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Thoughts on Robert Bly’s book, The Content Marketing Handbook

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One function of content marketing.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today I’m going to be taking a little excerpt from Bob Bly’s book, The Content Marketing Handbook. This came out in 2020.

Bob Bly or Robert W. Bly has been around for a while. He’s a famous copywriter and marketing consultant.

I mean, if you haven’t, if you aren’t aware of this guy, he’s put out a million books.

He understands content marketing because he’s been doing it long before it has been commonly called Content Marketing. And he shows it in this book, this book is like, it’s like a textbook, or an encyclopedia for content marketing, if you will.

I can spend time giving you a review about the book another time, I wanted to cover this one piece that I just love in here called the nine functions of Content Marketing. And today, I’m going to cover his first one.

I’m going to go through and I’ll cover all of these, but I’m going to separate them out through different episodes. So the first one I want to go through.

And he says that these are basically the reasons for doing content marketing, these are the functions these are things that content marketing can provide for you.

One way is to set the specs is what he calls set the specs.

So it’s a way of defining what customers or clients or potential customers and clients should be looking for.

Here’s how he puts it I’m going to read you this piece here.

It says, content marketing can educate prospects on what features functions, and capabilities they should look for in buying a particular type of product or service.

Now, because you’ve presented your criteria, and a white paper or another medium that looks like useful information, not a sales pitch, readers absorb and accept your guidelines, and then they use the specifications you’ve set.

So you can come out with this, why you see oftentimes reports and other things offered by people who actually offer the things that you’re helping them to buy, which is it’s an interesting way of doing it.

You would say, Well, what does that actually work?

Yeah, it works. This is because who else is helping them to look beyond just hey, pick me, pick me.

I mean, who else is not saying that?

This is giving reasons this is giving criteria, you’re setting the specs for them to be able to purchase by and you’re setting them in a way that puts you in the best light, obviously.

So the the paragraph here he says, You say you sell motionless mixers.

One of the products I helped a market at Coke engineering, you’re offered in your ads that you offer in your ads, a booklet called seven things to look for once specified.

When specifying motionless mixers prospects, read it and use your criteria when they look to purchase motionless mixers, and whose mixer fits all seven criteria perfectly.

Okay, you can define it, you can define what they should be looking for. And if they actually take those, and it has to make sense.

You can’t just say well, they want to have blonde hair. And now that you know, it has to make sense.

But if you make sense, and they say yeah, that makes sense, I should look for these things.

They can take that if they’re really a keen shopper and they’re really looking at other options.

You can set yourself out as the best option without having to say I’m this, I’m that I’m this I’m that. It’s a very interesting twist.

It’s one step away from you saying it yourself by putting it in a report in a book in a whatever that you’re that it is that you’re passing out to them.

It’s on the topic that they’re interested in, especially if you’re in this really works well in a highly competitive area.

So if you’re in an area where they think that everyone’s basically the same, and they’re looking to dig in.

I heard Dan Kennedy talking about this on an older audio. He was discussing a gentleman who was in real estate and that he actually this person had done really well at putting…I can’t remember their name off top my head but they did really well in their area as making themselves a celebrity as really putting themselves out there and giving a good name for themselves.

So that pretty much everyone knows who they are and they know what they do.

I talked about this in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

One of the one of the ways to be able to do that is to be somebody. I go through kind of the steps and give examples of other people that have done this.

That really doesn’t matter what industry you are if you could find a way to be somebody to that customer base.

You can stand out company lately, but it’s not the only it’s not the only way, it’s not the only thing you should be looking for.

But go check out my book, 9 ways to Amazon-Proof your business, you can buy a copy, or you can download a free copy over at AmazonProofBook.com.

Let’s get back to this, I was telling you that story about the about the the real estate agent.

He hit a troubled market where all of a sudden, it seemed as though people were not just willing to take him just because he was a celebrity.

All of a sudden, he was getting a lot of people coming in and saying, hey, great, we’d like to, we’d like to some more information, because we’re gonna, we’re shopping around, we’re looking for a real estate person.

He didn’t know how to differentiate himself. Other than being celebrity, he didn’t know what else to put out there.

But what they did is they put together a report similar to this, if I remember correctly, they put together a report similar to this, where these are the things you ought to be looking for, in a, in a real than picking a real estate agent.

He was the one that fit all the criteria. And at the same time, it saves them time, so that he didn’t have to sit there and try and put on a pitch, which really degrade you as as the person.

If you’re really trying to sell yourself hard, then it puts you in a situation to where it’s really difficult to stand above and beyond.

Because you’re just another person trying to get their business, it just the posture and everything is all off on a situation like that.

We’ve talked about that and other times but if you understand that, if you’re in any type of the service industry, especially, you will understand that the idea behind that.

So what they did is instead of instead of playing the game, they went around the game, they say, Hey, we understand that you’re looking for other people, here’s here’s here’s a report that you can use.

That set him up in the right frame in the right light that allowed him to be able to step away from that game, while at the same time controlling the game, which is a really neat idea, setting the specs. That’s a number one of the nine functions of content marketing, by Robert Bly.

It’s a great book, definitely worth worth getting.

If you’re really willing to research it. It’s dense. I mean, there’s a whole lot of information, a lot of great lists. It he’s really good for that.

If you’re really interested in getting deep into it, now I’m going to be putting on a training. I’ll and I’ll tell you where I get all my material.

I’ll be discussing this and I’ll be discussing a whole lot of other things, especially for beginners, for people who are just looking and seeing whether content marketing is going to be right for them.

I’ll be announcing that in the next coming weeks. So be sure and stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I’ll be back tomorrow with number two of the nine functions. You have a great night we’ll be back then.

Get out there and let the magic happen.