The only "trick" in content marketing is that the content needs to help your ideal customers

In this episode of Talking About Marketing, we ask, why answer people's questions? As you'll hear in the discussion, there are compelling reasons for revisiting your website content and running the simple "what's in it for me" test on behalf of your ideal customers.

For our first segment, however, Steve taps into some findings from an Oxford professor on how to think better, especially in relation to our marketing tasks.

In the mailbag segment, Steve shares a question about an alarming email a client received about their website security certificate being down.

And for a dose of perspicacity (the sharpening of our minds), David tunes our senses by reliving the United Breaks Guitars classic, one-man campaign that made an airline take note of poor, neglectful service (eventually).

We hope you find this helpful.

Episode show notes with timecodes

01:38 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.

How to think better

Steve plays a snippet from Oxford professor of mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy, from one of David's other podcasts, Blind Insights with David Olney.

Professor du Sautoy has written a book, Thinking Better: The Art Of The Shortcut, and as he discussed themes from the book, Steve immediately thought of many of the business people who've been in his workshops over the years.

There is often a high mixture of excitement and a gung ho spirit when people are having a great time in a workshop, but when Steve chats with them later, some people have lost their oomph. Typically, they've gotten themselves stumped and what was taught ends up going into the Too Hard Basket.

So Steve plays some insights from the professor, that might help us adjust and prepare ahead of workshops or other challenging tasks.

the bit I thought was relevant - it's about knowing it will get hard in the immediate future, as well has being prepared to make some decisions about how you might approach new tasks.

10:09 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.

Inbound vs outbound marketing. There's no "question" which is best

David started by asking: Why can't I concentrate? Why can't I sit for any length of time and read a book? Why can't I stay on a single web page and read the whole article from start to finish? It's because in the context in which we now live we face constant disruption. Interruption.

For a very long time outbound marketing was often called interruptive or disruptive marketing; an ad would pop up and disrupt you from what you were doing and if it was colorful and entertaining. Maybe that was once okay because you weren't interrupted and disrupted very often. But that's changed now.

By about 2005 to 2007, the period in which Steve was starting to go out and run social media workshops, people were starting to get overwhelmed by things.

At this point, the realisation kicks in among some very smart marketing people that if you actually give people answers to their questions about things they're concerned about or things they want to achieve that are their dreams, they will build a relationship with you, they will trust you they will purchase from you and they will be your greatest advocates because they feel like you treated them with respect and that in a world where interruption is just everywhere all the time.

Learn more in our discussion.

27:47 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.

Has my SSL certificate really stopped working?

I received a flurry of three emails from clients all along similar lines recently. As is typical (and I am glad my clients have learned to bounce emails off me when they are unsure), Michelle from Hok Homes took a few moments to ask, do I need to do anything with the below?

Here's what she received: 

AutoSSL has renewed “hokhomes.com.au”’s Domain Validated (DV) SSL certificate. The new certificate lacks 8 of the website’s domains. It then lists 8 various subdomains that are all linked to an account such as cpanel, webmail, calendars, etc.

What's happened is the AutoSSL regenerates itself every month and if there is even a split second's gap in the process, the system sends a hideous email that looks like the robot from Lost In Space - Danger Will Robinson.

If you get these, you can go into your cpanel hosting and check the status in the Security tab OR go to your website and have a look in your web browser. If there's a nice padlock there, all is good. If the padlock is broken, then you do need to address the situation with great importance.

But the big lesson - please use your relationship with your trusted person to bounce any suspicious emails past them whenever you're in doubt.

You can hear my explanation in the episode or read it here: 3 Alarming Emails Small Business Website Owners Get – And What To Do About Them.

32:20 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case stude from the past.

United Breaks Guitars

For this segment, we rolled out the famous United Breaks Guitars protest song and consumer movement, started by singer/songwriter, Dave Carrol.