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Why Content Marketing Trumps Ugly Websites

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App Masters10:22Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Consistent content marketing brings in clients even when the website is ugly. Interviewing experts, learning, executing and teaching builds trust that removes any need for paid marketing or client hunting.

Key takeaways

  • Trust built through content won customers, not website design. 5:32
    • The first podcast site was a plain page he designed and built himself, and it still brought in customers.
    • He later added a one-page site with logos and a contact form, which he rates about a 2 or 3 out of 5.
  • Interviewing admired experts started the content engine. 3:38
    • He cold-contacted people he had read about and asked them to be his first podcast guests, and they said yes.
    • He started the podcast in May 2013 while still working full time.
  • The loop of learn, execute, then teach turns content into expertise people trust. 7:02
    • The interviews worked as free consulting from guests, which he applied to his own apps and then shared with the audience.
  • That trust brought clients without outreach or paid ads, and let him leave his job. 4:10
    • By the fourth or fifth month, listeners were asking him for marketing help, and he gave notice in September 2013.
    • An app launch started at $500 and now costs about six times that, with a team of three.
  • Consistency is what makes the strategy work. 8:46
    • He has published almost 500 episodes in three years.
    • A handful of other app podcasts have dropped off because they could not keep up.

People just consistently come to me looking for advice. That's what content marketing can do for you.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 From cassette tapes to the corporate ladder

A long-held wish to run his own business only became real when other podcasters showed a smaller, balanced way to do it.

  • Seeing others earn well without a huge company finally pushed him toward entrepreneurship. 1:52
    • He sold cassette tapes to classmates in sixth grade, so the entrepreneur itch started early.
    • He earned a business degree with a computer science minor, then kept climbing the corporate ladder.
    • Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas inspired him.
    • Growing up in the Bay Area, he assumed success meant raise millions and sell for billions.
    • They showed him he could make money and still live a balanced life.

2:18 From a first app to a podcast

A successful first app gave him a business to talk about, and interviewing heroes in that space became the podcast.

  • A quick first app win in 2011 hooked him on app building. 2:44
    • He built it in Corona with modified code templates, and it reached number eight in educational games on launch week.
    • The app was free and brought thousands of downloads right away.
    • He chose Corona over Objective-C because his HTML and PHP background made it easy. It is based on Lua.
    • His son was 18 months old, so he coded early mornings, nights and weekends.
  • The podcast idea came from the app business he already had. 3:26
    • He wanted a podcast but did not want another entrepreneurship show.
    • His first guests were Sylvain from Apptamin and Tope from App Design Vault.
    • His marketing background as a growth hacker at a San Francisco startup gave him some skill, though he felt he knew little then.
    • He gave three months' notice, which he says was probably too long.
    • He expected to earn from courses or his own apps, not from an agency.

5:11 Demand pulls him into an agency

Requests from listeners pushed him into the agency work he had resisted.

  • He resisted an agency because services do not scale. 5:54
    • Growing up in the Bay Area taught him to build a product and sell it.
    • He had no other plan for making money yet.
    • His rule was you gotta build a product you gotta sell it.
    • He turned down clients even after the first site had brought him customers.
  • Steady requests made him add a simple service page. 6:12
    • Enough people kept asking for marketing help that he changed his mind.
    • Learning from guests was enough to draw people in.
    • He did not have to share much of what he learned at first.
    • Executing came next, so the order became learn, execute, teach.

7:11 A lean team and wider content

Staying small keeps his services affordable and leaves room for family.

  • A team of three keeps the work affordable and the life balanced. 7:54
    • He serves developers, startups and major companies.
    • He no longer feels he must do everything himself.
    • He balances agency days with being a dad and husband.
    • He expects to charge more as the team gets better.
  • Content now grows beyond the podcast. 8:36
    • The team is adding blog posts and webinars.
    • It all started with interviews of his heroes.
    • He credits the system he kept running.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency and podcast host. A podcast built on interviewing admired people in the app space became the lead source for a marketing agency, with no paid marketing and no outbound client search. The lesson is that consistent content, backed by learning, executing and teaching, earns trust that brings customers to you even with a very ugly website.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript247 lines
0:00

coming up I'm going to share why content marketing trunks ugly and I mean butt ugly websites every single day of the week and why when you have a proper content marketing strategy in place you'll never have to look for clients or customers stay tuned oh hey what is up at nation is Steve P young founder of app masters dot co the place you go when you want action packed content in the app space now I want to share with you a little bit of my backstory and why I believe content marketing has really allowed me to quite frankly live the life of my dreams okay now just give you a little backstory back when I was just a mere little Steve p young in the sixth grade I actually cuz it's old cassette tapes to my classmates and i wanted it so i was being entrepreneur back at a very young age I didn't really know it at the time it was just something I want to do for fun is something I can make money with

1:19

so I did it but as I grew up I said hey I really do want to be an entrepreneur run my own business that's what I want to do but for some reason or another I just kept climbing the corporate ladder so I got a degree in business and a minor in CS computer science and I knew that I would somehow mesh the two together business and technology something that I've eventually done but I didn't know at the time and I just kept climbing the corporate ladder climbing climbing climbing till finally something hit me I guess listening to a lot of the people like Pat Flynn seeing John Lee Dumas do his thing inspired me that hey I don't have to have like a huge company I growing up in the Bay Area i thought i had a raise millions and sell for billions but these guys are showing me a way where you can make money and still live a balanced life and this is what I loved to do this what I get to do every single day of the week

2:18

so I want to share with you how it all started so in 2011 I started making apps I my son was 18 months at the time and I said hey I want to get into this game let me start creating some apps so I picked up corona which was the only thing I could really learn tried to learn objective-c and just went but I picked up corona because I had a little bit of HTML PHP type of background that picked up that language pretty easily was based off a lua so i made my first appt found some templates some code templates out there modified it and to my needs and i published the app and it did phenomenal it was number eight under educational games on launch week so this is 2011 at the time it was a free app I was casing I was getting thousands of downloads right there immediately I was hooked but I still do it on the side you know waking up early nights and weekend coding on bart doing it all on the side till 2013 the rolls around and I started

3:15

constantly listen to podcasts still at the time I said I want to do a podcast but I wanna do an entrepreneurship like everybody else I was like I don't know I don't know what I'm gonna do it with then so it hit me one day I was like you know what you have this app business why don't you an apps are continuing growing why don't you just interview people that you really admire in the app space and I did that and at the time I didn't know it but this was my first step into content marketing and I started interviewing some of the heroes in my space so it started out with just people i knew from the area from the app space cell van from abdomen and then tow pay from app design ball i read about them I knew of them reach out to them cold would you want to be my very first guest on this podcast they said yes and I started interviewing people and really learning from them really learning learning learning learning and then

4:10

finally around I would say the fourth or fifth month that I was doing it still again doing on the side people started coming to me for marketing help now I have a marketing background I was a growth hacker for a start-up in San Francisco so I knew a little bit but the time I didn't know anything but they started coming and coming and coming which then gave me the confidence that was the beginning may of 2013's started the podcast September 2013 I decided to finally give notice three months is probably a little too long to give notice by gave notice to my boss we had a great relationship and said hey at the end this year I'm gonna leave I'm gonna start my own company and do my own thing so enough of the audience kept coming to me that I was able to leave corporate life and really run the podcast and agency now at the time I didn't know again what it was going to be because the agency at the time was he even though

5:03

there I thought I was going to make money selling courses or doing some or making apps that's how I thought it was going to be but because i purely focus on content marketing which was really me getting free consulting from my guess that's what my content marketing was was getting free consulting for my guests learning from them and then executing for my abs and then my own apps and then sharing that with the audience I started building up enough trust with people that they started coming to me for app marketing help i'm going to show you i'm going to show you right now the very first web site that i had when i launched the podcast isn't this an ugly piece of thing I built this all myself I designed this all myself but this was a very first version of the website that got me customers and still I resisted I resisted bringing on clients I didn't want to do an agency because I grew up in the Bay Area it doesn't scale you

6:02

gotta build a product you gotta sell it right and so what did I do is that okay well frankly at the time I didn't know how I was gonna make money and enough people are kept coming to me and saying I won't marketing help so I put up a page on my website I had changed the website around a little bit made it a little bit prettier even though it wasn't that pretty went from like a 22 may be out five hang on the hot scale but I put up a one pager I'm gonna show you that and you can see really simple one-page website some logos on air on there in the contact form again because why I was consistently creating content in my form of content still at the time was just doing the podcast learning from others and when I'm learning people started coming to me this is brilliant right I come on all you got to do is learn do we thought that I don't have to share a lot of the content that i learned i just have to just keep

7:00

learning essentially and then i started executing obviously that's the key to learn execute and then teach teach what you what you learn in what you've learned from have EF case now but finally now we are pretty much three years in to the agency and me being on my own I've got a brand new website learned a lot more and that one-pager man it's crazy to think that we're charging what we charge now six times you know we started out mere five hundred dollars for an app launch now we're charging six times even that as we get better we're probably can charge more just level up our game but it's just amazing to see what we're where it all started it was all about just interviewing people learning from people and consistently doing it and then executing and then teaching and sharing some of the winds through that execution there's allowed me to really live a life where I get to balance the days of being

8:00

a dad and husband and then obviously having an agency to and now I come to you with a team of three of us right now there's three of us but that's enough to lean enough where I can still be affordable to any developers and to startups and to like major companies as well and still you know really do amazing things for them but keep it lean enough where I don't feel like I have to do everything myself anymore so I love our team right now Mary and thank you help to grow for many years with you guys and I just want to tell you that's what content marketing has done and now we're starting to create more blog posts we're starting to do more webinars we're starting to do more content but it all started just because we interviewed I interviewed some of my heroes because system we kept doing it now almost 500 episodes in three years later and a few of the app podcast have fallen not just a few actually handful have fallen off

9:01

the wayside they don't do anymore the kantkiss system keep up that's what it is consistently producing content and then teaching it and then executing on it and that has allowed me to not do any paid marketing really not even look for clients people just consistently come to me looking for advice that's what content marketing can do for you and in my next video I'm going to share a super super ninja hack on how can you how can you how you can use content marketing to attract your target market to have them coming to you it's one of my favorite content marketing hacks in the whole wide world I'm gonna share what I'm gonna share with you I'm killing my T's actually killing my T's so I hope you join me next week wait it's my favorite content marketing hacked in the whole wide world it's something I developed by was in corporate life and something I'm going to share with you that if you just

10:05

start getting started in content marketing well it'll ship it will prove to you that you can use content to attract your target market and have them eventually become your customer all right stay tuned for that bye