Phoebe: Hello brand journalism community. I'm Phoebe Chongchua, thanks for tuning in to the Brand Journalism Advantage Podcast. Here we go with the inside scoop. On today's show, Daniel Daines-Hutt. Daniel is a self-confessed marketing nerd who has a background in direct response advertising but ironically it is his content marketing that people know him for. Daniel has had the top 10 content of all time on Inbound.org and the top content of 2017 on GrowthHackers. He has also had a viral post generate $3 million in client requests in just two weeks. Well, that's killing it I'd say. Hey, how are you?

Daniel: I am very well, thank you very much for having me.

Phoebe: So I love this because this show is all about marketing, it's all about storytelling, it's about getting your content seen, right? You could create a story and tell a story for a brand, but if you can't get that content out there in front of the right people it's not doing you much good, right Daniel?

Daniel: Oh, totally, and you'd be surprised how many people focus on the creation part and not actually getting it out there.
Phoebe: Yeah, you know, I can't remember the statistic that I heard, but it was something like ... I'm probably going to butcher this, but I think it was like 20% of the time should be spent on the content and the rest of the time should be spent on actually distributing it because that distribution is so vital. And it's not to say that the content creation isn't because you don't want to be distributing crap, but you want to make sure both sides of it are moving along and doing what needs to be done to get it to reach that end user.

Daniel: Totally. There are multiple different reasons for it from like an SEO standpoint and kind of your sanity as well, rather than writing all the time and things like that. All those results that you mentioned, we did that with nine blog posts in I think two years.

Phoebe: Wow!

Daniel: You don't need to be creating a lot of content all the time. You have people out there who are just like your customer, and you're better off just getting in front of more of those people rather than just creating content all the time for the customers you already have.
Phoebe: Mm-hmm (affirmative), and what we're talking about today brand journalism community is how we generate a 22 to one ROI promoting content to a cold ... Yes, you heard that right, cold audience. So this isn't even warm leads.

Daniel: Yeah, it's pretty crazy. We're getting I think it's opt-in rates for about $2.60 in the marketing space. We can actually afford to pay $23 because we know our numbers and things like that, so it's way under margin, and it's technically higher than 22 to one, but we didn't want to make it to spammy, you know, one of those click-bait headlines. It's driving-

Phoebe: Yeah, we want to dig into that because when you're talking about a cold audience, I think a lot of people feel like, wow, that can be near impossible to reach those types of folks and it is possible. Daniel's going to take us down that step by step and tell us ... I think you said there are four characteristics of that and you're going to tell us that when we get to our top tip section, but first I want to kick it off with our icebreaker because this is rather interesting. I want to hear about this, why you were at sea during a force nine storm. You survived that, incredible. What was that like? What were you doing?

Daniel: I was 17 at the time, and back in England we do something called the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, which is a scheme to get you points to get you points to get into university and things. We were sailing from Denmark to England. First five days you're just going down canals, and it's beautiful. And then we were out at sea, and we were having to be tied to the side of the boat mainly so that we don't get washed over and also to keep, basically, the weight of the boat to one side.

Phoebe: Wow! How crazy. What were you feeling? What was running through your mind at that time?

Daniel: If I had to be totally honest, it was pitch black, and all we could see were the waves, and they were kind of like 15 foot, and we were just tied to the boat and getting blasted with rain and things like that. Yeah, it was like 4:00 AM in the morning, and we hadn't really slept, so we weren't really thinking. We're just holding on to the side basically.
Phoebe: Wow, and when you finally hit land, the first thought through your mind?

Daniel: I needed to sleep. It had been about two days at that point.

Phoebe: Wow, that's incredible. That's something, I'll tell you. Well, stormy waters then. You're used to it with this whole inbound marketing thing because it can be stormy waters, not like that, but it certainly can be rocky at times trying to figure it out, the ups and downs, and you know, there's a quote that I love that I want to get your feedback on. It goes like this, "Don't interrupt what your buyers want to consume. Be what they want to consume," Mike Volpe, and that's from HubSpot. I just think that that's so critical when we are in the process of the content creation phase. What do you think?

Daniel: I've not heard that before, but it's spot on. I totally agree with it. Thinking of it from a direct response point, direct response is really where you're just trying to get an action to be taken from everything that you do, a measurable action. I see this, and I'll talk about this later with opt-ins on content, and people have like 15 different ways to opt-in that they don't give the person the chance to actually read and consume the content, and so people never take the action, and it's spot on.

Phoebe: Yeah, you're just interrupting, interrupting, interrupting.

Daniel: That's it. It's like you're trying to make a sales pitch, the customer is sold, and then you keep interrupting them to tell them why they're wrong about why they want to buy.

Phoebe: Yeah, just push it forward, sign here, let's get this done, I get it. That is so funny when people go on like that. It's like they can't believe they've made the sale, so they keep going.
Daniel: Yeah, and they're trying to talk the customer out of it. Maybe it's like a self-sabotage thing perhaps.
Phoebe: Yeah, yeah, well give us a success quote or a tip that's meaningful to you.

Daniel: Empathy. This is a big thing, and it's especially when you're trying to sell to anyone, or even a cold audience is, empathize. Do what's right, and then give them what they want. Try and understand that person because sales isn't hard, content isn't hard if you understand the person you're trying to help. Basically, if you can understand what's motivating them, what's driving them, and why they want the thing, then it's very easy to sell the thing because you're the middle man. You need to just help them see that it does what they want, so practice empathy.

Phoebe: Really good. I think that's so important. Even in my former career as a TV journalist, empathy was critical to being able to get the interviewee to engage with me and speak. In that case, it was many times a really tragic that had happened that I was trying to interview someone about, but in the marketing world and translating that into brand storytelling, having that empathy and being able to understand where your buyer is so that you can take them down the buyer's path, if you will, is so critical. And you really can't story tell without that.

Daniel: Right, it's one of the biggest things that I see that people struggle with is not truly understanding who they're trying to serve. And that's where you don't know who the person is, who the customer is. It's just not understanding what drives them, things like that.

Phoebe: Yeah, right, exactly. So I want you to share a little bit more. We've heard a lot of success that you've done in quite a short period of time as you indicated at the top of the show but take us back in time. You know, your background's in direct response. Tell us about the company that you are with today and tell me your career highlight. What's most meaningful to you?

Daniel: Yeah, totally. Well, believe it or not, I wasn't that driven as a youngster. It was only because I'm from England originally and I live in New Zealand. I was actually about to get kicked out of the country because I was too old to apply for another visa, and I found a loophole about an entrepreneurship visa you could actually stay. I set up a clothing company kind of overnight and was selling that, and although it was the smallest thing, selling that first T-shirt, and this is going back five, six years now, it meant that I could then choose that path. And nowadays I live by the beach with my partner and our cat, Ninja, and yeah, it's those things that are most important. I know I should be saying big traffic numbers and things like that, but they come and go. Those things are important to me.

Phoebe: Yeah, yeah, just having that time and the lifestyle that you have been able to create because of the success in your career.

Daniel: Exactly, it doesn't take much.

Phoebe: Fantastic. All right, well now you've got to take me to that time where things are just really rotten, down and out, and you're looking for a way out. Tell me about that 'when it didn't work' moment.

Daniel: Okay, so I'm a good marketer, but I am not always the best business person. We wrote a case study we set at the start that went viral. We got $3 million dollars in client requests in two weeks, which is great, but we were only a small company at the time, and I can still feel it in my voice now talking about it, the failure, but we grew very fast, and we were trying to grow, and we're trying to provide services to people and things like that, and it ended up a lot of long days. I'd put on about 90 pounds at the time, and it was just super stressful, and I had a full-on kind of burnout breakdown.

Daniel: I ended up going on holiday for two months. I turned my phone off, absolutely everything, but we came through it, exercised making the right choices. Sometimes it's not ... This is why I was saying as well by being by the beach and things, that's important to me, rather than just the cash. It was just ... I think you go from these evolutions as a business owner or as an entrepreneur and you start to ask better questions about what it is that you want. We can still make good money, but we don't have to be up 18 hours a day working.

Phoebe: What was the critical defining factor at that moment to change the situation?

Daniel: Just taking time out. Sometimes you're so close that you can't actually see where the problems are, and actually getting a mile high view, and the first thing I realized is I just wasn't getting enough sleep. And your brain can't cope and make good decisions at that point.

Daniel: And then from there it was saying no to opportunities because if you're a small agency, or a freelancer, or something like that when they start coming in you're trying to say yes to all of them because you don't know the next time you'll get paid things. I understand the fear and anxiety on both sides, but yeah, it was only saying yes to the right things for us. Being clear on where we wanted to go and asking those questions, where do I want to take this business in five years, 10 years kind of thing. And then, does this align with that? Because then you can say no, and it can be difficult, and you can eat ramen or whatever for a couple of weeks and you'll be fine because you know you're getting the right customers who are not so stressful or ... Not saying that people are, but that always happens. You can start making the right choices about different things.

Phoebe: Yeah, so often I hear on this show from the guests that they need to learn to take that time. That's so critical.

Daniel: Yeah, it's difficult, right? There are three stages of people where a lot of us ... You have these geniuses who can hear about a mistake and then never make it; they just go, okay, well if that's what a lot of people suffer from I'll never do it. But in reality, to most of us, we have to make that mistake. It's not until afterward that we can actually come through it.

Phoebe: Absolutely. Well, let's dive into our top tips because this is what the audience tunes in for. They want to know, how do we generate a 22 to one ROI promoting content to a cold audience, or how do we get at least close to that. I know you've got four steps for us. Take us through that.

Daniel: Totally, so I just wrote this huge guide, basically, on this. It's a 30,000-word guide, which is basically a book, you know, like a short marketing book on the topic. But our wrote guide, it's all three, but I want to give the cliff notes over it. So obviously [inaudible 00:13:29] said that you need to be promoting content just for your own sanity. Basically how we do the process is just four stages if you break it down to fundamentals. You have an advert that drives traffic to a blog post. You have the blog post, obviously. There needs to be some way to capture that traffic, so an opt-in of some sort, and then you need to be tracking and improving, so trying to lower the cost to get people across or improving the opt-in because both of those things are connected.

Daniel: A big thing that I will say right at the start and it's what stops a lot of people with paid outs is most ads start at a loss. So a lot of people will spend their initial money on ads, be losing money, and then stop and then totally lose everything. Whereas in reality, you need to start slow, start getting data, and then create a winning advert from that. Stop me if I ramble on because I get a bit nerdy about this stuff.

Phoebe: No, I love it. I want you to go a little deeper though and take us through the first step. So, you say an advertisement that drives traffic to a blog post to explain that.

Daniel: Totally. What we do is we use a sequence of product development testing. It's called bottom-up testing. Basically, you're testing a product or an advert, and you're finding what fails, and then you're making minor adjustments to see how it improves. And then you keep that improvement, and then you test again, and then you make another improvement, and so on, and so on, and so on. So most ads start ... If you're lucky, you'll spend $4 and make $1 back. Whereas what you need to do is continually test until you get to the point, okay, well you're spending a dollar and then you're getting $22 back, which is what's happening right now.

Daniel: The whole process and everything is not difficult but, as you said at the start, you do need to have good content because it's pointless driving cold audiences to traffic that doesn't convert anyone. That content needs to be good, and it needs to get that opt-in rate.

Phoebe: So Daniel, let's talk a little bit about that content because when you say good, are you talking about pages worth of content? Define good and define what kind of content you think is worthy of this strategy.

Daniel: Okay, I like to look at this from two angles. If you write good content, obviously you can write less often because it does the job better. Usually, it's about 1500 words to 3,000 words. If you do it like that, you'll get SEO benefits and things like this, but in reality, if you go in depth with that content, it's actually very easy to write that kind of length anyway. So if you're actually teaching, you're actually showing ... If you think about it, almost all content is taking the reader on a journey of transformation, from where they were now to where they are at the end. Mainly it's a change in idea; it's a change in thought, it's a way they can grow. That's why we're attracted to story basically because it's taking people on that journey.

Daniel: So we broke down, and we looked at a lot of content by a lot of smarter people than us. And when we looked at it, it was only nine elements that break up the best content online. It's usually content that builds authority, content that builds reciprocity, trust, things like this. If you break down those parts, it's just longer content, more images. It teaches and gives value. It's not holding things back, stuff like that. So it's actually really easy to do, it's just remembering to actually include those things in your content. Does that make sense?

Phoebe: Oh, absolutely, so important, and I think those longer pieces when they're not just long for no reason. Sometimes you see content that is just rambling on, and repetitive, and that can be rather annoying, but when you really have a piece that is drilling down and answering the questions, it does take about 1500 to 3,000 words to explain something in depth and help people understand it.

Daniel: Exactly. I'll give people a writing tip now. When I'm writing a post, I will plan out all my different ideas, and what people need to know, and things like that, and I'll actually record it into a microphone like we are now as if I'm talking to a friend. And what you'll find, is when you play that back, and you transcribe it yourself, you've got about a thousand words anyway. And then when you actually go into it, and you give more depth and context, boom, you've got 2,000, 3,000 words. It's very easy to do because rather than just mention a point, as I have here, I might include a list of those nine elements, and I write down why you need to include them and how you include them in a post.

Daniel: So suddenly now that article would have value, it would have context. People would see you as an authority and things like that. And the beauty is, you can actually go into old content and edit it to do this. You don't have to write something new.

Phoebe: Exactly. So now let's talk a little bit more about circling back to the advertisement, and you're doing it on Facebook and those other platforms out there that people are on, LinkedIn for instance. I'm seeing a lot of success there. But share with us, are there any inside tips? Facebook has changed a lot. It's had many issues. It's even had people abandoning Facebook, but you still are finding this a great platform?

Daniel: Totally. The main issue is a lot of people will focus on hacks or the sneaky trick that's getting an ROI now. What we're doing is kind of fundamentals of copywriting than marketing. All we're really trying to do is put an advert in front of the right audience, and the advert is tested to convert. The beauty of Facebook is obviously they've got like four, five billion users, but it's also an entertainment platform rather than LinkedIn, or Google Ads, and things like that. With the Google Ad people are searching with intent, so if someone's searching for a certain term and your article comes up that's great, but they're normally warm people. People on Facebook are quite cold, and they're looking for entertainment. So, if you can write an advert to a piece of content that's going to entertain them, and so Facebook really like that, and they will show it to more people, lowering the cost as you go, and improving the relevance. So it's a perfect platform for actually sharing blog posts and things.

Phoebe: Can you give us an idea of what makes a good ad?

Daniel: Totally. So especially when I'm writing for a cold audience, their awareness is totally different, their motivations, their desires, their interests, and things are totally different to a warm audience because they don't even understand solutions and things at that point. They're more focused on problems, or they might even realize that they have a problem and things like that. So it generally has to be a longer advert because you need to be able to communicate with people who don't understand the topic fully at that point, which is great because it's a blue ocean. No one is competing to get in front of these people as well.

Daniel: An advert, in reality, has four elements. You have the image that gets their attention. It's the first thing that stops people as they're scrolling through. Then you have the headline that they're saying, okay, is this relevant? [inaudible 00:21:25]. Then they have the subhead, which supports that, and only when they actually start to read the text at the top of the advert. You would think the way it's laid out that that's the first thing they read and then they click, but it's actually different. It's the image that gets the attention, then the headline and the subhead. So once you understand that you can actually write your advert better for those particular elements. So having a call to action in your headline just because it's under the image doesn't make sense because all you're doing is you're giving them a call to action immediately, and they don't really care. You haven't captured their attention on why they should care or if it's relevant for them. You know, they're kind of ... It's almost like the old newspaper days where they're scanning through headlines to see what's relevant before they then read the article.

Phoebe: Yeah, so we're back to what we talked about at the top of the show, empathy. If you understand and you empathize you wouldn't put a call to action immediately because that's just not going to be relevant to them.

Daniel: Oh, totally. They're not paying attention at all because at that time they're trying to save brain power and just scanning through to see what's relevant for them. And if you can then attract them at that point then they'll start to read the advert, and then they'll click on it, and in the long format, it can be 200 words, it could be 1000 words. It's whatever it takes to actually communicate with that audience, and you'll find there are specific patterns and things, lead with the interest, and then move to this, and then move to that.

Phoebe: Can you give us your example? Can you tell us a little bit about your ad and what worked so well? Just break that one down for us?

Daniel: Totally, at the moment we're promoting a blog post, kind of our manifesto post of you don't need to be writing all the time. You should be bloating. And so the image is it's a picture of behind the scenes of our word press, and you can see that we've only written nine posts in two years. And then the advert itself, it calls to ... The headline is like eight posts two years and thousands of visitors, why you need to stop making content if you want to get traffic. So that stands out, especially for people who have got a business and they're not getting traffic to their website and things like that.

Phoebe: Excellent, love it. Well, it's catchy for sure.

Daniel: Yeah, actually one of your former guests helped me with that headline. I was testing Aaron Orendorff.

Phoebe: Oh yeah, yes.

Daniel: Yeah, a good friend of mine. I was testing out, we kind of throw ideas back and forth and we were like, yeah, that'll be the winner. And then below that, the subhead is ... Let me read this, going to read my own writing, "His email reply wasn't subtle. He called me out when I said you could write less and get more traffic but then I showed him the results." And that's a true story where I was showing our results with an influencer and he basically just shot us down and things like that. So straight away there's an emotional component and things, and it's attracting people with a desire.

Daniel: And then as we get back above the image it says, "New blog post" straight away, so they realize it's a blog post. "Is writing more content really the answer or is it actually hurting your traffic chances? I used to think it was the solution to all my worries..." and then they have to click to read more of the ad. And then it kind of goes through our story of how we got started and the results and the mistakes that we made to get there. I'm not giving away everything in the post. I'm getting them ready in an understanding the right things to be ready to read the post if that makes sense.

Phoebe: Yeah, no, that's great. That's fantastic that Aaron helped you. He was, by the way, Brand Journalism community, episode 302, "Creating Click Worthy Content That Isn't Click Bait." So that plays hand-in-hand, so I will drop that in the show notes at thinklikeajournalist.com so you can listen to that episode as well. Well, I really love this, and I think you've added a lot of value, you showed a lot of great tips both on, not just how you went about your adverts but how you create the content and the fact that you've only created I guess it was nine blogs in two years? Is that what you said?

Daniel: Yeah, we're going to get up to a 10 in three years now.

Phoebe: Well that's fabulous, that's fabulous because it just goes to show that sometimes you've got these people on autopilot where they are just cranking out stuff really from these mills if you will, these writing mills, and that is just not the way to go. So, thank you so much for what you've shared, Daniel. We've got to move on in the interest of time. So, it is time to think like a journalist. Here's the scenario. You've been hired to help an ailing company. It's about to financially collapse. Now, its reputation's shot. You've got a month, a $1000 budget, a smartphone, and a laptop. How do you begin to turn this company around?
Daniel: Okay, so my self and my partner, we have a saying. It's called 'fix the spacesuit.' I don't know if you've ever seen The Martian with Matt Damon?

Phoebe: Yes.

Daniel: And so immediately they've just been through this storm on Mars, he's got this spear thru his leg, everyone's left. The first thing he needs to do is fix his suit before he can go and grow potatoes and things like that because otherwise, he'll suffocate before he gets there.

Daniel: So it's about putting into cascading levels of importance. So the first thing is why is it failing? And rather than just give a broad answer let's say it was low sales. They're not making enough sales to cover their cost. Well, usually that's because if you've got a product and not selling it's not fully connecting with the audience. So I would reconnect with the audience first. I would straight away interview current customers, people who are not customers yet, and people who are cold. Because if I can understand my audience at those three stages I'll be able to write a better message to them and then I will improve my offer, and then I will make more sales.

Phoebe: Well, that is an excellent strategy, sounds like it would work to me.

Daniel: Exactly, well that's how we write our ads as well basically.

Phoebe: What is one piece of technology, video, multimedia equipment, or app that you just can't live without?

Daniel: Okay, so I went a bit out of the box here, it's a software called Databox, and it's basically a tracking software where you can track multiple different things. We have, for example, in it right now we're doing a lot of link building to an article. So I can track at the same time my organic traffic, email outreach that are sent, and links that have come in because you've got to measure your results to manage what work you do. So Databox I think it's totally free up to about five different tracking things, but basically, I'll log in every day, I'll check those, and I'll log in at the end of the day, and it gives us a feedback loop.

Phoebe: Excellent. One book, documentary, blog, podcast, or Internet channel you'd like to recommend?

Daniel: Okay, so I'm going to go with a book, and it's by Ryan Holiday, and it's called The Obstacle Is the Way. It's a book on stoicism, which I think is fantastic for entrepreneurs, business owners, anyone really, just teaching you kind of how to take control of your emotions and things.

Phoebe: Expert predictions, the year is 2025. Give us a look. We're closing in on it now since I started the show a couple of years back, but we're getting closer and closer. What will it look like from your vantage point? How important is all of this, and I know it's really tough to answer where Facebook will be, or how adverts will play into that but give us a look from your vantage point.

Daniel: I think the methodology will be the same. It's just the platform will be different. I'm a bit of a sci-fi nerd. I'm hoping it'll be some kind of holograms and things or Bladerunner kind of cityscapes but in reality if you can understand your audience, and you can connect the dots between why they want the thing and how the thing provides that then it's going to be simple for you to be able to create messages on any platform.

Phoebe: Where do you like to wine, dine, and play?

Daniel: At the beach, picnic at the beach.

Phoebe: Love it, love it, and a favorite beach where you are?

Daniel: I don't want to make people jealous. It's only two minutes down the garden, so yeah, it's a very long beach where we live and a pretty good surf as well.

Phoebe: Okay, what's the name of it?

Daniel: We're in a place called Mount Maunganui, which translates to "caught by the dawn."

Phoebe: Oh, lovely, lovely. All right, well thank you so much. I love what you've offered up to our community. It's been great. If they do want to get a copy, I think you'll have a link for us, right, that you can pass on. It'll go to thinklikeajournalist.com, and I will put a copy here to see some of those blog posts and get more information from you. Does that sound good?

Daniel: Yep, totally, and you can download it as a guide as well. Just don't print it off because it's 299 pages on a pdf.

Phoebe: Nope, nope, sounds like you got to be using one of your Kindle systems or your iPhone.

Daniel: Yeah.

Phoebe: Daniel, thank you so much. I love what you've shared on The Brand Journalism Advantage.

Daniel: Thank you so much for having me.