Choosing your marketing 'type'
What type of content fits your business world?
How do we decide on what type of content marketing to do for our business?
Should you teach? Tell stories? Tell jokes?
Is it all trial and error?
Or is there a system we can use to decide?
If we don’t know what type of content we want to do, how do we stay the course and not get lost into oblivion?
There are so many possibilities open to us with marketing, it can drive us insane.
Example:
With one of the businesses we work with, he had a system of putting up a video each day on social media. Mostly entertainment and inspirational stuff. They might be seen by a few hundred people. Or a few thousand. But then one day he put one up that went viral. Thirty-five million views. We were celebrating it, but you couldn’t help sense that other people were a little envious of this sudden exposure. Which also doubled his audience…
And so it goes as a service business:
You see peers, or colleagues sending different kinds of emails, or starting podcasts. Someone gets a great result, and it’s tempting to cross over to the latest platform or trend. You can hope that a similar thing can happen to you.
It reminds me of the video game ‘pong.’ Where you tap the ball back and forth with the two sliders.
In business we can end up blipping back and forth. Not just with different platforms, or mediums for marketing, but different types of content altogether.
You need a North Star with the type of content that you do.
What do we mean by type of content?
In one of Robert Greene’s books, The 50th Law, that he wrote with 50 Cent, he talks about how fifty created his own kind of music.
When 50 Cent came up, he had a period around 2000 where he had been shot, and went into hiding. When he was out of action, he reinvented himself. He stewed on the feeling of being at rock bottom. And then he started to write music from that angle. Suddenly he put out a song, right when people had almost forgotten about him. His songs were angry, and reflected the story that was unfolding in the streets real time.
More:
Because 50 Cent was still potentially ‘wanted’ by the people who had come after him, he wouldn’t show his face. As more of his songs came out, they were heard all over the city even though he wasn’t there.
A lot of other rap music was being played at the time.
The problem was though, it was too polished:
“The music on the radio was all so packaged and produced. Even the tough stuff, the gangsta rap, was fake. The lyrics did not reflect anything form the streets that he knew. The attempt to pass it off as real and urban angered him to a point he could not endure.”
50 Cent created his own type of content. He told stories, exposing what was really happening. People loved it.
It’s much the same for us with service businesses.
When we look closely at any page, or business that we love to follow, we see that they have a core ‘type’ of content that they become known for.
Another example:
My wife Ruby loves to follow along with this family over in the States, who run a farm. Their social media account is called Ballerina Farm. Every day they will upload ten or twenty short videos to show what happened that day at the farm. Sometimes it’s feeding the pigs. Sometimes it’s an update on the cow that got stuck in the ditch and broke a leg. Sometimes it’s about shipping out orders to their customers.
Now they have a global audience of raving fans, obsessed with their whole story. They tune in to watch everything to see what’s happening next.
This is what we call a story-driven type of content. Or, we engage with them to get updates on the story.
Someone who follows that business, or marketing ‘type’ of content might also follow other types.
Maybe they watch for the information or the entertainment, a la Gary Vee.
Maybe they also follow other accounts because it links into part of their lifestyle like a fishing channel.
We look to different types of content for different reasons.
As a business owner, you have a choice on what type of content you create…
And while you aren’t ‘locked in’, now this is something you can become known for.
Plus, when you know what type of marketing you want to do, you can get much better at it.
Let’s take a look at some different types of marketing.
Five Different Types of Content
When we look at creators, entertainers, and content producers, we find there are some key types of marketing or ‘content’ that we love to follow:
Latest industry news and updates (especially if it’s controversial)
Humour
Great storytelling
Alternative views, or deep expertise
Insight into pain points, and then discussing solutions
Typically, you’ll want to stick to one or two types, per platform.
Example:
For us, on social media with the Creator Club account, we are about Insight into pain points, and alternative views.
The emails are a different. They are alternative views, blended with insight into the lives of the characters of our world.
This is because the emails are where the inside ‘scoop’ happens. They are more about story, and an alternative view to the whole small business chestnut.
This is largely because I’m always attracted to story, and it suits my personality and our world.
(This is also the type we primarily teach in Creator Club, as it aligns with a ‘world building’ lens of business.)
Give yourself a constraint
In the early 2000’s, AUDI had to revamp their race car for the 24 Hour Le Mans races.
At the time they saw that diesel cars were becoming more popular across all parts of the auto industry. And, to ‘spearhead’ this movement and make them more attractive to the customer, they wanted to create a high performance diesel race car.
This gave them a constraint.
What they did was they used that constraint and said “OK, how else can we go faster?” Sure they pushed to build a powerful car, but also they saw that if they could build a car that stopped ‘less’ than other cars (better fuel consumption) they would be faster across 24 hours.
In the end, that’s exactly what happened. The new R10 had a fuel consumption of 41L/100km. In comparison, at the same time, a formula One car had an efficiency of about 75L/100km.
So the R10 was able to get more laps per stint than other cars. This was a key reason why they won three 24 Hour Le Mans races.
A similar thing happens with your marketing ‘type’.
When you not only know where you want to show up, but also how you want to show up, you have a constraint in place, and now you can improve the work.
Where you show up, and the type of marketing you do is important. Because this is also how you will build a relationship with your audience, and present your offers and sell.
How do we decide what type of marketing to do?
There are three major factors that can drive our marketing type. This has nothing to do with the latest ‘trends’ in the industry.
Why?
Because if you were to change your type with every shift in trends, then you would be constantly chasing. Now. This doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate new trends into your work, but that’s at a more tactical level.
Method 1 - Use your personal strengths and characteristics.
When I was fourteen I had to write a short story for school. At the time I was reading these adventure novels. So basically what I did was I wrote a story in the style of one of these adventure novels about going to an island that was covered with sea snakes.
And as we walked around the island, we had to dodge all these highly venomous snakes (sea snakes can’t really harm you, but in my story they were dangerous).
Since then, I’ve always enjoyed the mix of information and story.
Now, are there better storytellers than me? Of course. Are there better copywriters? Sure. Are there better teachers? No doubt. But I have come upon a unique type of content that only my journey could create.
People talk about A.I taking over copywriters, but there’s no chance that can happen really, because it only ‘recreates’ what’s been done. It can’t come up with a new story like the one above.
You get to choose, one ‘type’ of marketing that suits you
If you’re very analytical, or more information driven, then you might specialise in succinct tips or education. Or the latest news in your industry.
If you’re a comedian, and can speak or write in a funny way, then you will want to do comedy. You could do email and social media that is funny, and that’s super popular.
Or, if you like story and have an interesting world, simple share what’s going on, and show us how the story unfolds.
Method 2 - Look at the type that maps to the psychology of the people you want to serve
In marketing, there’s a constant pressure to jump onto the latest trends or platforms, whether that’s twitter or facebook groups or TikTok.
One thing we want to think about is that the type of marketing that you choose is going to overlap or attract certain types of people.
Example:
One of the trends that I saw come out that I immediately didn’t like personally, was when people would do short videos, and ‘point’ to different text on the video as music played. It was this big trend that would take a lot of the posts viral. And this may not be accurate, it’s impossible to say - but my guess is that the people that I want to work with aren’t really into these kinds of videos either.
On the other hand, I believe that smart people read books. And I know, there’s technically no difference between audio books and books. But with a book you can’t really be doing anything else. You have to stop other activities in order to read it. Whereas with an audio book, you can walk around. The point of that is by writing a book, I’m speaking to ‘committed’ people that actually stop to read a book.
By telling stories, you are speaking to people who value story and meaning
…And don’t need the quick tip cheat sheet to try and get to the result.
On the other hand, if I write longer articles, they aren’t going to be suitable for a CEO that has their day stacked from 5am to 8pm and is driven in a corporate career.
Anyway, when you think about a type, consider who you want to speak to, and who you serve as a customer. Make sure that your marketing type is compatible.
Method 3 - Standing alone
The final angle with choosing your marketing ‘type’ is to stand alone. Now, this isn’t going to be totally possible, all the time. But basically what it is, is looking at a ‘unique’ type of content, relative to your industry.
Let’s say you’re a personal trainer.
Well in that niche, maybe everyone is doing tips on exercises. Well, instead of tips, you could focus on storytelling, or humour. This actually happened a few years back, with a guy his name is James Smith PT. He’s blown up now, but basically started out at zero and doing humour posts. It was totally new in the niche.
Personally I kind of think this way about story…
In the coaching or consulting world, there’s a lot of education, a lot of tips, and a lot of more virtuous advice.
So by prioritising story driven-content, I have a unique and personalised angle.
Conclusion
You’re not ‘fixed’ to just one type of content. But if you think about it like music, you’ll quickly see the edge in having a guiding constraint:
If you were to sit down to write a song, it would help to know what genre, or kind of song you are writing.
And what type of music you are wanting to excel in. This means you’re clear on how your listeners will feel when they tune in, and you can improve your craft.
Content marketing is much the same.
If you ain’t clear on what type of content your want to do, it’s easy to jump all over the place.
You won’t have a clear bearing on what you’re doing and it gets harder to improve your work.
If you are clear on your content type, whether that’s story driven, cutting edge tips, humour or otherwise, you’ll know exactly how to get to work each week. And then you will quickly start to improve your craft.
Want help to juice up your writing so people actually read it?
You never need to be stuck on what to say again. These 18 tips will help you with everything from copy for emails to Instagram posts.
Click the button below to download your guide.