I don’t believe in magic pills, particularly not in business. BUT if I did believe in magic pills, content marketing would be it. It is so versatile, so personal, and SOOOO effective (plus cost-effective).
I’ve talked at length about your sales cycle, the conveyor belt of clients walking the path to your door and the process by which they meet you, learn about you, and decide whether or not to buy from you (check out this blog or this video for the key background info on the Sales Cycle before you read on). What makes Content Marketing so magical is that it can do multiple things and fill multiple gaps in your sales cycle. In fact, if you really go for it, you can build your entire sales process JUST around content marketing.
But let me back this up a few steps and define Content and Content Marketing. For our purposes, Content is anything you create that shares your expertise or perspective which can be found via a search engine. So we are NOT counting social media (for now, once you up your game we can count that). Social media content is generally shorter form (though it doesn’t have to be) and is not discoverable in the same way unless you ALREADY have traction (for our purposes we are assuming you do not. Message me if you have a huge following and we can talk about how that changes things). So when I talk about Content I am generally referring to Blogs, Videos, and Podcasts. These are incredibly searchable, they show up in google and on their respective platforms. They give your audience deeper insight into who you are and what you know. They are shareable and encourage sharing by the nature of their platforms. Content marketing is simply creating content for your brand and intentionally marketing the content as well as using the content to market your products, services, or brand.
The First Magic Function of Content Marketing is Lead Generation.
By nature of existing as searchable and shareable content, your content can draw in new leads for your business. People who are searching google for “why Content marketing is fairy dust” can find this post; people scrolling facebook might see that one of my clients shared this post. I don’t yet know (based on analytics) a full third of the people who are currently reading this post. New people learn my name, hear my voice, read my perspective, and get a glimpse of what I do because I have written this blog post.
The Second Magic Function of Content Marketing is Nurturing.
Most people, once they know I exist will want to do their research, they will poke around my website, read my bio, look at my services, maybe join my email list. They will want to get to know me and learn to trust me before they buy. Really good content is deliberately designed to reach out and grab the audience by the hand and guide them through the process of moving from a cold lead (a relative stranger) to a warm lead (someone who knows, likes, and trusts me). Sometimes that can happen in a single piece of content, sometimes it is through repeated contact with your content over time, sometimes that shift happens over the course of an hour-long rabbit hole binging content from someone you have just discovered. Content builds a relationship with your market; they get to peek inside your head and behind the curtain. By reading this blog you are learning more and more about who I am, what I do, and whether or not you even want to work with me.
The Third Magic Function of Content Marketing is Sales.
You can sell things DIRECTLY from your content. Sales copy is designed to identify pain points in your market and present to them a solution. That happens all the time in blog posts, videos, and podcasts (For example, this blog post clearly identifies a pain point, gives some recommendations, and invites you to reach out to me if you want more). Nurturing your clients into warm leads primes them for the sales process and may often get them reaching out to BUY from you before you have even tried specifically to sell to them.
The Forth Magic Function of Content Marketing is that it is Independent.
I do not have to be there for you to read this blog. I don’t even have to be here when it is posted. I’ll probably be out getting a massage or talking to clients. Months or years from this moment when I am sitting in my office thinking these thoughts, you can benefit from them. Content can take on a life of its own, getting shared and found by people I don’t even know (when this happens on a large scale we call it going “viral”). My input of energy is the same whether 2 people read this post or 2,000 people read this post, it exists independently of me.
The Fifth Magic Function of Content Marketing is that it is Recyclable.
I’m BIG into recycling, both in a “let’s not put more plastic into the ocean” kinda way and in a “let’s use the energy we expend in our businesses wisely”. So when I take the time and energy to learn, synthesize, or invent something brilliant, I want that expertise to get to as many people as possible as easily as possible. Long story short, I can take my content and recycle it. A blog post can be the same topic as a facebook live. My assistant can pull quotes or bullet points out of a podcast episode and post them to twitter for me. Multiple videos can be strung together in a playlist that acts as a mini-masterclass. Blogs can be compiled into a super guide on a particular topic. My content can create other content and be available in many formats to many different audiences.
Places to Sprinkle Content into your Existing Strategy
In Networking: Use a recent blog post as a “snickers bar,” a reason for people to reach out to you after the meeting. “You mentioned that you have trouble with “X” I just wrote a blog post about that. Would you like me to send it to you?”
In Research You Already Have to Do: For example, turn the interviewing you are already doing for your upcoming book into a podcast. Ditto for any other research you do. Share your own learning process.
Spice up Your “About Me” Section: Most of us have an “about me” page on our website or a “meet the team” create content that shares the same info, plus your voice, perspective, and expertise, and stack that on your website instead.
To Draw Leads from a Speaking Engagement: Each new piece of content becomes a new lead magnet that you can offer from the stage of your next gig.
For the People You Want to Stay Top of Mind With: As you are nurturing leads or keeping in contact with connections, sending them an article or episode that might speak to them in particular boosts you back on their radar
Creating Content for your business will definitely have that fairy dust effect, even in small sprinkles the effect is pretty damn great over time. But I’ll level with you, as much as it can be helpful in small sprinkles, the true secret sauce mojo comes out when you build it into the foundation of your strategy. I just showed you a bunch of things that content can do and it does it best with consistent creation as an integral part of your process. Content Marketing can fill most gaps in your sales cycle, it can generate leads AND nurture them. It creates an ever-growing body of work that your market can use to identify if you are the ONE they have been looking for to solve whatever problem it is that they have.
When you commit to creating content consistently for your business, content that you enjoy making and others enjoy consuming, you open yourself up to creating a small world for people to discover and play in, a world that leads them inexorably towards working with you.