Contract Free PR Support

John Jantsch (00:02.118)

So, what if every AI tool your business just adopted is quietly making customers trust you less? Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jance, and my guest today is Doug Dibert Jr. He’s the founder and CEO of Magnif Mag. I I bet you a lot of people struggle with that. Magnify. Well, he’ll he’ll straighten me out.

A white label video platform that helps marketing agencies and businesses add video to AI chat, email automation, and reputation marketing systems. So Doug, welcome to the show.

Doug (00:36.632)

Thanks so much. Yeah. No, no. It’s we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re marketers and salespeople. We’re not, you know, English majors, right? So

John Jantsch (00:43.91)

All right. So so tell everybody everybody listening how to actually pronounce it.

Doug (00:51.148)

Magnify, yep, yep, you got it. Yep, magnify, M-A-G-N-F-I, yeah. Well, it w I I I originally started it. I was gonna buy M-A-G-N-I-F-I, but somebody else owned it and they wanted five grand for the letter I. And when you’re a startup, right, I mean every dollar counts. So I was like, well, just take off the I, no big deal.

John Jantsch (00:53.484)

it says magnify, okay. Okay, all right. I was

John Jantsch (01:02.95)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I tell you the other issue I ran into. I I so wanted to pronounce your name like the cartoon. I was trying to put an L L in there, you know. I I so wanted to do that as Dilbert, but that’s okay, gosh. I should I should we start my intro over again? I just butchered everything. All right, so yeah, there you go. All right, well now.

Doug (01:17.704)

Yeah, I get that too.

Doug (01:22.882)

Yeah, yeah, I I get that too. It’s it’s actually diapers, but long eye.

It’s it’s perfect and it’s imperfection. There we go.

John Jantsch (01:39.364)

Now we have a reason to talk about it. So that’s a you know, that’s a marketing win. so you started as a video production company agency, and my guess is that most of your clients saw what you were doing or you sold what you were doing as content production. I I think that’s probably a true statement, right? how does Magnify actually look at video content differently?

Doug (01:40.97)

Yeah, there you go.

Doug (01:47.575)

I did, yeah.

Doug (01:56.63)

You got it. Yeah.

Right true.

Doug (02:06.734)

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So how we look at content differently, I mean, this is it’s a little bit of a metamorphosis, right? And a a lot of the metamorphosis for us really has been driven by the advancement of AI in a lot of communication. So video for a long time has been seen as just content. You know, social media, you gotta make video content, you gotta make those expert tip videos, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, which is all true.

John Jantsch (02:13.317)

Right.

John Jantsch (02:23.226)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (02:34.306)

But now it’s it’s even more important because it’s a part of humanizing business communication and AI driven communication now. That’s it’s it’s like the pivot has just happened not even that long ago. It’s it’s it’s definitely very interesting pivot, even for us.

John Jantsch (02:52.634)

Yeah. Well well, and I think the biggest change is what you’re suggesting, and certainly what I’ve seen, is that there’s a lot of places, there’s a lot of gaps in where people are using it, video. Certainly, I mean, I I guess we could start with talking about, you know, how video differs from from word, written word content and maybe go there, you know, like why is video so powerful as a medium period?

Doug (03:11.405)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (03:18.008)

You got it. Well, it’s it’s it’s definitely more powerful than just text on a screen because you see let’s like right right now, we’re doing a video podcast, right? You’re hearing my voice, you’re hear you’re hearing my tonality, you’re you’re seeing my hands move. I’m a big hand talker. So you’re seeing my eyes get big with excitement, right? And then obviously you’re laughing. So just it we read so much nonverbal communication than we do.

John Jantsch (03:38.565)

Yeah.

Doug (03:46.242)

Verbal and we actually in science shows we learn more. So the businesses that are are adding video now to a simple email communication are are standing out in a huge way and closing deals faster. We worked with some sales teams that were super reluctant, like, I don’t want to take the time to record a video. I’m busy. I just want to fire off a quick, you know, email and then send it off. You know, keep the that sales prospecting thing going. But the businesses that actually levered it early on.

John Jantsch (03:47.205)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:08.677)

Yeah.

Doug (04:16.574)

actually close the deals faster because video is a fantastic conduit for no like and trust in a in a digital first world.

John Jantsch (04:23.898)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think I think all communication is a form of persuasion. you know, we’re trying to persuade somebody to do something, you know, even if it’s just right back to me. and so I I think video scores very high on trust, and trust is certainly one of the biggest elements of persuasion, as you as you just mentioned. W I I read in the beginning of this some stats that that actually I think you you have shared. Seventy nine percent of Americans prefer human

Doug (04:30.754)

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (04:45.75)

You got it.

John Jantsch (04:53.868)

Over AI agent and customer service, 86 say human interaction still matters to brain experience. I’m wondering if those numbers are skewed because so many people are doing it poorly. you know, so some of the automation, the really particularly the early automation was was more frustrating than helpful in a lot of cases. And they just found themselves like human, human, human, you know, pushing whatever button to get to that. And and do you think that that some of those numbers are there because

Doug (05:03.672)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (05:11.061)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (05:15.98)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:21.594)

People are doing it poorly. I know that I’ve had good experiences with AI chat and I I’m like, Great, that was the way I wanted to go because it I got the result. That’s really all we’re after, right? Yeah.

Doug (05:32.322)

Yeah, you got it. Yep, right to the end result. Yep.

John Jantsch (05:36.048)

So so how does I guess the second part of that, an actual question, you know, how you know, how is somebody using video in all these like customer experience and onboarding and you know, all the things that they think about that they don’t think about in a lot of cases after the sale?

Doug (05:54.03)

Correct. Yeah. Well, so after the sale, super important. So especially after the sale, letting them know that a real human being is actually behind the business is vitally important. So when they get that first welcome email, adding a simple video to it, even if this is generic, even in the chat bot, right? We’re seeing a a nice uptick in people adding video replies just to a chat bot. Because even after the sale, even for Magnify, when somebody comes in and white labels a platform,

John Jantsch (06:06.01)

Right, right.

John Jantsch (06:20.602)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (06:23.0)

They’ll come and they’ll still hit our chat bot up and just ask questions. So we just we deliver video answers to that. So adding video to that. So and then even social media. People businesses don’t think after somebody is sold, like their social media is just for attracting customers. Your social media is also for continuing to sell to your current customers, because if they bought from you, they’re probably liking your social media.

John Jantsch (06:26.693)

Yeah.

Doug (06:48.278)

So continuing to educate and nurture and onboard that customer into how to maximize out your product or your service that you have.

John Jantsch (06:57.914)

So so so give me a little give me a little bit on the technical details. When you say video in your chat replies, that’s really a a a bot that is replying in video form. I mean that’s not actually pre-recorded videos. A lot of people used to do that. but but you’re actually saying no, it’s gonna respond to the exact question it was asked based on a knowledge base.

Doug (06:58.186)

Even after the sale.

Doug (07:09.73)

You got it.

Doug (07:19.138)

Yeah, based on the knowledge base and delivering of a pre-recorded video. You got it. So that way I’ve seen the the bots out there that have like the automated like AI avatar and it looks really weird like the headljerk and then I’ll give you that text response answer. But these are pre-recorded video responses that are delivered by the AI at the right place at the right time.

John Jantsch (07:33.422)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (07:40.643)

Okay.

Doug (07:44.46)

So business can still we tell me this all the time, automate as much as you can, but when it’s appropriate, add in that video that that human layered response versus just a a talking bot. So what the bot is figuring out where the appropriate response is to add that video video reply.

John Jantsch (08:04.57)

So one of the things I think we talked about was at reputation management. you know, there are a lot of industries that have been on the, you know, getting reviews game for many, many years, home service industries, restaurants, spas, you know, that kind of thing. But it’s I think almost every business has now realized how important it is. how can you use kind of one what I call one-to-one video in referral generation, or not necessary referral, reviews like a Google review.

Doug (08:14.626)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Doug (08:31.586)

Yeah, review capture. Yeah. So a lot of softwares out there I know for reputation management. After somebody leaves a four or a five star or an NPS score leaves like a nine or a ten, now you could with with our platform, that’s how we work beautifully with those platforms. Is that if they do click those, you can automate either a gay, you know, click here and tell us your story, record a quick video testimonial about your experience. And hey, as a thank you for your time, you know, for for telling us your story, we’ll

Well send you 10% off the next visit, right? So that’s a perfect opportunity to create micro influencers out of those people who are leaving those those five stars or four stars and those nine and tens on the on an MPS score. So then it becomes a content generation engine.

John Jantsch (09:17.348)

Yeah. So so so again, just to clarify that, you’re not necessarily saying use it you know, a lot of people do things where they did a service and they want to send a video out to the person saying, Hey, review us. But you’re actually you’re actually advocating more for once somebody does review you to actually then ha use it as an engagement tool.

Doug (09:36.738)

Yeah, it’s actually both. Yeah, yeah. So it yep, you you could utilize it both ways. Like we we have users on our platform that’ll use our video email tool. So it’ll actually route them to a video message of the owner saying, Hey, like I’m Bob the from from Bob’s Burgers, right? Hey, I’m so glad you had a great time at at our place. If you feel so inclined and you want to tell us your story about how much you loved your burger, what was your favorite burger? Just click the link below and record your story for us. And next time you come in, you know, burgers on me, just for taking the time.

John Jantsch (09:38.479)

Yeah, okay.

John Jantsch (10:06.566)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (10:06.732)

So we’ve seen it both ways. You got it.

John Jantsch (10:10.244)

many years I have actually advocated small business owners, you know how you you fill out a form, whether it’s request a quote or just contact us or whatever the form is, and and it always drove me crazy. You’d press that button, send, and you weren’t even I mean there was no confirmation, there was nothing. You’re like, I don’t know, did they get it? You know, or not, right? And I’d always was big on getting business owners to record a video, send them to a page that basically says, Hey, we got it, you know

Doug (10:11.51)

Yeah, okay. Yeah, small.

Doug (10:16.814)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (10:27.554)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (10:36.674)

Our best agent is on it, they’re gonna get back to you. Me and and the people that did that, it was funny how often we’d get comments because it it was it’s it’s now pretty regular, but it was unique almost so that you know, people would comment on something so goofy and so simple.

Doug (10:39.436)

Yeah.

Doug (10:51.406)

Well what’s what’s what’s funny is you were ahead of the game, John. And because what you were what what you were doing is you were humanizing the experience. Instead of shooting a simple e or even a even an email, just like you said, sometimes you get nothing back, but usually you get that automated little text like, We’ve got your thing, let’s let me be in touch with you, blah, blah, blah. But now, looks like you said, recording, I mean, taking three minutes or less to record a video, throw that in your auto response, and then

John Jantsch (10:56.921)

Yes.

John Jantsch (11:07.045)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (11:20.162)

Having that video pop up? You were ahead of the game, man.

John Jantsch (11:23.79)

Yeah, well and and the fact that everybody the pandemic actually sped this up because everybody that everybody had to go out and get a camera and everybody got on video and everybody was used to now they had all these tools to actually do that recorded before. I mean when I started doing it, we had to bring a crew into the office. It was much harder. So

Doug (11:27.566)

yeah. Yeah. Video.

Doug (11:38.83)

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I remember even even before the like just trying to get something out of Zoom call before all that was was super hard to do. Now it’s like we gotta walk across the street. well to Zoom.

John Jantsch (11:47.47)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So I think I read somewhere you do something called Thank You Thursday. you pick a random client e each week and send a personal video email. it’s so funny. Again, going back to old practices because I’ve been doing this a long time. I had a habit of of every Friday I would call three or four clients, literally with like, hey, I was just let’s see how you doing. And I can’t tell you how often somebody said, you know, I was just about

Doug (12:00.706)

Yeah.

Doug (12:14.926)

There you go.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:21.414)

call you, we need to do XYZ. I mean, it was unbelievable. So I made it a habit. So tell me about your thank you Thursday.

Doug (12:22.19)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, thank you Thursday came well from you know from video email, right? ‘Cause like we talk about you should use video email, should do that. It’s kinda like practicing what you preach. So every Thursday, well, ’cause it rhymes, it kinda helps you remember it. yeah, thank you Thursday. You just pick a random customer and record a video and just say, Hey, how’s the su how it’s going on? Hope you’re doing fantastic and hope you’re enjoying the platform. You know, hope the family’s doing good. Just want to record a video to say, Hey, thank you. I appreciate you because I would not be here if you if we if we weren’t working together. So I just want to say thank you.

John Jantsch (12:38.469)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug (12:56.474)

And less than twenty-four hours, if not maybe five to ten minutes later, you would get a response back saying, That was really cool. Thank you so much. And and a little what you just said, John, will happen. They’ll be yeah, well I thinking about adding X this Y XYZ thing on it. I’m glad you reached out. Let’s get this thing going. So it’s I mean, your your your current customer base is is the best base to re to sell additional products and services to because they already know, like, and trust you.

John Jantsch (13:21.412)

Yeah. Have you have you have you quantified or or or gotten even any kind of feedback from clients who’ve maybe adopted that practice to say this is what this has meant over the last six months?

Doug (13:34.466)

Yeah, mean l l literally what I just still what when I kind of explained that concept to our to our agencies and stuff like that that white label us even businesses, literally the same response is like, my gosh, this is so easy, so simple, especially from C suite people, like messaging out their their team members. Hey, I want to record your quick video or record a quick video and just say, Hey, you know, hey, you know, Bill. Just want to record your quick video, just let you know I think you’re doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much for working here.

John Jantsch (13:38.766)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:48.601)

Yeah.

Doug (14:01.56)

Especially if they’re talent they want to keep. People just wanna feel appreciated. So that C suite executive that was using our platform did that. He’s like, my gosh, like this is I’m gonna do this all the time now. Just record video, just say thank you to my team members who are doing a fantastic job.

John Jantsch (14:04.976)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:16.928)

th a lot of people have been, and any number of people have been using tools like Loom to do kind of similar one to one video and you know, you you just click a button and record. I I I know, you know, we initially our initial use case for using Loom was when we were trying to explain, say to a web designer, like, fix this thing right here, you know, and it was just a lot easier, right, to communicate that. How does your platform differ from a you know, a tool like that which can be free?

Doug (14:23.256)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Doug (14:35.372)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (14:45.58)

Yeah, yeah, no, Loom’s a fantastic platform. Yeah. So we we have the we just like you said, we have the we have the same kind of capabilities inside of Magnify, right? But the cool part about what what Magnify is is we’ve built in not just a a screen recording tool, but we have the ability to capture video testimonials, produce simple branded video clips, make little story videos which takes three video clips and produces them into one video, and then literally add video to any marketing communication that you have, whether you have an AI chat bot.

John Jantsch (14:51.718)

Ha ha ha.

Doug (15:14.942)

you have SMS marketing, add videos to that. So we’re kind like the the all-encompassing video powerhouse. And that stemmed when I was running my video marketing agency. It stemmed from what other digital marketers and what businesses were actually asking for on a consistent basis. So when you’re running a video production company, you’d get those nice big client contracts, right? Where you’re making 10,000-ish dollars a video. But

Magnify was birthed out of, well crap. Like I gotta make more I gotta I gotta figure out a recurring revenue model instead of always always hunting and killing that next thing. So that’s where it was kind of birthed from was the the tools, the five tools we have were birthed from what businesses use or and should be using on a regular basis. And then what makes us unique with the video communication tools is the video content creation tools. We produce it for you. So there’s no video editing needed.

John Jantsch (15:49.966)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (16:01.456)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:09.658)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (16:09.74)

So art it adds your your logo and music and captions and call to action all by itself.

John Jantsch (16:15.856)

Well in and that ten thousand dollar video, you know, AI is cutting into that budget pretty pretty significantly too, I think.

Doug (16:22.582)

yeah, it’s funny you mentioned that. Well, it’s ’cause we we actually just through probably about a good year and a half, like obviously we’re we’re on we’d like to think we’re on the cutting edge of of video. And AI video being one of those. We we’ve seen it go from like the really terrible to where it’s at now and we’ve we have studied it and just started offering like cinematic style AI videos where it looks

Where it could replace a five million dollar budget video. We just did one for a multi location automotive repair shop. And they wanted like, they came to us, they wanted like a Mad Max style thing video built around a air freshener. Their big thing was like this cool air freshener that you that you hang on their their their the the mirror gives them 15% fifteen dollars off their next oil change.

John Jantsch (16:51.534)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm.

John Jantsch (17:10.67)

Mm.

Doug (17:19.81)

Gets it back of the door. they wanted a story built all around that. So we went, we we were like, okay, yeah, we’ll give you like a one that’s like around a minute and a half. But like once we got into it, we’re like, we made us like a two minute 30 30 second, like full movie trailer. I mean, complete with scenes. I mean, if you were to pay a crew your minimal five million dollars, and it turned out amazing, they dropped it on their social media.

And within two weeks got over seven thousand plays. And immediately we’re like, we want to do more. So we’re actually doing one that’s a a gone in sixty seconds theme mixed with back to the future. So that’s sort of getting ready to drop here pro pretty quick.

John Jantsch (17:50.256)

Yes.

John Jantsch (17:56.088)

yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that’s that’s interesting. I mean you imagine you imagine like, you know, two actual live trucks or something driving down the road, you know, in a Mad Max style. I mean, I would take f twenty people back in the day, right? All the people holding boom mics and and the three, four different videos on, you know, on trucks. I mean, crazy. So,

Doug (18:02.102)

It’s awesome.

Doug (18:12.366)

Yeah. It’s like my God.

Doug (18:21.85)

somebody who studied filmmaking in college, if I had this at my fingertips back in the day, like I mean, literally, like your the your imagination is only the limit. It’s so it’s crazy.

John Jantsch (18:24.411)

Yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:32.696)

Yeah, yeah. All right, so I’m a two person shop and I don’t have time for video. What’s the least amount I could get away with?

Doug (18:42.712)

The least am I gonna get away with, right? That well, that’s what the Magnify platform was built for, number one. But number, but number two, bust out that phone in your pocket and just record some content for the love. Because I I always love when people you’re on screen, it’s been this is a great analogy I tell all people who are considering it. You ever been scrolling on social media and you stop and you see some guy’s video, you’re like, that guy’s an idiot. Like, I know more than that person.

John Jantsch (18:43.78)

Ha ha ha.

John Jantsch (19:08.602)

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (19:10.968)

Well, that person took the time to record a video. Well, you have no excuse. Start recording that content. Put it on social media, especially if you’re on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is so hot right now for video content. If they if you’re a LinkedIn person and you’re watching this, make video content on LinkedIn to position yourself as a thought leader as an expert. There’s never been a better time to do it on LinkedIn, for sure. Hands down.

John Jantsch (19:14.277)

Yes.

John Jantsch (19:21.296)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:34.596)

Although my soap speech, stop recording the videos in your car with you driving. I hate those, okay?

Doug (19:40.544)

Yeah. Listen, I’ve been guilty of those. ‘Cause like sometimes you’ll get that thought that pops in your head and like I wanna get it out before I forget. But I hear you. I hear you.

John Jantsch (19:52.778)

So so so so you’re positioning your program though or your platform as white label for agencies. so tell me a little bit about I don’t know the first ninety days of implementation for an agency, what’s that look like?

Doug (20:01.954)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug (20:08.3)

Yeah, so first that’s the most important, right? The first ninety days. So the first ninety days when agency signs up, they they typically have a customer that they’re already like have asked for either video testimonials or they want to add video to an email marketing plan. And so that’s when they typically will find us, right? So but we tell agents all the time, yes, it’s exciting that you have a customer, right? And how our platform works is they pay that the the flat rate and then they get thirty they get thirty seats, thirty seats to give out to as many customers as you got it.

John Jantsch (20:23.675)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:33.284)

Hm. Wow. so those could each be a client could have a seat. I’ll get you, okay.

Doug (20:38.38)

Yeah, so you can give video testimonial capture, video email, branded video clips for your customer and add a layered in video service that works with your existing stack, your reputation marketing, your social media plan, your website design. But we tell them first 90 days, if you make sure you get yourself an optimized YouTube channel for your own agency. And because you agencies

John Jantsch (20:50.638)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (20:59.61)

Yeah.

Doug (21:04.477)

love the idea of having an optimized YouTube channel for their business because one, it helps out tremendously with SEO, right? I mean, and John, you’d be surprised how many agencies don’t know that YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. And when we tell them that they’re like, what? Really? Yes, it is. So yeah, it’s a great way to sell your client into creating content. So the first thing is getting them to create content. Get a video testimonial from one of their happy customers.

John Jantsch (21:10.99)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (21:16.902)

Sure. Yeah. Has been for a long time. Yeah.

Doug (21:32.472)

But it’s implementing it in with their own tech stack, right? So when they approach a business and they go, Hey, check out what we’re doing here. This will work better. This will make work amazing for your business. The business goes, Well, heck yeah, that’s awesome. I want that too. And it’s an easy add on. And most agencies are charging between two hundred and fifty bucks to seven hundred fifty seven hundred and fifty dollars a month in recurring revenue. Right out the gate. Yeah. Yep. You got it. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:53.772)

Right. Per se per seat. Yeah, yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you stopping by, taking a few moments on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some where you’d invite people to learn more about w how they can try out Magnify?

Doug (22:11.02)

Yeah, we well obviously you can just go to magnify dot com, A G N F I dot com. And then always hit me and hit me up on LinkedIn. I’m super active on LinkedIn. Just for just search Doug Doug Dybert J R on LinkedIn. I’m on there pretty much probably way too often, but you could f we could find me on there too. So

John Jantsch (22:29.318)

Well I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road, Doug.

Doug (22:34.072)

Perfect, John. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:02.118)

So, what if every AI tool your business just adopted is quietly making customers trust you less? Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jance, and my guest today is Doug Dibert Jr. He’s the founder and CEO of Magnif Mag. I I bet you a lot of people struggle with that. Magnify. Well, he’ll he’ll straighten me out.

A white label video platform that helps marketing agencies and businesses add video to AI chat, email automation, and reputation marketing systems. So Doug, welcome to the show.

Doug (00:36.632)

Thanks so much. Yeah. No, no. It’s we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re marketers and salespeople. We’re not, you know, English majors, right? So

John Jantsch (00:43.91)

All right. So so tell everybody everybody listening how to actually pronounce it.

Doug (00:51.148)

Magnify, yep, yep, you got it. Yep, magnify, M-A-G-N-F-I, yeah. Well, it w I I I originally started it. I was gonna buy M-A-G-N-I-F-I, but somebody else owned it and they wanted five grand for the letter I. And when you’re a startup, right, I mean every dollar counts. So I was like, well, just take off the I, no big deal.

John Jantsch (00:53.484)

it says magnify, okay. Okay, all right. I was

John Jantsch (01:02.95)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I tell you the other issue I ran into. I I so wanted to pronounce your name like the cartoon. I was trying to put an L L in there, you know. I I so wanted to do that as Dilbert, but that’s okay, gosh. I should I should we start my intro over again? I just butchered everything. All right, so yeah, there you go. All right, well now.

Doug (01:17.704)

Yeah, I get that too.

Doug (01:22.882)

Yeah, yeah, I I get that too. It’s it’s actually diapers, but long eye.

It’s it’s perfect and it’s imperfection. There we go.

John Jantsch (01:39.364)

Now we have a reason to talk about it. So that’s a you know, that’s a marketing win. so you started as a video production company agency, and my guess is that most of your clients saw what you were doing or you sold what you were doing as content production. I I think that’s probably a true statement, right? how does Magnify actually look at video content differently?

Doug (01:40.97)

Yeah, there you go.

Doug (01:47.575)

I did, yeah.

Doug (01:56.63)

You got it. Yeah.

Right true.

Doug (02:06.734)

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So how we look at content differently, I mean, this is it’s a little bit of a metamorphosis, right? And a a lot of the metamorphosis for us really has been driven by the advancement of AI in a lot of communication. So video for a long time has been seen as just content. You know, social media, you gotta make video content, you gotta make those expert tip videos, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, which is all true.

John Jantsch (02:13.317)

Right.

John Jantsch (02:23.226)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (02:34.306)

But now it’s it’s even more important because it’s a part of humanizing business communication and AI driven communication now. That’s it’s it’s like the pivot has just happened not even that long ago. It’s it’s it’s definitely very interesting pivot, even for us.

John Jantsch (02:52.634)

Yeah. Well well, and I think the biggest change is what you’re suggesting, and certainly what I’ve seen, is that there’s a lot of places, there’s a lot of gaps in where people are using it, video. Certainly, I mean, I I guess we could start with talking about, you know, how video differs from from word, written word content and maybe go there, you know, like why is video so powerful as a medium period?

Doug (03:11.405)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (03:18.008)

You got it. Well, it’s it’s it’s definitely more powerful than just text on a screen because you see let’s like right right now, we’re doing a video podcast, right? You’re hearing my voice, you’re hear you’re hearing my tonality, you’re you’re seeing my hands move. I’m a big hand talker. So you’re seeing my eyes get big with excitement, right? And then obviously you’re laughing. So just it we read so much nonverbal communication than we do.

John Jantsch (03:38.565)

Yeah.

Doug (03:46.242)

Verbal and we actually in science shows we learn more. So the businesses that are are adding video now to a simple email communication are are standing out in a huge way and closing deals faster. We worked with some sales teams that were super reluctant, like, I don’t want to take the time to record a video. I’m busy. I just want to fire off a quick, you know, email and then send it off. You know, keep the that sales prospecting thing going. But the businesses that actually levered it early on.

John Jantsch (03:47.205)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:08.677)

Yeah.

Doug (04:16.574)

actually close the deals faster because video is a fantastic conduit for no like and trust in a in a digital first world.

John Jantsch (04:23.898)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think I think all communication is a form of persuasion. you know, we’re trying to persuade somebody to do something, you know, even if it’s just right back to me. and so I I think video scores very high on trust, and trust is certainly one of the biggest elements of persuasion, as you as you just mentioned. W I I read in the beginning of this some stats that that actually I think you you have shared. Seventy nine percent of Americans prefer human

Doug (04:30.754)

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (04:45.75)

You got it.

John Jantsch (04:53.868)

Over AI agent and customer service, 86 say human interaction still matters to brain experience. I’m wondering if those numbers are skewed because so many people are doing it poorly. you know, so some of the automation, the really particularly the early automation was was more frustrating than helpful in a lot of cases. And they just found themselves like human, human, human, you know, pushing whatever button to get to that. And and do you think that that some of those numbers are there because

Doug (05:03.672)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (05:11.061)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (05:15.98)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:21.594)

People are doing it poorly. I know that I’ve had good experiences with AI chat and I I’m like, Great, that was the way I wanted to go because it I got the result. That’s really all we’re after, right? Yeah.

Doug (05:32.322)

Yeah, you got it. Yep, right to the end result. Yep.

John Jantsch (05:36.048)

So so how does I guess the second part of that, an actual question, you know, how you know, how is somebody using video in all these like customer experience and onboarding and you know, all the things that they think about that they don’t think about in a lot of cases after the sale?

Doug (05:54.03)

Correct. Yeah. Well, so after the sale, super important. So especially after the sale, letting them know that a real human being is actually behind the business is vitally important. So when they get that first welcome email, adding a simple video to it, even if this is generic, even in the chat bot, right? We’re seeing a a nice uptick in people adding video replies just to a chat bot. Because even after the sale, even for Magnify, when somebody comes in and white labels a platform,

John Jantsch (06:06.01)

Right, right.

John Jantsch (06:20.602)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (06:23.0)

They’ll come and they’ll still hit our chat bot up and just ask questions. So we just we deliver video answers to that. So adding video to that. So and then even social media. People businesses don’t think after somebody is sold, like their social media is just for attracting customers. Your social media is also for continuing to sell to your current customers, because if they bought from you, they’re probably liking your social media.

John Jantsch (06:26.693)

Yeah.

Doug (06:48.278)

So continuing to educate and nurture and onboard that customer into how to maximize out your product or your service that you have.

John Jantsch (06:57.914)

So so so give me a little give me a little bit on the technical details. When you say video in your chat replies, that’s really a a a bot that is replying in video form. I mean that’s not actually pre-recorded videos. A lot of people used to do that. but but you’re actually saying no, it’s gonna respond to the exact question it was asked based on a knowledge base.

Doug (06:58.186)

Even after the sale.

Doug (07:09.73)

You got it.

Doug (07:19.138)

Yeah, based on the knowledge base and delivering of a pre-recorded video. You got it. So that way I’ve seen the the bots out there that have like the automated like AI avatar and it looks really weird like the headljerk and then I’ll give you that text response answer. But these are pre-recorded video responses that are delivered by the AI at the right place at the right time.

John Jantsch (07:33.422)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (07:40.643)

Okay.

Doug (07:44.46)

So business can still we tell me this all the time, automate as much as you can, but when it’s appropriate, add in that video that that human layered response versus just a a talking bot. So what the bot is figuring out where the appropriate response is to add that video video reply.

John Jantsch (08:04.57)

So one of the things I think we talked about was at reputation management. you know, there are a lot of industries that have been on the, you know, getting reviews game for many, many years, home service industries, restaurants, spas, you know, that kind of thing. But it’s I think almost every business has now realized how important it is. how can you use kind of one what I call one-to-one video in referral generation, or not necessary referral, reviews like a Google review.

Doug (08:14.626)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Doug (08:31.586)

Yeah, review capture. Yeah. So a lot of softwares out there I know for reputation management. After somebody leaves a four or a five star or an NPS score leaves like a nine or a ten, now you could with with our platform, that’s how we work beautifully with those platforms. Is that if they do click those, you can automate either a gay, you know, click here and tell us your story, record a quick video testimonial about your experience. And hey, as a thank you for your time, you know, for for telling us your story, we’ll

Well send you 10% off the next visit, right? So that’s a perfect opportunity to create micro influencers out of those people who are leaving those those five stars or four stars and those nine and tens on the on an MPS score. So then it becomes a content generation engine.

John Jantsch (09:17.348)

Yeah. So so so again, just to clarify that, you’re not necessarily saying use it you know, a lot of people do things where they did a service and they want to send a video out to the person saying, Hey, review us. But you’re actually you’re actually advocating more for once somebody does review you to actually then ha use it as an engagement tool.

Doug (09:36.738)

Yeah, it’s actually both. Yeah, yeah. So it yep, you you could utilize it both ways. Like we we have users on our platform that’ll use our video email tool. So it’ll actually route them to a video message of the owner saying, Hey, like I’m Bob the from from Bob’s Burgers, right? Hey, I’m so glad you had a great time at at our place. If you feel so inclined and you want to tell us your story about how much you loved your burger, what was your favorite burger? Just click the link below and record your story for us. And next time you come in, you know, burgers on me, just for taking the time.

John Jantsch (09:38.479)

Yeah, okay.

John Jantsch (10:06.566)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (10:06.732)

So we’ve seen it both ways. You got it.

John Jantsch (10:10.244)

many years I have actually advocated small business owners, you know how you you fill out a form, whether it’s request a quote or just contact us or whatever the form is, and and it always drove me crazy. You’d press that button, send, and you weren’t even I mean there was no confirmation, there was nothing. You’re like, I don’t know, did they get it? You know, or not, right? And I’d always was big on getting business owners to record a video, send them to a page that basically says, Hey, we got it, you know

Doug (10:11.51)

Yeah, okay. Yeah, small.

Doug (10:16.814)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (10:27.554)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (10:36.674)

Our best agent is on it, they’re gonna get back to you. Me and and the people that did that, it was funny how often we’d get comments because it it was it’s it’s now pretty regular, but it was unique almost so that you know, people would comment on something so goofy and so simple.

Doug (10:39.436)

Yeah.

Doug (10:51.406)

Well what’s what’s what’s funny is you were ahead of the game, John. And because what you were what what you were doing is you were humanizing the experience. Instead of shooting a simple e or even a even an email, just like you said, sometimes you get nothing back, but usually you get that automated little text like, We’ve got your thing, let’s let me be in touch with you, blah, blah, blah. But now, looks like you said, recording, I mean, taking three minutes or less to record a video, throw that in your auto response, and then

John Jantsch (10:56.921)

Yes.

John Jantsch (11:07.045)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (11:20.162)

Having that video pop up? You were ahead of the game, man.

John Jantsch (11:23.79)

Yeah, well and and the fact that everybody the pandemic actually sped this up because everybody that everybody had to go out and get a camera and everybody got on video and everybody was used to now they had all these tools to actually do that recorded before. I mean when I started doing it, we had to bring a crew into the office. It was much harder. So

Doug (11:27.566)

yeah. Yeah. Video.

Doug (11:38.83)

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I remember even even before the like just trying to get something out of Zoom call before all that was was super hard to do. Now it’s like we gotta walk across the street. well to Zoom.

John Jantsch (11:47.47)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So I think I read somewhere you do something called Thank You Thursday. you pick a random client e each week and send a personal video email. it’s so funny. Again, going back to old practices because I’ve been doing this a long time. I had a habit of of every Friday I would call three or four clients, literally with like, hey, I was just let’s see how you doing. And I can’t tell you how often somebody said, you know, I was just about

Doug (12:00.706)

Yeah.

Doug (12:14.926)

There you go.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:21.414)

call you, we need to do XYZ. I mean, it was unbelievable. So I made it a habit. So tell me about your thank you Thursday.

Doug (12:22.19)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, thank you Thursday came well from you know from video email, right? ‘Cause like we talk about you should use video email, should do that. It’s kinda like practicing what you preach. So every Thursday, well, ’cause it rhymes, it kinda helps you remember it. yeah, thank you Thursday. You just pick a random customer and record a video and just say, Hey, how’s the su how it’s going on? Hope you’re doing fantastic and hope you’re enjoying the platform. You know, hope the family’s doing good. Just want to record a video to say, Hey, thank you. I appreciate you because I would not be here if you if we if we weren’t working together. So I just want to say thank you.

John Jantsch (12:38.469)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug (12:56.474)

And less than twenty-four hours, if not maybe five to ten minutes later, you would get a response back saying, That was really cool. Thank you so much. And and a little what you just said, John, will happen. They’ll be yeah, well I thinking about adding X this Y XYZ thing on it. I’m glad you reached out. Let’s get this thing going. So it’s I mean, your your your current customer base is is the best base to re to sell additional products and services to because they already know, like, and trust you.

John Jantsch (13:21.412)

Yeah. Have you have you have you quantified or or or gotten even any kind of feedback from clients who’ve maybe adopted that practice to say this is what this has meant over the last six months?

Doug (13:34.466)

Yeah, mean l l literally what I just still what when I kind of explained that concept to our to our agencies and stuff like that that white label us even businesses, literally the same response is like, my gosh, this is so easy, so simple, especially from C suite people, like messaging out their their team members. Hey, I want to record your quick video or record a quick video and just say, Hey, you know, hey, you know, Bill. Just want to record your quick video, just let you know I think you’re doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much for working here.

John Jantsch (13:38.766)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:48.601)

Yeah.

Doug (14:01.56)

Especially if they’re talent they want to keep. People just wanna feel appreciated. So that C suite executive that was using our platform did that. He’s like, my gosh, like this is I’m gonna do this all the time now. Just record video, just say thank you to my team members who are doing a fantastic job.

John Jantsch (14:04.976)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:16.928)

th a lot of people have been, and any number of people have been using tools like Loom to do kind of similar one to one video and you know, you you just click a button and record. I I I know, you know, we initially our initial use case for using Loom was when we were trying to explain, say to a web designer, like, fix this thing right here, you know, and it was just a lot easier, right, to communicate that. How does your platform differ from a you know, a tool like that which can be free?

Doug (14:23.256)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Doug (14:35.372)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (14:45.58)

Yeah, yeah, no, Loom’s a fantastic platform. Yeah. So we we have the we just like you said, we have the we have the same kind of capabilities inside of Magnify, right? But the cool part about what what Magnify is is we’ve built in not just a a screen recording tool, but we have the ability to capture video testimonials, produce simple branded video clips, make little story videos which takes three video clips and produces them into one video, and then literally add video to any marketing communication that you have, whether you have an AI chat bot.

John Jantsch (14:51.718)

Ha ha ha.

Doug (15:14.942)

you have SMS marketing, add videos to that. So we’re kind like the the all-encompassing video powerhouse. And that stemmed when I was running my video marketing agency. It stemmed from what other digital marketers and what businesses were actually asking for on a consistent basis. So when you’re running a video production company, you’d get those nice big client contracts, right? Where you’re making 10,000-ish dollars a video. But

Magnify was birthed out of, well crap. Like I gotta make more I gotta I gotta figure out a recurring revenue model instead of always always hunting and killing that next thing. So that’s where it was kind of birthed from was the the tools, the five tools we have were birthed from what businesses use or and should be using on a regular basis. And then what makes us unique with the video communication tools is the video content creation tools. We produce it for you. So there’s no video editing needed.

John Jantsch (15:49.966)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (16:01.456)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:09.658)

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (16:09.74)

So art it adds your your logo and music and captions and call to action all by itself.

John Jantsch (16:15.856)

Well in and that ten thousand dollar video, you know, AI is cutting into that budget pretty pretty significantly too, I think.

Doug (16:22.582)

yeah, it’s funny you mentioned that. Well, it’s ’cause we we actually just through probably about a good year and a half, like obviously we’re we’re on we’d like to think we’re on the cutting edge of of video. And AI video being one of those. We we’ve seen it go from like the really terrible to where it’s at now and we’ve we have studied it and just started offering like cinematic style AI videos where it looks

Where it could replace a five million dollar budget video. We just did one for a multi location automotive repair shop. And they wanted like, they came to us, they wanted like a Mad Max style thing video built around a air freshener. Their big thing was like this cool air freshener that you that you hang on their their their the the mirror gives them 15% fifteen dollars off their next oil change.

John Jantsch (16:51.534)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm.

John Jantsch (17:10.67)

Mm.

Doug (17:19.81)

Gets it back of the door. they wanted a story built all around that. So we went, we we were like, okay, yeah, we’ll give you like a one that’s like around a minute and a half. But like once we got into it, we’re like, we made us like a two minute 30 30 second, like full movie trailer. I mean, complete with scenes. I mean, if you were to pay a crew your minimal five million dollars, and it turned out amazing, they dropped it on their social media.

And within two weeks got over seven thousand plays. And immediately we’re like, we want to do more. So we’re actually doing one that’s a a gone in sixty seconds theme mixed with back to the future. So that’s sort of getting ready to drop here pro pretty quick.

John Jantsch (17:50.256)

Yes.

John Jantsch (17:56.088)

yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that’s that’s interesting. I mean you imagine you imagine like, you know, two actual live trucks or something driving down the road, you know, in a Mad Max style. I mean, I would take f twenty people back in the day, right? All the people holding boom mics and and the three, four different videos on, you know, on trucks. I mean, crazy. So,

Doug (18:02.102)

It’s awesome.

Doug (18:12.366)

Yeah. It’s like my God.

Doug (18:21.85)

somebody who studied filmmaking in college, if I had this at my fingertips back in the day, like I mean, literally, like your the your imagination is only the limit. It’s so it’s crazy.

John Jantsch (18:24.411)

Yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:32.696)

Yeah, yeah. All right, so I’m a two person shop and I don’t have time for video. What’s the least amount I could get away with?

Doug (18:42.712)

The least am I gonna get away with, right? That well, that’s what the Magnify platform was built for, number one. But number, but number two, bust out that phone in your pocket and just record some content for the love. Because I I always love when people you’re on screen, it’s been this is a great analogy I tell all people who are considering it. You ever been scrolling on social media and you stop and you see some guy’s video, you’re like, that guy’s an idiot. Like, I know more than that person.

John Jantsch (18:43.78)

Ha ha ha.

John Jantsch (19:08.602)

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (19:10.968)

Well, that person took the time to record a video. Well, you have no excuse. Start recording that content. Put it on social media, especially if you’re on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is so hot right now for video content. If they if you’re a LinkedIn person and you’re watching this, make video content on LinkedIn to position yourself as a thought leader as an expert. There’s never been a better time to do it on LinkedIn, for sure. Hands down.

John Jantsch (19:14.277)

Yes.

John Jantsch (19:21.296)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:34.596)

Although my soap speech, stop recording the videos in your car with you driving. I hate those, okay?

Doug (19:40.544)

Yeah. Listen, I’ve been guilty of those. ‘Cause like sometimes you’ll get that thought that pops in your head and like I wanna get it out before I forget. But I hear you. I hear you.

John Jantsch (19:52.778)

So so so so you’re positioning your program though or your platform as white label for agencies. so tell me a little bit about I don’t know the first ninety days of implementation for an agency, what’s that look like?

Doug (20:01.954)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug (20:08.3)

Yeah, so first that’s the most important, right? The first ninety days. So the first ninety days when agency signs up, they they typically have a customer that they’re already like have asked for either video testimonials or they want to add video to an email marketing plan. And so that’s when they typically will find us, right? So but we tell agents all the time, yes, it’s exciting that you have a customer, right? And how our platform works is they pay that the the flat rate and then they get thirty they get thirty seats, thirty seats to give out to as many customers as you got it.

John Jantsch (20:23.675)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:33.284)

Hm. Wow. so those could each be a client could have a seat. I’ll get you, okay.

Doug (20:38.38)

Yeah, so you can give video testimonial capture, video email, branded video clips for your customer and add a layered in video service that works with your existing stack, your reputation marketing, your social media plan, your website design. But we tell them first 90 days, if you make sure you get yourself an optimized YouTube channel for your own agency. And because you agencies

John Jantsch (20:50.638)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (20:59.61)

Yeah.

Doug (21:04.477)

love the idea of having an optimized YouTube channel for their business because one, it helps out tremendously with SEO, right? I mean, and John, you’d be surprised how many agencies don’t know that YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. And when we tell them that they’re like, what? Really? Yes, it is. So yeah, it’s a great way to sell your client into creating content. So the first thing is getting them to create content. Get a video testimonial from one of their happy customers.

John Jantsch (21:10.99)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (21:16.902)

Sure. Yeah. Has been for a long time. Yeah.

Doug (21:32.472)

But it’s implementing it in with their own tech stack, right? So when they approach a business and they go, Hey, check out what we’re doing here. This will work better. This will make work amazing for your business. The business goes, Well, heck yeah, that’s awesome. I want that too. And it’s an easy add on. And most agencies are charging between two hundred and fifty bucks to seven hundred fifty seven hundred and fifty dollars a month in recurring revenue. Right out the gate. Yeah. Yep. You got it. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:53.772)

Right. Per se per seat. Yeah, yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you stopping by, taking a few moments on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some where you’d invite people to learn more about w how they can try out Magnify?

Doug (22:11.02)

Yeah, we well obviously you can just go to magnify dot com, A G N F I dot com. And then always hit me and hit me up on LinkedIn. I’m super active on LinkedIn. Just for just search Doug Doug Dybert J R on LinkedIn. I’m on there pretty much probably way too often, but you could f we could find me on there too. So

John Jantsch (22:29.318)

Well I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road, Doug.

Doug (22:34.072)

Perfect, John. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:01.708)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, no guest. I’m doing this series of seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number five. So go to the show notes. You can find all the other episodes if you are behind on this. but I’m gonna dive into episode or step number five. and this one really talks about pipelines. Having a great, healthy pipeline is awesome, isn’t it? Unfortunately,

many people don’t own their pipeline. And this is going to be easy to test. I’m gonna really talk that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. But if if let me ask you this. If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, the platform shuts down, alg algorithms change, cost doubles. how long before your pipeline would dry up? be honest. most of the folks that I encounter 30 days or less. and that’s really risky, and that is the cost of

Renting versus owning your pipeline. And I I want to talk about a little bit about those terms. If you own it, that means you control it. you decide who’s on it, what reaches them. no platform’s really going to change that is going to to to really make that go away. That’s that’s the true idea of owning. So I mean, you own your website, you own your email list, you own your social media.

To some degree, although those are really controlled as well. So I want to get into some of the things that I believe if you want to truly own your pipeline, you have to actually own all the assets that drive your pipeline to the extent that you can. Now, when you hear marketers talk about owned media, earned media, paid media.

When I’m talking about renting, really that’s what paid media is. And to some degree earned media, which is great, the publication writes about you. some

John Jantsch (02:07.638)

search platform sends traffic to you. Yeah the social media platforms, you know, people follow you and you know on YouTube or something and and then click over to your website. Those are all things that you you kind of earn mentions. But again, those are really not under your control. I mean those are things that could theoretically go away tomorrow. YouTube changes their algorithm and you no longer get any traffic from it. so that’s why I want to focus on this idea of own. you know someone else

on in on most pipeline, rented pipeline, somebody else owns it, you pay for access to it, you play basically by their rules. and and the the beauty of that, of course, is that that can happen instantly. If you’re a new business and you go to Google AdWords and you open an account and you start advertising, I mean you can actually generate pipeline, you know, immediately. But as many people have experienced, that pipeline

Can get more and more expensive every single year, less and less profitable every single year. they change the rules, and all of a sudden you can’t talk about your product or service in the way that you want to in your ads. I mean, there are all kinds of things that that are there. and a business and and the challenge is this rental model is very fragile, but it can be invisible too, right? A business can look very healthy.

Be chugging along, but it’s 70% of their pipeline, 70% of their customer growth comes from rented channels. And all of a sudden, you know, they disappear overnight because something changed. So here’s a here’s an audit that I would tell you to do. You can do this live. lift up list every lead source that’s produced revenue for you in the last 12 months. And I know sometimes that’s hard to attribute where the revenue came from, but

Spend some time thinking about where your revenue comes from, what lead source, and start marking: is this owned? Is this rented? or you know, rented is the same as paid. you know, and and really kind of look at what’s the ratio. All right. So I want to talk now. Now that you’ve done that, I’m gonna talk about the the the four owned channels and why you need to really put more emphasis, probably.

John Jantsch (04:30.828)

need to put more emphasis on those and less on the rented ones. So the first one is email. I’ve been around for a very, very long time. We started, we started, I think, heavily using email right at the end of like in the 90s, 97, 98, 99, all of a sudden email became a thing. everybody was, you know, really adopting it. And I swear, you know, once people, once people learned the marketing

value of having an email connection with somebody. Of course they started abusing it. And that’s why a lot of people have then declared almost every year from about 2000 and well, let’s say 2004 or so when social media started cropping up that the email was dead. How many times have you heard that one, right? At least for 15 years. But it still works. It’s still one of the most valuable channels. and I

contend that it probably will remain. Now it it it has gotten harder to make effective. and that’s really more because people have abused it and because people have other options that that they’ve spent on. And you know, there’s so much spam and cold, you know, outreach that comes through those that have have actually made people, you know, not like email, if you will, but but a qualified email list that you have built over five years, direct, reliable,

owned is really one of the most efficient channels that you can have. But again, qualified, nurtured, not abused, members of that list can can be really one of the most valuable marketing assets that that a business has. key word again, qualified. people asked to be on it. It was not scraped, it was not bought, it was not added. this is

This is actually your first layer of content, if you think about it. The principles that make content work apply. Genuine point of view, useful, specific. So when you’re sending email out, that is part of your content plan, right? So genuine point of view, built on one of your core principles, built on one of your hub page, one of your

John Jantsch (06:52.0)

elements that you’re using in all of your marketing, all of your content. Ca email in a lot of ways is a content channel. It’s not necessarily a sales channel. It certainly can be. You can earn the right to sell very directly in email, but it is first and foremost, it is a content channel.

John Jantsch (07:12.278)

And again, you know, a lot of I think a lot of people, partly because of spam and things that have gone on, you know, feel like, you know, email doesn’t feel that exciting anymore, right? And I think that that’s a lot of times the edge. you know, the the the real and and again, I’m not talking about necessarily all the ways that people are using it and abusing it. I’m talking about the ways that you have the ability to have a direct conversation. And that and that’s you know, that’s probably one of

It’s one of things I forget all the time, but it’s probably one of the core principles of email is we feel like, okay, this email is going out to 20,000 people. So we’re writing it like it’s going out to 20,000 people. What if you wrote it like it was going out to one person? That you told a personal story, that you were vulnerable, that you shared a a a point of view that might not be accepted by everyone. That’s how you have to think about all of your writing.

You’re writing it to one person. Whether it’s a YouTube video, an email, a social media post, it’s not, hey guys, hey everyone listening. It’s hey, you one person, I wrote this directly for you, or at least you’re gonna feel like I wrote this directly for you. That’s how you make email, certainly a potent channel. I wrote an entire book about this second channel called the Referral Engine. and I’m

Happy to say that that book has remained evergreen because the referrals are not some hack that come about because of the next platform. They are genuinely earned if you actually focus intention on them. Obviously, you’ve got to do good work to get referrals. But after that, if you are intentional about how they are are created, referrals are they’re probably for most of us, they are the best leads. they already

arrive kind of pre-trusted. they close faster, they’re less price sensitive. They’re more likely to refer other people because that’s how they came to you. most small businesses, I think most small businesses, hopefully you do, receive some referrals, but they happen accidentally. that’s hope. That’s not a system. there are three parts to a an effective referral system. There is a specific ask, there is a specific moment.

John Jantsch (09:33.738)

And there is an easy path. So here’s what I would here is who I serve and I would like what I would like you to do. you do that at a moment when the client or the yes, the the client or the you know, the person, it’s the right time to ask them. It’s it’s the moment of truth, as I’ve called it before. And then you make it very easy for them. Most businesses are missing two and three. I mean, they think about like, yeah, okay, I I’m

Gonna go out and ask people for referrals, but I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna have it as a planned moment. I’m not gonna have it make sense, I’m not gonna actually make it really easy for them to do. You add those two pieces of it, and you know, right after the customer experiences something good, you make you make that ask land right then and you make it easy for them to do. Now, the the third channel is that you can own.

Is one that is a branch of referrals to some degree. not exactly. and that’s partnerships, strategic partnerships. I don’t know why more people don’t spend more time on this particular channel. non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are are probably the most underutilized, underused lead source that any small business can have. And it’s it’s not even close. I built in the early days my entire following, my entire business.

My entire platform around these strategic partnerships because it was so easy for me to take the fact that I was early on producing content and others, people started realizing we need content, we need to educate, we need to bring our communities together. And all of a sudden I was a ready-to-tap source. And so they put me in front of their audiences. So the ideal client.

Every one of your ideal clients needs other professionals. every one of your ideal clients has other needs. If you’re in the home services business and you are an electrician, they also need a painter and a plumber and a roofer and a person to do landscaping. so if you could start to develop relationships with all the people that also serve your ideal client, and you can activate those relationships.

John Jantsch (11:49.54)

have them if if you have a podcast, have them on your podcast, you be on their podcast, write content for each other. There’s lots of ways that you can actually start developing these relationships so that these strategic partners then have a have a a real reason, but also your top of mind when it comes to referring you. And then the fourth one is is still just direct relationships. The more AI becomes invasive.

Is that the right word? In our lives and our businesses, the more human element is going to become important. So if you’re using AI to actually become more efficient and to free up time, take that extra time, take your team’s extra time and start doubling down on networking, on speaking, on associations, on in industry, in person industry participation. Spend more time doing those kinds of things because.

those still pay off and they they’re gonna pay off I think even more as people try to automate and and have you know robots theoretically doing their content. I I still don’t know that we’re ever gonna actually get to that point. But I think the real opportunity right now is to double down on the human content. So do that owned versus rented audit. Do it this week. if rented is more than half then really

The owned growth engine is really the work that you need to focus on. So this is step number five of the seven steps to small business marketing success. Hopefully you’re enjoying this series. You can go to our website at Duct Tape Marketing to find the rest of the episodes or the rest of the steps in this. and and obviously six steps six and seven are coming. These are all if you just want to get the ebook all in one shot.

It is dtm.world slash seven steps. you can get it for five bucks. if you want to actually talk to one of our consultants, it is duct tapemarketing.com consultation. So if these are making sense, that actually next step might make sense for you. Go grab the ebook or go grab a a strategy call with one of our advisors. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

John Jantsch (00:01.708)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, no guest. I’m doing this series of seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number five. So go to the show notes. You can find all the other episodes if you are behind on this. but I’m gonna dive into episode or step number five. and this one really talks about pipelines. Having a great, healthy pipeline is awesome, isn’t it? Unfortunately,

many people don’t own their pipeline. And this is going to be easy to test. I’m gonna really talk that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. But if if let me ask you this. If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, the platform shuts down, alg algorithms change, cost doubles. how long before your pipeline would dry up? be honest. most of the folks that I encounter 30 days or less. and that’s really risky, and that is the cost of

Renting versus owning your pipeline. And I I want to talk about a little bit about those terms. If you own it, that means you control it. you decide who’s on it, what reaches them. no platform’s really going to change that is going to to to really make that go away. That’s that’s the true idea of owning. So I mean, you own your website, you own your email list, you own your social media.

To some degree, although those are really controlled as well. So I want to get into some of the things that I believe if you want to truly own your pipeline, you have to actually own all the assets that drive your pipeline to the extent that you can. Now, when you hear marketers talk about owned media, earned media, paid media.

When I’m talking about renting, really that’s what paid media is. And to some degree earned media, which is great, the publication writes about you. some

John Jantsch (02:07.638)

search platform sends traffic to you. Yeah the social media platforms, you know, people follow you and you know on YouTube or something and and then click over to your website. Those are all things that you you kind of earn mentions. But again, those are really not under your control. I mean those are things that could theoretically go away tomorrow. YouTube changes their algorithm and you no longer get any traffic from it. so that’s why I want to focus on this idea of own. you know someone else

on in on most pipeline, rented pipeline, somebody else owns it, you pay for access to it, you play basically by their rules. and and the the beauty of that, of course, is that that can happen instantly. If you’re a new business and you go to Google AdWords and you open an account and you start advertising, I mean you can actually generate pipeline, you know, immediately. But as many people have experienced, that pipeline

Can get more and more expensive every single year, less and less profitable every single year. they change the rules, and all of a sudden you can’t talk about your product or service in the way that you want to in your ads. I mean, there are all kinds of things that that are there. and a business and and the challenge is this rental model is very fragile, but it can be invisible too, right? A business can look very healthy.

Be chugging along, but it’s 70% of their pipeline, 70% of their customer growth comes from rented channels. And all of a sudden, you know, they disappear overnight because something changed. So here’s a here’s an audit that I would tell you to do. You can do this live. lift up list every lead source that’s produced revenue for you in the last 12 months. And I know sometimes that’s hard to attribute where the revenue came from, but

Spend some time thinking about where your revenue comes from, what lead source, and start marking: is this owned? Is this rented? or you know, rented is the same as paid. you know, and and really kind of look at what’s the ratio. All right. So I want to talk now. Now that you’ve done that, I’m gonna talk about the the the four owned channels and why you need to really put more emphasis, probably.

John Jantsch (04:30.828)

need to put more emphasis on those and less on the rented ones. So the first one is email. I’ve been around for a very, very long time. We started, we started, I think, heavily using email right at the end of like in the 90s, 97, 98, 99, all of a sudden email became a thing. everybody was, you know, really adopting it. And I swear, you know, once people, once people learned the marketing

value of having an email connection with somebody. Of course they started abusing it. And that’s why a lot of people have then declared almost every year from about 2000 and well, let’s say 2004 or so when social media started cropping up that the email was dead. How many times have you heard that one, right? At least for 15 years. But it still works. It’s still one of the most valuable channels. and I

contend that it probably will remain. Now it it it has gotten harder to make effective. and that’s really more because people have abused it and because people have other options that that they’ve spent on. And you know, there’s so much spam and cold, you know, outreach that comes through those that have have actually made people, you know, not like email, if you will, but but a qualified email list that you have built over five years, direct, reliable,

owned is really one of the most efficient channels that you can have. But again, qualified, nurtured, not abused, members of that list can can be really one of the most valuable marketing assets that that a business has. key word again, qualified. people asked to be on it. It was not scraped, it was not bought, it was not added. this is

This is actually your first layer of content, if you think about it. The principles that make content work apply. Genuine point of view, useful, specific. So when you’re sending email out, that is part of your content plan, right? So genuine point of view, built on one of your core principles, built on one of your hub page, one of your

John Jantsch (06:52.0)

elements that you’re using in all of your marketing, all of your content. Ca email in a lot of ways is a content channel. It’s not necessarily a sales channel. It certainly can be. You can earn the right to sell very directly in email, but it is first and foremost, it is a content channel.

John Jantsch (07:12.278)

And again, you know, a lot of I think a lot of people, partly because of spam and things that have gone on, you know, feel like, you know, email doesn’t feel that exciting anymore, right? And I think that that’s a lot of times the edge. you know, the the the real and and again, I’m not talking about necessarily all the ways that people are using it and abusing it. I’m talking about the ways that you have the ability to have a direct conversation. And that and that’s you know, that’s probably one of

It’s one of things I forget all the time, but it’s probably one of the core principles of email is we feel like, okay, this email is going out to 20,000 people. So we’re writing it like it’s going out to 20,000 people. What if you wrote it like it was going out to one person? That you told a personal story, that you were vulnerable, that you shared a a a point of view that might not be accepted by everyone. That’s how you have to think about all of your writing.

You’re writing it to one person. Whether it’s a YouTube video, an email, a social media post, it’s not, hey guys, hey everyone listening. It’s hey, you one person, I wrote this directly for you, or at least you’re gonna feel like I wrote this directly for you. That’s how you make email, certainly a potent channel. I wrote an entire book about this second channel called the Referral Engine. and I’m

Happy to say that that book has remained evergreen because the referrals are not some hack that come about because of the next platform. They are genuinely earned if you actually focus intention on them. Obviously, you’ve got to do good work to get referrals. But after that, if you are intentional about how they are are created, referrals are they’re probably for most of us, they are the best leads. they already

arrive kind of pre-trusted. they close faster, they’re less price sensitive. They’re more likely to refer other people because that’s how they came to you. most small businesses, I think most small businesses, hopefully you do, receive some referrals, but they happen accidentally. that’s hope. That’s not a system. there are three parts to a an effective referral system. There is a specific ask, there is a specific moment.

John Jantsch (09:33.738)

And there is an easy path. So here’s what I would here is who I serve and I would like what I would like you to do. you do that at a moment when the client or the yes, the the client or the you know, the person, it’s the right time to ask them. It’s it’s the moment of truth, as I’ve called it before. And then you make it very easy for them. Most businesses are missing two and three. I mean, they think about like, yeah, okay, I I’m

Gonna go out and ask people for referrals, but I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna have it as a planned moment. I’m not gonna have it make sense, I’m not gonna actually make it really easy for them to do. You add those two pieces of it, and you know, right after the customer experiences something good, you make you make that ask land right then and you make it easy for them to do. Now, the the third channel is that you can own.

Is one that is a branch of referrals to some degree. not exactly. and that’s partnerships, strategic partnerships. I don’t know why more people don’t spend more time on this particular channel. non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are are probably the most underutilized, underused lead source that any small business can have. And it’s it’s not even close. I built in the early days my entire following, my entire business.

My entire platform around these strategic partnerships because it was so easy for me to take the fact that I was early on producing content and others, people started realizing we need content, we need to educate, we need to bring our communities together. And all of a sudden I was a ready-to-tap source. And so they put me in front of their audiences. So the ideal client.

Every one of your ideal clients needs other professionals. every one of your ideal clients has other needs. If you’re in the home services business and you are an electrician, they also need a painter and a plumber and a roofer and a person to do landscaping. so if you could start to develop relationships with all the people that also serve your ideal client, and you can activate those relationships.

John Jantsch (11:49.54)

have them if if you have a podcast, have them on your podcast, you be on their podcast, write content for each other. There’s lots of ways that you can actually start developing these relationships so that these strategic partners then have a have a a real reason, but also your top of mind when it comes to referring you. And then the fourth one is is still just direct relationships. The more AI becomes invasive.

Is that the right word? In our lives and our businesses, the more human element is going to become important. So if you’re using AI to actually become more efficient and to free up time, take that extra time, take your team’s extra time and start doubling down on networking, on speaking, on associations, on in industry, in person industry participation. Spend more time doing those kinds of things because.

those still pay off and they they’re gonna pay off I think even more as people try to automate and and have you know robots theoretically doing their content. I I still don’t know that we’re ever gonna actually get to that point. But I think the real opportunity right now is to double down on the human content. So do that owned versus rented audit. Do it this week. if rented is more than half then really

The owned growth engine is really the work that you need to focus on. So this is step number five of the seven steps to small business marketing success. Hopefully you’re enjoying this series. You can go to our website at Duct Tape Marketing to find the rest of the episodes or the rest of the steps in this. and and obviously six steps six and seven are coming. These are all if you just want to get the ebook all in one shot.

It is dtm.world slash seven steps. you can get it for five bucks. if you want to actually talk to one of our consultants, it is duct tapemarketing.com consultation. So if these are making sense, that actually next step might make sense for you. Go grab the ebook or go grab a a strategy call with one of our advisors. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

John Jantsch (00:01.708)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, no guest. I’m doing this series of seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number five. So go to the show notes. You can find all the other episodes if you are behind on this. but I’m gonna dive into episode or step number five. and this one really talks about pipelines. Having a great, healthy pipeline is awesome, isn’t it? Unfortunately,

many people don’t own their pipeline. And this is going to be easy to test. I’m gonna really talk that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. But if if let me ask you this. If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, the platform shuts down, alg algorithms change, cost doubles. how long before your pipeline would dry up? be honest. most of the folks that I encounter 30 days or less. and that’s really risky, and that is the cost of

Renting versus owning your pipeline. And I I want to talk about a little bit about those terms. If you own it, that means you control it. you decide who’s on it, what reaches them. no platform’s really going to change that is going to to to really make that go away. That’s that’s the true idea of owning. So I mean, you own your website, you own your email list, you own your social media.

To some degree, although those are really controlled as well. So I want to get into some of the things that I believe if you want to truly own your pipeline, you have to actually own all the assets that drive your pipeline to the extent that you can. Now, when you hear marketers talk about owned media, earned media, paid media.

When I’m talking about renting, really that’s what paid media is. And to some degree earned media, which is great, the publication writes about you. some

John Jantsch (02:07.638)

search platform sends traffic to you. Yeah the social media platforms, you know, people follow you and you know on YouTube or something and and then click over to your website. Those are all things that you you kind of earn mentions. But again, those are really not under your control. I mean those are things that could theoretically go away tomorrow. YouTube changes their algorithm and you no longer get any traffic from it. so that’s why I want to focus on this idea of own. you know someone else

on in on most pipeline, rented pipeline, somebody else owns it, you pay for access to it, you play basically by their rules. and and the the beauty of that, of course, is that that can happen instantly. If you’re a new business and you go to Google AdWords and you open an account and you start advertising, I mean you can actually generate pipeline, you know, immediately. But as many people have experienced, that pipeline

Can get more and more expensive every single year, less and less profitable every single year. they change the rules, and all of a sudden you can’t talk about your product or service in the way that you want to in your ads. I mean, there are all kinds of things that that are there. and a business and and the challenge is this rental model is very fragile, but it can be invisible too, right? A business can look very healthy.

Be chugging along, but it’s 70% of their pipeline, 70% of their customer growth comes from rented channels. And all of a sudden, you know, they disappear overnight because something changed. So here’s a here’s an audit that I would tell you to do. You can do this live. lift up list every lead source that’s produced revenue for you in the last 12 months. And I know sometimes that’s hard to attribute where the revenue came from, but

Spend some time thinking about where your revenue comes from, what lead source, and start marking: is this owned? Is this rented? or you know, rented is the same as paid. you know, and and really kind of look at what’s the ratio. All right. So I want to talk now. Now that you’ve done that, I’m gonna talk about the the the four owned channels and why you need to really put more emphasis, probably.

John Jantsch (04:30.828)

need to put more emphasis on those and less on the rented ones. So the first one is email. I’ve been around for a very, very long time. We started, we started, I think, heavily using email right at the end of like in the 90s, 97, 98, 99, all of a sudden email became a thing. everybody was, you know, really adopting it. And I swear, you know, once people, once people learned the marketing

value of having an email connection with somebody. Of course they started abusing it. And that’s why a lot of people have then declared almost every year from about 2000 and well, let’s say 2004 or so when social media started cropping up that the email was dead. How many times have you heard that one, right? At least for 15 years. But it still works. It’s still one of the most valuable channels. and I

contend that it probably will remain. Now it it it has gotten harder to make effective. and that’s really more because people have abused it and because people have other options that that they’ve spent on. And you know, there’s so much spam and cold, you know, outreach that comes through those that have have actually made people, you know, not like email, if you will, but but a qualified email list that you have built over five years, direct, reliable,

owned is really one of the most efficient channels that you can have. But again, qualified, nurtured, not abused, members of that list can can be really one of the most valuable marketing assets that that a business has. key word again, qualified. people asked to be on it. It was not scraped, it was not bought, it was not added. this is

This is actually your first layer of content, if you think about it. The principles that make content work apply. Genuine point of view, useful, specific. So when you’re sending email out, that is part of your content plan, right? So genuine point of view, built on one of your core principles, built on one of your hub page, one of your

John Jantsch (06:52.0)

elements that you’re using in all of your marketing, all of your content. Ca email in a lot of ways is a content channel. It’s not necessarily a sales channel. It certainly can be. You can earn the right to sell very directly in email, but it is first and foremost, it is a content channel.

John Jantsch (07:12.278)

And again, you know, a lot of I think a lot of people, partly because of spam and things that have gone on, you know, feel like, you know, email doesn’t feel that exciting anymore, right? And I think that that’s a lot of times the edge. you know, the the the real and and again, I’m not talking about necessarily all the ways that people are using it and abusing it. I’m talking about the ways that you have the ability to have a direct conversation. And that and that’s you know, that’s probably one of

It’s one of things I forget all the time, but it’s probably one of the core principles of email is we feel like, okay, this email is going out to 20,000 people. So we’re writing it like it’s going out to 20,000 people. What if you wrote it like it was going out to one person? That you told a personal story, that you were vulnerable, that you shared a a a point of view that might not be accepted by everyone. That’s how you have to think about all of your writing.

You’re writing it to one person. Whether it’s a YouTube video, an email, a social media post, it’s not, hey guys, hey everyone listening. It’s hey, you one person, I wrote this directly for you, or at least you’re gonna feel like I wrote this directly for you. That’s how you make email, certainly a potent channel. I wrote an entire book about this second channel called the Referral Engine. and I’m

Happy to say that that book has remained evergreen because the referrals are not some hack that come about because of the next platform. They are genuinely earned if you actually focus intention on them. Obviously, you’ve got to do good work to get referrals. But after that, if you are intentional about how they are are created, referrals are they’re probably for most of us, they are the best leads. they already

arrive kind of pre-trusted. they close faster, they’re less price sensitive. They’re more likely to refer other people because that’s how they came to you. most small businesses, I think most small businesses, hopefully you do, receive some referrals, but they happen accidentally. that’s hope. That’s not a system. there are three parts to a an effective referral system. There is a specific ask, there is a specific moment.

John Jantsch (09:33.738)

And there is an easy path. So here’s what I would here is who I serve and I would like what I would like you to do. you do that at a moment when the client or the yes, the the client or the you know, the person, it’s the right time to ask them. It’s it’s the moment of truth, as I’ve called it before. And then you make it very easy for them. Most businesses are missing two and three. I mean, they think about like, yeah, okay, I I’m

Gonna go out and ask people for referrals, but I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna have it as a planned moment. I’m not gonna have it make sense, I’m not gonna actually make it really easy for them to do. You add those two pieces of it, and you know, right after the customer experiences something good, you make you make that ask land right then and you make it easy for them to do. Now, the the third channel is that you can own.

Is one that is a branch of referrals to some degree. not exactly. and that’s partnerships, strategic partnerships. I don’t know why more people don’t spend more time on this particular channel. non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are are probably the most underutilized, underused lead source that any small business can have. And it’s it’s not even close. I built in the early days my entire following, my entire business.

My entire platform around these strategic partnerships because it was so easy for me to take the fact that I was early on producing content and others, people started realizing we need content, we need to educate, we need to bring our communities together. And all of a sudden I was a ready-to-tap source. And so they put me in front of their audiences. So the ideal client.

Every one of your ideal clients needs other professionals. every one of your ideal clients has other needs. If you’re in the home services business and you are an electrician, they also need a painter and a plumber and a roofer and a person to do landscaping. so if you could start to develop relationships with all the people that also serve your ideal client, and you can activate those relationships.

John Jantsch (11:49.54)

have them if if you have a podcast, have them on your podcast, you be on their podcast, write content for each other. There’s lots of ways that you can actually start developing these relationships so that these strategic partners then have a have a a real reason, but also your top of mind when it comes to referring you. And then the fourth one is is still just direct relationships. The more AI becomes invasive.

Is that the right word? In our lives and our businesses, the more human element is going to become important. So if you’re using AI to actually become more efficient and to free up time, take that extra time, take your team’s extra time and start doubling down on networking, on speaking, on associations, on in industry, in person industry participation. Spend more time doing those kinds of things because.

those still pay off and they they’re gonna pay off I think even more as people try to automate and and have you know robots theoretically doing their content. I I still don’t know that we’re ever gonna actually get to that point. But I think the real opportunity right now is to double down on the human content. So do that owned versus rented audit. Do it this week. if rented is more than half then really

The owned growth engine is really the work that you need to focus on. So this is step number five of the seven steps to small business marketing success. Hopefully you’re enjoying this series. You can go to our website at Duct Tape Marketing to find the rest of the episodes or the rest of the steps in this. and and obviously six steps six and seven are coming. These are all if you just want to get the ebook all in one shot.

It is dtm.world slash seven steps. you can get it for five bucks. if you want to actually talk to one of our consultants, it is duct tapemarketing.com consultation. So if these are making sense, that actually next step might make sense for you. Go grab the ebook or go grab a a strategy call with one of our advisors. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

John Jantsch (00:01.708)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, no guest. I’m doing this series of seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number five. So go to the show notes. You can find all the other episodes if you are behind on this. but I’m gonna dive into episode or step number five. and this one really talks about pipelines. Having a great, healthy pipeline is awesome, isn’t it? Unfortunately,

many people don’t own their pipeline. And this is going to be easy to test. I’m gonna really talk that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. But if if let me ask you this. If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, the platform shuts down, alg algorithms change, cost doubles. how long before your pipeline would dry up? be honest. most of the folks that I encounter 30 days or less. and that’s really risky, and that is the cost of

Renting versus owning your pipeline. And I I want to talk about a little bit about those terms. If you own it, that means you control it. you decide who’s on it, what reaches them. no platform’s really going to change that is going to to to really make that go away. That’s that’s the true idea of owning. So I mean, you own your website, you own your email list, you own your social media.

To some degree, although those are really controlled as well. So I want to get into some of the things that I believe if you want to truly own your pipeline, you have to actually own all the assets that drive your pipeline to the extent that you can. Now, when you hear marketers talk about owned media, earned media, paid media.

When I’m talking about renting, really that’s what paid media is. And to some degree earned media, which is great, the publication writes about you. some

John Jantsch (02:07.638)

search platform sends traffic to you. Yeah the social media platforms, you know, people follow you and you know on YouTube or something and and then click over to your website. Those are all things that you you kind of earn mentions. But again, those are really not under your control. I mean those are things that could theoretically go away tomorrow. YouTube changes their algorithm and you no longer get any traffic from it. so that’s why I want to focus on this idea of own. you know someone else

on in on most pipeline, rented pipeline, somebody else owns it, you pay for access to it, you play basically by their rules. and and the the beauty of that, of course, is that that can happen instantly. If you’re a new business and you go to Google AdWords and you open an account and you start advertising, I mean you can actually generate pipeline, you know, immediately. But as many people have experienced, that pipeline

Can get more and more expensive every single year, less and less profitable every single year. they change the rules, and all of a sudden you can’t talk about your product or service in the way that you want to in your ads. I mean, there are all kinds of things that that are there. and a business and and the challenge is this rental model is very fragile, but it can be invisible too, right? A business can look very healthy.

Be chugging along, but it’s 70% of their pipeline, 70% of their customer growth comes from rented channels. And all of a sudden, you know, they disappear overnight because something changed. So here’s a here’s an audit that I would tell you to do. You can do this live. lift up list every lead source that’s produced revenue for you in the last 12 months. And I know sometimes that’s hard to attribute where the revenue came from, but

Spend some time thinking about where your revenue comes from, what lead source, and start marking: is this owned? Is this rented? or you know, rented is the same as paid. you know, and and really kind of look at what’s the ratio. All right. So I want to talk now. Now that you’ve done that, I’m gonna talk about the the the four owned channels and why you need to really put more emphasis, probably.

John Jantsch (04:30.828)

need to put more emphasis on those and less on the rented ones. So the first one is email. I’ve been around for a very, very long time. We started, we started, I think, heavily using email right at the end of like in the 90s, 97, 98, 99, all of a sudden email became a thing. everybody was, you know, really adopting it. And I swear, you know, once people, once people learned the marketing

value of having an email connection with somebody. Of course they started abusing it. And that’s why a lot of people have then declared almost every year from about 2000 and well, let’s say 2004 or so when social media started cropping up that the email was dead. How many times have you heard that one, right? At least for 15 years. But it still works. It’s still one of the most valuable channels. and I

contend that it probably will remain. Now it it it has gotten harder to make effective. and that’s really more because people have abused it and because people have other options that that they’ve spent on. And you know, there’s so much spam and cold, you know, outreach that comes through those that have have actually made people, you know, not like email, if you will, but but a qualified email list that you have built over five years, direct, reliable,

owned is really one of the most efficient channels that you can have. But again, qualified, nurtured, not abused, members of that list can can be really one of the most valuable marketing assets that that a business has. key word again, qualified. people asked to be on it. It was not scraped, it was not bought, it was not added. this is

This is actually your first layer of content, if you think about it. The principles that make content work apply. Genuine point of view, useful, specific. So when you’re sending email out, that is part of your content plan, right? So genuine point of view, built on one of your core principles, built on one of your hub page, one of your

John Jantsch (06:52.0)

elements that you’re using in all of your marketing, all of your content. Ca email in a lot of ways is a content channel. It’s not necessarily a sales channel. It certainly can be. You can earn the right to sell very directly in email, but it is first and foremost, it is a content channel.

John Jantsch (07:12.278)

And again, you know, a lot of I think a lot of people, partly because of spam and things that have gone on, you know, feel like, you know, email doesn’t feel that exciting anymore, right? And I think that that’s a lot of times the edge. you know, the the the real and and again, I’m not talking about necessarily all the ways that people are using it and abusing it. I’m talking about the ways that you have the ability to have a direct conversation. And that and that’s you know, that’s probably one of

It’s one of things I forget all the time, but it’s probably one of the core principles of email is we feel like, okay, this email is going out to 20,000 people. So we’re writing it like it’s going out to 20,000 people. What if you wrote it like it was going out to one person? That you told a personal story, that you were vulnerable, that you shared a a a point of view that might not be accepted by everyone. That’s how you have to think about all of your writing.

You’re writing it to one person. Whether it’s a YouTube video, an email, a social media post, it’s not, hey guys, hey everyone listening. It’s hey, you one person, I wrote this directly for you, or at least you’re gonna feel like I wrote this directly for you. That’s how you make email, certainly a potent channel. I wrote an entire book about this second channel called the Referral Engine. and I’m

Happy to say that that book has remained evergreen because the referrals are not some hack that come about because of the next platform. They are genuinely earned if you actually focus intention on them. Obviously, you’ve got to do good work to get referrals. But after that, if you are intentional about how they are are created, referrals are they’re probably for most of us, they are the best leads. they already

arrive kind of pre-trusted. they close faster, they’re less price sensitive. They’re more likely to refer other people because that’s how they came to you. most small businesses, I think most small businesses, hopefully you do, receive some referrals, but they happen accidentally. that’s hope. That’s not a system. there are three parts to a an effective referral system. There is a specific ask, there is a specific moment.

John Jantsch (09:33.738)

And there is an easy path. So here’s what I would here is who I serve and I would like what I would like you to do. you do that at a moment when the client or the yes, the the client or the you know, the person, it’s the right time to ask them. It’s it’s the moment of truth, as I’ve called it before. And then you make it very easy for them. Most businesses are missing two and three. I mean, they think about like, yeah, okay, I I’m

Gonna go out and ask people for referrals, but I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna have it as a planned moment. I’m not gonna have it make sense, I’m not gonna actually make it really easy for them to do. You add those two pieces of it, and you know, right after the customer experiences something good, you make you make that ask land right then and you make it easy for them to do. Now, the the third channel is that you can own.

Is one that is a branch of referrals to some degree. not exactly. and that’s partnerships, strategic partnerships. I don’t know why more people don’t spend more time on this particular channel. non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are are probably the most underutilized, underused lead source that any small business can have. And it’s it’s not even close. I built in the early days my entire following, my entire business.

My entire platform around these strategic partnerships because it was so easy for me to take the fact that I was early on producing content and others, people started realizing we need content, we need to educate, we need to bring our communities together. And all of a sudden I was a ready-to-tap source. And so they put me in front of their audiences. So the ideal client.

Every one of your ideal clients needs other professionals. every one of your ideal clients has other needs. If you’re in the home services business and you are an electrician, they also need a painter and a plumber and a roofer and a person to do landscaping. so if you could start to develop relationships with all the people that also serve your ideal client, and you can activate those relationships.

John Jantsch (11:49.54)

have them if if you have a podcast, have them on your podcast, you be on their podcast, write content for each other. There’s lots of ways that you can actually start developing these relationships so that these strategic partners then have a have a a real reason, but also your top of mind when it comes to referring you. And then the fourth one is is still just direct relationships. The more AI becomes invasive.

Is that the right word? In our lives and our businesses, the more human element is going to become important. So if you’re using AI to actually become more efficient and to free up time, take that extra time, take your team’s extra time and start doubling down on networking, on speaking, on associations, on in industry, in person industry participation. Spend more time doing those kinds of things because.

those still pay off and they they’re gonna pay off I think even more as people try to automate and and have you know robots theoretically doing their content. I I still don’t know that we’re ever gonna actually get to that point. But I think the real opportunity right now is to double down on the human content. So do that owned versus rented audit. Do it this week. if rented is more than half then really

The owned growth engine is really the work that you need to focus on. So this is step number five of the seven steps to small business marketing success. Hopefully you’re enjoying this series. You can go to our website at Duct Tape Marketing to find the rest of the episodes or the rest of the steps in this. and and obviously six steps six and seven are coming. These are all if you just want to get the ebook all in one shot.

It is dtm.world slash seven steps. you can get it for five bucks. if you want to actually talk to one of our consultants, it is duct tapemarketing.com consultation. So if these are making sense, that actually next step might make sense for you. Go grab the ebook or go grab a a strategy call with one of our advisors. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

John Jantsch (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I’m doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven’t caught the past, I think I’m on episode four here. If you haven’t caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How’s that for a topic?

So here’s the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn’t help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here’s the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I’m AI didn’t necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it’s just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there’s no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn’t really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that’s actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that’s what you’re producing, that’s all you’re producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I’m not necessarily saying you don’t need content. I’m saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you’re an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I’ll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it’s a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you’ve got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client’s problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can’t make it, if you can’t tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn’t be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That’s one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that’s a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you’re bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I’ll call this. If you’re bored with a topic in six months, it’s not a pillar. It’s a theme. Pillars are really what you’re still the authority on, or what you’re driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won’t always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it’s sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they’re trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it’s a it doesn’t get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that’s the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I’ve I’ve talked, I’ve written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you’re going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it’s the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there’s lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don’t forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here’s the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you’re a real expert. And here’s the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don’t have to wait till they’re done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we’re actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it’s really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that’s going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can’t do that. and that that’s really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that’s really the

that’s really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that’s really the foundation structure, right? You’ve got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I’m sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That’s what we have to do today to make sure that we’re putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we’re thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it’s very generic, it’s very balanced, it’s very readable, it’s a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it’s forgettable because there’s nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that’s different. Why isn’t anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we’ve always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn’t develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I’m not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that’s gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn’t heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn’t have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don’t necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what’s different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here’s your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you’ll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you’ll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you’ll add to them. Hopefully you’ll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren’t saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you’re not actually surfacing it. And that’s a real key difference. So

this today’s podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I’m talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it’s just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

John Jantsch (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I’m doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven’t caught the past, I think I’m on episode four here. If you haven’t caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How’s that for a topic?

So here’s the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn’t help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here’s the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I’m AI didn’t necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it’s just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there’s no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn’t really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that’s actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that’s what you’re producing, that’s all you’re producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I’m not necessarily saying you don’t need content. I’m saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you’re an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I’ll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it’s a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you’ve got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client’s problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can’t make it, if you can’t tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn’t be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That’s one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that’s a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you’re bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I’ll call this. If you’re bored with a topic in six months, it’s not a pillar. It’s a theme. Pillars are really what you’re still the authority on, or what you’re driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won’t always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it’s sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they’re trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it’s a it doesn’t get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that’s the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I’ve I’ve talked, I’ve written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you’re going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it’s the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there’s lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don’t forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here’s the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you’re a real expert. And here’s the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don’t have to wait till they’re done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we’re actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it’s really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that’s going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can’t do that. and that that’s really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that’s really the

that’s really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that’s really the foundation structure, right? You’ve got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I’m sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That’s what we have to do today to make sure that we’re putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we’re thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it’s very generic, it’s very balanced, it’s very readable, it’s a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it’s forgettable because there’s nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that’s different. Why isn’t anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we’ve always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn’t develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I’m not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that’s gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn’t heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn’t have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don’t necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what’s different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here’s your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you’ll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you’ll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you’ll add to them. Hopefully you’ll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren’t saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you’re not actually surfacing it. And that’s a real key difference. So

this today’s podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I’m talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it’s just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

John Jantsch (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I’m doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven’t caught the past, I think I’m on episode four here. If you haven’t caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How’s that for a topic?

So here’s the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn’t help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here’s the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I’m AI didn’t necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it’s just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there’s no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn’t really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that’s actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that’s what you’re producing, that’s all you’re producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I’m not necessarily saying you don’t need content. I’m saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you’re an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I’ll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it’s a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you’ve got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client’s problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can’t make it, if you can’t tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn’t be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That’s one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that’s a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you’re bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I’ll call this. If you’re bored with a topic in six months, it’s not a pillar. It’s a theme. Pillars are really what you’re still the authority on, or what you’re driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won’t always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it’s sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they’re trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it’s a it doesn’t get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that’s the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I’ve I’ve talked, I’ve written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you’re going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it’s the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there’s lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don’t forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here’s the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you’re a real expert. And here’s the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don’t have to wait till they’re done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we’re actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it’s really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that’s going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can’t do that. and that that’s really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that’s really the

that’s really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that’s really the foundation structure, right? You’ve got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I’m sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That’s what we have to do today to make sure that we’re putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we’re thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it’s very generic, it’s very balanced, it’s very readable, it’s a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it’s forgettable because there’s nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that’s different. Why isn’t anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we’ve always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn’t develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I’m not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that’s gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn’t heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn’t have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don’t necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what’s different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here’s your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you’ll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you’ll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you’ll add to them. Hopefully you’ll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren’t saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you’re not actually surfacing it. And that’s a real key difference. So

this today’s podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I’m talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it’s just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

John Jantsch (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I’m doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven’t caught the past, I think I’m on episode four here. If you haven’t caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How’s that for a topic?

So here’s the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn’t help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here’s the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I’m AI didn’t necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it’s just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there’s no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn’t really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that’s actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that’s what you’re producing, that’s all you’re producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I’m not necessarily saying you don’t need content. I’m saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you’re an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I’ll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it’s a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you’ve got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client’s problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can’t make it, if you can’t tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn’t be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That’s one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that’s a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you’re bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I’ll call this. If you’re bored with a topic in six months, it’s not a pillar. It’s a theme. Pillars are really what you’re still the authority on, or what you’re driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won’t always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it’s sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they’re trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it’s a it doesn’t get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that’s the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I’ve I’ve talked, I’ve written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you’re going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it’s the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there’s lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don’t forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here’s the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you’re a real expert. And here’s the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don’t have to wait till they’re done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we’re actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it’s really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that’s going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can’t do that. and that that’s really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that’s really the

that’s really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that’s really the foundation structure, right? You’ve got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I’m sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That’s what we have to do today to make sure that we’re putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we’re thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it’s very generic, it’s very balanced, it’s very readable, it’s a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it’s forgettable because there’s nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that’s different. Why isn’t anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we’ve always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn’t develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I’m not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that’s gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn’t heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn’t have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don’t necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what’s different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here’s your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you’ll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you’ll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you’ll add to them. Hopefully you’ll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren’t saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you’re not actually surfacing it. And that’s a real key difference. So

this today’s podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I’m talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it’s just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.