90 Second Content Marketing Lessons

There's no doubt about it. Computing ROI for a content marketing program is tricky. There are measurements and metrics to gauge audience consumption, but expressing the impact of those actions in dollars is practically impossible.    This episode is in our new format. It's a lot longer than 90 seconds but I've taken the time to point out ways that content marketing affects your business and how you might go about assessing the value of those effects for yourself.

Email is one of the most cost-effective methods for marketing a business. For those with small budgets, email is the only viable direct channel between the company and their prospective customers. In this podcast we'll talk about how to grow your email list organically. The lead magnet strategy has been around forever, but it still works. Even small companies can use the ideas in this episode to start growing their email lists with lead magnets.

You don't have to be an English expert to write effective business communications, but don't let lazy speaking habits make an unfavorable impression on your audience. Grammar-checking software will help clean up those passages that seem OK in casual conversation but irritate readers or listeners.

This lesson describes two recent real-life examples where content marketing produced results for our clients - in entirely different ways.

This six-minute podcast is about how to use a frequently unexploited resource you've already got to stay top of mind with your customers and prospects - with very little investment. We did it with almost no money and so can you!

Sorry to break this to you, but there's probably a good portion of your email list that has lost interest. Neglecting to look at metrics and weed out the disengaged might make you feel good about the size of the list, but there are some long-term negative effects to consider. We rarely think about pruning the list, but it's pretty important. Continually sending to people who don't open your emails damages your reputation as a sender and is just asking for spam complaints.

Previously used PowerPoint decks, magazine articles, newsletters, videos, cheat sheets, tutorials, or customer case studies are probably sitting around your business gathering dust. So many companies spend time and money to create a piece of content for a specific purpose and then never touch it again.It's hard enough to find the time to create new original content from scratch! Why not unearth some of that existing material, spruce it up, and use it again to present to a new audience?

Random publishing is not the best use of informational content. Unfortunately, organizations often publish profusely in short bursts of activity followed by long periods of darkness where nothing new is generated. This approach impedes continuity.It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s actually easy to put together a simple plan for creating, publishing, and re-purposing content...

Once a prospect buys, you want to keep them engaged with your company and be good references. Eventually renewing or upgrading is going to become a goal. This means you'll continue to stay in touch and delivering quality content.This lesson is about the Retention phase of the sales process.

Purchase – the bottom of the sales funnel. This is when buyers are almost ready to buy. You know who they are because you've used gated content and browser cookies in the top and middle funnel stages. The level and frequency of interaction tells you a buyer has reached the purchase level.This lesson includes some suggested content you can use in the purchase stage of the buying process.SEE THE LINKS SECTION FOR A FREE ONLINE CONTENT AUDIT >>>>>

Prospective customers ready to do research and evaluation have an identified need or a problem to solve. If the Awareness effort has done its job, the prospect will remember your company might have an appropriate solution. Now they want to figure out if your company’s solution is worthy of further investigation, and how your solution compares to what other companies have to offer.SEE THE LINKS SECTION FOR A FREE ONLINE CONTENT AUDIT >>>>>  

I use a simple sales funnel for my business. There are only 4 levels: Awareness, Research, Purchase, and Retention. In this lesson I'll tell you how the Awareness level is used and give you some ideas about the type of content you might use there. In subsequent lessons I'll do the same for the other sales funnel levels.SEE THE LINKS SECTION FOR A FREE ONLINE CONTENT AUDIT >>>>>

The last lesson talked about why publishers should use illustrations in blog postings and newsletter articles. This lesson explains how to use common resources and tools, like Powerpoint, to get the illustrations ready to publish.

Illustrations in blog posts, newsletters, and social networks serve a number of purposes:They attract attentionThey quickly communicate the topicThey make the post more sharableThis lesson tells why I use illustrations so much and where I get them.

We haven’t really talked about what to do with lead scores after you’ve gone to the trouble to set up the mechanism to compile them. That’s what this lesson is about. The whole idea of scoring leads is to be able to tell when a prospect has likely advanced to the next level of the buying cycle.

This lesson continues with the topic of lead scoring. Included is a list of lead actions one might want to track and suggested point values for them.

Lead scores can have a couple of different components. This lesson discusses demographic components of a lead score. The following lesson will cover how contact activity contributes to a lead score.

This lesson is the introduction to lead scoring - the practice that allows you to put all the demographic and tracking data you're accumulating about customers to work. Lead scores separate the fully engaged prospects from the mildly interested, allowing you to follow-up with the most likely buyers. More details about lead scoring are coming in the next few lessons.

We’ve all probably read stories about companies with huge mailing lists and had pangs of inadequacy. Of all the things we can measure, particularly in the email communications world, list size seems to be the statistic with the greatest emotional hold on us. How can you really tell what is working when a good portion of your file never reacts to ANYTHING you send? You can’t.

Once you’ve done a great job at consistently reinforcing the value of your company and its products, then you need to start creating some content that will give your engaged prospects some reasons to buy.   This is the time to point out the factors distinguishing your product or company from other choices available in the market.