“If You Build It, They Will Come”
Don’t you wish it was that easy when it comes to content marketing?
This week I wanted to share with you a couple of things I do to turn posting content into new customers and 💰 in the bank.
As the co-founder of IAM Productions, we speak to a lot of people about content marketing and I’m genuinely surprised at the number of people that have absolutely no strategy before they post content or after they post to turn views and engagement into sales.
If you’re hoping that once you post content people will start flocking to your business, demanding to work with you and spend shed loads of cash, you’re going to be bitterly disappointed.
In this newsletter, I’m going to share with you just 3 (of 12) strategies we use ourselves and we advise our content marketing clients to also do – so they can turn “just posting content” into sales.
This one is a 10-minute read 👇
I’m sure you’re bored of hearing the story about how Ian and I sold Learning Heroes for $11m (£8m in proper money) back in 2017?
I know I’m bored telling it.
What you may not realise is that we didn’t have a marketing budget to do paid ads and had to solely rely on content marketing on LinkedIn and YouTube to grow our audience and attract clients.
But just getting 👀 on your content is useless if it doesn’t convert to new business…
We quickly realised that if we created good content, that resonated with our ideal client, we would get noticed. But, as we weren’t an established brand (no one had ever heard of us before) we were unlikely to win much business by just posting content alone and sitting back and waiting.
So we had to work harder than all our competitors to turn what little attention we initially got, into paying customers. Doing that allowed us to sign up 340 corporate clients like; Boots, The FA, Matalan, Halfords, NHS, Arcadia Group and eventually lead to that £8 million exit just 2.5 years later.
That’s the dream, right?
Work hard for a couple of years, grow your business and cash out? Well I tell you what… it’s not going to happen if you just sit there waiting for sales off the back of posting your content.
You’ve got to make your content work hard for you and you’ve got to work harder once it’s been posted. Can’t be arsed with graft? Stop reading now.
Have you ever heard of the 95-5 rule?
The 95-5 rule is a rule in marketing that suggests that at any one time, 95% of your potential clients aren’t ready to buy today.
So no matter how good that bit of content you just posted this morning is 95% of your ideal client are “out-market” today. They won’t be buying your stuff.
Only 5% of your potential prospects will be ready and looking to buy right now. but you’re now in competition with all the other providers in your niche for that 5%.
Sounds shit, right?
So your content marketing should be aimed at the 95% that will become “in-market” and ready to buy in the future.
You want to be creating content that’s “front-of-mind” with that audience, consistently. So when they are ready to buy – you’re the option they (in an ideal world) immediately think of or (more likely) are one of the two they’re considering to work with.
So how did I make sure my content was working hard to turn the 95% into future sales and close more of the 5%?
Here are 4 ways I did that 👇