Laura Hanly
Every business has at least one expert in it. And it’s that expertise that provides your business with its competitive edge. You must leverage this as the critical resource in your marketing, so let’s dive into how to do that. To develop any successful marketing strategy, you need to have a clear picture of the goals in your business. (Location 194)
You need to have a consistent strategy for the content you’re producing, so that your audience is engaged, comes to know and respect you as an authority, and will buy from you when the time is right. Let’s look at how to produce recurring content in a way that will help you achieve those goals and keep you motivated to keep producing on a regular basis. (Location 197)
Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team in order to develop a marketing strategy that will serve your business: (Location 200)
Now, there are two main types of content you can use in a content marketing strategy. There’s recurring content, which builds a customer base gradually over time, and there are content assets used as near-term client acquisition tools. (Location 213)
What are your customers looking to you for insight about, and how do those topics overlap with the values you outlined above? (Location 225)
What is the one thing you can focus on becoming known for that will make it easier to develop, market and sell products that your audience will buy again and again? (Location 229)
The simplest way to become an authority on something is to say the same things about that topic over and over again. (Location 234)
Develop content themes to go along with your ‘one thing’, and map out several topics within each theme to cover over the next three months. Pick four themes total, and three topics per theme. Write the headline for each of the 12 topics, assign a date to each one, and use that as your content framework. (Location 249)
Simplified, here’s the overview of what should be in your quarterly plan: (Location 251)
Mapping your content out like this ensures that you can be strategic about your production: you can lead your audience to a certain action over time, you can educate them about a product before you’ve announced it, or you can just give them a complete, cohesive body of knowledge about the things that you all value. (Location 257)
Don’t publish without a plan. Every piece of content that comes out of your business needs to serve a clear, strategic purpose, both for you and your customers. (Location 269)
Action Steps for Chapter One: (Location 277)
There are two types of content ecosystems: recurring systems, and asset systems. A recurring system has six parts that need to be built in for the ecosystem to be healthy; an asset system has four parts. You can use either system on its own in your business, or you can use them both in tandem. (Location 288)
Good opt-in offers include white papers, industry reports, educational courses, cheat sheets, checklists, webinars, video courses, coupons or demo/downloads. (Location 298)
Once you’ve made your initial offer, you will have two groups: prospects who converted, and those who did not. You need to follow up with both. (Location 308)
The Four Parts of An Asset Ecosystem (Location 317)
that if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. (Location 340)
(I’m including an example here in italics to demonstrate what I mean… and to be really specific): (Location 354)
This is the second key to creating powerful content: having an opinion. It’s not enough to just state the facts – you have to let people know what you stand for, so they feel compelled to join your tribe or get the hell away from you. (Location 385)
Then we boosted it on Facebook, our team posted it across all our social media networks, we shared it with influencers in our space, and we submitted it to sharing platforms like Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon to increase the audience that would see it. (Location 392)
Content works when you’re consistent. You need to publish on a regular schedule to reap the full benefits, so you have to commit to the discipline of doing it, or find someone else to handle it for you. (Location 405)
Action Steps for Chapter Two: (Location 426)
Secondly, you need the right offer. If you’re going to go to the trouble of getting their attention, you have to have something to offer them that has real, tangible value. (Location 440)
Finally, you need the right copy. You could have the world’s best copywriter on your team, doing their very best work, but if the audience and offer aren’t right, it will count for nothing. (Location 442)
The offer and copy, then, need to be focused on the people making the buying decisions. (Location 450)
Without a clearly defined outline of your ideal customers and their needs, you’re stuck before you’ve even started. (Location 460)
The Harvard Business Review2 recommends a three-fold approach to identifying if a market segment is right for your business: perspective, capabilities and profit potential. (Location 469)
To identify the types of offers that are most likely to be a success with your market, you must go back to your primary customers. (Location 534)
Is their business struggling to carve out market share? A book on powerful positioning and branding will be a hit. (Location 535)
Market validation, then, is a critical part of developing the right offers for your audience. How will you know what your market wants, if you never talk to them? (Location 566)
Here are the key steps you need to take before you start developing a product or offering. (Location 571)
You can do this a number of ways. Start by surveying them. Ask them questions that will help you quickly see if your assumptions are correct, if they’re using your product or service as you think they are, and what the offer is doing for them. (Location 578)