Mastering SEO and Content Marketing: Tips for Building Trust and Driving Revenue

Hey, hi, everyone. Welcome to your show, E-Coffee with Experts. This is your host Ranmay here. And today we have Matthew Proctor, who is the founder and CEO of Narrative Bent with us. Hey, Matthew, how is it going?

Good. How are you? Glad to be here.

All good. I can’t really complain. To start off, Matthew, let’s get to know the human behind the mic.

Why don’t you talk us through your journey? How were you growing up as a kid? How did you Get in the digital marketing space and also more about your agency. What do you guys do? What do you guys specialize in? And we’ll take it forward from there.

Sure. How was I as a kid? You want to go way back? So basically, in a nutshell, I won’t go that far back as a kid, but I was an English literature major in college. Graduated, didn’t know what I was going to do, ended up wanting to be a blogger, right? This was back in like 2008 2007, 2008, fell into the SEO community at the time.

They were building blogs like for doing keyword research, building blogs, building backlinks, they weren’t calling it SEO then they were calling it like make money online, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I built a bunch of sites on my own kind of self taught SEO made some money, but not very much money from like advertising and affiliate revenue on those sites.

Ultimately leveraged that to get a job in an ad agency doing SEO for clients and customers. And since then Did I’ve worked at I’ve consulted for so many different brands. So anywhere from like your local car dealership, all the way up to Tiffany and companies, Ben and Jerry’s Procter and Gamble, McKesson, Facebook, like big, large name brands.

Then got sick of the consulting world, joined a startup company while I was living in San Francisco. I led their SEO. I started with them around like their series a, and then I was their first SEO and content hire and helped grow their department and grow their program into a multimillion dollar revenue line for them.

That I worked there for about six years. Then I joined another company, another tech startup, joined a fitness app and helped them kind of triple their SEO program. And then generative AI came out. Everybody got really excited about that. I decided I wanted to start my own agency. So about a year and a half ago, I kicked off a narrative bent.

We’re a boutique content marketing agency. I actually joined with a handful of people from that I worked with at those two previous roles. I the people I really loved working with, we were all content marketers together. We all loved being creative together. So we joined forces.

And now we specialize in doing content marketing for high stakes industries like real estate, finance, healthcare, and B2B tech. So that’s us.

Lovely, lovely, quite a story. I must say so Matthew, quite clearly, you have scaled, companies, organizations, through the help of SEO, and it’s clearly a company from zero to 750, 000 dollars in revenue. What are some of the tactics which you would want to share with us today, which like is it’s something which really works across industries because you have, Been working in B2B and SAS and real estate, there’s been, quite a few niches that you’ve worked into. So what is something that kind of works?

That’s a big question. I would say in general, I believe that content marketing works. So I like to talk about it as, if you’re trying to grow a company, I’m a big fan of what I call content led growth marketing, basically where, You know a lot of marketing organizations will put paid media at the front Of everything and they’ll think about leading the charge with that I actually think that it’s Behooves everyone, especially in these days in the media environment, we’re all in right now to lead with content.

And so leading with your own content on your own site, on your own social media platforms, building that kind of, not necessarily going so far as to think you’re a publisher, but. In a way getting close to that, where you want to be able to own your own story, own your own message, help your customers in any way that they want to be helped wherever they are searching for help, whether that’s search or social media.

And so I’ve taken that kind of mentality through my entire career. Basically I think, I got into SEO and content because I think The internet right now or at least, 15 years ago when I started in this business, like the opportunity is unprecedented for anyone to basically like, Reach millions of people around the world.

Like just the fact that you’re even talking to me right now is an insane a thing, and that’s only possible because of content, right? You’re actually, to put it back on you, you’re doing a content led strategy right now where you’re. Launching this podcast. You’re talking to experts, really, you’re trying to get me to understand your business and to talk about, how we can, how you can help mine.

That’s all part of the mix now. And that’s only possible through content. And that is yeah. It’s such a powerful way to get people’s guards down. It’s such a powerful way to get, to build trust and empathy in each other and develop those relationships. And so anyway if you ask me like what works, content works, especially if you’re, doing it right.

I think the problem is most, most organizations that don’t, that try to do content treat it like advertising and they don’t give it the. The space it needs or the time it needs and so it often fails for them and I think that’s like pretty unfortunate. But anyway, that’s a long way of saying but yeah content works Especially if you’re doing it.

Absolutely You know, like the old saying is there, content is king It still is and I am i’m sure it’s going to remain that way right because that is It’s something, irrespective of all that, all those terminologies that we talk about, right? It’s the end of the day, content is something which is going to be consumed by the, end target audience to make that decision to either buy a product, use a service or not.

So that is going to be relevant. That kind of triggers that decision making of an individual, right? So yeah, and I’m totally, 100 percent with you on that one. And talking about content, we see that, there are a lot of mistakes that businesses make, right? So what do you feel are some of the common, or generic mistakes that brands do while creating that brand voice or message, for the, for the target audience?

Yeah, I think the biggest mistake they often make is treating it like an ad. And so the mental shift, the mind shift you have to make when you’re a content marketer versus just a marketer or an advertiser, is that a content marketer? Is trying to get people’s attention first, right? You can’t, but you can’t get somebody’s attention with a commercial, at least not very easily. And so if you launch a blog or you launch a LinkedIn profile or you launch a Facebook community or something, those are all content efforts. And if you try to. Turn them into straight up commercials for your product. it’s going to turn people off right away. And so the biggest mistake I see is like going into it, expecting it to behave in a similar way as like television behaved, like television ads behave or paid search.

Works or how even paid social works. This kind of channel is much, is very different than those. I would think about it if I was to give people, if I give people advice, I would look at it like. If you watch some of those like late night talk shows, right? If you watch like Conan O’Brien or Jimmy Kimmel or a Jimmy Fallon show, right?

The late shows. I don’t know if you’re a fan of those at all. But those are expert content marketing vehicles. This is how you need to be thinking about content where. Yeah. Not necessarily like trying to entertain all the time, but their first responsibility is to put on a great show, right?

And to get people to tune into it. And then even when they have the guest who the guest is there purely to sell their services and or sell the new movie they’re putting out, the interview doesn’t like harp on that too much. It’s all about let’s. Make this more interesting for people. And if we just talked about the thing we’re trying to sell, that’s not going to be that interesting necessarily.

And yeah that’s one of the biggest mistakes I think people make is they try to turn their blog into a commercial or they try to turn their social media into a platform to just like. Sell their things all the time. And the truth is that people are not following you on Facebook to be sold to on a constant basis.

They’re following you, or they’re finding you on Google, they’re going to Google to search for answers to their problems. They’re not going to Google to be sold to necessarily. And your blog needs to be sold. address those problems. It needs to be helpful. It needs to almost be like as objective as you possibly can.

And then the best talent, the most talented content marketers are the ones who can walk this very thin line between like ads and editorial. And so the ones that If you lean too hard into editorial, you’re never going to convert anybody. You’re never going to make any sales. And so it’s not going to work as a marketing vehicle.

But if you can balance that and, but if you go too hard on editorial, on advertorial Nobody’s going to listen to you in the first place. You don’t get any trust. You don’t get any interest. Google doesn’t rank you for where it needs to rank you. And so you don’t make any money either. So you have to walk that line.

Absolutely informational content is something that, any audience would, vouch for it first. And then, like you mentioned, if you have You know, directed it in the right way. They will not really feel that you’re pushing something their way to get sold.

There’s a thin line there. There’s a thin line there, which, quantum market is really good. Quantum marketers are good at it. If they can really put it in a way wherein me as their target audience is not feeling that I’m getting sold something. Nothing like it.

Absolutely. And talking about you emphasize on content, which cannot really be written by AI. Yeah. But yeah, I want to ask you this Matthew, what is your take on. Overall, the usage of AI and its efficiency when it comes to content.

Sure. Yeah, so like I said, like when ChatGPT came out and Generative AI came out, I actually decided to start an agency, a content marketing agency.

As a result of it. And two ways to look at that. One, I realized that I would be able to do more and move faster with less. Cost than I would have been without generative AI, right? So the barrier to entry of starting a business and starting an agency, especially in the content marketing world was lower because chat GPT existed.

So that was an exciting kind of possibility. And actually some of our first clients were In house content teams where we came in and taught them how to use this technology to reduce their costs, to move faster and do interesting work with that art, with that technology. So that’s the like benefit of it, but.

By also going heavy into it and like really trying to learn how it works and what it does and what it does well, we also learned what it doesn’t do very well. And the truth is that AI can do like generative AI, like chat, GPT, these like large language models. They can do very magical, wondrous things, but they also lie to you constantly.

They act like it’s real when it’s not. They are extremely overconfident and, that can be very problematic. And I think what you’re seeing in the media market is a growing demand for authenticity, for human stories, for lived experience, for insight and nuance and novelty that the very nature of this technology just cannot do, right?

Like it is At a, at a very oversimplification of it, it’s basically just remixing what already exists, right? It’s taking this giant corpus, this giant body of the internet, and it’s like remixing it into all these different ways. Humans are the only ones that can create novelty, right?

Like we can create new ideas. We can contextualize them in a way that cannot be done just by remixing things. Like the way that our minds think and create is something that only I believe. I don’t know. I believe only humans can do it the way we do it. And so I’m seeing in the market. And as we’ve launched the business, right?

You had mentioned like We’re now pacing towards a 700, 000 revenue after only a year and a half being in this business. And I think that’s because the marketing leaders are realizing that to compete, they need to step up their game. They need to deliver better quality work, right? And so I think AI has really changed A lot about this business.

And you’re seeing like a lot of people are cutting corners. They’re spinning up thousands of pages. Google is threatening to replace, their search results with just AI generated results. There’s a lot changing. But at the same time that has had this like very interesting effect where bad content creators.

Not bad, but like the mediocre, like if we think about it, like a bell curve or a long tail, there’s all the cheap writers that used to exist and all those like cheap content creators who, got by and could deliver and create blog posts and create articles, whatever AI is quickly replacing them.

But. On the top tier, you’re talking like, the New York times is not using generative AI to rewrite or to replace their journalists. And on the top band, you’re seeing an increase in cost and an increase in demand for that. And so I think actually if you are one of those top tier creators and in that kind of Let’s say top five to 1 percent of content marketers.

You’re going to stand out in a much bigger way and you’re actually going to be. exponentially more successful because AI has raised this bar. Yeah. So anyway, it’s an interesting, it’s definitely an interesting world we’re living in right now.

Yeah, absolutely. With Google there, coming up with all the new stuff, month in, month out keeps us on our toes. And that’s interesting. For an agency, if they’re doing things the way it should be then it is. Interesting times for them. And if you’re cutting corners, you’re going to face it.

Yeah. I was, I would add that, since you’re, I think a lot of your audience are probably like SEO agencies, right?

I would say. Yeah. My long view of this whole thing is that if you lean too hard on AI content creation in SEO and especially, you might get some quick wins now while the platforms are trying to figure this out. All right. But the truth is that Google can also use generative AI. And if you, if all you’re adding to the internet is effectively like spun content from generative AI, what is the point, why would Google send traffic to your site?

If they can just spin that content themselves at the moment, somebody asks for it. And so I think the content marketers and the SEOs who are like playing the long game in this field right now are the ones who are really pushing their companies and their clients to do proprietary research, bring in subject matter expertise, do expert interviews, right?

Quote real people, talk about real stories, bring video in all these kind of things that Google’s AI just cannot do easily. And that honestly, Google should start incentivizing us all to do because they need to train their LLMs. They need to keep the, they need to keep these large language models updated with fresh training data.

And so I think what you’re going to see over the next, five years or so is this kind of like tug of war between the platforms trying to do a lot with AI, but then also they’re going to have to figure out how to incentivize people like us to create better, more novel things that only humans can make.So that’s my take on it anyway.

Lovely lovely pointers there. Matthew Greta, finally, you have been, in the SEO space for quite some time now, right? Even before your agency. So what is your favorite client story? Let’s stick to your agency rather. So what is your favorite client story, Matthew?

Yeah, so I’ve been in this business. Yeah, sure. So I’ve been in this business for over 16 years. I’ve seen a lot of different, I’ve built my own sites. I’ve helped other clients. I’ve helped big brands. I’ve helped small brands, whatever. While technically it wasn’t, A narrative bent client.

Cause narrative bent didn’t exist. The same core team that’s at narrative bent was the one that helped. So I worked at a prop tech startup in the real estate space, join them at their series a, and then. Worked with them to help them grow to a unicorn company. So they became over a billion dollar evaluated company.

I think I was employee 27 at the time, when I started and then grew with them to when I left the company, they had like over 800 employees. So crazy growth. And I think SEO and content played a massive role in that. I think, we really helped to lead the product roadmap there.

What front end development projects did their engineering team take on? We helped lead the charge on the paid media side. What keywords did they target? What messages did they put forward? We. Basically built, we had our hands in 99 or maybe at least 95 percent of the sites of the pages on the site, developing the business case for them, the wireframes for them, the design for them, the copy on them, putting it all together, launching it.

And then we also led the PR effort for the most part. And so that, It’s very rare that at this point, like as an agency that we’re going to get that much oversight and that much control, creative control inside of an organization, unfortunately. But we took it, from I think if you look at SEM rush, the, during the time that I was there, we took it from like zero to 1 million visits a month.

And that. Had amazing, insane return on the investment. I think it was probably like, I don’t know, I can’t actually talk about revenue numbers unfortunately, but it had at least a 10 times return for if you just were to look at like our cost to. If you looked at a snapshot of a year, we had 10 times return.

But even if you look at the entire time I was there, so I worked for them for, about six years. Were, we probably spent, we probably earned back 20 times what we spent during that time. And so that’s just like insane. impact. Yeah. So that’s my favorite story. And then, with narrative bent, we’re still a newer firm.

So we have, only a handful of clients, but we’re able to we’re able to make faster gains. Because we’re not as, SEO focus anymore. We’re like blending search and social media and PR all together. And so we’ve done things like we’ve helped our clients land big press opportunities through the content we’re creating.

We helped one of our clients like get over 300 attendees to their webinar and get like over a hundred qualified leads to their sales team, from a single campaign. No paid, We didn’t, we weren’t running any paid ads for that. We were just like organic content through search and social.

And yeah, so we’re, I hope to find clients who want to work with us in the same way that we did in house I’ve designed narrative bent as less of an agency and more of a fractional content team. Cause we want to plug into a business and really have strategic. a strategic partnership with them, help guide their marketing efforts, their product and engineering efforts and their PR efforts all at the same time.

Cause I just think that the data and the output that you get from good content marketing is so powerful and so insightful that if businesses aren’t leveraging it properly, they’re leaving a lot of money on the table, in my opinion.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you have this space for quite some time now, Matthew.

You work with big setups, big campaigns, now owning an agency and I’ve scaled up that as well, right? So you’re quite on your journey there. So for our audiences, especially the young ones who are trying to make a mark in this space, starting out and there must be folks, who would also want to have their own setup at one point or an agency or whatever.

Sure. So for them, what is that one piece of advice you’d want to give them?

Oh, that’s a tough one. I would say it depends on exactly what you want to do. I guess if you’re trying to create an SEO agency, your best bet right now is to really like niche down and special if you’re starting out from scratch and you don’t have an agency right now, I would say start off as an individual consultant.

Get a few clients in a very specific vertical that you are interested in that you can have like industry understanding of, right? So whether that’s law or healthcare or, whatever and niche into that and be very focused on that one thing and then try to

try to go beyond it would be my second advice because Unfortunately, if you’re a brand new consultant, SEO is very hard to sell. Because it is this like long term channel takes a lot of work and a lot of time and investment into, I am, I was on the in house, I was on the in house teams, like I empathize with how difficult it is to like basically.

Close your eyes and sign a hundred thousand dollar a year kind of contract with an SEO for, with an SEO agency and not get results for nine months. Especially if you’re a brand new startup company, that’s just at the beginning of this, like it can become pretty hard. And so what we’ve been trying to do is offset that with things from social media or with paid search.

If I was a brand new SEO consultant and just wanted to focus on search, I would also learn paid search. I would also learn local ads. And I would target a niche where I can say, okay, I’m not just going to do your SEO for you. I’m going to think about search as a whole. I’m going to think about all of Google and I’m going to niche into that.

And I’ll deliver results to you right away through Paid search can get results in the, if you’re, I don’t know, niching to like a doctor’s office or something, you can drive leads to the doctor’s office in the first 30 days. And then you can have SEO kind of become making that client more efficient over time and kind of buy that time for you.

So you don’t end up like getting fired in month four. That would be my record anyway. So it’s like a combination. It’s like niche down, but also don’t just get locked into the organic search channel. Because to be honest, the organic search channel is getting punished. They’re just like, Google is putting so many ads on top of us.

And then there were a ton of maps on top of us. And then. The competition is getting steeper and it’s this crazy arms race. And so you really I honestly think these days, like SEO, you got to be really invested in it on a long, in the longterm for it to be successful. And the only way to do that is to try to become like the top dog.

And so that’s why, The clients we love to work with at NarrativeBent are the ones who are ready to put that effort in and really try to do something special with their content. But yeah, if you’re just getting started and you don’t have an amazing creative department that can do journalist level content creation, or if you don’t have an amazing PR team that can build really high caliber links and you’re just an SEO, then Supplement with page search as well.

And you’ll get more clients faster and then start to build, then start to build from there. That would be my, anyway.

Lovely. Great, Matthew. Thank you so much for the insights and the advice, right? And this has been a brilliant conversation. And for audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

Yeah. So you can find out more about us on narrative bent. com. That tells you about the agency and then I am very active on LinkedIn. So feel free to follow or connect with me on LinkedIn. It’s just Matthew Proctor, narrative bent. I don’t know if I could, maybe you could add the URL at the, in the podcast description or something.

But I post every day on LinkedIn. I talk about search, social marketing trends, like AI, anything that can help high stakes business industries do better marketing. That’s what my LinkedIn is all about.

Lovely. Great. Yeah. Once again, Matthew, thank you so much for taking your time to do this with us.

Really appreciate it. Yeah. Cheers.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks.