Susan
More to marketing. Welcome to modern marketing, a podcast on marketing, product and everything in between. I’m your host, Susan, and I’m very excited today to talk to someone in regards to taking your content and bringing it to life in a market and just just really making it more exciting than what it is today and how you can actually do different things. They’re in smarter ways now. I’ve had an expert come along here to tell us all about this, and I’d love to introduce you to. Rachel Rachel has an immense passion for performance, marketing and runs a hugely successful marketing agency. Having worked with established brands such as High Smile, Netflix, Samsung and Kohl’s. Rachel has also trained $1,000,000 agency teams too. Her clients have had opportunities to work with some of the most amazing major celebrities that you all know of, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Wahlberg, co-founder of Google and the co-founder of Red Bull too, just to name a few of them. Throughout her years, she’s had some amazing hands on experience. Rachel has learned a thing or 20 on the most important pieces that you need when creating content for marketing and brand strategy, and most importantly, that content never sleeps. So welcome Rachel.
Rachael
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good to be.
Susan
Here I’m so excited to have you here. But tell us a bit more about yourself and your journey.
Rachael
Yeah, so originally I had, you know, taught martial arts as a. As a a job and then moved into working with high smiles, so worked on their customer experience team to start with and then social experience and got a good understanding of of how that business operates, which fundamentally those guys are a marketing machine, but it comes down to content. And so that was something that I learned. Really early on was a lot of these brands that are successful put a priority on content. And then from going on from high small, I started my own agency really it was sort of small consulting gig and then yeah, built that out. Now we’ve got a A-Team just moved into our second office and yeah, it’s been really good working with clients in you know design and construction and lifestyle businesses. Slow.
Susan
And I completely agree with you that there’s some companies out there that just don’t even think about content and don’t even go down that path at all to to even know where to begin. A lot of them so. Maybe they’ll start with some basics. What is content and how is it different when applied in other channels?
Rachael
Yeah. So you want to think about content as you know, it comes in different forms, right? So you could have written content, video content, you know, imagery and statics. You might even have long form content. So it’s really a medium in which we’re communicating something, whether it’s written verbal, you know, this podcast, for example, you know, some people, your listeners, would be listening to this. This is an audio form of content. And so you really want to be thinking about like, wherever you’re distributing that, it has a different purpose. You’ve got content specifically for paid advertising that’s a bit more direct to consumer. You’ve got organic content campaign specific. And so you’ve got this medium and then you want to think about that medium and how you’re communicating a message will change. Depending on the channel in which you’re pushing that through.
Susan
And I’ve seen that a lot of people, businesses don’t necessarily know to do it differently. They keep thinking that the same word and that’s on a billboard, can mean the same wording in TV ad to the same wording that you see on a display ad or on a social creative piece as well. How do you go about educating these new clients about the importance of selecting the right voice and the right messaging for all those different types of content?
Rachael
So whenever we’re speaking to clients, we kind of build it back to the basics, right. And that’s something you need to be thinking about when you’re thinking about marketing, it’s just come back to the basics and go what am I trying to achieve here. And so if we’re trying to achieve a brand positioning and we’re trying to build awareness organically. Be then the type of content we need to show insight and in marketing you’ve got the the old school build, no lack and trust. And so if you’re building no lack and trust, you wanna show insight into the business and so you might then build that out into behind the scenes content if you’re. Packing. Product in the warehouse. You might want to showcase that process, maybe even gifting a customer an extra product and creating a TikTok out of that. And so you’re building is no luck and trusting any insight into the business. Whereas if your agenda is to improve conversions through paid advertising, maybe we need to look at what kind of content is seeing on the website. Is the imagery strong enough? Is your copy strong enough? And so how are we then helping to improve the conversion rate? So building it back build, no, lack of trust. Understand what your purpose is, and then from there we can work out what kind of content you. Need to focus on.
Susan
Yeah, I feel that there’s a lot of businesses that try to do this by themselves and their assumption is I’ll see what my competitor is doing and copy. Have you seen a lot of that as well in all your years of experience of that, we’re just going to copy and not think of being original.
Rachael
Absolutely far too often, and you can you can sniff it, you can, you can smell it from a mile away and it doesn’t feel authentic. And if you’re always in the shadow of another brand, you’re always trying to copy what they’re doing. It’s not going to work out for you long term because they’re they’re leading the way and they’re always a step in front of you. And so it’s really important to go, OK, what? What are we good at? What’s our unique selling point? What do customers want from us? Because that’s how you real people in you’ve got something different that people can experience or gain or learn from you.
Susan
Or even just the brand itself being associated with it can be that point of difference as well. Absolutely. So when when we’re thinking about the content, how should the brands actually prioritise content and what are some of the benefits of doing that?
Rachael
Absolute. So you wanna think about content like the fuel, right? If you try to think up any marketing campaign, whether it’s organic, social media, paid advertising, a media campaign on Forbes, whatever you’re doing. If you try to achieve that without content, without copy, without imagery video, you can’t and so content is the fuel that you need to derive marketing and so the businesses we have, we have two key sayings in the team. One is content never sleeps and the other is the brand that produces the most. Content with. And So what you want to be thinking about is constantly. Being in front of customers testing always be testing AB ABT and so you want to be thinking about content in this way. And so if you’re looking at why content is important, it’s the fuel allows you to test remain in front of people, remain relatable as well. And there’s so much noise right now. And so if you look at any brand, look at Yeti for example or high smile, you want to be thinking about why they so in front of people all the time because they’re producing content of different types as.
Susan
Well, umm and all those different channels too for the different types of people they’re trying to target. Absolutely. Because I’d I’d make a a big statement here that social media is being so new over the last 10 years and evolved so much. That a lot of traditional marketers still probably haven’t even caught up with how they could use those different channels with different content to to make a stronger proposition to bring in the right people that want to know about you. Exactly. Yeah. And I know you’ve done a lot of work with influencers, some major celebrities as well, which I’m very jealous about because I think they’ve got some amazing brands behind them in the products that they’ve built and the services they’ve built as well, can’t wait till wahlbergs burgers comes to Australia to be. Honest.
Influences are rampant at the moment. There’s your micro, your nano, your your bigger ones, your your Kim Kardashians as well. But is this? Just a fad. What? What’s your? Experience being here about what you think the future might hold for brands and their connection with influencers.
Rachael
Absolutely so. When so my background working influences is I have created, you know, done influencer campaigns for, you know, a number of different brands. And you know, we’ve got clients who organically, you know, these celebrities will come about because they’ve put the content out there. They’ve created the brand that these influence influencers or celebrities see and they want to be part of. So that’s also another reason why content is so important when it comes to influences. People of influence, which is where Influences’s term came. Have been around forever and so you want to be thinking about the type of influences that are going to remain and the type of influences that will drop off.
Rachael
And so you know, you’ve got people with 10 million followers, you’ve got people with. 5000 followers, they’re all considered influencers with the type of content that they’re producing. That’s what we need to look at is what’s going to stay and what’s going to go. And so this, this era of people just posting content that feels in genuine, it’s the same script. Hey guys. You know, you’ve all been asking, what’s this? What? What’s my secret weapon to having great skin? You know, you’ve all asked this. That type of content isn’t going to be as genuine as storytelling lock style. Bringing back sort of that old school. Product placement that’s not direct to consumer necessarily directly selling. And so I think we need to be thinking about this kind of content. And that’s where I think influences will always remain, but it’s more so the kind of content that they’re producing.
Susan
It goes back down to that quality over quantity, doesn’t it? So it’s about making sure that it’s genuine. It’s relatable. People actually can get to it as well because a lot of the time some of these products maybe 10, twenty $100,000, that’s not relatable. It’s great. Maybe content to watch, but that’s very short term where as you see and believe and build that trust. That’s where you it turns more from a fad to a future because you’re now. You’re partly loyal, you have. You’ve decided. I’m actually got an affiliation with this brand. With what they’re selling with what they’re sharing, and I can connect. And I suppose this also brings on the aspect of Community. An influencer builds a community for that brand as well. Have you had any dealings with building influencer communities out that have been really exciting that you give any examples of?
Rachael
I would say when it comes to like building community, not necessarily for the influencer themselves, but more so when it comes to building out that community with the brand and how having multiple faces as part of that brand built. When it comes to influential people, yes, they have their community, they’ve got people who enjoy watching content with them, following along in terms of what they’re doing. And those people become really loyal. And so when they suggest a certain product and those people really appreciate their opinion, that’s something they focus on. I think we’re also going to see a. Big shift of companies actually investing in their teams, becoming personalities or influential people. As part of the. Brand. And so you can see that Amazon have just invested in a major majority of their staff actually being trained on how to produce content. And so you want to be thinking about, OK, if there’s this shift. These influential communities and these brands are actually going to now invest in people part of their team being influencers and you can see this shift happen over time with the trend on TikTok which you know the intern took over the the TikTok the intern took over Instagram. And so you’re going to see these personalities. Who the founder or the marketing team or the finance team? People in the warehouse, these people are actually going to be creating content in house. And we’re going to see more of a movement towards in-house personalities as well. So I think you know these influencer communities are important, but we’re also going to see the brands now focusing on personalities within the team as well.
Susan
And again, that’s how they differentiate themselves, isn’t it? They can have that different point of difference compared to their competitors where you might want to. Sally reminds you of your mums, you want to follow Sally’s journey as she’s working behind the scenes in this company, you’re learning different things as well. So there’s probably a lot of human touch points in there where it really comes relatable as well.
Rachael
Absolutely.
Susan
Now, what should brands focus on though, when they’ve got their content?
Rachael
So if you’re again coming back to simple terms, especially if you’re a brand that. Aren’t sure where that next step is, or you’re looking at investing in content. What you need to look at is how do you achieve this? At the most simple form? So you could ask the team if they’ve got content on their camera roll. From around, you know, things that happen, you know, team events, things that happen in their work day. You also probably want to have the team on board. So briefing everyone saying, hey, we wanna do this and having a couple of key people who are on board with that. If you’ve got a team that’s an older demographic, sometimes you can have a bit of a challenge there or as the younger.
Susan
Hmm.
Rachael
Team members are probably more likely to to want to do that. Now, if you’re creating videos, you don’t want them to feel really forced either, so it’s really important to have conversations, selfie style videos talking to the camera as you wanted to feel genuine, like someone’s actually talking to you as a friend. We like to brief our customer clients and say. Talk to the camera as if you’re on FaceTime. Yep, and so if you’re a business and you’re looking to produce this kind of content, phone content is absolutely fine. And it’s just trying to document the INS and outs and the day-to-day of the business and exciting things that are happening as well. Start there and then you can build and get a videographer on board. Have video editing have different types of videos edited, but at a really really basic level. Just get the team on board and start filming. Just start.
Susan
And as long as you’re not hearing live straight away, you’ve got time to actually check and proof before you hit go out live. So you. Yourself as well then. Yeah, definitely. I think there’s a place for life. Yes, but probably not when you’re first starting out.
Rachael
No, having pre planned content that you can. You know you’ve got a bit of a plan there and that way you can control the conversations too.
Susan
Exactly. And I think another piece that’s probably very important is monitoring that the social engagement as well. So when you do post that you don’t just leave it as dead air. Because a lot of times in some of these channels, people may comment or ask questions or whatever it might be or want to know a little bit more. How important is it for them to keep on that as well? And how long do you think they should watch a post in some of the traditional types of areas that we send? Our content to.
Rachael
Yeah. So when we’re and part of what we’re doing as well is we with our organic social media packages, we will manage all of that for the clients. And so how we look at it is we look at everything daily and we do it in the AM and the PM. So it’s constantly monitored. And so the post goes up, we make sure that we responding to those. Limits that you know we’re responding to the DM story replies. You know you want to be checking your your comments in the last few posts, you know, over a couple of couple of days and then even you know a week or two on just double check and make sure you’ve not left any comments unread. The reason for that is. If you’re not responding to customers, and if you don’t have time, have someone do that for you, because it showcases that the brand is active and that you care about customers and that you’re onto it subconsciously. That communicates to a customer that you care.
Susan
Yep. And you’re also authentic too. So what you’ve posted up there isn’t just a A1 off. That’s what you think. That moment you’re following through with? Probably a a social contract you’ve done by having your socials out there that you will actually be able to contact both ways.
Rachael
Yeah, definitely. And again, that is content as well. Everything is content. Content never sleeps. There is always something right? Someone comments on a real on your Instagram you can reply to that comment as a real, and so you’ve produced content. You’ve already got your idea. Someone responds to a story, you can then repost that answer in a question box and repurpose that as content. And so you want to be on to these things and going, how can we? Get the most for the least.
Susan
Exactly. Drag it out for as long as your camera. It makes sense and as relevant.
Rachael
Exactly.
Susan
Now I’m. I’m sure you because you’ve been watching and learning all these years. Seeing what, what’s out there, in socials, what competitors are doing, what other brands are doing just as part of your natural learning, working with clients. But what mistakes do you see with content? Are you able to share some and be able to talk to some examples?
Rachael
Absolutely. So the biggest mistake when it comes to content is producing something that doesn’t feel authentic. And if it feels really forced and quite sort of like pre planned. And I think that’s a really big mistake that a lot of businesses also do. Is it, you know, they put strange philtres on it. Weird text. You just want to look at what are people out there doing? If you’re not sure what to do, content go on. TikTok, go on Instagram reels and just get a gauge of how people are producing it. I think that’s a really big thing, things that. Are over staged. I think there’s a difference, right? So we’ve got content. I believe that we’re going to see more high end high production content coming out. But then we’re also going to see more authentic and vlog style, and so these common mistakes are like the way that it’s it’s produced, making it feel inauthentic and a. Little bit forced. The way the formats as well, so making sure if you’re producing content for ads, make sure that you’ve got a 9 by 16 four. By 4 by 4 by 5, and one by one ratio so that you have the right placement. So whenever you’re running Facebook ads, for example, you want to make sure that you’ve got your story placement, your real placement, but also your feed placement sizes of that same piece of content. And so you want to make sure that. You’ve got the right ratios as well. They’re quite different ends of the spectrum in terms of errors, but these are some of the common ones that I’ve. Been seeing lately.
Susan
One of the ones that comes to my mind is when they’re so forced they almost remind you of some of those old school hate HR force videos you’d have to watch and you just cringe.
Rachael
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, lack of value, I think is a really big one too. And that’s what you’re. Saying it just. Feels forced in marketing. We always wanna think about give, give, give, give, give, ask. Give. Give, give, give, give, ask. And so you want to be giving that value. If you’re creating a video and it’s quite shallow and surface level and there’s not a lot of actual value. You that can you can. You’ll lose people pretty quickly.
Susan
One of my favourites out in socials is watching a particular French pastry chef who makes different things out of chocolate. And he just gives all the time. So he give gives all these videos of making. I’ll make a full size dinosaur out of chocolate. I will make this tiny little music box that opens and can actually move around with chocolate. And you you watch, watch, watch all these videos because I sometimes get suckered in. But there’s not much ask. So when there is an ask, you don’t feel like they’re. Bombarding you or? They’re they’re right in your face or ohh. It’s bit very personal. Bit. Ohh. How much details do they know about? Me. It’s very. Subtly done, and I think that needs to be part of where we go with content as well. That’s not thrown in your face. I’ve got someone yelling at you, but that’s so natural that you feel like ohh yes, I will click. On that and learn more.
Rachael
Absolutely bite sized pieces. Give them a taste of of what they. Could get from you. You know that that chef that you’re. Talking about Yum but.
Susan
I know. I would love to just be the leftovers person. You cut that off, you’re not. Using it for, I’ll just watch that.
Rachael
Yeah, yeah, no worries. You know, they may do a course, right? And they’ll teach you how to do that. And so you’re going. Ohh gosh, I would love to do something like that and they might post a story and say, hey, if you guys would actually like to learn from me. I’m. I’m gonna put a course together. Let me know what information you’d like to see. And so they may actually produce a course based on the information that people are asking for. And so you really want to listen to your customers and create content around that too.
Susan
And that’s actually exactly what’s happened to me very recently. There’s a a very small local Baker who she’s got a little she’s very little in the influence of space. So she’s localised. Does baby smash cakes or other little cakes as well? Vegan friendly, all those things that you might be looking for when you’re taking children’s things as well.
No eggs and all those pieces. And she’s expanded out to adult cakes for birthdays and anniversaries, etc. So I follow her. So I just follow. I follow her. Insta. And I see her making all these beautiful creations for the people where I might be a little. Video or I? Might just be an image and I just love seeing it, but then every so often she’ll put up. Would you like to learn how to do this type of icing come to my course and again it’s just that little bite size. Where it’s you might be interested, you might not, and I have to say, I actually did the course and I learned how. To do it as well, there you go. Perfect awesome strategy work for her. It definitely did. And again it it comes back to that relevance you were talking about doing give, give, give then ask but also making sure her content made sense as well by doing differences between reels and images in this case.
Rachael
Absolutely, definitely.
Susan
But what excites you most about this space? Why? Why do you love content? Bring content marketing so.
Rachael
I think like looking at content like I said, as the fuel when it comes to marketing is you know we focus at market Agency on organic marketing and paid advertising. And so we look at marketing as ecosystem and so that ecosystem allows brands to create this really nice. Presence in the market space where they use the organic side to really talk to the customers, create that community and actually inspire and motivate people and improve their lives. And then on the other side is that direct to consumer where we can actually increase conversions. And So what I’m most passionate about when it comes to the content marketing. Is the fact that you can have a lot of fun with it, and how I have first hand seen like our clients and just brands in general be able to grow. Through creating content and being able to test it and you know me personally, I was never someone to be in front. Of the camera. Now we produce content and you know, being on front in front of the camera and talking about value, it becomes fun and you know, you get involved in it and the team loves that as well. And so.
Rachael
I think that brands have the opportunity to really speak directly to customers and actually make an impact when they are giving that value when they’re giving that insights, not just about talking about your product, you could be talking about your industry, could be talking about like what problems you solve. Certain materials, lifestyle changes and then your product could just be one of those things to support that. And so it’s about creating that community and that education and that value. So for me the the passion comes from being able to see the change that makes for a business.
Susan
I love that and that that’s part of why I’m I believe you went into your agency as well because you love what you’ve learned and now you can share it with others and help them build and be successful.
Rachael
Absolutely. I see too many businesses they. They often struggle to know what the next best step is, and it’s for someone like myself and the team and even yourself. You would understand this is it’s, you know, you see what that next step is because that’s your expertise. That’s not your expertise and you’re focusing on product development and building an incredible business. Often you you can leverage someone else’s knowledge and know how to get to that next best step, and so you know, I suppose that’s why we exist is really to help business owners to take that part off their plate.
Susan
100% and the amount of knowledge you and your team would have as well. It’d be so much more than that person could ever read in a couple of books too, because you’ve actually got the hands on experience and done the AV changes, the optimization, everything to actually see what does work and what doesn’t.
Rachael
Yeah, the day to day, like we see trends every day, we test things every day and so we can go, OK, that worked for that client that worked. That client can maybe and that’s a learning we can use for another client too. So you’ve got that. So is that in? But and it’s, you know, it is like you look at how much it would cost to hire an employee, there is no way in marketing that you could hire someone that could be paid advertising, content creation, video editing, graphic design, social media, SEO all in one person. Exactly how much that would cost to get that whole team.
Susan
Mm-hmm.
Rachael
And then how much it costs just to have, you know, someone manage that an agency for instance.
Susan
In.
Rachael
It becomes a lot more cost effective and so coming back to the content side of things, that’s a really good starting point is if you’re doing that in house, just start really simple and then build from there.
Susan
Exactly. Get it right to start with and then build upon it and. Grow it. Absolutely. I have my final question. I ask everybody, everyone gets asked this question and you can have multiples as well. Doesn’t have to be 1, but what brand any brand in the world best represents you and. Why?
Rachael
I would say there’s there’s probably two of them. I love the brand Gosney that make pizza pizza ovens. I think that their content strategy is Epic and loco, love, loco loves incredible brands. Those guys have had amazing success specially and you know. If you look, I believe those guys started in 2013, 2015, if you.
Susan
That one guy? Yeah.
Rachael
Look at how. Long it’s taken them to get to this point. People look at them and go, gosh, they’re a major success. They’re in all health food stores. They sell out. People talk about them, you know black. They’re gold. Umm, but it’s taken them ten years to get to that point. And so how they’ve been able to do that is content.
Susan
Yep, going back to their their passion and showing and sharing it and then building that everyone’s love into it as well to make it bigger. I love that. I love those two brands. I’m just going to do a quick round up, so do add more once I finish, but thank you so much. I love talking content and influences. I learn so much more when I get to have this opportunity and for me the biggest thing here is about content. Definitely never sleeps. You’ve got all different forms. Like you’ve written your video, your images, long form, etc. But it’s really about communication. Making sure that all those different types of forms you create of your content have different purposes. Depending on what you’re doing and who you’re talking to, so you’ve got to make sure you sit back and plan out your strategy for content. So you’re doing the right thing at the right time, and it makes sense this can. Be things like thinking about direct to consumer or is it going to be organic and then how you’re going to pivot all your pieces to make sure it’s authentic along the way too, so it doesn’t feel forced. But go back to the basics of marketing. Pretty much why are you doing it? What are you trying to communicate and do that whole build know like and trust? How can you build that out and make that part of your strategy now influences themselves? You want to look for quality over quantity because you want to make sure that they’re going to be around for the long run. So if you do partner. Or invest or you’ve got someone that loves you and is an influencer. They make sense as well. So that if they’re. Creating content for you naturally, which is amazing if they do, or if you’re paying for it. That does come across authentic and then not just going for a paycheck to be able to make some more money there. But one of the best sources of influences you could do something like what Amazon is just starting to do is see if your employees want to get on board and be part of the strategy. Maybe they can do some video reels around the office people’s parties behind the scenes packing boxes. Some of those behind the scenes content can be very magical when it comes to. Creating content for socials and it can be short form there as well which is. Nice short, sharp and sweet. We always remember to give, give, give and don’t ask for too much because it is a content for people to enjoy, not necessarily a forced selling channel. And always make sure you’ve got someone around to respond. You don’t want to leave it as dead air out there that you’re not going to be talking back if you put some magical content out there, you want to continue the conversation and then that adds more content along the way too. You may even get some ideas out. Of it for future content. But my three final things I would like to leave off on are. Content is fuel. It is what runs your marketing strategy when it comes to it. You have to have that content. As the fuel. Content never sleeps. Make sure that you’re always watching what’s going on out there and that you’re being relevant and. Products that post the most relevant content at the right time, right place all those things wins. And by doing that you can do lots of test loans as well. So you can make the adjustments. You need for your market. How did I go, Rachel?
Rachael
I don’t think. I could have summarised it any better, you know.
Susan
But fantastic. Is there any final thing that you’d like to leave off on as well and tell us a bit about your business as well, so?
Rachael
People can find you. Yeah. So I think the last thing as well is that you don’t need to overcomplicate it. You know, as a business, that might feel like, oh, gosh, now I have to go out and get the team on board. And and all this like at the end of the day. Just ask yourself. Who are we talking to? What are we trying to achieve and how? Like what is the best next step? And so if that is something that you. Need support with. That is, you know, that’s why marked agency exists. So it’s MRKD agency.com RKD agency is our handle on all social channels. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, I’d love to say to your, to your listeners, we’re happy to do an audit on the House, take a look under the hood and just see some some. Areas of of the marketing that you can be growing, so if that’s something that sounds like of interest that offer is there. But yeah, at the end of the day, just don’t over complicate it. Just start simple and you can build some.
Susan
Fantastic. Thank you so much for everyone. I will make sure that links to Rachel’s business marked agency and also to herself and Instagram are included in the show notes, so make sure you read those and click on all those. To hear more. Thank you again so much, Rachel. I’ve really enjoyed this. I love learning more in this space. As you know, cuz we had a pre chat before. But for everyone else, don’t forget to add more to marketing. To your playlist so. You don’t forget and miss out on any. Future guests. More to marketing.
