Chris Garrett is one of the most prolific content marketers out there, and that is . Chris has a long history with CopyBlogger and has mentored some of the biggest bloggers in the world including John Morrow who I featured earlier on in this podcast series.
Content marketing is constantly evolving and there are several ways in which to do this.
He’s also worked closely with Darren Rowse, and in one of the CopyBlogger authority webinars, I remember him being described by Sonya Simone as someone who’s one of the founders of CopyBlogger as one of the hardest-working people she knows. Chris was born in Canada. He grew up in the UK, and now he lives in Alberta, Canada where he teaches content marketing at a University.
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Ash Roy and Chris Garrett Transcript of Conversation
Ash Roy
Welcome to the Productive Insights podcast for entrepreneurs and professionals. Head over to Productiveinsights.com for over 100 free tips, articles, videos and podcasts that help increase your productivity and maximize your profits to fund the perfect lifestyle. Hello, everybody. I'd like to welcome one of the most prolific content marketers out there, and that is Chris Garrett. Chris has a long history with Copy Blogger and has mentored some of the biggest bloggers in the world, including John Morrow, who I featured earlier on in this podcast series. He's also worked closely with Darren Rouse and in one of the copy blogger Authority Webinars. I remember him being described by Sonya Simone, who's one of the founders of Copy Blogger, as one of the hardest working people she knows. Chris was born in Canada, he grew up in the UK, and now he lives in Alberta, Canada, where he teaches content marketing at a university.
Chris Garrett
Paddy Chris, that was a great introduction. I'm blushing. Now.
Ash Roy
What university do you teach at, Chris?
Chris Garrett
I teach at the Mount Royal University here in Calgary. So it's really nice to be able to do that. I'm standing in for Ernest Barbaric, who's a lovely guy, and he couldn't do it anymore. He's just had a baby. He asked me to step in and I'm really enjoying it.
Ash Roy
Oh, great. That's cool. And content marketing is such an interesting topic to me because I've been an authority member on Copy Blogger for about two and a half years now, and honestly, it's been one of the best investments that I've made. So I'm really, really excited to talk to you about this topic.
Chris.
Let's start by talking about what we mean when we say content marketing.
Chris Garrett
The funny thing with the phrase content marketing is a lot of us were doing it before it became called content marketing. If you imagine like the overlapping Venn diagram illustrations, there's a few things that go into content marketing that are called different things, but they all add up to what we know as content marketing. So it could be what we used to call corporate blogging or business blogging inbound marketing has been done for years and years and years, even before we had this phrase, right? So if you think about Procter and Gambles would sponsor TV shows and radio shows, so that was the soap opera. And we would have recipes in store magazines. So that was an article, a serving suggestion, obviously got you to consume more of those ingredients, but also it was a reason to pick up the magazine which would advertise to you. So content marketing is anywhere you're using content to attract customers and prospects or retain the interest of customers and prospects. And we usually use content marketing in an online sense to be the attraction and retention and conversion of prospects and customers. But content marketing really could be being useful, not being sales first.
Ash Roy
It's a very good point you touched on about being useful. I think that for me, content marketing is very much about adding value and doing that through storytelling, which I believe is hardwired into us humans. I believe storytelling is a really big part of it, definitely.
Chris Garrett
And Sonia, who you mentioned earlier, she says it's marketing you don't want to throw away, and that's a really good way of looking.
Ash Roy
Beautifully put. Okay, so I wanted to talk a little bit about how content marketing has transformed a business. You touched on it a little bit when you talked about Procter and Gamble, but any other stories you can tell us about how a business has used content marketing?
Chris Garrett
I'm struggling to come up with a case study that you probably haven't heard before because you're a member of our community. So that's the tricky part. I'll give you an anti case study, if you like. First, which is a good example of a company who is struggling in the day and age of content marketing. And social media, I think, is Coca Cola. In the days of top down advertising, interruption advertising, they could just buy TV, radio, magazine advertising, and just get in front of everybody they needed to, and they could direct the conversation. I think companies such as Coca Cola, McDonald's, those kinds of companies are going to struggle increasingly because there's so much information out there and not all of it is positive for these companies. If you think about Coca Cola as being the ingredients and the high fructose corn syrup, they're not really trendy ingredients, right? They're not things that we're encouraging each other to consume. And yet their entire business is based on us consuming greater and greater quantities of these ingredients.
Ash Roy
Great point.
Chris Garrett
And add to the fact water scarcity in a lot of places in the world, it's not a fun time to be in one of those businesses. At the same time, we've got all this information about how to have a lot more healthy lifestyle and how to consume better ingredients and how we should be preparing our food. So you've got this weight of content on the positive. You've got the weight of content and argument and discussion on the negative. You've got all this social proof against it. You've got parents who will openly criticize you if they see your kid drinking from a Coke bottle. And how do they combat that? They haven't got the traditional tools, so they are turning to content marketing, and they're actually doing quite well. And McDonald's is a good example of a company who's saying, actually, we're not as unhealthy as you think, and our ingredients aren't as bad. But that whole sector of previously dominant companies, I think we should all look at those very carefully and see what they're doing, see how they're combating these negative effects, how society has moved. Now, in a positive, I did mention to you that I'm struggling to think of unique case studies, but a very good case study, which you will have heard before, is Marcus Sheridan's swimming pool company. I'm sure you have heard of him. His company was struggling. There was the decline in sales that was going to basically put him out of business. And they decided to go from having a very thin website, very thin web presence, to going all in on the web and answer every question a prospect or customer ever asked them, even to the point of practically sending people to competitors being completely transparent. And it turned their company around. And there's a couple of good reasons for this. One, all that content out there, each piece of content was a salesperson out on the web, working 24/7 for their company, getting them attention, search, traffic, shares. All of those pieces of content, all of those pages, were another opportunity for somebody to find them. But then when you look at the competitors, they weren't as transparent and open about their pricing, about their product, about how it worked. So all of these questions, who are you going to trust more? Are you going to trust the person who says, no, you have to pick up the telephone so I can close the deal? Or are you going to trust the person who's got it all out there in the open so that they can't go back on you?
Ash Roy
Absolutely. And something McDonald's, I think has done really well is nowadays when I go into a McDonald's, I notice that they have these calorie charts, and they're being as transparent as they can about how much each of their products carries in terms of calories. They also have got the fruits up there and they've got water there rather than just coke. And so they're very smartly, trying to move away from the high fructose content products.
Chris Garrett
And if you don't share that information, people think, what have you got to hide? Why don't you know?
Ash Roy
Yes. And that's another great point, isn't it? Content marketing allows you to have this open and honest conversation with your customer. If you don't have that open and honest conversation, you're pretty much at a disadvantage today.
Chris Garrett
Yeah. We have gone from a place where you could control the conversation to the conversation happening with or without you. And so it's really difficult for people who grew up in this Mad Men sort of era where you would put a message out and it would be consumed and the cash would roll in Super Bowl ads. The return on investment on Super Bowl ads must be at an all time low because it's just too old school. Very little reason to take action because of that kind of marketing. Content marketing is an answer to a question. So the people who are going to convert from your content have self identified that they've got a need. They've been looking for a solution that's so much nicer than a salesperson calling you up and trying to beat you over the head until you say, okay, leave me alone. Where do I sign?
Ash Roy
Right? And that's part of the reason why viral marketing YouTube has just taken off and why Super Bowl ads are just relegating into the background. Because it's no longer a top down conversation that is directed by the manufacturer or the seller of the product. It is now a two way conversation. And a lot of it is a pool conversation, which is initiated by the customer.
Chris Garrett
Exactly. And it may be initiated by a referral from a friend. And that has extra weight because we all appreciate advice from our friends, especially when it's a product or service recommendation. So these channels are now becoming person to person rather than business to consumer, and that's changed the whole landscape.
Ash Roy
That's a brilliant way to put it, Chris. Person to person rather than business to consumer. I couldn't have put it better myself. This is a great segue. Let's talk a bit about how content marketing applies to businesses looking to leverage the online channel. We've already touched on it in bits and pieces. We talked about YouTube, we talked about viral content. Let's talk a little bit more about how Copy Blogger, and particularly Copy Blogger Authority does. That so fantastically well.
Chris Garrett
Well, the funny thing people don't believe about Copy Blogger, which is absolutely true, is Copy Blogger has never had full advertising campaigns. I think the amount of money Brian spent on advertising is probably less than Brian Garda spends on Zarbooks in a month. We've got like, no outside investors because we're competing against these venture capital funded companies. We don't have a sales team. So it's an eight figure business that was entirely bootstrapped, entirely built from content marketing. The only advertising we do is so that we can teach that as a skill. We'll do an experiment with it and it'll be a case study, it'll be a lesson. The business is grown and built with content marketing. You will see the occasional ad, and I would really love it if people tell me if they spot one out there, because Jess and Tony are mad scientists, they will experiment. But the amount of money put behind it is pathetically small. So every dollar of that eight figure business has come from content marketing, and it's all permission based. It's not outbound marketing. We're not pushing our message on people. It's actually you will get our messages by either coming to our site or especially if you opt into a list and showing interest. So we're not interrupting your day. So I think that really turns things around.
Ash Roy
Yeah, and I think there's an excellent free course that you can do when you sign up with Copy Blogger. And that's what got me to become an Authority member, because I got so much value out of the free course that I decided that the Authority membership would be worthwhile. I have been using the webinars, many of which you're a host on. They really have great value. I feel that it's a little bit like the product is good enough quality for me to want to share it with other people. In fact, I'm doing that right now in this conversation and I have nothing to gain out of it. But I have found the content compelling and value adding enough for me to want to talk about it. And that is exactly how content marketing works. So Copy blogger is walking the talk.
Chris Garrett
Yeah. And one of the things that most people don't really anticipate or realize until it's happened is that free course allows you to see a teaser of all the paid stuff. So we're not really pitching authority to people on a regular basis, because if you sign up and you get the free ebooks and then you start clicking around, a lot of the time you'll get a little box that says, sorry. You need to upgrade before you can see this full content, but you see enough of it to know that it's interesting. So there's subtle nudges rather than, as I said before, being beaten over the head by sales messages all the time.
Ash Roy
Which is a far nicer and more respectful way to communicate with your buyer.
Chris Garrett
Yeah. And from us trying going from a simple newsletter autoresponder to the free content library, it was a 400% increase in conversions. We didn't have pop ups, we didn't have anything annoying. We just went from saying, instead of signing up to this list, register for this free content library, here's what you're going to get. And it was 400% increase in conversions on what was already successfully growing the business. So it wasn't like we had this really bad limping along list. We had a really well converting list and it was a 400% increase. So that free content library concept worked so well that now we've got one on New Rainmaker.com and we've used it a few times since you're doing different.
Ash Roy
Forms of content marketing now, I also listened to the lead, which is your podcast. And in fact, earlier this morning I was listening to Jared Morris talked to Dan Pink about sales and Dan Pink actually says, everything good in life begins with a conversation, which I really liked. In fact, I wanted to quote that in this interview, which I have done now. And I see that Copy Blogger has got a good quality podcast, which is the lead, and you've got your webinars, which is something that is part of the paid subscription, and then you've got your free content, which is through your blog posts.
Chris Garrett
We're actually doubling down on the podcasting and you're going to see a few of us putting our own podcasts out. So there's going to be obviously the lead, and there's going to be the New Rainmaker podcast, which is Robert and Brian Clark. But a few more of us are going to be putting podcasts out. It's a big experiment. I don't really like hearing my own voice, so I don't know how well it will do. But we're really trying to reach as many people with as much value as we can in the hope that people then appreciate that and follow us back and get to know us a bit more. So hearing our voice will more directly lead to wanting to hear us on webinars. That's the anticipation. Yeah.
Ash Roy
Chris, look, I think your voice sounds pretty good to me, mate.
Chris Garrett
Not everybody can understand my accent. That's a problem.
Ash Roy
Oh, I can understand you perfectly. Maybe it's because I lived in England for a couple of years. The other thing that's really, really good about podcasting is that people are listening to it at the gym, they're listening to it while driving. And in fact, Tim Ferris was interviewed by John Lee Dumas on podcasters paradise not long ago. And he actually says that despite having been as prolific an authority as he has been, a lot of people are only discovering him, even now, through his podcast, rather than any other form of content. It makes a lot of sense to have a podcast, which is why I kicked off my podcast. Something I was going to talk about is why business owners should see content marketing as a critical business tool. But I think we've really made a very strong case for it already.
Chris Garrett
I think one thing I would say is even if you don't try it, one of your competitors will do it and they'll achieve results that mean that you wish you had. So you might not be thinking it's a good idea now, but once you see a competition doing it, you will wish you had earlier.
Ash Roy
Exactly. It's a little bit like having a website, isn't it? Maybe ten years ago, people may have thought having a website was something that was optional, but now, if you don't have one, you are at a massive disadvantage. And I believe the same goes with podcasting and content marketing.
Chris Garrett
Yeah. The thing is, like I said before, content is an answer to a question, and that question could be critical to them making the decision to purchase it could be an objection. So there's positive and negative reasons to be looking for that information. So the obvious questions are, how much is it going to cost? How long will it take? All of those things. Things that people increasingly don't want to talk to a salesperson for because they know they're going to be sold to, they want to be in a less confrontational environment. How many people make a sales decision now without doing some research? Especially if you're going to buy a house or a car, something so important and expensive, you don't turn up and then start doing your research. You turn up practically decided, and then the salesperson basically does the transaction and with the objections. You could be losing sales right now because somebody has an objection that they haven't got an answer for and that has turned them away.
Ash Roy
I think Google calls it moments of truth.
Chris Garrett
Yeah. And really sales copywriting comes down to getting somebody to make a yes no decision. Because ambivalence or confusion or that I will think about it is the end of your sale. It's either got to be a yes or a no. So you need to arm them with that information. And if you're withholding information, or if you don't think the effort is worth it, the biggest objection against doing content marketing is but it's so much work, takes so much effort. I don't to be in the spotlight. You don't have to do a video or radio show, but you will have to create some content. You need to help people. And if you need to get help from a consultant, a writer, content creator, designer, do it because your competitors have that content. You don't.
Ash Roy
Yes, absolutely. That actually touches on the very next point, which is overcoming objections. Why would someone not want to implement content marketing in a business? And what typically stops someone from getting started with content marketing? A lot of people think that it might be too hard or it's too time consuming. How does a person get started? How does a person overcome that initial inertia with getting started with content marketing?
Chris Garrett
Yeah. The main thing is to decide who in your business is going to do it and then do it incrementally. Don't make a big promise. Don't say, I'm going to write four articles a day forever. So you might not want to start a blog because that's a promise. Because that's a promise of future content. Instead, just put an article, some pages, just start adding content to your existing website. However, you can do it wherever you can do it. And don't expect it to be perfect. Just incrementally add, incrementally improve small steps. Because if you tell people you're going to be publishing on a schedule, either explicitly or implicitly, or if you tell people that something is going to be a certain level of quality or scale or quantity, then you're setting yourself up for potential failure and you add into your own procrastination because you're creating resistance.
Ash Roy
That's a fantastic point. The point about getting started in an incremental fashion, it's sort of like the Japanese Kaizen approach. And I remember Sonia Simone saying in one of the copy blogger seminars that she has written every day for something like 20 years, she says, just make a commitment to just write one sentence. Don't try and write 400 words, 1000 words, just write one sentence. And if you feel that you want to write more at the end of that great. And you usually do. But don't commit to something that you can't definitely deliver on. And one sentence is a very small thing to commit to, but it creates that habit, which is, I think what you're saying, is that right?
Chris Garrett
Yes. So you can either do a small part, break down the big scary task into tiny pieces and do a tiny piece, and that momentum often carries you forward. It's like you break the seal or you can make a commitment to somebody who you don't want to let down, not necessarily public or a customer even. But if you've got some sort of accountability pattern and say, I'm going to do this, manageable amount of effort by this date and time and a combination of the things often works very well. But see what works for you. But it doesn't have to take over your life. You don't have to have a full time employee. It doesn't have to be expensive. Just on Monday, come up with some headline ideas and some article ideas. It could be just answering questions that you've already got in your email inbox that you've sent out to customers before on Tuesday, turn that into an outline. Choose the most important or the best idea. Turn that into an outline. Wednesday, flesh out the outline. Thursday, edited it up. Friday, post it and promote it. So that's 30 minutes a day.
Ash Roy
Okay.
Chris Garrett
Who can't find 30 minutes a day?
Ash Roy
That's exactly right. And it's very much like building a house in small increments. And as you add one brick at a time, you start to see a structure come into place, and that itself encourages you. I had an interview with Neil Patel that had been sitting on my computer for a year, and I was scared to publish it because I didn't have enough interviewees, didn't have enough guests to take that first step. And literally as soon as I did that, I remembered that I had an interview that John Morrow had agreed to do with me. You were kind enough to come on. So that's exactly what you're saying, isn't it? Once you have something in place, you feel more motivated, you have that momentum, and then you want to build on it. Before you know it, your house is built.
Chris Garrett
Exactly. And you'll start getting some feedback, hopefully initially positive feedback, you'll get some customers and you'll see the rewards.
Ash Roy
Yeah. Another really important point about content marketing is how it establishes authority, which is why copy blogger sells their authority membership. Content marketing puts you in a position of authority, which builds the know like and trust relationship with your audience.
Chris Garrett
Yeah. Increasingly we're looking at attracting people who will grow to know like and trust us, but we're seeing beyond that. It be a vital part of how we select service providers. And if you think about like a realtor, you don't just want a realtor with expertise, you want somebody that you can stand to be around for possibly a considerable amount of time. Personal fitness trainers. Again, it's quite an intimate thing when you think about it. Counselors and coaches and anybody that's going to be in your house. Trust isn't just a nice to have and no like and trust. It's not just something that, okay, I'll tip the balance. It's now becoming something that we're looking to as a vital aspect of the service delivery. So if you can get across your personality and your expertise, it's not just what I can do for you, it's how I do it, how I approach it, how it makes you feel, then you're going to succeed where others are failing because they're not putting themselves out there. So that's an obvious reason why somebody might not want to do that. But the more you can do it, the more successful you'll be.
Ash Roy
Right. Chris, I can see why you're a professor in content marketing because you've made some really subtle but important points. You've talked about how content marketing is a person to person conversation rather than a company to a customer conversation, which is how it used to be. You've talked about developing relationships with service providers that are viable, about not making a big promise to yourself, but just creating content incrementally. In fact, that's the best action that a listener can take if they want to get started with content marketing. And that is start small. Make a commitment to something small every day and just keep at it.
Chris Garrett
Yes. Just mind your customer questions. If you don't have customers already, mind social media and the community forums out there. Find out what's keeping people up at night and just start writing about it.
Ash Roy
Write solutions to solve a problem with your content.
Chris Garrett
Exactly.
Ash Roy
Okay, well, Chris, that brings us to the end of the interview. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate at it.
Chris Garrett
It was my pleasure.