Heidi Cohen Interviews Scott Aughtmon
Q: What’s your best piece of advice for readers looking to improve their marketing?
I think that the biggest error that content marketers or marketers make is believing that they can create desire for their product or service.
Famed copywriter Eugene Schwartz gave the best advice I’ve heard about this in his book Breakthrough Advertising…
“This is the copy writer’s task: not to create this mass desire – but to channel and direct it. Actually, it would be impossible for any one advertiser to spend enough money to actually create this mass desire. He can only exploit it. And he dies when he tries to run against it. Let me repeat. This mass desire must already be there. It must already exist. You cannot create it and you cannot fight it. But you can – and must – direct it, channel it. Focus it onto your particular product.”
You cannot create a desire for your product or service. That’s impossible to do – even for a legend like Eugene Schwartz! That means that it doesn’t matter if you love your product. All that matters is that your prospects desire it.
Q: What was the inspiration for your book?
I’ve been writing about content marketing for 4 years and during that time I’ve shared a lot of valuable ideas that people have really resonated with. I knew that those ideas are still important and still needed, so I decided to compile them all together in one place and pull out “content marketing hacks” that people could use as takeaways. The result is my book 51 Content Marketing Hacks.
Q: What is the key concept behind your book?
I already mentioned the way that I came up with it, so I won’t repeated that. But I’d say that the key concept behind the book is this: Creating content to market your business or organization can be an incredibly powerful tool. But there’s a problem. In a world where content has become a commodity, creating engaging content that stands out from the generic norm has become incredibly important.
So the purpose of my book is to give the reader 51 hacks or “clever solutions” to the problems that individuals, businesses, and organizations face when it comes to creating engaging content that their audience will notice, consume, and enjoy.
Q: What do you want readers to take away from your book?
I have packed my book with content marketing examples from history, television, popular products, and more. I want readers to walk away feeling more inspired and feeling more capable of implementing successful methods that will allow them tap into the power of content marketing.
Download a preview of 51 Content_Marketing_Hacks
Q: How do you describe yourself professionally?
I named my business “RAMP”, because whether it is through content creation, consulting, or some other form of assistance, I help businesses go (or grow) to new levels. I do this on a strategic level by helping businesses uncover new income streams or underutilized assets. For businesses that want to focus on content marketing, I help them create or improve their content marketing strategy.
Q: What are 1-3 books that inspired you?
I am an obsessive-compulsive reader. I am usually reading 5 or more books at the same time, so it’s very difficult to pick 1-3 books that have most inspired my work or career, because I could name so many. But I’ll give you five that I can think of right now:
The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle by Jim Rohn
The Success System That Never Fails by W. Clement Stone
Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
Q: What is the biggest challenge that you’ve had to overcome in your life or career?
I’d say that the biggest challenge was the one that propelled me into the business arena. Around 1999, I put up a website in a small, music sub-genre and I wanted to figure out how to build traffic.
It was during that time that I began to read everything I could about marketing. I read every online-guru there was in the late 90s, every classic marketing book, or current marketing book I could get my hands on.
And in the process I found out that I not only had an interest in marketing, but my mind was wired in that way. I grew that small site to become probably one of the top 5 of so sites in that niche. This began me on the path that I am still on today.
Q: What’s something unusual or fun that most people don’t know about you?
I’ll give you an unusual fact and then a fun one:
Unusual Fact = I was kidnapped by father at the end of 4th grade class and didn’t see my mother for about a year and a half.
Fun Fact = I have a black belt in a very unique form of martial arts called “Shorinji Tae Gar.” It was a hybrid style of martial arts that combined what my instructor believed were the best techniques and mindsets of eight martial arts which included: Tae kwon do, Judo, Jujitsu, Kenpo, Aikido, Tai Chi, Shorin Ryu and Shorinji Ryu
Q: Is there a piece of content, a social media campaign or a marketing campaign that you worked on that you’re particularly proud of?
I am most proud of something I came up with called 21 Types of Content We Crave.
I came up with the idea for this infographic one day when I began thinking about the common content themes that appeal to people across a wide range of audiences. I had the infographic created and then I submitted it to ContentMarketingInstitute.com.

It originally appeared on their site back on June 5, 2012. Before their site redesign and the number was reset, the number of times that post had been tweeted was over 800 times, and it currently says that the tweet count is over 800, so it’s been shared around 1600 times. It also received 102 comments on their site before the comments were closed. The infographic itself has also been shared and pinned hundreds of times by many people. All that to say, that I never imagined it would get such a positive response from so many people! But I am grateful that so many people have found it helpful.
Q: Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you’d like to share?
If any of your readers are struggling with their content marketing and wondering, “Why isn’t content marketing working for my company?” then they are welcome to watch a free, 12 minute video about a concept I call “Question Directed Content Marketing”. They can watch it here: http://recessionsolution.com/what-is-question-directed-content-marketing/
Contact information
- Name: Scott Aughtmon
- Company: RAMP
- Blog: http://www.RecessionSolution.com
- Book(s): 51 Content Marketing Hacks
- Twitter: @rampbusinesses
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/scottaughtmon
Now there are two ways to get Heidi Cohen’s Actionable Marketing Guide by Email:
Signup for the weekly Actionable Marketing Newsletter and get a roundup of of the week’s posts, plus extra content you won’t find on the website, plus a free e-book: What Every Blogger Needs to Know – 101 Actionable Blog Tips
Want to check out the newsletter before you subscribe. Well, you can – Just visit the Actionable Marketing Guide newsletter archive.
Subscribe to receive notice of each new actionable marketing post delivered free, directly to your inbox.
Actionable Marketing Guide publishes new posts from 2 to 5 times each week. You will receive a summary of each new post from “Heidi Cohen”. The email’s subject line will begin “Actionable Marketing Guide” followed by the title of the new post.