How Do You Build Expert-Led Content That Earns Trust?

Susan Powell (00:02) So it's positioning the company as the, not just the top choice, but the true expert that knows what they're talking about and that ⁓ builds a foundation of trust, a very strong foundation of trust. So that dynamic isn't just throw something at the wall to see what sticks. It's not just jump on the burrito slap bandwagon on social. mean, it really is knowing your customers, where they live, where they get their information and what their challenges are, not just needs, but their Benjamin Ard (01:03) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Susan. Susan, welcome to the show. Susan Powell (01:08) Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. Benjamin Ard (01:10) Yeah, Susan, this is going to be a fun time. have loved getting to know you already. Let's get the audience caught up with who you are, what you do, all that kind of fun stuff. Give us your background and work history. Susan Powell (01:21) I started life as an elementary school teacher. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, the animation required to keep attention spans is something that comes naturally to marketers. So I think the segue wasn't that far apart from my original career in education. I have a passion for English. I love to write and as I got into the private sector, I looked at opportunities to enter business communications and realized as I was growing that that I truly am fascinated by what marketing is, not what people think it is, but by what it truly is. When you get in there and you're in the trenches with your fellow marketers, it's not just make it pretty and throw it out there. goals and I think I bring that from the teaching background. We were very focused on goals and objectives and they were behavioral in order for the students to achieve. So I kind of brought that with me. I think it was a natural journey. Benjamin Ard (02:14) love that. That is so cool and as a parent of young children I applaud anyone who can keep anyone's attention span. I struggle with it sometimes. It's definitely it's an art and a science and a love and a passion so I love it. That's so cool. Susan Powell (02:23) Yes. Yeah, it was fun. Benjamin Ard (02:29) So today's episode, I'm so excited. Here's the title for us today, How Marketing Can Actually Drive Strategy, Not Just React to It. So when we hear that title, Susan, what do you mean that marketing can drive the strategy and not just react to it? What's kind of the gut response? Why is that so important? Susan Powell (02:49) I from our perspective here especially, and we hear our CEO say it too, the customer centric nature of business today is not just look at me and what I can do and what I can bring to you, it's we know what your challenges are, we know the problems that you have and we solve them. There may be occasions when we're not what you need, but we know the solutions and the tools that you need to solve your challenge. So it's positioning the company as the, not just the top choice, but the true expert that knows what they're talking about and that ⁓ builds a foundation of trust, a very strong foundation of trust. So that dynamic isn't just throw something at the wall to see what sticks. It's not just jump on the burrito slap bandwagon on social. mean, it really is knowing your customers, where they live, where they get their information and what their challenges are, not just needs, but their So I think what we're seeing here is there really is a place for marketing to jump on some of those fun trends and stay top of mind and use some humor. But then there's also some time to bring that serious We know the challenges and we have the tools. We might not be what you need, but we know where to find what you need. So I think it's more a more universal problem solving approach. Benjamin Ard (04:17) I love that. Okay, that's super cool. So when you're looking at it, one of the questions that comes to mind is what's kind of one of the biggest misunderstandings you feel like people have when they're actually thinking about strategy and what it really means. I mean, I in college actually had to take a course for my degree of what the difference between strategy and tactics was. And it took a whole semester. for us to learn the difference. from your experience, what are some of those misunderstandings when it comes to strategy and what it is? Susan Powell (04:46) You made me think of strategy and tactics and the difference. Watch the series Band of Brothers. You will get that. I think for me, strategy is, I think one of the big misunderstandings is here are our revenue goals. Okay, here are all our market verticals. This is a revenue goal for this one. Okay, that's nice. Another misunderstanding related very closely to that is, What do you need? do you, leads, just bring us leads. Okay, great. Here's some leads. We'll go chase the money. That's not a strategy. Those are very good goals and they drive business. But the strategy makes sure that those goals are not just met, they are exceeded and that there is a solid foundation to build upon them and keep them going. especially in... arenas like government marketing. Those are long-term relationships. That's not one and done. Those RFPs turn into five, 10, 15, 20 year relationships. So it's having the vision beyond just we want to make money and we want to bring in leads. It's more sustainability than it is just bring in money. Benjamin Ard (05:49) I that. Okay, so I can guarantee there are marketers right now that are nodding their heads. I can have a strategy that's not just revenue and leads. Okay, okay. Where do they start? How does a marketing team or a marketing leader who's nodding their head right now, how do they start to build the strategy? And also, how does that kind of tie into the corporate strategy? How do they start? Susan Powell (06:07) Ugh. I a lot of them will say, just go to AI. You you can use perplexity with Claude as the writing engine. can use, no. That's co-pilot. That's a good place to do some research, but the best place to start is if these are our revenue goals and they want leads, what do these customers Benjamin Ard (06:22) You mean, Chet-GPT is not strategy? ⁓ Susan Powell (06:38) potential customers look like? What are they challenged with? and if they're because the revenue goals normally from the top are very lofty. So what resources do we have at our disposal? Let's start with a SWOT analysis is a great place to start. So what's working, what's not, what are our opportunities, what are our challenges, really putting that into perspective and don't be afraid to list the negatives. Here's what's ticking me off. Here's where we don't have resources. That is a great place to actually start. It's almost like that swim lane. The first thing you have to do is just jump in the pool. And then what I did, I actually went to a friend of mine who is a marketing, actually a CMO now, and said, I have this outline. I have some notes. I want to put it together in a comprehensive document for the C-suite leadership here." He said, great. I'll send you the elements your document should include. I'm not going to send you a template. It's not going to be, you know, fill in the blanks, but I'll send you the elements you need to include. And that, I love that challenge as a marketer and as a writer. So start with your SWOT analysis. Look at a basic framework. You know, start with your four Ps of marketing if you want to go back to, you know, 101. Go ahead and start with those. I think the critical pieces for me in building the strategy are the basic personas, just as a starting point. Don't get too detailed. You can get in the weeds with that. But also, what are the metrics that are going to measure success? So we have a videographer, we have social media manager, we have our digital presence manager, we have, what are they going to show to the C-suite success. So bring them in to the discussion about the metrics and commit to them. Those are your KPIs. Benjamin Ard (08:27) I love that. That's so cool. Now when you're looking at OKRs and KPIs, you you mentioned the goals of revenue and leads and things like that. What are some maybe better OKRs or are those OK to use as like a subset of your strategy? How do you kind of look at the metrics as a part of strategy? Susan Powell (08:44) The metrics for marketing, I think they're gonna differ industry by industry. Some of them are gonna be the same. You're gonna have your vanity metrics with your website traffic and things like that. But then you're gonna have the more substantive metrics that are gonna be your click throughs and your churn. One of the most elusive things in marketing that I'm preaching to the choir here for all of your listeners, but one of the most elusive things in marketing is that drawing the the connection line between a lead and a customer. So where did marketing touch that? So we are focusing very heavily with analytics and data, again, input from the team, but we're looking at our CRM and making sure that there's a lot of lead nurture going on, especially for one of our market verticals, with making sure the salespeople are putting in the latest touch with the leads. But what's driving us are the analytics around click-through rates. Those are huge. And then the outreach. Who's contacting us and how? And, you know, are we getting feedback from them? Do we send surveys? Are we getting feedback from them that this came from because I saw this video or, you know, I saw it? So chasing it down can be elusive, but we have a firm set of KPIs that we as a team created to say this is where you know we're successful. Benjamin Ard (10:02) I love that and I my two cents with that is I am a huge proponent of self reported attribution. I I know a lot of teams try from it. It's not very technical. It's way too easy to set up and just ask someone. How did you hear about us or what made you click? But it is another data point at least that people should consider and even if you make it as qualitative as possible, it provides some really insights. Good insights and answers. I love that. Susan Powell (10:14) Yeah. Absolutely. Benjamin Ard (10:29) So now the marketing team has a strategy and it's actually a strategy and it uses the resources and it understands who you're talking to and what you're trying to accomplish and it's aligned with the company goals and you're trying to get the rest of the team to know their role when it comes to the strategy. Each individual has different objectives. Has different day in and day out responsibilities they need to take care of. How do you help them connect what they do to the bigger picture, to the strategy, and then hopefully make it into a lens so they know, okay, I should be doing this and I shouldn't be doing that based off of the strategy itself. Any recommendations there? Susan Powell (11:14) That's a big one. We meet monthly as a team. We have a set agenda. So there are no surprises. Okay, you're going to speak about this, you're going to speak about this. We review two things up front. We review the budget. And then we look at the strategic plan. I call it the strategic plan, but we look at the strategy. And we just skip to, I'll pull up the table of contents. Okay. What do you guys want to fast forward to? Does anybody have any challenges? Does anybody have any issues? We also do something and that's everybody has a copy of it. You know, they know where it is. It's placed where we can all see it. But we also do something that I think it may be long term. It may not be, but I think it kicked our team off on a good note. And that is we have what we call a Monday stand up. We stand up, we grab our coffee or whatever your tea. And we just kind of stand in a circle. Hey, how's it going? How was your weekend? So go around, everybody name one success. It can be a personal success. It can be a professional success. It just up to you. Name whatever you want. Then we go around the circle. Everybody name a work-related challenge. What are you staring down that's keeping you up at night? What do you not have enough resources to accomplish? This kind of thing. And I think it sets the tone for the week and reconnects us to what the priorities are. Because We all know full well as marketers, everybody from every department in the company is coming to you with these wonderful ideas. this is great, we need to do this. Or they think they have terminology, because we marketers have their own glossary of terms. So, I need a campaign around this, I need a drip around this, I need that. Okay, that they don't actually know. So we back up. every single time and talk, what is the goal? Who are trying to reach? Why are you trying to reach them? What is their challenge? And it kind of stops them and makes them think. And then we hold ourselves accountable to, if we're going to do that, understand this is what I'm measured against. And this is what I report on every month. So, and I think the more proactive we are to show our value, the more seriously we get taken. Benjamin Ard (13:16) I love that. That's so cool. So it's interesting. It feels like almost on a strategic level with those Monday standups, a big part is that you as a team are willing to embrace and kind of understand the struggles that you're going through and provide aid and let other people kind of have that platform. It feels like that's almost, would you call that a strategic level or a tactical level kind of advantage? team has by doing that. Susan Powell (13:44) It's a tactic, a weekly tactic that feeds the overall strategy that everybody has a say in the strategy. if there's something that's not working in that strategy, let's look at it. How do we need to bring business development or another business partnership here in the company? How do we need to bring those SMEs in to talk to us about it? Because maybe we're measuring the wrong thing. Benjamin Ard (14:08) I love that. Well, Susan, as promised, these episodes go by so fast and we are already out of time. It's incredible. If anyone listening to this would like to connect with you online, how and where can they find you? Susan Powell (14:12) I hate you. They can find us on moveinterstate.com, which is our website. I am going to say this. I'm going to get a plug in. are rebuilding, not rebuilding this website. We're blowing it up and starting from scratch. We are, yes, we're building a brand new website. We have a consultant with the framework that we've chosen, and then we have a vendor that's doing the actual development. So we're very excited about that, but right now it is Benjamin Ard (14:30) Ooh, I love it. I love it. Everyone's favorite platform. I love it. For anyone listening, we will link to Susan's information in the show notes. So just scroll down and connect with her below. Susan, thank you so much for the time and all of the insights. This has been amazing. Thank you so much. Susan Powell (14:56) Benjamin, I had a blast. Thank you so much.