The importance of content

Dave Harries: Grant, something that you really stress in this book, I think, it comes up more than once, is the importance of content. I want to ask you a bit about that, because obviously an online presence, I guess, is nothing unless you’ve got content.

Grant Leboff: Yeah, absolutely. One of my pet hates, actually, is people use this phrase content marketing all the time and stress the importance of content, which I agree with in essence, but they’ve missed a nuance I think. Is that, when you use the term content marketing, it sounds like content is a virtue in its own right. That somehow it’s a virtuous thing to produce videos or blogs or articles or white papers or whatever it is. The reality is, it’s an outcome of the world we live in. In other words, every business today owns channels, because they have a web presence, they have a website, they may have a blog, they may have a YouTube channel, they may have a Facebook page, etc. etc.

Those are channels. They’re only as good as the content you put on them. The same as the BBC, in essence, is basically a set of pipes with a licence to broadcast, what makes the BBC great is the content that it puts on, the programs it creates. It’s exactly the same. Your website is dead space on the internet. Your Facebook page is dead space on the biggest social network in the world. Your YouTube channel is dead space on the biggest video platform in the world. What will make those channels great is the content you put on.

Therefore, as a business, you need content. As a salesperson, with a LinkedIn profile, with a blog, possibly with a Facebook page or whatever else, you also need content. Content is vital, but people have to understand it’s an outcome of owning a channel. It’s not suddenly become really virtuous to become a writer and broadcaster.

Dave Harries: Therefore, if we follow that through to its logical conclusion, it implies to me that the nature of that content is very important. In other words, what you’re saying has to be relevant, it has to relate in some way to who you are, what you do, what you’re selling in this case. Is that right?

Grant Leboff: Absolutely. One of the things that people get wrong is they can produce … Well, either just produce bad content, which is obviously wrong, but even if they produce good content, it’s not to understand how will that help in the sales process. As a salesperson, as a marketing team, you’re not producing content, let’s be honest, for its own sake. Yes, you want to give value to the customer, 100%, otherwise they won’t engage with it, but you do want them, essentially, to buy at some point in the future and it could be several years down the line, but you do want them to do that.

One of the things you have to understand is, what are the challenges, the issues, the problems, that our customers have, and understand those. Then you can create all sorts of insight and understanding and content, and there are lots and lots of things that you can do around those, but at least by doing that you’re starting to tie it back to the products and services that you provide and there’s some sort of semblance of buying journey. What do I want my customer to do next becomes a question that you have to ask.

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