How to Do Content Marketing that Leads to Paid Gigs w/ Jason Vana

UX Marketing

Jason Vana

Blake: [00:00:00] All right. On the podcast today, I have Jason Vanna, who we're going to talk about branding and side hustles and how you can actually create content that leads to gigs. But before we get into that, let's get a little bit of context on Jason. So first off, Jason, how are you doing today?

[00:00:20] Jason: [00:00:20] I'm great, man. How are you doing?

[00:00:22] Blake: [00:00:22] I am fantastic. I'm ready to get this going. And I'm curious if we could just get a little bit of the history

[00:00:28] Jason: [00:00:28] of your career so far, just so we

[00:00:29] Blake: [00:00:29] know, where are you being and how you can help out?

[00:00:33] Jason: [00:00:33] Yeah, so I actually started out in sales doing, advertising sales for a local newspaper. and I like to tease all my, salespeople friends that I upgraded to marketing after that.

[00:00:45]they don't like that so much, but I like to say it. but yeah, so I've been in marketing for roughly about 13 years, if you don't count the five years, where I focused on advertising. And so basically done everything from designing ads to helping small local businesses, no how to market it. their company.

[00:01:06] Two, I'm marketing for a community college marketing for a church marketing for now. A food processing equipment, the manufacturer. and then I have my own side hustle where I help, personal brands. And. More small businesses really understand their branding and, developing marketing strategy. So basically I break the rule of find a niche and focus on it because I've done, I've basically done it all.

[00:01:37] So yeah, that's, that's kind of a, my career in a nutshell, I would say.

[00:01:43] Blake: [00:01:43] And if you had to pinpoint like one professional superpower that you feel like you encapsulate, what would that be?

[00:01:50] Jason: [00:01:50] Oh man. I would say the biggest thing, and this is why a lot of people will, will hire me, is the, the ability to really help, A business helping individual understands their identity as a, as a brand or as a company. and be able then to communicate that quickly and communicate that well. and so really what I've done at the current job where I work. Is taking a brand that no one knew in the industry and turned it into a globally recognized, Globally recognized and really desired brand, to work with. And so that's kind of the, I can do a lot, but that's my super power is, here's the messaging. Here's what we need to focus on. Now let's do this. So yeah, that's, that I would say is my super power. And

[00:02:40] Blake: [00:02:40] that. So that's, that's on a bigger scale.

[00:02:42] And then, and if we take it down, I'm sure that we have a lot of principles that we can cover for side hustlers and people that are trying to do something, build something that's meaningful to them, but they're kind of starting from scratch. So let's, let's just dive into that, because if I'm early on in my side project, I kind of know my, I know my product, I know my audience a little bit.

[00:03:02] How early on should I actually be worried about branding?

[00:03:06] Jason: [00:03:06] So actually a lot of my side hustle, my personal side, hustle cuts clients are personal branding and kind of that very small business. I have an idea, I have a product and I want to move forward. And really what I, I advise them is, you really need to start working on your brand right away.

[00:03:25] And the reason I say that is. A brand is not just a logo and colors and fonts and all that. Those are brand elements. But really what a brand is, is understanding your identity as whether that's an individual or a company. so it's your identity and how you communicate that and get people to understand that very quickly.

[00:03:48] So psychologists say that we have seven seconds. To make a first impression that within seven seconds you will make a judgment on any person, product, idea, company, whatever it may be, seven seconds. And what a brand does is it takes the core of who you are, who your businesses, and distills it down in a way that people can make that snap judgment.

[00:04:12]within seven seconds correct about who you are. And so I'm not saying that you need to go all out and spend $5,000, having someone you know, come up with a fancy brand for you and, and go through like a weeks long process of a brand. I would definitely say later on, as your brand grows, you might want to do that to make sure everything is in sync.

[00:04:35] But really you need to, I tell my clients this all the time. Nope. The process you need to go through with marketing is start with your, your target customer, your target client. Who are the people that you want to buy your product, buy your service, work with you. Then the next thing you need to do is determined who you are as a company or brand or a personal side, hustle or whatever, whatever you are in that, in that category.

[00:05:07]You need to determine who you are and what your message is. What is that? What I tell my clients, you need the tagline, which is your three to six word. Here's who I am in a snapshot, and then your one line summary of this is who I work with. This is what I provide. These are the results you're going to get in one sentence.

[00:05:29] That way people see that and they are able to very quickly understand how you benefits. Yeah. And that really is your, that's your brilliant. it's not necessarily the logo and the colors that comes later where you, once you know who you are and how you help your target audience, then you pick colors and you pick fonts and all that stuff that helps with, yeah.

[00:05:53] Persona that you've built around yourself and around your company. So for me, I always tell people, start right away. You. It takes some time. And I know as a side hustler and or a small business, that's the last thing you have is time. Especially when it's like I have to start making sales so I can pay some bills.

[00:06:15] Like I know that I go that process. Bye. The benefit of having a brand and people being able to see the content you put out, see, you know what you're doing, look at you and be able to very quickly say that's who you are and that's how you help. That's, that's invaluable. Like you, you will land more clients, you will get more money if you have a brand and people can very quickly see if you can help them or not.

[00:06:45]it's, you'll even save money on marketing if you have a good brand. So it's, it's really a core thing that you need to do right away.

[00:06:55] Blake: [00:06:55] You mentioned that a tagline, so I wanted to nitpick at that a little bit because. I'm curious if you have any examples, whether of your

[00:07:03] Jason: [00:07:03] own brand or a brand that you've worked with,

[00:07:06] Blake: [00:07:06] a tagline or two, just to give people an idea of what that actually, it sounds like it looks like.

[00:07:11] Jason: [00:07:11] Yeah, so my tagline for, for shift is, simplify your marketing, because that's really when, as I put out content, as I've worked with customers, you know, throughout the last, Doing a side hustle now, probably for 15 years off and on just helping random local businesses with their marketing. Well, what I've heard is that, from kind of from this target market of.

[00:07:36] Personal brands and small businesses is when they think of marketing, they think this very overwhelming, like I don't even understand where to start because now there's this thing called tick tock, and I should be on Snapchat, but I don't even know what that is. And how do I do Instagram? And you know, I heard someone say, I need to have a website, but I don't even know how to build one.

[00:07:56] And like it's, it's all this marketing advice that's out there. And there the, a lot of. Personal brands and small businesses are just overwhelmed and like, I don't know where to start. And what I've heard people say is, you can't, I've come in and help them simplify the whole process. And so I took what is my, unique, my USP, my competitive advantage, whatever you want to call it.

[00:08:20] I've taken that. Why clients, work with me and distilled it into three words. I'm working with a. A client right now, it's an it company. And what we've settled on for them is, making it simple. really, when you look at it written out, it also says, making it simple, you know, cause it, and it is the same thing basically.

[00:08:43] And. Yeah, I don't, okay. I don't make every tagline have the word simple in it. Right. Well, as I was saying that, I was like, Oh crap. People are gonna think that all I do is come up with simple. but really what they've said when, when they've worked with their clients and as we've done surveys with their clients and understand like why people hire them is they have this, you really unique, this is what they call a decision matrix.

[00:09:08] Which helps their customers understand what actually they need in the it world for their company. So they sit down and they say, okay, what do you want your phone system to do? Like, do you want to pick it up and be able to push a button and transfer? Do you want to be able to record? Do you want to be able to do this?

[00:09:25] And when it looks, when you look at your, the computer system, do you, what do you need it to be able to do? So they help them answer those kinds of questions. And then what they do is develop a And it system for them. So they make it simple that you don't even have to know it specs to get a good it system with them.

[00:09:47] And so those are, those are probably the biggest two. There's one right now. We're not, we haven't finalized it yet. but it's a financial company and it's, building your financial future because what they do is they work with, Basically your every day person who normally you wouldn't think they have a financial advisor, because a lot of people think of financial advisors as you know, for the millionaires who have lots of money and don't know what to do with it.

[00:10:14] This is for the everybody and they do things even down to. You're looking to buy a car and you don't know if you should lease or buy. They will sit down with you and help you determine for you what is the best decision. And so it really is about helping to build your future and makes smart by neutral decisions.

[00:10:34] And so it really is taking the core of this is what sets me apart. It makes me different. And distilling it in. What I say, three to six words so that it's short and memorable, and then you can put it, when you have a website, you put it really, it should be the first text people see on the website and in what's called your hero section, which is when you load a website and you only see that first part in your browser.

[00:11:02] That's, that's your called your hero section. It should be right up there. So when they load your website in the first 10 seconds, they know exactly how you help them. That's the point. That's the, the idea behind the tagline. Is that a quickly and clearly communicates the advantage that you give to the people who would buy your product or your service.

[00:11:27] Blake: [00:11:27] Yeah. That's, that's the, the foundational essence of building a brand. And I want to get even more specific now because something that yeah, that you do is something that I do is post a lot of content on LinkedIn. I want to, I want to talk about how that actually leads to getting, Hey, because some people, a lot of people are going to say, all right, I can create content all day.

[00:11:48] I can do that until the cows come home. But then. What does it actually do for my

[00:11:53] Jason: [00:11:53] business? So I'm curious

[00:11:55] Blake: [00:11:55] if you have a process or just kind of a blueprint of how you can start creating content that's actually going to lead to you getting paid.

[00:12:03] Jason: [00:12:03] Yeah. So a few, a few things that I tell people, cause I get that question a lot is one, you need to be in in this for the long term.

[00:12:13] This is not, you're not going to put up three posts on LinkedIn over the course of a month and start bringing in money. because really what you're doing is you are positioning yourself as an expert in whatever topic, whatever industry that, that you're in. And so for me, when I started on LinkedIn, I've only been active, like actively posting content on LinkedIn for less than a year now.

[00:12:37] And when I started out, it was kind of this dipping my toes in, didn't. Like every platform is different, has a different atmosphere, has a different style. And so I was like, well, I'm just going to start with putting out content that I've done already and just see what works. And so a lot of it was more personal development stuff, which I don't do anything.

[00:12:58] I do a lot of personal development, a lot of coaching and stuff like that, but it's not something that I make money from. And so as I was doing this, I was growing an audience and having people find my content, and I was engaging on other people's contents so that they could find me, which are all things you need to do.

[00:13:15] You can't just post and people will magically find you and start. They start following you. You actually have to be active in it, engage on other people's content. But so I started doing this and realized like, okay, I'm getting people seeing my content, commenting on it. But. I'm not going to make money with this because this isn't really what I want to do, do longterm.

[00:13:38] I'm, I have this side hustle that really, it wasn't until last year that I got serious about my side hustle and said, okay, I want to turn, I want to do this full time. Like I want this not to be a side hustle anymore. I want this to be a full time thing. And, and that was probably around September, October last year where it's like, okay, I want to start getting.

[00:13:59] More clients than just the random people that find me. And they're like, Hey, can you do a logo for me? It was like, I want to do this more seriously. And so, With that, I realize that if I want to start getting clients, I need to start putting out content about marketing. and so really what I did was the processes that I would take my customers through.

[00:14:24] So how do you, how do you determine what your tagline is? How do you know, like what your competitive advantages, how do you find your target market? How do you write content for LinkedIn to make money? Like, all these things that people started asking me questions, I would just turn into content and post on LinkedIn.

[00:14:42]And I did this consistently every day. I would do really Monday through Friday, put a lot of content out on the weekends just because. I don't want to be glued to LinkedIn over the weekends. And I like having my weekends free of that. So Monday through Friday, every day for, really since April, I've been putting out content on LinkedIn about marketing and branding.

[00:15:07] And how do you, how do you, build your website and how do you do an email list and really all those kinds of, like. How do I do this? Because that my target market are people who say, I know I need to do marketing, but I, I don't know what to do and I don't know how to do it. So I put out some very practical, like if you actually read through all of my posts on LinkedIn and applied them, the lessons that I put in there and follow the steps and all that stuff, you would not need to hire me.

[00:15:41]That's what I do. Aye. Aye. Aye. Come at it from, I'm going to put out everything so that people do not have to hire me. But when they realized that, like, man, this stuff's harder than I thought, like, and I don't have the time to spend doing all that, and this guy knows what he's doing. I'm just going to hire him because he'll be much faster at it than me trying to figure out a whole new system and how does this work?

[00:16:07] And I've got questions. So that's what I did. And really with that too, is I always told people, if you have a question, send me a message on LinkedIn and I will try to answer it as well as I can. In a generic way. And so then what I did, what I did was I said, if you want them a consultation where I will take your specific issues, what your specific questions of, Hey, I'm trying to sell this.

[00:16:36] What should I send out in an email? Then let's book a one hour consultation and yeah, we will go through your specific company, your specific product, and what you specifically have the capacity to do, whether you want to do it yourself or you want to hire me to do it for you. And so it was on the front end was here's how to do it yourself, and then, then I said, if you want.

[00:17:04] Specific help, that's where you're going to, that's where you're going to pay. Because I don't have the time to sit and, yeah. You know, my, I think my last post had over 200, reactions and about over a hundred comments. I don't have the time to sit a specific marketing strategies. To a hundred people, you know?

[00:17:27] But it's like if you, if you really want to know how to do this, book a time with me, and what we'll do is we will go through, here's how you can improve you're marketing. And so that's, that's kind of how I've been making money. And I've landed since I've been doing it more specifically saying, Hey, okay, time with me.

[00:17:47] I've landed some of my biggest clients through LinkedIn, and it's like almost every week I'm having people book times. With me, which my process is content on LinkedIn to help you do it yourself. Build that trust. People see, man, this guy knows what he's doing. Book a consultation with me, which I do charge for.

[00:18:05]I didn't at first cause I was like, okay, this is lead gen. I'm going to do it for free. And then I realized a lot of the people that were booking the free times actually didn't want to hire someone. They just wanted free advice. And then I said, okay. You're, if you want my time you're going to pay for it.

[00:18:22] But if you book me to do any of the marketing work after that, like if I give you advice of let's say, Hey, start an email list and you said, ma'am, I don't have the time to do that. Could you build it for me? Well, yes, I'll send you a proposal for that. If you hire me to do that for you, then I discount the cost.

[00:18:42]the PR of the consultation. That way people get this value of, okay. Even if this guy gives out crap advice. I'm out of a hundred I'm out, I'm out right now. I charge a hundred dollars so I'm out of a hundred dollars not, not that big of a deal, but if this guy is awesome and I booked him to do other stuff, then that a hundred dollars what ended up being free anyways.

[00:19:06] So that's kind of how I've done it. And it's, it's work. Like I, I have a meeting right after we're recording this podcast with a guy who just booked me to do a full brand for him. You know, like it, it works. Bye. You have to be consistent. And that's the biggest thing. That's the biggest thing. Yeah.

[00:19:26] I'm curious how long

[00:19:28] Blake: [00:19:28] into posting the content...