Where You MUST Create Content in Your Business

Creating content isn’t done on the fly. Small business owners don’t get struck by inspiration and crank out blog posts that magically turn leads into customers. Successful content marketers have a process they use to plan their content over the long-term for sustainable results. To count yourself among their ranks, you need a content marketing plan, and this course will teach you step-by-step how to create and implement one that you can realistically commit to.

So, what exactly do we mean by “content marketing?” A broad definition would be that it’s a strategic approach to marketing, the focus of which is creating and publishing content that’s valuable and relevant to your audience, with the intent to attract potential customers and retain them. The ultimate goal is to build a relationship with an audience of buyers and increase profits through content.

There are several reasons why you need a well-planned content strategy:

• Content marketing is an extremely cost-effective method compared to traditional advertising and, if done well, it works.
• You need a consistent flow of content that’s highly valuable and relevant to your audience
• Your content needs to be aligned with your long-term business goals in order to get you the results you want
• Your strategy needs to be sustainable over the long-term so that it can scale as your business grows
• If planned well, you’ll get excellent results out of the work you put into creating and publishing content

Many entrepreneurs and small businesses fail to create a strategic content plan because they fear they don’t have time or resources, or they don’t see an immediate impact of their efforts. But this is a long-term plan, so it involves planning well at the beginning to achieve consistent results later.

The Four Core Content Areas

In this course, we identify four areas for which to create content. The reason for this division is that there are different goals for content, and you have to create each piece with a goal in mind. Every business needs content in these four areas for an integrated plan.

1. Awareness Content

The aim of awareness content is to familiarize potential customers with your business. It’s the wide entrance to your sales funnel. It aims to:

• Expand your reputation
• Build brand visibility
• Initially start building trust (although other areas of content creation will focus more on this)
• Attract potential customers or “tire kickers”
• Populate your websites, blogs, podcasts, and so on with content for SEO purposes

Awareness content can be anything that you put out in public, such as blog posts, podcasts, vlogs, social media posts, speaking events, and so on.

2. Lead Generation Content

The initial purpose of a sales funnel is to qualify leads. A lead is someone who has encountered your business, is interested in what you have to offer, and has started following you. If they’re interested in learning more about you or receiving more of your content, they qualify themselves as leads. A qualified lead is likely to become a customer.

The purpose of lead generation content is to give potential customers a bigger taste of the type of content you offer. It builds your list of “warm” prospects and you can use this content to build and nurture a relationship with them that eventually leads to a sale.

Examples of this type of content include:

• Opt-in content, such as reports or resources, where a person provides their email address in exchange for the free content
• Webinars or seminars where you get contact information from participants
• Free membership sites where you can communicate directly with members, offering them further content and deals.

3. Paid Content

As the name suggests, paid content is content you sell for a profit. The main purpose, obviously, is for you to gain revenue. This is not just content you sell, but could also be content that promotes products or services that you sell. Whatever the nature of the content, its purpose is to generate sales.

This includes:

• Online courses
• Webinars
• Workshops
• Coaching resources
• Membership sites
• Sales pages
• Promotional email series

4. Relationship Content

The purpose of this content is to interact with customers and build a loyal following. The point isn’t to sell, but to increase customer satisfaction and retention, and encourage repeat sales. With this content area, you listen to your audience, interact with them, and deliver content that meets their needs. This is what builds your relationships. This content also allows you to get feedback from your customers on how you’re doing.

Relationship content might include a weekly newsletter for customers, onboarding tutorials for new customers, live videos for your exclusive customer Facebook Group, Q&A calls for customers, FAQs, and so on.

Now that you have a good idea of where you need to create content in general, let’s dive into the course and create a plan that makes sense for you and your business.

By the time you complete this course, you’ll be able to:

• Recognize and understand the four core areas of your business where content is absolutely essential, no matter what type of business you’re in
• Identify your most important business goals and which content types will have the biggest impact on them, so that you can devote your content creation time to efforts that will get results
• Identify the focus for your content plan in terms of the product, service, or area of expertise you want to be known for, so that you know what types of topics you’ll cover with your content
• Describe your ideal client or customer and the content they prefer, so that your content plans are hyper-focused only on the people who will help your business grow
• List the main questions you need to address for your target audience in each of your core content areas, so that you know what content you need to create to move people forward in your business
• Take an inventory of your current content, so that you know what you already have to work with when it comes to repurposing or re-sharing content to bring it back into the light and save you time
• Pick the types of content you personally enjoy creating, so your content plan is something you look forward to implementing and not a chore you dread
• Consider the time and resources you can realistically commit to creating content, both for one-time and ongoing projects, so that your plan is something that can be implemented without sacrificing other areas of your business
• Create a one-page content plan that includes the essential ingredients for your content marketing success, so that you can gather momentum and see measurable results
• Brainstorm specific questions you need to answer in each area where you will be creating content, so that you have a list of topics to draw from whenever you need to create content
• Outline your first three months’ content creation schedule with specific time set aside in your calendar, so that you can hit the ground running without having to think about when you’ll create and publish your content