Five Steps to Creating Marketing Content Which Sells
Are you struggling to produce good content?
From websites to blogs, social media, to video.
Do any of these sound familiar?
I want to write a regular blog post, but I don't know what to write about from week to week
I struggle to get ideas from the rest of the team
I am full of ideas and create lots of blogs, social posts, newsletters and videos, but they have no consistent theme, just whatever is top of my mind
I am trying to elevate my brand to position us as thought leaders, but I am not confident I have an effective approach
If one of these sounds familiar, read on!
This is a step-by-step guide for business owners and marketing managers which will ensure you effectively use content marketing as a tool to grow your business.
But why do we need content at all?
Why is Good Content Important?
Unless you have an endless budget for paid advertising or sales people, good content is a great tool to have in your business' toolbox.
Put simply, good content helps your potential customers find you, get to know you & want to buy from you.
Good content will help your business:
Build brand awareness
Nurture leads
Engage audiences and keep them buying
Establish authority and credibility
Drive traffic - especially if it is planned around search terms and keywords
Wait. What Actually IS Content?
The primary goal of content marketing is to provide value to the target audience, at the appropriate time in their buying journey.
The objective is to help them make a decision that yours is the product or service for them and means what you sell and your company (brand) is top of mind when they are ready to buy.
'Content' is the generic word for what you talk about, or show, in your blogs, social media, videos, infographics, websites, podcasts, whitepapers, etc..
There should be a cohesive story across all platforms.
Are You Holding Back Your Sales Growth?
In many of the scaling companies I see, a limitation to effective marketing (and therefore sales growth) is that there is no cohesive story being told.
A lot of effort is put into creating content and engaging with customers, but it is disjointed and does not tell a story about the brand.
If I asked your prospects what you sell and why you are better than your competitors - would you like the answer?
A lack of cohesion means your potential customers get a disjointed message about what you sell, why they should buy from you and what a difference you are going to make to them.
A lack of consistent story in your content can also mean you have gaps when your prospects are looking to engage and make crucial decisions.
Are you in their top 3 options?
Do they even know you exist?
What value do they really get?
Why would they buy from you?
Five Steps to Effective Content Creation
Take these 5 easy steps and get more effective in your content creation. Move your customers from unaware, to buying and then loving you.
Step 1: Who Are Our Customers?
The most important question is to really understand your customers.
Use your ‘ideal customer personas’ which you should already have:
Who are our ideal customers?
What’s going on in their world?
What are their challenges?
What are they looking for?
How do we help?
What words do they use and what are they looking for?
Step 2: What Do I Want to be Famous For?
I often ask clients to identify what they “want to be famous for?”
This has got to relate to what your customers care about
What do we do?
What does our brand stand for?
What is our unique selling point (USP), what makes us different? This could be your product, your insights, or the way you deliver it?
Step 3: Create Your Messaging Pillars
To keep focused, you want no more than 2-3 key themes.
Take what you want to be famous for and your knowledge of your ideal customer and write down your key themes as a single word or phrase.
This might take a few attempts, but once you have got it, life becomes a lot simpler, I promise!
Examples:
- Insightful
- Quality
- Sustainability
- Expert & knowledgeable
- Time saving
- The best customer service in the market
- Reduced lifetime cost
- Excellent project management
Step 4: Brainstorm & Ideation
Now it’s time to brainstorm the messaging you want to focus on under each pillar.
Remember, this is about creating content that your customers want to read about and that centres on their needs and challenges.
Step 5: What Do You Need for Each Stage of the Funnel
Prospects and clients are all at different stages of the buying funnel:
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
Retention
Advocacy
Map out what the content needs are for each stage and align it with your messaging pillars.
Your job is to provide content that helps move customers through the journey, answering their questions at the right time. By having a small number of clear pillars, your target customers will see a cohesive story from you and be quite clear about the value you provide and why they would buy from you.
For example:
Key Pillar: Innovation
Awareness:
A free guide to help customers find the right solution, including questions to ask about how a company’s innovative approach helps support the customer’s business objectives
Consideration:
Case studies showing how existing solutions weren’t meeting the customer's needs and how your innovative approach has helped future-proof their business
Decision:
A comparison guide of offerings in the market which includes your innovative product or approach
Retention:
A newsletter article showing how innovation is enabled within the company and has created better services for customers
A couple of final tips:
The creation of the content pillars is totally dependent on you understanding your customers’ needs and being clear about what value you bring, so spend time here
This is a journey - you won’t have all the content for all the pillars on day 1, but by remaining focused you will end up with an amazing suite of content which tells a really compelling story, leads potential customers to your door and can be repeatedly reused
Good luck! I’d love to hear how you get on. Or if you need a helping hand - reach out.