023 The Value of Content with Benjamin Grønvold

Benjamin Grønvold is a Norway-based digital marketer and SEO specialist. In this episode, we talked about how to figure out the right content to create, his go-to tools for planning content and the value of creating content for the entire customer journey.

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Episode Notes

In this episode of No Hacks Marketing, we are joined by Benjamin Grønvold, a digital marketer and SEO specialist.

After listening to this episode, you will learn:

How to determine the kind of content that your audience wants
How to figure out the kind of content that will drive volume
How to target the entire customer journey using content

Knowing the Kind of Content You Should Create

Bill Gates once said, “Content is king”. That said, you should know what content you should create, what format it should be, and what kind of question it should answer. You should also know what kind of content your audience and potential audience needs, and whether it will drive volume.

There are two elements to think about regarding content types: The first one is what kind of content does your user need and the other one is what’s going to drive the volume.

The main goal here is to figure out their problem and how you can solve it. That’s because being aware of the problem will lead you to know what kind of content you would write.

However, people have problems that they may or may not be aware of. They might have a pain that they don’t know about or know about. So, knowing where your customer is in his or her customer journey is going to be essential. This can help you create content that goes directly to them.

And this is where the volume comes in.

Some sectors are competitive and they have tons of customers down the funnel that is looking to buy certain things. That said, you need to create content that a user needs.

For example, if your user has a horse and you’d like to introduce a car, they might start to question themselves “what am I going to do with a car, if I have a horse?” That’s when you need to create content showcasing the benefits of having a car.

Understanding “People Ponds”

There’s a guy who wants to buy a boat, let’s call him the Pond Guy. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been on a boat nor has been in the ocean. He’s missing out on how amazing sailing feels like, especially during summer.

So, what you need to do is to try to communicate the wonderful aspects of the ocean. You can tell him that being on the water is awesome. He needs to know, or someone needs to tell him, that this is a problem. That way, he will realize that there is more the world has to offer.

Now that Pond Guy knows what he wants to do, he might ask “where should I go?” He can be that one guy becomes the other or a different Pond Guy.

In marketing, you can do it at the same time, in two different groups. You’re targeting specific people and you want your audience to progress to the next group. However, you don’t have to wait for that because it could be two different things.

You can also run a marketing campaign that targets every parallel. You can also develop a marketing strategy that only targets one group because that’s where the volume of traffic is. So, it all depends on your business strategy.

The Value of Your Brand

You want to build brand advocates out of these people. Hence, you need to create an awareness of what you offer.

Next is the consideration phase, wherein you need to compel them to consider you as an option. In the navigator phase, that’s where you’re converting. So, you need to get them to convert now or use all the conversion rates, optimization tools, and strategies.

Lastly, you have customer service or customer maintenance. That’s where you have the explorer who is looking for channels that work best.

Developing Your Content Distribution Strategy

The first step to do proper SEO strategy is that you want to make sure that you rank on Google for these terms and get that traffic in and then. Of course, using Google and Bing ads too.

Paid advertising newsletters are perfect for repeat customers and to keep them happy.

The key here is trying to figure out what content you are making and an awareness of where your customers are, and try to match that.

Knowing Which Step of the Journey to Focus On

How do you know where your weak points are? Where would you get the highest return on investment? What do you do about that?

The answer to that depends on your marketing strategy.

You need to start building what’s needed, leading you to focus a lot on the early stages. If you’re in a very established sector, you want to focus more on the consideration or later stations.

The other one is what drives volume. You want to figure out what people are searching for.

People are interested in trying to validate the pros and cons of different samples or trying to figure out what to do. That’s going to influence where you put your focus.

Of course, think of it as customer intent. If people search for what to do in summer, you don’t know if they have any inclination to go sailing or not. That way, you wouldn’t put all your eggs in that basket, but it’s probably going to be very high query focus.

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