236 The Power of Content Marketing - Spencer Powell Sep 25 2024

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us Spencer Powell. Spencer is the CEO of Builder Funnel. Welcome, Spencer. Thanks for joining us today.

Spencer Powell: Thanks for having me guys.

Greg Bray: Well, Spencer, we know that you've been out there in the world of podcasting and content for a long time, but there might be a couple of people who don't know you yet. So, let's start off with that introduction, help people know a little bit about yourself.

Spencer Powell: Yeah, thank you. So, as you guys [00:01:00] said, Spencer Powell. I'm the CEO at Builder Funnel. I started this whole journey in 2010. Social media was coming onto the scene for businesses. And I thought that was interesting, so I started helping some friends and family clients. Then you kind of fast forward a little bit. It turned into an agency and fast-forward a little bit more and this year, we're about 32 people. We only serve design build remodelers and custom builders, and we're a strategic marketing firm. And we actually just found out a few weeks ago, we hit the Inc. 5000 list this year. So, we've been growing pretty fast and we try to help our clients grow as well.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, I was going to ask you about an interesting factoid, but making the Inc. list is pretty awesome. However, that's still business related. So, let's go with something about you that our listeners don't know. Oh, and a little fact before I get into that, Greg and I have been doing this for a little over four years now, and we've never had a repeat guest. You are officially our first repeat guest. Greg, what was he episode one, two, [00:02:00] something like that?

Greg Bray: He was episode three.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, one and two were us, right?

Greg Bray: Yeah. One or two was us. So, Spencer was our very first guest and we went back and looked and figured out that we probably didn't have everybody listening to it, so it might be time to bring him back.

Kevin Weitzel: It's not even like we're doing a wash, rinse, repeat of that same episode. We're actually talking about a new subject matter. But anyway, so now that we've tackled that, Spencer, before we get into you and Builder Funnel, let's find out about you personally, a factoid about you that has nothing to do with work or the industry or anything. And you can't use the same factoid you used before.

Spencer Powell: I was wondering what the original factoid was. So, why don't I give you two just in case?

Kevin Weitzel: Giddy up.

Spencer Powell: All right. This may have actually been the one. We'll go back and listen. I've eaten at every Chipotle in Colorado.

Greg Bray: That's the one.

Kevin Weitzel: That is the one.

Spencer Powell: There it is.

Kevin Weitzel: All right. So, Chipotle, what's the next one?

Spencer Powell: One of my hobbies and things that I really, really love to do, and maybe in another lifetime, it would have been awesome to do as like a profession, but I love playing doubles volleyball. So, beach volleyball or grass [00:03:00] volleyball, but twos.

Kevin Weitzel: Okay, now do you wear those tiny little bikini speedos that they wear in the Olympics?

Spencer Powell: It's required, so yeah, I definitely do.

Kevin Weitzel: Wow, that's pretty awesome.

Spencer Powell: The ideal is jean shorts and aviators.

Kevin Weitzel: Nice. You going Top Gun theme there. Oh, I love it.

Greg Bray: Oh man. Spencer, tell us a little bit more about Builder Funnel for the folks that aren't as familiar with what you guys offer.

Spencer Powell: Sure. Yeah. Thank you. So, I would say all things digital. We start with strategy first. We've been doing this 14 years now and when we first started, it was kind of like, Hey, we can do some stuff for you, right? Like we'll manage your social or work on some SEO. And a lot of the times that stuff is good, that stuff will move the ball forward.

But if you just take a quick second to pause and think strategically about what's this client trying to accomplish in terms of their goals, their objectives for the year, [00:04:00] and then work your way back to a game plan, you end up with maybe similar tactics, maybe some different tactics in that plan, but everything is like laser focused towards those goals. And so, we actually start every engagement with strategy first, and then we move to tactics.

We take people through a marketing blueprint process and then we'll get to SEO, content marketing, social media, email, lead conversion, reporting, like all the tactics. That's where we've really carved out our kind of niche within a niche being in design build remodeling, custom building, you know, the residential construction industry.

But let's start with strategy and then move to tactics. We can also build a website, but we've taken a different approach to that too, where we lean more towards let's build a performance-based site versus like a custom site every single time.

Kevin Weitzel: All right now, this is a serious question. I can't even say it with a straight face.

So, let me ask you this in all the strategy and tactics, [00:05:00] is there ever a wacky inflatable flailing tube arm man that is deployed at any of your custom builders?

Spencer Powell: Usually if you have a model, that is a big part of the tactics because how else are you going to get the drive by attention?

Kevin Weitzel: Boom.

Spencer Powell: Yeah.

I actually like having an army of them together because you can't miss that.

Greg Bray: Spencer, let's pull that word strategy apart a little bit. If you're like me, most people that call you are not saying, Hey, I'm calling you 'cause I need a strategy. They're calling because they need more leads or sales. Or they're calling because, Oh, I want SEO or they have a specific thing that they think they need, or I need help on my social media, or I need whatever. How do you communicate with them that we need to take that big step backward and look from a little bigger picture, higher level first? And what do those conversations look like?

Spencer Powell: Yeah. Well, Greg, why do you think you need SEO?

Greg Bray: Oh, now he's going [00:06:00] to role-play.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, he just, he just flipped the script on us, Greg.

Greg Bray: But that is the first question, right? Because I want to show up on the search engine.

Spencer Powell: Why is that important?

Greg Bray: Uh, because my competitor does, and somebody told me at lunch that I should be, you know, or something important like that.

Spencer Powell: So, you just want to be higher than your competitor.

Greg Bray: Of course.

Spencer Powell: Being higher than them on Google? Like, what does that matter?

Greg Bray: Well, I would expect that that's where my customers are searching for the services and products that I provide, and therefore I want them to be able to find me so that they can buy my stuff.

Spencer Powell: Oh, so you need more customers, and thanks for playing along. I appreciate it. But I mean, that's really what it is, right? Because somebody will come to us and say, Oh, we want to do more social media. They probably went to a conference, they saw a session, they listened to a podcast like this and they're like, ah, that's the answer. Right? Maybe it's the answer. Maybe it's part of the answer or maybe you don't need it at all.

Going back to your question of strategy, it's really, [00:07:00] okay, what are the goals? Strategy is just saying, okay, I have this goal and this outcome, and then I'm going to allocate resources and options. The strategic part of it is saying, okay, I have a million different marketing options, and I have a finite budget, how am I going to match the tactics and the budget in the best way possible to get to that goal? It's really just kind of resource management.

And then obviously if you have somebody that has proof that a certain tactic has worked for a similar type of business, then you can make a higher probability bet that, Oh, maybe SEO plus, you know, content marketing and a good lead conversion strategy is a good way to get to that goal.

Greg Bray: Yeah, I love that definition of asking the why questions. Because strategy really, in my mind, is about the why. Why are you doing this? Then when you understand the why, it's like you were just saying, is that really the best thing to accomplish your why? Or is there something [00:08:00] else that might be a better use of those finite resources, right? Have you had any clients show up with infinite resources yet? Because I would like one of those, please.

Spencer Powell: Yeah, I have yet to run into them.

Greg Bray: Kevin gets those clients all the time. They have unlimited budgets and are just ready to spend.

Kevin Weitzel: No, but I do need to figure out how to tap into these multibillionaires, you know, like the Taylor Swift's of the world, that just have piles of money that they just give to their staff, and here's a hundred thousand dollars. I need this in my life. I really do.

Greg Bray: So, Spencer, have you ever asked those questions and you just get kind of that deer in the headlights response of, I don't know why. I'm just supposed to, somebody told me I'm supposed to do this.

Spencer Powell: Yeah, you do get that. But I feel like if you just keep pulling on that thread, you usually can get to something. And sometimes it's a business objective. Hey, you know, our revenue was down last year. I'm actually just trying to make it back to where we were. Or, oh, I really want to be at, you know, double in three years. But even that you can [00:09:00] pull back a little more. And there's usually personal reasons tied to the business objectives too. It could be the family is expanding and growing or you have goals to retire early, or you want to buy a boat, whatever it is.

So, yeah, I think when you do hit that point if someone just keeps giving you the, I don't know, I just need it, I don't know, over my career, as I've learned more about sales, I've learned to just keep going and asking the questions. Otherwise, if you don't actually get to the real answer, you've recognized this person doesn't actually have a problem they need to solve. They're just kind of fishing around for some information. I don't know, maybe they're trying to learn, but they usually don't actually want to do anything about it. If you have real pain or you have a real aspiration, then you do want to try to figure out how to solve that problem and so there usually is a real thing behind that.

Kevin Weitzel: Everybody has pain points. No matter how successful your company is, there's always going to be something under a rock that you need to fix. But how often do you run into companies that are reaching out truly that have pain [00:10:00] points, but don't recognize, where you uncover their pain points because they're just coming to you because they have IBSitis? Hey, I was at a building knowledge session at IBS and they said something about SEO, and, I need to talk to somebody about this. How often do you find that it is truly just aimless and then you have to help them uncover what that aim and focus needs to be?

Spencer Powell: It's not the majority. Usually, if you've gotten on the phone, hopped on Zoom with somebody, they're willing to spend the time. You'll get to some sort of goal, pain, objective. Because even behind that, right? Like they go to a session and they're excited about something. They're excited about something because that's something we'll hopefully get them to their goal. Even if there isn't a pain, they're like, business is good, but I want to be here. Then maybe you're pulling on a want, and that will be probably a little less powerful than a pain, but still, something that they're trying to achieve.

Greg Bray: So, as you work through those strategies with your clients, and then you start to lay out, okay, to achieve these goals [00:11:00] here's the various tactics. We use the word tactics, right? These are the action items, the campaigns, the various directions we're going to go to achieve those goals. What are some of the things that a builder should do themselves versus the kinds of things that they really need that expert partner agency to help them with?

Spencer Powell: It's a good question. The way I think about that is what skills do you have internally already? And if you feel like, Oh, our team is really good at social content. We're here, we have the context of the rest of the business, we kind of know what else is going on. We know the personality, the culture, so we're able to like pull that into social content really well.

But maybe you don't have somebody on staff that knows how to do keyword research or make technical fixes to the website. So, maybe you would outsource that. But I think that's one of the best ways to start is just figuring out where do we have some core strengths and then where are we [00:12:00] weak and what areas do we need to partner in. But I think a lot of it's honestly preference, right? Because if you really wanted to, you could just say, well, I might hire an SEO expert and a web expert. And then I might hire a social media expert, and then I might hire a paid ads specialist.

Now, budget is a consideration. You go, well, maybe I can't afford all of those people full-time. So then, Oh, maybe now I look for an agency or a freelancer that maybe has a small team, and I kind of get access to maybe a dozen skill sets, but for the price of one person, because they're fractionalized, right, and I'm going to get to tap into their SEO knowledge and their paid ads knowledge and their social media knowledge. So, I think it's generally preference and resource decision-based.

Greg Bray: Well, and you've been doing this for a few years. You've probably seen the same thing that I have that 10, even 15 years ago, one person could do more than one of these skills and be decent at it. But in today's environment, the need to specialize is [00:13:00] just continuing to grow and grow and grow. And it's really hard for somebody to be really good at a lot of those things. Would you agree with that?

Spencer Powell: A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, if you can find that person, they're a unicorn. Doesn't mean they don't exist, but they probably will command premium salary. And yeah, I mean, even if you just break apart something like Google Ads, the amount of changes that you have to keep up with, the way you're structuring those ads, the way you're tying that in with even other concepts like landing page best practices and copywriting with the way you're structuring your headlines and conversion rates. That's just one little part of digital marketing, but you truly can go super deep on that and become, you know, a true expert. And so, it's the same for all the other mediums, right, and the different tactics.

Greg Bray: Yeah. I always cringe a little bit when I talk to a builder who has one person who's doing everything for them in-house.

Kevin Weitzel: But Greg, Susie is good at Facebook and she just graduated high school and they can [00:14:00] afford to have her do all that stuff and she'll learn it. She'll figure it out. Right?

Greg Bray: She will eventually. Yes. Yes. At what cost? Right? At what cost? So, Spencer, you're working on this strategy, you've got some ideas. If the builder's budget is such that there's only one thing that they can do? Now granted, I'm gonna say that it's not always the same answer. That's fair, right? It's not always the same answer. But in general, is there one thing that's kind of at the top of the list as the starting point in the plans that you guys put together?

Spencer Powell: It's a good question. Maybe I'll cheat and you can push back. It depends, like you said because it depends on the outcome. It also depends on where you're starting from versus where you're trying to go, and you're looking at the competitive landscape to like, what is my competition doing versus not? Generally, I would say paid ads is a part of the strategy. And also, I'm going to say, like, content marketing, which includes SEO. Like, they go together in my mind in terms of like blogging, core service pages, [00:15:00] like location-based terms that you're trying to show up for home builder in X, Y, Z city.

The reason I wanted to just say one of those or both is because the content\SEO side is typically longer term. It's going to cost you more upfront, but then over time, typically your cost per acquisition will be lower because you're not paying for every single click. You've eventually earned all that traffic. Versus the paid side, you're continually paying. And then if you want more, you just need to pay more, but it's generally faster to get to the results. So, if I were to pick two anchor pieces, those would be the two because it's really balancing, we need to make progress now, but I also want to build for the long term and that's where content marketing and SEO are really powerful.

Kevin Weitzel: So, you're saying there's a lot of encyclopedia chapters, but those are the bookends.

Spencer Powell: Yeah. That's a good way to put it, man. You should be getting paid the big bucks.

Kevin Weitzel: I should. Tell that to my senior partners. I do need to make the big bucks. [00:16:00]

Greg Bray: Well, I was told you make double what I do on this thing, Kevin.

Kevin Weitzel: Double zero is not possible.

Greg Bray: Well, Spencer, I appreciate your answer to that, because it was a trick question, right? Because I think everybody perked up. Oh, there's only one thing I need to do first, right? And there isn't. There isn't only one thing because it does depend. I completely agree with where you were headed there. There's things that bear fruit today. There's other seeds you have to plant and let grow longer and content takes a lot of work and takes time for it to grow.

Spencer Powell: Yeah, it really does. And to tie in even the strategy piece that we started out with. Maybe it's a builder that is getting tons of traffic to their website. The one thing that I might start with is actually like, let's work on your website's conversion rate. Maybe they're getting a bunch of traffic and it's decent traffic, but they're not converting many leads. And so, that's where the context of the current scenario versus the goal is really important because then you can say, oh, I only have enough budget for one thing. Well, that one thing might [00:17:00] be for 6 months let's work on doubling your conversion rate. We might double your lead flow and maybe we don't need to do any more paid ads or more content marketing right now. But obviously, then they'll have a new goal in six months.

Greg Bray: Well, and that's a great point. It changes over time. This stuff evolves. It's not a one-and-done kind of opportunity for sure.

Hey, everybody. This is Greg from Blue Tangerine. And I just wanted to personally invite you to join Kevin and me at the upcoming Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit. It's going to be October 23rd and 24th in Raleigh, North Carolina. You do not want to miss this. We're going to have marketing education. We're going to have online sales counselor education. We're going to have networking, round table discussions, and of course, a whole lot of fun. So, make sure you get registered today and join us. You can get all the details at buildermarketingsummit.com. Can't wait to see you there.

So, let's talk a little bit more about the content piece then because I think [00:18:00] a lot of people like that idea. They know that they should be creating content, but they're probably not sure what kind of content to create, how to get it out the door in a timely manner or in a recurring process. There's a lot that goes into that. What are some of the suggestions you have for creating a powerful content program?

Spencer Powell: Don't do it. I'm just kidding. As you were talking, I was thinking, gosh, I've been doing content for almost 14 years. We try to be a good example to our clients. Like, Hey, the services we're proposing you do, we do all those things for ourselves and we do a lot of them. I do a lot of content. It's a lot of work, not going to lie. But I think some of the easiest ways to get started, let's first maybe break apart content because there's written content, there's audio content, there's video content.

Written content I think is still a no-brainer. That's a very easy place to start and that ties you in with your SEO strategy. So, think blogs, website [00:19:00] pages, written form and you can tie in a keyword to your approach there. So, that is a great place to start and keep going.

Then when we like layer on video content. You're thinking, okay, I've got video on my website. I've got my YouTube channel. I've got social. So, now you've got medium-form content, maybe long-form content, you've got really short-form content, and it starts to really balloon in terms of, how am I thinking through creating all of this? What's the strategy behind it? Can I keep it up? The consistency piece is really critical.

If you're starting from zero, let's start with a blog and if you don't like writing, partner with somebody, find an agency, a freelancer, have somebody on your team, do the writing. And then when you go to video, I think it's powerful if you can build behind with some personal brand.

So, maybe that's the CEO, maybe it's a VP of marketing or sales, or maybe [00:20:00] it's just somebody that's great on camera. But if you have somebody that's willing to get in front of the camera, you'll have the consistency piece. And then it's just a matter of identifying topics. And maybe that was part of what your question was. And I think one of the best ways is just to break apart everything you do and then answer questions about it.

So, what does the process look like for getting qualified to buy a home? What's the process for picking a plan selection? What's the process of the construction of the home and what's the order and what's my involvement as the homeowner, what should I expect at these different phases? And you can start breaking down everything from that perspective of questions. And I think an easy place to get that is to talk to the sales team because they get lots of questions that they have to answer all the time, and then you turn that into content. And then not only can the salesperson use that content and share it, but people will start finding that.

And then you get the benefit of educating them and adding value to [00:21:00] them through their marketing, which is one of the reasons I love content marketing is because it's a style of marketing that you can pretty much do unlimited of and feel good about it. If you're truly trying to educate and bring some value to the audience, knowing that like, Hey, if a hundred people see this and only one buys, hopefully, the other 99 still learn something new and got something out of it.

Greg Bray: And as you said, it's a lot of work. You used the magic word consistency in there. And I think that's one of the secrets in my opinion is figuring out how to stay consistent. I can't tell you how many times I see a blog that has like 3 or 4 articles, especially when you date them. If you're not going to do it very consistent, then don't put dates on them. Right? But they have a few articles out there and then it's been 6 months since the last one, right? Or whatever. And you're just like, Hmm. Wonder what happened here. How do we stay consistent with it? What are some secrets?

Spencer Powell: Yeah. The magical secrets to consistency. I mean, I think this is the crux of a lot of things, right? Whether it's lifting weights or [00:22:00] sticking to a food plan or, you know, anything that you want to do. If you are committed to content marketing then you will stay consistent. At the end of the day, it's probably not secrets. It's nuts and bolts of, Hey, this is the cadence that we're committing to and putting it on the calendar.

Like for me, I film once a month. I pre-plan the content and I shoot the videos in three, four hours, or whatever it is. It's on the calendar, so it happens. Right. We're probably talking habits and, you know, psychology and stuff like that. Or you can pay somebody. Some stuff that I'm not good at staying consistent with, just hire it out, because then you know I'm paying for this to happen.

Kevin Weitzel: Wait a minute. You said you can relate it to like weightlifting and you kind of, you know, puffed your chest a little bit and then you said, or sticking to an eating plan and you look directly at me, Spencer.

Spencer Powell: Did I?

Kevin Weitzel: Holy, no, you didn't. Just joking. Just joking.

Spencer Powell: This was audio only.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm just trying to break up the monotony of us [00:23:00] geeking out here.

Greg Bray: Well, I think the lack of consistency is what kills a lot of good marketing programs and takes a lot of strategies. And then, you know, later somebody comes back and say, well, you told me this six, eight months ago and nothing's working. I'm not getting anything, you know? And it's like, well, yeah, the consistency hasn't been there. I think it's one of the secrets and you're right, there's no simple answer to it other than to just make it important enough to get it done.

Spencer Powell: Yeah. It is really hard because at the beginning you don't see any results, and so there is kind of this leap of faith with some of it. One of my favorite examples of that is a personal example. I'm in Colorado Springs. I grew up here from fourth grade on. Probably everyone in whatever city you're in has like a similar thing to this. But it was a jeweler, they're on the radio and you just hear the same ad for the same jeweler over and over and over again, because they were just consistent, right?

I was what, eight [00:24:00] years old, then 10, then 12, and on and on and on and on. Years later, I ended up getting my engagement ring there. And I think about that a lot because if they just would have run like four ads, nope. But they did that for decades. And so, you stack that up and you just go, Oh, Spencer's just one customer. He bought one ring there. Well, now I've purchased a couple of other things from that same location, so their lifetime value has grown for me.

But how many other people like me were also listening to the radio and heard that ad 30, 50, a hundred, 200 times over multiple years? For me that was a great, like consistency plus branding example, because when it came time to make that type of purchase in my life, it was like, oh, well, I already know somebody there. I already have a solution. But that's hard, right? Like, that's over a decade.

Kevin Weitzel: Nationally, you've got Arby's that they have the meat. You know, everybody [00:25:00] knows it. And subliminally, if I'm thinking of a meat sandwich, I'm thinking of Arby's. But what about the JG Wentworths of the world that do that silly thing where everybody's in a bus and they start singing operatically about, calling his number, and the number is part of the jingle? It just sticks in your brain. I don't know what JG Wentworth was or does, or if they're even still around.

But you're about to get a hold of them. But if I, if I just sat here and maybe smoked a doobie or something, I could recite that entire commercial just from how many times I've heard it.

Spencer Powell: It's an interesting thing.

Greg Bray: I like the jewelry example too, Spencer, because it's an example of a rare and more expensive purchase. You don't do that every day. Just like you don't buy a home every day. The ad to go buy some new shoes or new clothes or whatever, more impulse buy type of opportunity, is a little different where you get that return potentially in a much shorter timeframe.

But buying a home, who knows where that person is a few years from now when they're not shopping today and being able to be there, but yet, you want the sale today as opposed to a few years from now. Right. So, that's what we're all looking [00:26:00] for is how do we get in front of the people today versus planting those seeds for the ones for next year and the year after.

Spencer Powell: And that's where I think too, we can tie in that to like the content marketing, SEO piece. Let's just use that same jewelry example. Let's just say they spent 50 grand a year on the radio ads. Well in year one, maybe they got a few customers or whatever it is. Then year two, you kind of start to get the stack effect because now you've had all this repetition more people are aware, so you get a few more. You fast forward to year 10, I'm sure costs have gone up a little so it's not perfectly 50 grand every year. But you can roughly spend the same but you're getting more output by year 10 from that compounding nature.

Content marketing and SEO is similar. If you write a whole bunch of blogs in year one, there's a good chance that like some of them moved up in the rankings, but maybe none of them are like number one, maybe you hit first page for a couple. But then you go to year two and you stack on, maybe now you've got 24 blogs and you've got 48 blogs and you've got a hundred blogs.

And now your [00:27:00] site is so much stronger and all these blogs are starting to move up in the rankings and you're investing a similar amount each year, but now you're getting more traffic and more leads by a mile than you did in that first year. And so I think, there are some marketing efforts that are like that versus paid ads, where it's very much not that way, where you're just, I'm paying for the amount of clicks and traffic I can get and conversions. If I want more, I just need to pay more.

Greg Bray: When you look back at your own experience with that because you've been creating your own content for many years, has it worked for you? Are you getting that compounding effect?

Spencer Powell: Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of that, we've continued to grow our business consistently as well. In addition to the compounding effect, you also get those stories where somebody comes to you and they're like, I've been listening to the podcast for six years and the timing is now right.

Until you've experienced it, like it's easy to just hear me talk [00:28:00] about it or listen to the jewelry example. It's really hard to do because you're forking over the cash every year. And when it's your cash and it's your time and it's your energy, it is really hard to start from zero. But there's data out there to support it. There's numerous examples out there to support it. And if you can experience it for yourself, you'll get hooked because you see the power in it.

And again, to reference my earlier point, you get to add value through content which is a nice benefit to running your marketing program versus I'm just trying to like jam stuff in front of people and just get their name and email at any cost. You really actually can build a relationship. People feel like they know your brand, your company, your people by the time they actually do meet you in person or connect with you on a one-to-one basis.

Greg Bray: I think that ties into a really key point about trust and relationships that is probably an even bigger deal for the smaller builder than maybe the large [00:29:00] one who's got specs that are move-in ready and things like that where somebody can walk in, look at this home. I don't need to know a lot about this builder. It's just, do I like this house or not and is it in the right place?

Whereas, that smaller custom builder or the remodeler who's doing a project that's a unique and special and just for you, you have to remember you're selling trust before you're even selling the actual service and product because it doesn't exist. It will be a one-of-a-kind kind of thing. And what you're getting at is building trust I think it. Would that be a fair analysis of kind of where you were going with that?

Spencer Powell: Yeah, 100%. It's a nice, comfortable way for your prospects to get to know you at a distance. They can binge-watch all your YouTube videos. They can scroll your social media from the comfort of their home behind a screen. They can really get to know you as a person, as an individual, they can see some personality, all of that can come through content. Then when they sit down and [00:30:00] meet with you and talk about their project, their comfort level is much higher.

One of the things I really like to talk about the power of content marketing is I think content marketing creates referral-type leads. Referral is great because if Kevin is like, Hey, Spencer, you should work with Greg and I already trust Kevin and know Kevin, then I'm like, great. Now I trust Greg. The trust is built into a referral. Content marketing creates a very similar thing because someone gets to know you.

For you guys, like you have regular listeners of this podcast. I bet you have a lot of people that spend more time with you than their best friends and some of their family members because you're in their ears every week for half an hour, an hour, right? And over a year, if they don't miss an episode, which I know they don't, that's like 50, a hundred hours. Whereas they may spend, you know, 20 with their best friend or close family member.

Kevin Weitzel: Should we sprinkle [00:31:00] in some affirmations then? Like, doggone it, you're smart, you're good enough, you're pretty, and people like you. Should we sprinkle those in like Stuart Smalley?

Spencer Powell: It can't hurt.

Kevin Weitzel: I think we're missing out on something here. We could be like lifting people up while feeding their brains.

Greg Bray: I'm just starting to feel sad for some of them that they're stuck with us that often. But to Spencer's point, it is a fascinating psychological insight about how people trust the people that they just spend time with and that they get to know through educational information, the person who educates you and teaches you about process and the way it works and who's there all the time. It just kind of. grows and there's something there that builds trust and it's real. It's real.

Spencer Powell: Yeah. The data-backed parts of it, or like the law of reciprocity and things like that, where you're just like, Oh, this person has just been giving me helpful information for so long. There's just so many benefits to content marketing.

Greg Bray: Well, Spencer, it's been a great conversation. [00:32:00] Want to be respectful of your time? Just any last words of advice that you wanted to share today, uh, with our audience before we wrap up?

Spencer Powell: Yeah, I guess since we've been talking a lot about content marketing, I would encourage you to take it seriously. That piece is not going away. And maybe I'll close with an example. I don't know the year and I'm probably just making up all the details about this. So it doesn't matter.

Um, but way, way back. I'm thinking like, it's either from the early 1900s or maybe even the late 1800s, somebody can fact-check me after this. It's fine. But John Deere, they started a print magazine and the print magazine was free to subscribe and farmers would subscribe to it. And it had all these farming best practices and how to, you know, make your farm more profitable and all this kind of stuff. And so they built a big audience.

But within that magazine, they featured their equipment and they sold a lot of equipment out of that too. If you think about what that was, that was just content marketing [00:33:00] through a print magazine. Whatever medium takes shape, 10, 20, 30 years from now, there's still going to be content marketing, that idea of how do I add value through marketing, educate my buyer, help them make a good decision, and by doing so you will attract more of an audience and that audience will be warmer, they'll trust you more, and they'll be excited to buy from you.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, Spencer, for spending time with us. If somebody wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Spencer Powell: Yeah. Thanks for having me guys. I enjoyed it. BuilderFunnel.com is the best place to find us. Yeah, if you like social media, BuilderFunnel on Instagram, check out our YouTube channel. We have a podcast. but if you just type in Builder Funnel, you'll find whatever you're looking for.

Greg Bray: Well, thanks, Spencer. And thank you everybody for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.

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