Lessons

Lesson Info

Building Guides for Content Marketing

now guides don't necessarily have to be I talked about this in the previous segment guys don't have to be this big all inclusive out huge out of the box massive project they have a lot of value when they are that but they could be a simple as just three to five pages and so make sure that as we go in two today's conversation about guides you re center your mind to focus on the idea that guides are really about developing trust in your target market hopefully your customer I think guides can be great at every single phase along the way they really have power at every one of the five phases we talked about yesterday remember we talked about those five phases that a person goes through as they enter your business as it become accustomed as they leave we talked about using the wedding photographer is an example but really any life cycle business lines up perfectly with the wedding photographer that first phase is the pre engaged lead pre engagement haven't gotten engaged yet because engage...

ment is one of those pivotal points that turns them from being a potential into really being suited for you so we have a pre engaged lead then we have the engaged lead the person who's not pre engaged but now has gotten engaged to somebody this is getting married looking around and then they they hire you to become their customer we treat a customer differently we would treat somebody who's not our customer and so we have a different phase for that it's called the engaged customer phase and then we have the post married I'm sorry the married customer phase and that's the phase where there's still a customer you're still interacting with them you still owe them the photos you still owe them an album but they're cut there still customer at that point you're still interact with them but they've already gotten married the way we talk to them is very different they don't have the same problems anymore they're not trying teo to plan a wedding they've gotten married and then we have the post married post customer person that phase that really appeals to those people that we've already served everything and left on their own devices we would probably never talk to him again unless we just bumped into them or saw them but there's still a lot of interaction to do with them now guide can really provide a lot of value at every single one of those phases okay guys can provide value before people are even interested in you and your brand they can provide a lot of value there I would say that where they have the most value is once they're inside of your customer life cycle once they become a customer of yours you get to use guides to continue to build trust by solving problems that they don't even know they have there's so many problems that we know that our target market goes through on a daily basis and we know when they're gonna have those problems we know how they're gonna feel we know what it's going to make him feel like and when we get to lean in to those problems when we get to show empathy we get to show that we care when we get to show that we understand and we have an expert opinion and view to solve that problem for them we build trust and we build trust trusted stays currency trust is what allows him to go from an advocate to evangelist to a true believer trust is what allows him to engage with us and love us in return just like we're showing them that we love them and so guys do a great job about that guides really can help us out not just in that phase but in all the five phases where will really focus our attention for today though is on building guides that air really targeted towards that phase when they're at that customer section when they're a customer of yours you can just love on your customers member the hashtag we have going love your customer you can love on your customer's with really awesome guides that solve their problems um I think it's worth mentioning the idea about solving problems we really spent a lot of time talking I just want to take one quick step back before we dive into the guy and make sure we're looking at that for the proper standpoint let's get to make kind of examples going so we have that fundamental underlying principle of how to build a guy ah guide at its fundamental underlying principle should solve a problem for somebody it should be a problem that whether they know they have it or they don't know they have it it should solve a problem that as soon as they see it fleshed out they go yeah that is a problem of mine a guide just to brag or boast or a guide that's just full of empty words or you're relevant content doesn't do as much value and can actually serve to harm you because again in that case you're just publishing noise and nobody needs more noise in their life right now remember the idea of content marketing in general is not just to create a bunch of noise it's not just to create a bunch of content to just pollute more peoples in boxes and more people social media feeds the idea behind content is the right information at the right time to the right person targeted focused because you know your authentic brand and you know howto love on them so that's the model for creating guides and the good news is there's usually no shortage of problems that we can solve once we get to know the real needs of our target market of our customer once we know because we authentically attract a specific type of customs we know them it's not that hard to come up with all the problems that they're facing there's just so many problems that we can solve I do want to quickly point point out I haven't talk about today yesterday a lot of you were able to go grab the supplemental guy that she'd done it is created to this course this content marketing course so make sure that if you haven't gone and grabbed that guide it's a free download it's just a simple girl shoot out at dot com slash marketing that has a lot of the tips and the tricks that other photographers are using in their content marketing so you can get some real life examples from other professional photographers for today's segment it's also just a really great example of a guide I'm not going to say there are guides of the best ever there's a lot of areas we could improve upon but what it does show is it does showcase a lot of what I'm talking about so I'm gonna show you how to build a guide today take you through the ten steps of how to build a guide that's also available as part of the bonus material if you purchase the course we're gonna go through all that and if you don't want to see it in real life action grabbing this guide is also a great way to do that you could kind of follow along online and kind of see it so I want to make sure that was up there for those of you who missed it let's talk about the four reasons that you need to be building guides they all center around your target audience go figure that become a resounding theme yet of the course for not talking to a specified audience then we're really trying we're attracting no one you know I think I've made that point pretty clearly thus far but it'll keep coming up again and again and again number one reason that you need to be building guides is because it allows youto love on your audience this point has already been made in my intro and it's been made throughout the first half of this course loving on your customer is such a valuable way to create and build trust giving before and in excess of ever asking in return allows you to create that trust and that create that trust is today's currency building a guide and sending it to some guy at the right time to solve a problem they have builds that trust and let you love on your audience number two it allows you to educate your audience the young ones are going to be talking about educating your audience some tomorrow when they're up on stage and there is so much value in educating your audience we talked about a little bit rushed in the last segment about educating your customers on how to share your images and how not to share your images and about facebook educating your customers is something that we kind of forget to do a lot of the time we actually forget to do it a lot of the time this remember going back to the first day one of the first lives this is a crazy stressful emotional time in their lives and chances are high they've never done it before they don't know the rules they don't know how this works they don't know half the time they don't even know what an engagement session is they don't even know what a lot of these things that we think are ubiquitous that we think are normal you don't get what that is always think it's funny when photographers named their packages thie f two point eight or the f four prides don't know what that isthe but we can use that is a wonderful example about how we get sometimes caught up because we shoot twenty weddings a year we shoot fifty senior portrait say year we shoot thirty babies a year we we do this so often we're the experts on it my dad worked for the military for his for his entire life and if any of you come from the military a military family you know that the military loves acronyms they love akram's every night as that my dad would get in from work and my mom and him were talking about something I was still just a young kid even as I got older and into high school the conversation was always something like yeah well you know we had a meeting about the u b o c and it was tough because the ford before baez and that the ten type t x axis didn't show up I didn't know what to do so I had to go ahead and reach out to my my pfcs I got six pfc to show up but I didn't know where the other eight were once they got done with that I mean I had to roll over after lunch to take care of the key the t double cues we have forty double cues that are delayed in production and so I'm gonna have to head overto dw ft later this week to figure that out and I'm like I don't know people ask me at school my dad doesn't like I'm gonna be honest I really don't know what I think it speaks I think he works in a foreign language that's about all I know about what he does and you know we do this though with our customers we do we don't use acronyms necessarily but we talk in terms that they don't understand and we forget that there's a lot of education we can provide education is valuable done from the proper standpoint it sets the table nicely guides allow you to do that in a loving way they allow you do in a way that doesn't make them feel like they're at los are they're they're they're not worthy but allows it allows you to build them up it allows you to give them wings and that's what guides khun d'oh you know top five tips for what toe wearing your engagement session I mean that's a wonderful way to educate them so they don't show up in outfits that we don't how many guys have shot way to me agent sessions of white shirts and jeans on the beach not only is that boring not only is that really hard to do but it's not flattering for them and a guy that would help them out the top five tips to picking out your outfits for engaging session educates them in a loving manner that's what guys like to do number three it allows you to attract your audience we're not these guys are attractive they point out a need that people have and by pointing out that need people get the lean into you going to spend a lot of time on this because I think that this is a pretty self inherent point but guides allow you to be more attractive and being attractive is wonderful for your target audience because it gets people to lean into you and you want people to lean into you number four it build trust with your audience now all of these thie under opinion of it is trust but I think that the point I want to make here is that it proliferates the fact that you're an expert okay building a guide and writing about these topics just the very nature of you doing it makes you a trusted expert and so it's a different kind of trust it's not the kind of press that comes from loving your customer it's a trust that comes from being the expert but they trust you mohr because you really you've elevated your experts status in their mind and so building guides elevates your expert status which then allows them to trust you more that's a great thing because it validates what they spent on you it gives them reasons to share about why you're awesome you know they know why you're awesome they know they're in love with you but it's hard to go tell someone I spent five thousand dollars so I could hang out with someone who's awesome but when they can say things like he is an expert she's an expert in her field you should see what she publishes man she is obviously the expert on engagement sessions he's got three or four guides about engagement sessions I feel I feel more comfortable and so it elevates you as a trust a trust expert with your with your with your customers so let's talk about how do you pick the topic that you're gonna build a guide on again I don't think that there should be a shortage of topics for you if you truly understand that target audience then there should be no shortage for you should be able to really understand their needs and their wants you want I heard this once said and I thought it was just so fitting it was at a a marketing conference that I went to and it was all marketers in the room was really interesting markers by the way they don't have nearly as much fun at conferences if it as photographers d'oh it's a much different scene so we're go going for fifteen years the photographer conference is going to places and gatherings like all over the country the target's just loved have a good time we're social beings marketers I don't know what happened I thought they'd be social too to be honest with you but just a different breed I guess I've been to a couple marketing conferences and it's a much more quiet tame affair so just the same but I was at one of these marketing conferences and the speaker got up the keynote speaker and he said I want to summers I'm about to talk about marketers must be empathetic they must be the most empathetic people at the company and I love that because the marketer you must I understand you've gotta feel the pain that your customer is going through you gotta feel it you've got it when they feel when they go through it you've got to go through it right there with him you've got to be empathetic and that's when you can really truly develop a great marketing fundamental for how you build your topics is when you are truly empathetically understanding what it is they're going through that comes from getting that target audience very very closely very intimately having that persona built out so much so that you can feel their every feeling understanding them and that's what these topics get born out of you get to the point where you you can predict the topics and the pain points they have before they know they haven't before you've even seen them fleshed out because you understand it so well you're almost living in that character it's like it's like my favorite movie characters walking phoenix he is known for getting so into the character that it's actually somewhat destructive to him he gets so in and becomes the character so much you know that it begins to take him over I mean he'd make a great marketer so empathetic he'd make a great marketer hire him any day if I could for a lot of reasons but to define your audience and the face we talked about the phase earlier there's that more or less five phases by little different depending on the type of life cycle business you have to define your audience you're going to be talking to and the phase you're going to be talking to them at again way want to deliver the right content at the right time to the right person this is where we do it first and foremost out of the gate defined the audience and define what you're going to talk about so sorry to find a phase you're gonna talk to matt so I'm gonna be talking to my wedding customers talk to them at the engaged customer phase after they booked me but before they get married and I'm gonna be talking to the people that I already booked me okay good we have our defined audience we have are defined face second this is two part identify a problem that you're an expert at first part is identified the problem it's got to be a real problem you can't make one up it's not a real problem wait till you find one chances are you need to lean in more because they're there they exist they happen all across the board I never forget a problem that I didn't know existed until my wife and I were engaged and we were going through and we met with a florist I've never met with a florist before because I've never been engaged before fastening experienced by the way to be a wedding photographer and then go to the process of getting married this is where a lot of what I learned this came from is I realized how many problems there are and I'm in the industry by poor what I gotta watch my wife and she has followed me in the industry the whole time that we were dating knew each other was a wedding photographer from the day we met and there's still so many problems so we met we met with our florist and the first question he said it's okay what are your color schemes and sarah was said I don't know I have really thought about it and he was like you haven't thought about your color schemes it wasn't saying it like a rude way was just like what oh and she was like I didn't realize I had to think about that I mean I kind of crossed my mind and so I love I love sarah because you know she's been around me long enough and I've been talking for my whole life about trusting professionals trusting experts you're only good at a couple of things do what you're best and trust experts at the rest she looked at him and she said you know what how about we spend in our get to know each other and you pick the clothes for our wedding I'm not even getting so our wedding color scheme was picked by our florist who she trusted very much but it was a problem that I saw sarah and I didn't really know where to start when it came to picking the color scheme for a wedding and it was even something I ever even knew is a problem until he asked us point blank what colors do you want me to build your floral pattern off I didn't know that so many problems that we could come up with and you can identify and you need to identify these problems just started never no document just start a list of them you know just every time you see a problem write it down it'll make great fodder for blawg post for guides for other mechanisms to solve those problems later number two you've got to be an expert at it I'm not an expert at picking color schemes for wedding but I could pull together the right resource is in that case to be an expert at it because I could showcase what color schemes look good at weddings from a photo photographic standpoint I could also interview flores some of the experts that are experts at actually picking it I could put together a wonderful compilation piece and so sometimes that you're an expert at really should be changed too that you have access to experts in and you can merge and combined we're going to talk about that a little bit more later about where to go to get expert opinion if you're not an expert at it let's cross back over the example used earlier top five tips for picking engagement outfits that's something you probably wouldn't need to go outside of your own space for you could probably help photographer sorry brides and grooms out with that and again by the way that one transports to any any type of photography that shoots people so not just weddings any type how to pick out the outfits for your maternity session how to pick out the outfits for your family portrait session that's one that transports to any event photography I know some of you out there we've talked about the landscape photographers there still wonderful ways that you can come up with it's about looking at your end client understand their lifecycle phase and then identifying the problems in the pains they have number three is very clearly solved the problem so hopton dying to get this great idea way get these great way get this great concept we're going to solve a problem we put it all together and we forget one key ingredient in the end we never actually solved the problem for them we never actually did we promised we were going to do and that has the opposite effect of creating trust after after all that hoopla aw all that buzz all that wonderful good vibes they download this guy they access this block post whatever it is that's solving a problem and it actually doesn't solve their problem worse off it makes them more confused that's a problem and again it's important to think about solving the problem in terms of your target market okay so let's say you know a lot about your target market and you know the clothes they typically where and that they typically don't wear maybe that's something you can define your target market may be it's not but if you're writing a guide that is defining what to wear for the engagement session and then you recommend a whole bunch of clothing outfits that you know that your target market would never wear what now you've actually not solve the problem you've solved a problem but you haven't solved the problem for all of the different things we've defined so you need to make sure that as you're solving the problem you are looking at all the different phases here