[Fully Managed] Sam Dey from DEY Tips & Audio – Ep. 113

Marketing and Business Tips with Sam Dey from Dey Tips

Shannon: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed by Penji Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined to you today with a very special guest, Sam Dey from Dey Tips. Thank you so much for coming out with me today.

Sam Dey: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Shannon: I appreciate it. All righty. So could you please start off by telling us a little more about yourself, about your work with day tips and kind of what led you up to this point in your life?

Sam’s Background and the Birth of Dey Tips

Sam Dey: Awesome. So yeah, my name is Sam Dey, as you’ve mentioned, my brand day tips kind of start off with the back of me selling products online. So my first ever business was e-commerce, back when it wasn’t as, I guess, popularized as it is today. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, so I was running offline businesses before I started online and then kind of realized that, you know, most of where things were heading was going to be online.

So I quickly kind of caught onto that and kind of started an e-commerce brand, thinking it was going to be a side hustle. At the time I was at university and like I said, I was running my offline business, but my last year of university was full on. Anyone who’s kind of like studied at university and you know you’re doing your dissertation, you will know that it’s a lot of work to be doing that and something else as well. Most people have like a little part-time job or you know, just something to keep them ticking. And I had a full on business, so I kind of put the business on pause. I said to myself, look, I’ve only got a year of uni left. Let me just focus a year on this. And then afterwards I can restart a business and, you know, that will be kind of the rest of my life going forward, hopefully.

So that was the idea. That was the plan. What I didn’t kind of factor in was how big the e-commerce brand was going to be. So I decided to sell products online thinking that, okay, you know, even though I’m not running my business, I still need a little bit of income. So I was there thinking, you know, okay, maybe I’ll make enough to like take the train to uni and get lunch at lunchtime, just to kind of see me through this year. At the time I was still living with my parents as well, so I was just hoping to make enough to just time me over kind of thing.

But within the first six months in the business, within an initial investment of about 2, 300 pounds, the business was turnover about four grand a month. And at the time, I was making more than my parents. And I was like, wow, this is incredible. And like, what? The business that was supposed to just help me through my last year of uni was actually taking me away from uni because I was like at the post office every day with like 50 to a hundred units of products that I was selling online. So it kind of took legs of its own.

I was able to go full-time in the business when I left Uni and off the back of that, started to kind of document what I was doing on YouTube. You know, I also saw YouTube as a big opportunity as well. Started to document what I was doing on YouTube, telling people about the products I was selling and how I was marketing my products and so on and so forth. And that kind of drew into its own community as well with people who were just inspired and wanting to know more and wanting, like asking questions. And so I just kept on creating content and videos. And then the brand, the YouTube channel was called Day Tips. So the brand day tips kind of evolved from there. And, you know, I got into the marketing space doing it more and just fell in love with it really. So, yeah, that’s kind of how the brand day tips came about.

The Power of Starting Young

Shannon: That’s incredible. It’s also awesome to be able to reach such a feat at such a young age that’s kind of really, really awesome. I think a lot of people are hoping that their businesses reach that kind of scope by, you know, early on. I think that’s kind of intimidating too though, because you didn’t expect that to happen, I’m sure, in such a short period of time.

Sam Dey: Yeah, I think that’s where the best businesses are built, really. I think for me, my mindset was always, let me start young. Because when you’re young, everybody wants to help you. And so, like for me, my very first business, I started at 17 and it didn’t do so well, but like I learned a lot of things. I’ve got a lot of help from people who were like, oh, let’s just help this young guy out kind of thing. And if you, like, I went to mentors and asked them how they were growing their businesses and, you know, because you are young, and because you are aspiring up and coming, like they’re more willing to kind of help you.

So along your journey, you’re just, you’re going to fail a lot. But I always say it fell forward because from the failures you see like, like even if it’s just a little bit of success somewhere, you know, like, oh that kind of works a lot better than I thought it would. Let me put a lot of my effort or energy into that. And then you can kind of like create something great out something that you might not have even thought was gonna be the thing kind of, if that makes sense.

Falling Into Success

Shannon: Yeah, no, I think it’s really helpful to be able to fall into what you’re good at. ’cause I think a lot of people will like seek out a certain industry or try to focus everything on doing one thing, and then that’s not the thing that they’re the best at or they, I think a lot of people happen into an industry, especially with marketing. A lot of people will kind of focus on a niche and then maybe that’s not the niche that they’re good at, or maybe that’s not the niche that they should focus on because it doesn’t promote as much traffic or it doesn’t engage people in the same way. So I think that it’s nice to be able to kind of fall into something that works, even if you’re not intending on going down that path.

Sam Dey: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I feel like the best businesses always kind of slide by accident in some ways.

Shannon: Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of the most successful businesses too are started with a completely different motive in mind, like they, and it just gravitates into this completely different field and it just works. And I love when that happens because it’s just really interesting when you plan to do something and something completely different happens, but it’s also positive.

Adapting to Change and Listening to Clients

Sam Dey: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I always encourage entrepreneurs to lean into that. What you intend for a business to be might not be where it ends up being. I’ve spoken to so many successful entrepreneurs who have like started off in one direction, in one avenue thinking, yeah, all of my revenue is gonna come from this, and then there’s another revenue opportunity and that far surpasses what they intended or anticipated. And it’s like, wait, I’m actually serving my clients best when I do this rather than what I intended to do.

So, yeah, like I feel like it is always about listening and trying to feel the business and feel where your customers are kind of gravitating towards more where the income is kind of showing up and then redirecting the business. You can’t be like too rigid, especially in the day and age we’re in now where everything is changing so rapidly. You know, like with AI, you’ve got so many things coming in into play, especially the field that I’m in with SEO changing and algorithms changing all the time. You have to kind of be able to adapt and constantly evolve and become a new version of yourself, a new version of your business to kind of stay alive really.

Shannon: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And focusing on your clientele is really important too, because I love seeing how adaptable people can be in this space where they see that the client needs something and now they’re like, oh, okay, let me try doing this too. I think there’s definitely a space in which you should cap that because some people get way too overzealous and get really excited and that’s awesome and that’s great, but sometimes it’s at a detriment to them because you know that you can’t do everything all the time. And that’s okay. But I think that it is really important to constantly consider your clients and what they need and be able to adapt to that. Has there ever been a point where you have had to make kind of a major switch in what you’re doing to kind of fit what clients are looking for?

Transitioning from For-Profit to Government Clients

Sam Dey: Oh, really good question. I wouldn’t say major. I think usually you kind of feel things coming. I’m quite good at sensing and feeling when a tide is about to come. So for example, I guess the biggest thing was switching from working with for-profit businesses to government organization. So for a long time, you know, kind of off the back of my day TIPS brand on my YouTube channel and kind of putting out content about what I do in terms of my marketing. I used to get a lot of clientele that were in the business niche. And then over the last two and a half years I’ve been working with the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and kind of helping them with some of their marketing. But obviously their goals and objectives are different. They’re not necessarily trying to make sales or conversions. Their goals are more okay, awareness, how do we get citizens engaged and keep them engaged on social media and get them into involved in politics more. And so I definitely had to kind of shift my brand and shift my focus sometimes.

But never, it is never really been a huge shift, if you can kind of stay on top of what is happening in your industry, if that makes sense. You can kind of see, especially if you keep on top of like the popular blogs in your industry and news and what’s happening. Then you kind of see things coming and you can start preparing before they do, if that makes sense.

Anticipating Industry Changes

Shannon: It completely makes sense. I think the best industry leaders or I guess leaders in their own field are able to anticipate changes in the industry, and I think that’s something that’s super important. And I think those are the people that end up being the most successful, is being able to keep track of those things. It’s definitely difficult to keep updated constantly because especially if you’re doing all these things, wearing all these hats, and then you have to also keep track of the day-to-day. And marketing specifically is something that is changing rapidly all the time and is something that you have to keep updated with. But I think major changes are something that you had definitely anticipate by just watching.

Understanding Your Own Consumer Behavior

Sam Dey: Yeah. And do you know what the funniest thing is? Kind of putting my marketer hat on now is when you notice a change in your own behavior. How you consume and also the behaviors of those around you, but obviously most importantly, the behaviors of your target customer. So like the best example that I always like to give of this is a family friend of mine, he wrote a book and he came to me for some advice on how he was gonna market the book. And my initial question to him was, look, what ideas have you got already? What have you already started to plan on doing? And he said, I’m gonna get a billboard. And he was gonna pay quite a lot of money to get his billboard on the streets of London so that he can promote the book. And my immediate question to him was, when was the last time you saw a billboard and purchased a book and it made you purchase a book? And his answer was never. He’s never done that.

And so my next follow-up question was, what was the last book you purchased and what made you buy that? He said he bought a book from a YouTuber that he’d been following for a little while and you know, he kind of really connected with that YouTuber story and so purchased the book. And so the way he was making buying decisions was contrary to the way he was marketing or planning to market his own product. And I dunno why the brain seems to do this, but you know, a lot of us are on YouTube. We’re on Instagram all the time where we’re on TikTok, you know. We should be marketing in the way that we’re actually consuming and that will give us a really good insight into what is current and how we should be marketing now based on our own behaviors. Not kind of like going on YouTube and watching it for three hours and then deciding to market our business by using a billboard kind of thing. It doesn’t really make sense when you think about it. But yeah, just staying on top of your own behaviors can really help you to kind of ensure that your business stays ahead as well.

The Reality of Billboard Marketing

Shannon: I think that is really hard to get out of your head, I guess, sometimes of how you think something’s gonna work. So you’re not really considering your perspective as a consumer, you’re just considering Oh, like how, what are things that are related to marketing that I can get involved in in order to sell something or in order to do that. And I think it’s, it is really interesting to look at that and see people not realizing kind of the obvious. And I think that’s not wrong. It’s just kind of funny because I do think that there’s also very, I’m sure the most, it’s if he had a very absurd billboard that caught people’s eye, like maybe that would sell. And I think there’s a way to do things that are not the norm, I suppose. I think there’s definitely things that have caught my eye that are not something that I would normally consume. If I did see a billboard that was kind of wacky and I would probably look it up like, oh, we have a lot of billboards. I am based in Philadelphia with a lot of billboards here, and there’s actually controversy over many of them because they’re absurd or they something that should maybe not be on a billboard for everyone to be able to see. And I think that those do work. But for a book, yeah, I don’t think, I don’t remember the last time that I’ve looked at a billboard and been like, yes, I’m going to buy that book. But I do end up looking up absurd things when I see them on billboards because I wanna know more. And I guess that’s what they’re doing. I have I purchased any of those things though? No. Most of them are law firms that I have no need for, they don’t have any illegal services, but they’ll be on the top of my mind if I ever do so. You never know.

Sam Day: Yeah. I think Billboards, when you look at kind of billboard marketing and even like radio and television, it’s very difficult to convert. And I guess, and even if it does convert it, it can be difficult to track. I know nowadays we’ve got like QR codes you can track and whatnot. But usually, like if we think of like a Blockbuster movie, they’re going to be trying to just build awareness. You know, they might have like a really huge superstar and you see that on the side of like a subway or a bus, and then you see it on billboards as well. So it’s kind of like, it’s not just that one billboard. Usually they’re trying to get you, they’re trying to get into your psyche so that when you are thinking about going to the cinema the next time. You are like, oh, I’m gonna watch that movie. ’cause I heard about it. You don’t even necessarily always remember where you saw it or where you heard it, but it’s that repetitive, you know, talking about touch points and that can cost a lot of money to, and if it’s just one billboard and you’re paying like a thousand, $2,000 or $5,000 for, or whatever, it’s gonna be difficult to create that kind of experience. Whereas it’s so much cheaper to do that online in so many different ways. If you are on, you know, multi-channels. If you’re doing, you know, retargeting ads and all those kinds of technical stuff, it can be so cheaper to kind of get a better result with less of a budget, if that makes sense as well.

Budget Considerations and Marketing Psychology

Shannon: Yeah. I think it’s really important to consider budget when getting involved in that. Especially when it’s something that’s a new product or something that you haven’t tried to sell before. There’s a lot of things to consider, especially usually at that point, depending on the person I’m sure. But if it’s something that’s new, a lot of times that person doesn’t have an incredible budget. And I think that you have to definitely narrow down what is best for a marketing campaign for that. Actually a question that I do have is, so I know that everyone’s marketing campaigns are different and are uniquely catered to them as what they’re selling or what service they have. But do you think there’s anything that’s kind of unique that people don’t consider when thinking about marketing or thinking about how to sell something?

The Psychology Behind Marketing

Sam Dey: I think people don’t consider enough. I think people do consider it, but they don’t consider enough how related marketing is to psychology. They’re one and the same. And so obviously people who study psychology, sometimes that’s part of their course. They will study marketing and obviously some people will go to study marketing and psychology together as one. And we call it empathy marketing, essentially, like it’s the very first step whenever I’m working with a new brand or a new company or the very first thing is psychology, is, you know, let’s take a step back and do a little bit of empathy marketing and put ourselves in the shoes of our target customer, you know, would they respond to this billboard we’re about to put out?

And kind of going even going back to billboards, like it can be effective every single right place. You know, if you run a local business and it’s a barbershop, you might want a billboard like right next to the barbershop that points to where you are that says, you know, barbershop here so that locals know that where you are. Or if it’s a YouTube channel, you know, we need to start thinking about. What can we put in the thumbnail? What can we put in the title? If I was my target customer, would I genuinely want to watch this video? Would I want to click? Would I want to click on this ad? You know, when we take a second to take a step back and start thinking like our target audience, then we see so much more success with our marketing.

And a great way to do this as well is to think about someone in your network who would be your ideal client. Not so you can sell to them. Like obviously if they want to buy or invest in your service, then great, fantastic. But I always think, okay, let’s say if I’m selling a new vegan product, and I know someone in my network who’s vegan, I might create the marketing material for it and send it to that person and say, Hey, would you buy this? You know, if you didn’t know me, would you buy this? Would you click on it? Ask them to be really honest. Maybe even don’t tell them at first that it’s your business or something that you are planning to do. Trip them and ask them if this is something they’re interested in and get some real feedback from them. And they might say. Now I wouldn’t buy it because this, this, this, and this. And you can take a step back and think, okay, maybe this is some good insights into things that I can change about the product, about the service, or about the marketing to maybe appeal to my target customer a little bit better.

And then you can literally, I know we’re in the kind of like the data protection era, but you can literally legally spy on your target customers as well by looking up forums. You know, there’s loads of Facebook groups about almost every industry, every sub niche that you can think of, go into some of those forums and see what your target audience are speaking about, see what gets, you know, loads of replies in Quora and do some study and some real study. And I always say, like, one of my biggest quotes on my YouTube channel is, the better you know your audience, the easier it is for you to sell to them. You know, if I’m extremely thirsty right now and someone knocks on my door and they’ve got bottles of water. Then they’re much more likely to sell to me than if I’ve just had two liters of water and someone tries to sell me a Coke or all that. I’m not going to buy that. But if you really know what the pain points are and you truly make it your job like that, as entrepreneurs, that’s our job, entrepreneurs and business owners. Our job is to truly understand the needs, wants and desires of our target customer. Understand how our product or service helps to alleviate some of those stress points and package our product in a way where it’s obvious that we are the solution to our customer’s problems, if that makes sense. So we’re always going to win with our marketing if we kind of keep that top of mind.

Leveraging Forums and Understanding Average Consumers

Shannon: No, that’s incredible advice. And I think that there’s so many ways to do that that people don’t even consider because they see it as an informal way of kind of getting to know your audience. Like there’s places like Reddit, which are incredible spaces for trying to figure out your audience and what they need because people are asking questions on their constantly, they’re looking for advice. That’s literally the point. Like a lot of people are looking for things that you might have or like services that you might have and to be able to. You can literally just turn their question into an ad, like, and I think that a lot of people don’t even consider these avenues because they don’t, I don’t think they consider the average client sometimes that they, A lot of people will be so focused on getting these bigger entities that they kind of can’t get out of their head of thinking about the normal, average person and being able to focus on the normal, average person and get them, I think, can lead to these bigger entities that maybe might be your goal. But to be able to just think like an average person is something that is really important. And I feel like, I don’t know, people in the corporate world aren’t always thinking about that. It’s not their overarching goal, so they’re kind of. Not able to think in that person’s head. And I think the psychology really goes into that for sure. I really resonate with what you’re saying about that.

Learning from Successful Competitors

Sam Dey: Yeah, a hundred percent. And the biggest brands of our time, that’s all they obsess about, you know, so if, you know, I always say this to my clients as well, like, who has the attention of your target customer? What brands already have their attention. Could be your direct competitors. Your indirect competitors, because chances are they’ve done a lot of research and they’ve tested a whole lot of content. They’ve tested a whole lot of ads. So there’s ways to actually see what they’re doing and to study what they’re doing. So this can kind of give you a shortcut as well, so you don’t have to spend maybe as much money on ads testing, like obviously I’m a huge advocate of testing. But you might be able to shortcut some, a lot of that testing and get to the money quicker if you, number one, study your customers and number two, study some of your most successful competitors. ’cause chances are they know your customers really well.

Shannon: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think that we should constantly be looking at. Anyone that shares that space, they might not be doing the same thing as you. And that’s actually even better because even you might be able to partner with that person, or you might be able to even look for them for advice because they don’t see you as a competitor. They’re not worried about sharing things and different things like that. I think a lot of agencies, specifically I’ve noticed aren’t in the business of talking about things that like giving advice and stuff. And I think they think of that as revealing secrets, which is why I really like this podcast because I think that it’s really nice to be able to talk to adjacent industries and different people that, you know, are able to give advice like this. Because I think that corporations and businesses are sometimes very closed off to discussing these kinds of ideas because they think, oh, like my competitor can copy me. Well, if your competitor can copy you. That, well then you’re probably not doing it as good as you think you are because you should be able to be unique in the industry to be able to conduct things your way and be successful in that way. And if that’s not working for you or it’s easily translated into a different business, then maybe you need to rethink what you’re doing. And even if someone can do the same thing as you, they might not be able to do it as well as you can.

Studying Competitor Customer Journeys

Sam Dey: Exactly. They might not be able to execute in the same way. And there’s so many ways to just see what your competitors are doing. Even just as simple as one of the things that I used to do a lot more back in the day, but I am a huge advocate of still doing now is buying from your competitors with your record screen on your laptop. So you can see the exact process that your competitors kind of take you through, take their customers through. If it’s an upsell, if it’s a, you know, sometimes people have a simple kind of a order bump, they call it in marketing, where you can kind of like, Hey, you are about to buy this. Like, do you wanna add this for an extra $10? Or whatever it might be. Like the old school, you know, would you like fries with that? Just seeing the whole process. You know, you get a follow up email the next day and it says, Hey, you know, you abandoned your cart. Would you like to continue purchasing? Small things like that, you can kind of see, and it is usually in these fine small margins which separate a company from doing extremely well to a company, growing our business.

The Balance of Customer Communication

Shannon: Yeah, no, I think that’s a really great thing to build on. I think people are always watching their competitors, but I don’t think maybe closely enough, like they don’t realize that these small things are what contribute to a sale. And I think a lot of that goes off of like personal personability, or like being able to that follow up email, making it as personal as possible or making it caring about your audience, and I think that a lot of those little things are related to that. Like they’re a more personal touch or you know, a reminder is always something that’s great, but too many reminders are not great. I get really annoyed with businesses when I keep hearing from them, and I, you know, even if I liked them, I can get really annoyed and I think the average consumer can get really annoyed. So there’s definitely a fine line that a lot of people, I think don’t consider either. I think that that can be detrimental or help a business a lot and you kind of have to figure out where it is.

Sam Dey: Yeah, I think a lot of that is looking at your statistics as well, because you might like, like what you said, you might be annoyed by certain brands, but if they’re noticing that actually when they’re communicating a certain amount of time a week. Their business is growing. You know, there might be a huge drop off, but usually what I say is, you know, if someone unsubscribes or stops becoming a customer, then usually they would never have become a customer anyway. They never would’ve bought again anyway. If you message them less, obviously there’s a fine line between messaging someone 50 times a day and, you know, communicating effectively. But you will notice it in your statistics. You know, when you, if you send them a message out, whether it’s SMS, whether it’s email, whether it’s retargeting ads or whatnot. When you send five messages a week, you might notice a free x improvement in sales. If you bring that down to two, you might notice that. Your sales haven’t been as great. And so it’s when you get to a certain level in your marketing and in your business where you start to see growth, it’s really about understanding the statistics. And yes, there will be a drop offs, but it’s about okay, you know, making sure the business is always growing kind of thing.

Shannon: Yeah, I definitely think that’s something that is really important to consider and the. That’s something that we even implement with like our outreach. We’re always trying to look at the stats of how many times you email someone and what the response rate is, and constantly going over that and changing email templates and doing all these things. I think that that’s something that’s so incredibly important because there is figuring out that fine line is something that goes so much, leads so much into sales or doesn’t, and it. The average consumer can get very easily annoyed, can get very easily testy, looking at certain, or how much they get reached out to. And I think that, yeah, no one, and not everyone is considering that. Like they just want you to know about them and be present on your mind. But that’s not always a good thing. There are a lot of things, if someone’s present on my mind, that doesn’t mean that it’s, I’m fond of them.

AI and Personalized Marketing

Sam Dey: Yeah. And I think it’s with the right messaging as well, you know, one thing that AI is allowing us to do is to understand and it, what we’re going to see in the marketing in our marketing tools going forward is AI really learning and understanding our customers a lot better. It’s already doing that with, you know, like. The meta fixx all, you know, with Google Ads now, and, you know, we’re already starting to see this, but it’s going to get even better with it’s one thing messaging or stay top of mind, as you said on your, for your customers. But if you are sending them the right message at the right time with the right things, then they don’t mind hearing from you as much. You know, like that kind of the difference between being on Instagram, or TikTok, you know, some of these most popular platforms at the moment. We’re on there so often because they’re actually sending us content, they’re showing us content that is engaging us and is keeping us on the platform. You know, so even if we’re getting notifications, it’s maybe something that we want to see.

And I think that’s a really, really big distinction. And it goes back to understanding your customer. You know, if you’re messaging your customer is something that they don’t really care about or they don’t want to see, then that is a huge issue. Whereas actually, if you are messaging them something and it’s like, ooh. New product. I might wanna buy that. ’cause it’s, I’ve been thinking about that. Or it’s, you know, they’ve been clicking around, you know, so rather than trying to get the sale and trying to sell them something that they don’t want, it’s about understanding, you know, again, going back to the empathy marketing, understanding what they do want, understanding what messages they do want to see, and then that what became, what was an annoyance actually now becomes more of a convenience because it’s right in front of me. Is what I want. Even with these new. TikTok shop has become incredible, you know, essentially they’re selling to you, but you might see something on there and you’re like, wait a minute. Like, I want that, that that’s, that’s pretty cool. And now you are buying it even though they are putting it in front of you. And it’s technically an advert. It’s not as irritating. It’s not as annoying because actually it’s something that maybe the algorithm has picked up that is popular and you might actually, you might actually enjoy that.

The Power of Influencer Marketing

Shannon: Yeah, no TikTok ads are suspiciously catered to the individual. I actually, it makes me uncomfortable. I do, I will watch an ad and they’ll be like, does this happen to you? And it’s like, they list like six things and I’m like, yes, all of those things happen to me. How do you know that? And it’s just. I think that those are the perfect ads. Like I hate that they’re the perfect ads. ’cause I’m like, I feel like you’re manipulating me. Exactly. But it’s, but it’s so genius and it’s genius that I’m al they, it almost frustrates me because it’s something that I would never think about buying, I would never have learned about it. I would never have known about it. They create such a perfect ad that has catered towards, and it seems like it’s just catered towards me, but it’s not, it’s catered towards a bunch of people like me and there’s probably a bunch of people the same problems that I have and they just know how to get that.

And I think that having influencer marketing is something that is so I feel like. It moves so fast, but it is so smart, and if they’re doing it correctly, because it seems like, oh, this very average person that has the same problems that I do is advertising this product. And I know that TikTok has to, you know, requires you to say if you’re getting permission from something and that’s fine and whatever. But I think that having just a very normal person and not a celebrity quote unquote, another line between celebrities and influencers and what is what, now because it’s very different. But seeing an average person or a closer to an average person advertise something that I could use is something that, you know, you trust them a little more because you see their personality on these different platforms and you see how they are and you kind of believe them because you kind of convince yourself that you’re kind of their friend. And I think that celebrities aren’t as good as that because they don’t show you a lot of their life and they don’t show you a lot of who they are because, you know, they’re either an actor or they’re, you know, I don’t know. They play some kind of sport and you don’t really see like their personality as much, so you don’t believe them as easily. If that makes sense.

The Four Pillars of Quality Content

Sam Dey: Yeah, a hundred percent. I agree. And one of the work that I do with companies is helping them to feel more connected with their community online. And like you said, sharing your personality is one way of doing that. I often speak about the pillars of creating quality content. And, you know, if you’ve studied marketing for any length of time, you would probably would’ve heard them. You know, one is entertainment, and that’s like you said, what influencers do really well, they understand how to entertain their target audience, whether it’s young people of a specific demographic or it’s older people and, you know, they create content that really appeals to them from the get go. So from the thumbnail to the intro of the video, which obviously we all know, is really important to capture that particular audience, to retain in as many of them as possible throughout the content. And then ending on something that hopefully, you know, uh, entices them to want to watch again, when they upload the next time.

Shannon: All of these elements are really important. So are you, are you educating? Are, are you entertaining? Are you inspiring your audience? Um, or are you just updating them with, with news and, you know, so there, there are literally, uh. Content creators who just want to, um, keep their audience up to date with, with what’s happening.

So that’s also a really valuable content pillar as well, is informing. So we’ve got Inform, we’ve got Educate, we’ve got Entertain, we’ve got Inspire, and it should all link to your target audience. Are you doing one of those four things for your target audience? So, for example, with myself, with my brand, um, online, I create marketing content that helps to educate.

Sam Dey: Entrepreneurs and business owners. So that’s one content pillar that will draw them to my content. And even though I might not be a mass influencer because I’m not doing enter entertainment, um, I’m still able to create some, some sort of community with my content. And that’s what I think brands, uh, especially government, which I’ve been working with as well, leads to a lot better o of a drawback rather than trying to push your agenda is.

Again, empathy marketing. What? What do my audience want to see and how can I create content that’s going to really bring them value? 

Yeah, I know those are definitely things to really consider, and especially it makes sense that government entities don’t think about those things because they’re not thinking about entertainment is definitely not something that they’re probably thinking about at the forefront of their mind.

So it makes a lot of sense. Exactly. That that would be something that you kind of have to convince them to, uh, you know, get involved in. Um, so yeah, that, uh, I think that those are things that people should definitely consider at the forefront of when they’re putting out some kind of advertisement or something like that.

Shannon: So, yeah, 100%. I totally agree and I’m so sorry, but I, we have no time left to, I’m so bad at cutting off. ’cause I just feel awful about it and I just love to keep talking. But thank you so, so much for coming on with me today. I [00:38:00] really appreciate it and I really learned a lot. And I will say this every podcast, I don’t think, I hope I never stop saying it, that that’s my favorite part is to be able to learn more from this as well.

So I hope that, um, you know, if I was able to learn something that our audience will as well. So thank you so much for, uh, coming on with me today. 

Sam Dey: Awesome. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure. 

Shannon: Thank you and thank you everyone for watching. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe, to learn, uh, like I get to do every week.

Sam Dey: I appreciate it and have a lovely day.