Psychology Meets Marketing: The ELITE Method with Rai Hyde Cornell

Thank you to Jeremy Rivera for this guest content! Check out the Unscripted SEO Podcast for more.

In the latest episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera sits down with Rai Hyde Cornell, founder of Cornell Content Marketing. With a background in psychology and criminology, Rai brings a unique perspective to content marketing by applying psychological principles originally used in behavioral health to help companies change buyer behavior and gain market share without increasing ad spend.

Killer Quotes

“We marry psychology with content marketing, demand generation, and helping companies get more market share without increasing their ad spend dollars.” — Rai Hyde Cornell

“I spent eight years studying psychology and criminology… We now use a lot of the psychological principles that I used with patients who are going through serious behavior change modification like corrections counseling and substance abuse counseling. And now we use those same behavior change models to get our clients marketing strategies to change buyer behavior.” — Rai Hyde Cornell

“Most marketers just focus on, want to get them to buy. I want to get them to opt in. I want to get them to click. They focus on the behavior. Sometimes they focus on the thought or the emotion that might drive that behavior. But too often marketers get sucked into this kind of trendy, fad or this high pressure situation…” — Rai Hyde Cornell

“You have to practice that empathy exercise of getting into the minds as opposed to looking outside of your own experience and your own insights for all of the data and trends and facts and figures, you’re going to be ahead of the curve because you are going to be tapping into those internal experiences and providing content and messaging that resonates on a level that AI never can.” — Rai Hyde Cornell

Key Takeaways

• The ELITE method applies psychological principles to content marketing, focusing on the internal experiences of potential buyers rather than just their behaviors.

• Empathy is crucial to SEO and content marketing because Google is all about intent matching.

• Content marketing isn’t dead despite AI advancement – quality human-created content that addresses specific customer needs is more valuable than ever.

• Creating feedback loops between marketing, sales, and customer support teams helps companies stay ahead of trends and produce more relevant content.

• Looking beyond keyword research tools is essential – understanding the humans behind the searches creates more effective content strategies.

The ELITE Method Breakdown

From Psychology to Marketing: Rai’s Unique Approach

Rai Hyde Cornell brings an unusual background to content marketing. With eight years of experience in psychology and criminology, she applies the same principles she used with patients in corrections counseling and substance abuse treatment to help companies change buyer behavior.

“I run Cornell Content Marketing, which is a full-service content marketing agency where we marry psychology with content marketing, demand generation, and helping companies get more market share without increasing their ad spend dollars,” Rai explains at the beginning of the interview. This unique perspective stems from her extensive background in behavioral health sciences.

One of the core psychological models she uses is the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) triangle, which illustrates how thoughts affect emotions, which affect behaviors, which then affect thoughts again in a continuous cycle.

“We’re using the cognitive behavioral therapy triangle, CBT triangle, to really make sure that our content is providing the internal experience,” Rai details. “Our thoughts affect our emotions, which affect our behaviors, which affect our thoughts, which affect our emotions, which affect our behaviors. It kind of looks like this recycling triangle, and it just goes around and around and around.”

“Most marketers just focus on, ‘I want to get them to buy. I want to get them to opt in. I want to get them to click.’ They focus on the behavior. Sometimes they focus on the thought or the emotion that might drive that behavior. But too often marketers get sucked into this kind of trendy, fad or this high pressure situation where they’re being told by leaders, ‘Hey, you’ve got to get results, get results, get results.’ So they switch to these manipulative marketing tactics to get people to feel FOMO or scarcity or anything like that that’s going to elicit the behavior they want and yet that’s neglecting this huge internal experience that’s going on for your ideal buyer.”

This pressure often leads marketers to resort to manipulative tactics that focus solely on the behavior while neglecting the internal experience of potential customers. Rai’s approach aims to address the complete psychological journey of the buyer, utilizing principles that have proven effective in serious behavioral change scenarios.

Breaking Down the ELITE Method

Examine: Building a Bridge to Your Ideal Buyer

The first step in Rai’s ELITE method is to examine your current position. “You have to think of it like you’re building a bridge between you and your ideal buyer,” she explains. “You have to know where are we? Are we on flat ground? Is it rocky ground? Do we need to grade first? Do we need to level? What kinds of assets are we using that have been successful? Which ones actually match the brand we want to be portraying now and into the future?”

This examination includes auditing existing marketing assets and determining which ones align with the brand image you want to project. Rai shares a detailed example: “I worked with a cybersecurity company over the last couple of years where they had a ton of great assets, but they were all so outdated. They really needed to be updated to match the image that they were trying to portray in order to claim more market share and beat out the competition. And because they were so outdated, when we examined everything that they already had, there was really nothing left that we could use because they had grown and matured so much as an organization and they hadn’t grown or matured their marketing assets.”

Jeremy Rivera points out that this misalignment is common: “Organizations forgetting that how they are in the real world is not necessarily how they’re seen in the digital world. You might have grown yourself very successfully and have these shipping relationships and partnerships.”

He mentions his work with Save Fry Oil, a brand that was “literally so not online” that their brand query returned “did you mean save file order.com” and did not show up their website at all for their brand. Jeremy adds that this was also happening with another company, Lead Truffle, that had just launched, emphasizing the “through the looking glass effect with the internet of what’s there isn’t always an accurate reflection.”

Learn: Deep Diving into Buyer Psychology

The “L” in ELITE stands for “learn” – specifically learning about your ideal buyer at a profound psychological level.

“So the L is learn. You have to learn about your ideal buyer. And this is where we go really, really, really, really, really deep,” Rai emphasizes. Her approach uses a sophisticated psychological framework: “We’re using what I refer to as the stages of change matrix. And this is based on the trans theoretical model of psychology, which I used a lot as a substance abuse counselor, where we guide people through the stages of change for healthy behavior modification.”

“When we’re learning about our ideal audience, it’s not enough to just say, they’re in the brand awareness stage or they’re in the interest stage and now we can capture their contact information. You have to look at the internal experience that’s going on for them to see where they are in a much more robust model than what the sales funnel provides.”

“We break it down into the stages of change, which gives us a nice framework to lean on to say, okay, are they even aware that they have the problem that we as a company can solve for? Okay, now that they’re aware of the problem, are they actively looking for solutions? Are they still trying to in-house the solution? Are they even trying to solve the problem? Are they just dealing with it on a day-to-day basis? Do they have other priorities that are putting this problem we solve for lower on the list?”

“All of those things are going to affect how you talk to them and the messaging that you use at those various stages of change. So we get really granular on the thought process and the internal experience that our ideal buyer is going through.”

Jeremy acknowledges this is a crucial step that SEO professionals often miss: “We jump right to the keywords and keyword research and we forget there’s humans behind those keyboards that are typing those things in.”

He shares his conversation with Michael McDougald about understanding who they’re trying to reach: “How is he going to try to reach his particular audience? Like, what is, who is he exactly trying to reach? Who’s trying to solve this problem that he can speak to? And it’s just kind of like looking at the keywords… nothing in the keywords that actually gives you that much of a hint. You have to go back a layer and think through, you know, put yourself in somebody else’s shoes.”

“That’s the thing I love about SEO is it requires empathy because Google is all about intent matching. And if you can’t master intent matching, then you can’t get in front of people at the right time when they’re willing to step closer to you,” Rai responds.

“I think something like 60% of Google searches do not end in a click because of AI features and snippets and things like that nowadays. And so if you really want people to click and land on your website, you have to prioritize ranking for those higher intent keywords that indicate someone wants more than just a high level quick answer. They want a more complex answer or they want a tool that they can interact with or they want exact pricing information.”

Implement: Creating Content for Every Stage

The implementation phase involves creating content for each stage of the customer journey, from awareness through decision-making to retention.

“What was the I again?” Jeremy asks during the interview, to which Rai responds: “Implement. Yeah, so a lot of marketing models stop at this point. They think, okay, we’re just gonna implement all this content, we’re going to create this sales funnel where we have brand awareness content and interest content and decision content and action content.”

But Rai’s model goes further by adding a fifth stage that many marketers overlook: “Within our model we also have a fifth stage of the sales funnel which is retention because marketing should never stop at the sales. It’s far cheaper to retain existing happy customers and clients than it is to go out and win new ones. So you have to continue nurturing them with your messaging beyond that actual point of conversion.”

She emphasizes this isn’t where her process ends: “But it doesn’t stop there. You implement your strategy and you make sure you’ve filled all those gaps to make sure that there is content for every stage of change within that buyer journey.” This comprehensive approach ensures no gaps exist in the customer’s journey, providing support at every psychological stage they might experience.

Transform: Making Content a Living Organism

The “transform” stage is about continuous evolution. “But then you go on to the T, which is transform. And this is where you really have to learn,” Rai explains. “You have to be willing to learn and take what the market is saying, take what people are engaging with and do more of that. See what’s not performing well and either kill that on your website and redo the content that you created for that keyword.”

This means tracking what content performs well and doing more of it, while revising or replacing underperforming content. “The point is it has to be a living organism,” Rai insists. “Too many companies just think, we’ve got our website done, we’ve got two or three dozen blog posts, we’ve got some videos, we’re done, let’s go just focus on sales. That’s not enough. You have to keep learning and iterating because the market is learning and iterating and evolving.”

Jeremy strongly agrees, emphasizing the value of updating content incrementally: “I think there’s also a value to be had if you are developing content and you’re making updates to it incrementally, adding new opinions, adding new information over time.” He cautions against expecting immediate results: “You know, Google has an anti-spam response. So you never, never count yourself down or up like right away. Like you got to think long-term, but that means that you need to be invested in that transformation, invested in how they, a process to come back to those.”

He criticizes the common “spray and pray” approach: “It’s not just ‘well we wrote an article last month, we’ll write a new article this month.’ There needs to be a built-in process to come back and add to adjust, take inputs from sales, input from customer support, and develop that content.” Jeremy emphasizes: “Because you’re right, there is meat on that bone beyond just the original grabbing.”

Jeremy particularly highlights how SaaS companies often focus on creating content to reach new audiences while neglecting existing users: “It’s crazy how many SaaS companies, they just want to create content that reaches new audience while not really serving the people that are their consistent users. And if you’ve worked in SaaS, you know that recurring income is the holy grail. I mean, that’s the entire reason you do SaaS is so that you can build those recurring users.”

He elaborates on what these companies should do instead: “So you want to solve those little pieces of friction. You want to connect the dots of new SEO developments or new industry developments with new pieces, new features capabilities within your tools, which means going back and seeing when did we talk about that… Your site needs to breathe.”

Rai wholeheartedly concurs: “With SaaS in particular, a big reason for churn is poor user adoption. And so it’s like drinking from a fire hose sometimes when you adopt these new sales tools as a business. So if you are forgetting to create content for the people you’ve already sold, your churn rate is going to be through the roof.”

She concludes with practical advice: “So you have to make sure that when your existing users are going into Google and typing in things like, ‘How do I do this on such and such platform? How do I do that?’ They’re finding answers within your knowledge base that are going to help you continue to rank and support the people that you’ve already worked so hard to get.”

Enhance: Creating Feedback Loops

The final “E” – enhance – is about creating feedback loops between teams to continuously improve marketing efforts. Jeremy prompts Rai by saying, “I’m guessing you’re not misspelling it. So there’s probably an E after the T. Let’s round out our acronym.”

“Sure, yes. So that final E is enhance. And this is one of my favorite steps in the entire process,” Rai responds enthusiastically. “Too often, B2B companies in particular, they have their teams working in silos. They have their sales team, they have their marketing team, they have their customer support team, they have their customer experience and service delivery team.”

“In order to make sure that you’re constantly learning, what are the words that our ideal customers and clients are using? What things are they struggling with? Why did they decide to choose us over our competition? And what are their main pain points? What are their complaints? What are their points of hesitancy or the barriers to buying that the sales team is encountering?”

“If you can create these feedback loops between marketing and sales and marketing and customer support and marketing and service delivery, you are amplifying the amount of knowledge that you then get to put into practice and you’re getting ahead of those queries because you’re tapping that wealth of information that you’ve already worked so hard to build up around you.”

“I like to set up marketing and sales once a month, and then marketing and service delivery or customer support once per quarter. And having these open conversations about what are customers talking about? What are they complaining about? What are they worried about beyond just buying our solution but actually in their world, in their environment, in their industry, what are the things that they’re up against?”

“Then you can start creating content before those numbers really start to trend on, you know, KWFinder is my favorite SEO keyword tool. So before you start seeing those trends emerge on KWFinder, you’ll actually start hearing these tidbits of conversation so that you can get ahead of getting that content out there.”

Jeremy relates this to Classic City CPR classes: “So if you’re running CPR classes, you want to have a connection between your marketing team and the people that are either doing those Zooms or doing those in-persons, because you know they have questions all the time. And I try to do this myself when I onboard a new customer, is find out have they been writing down any of those questions? Have they been capturing any of those questions? You know, what’s the top five things you always get asked?”

“Because that’s just a pinch hit like duh that’s content… that’s an idea, that’s an enhancement, that’s something that you should add and embellish, you know, maybe as a new resource, maybe an extra paragraph or section, or a new video, different formats to address that particular pain point that wasn’t being engaged before.”

Rai enthusiastically affirms this approach with a simple “Exactly.”

Beyond Keyword Tools: The Future of Content

Jeremy and Rai dive deep into the limitations of keyword-focused SEO. “I think, yeah, there’s definitely a problem with keyword research tool focused SEO,” Jeremy notes. “And, you know, there are some aspects of it that are a big trap. You know, we forget that there is, we just look at these numbers and say, okay, well, that’s the search volume for this query. No, you can impact that. You can influence that through other channels.”

“You know, you can build awareness and you can, you know, reach influencers who, you know, build search or you know tap into existing audience and channels and you know you’ll get… there’s radio ads, TV ads, you know, that are disconnected. You know, they hear it in the ether and then they try to find out about that thing and that generates, you know, branded and unbranded search.”

“Well, you just manipulated, you know, the search engine volumes that you see in those tools. So don’t sleep on other marketing channels just because you’re so focused on, well, this is the volume and this is, let’s optimize for that. Let’s look at what it is and see, okay, that’s what it is now, is that, you know, see if there’s a seasonal impact on that. And then how can we influence the graph of interest for this particular thing?”

“Exactly, and that’s why I really love implementing this model with our clients because it’s not just, okay, let’s create a marketing strategy and then let’s build it. It’s not just that, but it’s insourcing valuable information that allows you to stay ahead of those curves or even create those curves,” Rai responds.

“And the companies that I work with, want to be thought leaders. They want to be the ones changing their industry because they have a new and better way of doing things, even if that way is harder to explain or there’s resistance in getting it adopted. But that has been the case with every amazing innovation that we’ve seen come out. So you have to be the one that’s taking your future in your own hands rather than being that passive, let’s just see what the trends say kind of marketer.”

Jeremy adds another dimension: “Yeah, I think there’s two pieces to that. One is the basing your strategy off of what you see your competitors doing and saying, well, they were really successful. I should do exactly what they do as opposed to identifying, you know, and using that competitor research gap not to catch up, but to look at the market gap of all of the competitors. What is the positioning and value across the board that’s missing? Not just, this guy wrote these five articles and I need to write similar five articles. It’s looking at, okay, there are 20 articles and none of them address this particular pain point.”

“Yeah, or your particular perspective. So every company has a unique point of view. They have a different driving why. They have a different mechanism for solving the problem they solve. So even if your competition has written great articles, yeah, those might be great articles, but it’s from their point of view,” Rai adds.

“You have to write it from your point of view. And if you disagree with the competition, which I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a company that didn’t disagree with their competitors, write that, explain that, elaborate on that, take a stance, and be that thought leader in your industry. And the people who also disagree with your competition are gonna gravitate towards you because they find something that resonates with the messaging they’re hearing in their own heads.”

Both discuss the importance of original research, with Rai challenging Jeremy’s assumption that research requires a large budget: “I’d actually challenge you on that because there’s a lot that people can do with online tools and surveys where as long as you’re reporting your numbers. So for example, there’s a tool that I often use with my clients called Polefish. Awesome tool, you can really set parameters on who’s gonna be able to respond to your survey so you’re getting a very narrow sample.”

“And I think the last one we did was it was $1,000 to reach a thousand people who fit very specific parameters. And from that, we were able to report data saying, hey, we asked a thousand experts in this particular industry, and this is what the majority of them said, and this is what they said on this. And we were able to report primary source data for a relatively low cost.”

Rai emphasizes that this approach is much more affordable than many marketers assume: “You’re not talking about, you know, 20, 30, $40,000 to do huge batches of customer interviews, you’re talking about sending out an email survey that’s automated and does all the data analytics for you.”

Human Content in an AI World

Jeremy and Rai also discuss the role of content marketing in an AI-dominated landscape. When Jeremy asks about the pessimistic view that “content marketing’s dead” because people will just use AI, Rai responds forcefully: “I mean, that’s a fatalistic perspective. I mean, that’s the perspective of someone who is intimidated by all of these changes and how fast the world of SEO and search intent is changing. And they’re just throwing their hands up and they’re saying, well, I can’t wrap my brain around AI and the way Google is ranking content nowadays. So I’m just not even gonna try.”

“And that’s a huge mistake because if everyone else is taking that approach but you actually put in the effort, then you’re gonna be the one that ranks. So you have to think about, okay, yes, there are a lot of people who type queries into Google and they just want those quick answers. But those aren’t the people that you want anyway.”

“If you wanna actually sell your services, you want the people who they’re going to type their query into Google. They’re going to see the AI snippet. They’re going to click the little link icon next to, ‘Where did, you know, Gemini get this from?’ And then they’re going to follow to your website. You want those people.”

“And so it’s so much more important nowadays to prioritize the quality of your content. And the other thing is Google is the SEO Bible and Google is prioritizing human created high quality content with the EEAT model. So you have to do that as well. You can’t just throw your hands up and say, I’m just going to spit out, you know, chat GPT driven content. Google doesn’t want that because it knows that humans don’t want that. So cater to what Google and the humans want and you will rank.”

As the conversation wraps up, Rai offers an actionable exercise for SEO professionals: turn off all devices for 15 minutes and mentally put yourself in your target audience’s shoes.

“Yeah, so I think one of the things, you know, a lot of what we’ve talked about today is the difference between human-sourced information versus tool-sourced information. And I think a lot of people, they have certain websites or podcasts or reports that they follow. You know, one that I think I get in my email inbox every day, if not twice a day, is demand gen report. I get all those emails and it can be very habit forming to continually look outside of yourself for answers.”

“But what I would encourage people to do is sit in your desk chair, turn off your email notifications, turn off your monitor, turn off your cell phone, and just sit there for 15 minutes and think, the people that I want to connect with, what is their day-to-day life like? When they come from the weekend into work on a Monday, what are they stressed about? What are they feeling overwhelmed by? And then how can I maybe help them with that?”

“Even if it’s not directly tied to the solution that I offer through my SaaS tool or whatever it is that your company provides, how can you help them alleviate some of those pains?”

“And if you can practice that empathy exercise of getting into the minds as opposed to looking outside of your own experience and your own insights for all of the data and trends and facts and figures, you’re going to be ahead of the curve because you are going to be tapping into those internal experiences and providing content and messaging that resonates on a level that AI never can.”

Connect with Rai Hyde Cornell on LinkedIn or visit Cornell Content Marketing to learn more about the ELITE method.

Listen to more episodes of the Unscripted SEO Podcast with host Jeremy Rivera for more insights on SEO and content marketing.