Simon Dell (00:00)
Welcome to another CMO, there we go, straight in the first sentence and I've screwed it up. CMO Marketing Podcast, there we go. ⁓ My name is Simon Dell, I am the CEO of CMO, that's C-E-M-O-H.com. We are the largest fractional marketing network in Australia and probably the world. ⁓ I know we're gonna check that even if we aren't. So let's just say the world.

If you want to find out more about us, cmo.com, c-e-m-o-h.com, or find me on LinkedIn. Simon Dell, I'm very easy to find. We have with us a recurring guest. I would class her now as a recurring guest because she's been on this podcast a number of times. ⁓ One of our longest serving consultants, freelancers, contractors, whatever you want to call them. ⁓ Welcome to the show again, Christy Hunter.

Kristy Hunter (00:57)
Thank you so much, Simon. Love being here. Excited about today's chat.

Simon Dell (01:00)
you

⁓ first of all, let's

tell everyone who don't know who you are, ⁓ who you are.

Kristy Hunter (01:10)
Yeah.

So my name is Christy Hunter and I founded Hunter Marketing Co, which is a marketing strategy and implementation support consultancy. up to eight years now, I've been running that business and prior to that, I was in-house leading teams, ⁓ in agencies, and I've been across multiple areas of business ⁓ in that space. So marketing, branding, advertising and comms.

This is really short version.

Simon Dell (01:41)
Cool. I think if anyone

knows small to medium sized business marketing better than you, I don't think there's many people out there who would top you in your knowledge and your experience in that space. Is that fair to say?

Kristy Hunter (01:57)
Well, that is...

Well, that's a big claim. I'll take it though. It's, that's an amazing compliment. Thank you. ⁓ Look, I think that because I've been doing this ⁓ or have been in the industry for like 25 years now, ⁓ I've seen a lot and I've experienced a lot. yeah, there's not much that I haven't really seen in the business space and also what's worked from a marketing and brand perspective as well. yeah, there's,

Simon Dell (02:03)
There you go.

Kristy Hunter (02:29)
Yeah, there's always lots of stories I can tell.

Simon Dell (02:31)
Cool, cool, well

maybe we'll get to a few of those today. But we're gonna talk about, specifically we're gonna talk today about this content marketing explosion. And just before we started, you were gonna talk about something, ⁓ an opinion on why this is happening. And just to set the scene, we as a business have had a lot of people, a lot of influx of clients.

Kristy Hunter (02:36)
You

Simon Dell (02:58)
or clients, contacts, whatever it is, looking for that solution, that content marketing solution. It seems to have ramped up. It seems there are more people looking for it. It may just be that more people are coming to us, but I think you feel the same, and I think you have an opinion as to why that's happening.

Kristy Hunter (03:22)
Yeah, look, I think AI has definitely played a massive part in that and the opportunity is huge there. Well, I think a lot of businesses think, this is a huge opportunity for us ⁓ to become more visible, to put lots and lots more content out there because you can. But that doesn't mean necessarily that you should be pumping it out as much as some people are doing at the moment. So I think also

Simon Dell (03:51)
Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (03:51)
So, when it comes to marketing and marketing strategy, ⁓ I think there's a lot of business leaders and CEOs out there, ⁓ they go, this is an easy thing for us to do. It's less complicated than thinking of a full campaign. Like if we're putting out content on a regular basis, surely that's gonna help our business.

Simon Dell (04:15)
Yeah,

and I think we've probably we've made a rod for our back. I think market is by saying consistency, you know, consistency trumps creativity. ⁓ So to your point, I think everyone's thing guy. yes. Look, we have to be consistent with content. We have to keep doing this. We have to it just has to be ongoing. ⁓ And then subsequently, we then get this. We get this demand and we just get this.

Kristy Hunter (04:38)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (04:43)
Just volume of content out there. It just seems like it's never ending really.

Kristy Hunter (04:48)
Thank you.

Yes and it's coming getting to a point where it's becoming unhelpful because

Simon Dell (04:58)
Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (05:01)
For multiple reasons, know, what can you believe anymore? Just because, you know, we wrote this blog doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Like, it backed by, well, firstly, is it backed by strategy, but is it actually accurate? Are you putting out accurate information? ⁓ So, and, you know, for me and what I talk to my clients about, it's around high quality, meaningful content that actually is going to be helpful for your ideal client or existing client.

Simon Dell (05:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (05:31)
minutes.

Simon Dell (05:31)
Yeah, there's

a scale problem here. What I think we see with every business is as they themselves grow bigger, they become more sophisticated in their marketing, they feel that there is just, that means that they should be doing more marketing. And I think to your point, this content demand has exploded, but quality hasn't necessarily kept pace. Do you think that's a fair assessment?

Kristy Hunter (05:59)
That's

absolutely, absolutely. think we're all smart enough to see when AI has written it as well. And so I certainly am very aware of, you know.

Simon Dell (06:08)
and

Kristy Hunter (06:14)
great content, crap content, you know, a lot of the stuff that I'm seeing, particularly on LinkedIn at the moment is really poor, you know? ⁓ I got a lovely compliment by a few people the other day at a networking event and they saw a particular post that I put up and they're like, wow, that was just a really heartfelt...

piece of content and I said, yes, because I wrote it. It's, it's, it's human centered. You know, like I look, I'm

Simon Dell (06:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (06:48)
I think some of us, you know, out there, we can write and I'd say the people who feel like they can confidently write, please write it yourself. But I think for those people who wouldn't consider themselves as copywriters or writers, then they're using it as a tool that they're relying on constantly. And I talked about my clients who don't have that skill set necessarily, but I said,

Simon Dell (06:51)
Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (07:11)
If there's mistakes in it, ⁓ if you're sounding like you, like that's going to win ultimately, right? Like if you're not getting your punctuation right or whatever, use the words that you would when you're a conversation, you know, with people.

Simon Dell (07:13)
Mmm.

Mm.

Yeah, it's look,

okay. I'm going to throw this one at you because I don't necessarily agree with what you've said there. I'll, and I'll, and I'll, no, no, no. Well, I, I, yeah, look, we're, we're take the AI thing now, because I think that is the, you know, content.

Kristy Hunter (07:35)
Okay, surprise, surprise. He's going to have a different opinion on some things that I say.

Simon Dell (07:47)
I think your point earlier is that there's been a rise of content, you know, which is a paralleled with this rise of the use of AI. Yeah. So some people are going, Hey, fuck, it's easy to make content with AI. Let's go out there and do that. I was reading the article this morning about someone who's made this TV show, who's made a love Island version or was made of an AI version of love Island with fruit or something like that. I don't know if you've seen that on TikTok there, their one minute episode. I haven't watched an episode yet, but

Kristy Hunter (07:53)
because of AI. ⁓

Yep.

Okay... No.

Simon Dell (08:17)
it's reaching millions, tens of millions of people. It's ⁓ fruit-based love island made by AI. And people are going, some people are going, this is just more of this AI slop. But a lot of people are going, my God, this is so much fun. So here's my question, because I think there is this horrific, there's this horrific gray area at the moment where you can't define whether,

Kristy Hunter (08:18)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (08:46)
You're saying if someone's genuinely written something, let's put it on a spectrum, okay? So one end of the spectrum is someone has genuinely written something at the other end of the spectrum, AI has written it for them, okay? I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago, where I was...

Kristy Hunter (08:52)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (09:06)
talking about lot about marketing and all these kind of things and I was on it for about 45 minutes, right? I then took the transcription of that podcast and I gave that transcription to an AI tool and I said, I think there's some good blogs to be had out of the conversation that I've had using my knowledge and my experience and my background and can you please turn this into a blog? Now,

Kristy Hunter (09:34)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (09:35)
We eventually got, I think, four blogs out of that podcast. I didn't write a single word of those blogs. The AI did, but all based on what the AI had interpreted out of my podcast. Now the question then goes, who wrote that blog? Who wrote those blogs? Did I write those blogs or did the AI write those blogs?

Kristy Hunter (09:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, okay, so it's.

Yeah, so.

Well, the AI wrote it, but it based it off your like your existing content, your tone of voice, your point of view ⁓ and, you know, your the topics that you you obviously talked about. But I think.

Simon Dell (10:07)
Yeah.

So is

that AI slop, is that acceptable?

Kristy Hunter (10:22)
I think it could be AI slop. I'd have to analyze it. Well, it comes back to data, right? Like I would always go, right? How well is this piece of content performed? And I'd love to see the stats. Yeah.

Simon Dell (10:27)
What are you? Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny

because that because largely those things go onto our website and then they're sort of shared within our content platform. Do they go viral? No. Do they do they get picked up in search engines? Yes, maybe they do. Do they get thousand clicks? No. But again, the thing with us is that potentially they get one click, which then convinces somebody to contact us and we can't necessarily. You know, we can't set necessarily try that. I just think there's a gray area here and and and I have these.

Kristy Hunter (10:46)
here.

to your but I was just gonna say around that though there's a strategy behind that for you guys right like you have the goal of being shown or being served in the AI summary right and that's part of your strategy so that's helping that goal

Simon Dell (11:13)
Hmm.

Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You still not really convinced me. You still not really told me whether that's AI's written that or I I've written that because again, as you said, it's my tonight. But it's that's my tone of voice.

Kristy Hunter (11:35)
I think I said that's an AI thing. You're not

physically writing it.

Simon Dell (11:44)
No,

no, but then your point earlier said if you can write it, you should be writing it. But I'm like, I can write it. I just don't want to write it because there's a better way of me getting my my. So I will do that with this blog as well. I will sit there and I will go. Sorry, not this blog, this podcast, what we're recording now. I'll take this podcast and I'll sit there and give it to Claud and go, let's create a blog out of this. Make sure that you quote.

Kristy Hunter (11:53)
Yep.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (12:13)
Christie in it, in the blog, you know, make sure you quote me in it, but let's put a blog together that is, that we can share. And again, it boils down to, is that AI?

Kristy Hunter (12:21)
Yep.

Yeah, look, I think, yes, it is, but it's taking, it's taking, you know, it's pulling from a source, which is this, you know, at what we're producing here, right?

Simon Dell (12:35)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kristy Hunter (12:45)
⁓

And what we're saying, let's say we're everything we're saying is really accurate about marketing and content. And then it's pulling out, you point of view, our discussion points and pulling that into a blog. And I think if they pull, it, if it creates something good that you're running your eyes across and you're happy with it and it's accurate according to you, then that's how it should be. That's how I see AI. ⁓

Simon Dell (12:51)
Yeah, fair point, yeah.

Kristy Hunter (13:15)
be used really well and by doing that that's scalable.

Simon Dell (13:16)
Okay.

So that's an acceptable,

we're defining that as an acceptable use of AI in marketing. If it was, if you just said to AI, hey, I need a blog on content creation or influences in 2016, ⁓ you know, come up with something for me and it gave you 800 words and you just went, yeah, that looks good. Is that where we perhaps go, okay, well, that's not a legitimate marketing tactic. Okay.

Kristy Hunter (13:44)
Yes. Correct. And that

is what a lot of people are relying on. And that's what I'm talking about when I was discussing, you know, what's happening on LinkedIn at the moment. People are going because they're not an expert in that space and they're relying on ChachiPT or Claude to just create that content for them. And they're going, yeah, they will do post it. And I just that's

Simon Dell (13:51)
you

Kristy Hunter (14:12)
where I think most people are falling down.

Simon Dell (14:14)
Yeah, it's interesting because for those that have listened in to me in the past know that ⁓ I write science fiction as well. There we go, there's the book in case nobody's bought that. ⁓ But the interesting thing is there's a big kind of, there was a book pulled from the New York bestsellers list the other week or something because there'd been accusations that

Kristy Hunter (14:28)
Yes. ⁓ Plug.

Simon Dell (14:44)
It had been written by AI. I have long conversations with Claude about the chapters that I write. And Claude never tells me what to write, but Claude tells me when a sentence is good or a sentence is bad. And it's interesting that I find that very, not hard, but I go, so I give you one, I give you one simple

Kristy Hunter (14:47)
Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

Simon Dell (15:13)
Example is that I wrote a sentence that says neither of which looked like they were excited. Okay. So that's eight words. Neither of which looked like they were excited. Claude reads it and goes, no, it should actually be neither of whom. Right. So it's asking me to correct. It's asking me to correct a grammar mistake instead of which I should be using the word whom. ⁓ and I go,

Kristy Hunter (15:33)
yeah. Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Simon Dell (15:42)
Okay, so is that acceptable in writing to be using? Because an editor would have picked that up, a human editor would have picked that up.

Kristy Hunter (15:49)
Yes, correct, yep. Yep, I think that's acceptable.

Simon Dell (15:52)
And I go, okay,

okay. So, all right. then, so that one's acceptable, right? So you sit there and go, let me find it. Let me find another one because there's a, this is a good one here. ⁓ It was somebody beckoned her down with a wave, nervously flashing a glance towards the ECC door.

as he did so, okay? The claw turns around and says, you don't need the word as ⁓ he did so there. He said, it's unnecessary, cut it out.

So effectively the Claude is rewriting the sentence, reducing the sentence by four words for me and saying, you don't need those words in there. The sentence scans without that. So again, is that the AI tool writing that or am I writing that?

Kristy Hunter (16:33)
yeah?

Yes.

Well, you've written it, it's just telling you to cut it, right? So.

Simon Dell (16:58)
Sure.

And that's where you suddenly get into this horrific area of what's AI and what isn't AI. Because those examples can be sort of littered through my conversations with Claude, where it's telling to maybe restructure a sentence or all those kinds of things. So you just go, at what point does it stop being you and start being the AI tool? And I don't think you and I are going to find an answer to that. And we've kind of gone off on a tangent about that. ⁓

Kristy Hunter (17:06)
yet.

Right.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (17:28)
But when it comes to this content idea, we've got all these companies producing this stuff where you just go, these are really gray areas. Is this the company talking to us or is this the AI talking to us or is this the marketing manager's idea converted into AI? There's so much ambiguity in this space at the moment that it's really hard to understand.

Kristy Hunter (17:51)
Yep.

I agree. I agree totally. I just think that, you know, marketers, business leaders who are, you know, in charge of content, that it comes back to what are they hoping to achieve? Are they solving a problem? ⁓ Is it meaningful? it human centered? Because when those things aren't present, it doesn't mean much.

Simon Dell (18:08)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm. I totally agree. So let's ask a couple of other questions, because you've talked about ROI, and I want to touch on ROI in a minute, but before you do that...

One of the other challenges that we've got, and I think one of the other reasons for this explosion of content, is there are so many channels now competing for attention. And I feel that that's always been a thing. There's always so many channels. But when you look 15 years ago, you were going, ⁓ it's Instagram and it's Facebook, and that's what you had to worry about. But now you've got this short form videos, you've got podcasts, you've got newsletters, you've got LinkedIn, you've got all the other social media channels, you've got all the streaming services as well.

So how does a marketer decide where they should be actually concentrating their effort?

Kristy Hunter (19:10)
I always go back to where is your ideal client, you know, and there look, there could be across multiple channels, but where do they mostly hang out? Where are they? ⁓

Simon Dell (19:13)
Mm.

Kristy Hunter (19:23)
researching where are they kind of sitting and consuming content the most? Where's the biggest opportunity for your business? So in any of my strategies I could say yeah you could be all across all these different channels but ultimately what's gonna you know if we focus on one or two and go hard on those you're gonna make the most impact right? Like you can be stretched because you know again it's the type of content you

know

which is it short form is it is it written is it video you know what is it so it's all about making sure that it's manageable also for teams ⁓

Simon Dell (19:55)
Mm.

It's, think, I think

the other challenge, I throw that one back at you as well now, not that I'm going to argue with everything you say today, but you know, it makes for better content anyway. My question to you with this is that I then feel that back in the day, so let's say 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you could really define those channels and those content channels around.

Kristy Hunter (20:12)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (20:29)
some level of kind of demographic, right? You'd sit there and go like Snapchat. Snapchat I feel still has its own demographic. That's largely teenagers and those kinds of things, right? But you look at the channels today and you just go, God, they are fractured by demographics and they're fractured by, you know, content. It's hugely varied in terms of the content that you find on these channels. How do they deal with that? Because it's...

Kristy Hunter (20:33)
Yeah. Yep.

correct.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah? Yep.

Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Simon Dell (20:58)
It's hard going, where am I going to find 35 year old men who want to buy a car? I mean, where the fuck do you find them now? It's like, you know, there is no chat. There is no, there is no channel for that.

Kristy Hunter (21:08)
Hahaha!

yeah yeah and i think this is when it comes back to

What's the strategy? What's the message? You know, what is the campaign and being really targeted? And it's the test and learn optimize that I talk about all the time with my clients as well. Like, you know, there's a starting point. If things aren't working, then we adjust and then we go from there. But it's, you know, is what you're saying or selling compelling to that particular audience and, you know, creating some

Simon Dell (21:19)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Kristy Hunter (21:47)
⁓ amazing content ⁓ is the starting point.

Simon Dell (21:53)
Is

from a ROI perspective, is it as simple as going, I spent this much money, we did this, how many views did we get, ⁓ know, how many, my dog's about to bark now just to ruin the entire recording because the postman's rocked up. Anyway, ⁓ but is it as simple as counting, you know, I've sold this many widgets because I did this much thing, is there other?

Other ways of sort of measuring return on these things.

Kristy Hunter (22:26)
But isn't that the biggest thing that you can focus on though? Because isn't that the point of if you're getting a certain number of sales and you're achieving ROI, isn't that the point? Like why else are we doing content apart from building brand and...

Simon Dell (22:30)
Woof!

Because I find isn't it

wouldn't it when it consider a hard ⁓ It's hard to draw a line between hey I posted something on Instagram and it did this I mean that in an ideal world that would be the case, but you've got brand awareness you've got

Lots of other lots of other benefits of being on social media. I often turn around to people and say hey social media is often is just social proof. Like you know you run an advert somewhere you put you put a billboard on a on a or a back end of a bus. ⁓

Kristy Hunter (23:01)
Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (23:18)
Someone goes then to your Instagram and goes. wow. These guys are really active They then click on the link through to your website. They then pick up the phone and fucking call you They've seen you four times all the way through But and then you just turn around and say where did you find out about us and they'll go? ⁓ I just called you they don't Equate to this. Hey, I saw you on the back of a bus. So you've got this attribution problem. So How does content?

Kristy Hunter (23:39)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (23:46)
How do you solve that question when it comes to, when you think about attribution? It's so kind of, it's so muddy.

Kristy Hunter (23:57)
Bye.

Yeah, I agree. It's messy. that's like attribution is the hardest thing for marketers to gather all that data and understand. mean, I'm working really closely with one client at the moment. And, you know, we've been working on this for probably 12 to 24 months. ⁓ And there's systems issues. know, it's a challenge. It's an absolute challenge. But if you're looking at the data on a monthly basis, you know, you'll get to understand

what is working and what's not across whatever channel you're focusing on essentially. So, but I agree with you, you you have to have, you know, that social proof, you know, use certain channels, you know, for when people are going through that decision making process, they're going to be checking, what are they posting on LinkedIn, you know, and then going to the website and making a decision, you know. So absolutely. But again, this, think this is a different conversation around, you know, where, what channels,

Simon Dell (24:45)
Mm.

Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (24:57)
best for growth or what activities are best for specific growth goals. ⁓ But I think there's absolutely importance on having a certain, ⁓ using certain channels for content. ⁓ But I think sometimes making some traction across that space is you've got to add an ads campaign on top of that. You know what I mean?

Simon Dell (25:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristy Hunter (25:27)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (25:28)
Okay, look, last question and just if everyone for everyone's benefit, these five questions I had here were all done by Claude. So I just, you know, that's from a content perspective. I'm I'm sorry, the following five were done by the other five were done by Claude. ⁓ You know, so I and that's that's

Kristy Hunter (25:40)
gave you that first idea that was my that was me

Simon Dell (25:52)
That's to me my argument is I often go, if I had more time, I would be able to produce what Claude is producing. To me, content is about a ⁓ reduction of time or an increase in efficiencies, however you wanna phrase it. So I sit there and go, the five questions that I came up with or that Claude came up with were based on me giving Claude a

three sentence, four sentence brief, I could have done those questions, right? There's no doubt about that, but I've saved myself 10 minutes, 15 minutes thinking those up, right? So that to me is the benefit and that's how I think we should be looking at content. Could have I produced this with, you know, a thousand monkeys at typewriters? Yes, absolutely, right? But I've done it.

Kristy Hunter (26:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yes, yes.

Simon Dell (26:50)
quicker and more efficiently using this large language learning model.

Kristy Hunter (26:53)
Yeah. Yeah, I

think that there's something to say about, you know, looking at your current workflow and going, right, how can we optimize or, you know, move through these things a lot faster using AI without a doubt. Again, I talk to my clients about that all the time. You can achieve so much more when you're, you know, looking at it that way without a doubt.

Simon Dell (27:15)
Yeah. Yeah. Look, the last

question then actually is quite an interesting one based on what we've just said there. It's the sustainability question because keeping up with content demand is, is this is Claude's, these are Claude's words, not mine. So judge, judge however you like. Keeping up with content demand is genuinely exhausting for marketing teams. What does a sustainable content operation actually look like?

And what does a burnt out one look like before it collapses?

Kristy Hunter (27:49)
Okay. Again, I think it works. You've got to look at current resources and what are their capabilities or skill set, right? ⁓ Do you have any kind of existing process around your marketing function? If you don't, that is the place to start. ⁓ You know, when I've delivered a strategy to a new client, I give them those frameworks because they don't know.

So I think we have to guide ⁓ business leaders and marketing teams there ⁓ to go, right, this is a sustainable framework. I've got a framework that I use for my business, but also for my client's business. And it's again about doing things smarter, not harder. So creating one piece of hero content and then repurposing it, pull bits out of it and use that across your socials, the email marketing, whatever it may be.

Simon Dell (28:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (28:47)
So I think that it's about creating those frameworks first and foremost to ensure that it is achievable, sustainable for the business.

And that's and that's really what it's about. also like, ⁓ sorry, you go. I was just going to say and just stick to it for God's sake, because it's that shiny object syndrome thing, right? Because they'll go, right, we've got this in flow. We can introduce something else now. And sure you could, but like get some momentum happening, get some results happening before you introduce the next thing.

Simon Dell (29:03)
What is it like?

Now go on, go.

Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

What does it look like when it's about to collapse was the second half of that question. What's a red flag? Just one red flag that you see where you just go, yeah, this is not sustainable or it's about to fall apart or, know, what do you see?

Kristy Hunter (29:52)
Look, I think ⁓ when content is falling flat, like...

Simon Dell (29:57)
Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (29:58)
you know, if you're looking at the data like and you're going, well, gosh, we're doing a lot here, but we don't really, you know, we're not really seeing any results here. ⁓ And I think the other part is just what I just said, which is, you know, people going, you can do all this. ⁓ like surely you can do more, push more onto the marketing team, you know, or whoever's doing the content. ⁓ So that that's kind of what I see.

Simon Dell (30:06)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the interesting thing, I think you said there as well, is where it's about repurposing content. You don't necessarily, the whole shitty management phrase works smart and not harder, right? And an example of that will be Wednesday morning, I'm going to do a podcast on my own. ⁓ Just talk for 20 minutes, because I love the sound of my own voice.

Kristy Hunter (30:39)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (30:51)
⁓ But I'm gonna talk for 20 minutes about how to price yourself. Right? And I could do that with you, I could do that with Tommy, I could do that with Josh, right? I could do that with different people. But again, I'm just gonna sort through my thoughts in terms of all the reasons and ways of pricing yourself as a consultant that I've heard over the years. And I fucking heard a lot of them, right? So I'm gonna just do that and go, okay, well there's,

Kristy Hunter (30:56)
Right.

Yep.

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Simon Dell (31:21)
five different ways of pricing yourself and here are the five ways and none of them are right, none of them are wrong. It's what suits you in the particular time and space that you're in at that moment, right? But I'll record that and that will go on to our podcast channel. It'll then go into YouTube, I'll share it through LinkedIn, I will then get it transcribed, I'll create a blog for it.

Kristy Hunter (31:34)
All right.

All right.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (31:49)
But also more importantly, I will then take it to, we've got an ebook about things that you've got to do before you become a fractional chief, a fractional CMO. I will add that as a new section within the ebook and re add the ebook back to the download page so people can have it for free, et cetera, et cetera. So just in that, what I think is probably going to be a 20 minute of my time, 20 minutes of my time.

we are repurposing maybe seven or eight different things for four or five different channels. And that I think is where businesses need to go, okay, we don't need to create that separately for every channel, we just need to do it once and repurpose it.

Kristy Hunter (32:28)
Yep.

Absolutely. It's a very smart way of doing it.

Simon Dell (32:41)
Yeah, and I think a lot of a lot of businesses don't quite get that yet.

Kristy Hunter (32:48)
No, because I think they're stuck on, well, what should we put out? And what are we putting out? Why are we putting it out? Like that's, you know, it's the, yeah, they don't know how to do a lot of that. So.

Simon Dell (32:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Your last last tip for you from today, you know, obviously there's a lot in what you've said today. There's a lot of, know, I think everything you said around process, measuring, et cetera, et cetera, all of those really, really good things. Is there anything else that you feel we haven't touched on when it comes to that content side of things? I know we've kind of gone off on a few.

a few tangents, but we do that every time we have a conversation. that's not to be unexpected. Anything else that you feel that there's something that you can say to other businesses who are sitting staring in the abyss of a content execution plan?

Kristy Hunter (33:30)
few tangents.

Okay.

Yeah, look, I think that ⁓ some businesses just get into a rhythm of just putting stuff out ⁓ and not having the strategy behind it.

because there's a lot of people going, ⁓ gosh, I don't know what to put out this week or next week. you know, what's the topic that's going to resonate with my ideal client or audience? ⁓ But if you have a solid strategy to begin with, that's all in there. The frame like the frameworks as well can be put into that. You know, how do we do this? Like what what is the content that we're putting out and for what purpose? Who are we speaking to? What are the sort of results do we want to get from this? So the strategy is like a very solid.

starting point for your business and then you can go right well we shouldn't divert from that then test that out for at least 90 days are you executing it well are you you know getting the content out at a high standard ⁓ it's not content for the sake of content it's being really intentional about it so that that is where I would just you know

Simon Dell (34:34)
Hmm.

Mm.

Kristy Hunter (34:59)
divert your attention to that side of it.

Simon Dell (35:01)
I'm going to argue with you on that as well,

right?

Kristy Hunter (35:05)
Of course you are. Why?

Simon Dell (35:10)
Why

must you always argue with everybody? Why must you do this? It's one of those, I've become very much more self-aware in the past 10 years about what a pain in the ass I can be. But it's like that, the interesting thing is that doesn't stop me being a pain in the ass. It just means that I'm more aware of me being a pain in the ass. No, no, but this is a serious no.

Kristy Hunter (35:18)
Hahaha

Hahaha

No. ⁓

Simon Dell (35:35)
I think there is an I think everything you've said is absolutely 100 % true and valid and all that. And I don't want anyone to think that what you're saying is not right because it is absolutely right. I'd also then, but I would also kind of say to businesses, it's okay just to start doing something without a plan, right? I think if you are sitting there, I just want to do something is spend three months just producing anything and find

Kristy Hunter (35:55)
Sure, sure.

Simon Dell (36:05)
Find your sweet spot. Find what's good for you. Find a rhythm. Find a channel. Find a medium. If it's blogging, it's blogging. If it's taking photos, it's taking photos. If it's doing, I tried doing illustrations once for two cents, like comic strips, like fun comic strips. And I was like, I like doing these, but are they gonna get any cut through, you know? But fuck it, let's give it a go. Let's try these things out. So I would say to you,

Yes, have a plan. Yes, understand your target market. Yes, all those kind of things. Sometimes just fucking do something. know, something that you're go, and let's just experiment with this. that a fair counter argument to what you've said?

Kristy Hunter (36:51)
I suppose look I don't disagree in the sense that you know if you're feeling creative and you want to put something out there Yeah, do that but just have a purpose, know, like it has to relate to your business I've seen so much content put out and I go what does this business even do? Like it just doesn't relate So so be creative absolutely test it out. Put it yeah put it out there, but bring it back to why are you doing it?

Simon Dell (37:02)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristy Hunter (37:21)
Like make sure there's a purpose behind it.

Simon Dell (37:22)
Yeah, it's

funny because I go, a couple of, six months ago I was sitting with some friends of mine who I play poker with, once every two months, once every three months, right? And I said to them, I wanna play some ball games, I wanna play some big ball games, there's loads of ball games on the wall behind me, Ones that take three hours, whatever. And I said, let's just put a post somewhere, let's see who we can find, who else wants to do this.

⁓ And I put a post out there and said, hey, we all want to go down to the pub and play some board games. Is anyone interested in doing this on a Friday night? And I ⁓ tell this story a lot because I go, I thought I might get five or six people. I'd have been happy with five or six people, right? That Friday night we had 25 people turn up and we're like, okay, shit.

Kristy Hunter (38:14)
Wow.

Simon Dell (38:17)
I then posted all the photos of those 25 people drinking beer and playing ball games at our local pub. And I posted them in a Facebook group, a 4069 group, right, for my postcode.

And I said, hey, if anyone else is interested in doing this again, because we had a great time, I've got a little WhatsApp group, join the WhatsApp group. We have 220 people in that WhatsApp group now.

Kristy Hunter (38:43)
You had purpose and it's human centered.

Simon Dell (38:43)
I,

it could, yeah, no, okay, okay. All right. You've countered me with that argument, but my point was, but, but okay. So then I sat there and went and out of that, group, then a guy says, Hey, I want you to come and do this in another suburb. And I'm like, Jesus Christ. Like I can't, he goes, I've got a venue that you can use in another suburb. And I'm like, and I'll give it to you for free. So to your point,

Kristy Hunter (38:52)
Hahaha

Simon Dell (39:12)
Sometimes I think what we're getting at here is when it comes to content purpose and being human centered. Those those two things, there has to be a tick in those two boxes, right? There has to be a tick in purpose. There has to be a tick in human centered strategy, long term objectives. Fuck that for the minute, right? You can, you can work that out as you go, right? You can, but you can, yes, you can, you go.

Kristy Hunter (39:35)
No, no. You can,

can, you can, but don't go on for 12 months like that.

Simon Dell (39:43)
No, okay,

okay, okay, okay. All right, we're compromised. I don't know, I think there's some things you could go on for 12 months ago. I still don't know why I'm doing this. I still don't know the long-term objective. Look, in businesses, it's much more serious. We've got to talk about, there's money involved here. You need to make money, all those kinds. There's time, there's money, there's people involved. If you have got that flexibility,

Kristy Hunter (40:00)
Yes. Yes. Yes. And time. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Dell (40:12)
I don't think it's, I don't think there's, you've got, if you've got that flexibility, you've got a little bit more leeway around time and put, you know, and all those kinds of things. So I just don't want, I do understand everything you say, but I just don't want everyone to get caught up in the thing where they go, you know, Christy says I've got to be planned and we've got to be doing this and this thing, unless we do this. I, and that's unfair me suggesting that that's, it's all your fault.

But

No, but my point is I think there is a balance between, I think there's a balance between actively planning and sometimes just doing something and seeing what happens and seeing how it resonates with your market and your target market and those things.

Kristy Hunter (41:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, I just think having that strategy in the plan gives you more confidence ultimately, right? Like it gives you direction. And so, yep.

Absolutely have and you can play within that plan. You know, you can test the waters, but just have a structure, you know, go right. I'm going to post this every month. Okay. Have some fun with the type of content. Absolutely. But just because if you, you know, all over the place with it, you're just not going to ultimately achieve anything.

Simon Dell (41:15)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe this is intrinsically the different personalities between you and I.

Kristy Hunter (41:44)
I was just going

to say that I'm planned and organized mostly and you're a little looser. And this is where I have to pull you up from time to time.

Simon Dell (41:52)
We always joke in the business. Yeah,

this is where we joke in the business is that we always sort of made the comparison between like it was the Starship Enterprise, whereas I'm Captain Kirk and Matt was like Scotty in the engine room, right? So Scotty in the engine room was no, no, we can't do that Captain. It's gonna take six hours and all this kind of thing. And Captain Kirk's going, let's land on this planet. Let's meet these aliens. Let's do all these kinds of things. And it's that sort of.

Kristy Hunter (42:10)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (42:21)
you know, somehow those things work together and the, you know, and I think a lot of good businesses have that balance between somebody who's not necessarily the handbrake, but someone who's holding the reins knows when to sort of pull back sometimes. But if you don't have a business where someone's going, let's do this, let's do this, let's do this, it can be very, it can be very slow. They can be very,

Kristy Hunter (42:31)
Yeah.

Yep.

Simon Dell (42:47)
very slow to evolve or grow and those kind of things unless there's throwing those ridiculous ideas out there every now and again.

Kristy Hunter (42:50)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Yeah,

absolutely. I think it's a balance. Gotta find the balance. If that's possible.

Simon Dell (42:58)
Anyway, what was supposed

to be a 20 minute conversation that turned into a 42 minute conversation. So whether anyone will listen to any of this whatsoever, I don't know. hopefully we'll get, hopefully we'll get some good blog and some snippets out of it as well. So ⁓ look, thank you very much for your time. Where can people find you if they need to find you other than the CMO website, which they can obviously find you on that.

Kristy Hunter (43:10)
You

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, definitely look me up on LinkedIn, Christy Hunter, fractional marketing ⁓ officer and marketing advisor. And I'm also at ⁓ HunterMarketing.co on my website.

Simon Dell (43:41)
Thank you very much for your time. is always fantastic having an argument with you and I appreciate your time.

Kristy Hunter (43:47)
Yeah,

my pleasure. Thanks, Simon. See you later. Bye.

Simon Dell (43:51)
Talk to you later. Bye.