing and inbound marketing. If this is something that your company is looking to do, guess what? Slam Agency is a full service marketing agency that really comes from this place of inbound and the power of inbound. Just go to slamagency.com and click free consultation and you'll be connected directly to me and we'll have a conversation. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. If you like what you just watched, subscribe, then hit that bell. 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