Content... Now What?

Contents !!!Chapter 1 ……………………… Introduction !Chapter 2 ……………………… The JTN Content Process !Chapter 3 ……………………… 6 Steps To An Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy !Chapter 4 ……………………… Key Takeaways !!!

Introduction !61% of customers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content and are more likely to buy from that company (Source: Custom Content Council). !In fact, a strong inbound marketing strategy more than doubles average website conversion rates (Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report 2013).

!So, you know content works. And maybe you’ve already produced some valuable, original content for your business… !Now what? !Publishing some great, audience-specific blog posts is a good start, but you’re not going to get results from that alone. !Content marketing is a process, not an event (this is where a lot of businesses go wrong!) and your success requires a solid strategy. !And that’s why we’ve created this guide… !

• This guide is for you IF… You know you should be using content to grow your business but don’t know where to start !

• This guide is for you IF… You don’t want to create content for the sake of creating content (aka. you want to be heard without just adding to the noise) !

• This guide is for you IF… You know your existing content could be working harder to bring you more leads and enquiries

!Bottom line: if you’re looking for a silver bullet fix, content marketing ain’t it. !BUT, if you’re ready to do the work it takes to grow your business with a predictable stream of leads then the step-by-step strategy outlined in this guide will help you.

JTN’s Content Marketing Process !My team and I are regularly produce quality content pieces to share our marketing expertise. This is the process we use to create the kind of valuable content that our audience is looking for…

Define Your Audience !Who? !

Before you begin producing content for your audience, you need to consider exactly who you’re speaking to. Ask yourself the

following questions: !• What experience level do they have? • What language do they use? • Are they familiar with industry jargon? • Do they need complicated concepts translated into plain language? !

MISTAKE: Assuming knowledge on the part of your reader and using terminology that goes above their heads. FIX: Write the way you would speak - as a person to a person (not as a business!)

What? !You can’t be all things to all people. As Michael Dell said, “this is a thing of the past…” Instead, you need to determine what your BEST prospects care about and identify a common need. Then ask yourself how your expertise can meet that need. !To find out what your prospects care about, visit forums and social media groups and scour through FAQs. Find our what keywords your audience is searching for and identify what topics best reflect your expertise. !

MISTAKE: Catering your content to too broad an audience means you risk diluting your expertise and miss opportunities to build your industry authority. !FIX: Better to publish content that 100 of your ideal prospects LOVE than to publish content that 1,000 people only kinda sorta like. !!Where? !Approximately 46% of online users rely on social media when making a purchase decision. (Source: Nielsen) !We know that social media is an effective channel for engaging with prospects where they’re already spending time. BUT, that doesn’t mean you need to be using every social media platform. In fact, not every platform will be right for your business (this is where a lot of people waste time trying to “find” their audience). !In reality you need to show up where they’re already spending their time. Ask yourself which channels your prospects are already using and searching for information on. Then determine which of these channels will be most effective for reaching prospects at each stage of their buying journey? !For instance, you might find that Facebook is a great platform for content that attracts prospects and sends them to your website. It may be that your blog is the best place to nurture these prospects into leads and then emails are most effective for turning leads into customers. !MISTAKE: Using social media for the sake of using social media (this is a quick way to waste valuable time and money). FIX: It only makes sense to show up on the social networks that your audience is already spending their time on (not just using Facebook or LinkedIn or Pinterest because you think you “have to”!) !!

Establish Your Goals !You may know that the “results” of content marketing can be

difficult to measure, at least when compared to traditional advertising and expecting instant ROI from your content efforts

is a big mistake (more on that shortly). !But, knowing what you want to achieve is key to an effective content

strategy. !(After all, the purpose of a content strategy is to support certain business goals…) !If you’re just starting out with content marketing, or just starting to get serious about it, then start with a few manageable goals to begin with. These can always be changed and expanded on with each content campaign you create. !Consider what you want to achieve in the following three areas: !

1. Engagement 2. Sales 3. Lead generation !

For instance, your goals could include any of the following:

• Earning more opt-ins • Establishing industry authority • Increasing engagement on social channels • Increasing blog traffic • Boosting organic website traffic • Reducing paid ad spend • Establishing thought leadership in your niche • Increase conversions from website visitors to customers • Getting more enquiries via the website !

Once you’ve determined what, specifically, you want your inbound marketing efforts to achieve, you’ll be in a strong position to establish the metrics that matter most to you. !Say your goal is to increase traffic to your business’ blog, for example, then metrics like ‘total visits’, ‘percentage of new visits’ or ‘visits from search engines’ will be more important than engagement indicators such as ‘comments’, ‘likes’ or ‘shares’.

Create A Content Plan !There are three key elements to creating a strong content plan: !

1) First, assess your resources…

Take a realistic look at the manpower, existing materials and resources at your disposal and time that you can commit to your content strategy.

This is the first critical step in creating a content plan, but many new content marketers overlook it… And end up spreading themselves too thin and getting frustrated when their marketing efforts suffer (or, more often, just don’t work!) !!

2) Then, plan your content pieces…After defining your audience and assessing your resources, you should already have ideas about the type of content your audience is looking for and how your expertise can be channeled to meet those needs. Now, it’s time to plan specific content pieces. For each content piece, clearly outline the following: !

• Objectivee.g. “to increase on-site engagement” !

• Content Typee.g. “blog post” !

• Channel e.g. “website blog and social media promotion” !

• Structuree.g. “3-part blog post series” !

• Frequency e.g. “one post every two days for a week” !

• Topice.g. “Email marketing dos and don’ts” !

• Tone e.g. “conversational but authoritative”!

• Desired Actione.g. “comments and shares” !

• URLe.g. “www.YourWebsite.com/Blog-Post-Topic"!

• Resourcese.g. Keep a list of URLs and other resources that may contain helpful background/reference information on the topic Quick win: What resources do you already have that you can leverage (i.e. have you produced training that you can repurpose, do you have in-house experts)? !!

3) Then, create an editorial calendar Organize your planned content pieces by documenting them in an editorial calendar. By sticking to this calendar of internal deadlines and publishing deadlines, you will keep your team on-schedule, your resources organized and your content efforts consistent.Hint: Your editorial calendar doesn’t have to be complicated. Start simple by creating an Excel or Numbers spreadsheet with columns labelled “content type”, “topic”, “audience”, “assignee”, “draft deadline” and “publication date”. !!!!

Promote Your Content !Without promotion, all of the effort that you’ve put into

creating your content is wasted. There are plenty of rookie marketers who hear about the power of “inbound” and think

“great, with this content I’ll have people queuing up for my advice!” !

And, they’re not technically wrong… Great content will attract more of your best prospects. !BUT, that content won’t get in front of the right people by itself (at least not at first). So, it’s up to you to maximize the reach of your content pieces through free and paid channels. Here are just a few examples of ways to promote your content and ensure that you “get found” by the people that matter most to your business:

!1) Free & earned distribution: !

• Promote your content via (relevant!) social channels • Submit share-worthy content (such as infographics) to content aggregators • Reaching out to influencers, editors and journalists can result in your content

gaining organic exposure on heavily trafficked websites • Guest post for influential websites • Interview other bloggers - by featuring them on your website, you can double the

reach of your post as they promote it across their networks • Submit your site to google, claim Google authorship and ensure that you’re getting

credit for every post you publish • Optimize your social posts with relevant #hashtags

2) Paid distribution: !• Social Media Ads • Promoted social posts and native advertising (i.e. your content appears seamlessly

in your prospects’ News Feeds) • Paid Stumbles (StumbleUpon can be a great source of traffic for certain industries) • PPC (Promote your content using Google AdWords or Bing Ads) • Press Releases (these can also boost your organic search rankings) • Paid advertorials from sites like Outbrain, OneSpot and Adblade !!!

Extend your content’s reach… !I often speak to clients who have already produced great content, but it’s sitting there just gathering dust. The best way to maximize the reach of this content is to break it up into smaller, focused content pieces. !EXAMPLE: If you’ve run a webinar in the past, you can use your notes to create a short, focused blog post on the subject. You can do the same with sections of your whitepapers and even use shorter, repurposed content pieces to promote your longer guides (i.e. turning a chapter of your guide into a blog post or infographic). !TIP: People love to read and share content with catchy headlines and content that is easily digestible, such as lists and cheat sheets. This is also a great way to “spoon feed” your content to people who may have downloaded your guide to read at a later date (and forgotten about it in the meantime). !!

Measure !As we covered earlier, expecting instant ROI from your content

marketing is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. But it IS important to monitor how well your content is supporting your

original goals and and optimize your content accordingly. !In step 2, we discussed the importance of determining your campaign

goals and choosing the success metrics most relevant to your content campaign goals. It’s important to monitor these metrics to determine what’s working for you and, importantly, what isn’t. !If you notice that one of your blog post topics is getting more interaction and engagement than others, for example, it’s worth creating more content around that focussed topic. In this way, your key metrics can inform your broader content efforts, allowing you to optimize you content marketing to better respond to the needs of your target audience and reach your campaign goals more efficiently.

!Remember, content marketing can (and does) work, but it requires consistency and a “groundswell” of both content and interaction before you start seeing results. This is why it’s so important to set realistic goals from the get go… And, trust me, with persistence, your efforts will pay off. !!!!!

Optimize !Content is never a one-and-done effort, so take what works best from each campaign (i.e. topic, channel or content type) and expand your content efforts around that. !You can do this as discussed in step 5 - by creating more focussed topical pieces based on your best-performing

content. You can also of this by repurposing your top-performing content - turning a guide into an easy-to-understand, sharable infographic, for example. !If your content isn’t performing as well as you think it could be, then try some of these “quick wins” for optimizing your content for engagement, shares and action-taking: !

• Don’t ramble • Make it easy to digest • Vary the length and format of your pieces to see what performs best with your

audience • Adding bullet points • Create lists • Break up long chunks of text to improve readability • Add a clear call to action !!

REMEMBER: Adjust Your Goals… !Maybe when you started out, the goal of your content was to increase brand awareness (looking at success metrics like search engine rankings, social media follows and unique visitors to your website via your blog)… !As your audience grows, however, your new goals might become more conversion-oriented (looking at success metrics such as PDF downloads and unique opt-ins). !It’s important to keep in mind that, as your content marketing strategy evolves and your resource library grows, you’ll need to revise your goals and metrics accordingly. !!

7 KEY TAKEAWAYS !!1. DO set realistic goals. Content is a long-term effort, so set goals that are most

immediately relevant to your business - these can (and will) change as your strategy evolves. !!

2. DON’T expect INSTANT ROI (i.e. don’t give to get). Content works, but only if you put in the effort to produce regular, useful content over time. !!

3. DO be helpful. Always strive to give your audience genuinely useful content that responds to their biggest questions, problems and pain points. !!

4. DON’T cater your content to too broad an audience. This is a common mistake, but you risk diluting your expertise and missing opportunities to build authority in your niche. !!

5. DO promote your content far and wide and make sure that you maximize the reach of your existing content pieces, too. !!

6. DON’T create content for the sake of it. If you’ve got nothing to say your prospects will see right through it. Plan your content in advance and keep publication consistent with an editorial calendar. !!

7. DO assess your resources before you begin. Planning to regularly publish huge content pieces will quickly derail your strategy if you don’t have the resources (manpower and time) to follow-through. !!!!

Would You Like My Team To Personally

Double, Triple

or Even Quadruple

Your Business

...For Free? !!From The Desk Of James T Noble London, England March 2013 !Dear Marketing Consultant, !I’ll cut to the chase. !I’m looking for a “dream” client for whom I can generate outstanding results. !If you’re that client, my team and I will personally work with you one-on-one to help you double, triple, or maybe quadruple your revenue and/or net profit. !I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. If you’re the right fit, I’d like to do it for you. !

The Cost? ZERO. !Here's why. !The very first thing I’m going to do for you is personally create a strategic plan to bring in immediate additional revenue. I call this “Found Money.” !There’s no charge for this and it only takes 45 to 60 minutes for us to do together. !

(I’ve grown multiple businesses of my own and consulted for others for well over a decade - I’ve grown pretty good at fast results.) !At the end of this initial planning session one of three things will happen: !1. You love the plan and decide to implement it on your own. If this is the case, I’ll wish you the best of luck and ask that you keep in touch to let me know how you’re doing. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to work together in the future.!2. You love the plan and ask to become a client so my team and I can personally help you execute it and increase your revenue ASAP.If that’s the case, we’ll knock it out of the park together. Guaranteed. !My team and I will even do most of the heavily lifting for you... we develop strategy, write copy, produce ads and lots more. !See, every client that has genuinely followed my advice and implemented my material has got results: tangible business growth, not ‘feel good’ stuff. !3. In the unlikely (and so far unprecedented) event that you feel you wasted your time, I will send you $500.00 as payment immediately. No questions or fuss. Your time is your most valuable asset, and I respect that. !It’s that simple. There is no catch. !Think about this... the absolute “worst case scenario” is you get $500 for “wasting” 45-60 minutes of your time. !The best that can happen is we work together one on one to increase sales and profit multiple times over. !Here’s how it’ll work: !First, we get on the phone together and go over your business. !I take a look at what you’ve got and what you want to achieve going forward.

!Once we have those “raw materials”, I help you come up with a strategic plan of action to immediately increase your revenue and profit. !There are a number of ways I might do this for you. !For example, I might show you how to restructure your service offering at a different price point, how to create rock solid recurring revenue, how to attract clients from previously untapped sources, or how to re-visit & reactivate past customers. !And like I said, there’s no charge for this. !

So Why Am I Offering This? !Two reasons: !First: I enjoy it. The campaigns I described above - along with many others - are my very best work. It makes me happy to see businesses achieve financial success as a direct result of the work I do with them. !Just as a client said to me the other day: “It’s magic when this starts to work!” !Second: It’s how I attract my best clients. !Here’s how that works: !Assuming you’re happy and you want me and the team to plan and execute these campaigns for you on a regular basis, you’ll probably want to continue working together long term. !If this is the case, I might invite you to become a consulting client. !Our “fee” is $6,850 a month. But when you think about it, it really doesn’t “cost” you anything. !Why? !

Because I expect to make you a lot more than $6,850 each and every month. MUCH more. !And if we keep working together over the next 12 months, I’m confident I can double your entire business... at a minimum. !How much is THAT worth? !In fact, I can give you a plan to make thousands of dollars of additional revenue (“Found Money”) during our first conversation - which is free! !So you’ll see the value by the time we hang up the phone - without ever spending a dime. !And in case you’re wondering: If you don’t want to become a client, that’s 100% fine. You won’t get a sales pitch or pressure from me of any kind, ever. !To be clear:

You Find Our Conversation To Be Incredibly Valuable Or I’ll

Immediately Pay You $500.00 To Compensate You For Your Time.

!I’m personally generating a marketing and business-growth plan for you up front (for free) and then letting you decide for yourself (with no pressure) if you’d like to work together more. !Plus, I’m taking it one BOLD step further by guaranteeing you’ll find this free plan incredibly valuable - or I’ll pay you $500.00 for the “inconvenience.” !It’s the ultimate try before you buy. !The ONLY reason I can do this is down to the results I’ve achieved for past clients (almost all of which I still work with, by the way) !

The combined decades of experience my team and I hold make sure my clients get results. !Period. !Consider these: !The company that was at risk of going bankrupt when we started working together. 18 months later they’ve tripled in size.

!The company that started from scratch and hit it out of the park with the very first promotion we planned for them... over 3000 new customers in less than a month.

!The consultant whose business had been flat for years, who quintupled their business (that’s 5x) after engaging us.

!So as you can imagine, whenever I make an offer like this, I get a LOT of interest. !And that’s why this next part is extremely important: !

This Is NOT For Everybody. !I have to be very selective about who I’ll speak with and I’ve got a strict (but understandable) set of criteria that needs to be met in order for us to proceed. !1. You have to have a solid business already.

This offer is for people who are up and running already and simply want to go a lot faster and a lot farther. !

2. You must have a steady flow of leads and customers.You’re advertising, you’re getting consistent traffic to your website or calls to your business... and you’re making sales. The numbers don’t have to be huge - they’re probably not where you want them to be (that’s where we come in) but you’re not starting from scratch.!

3. You must have a database of customers and/or prospects. Badly neglected databases don’t count.!

4. You MUST follow directions and be prepared to try new things.After all, if you don’t actually implement the strategy and materials I give you, you won’t make any money and you’ll quit pretty quickly. !

That’s it! !(Incidentally, I’m based in London, England - but I have clients all over the world - so don’t let that concern you. A large percentage of my clients are in the USA) !

Here’s What To Do Next !If you meet the criteria above and would like to talk to me personally about getting you the kind of marketing and business growth results I’ve already achieved for companies like yours, then I’ll happily set aside some time for you. !Here’s how the process works: !First, you’ll need to fill in an application. Don’t worry, it’s simple and unobtrusive. !I just need to know some information about your services, get an idea of what you want to accomplish, and so forth. !Next, Clare or Charlotte from my office will contact you to set up a time for us to talk that’s convenient for us both. !Our first call will usually be between 45 and 60 minutes. !This is where we really begin to figure out exactly what you want... and the quickest way to make it happen. !I’ll review your goals, your services, marketing channels and so forth... and I’ll give you a plan to bring in money immediately. !If you see the value in becoming client, great! We can talk about whether I think we could help.

!And if you don’t want to become a client - that’s fine too. As I said, I get a lot of interest from these occasional offers and more people apply than we can effectively help. !And if you tell me I’ve wasted your time, I’ll send you $500.00 immediately. !(I’ve never had anyone feel like their time was wasted - ever.) !

IMPORTANT: Time is a Factor !This consultancy offer is extremely limited because of the dedicated one-on-one time needed by me personally in order to provide you with results. !Naturally, it’s impossible for me and my team to work with more than a handful of new clients at any given time. !So with that said, know that the window of opportunity won’t be open long. !If you feel like this is right for you, click here or visit the link below to apply and let’s talk: !www.jamestnoble.com/LetsTalk

!I’ll speak to you soon, !James T Noble