The Content Marketing Bottleneck That’s Costing You Clients

Content really is King in the Marketing World. It has been for decades. But it takes a lot of time, effort, and skill to get it right. Do you find yourself struggling to keep up? Trying to publish quality content, consistently, that will attract new leads to your business?

I’ll share how I do it now, with minimal effort.

But first some context and some things to think through.

It can seem tough, I know. Back in 1997 when I started my management consulting business, I was doing it all myself. Sales, Marketing, Service Delivery, Admin, Accounts and Content Creation. I was working 7 days a week.

Now it’s even harder.

What type of content to produce?
How to make it not too salesy?
Where to publish it?
How to promote it?
What Social Media platforms do I need to be on?
How to use content to generate leads?

Very quickly you can end up with a to do list as long as your arm.

So, in this article, I’ll step you through how I plan, prepare and publish content, without too much effort. And is it worth it? Absolutely. This strategy drives a very large percentage of our new sales.

Who are you Marketing to?

This is a critical first step. You need to clearly identify your target market. What are their needs, wants and desires that your product or service can match? But also “who” are they. Create a customer avatar so that you can imagine them as an individual.

For example, one of my client avatars is George. George is married with two kids at private school. He has a master’s degree and is a middle manager in a major corporation. He gets frustrated at times that he doesn’t have the resources for his team to make a real impact and worries that his team may not be seen to be doing a good job.

When I create marketing content, I’m “talking” to George.

Who is your George and what do you offer that would help them?

The Purpose of Content Marketing

OK it’s an obvious question, but we first need to think about the purpose of our content marketing. It can require quite a bit of effort, so let’s make sure we know why we are doing this and benefit we expect to gain. I look at our own content creation from three perspectives.

Brand Awareness

This is purely a branding piece. It’s nothing to do with promoting a product or service. But it needs to be of interest to your audience of course. It could be about your new office, new staff, your values, really anything that talks about you and your brand.

But I prefer to make it educational or insightful. This way it adds value to the reader. Share some tips or insights related to your target market. Ideally something new that makes them think “wow, these people know their stuff”.

Product or Service Awareness

This is getting a bit more promotional now, as it talks directly to your products and services. It could be how your offering helps your customers or maybe even a case study.

It raises awareness in your audience’s mind, that 1) they may have a similar problem and 2) you seem to have the solution.

Promotional

This is a direct promotion or “offer” about your products and services. Or it might be an invitation to an event. But it requires a direct “call to action”. More on those shortly.

What Type of Marketing Content to Produce

I have probably tried every conceivable type of marketing there is over the last 30 years for my own business. Press, TV, Radio, Publishing Books, Events, and online of all types.

But for now, I want to talk about the easiest. And that’s online marketing. And in that context, you can think of content marketing as offering something of value, to get something. The thing of value is your content. So make sure it adds value to the audience. And what you “get” is their interest, recognition of your brand, and of your products and services, maybe their contact details so you can market to them directly, or perhaps even their contact details or a sales enquiry.

So, what works best?

It will vary of course by market. But for me, providing services to business managers and business owners, I find that these work well.

Articles and Posts

These are quite time consuming. For example, I might spend 2 – 3 hours writing a post like this. I work out the focus of the article, and who it’s for. What the main purposes and how the article should flow. I structure the title and then the headings and sub-headings first, then fill in the details. Like writing the contents page first.

There is a train of thought that you should entice your audience with the “perception of value” and get them to reach out to you for the real value. I don’t believe in that. I think it’s better to share some content that is of real value that that will help or inform people. The reality is, that your customers will still want to buy from you, whilst others were never going to be your customer anyway.

Those “non-customers” who consume your content but never buy are also very important. They help to spread your content and boost your follower / subscriber count. They become your advocates. So treat them well.

The length of articles and posts varies depending on the platform and how the algorithms change. But as a rough guide, short social media posts might be just 200 words, whereas a website article could be 1,000 to 3,000 words. Some of mine are much longer.

Make it as long as it needs to be to add value about the topic. This was going to be quite short for example, but I soon realised there was a lot more information and tips that I could, and should, share.

So “long form” articles and blog posts like this can still perform well. But make them easier to read with good formatting and adding relevant graphics. I don’t do that. My team do it. I hope!

Infographics and Images

Most people are very visual. We take in information much faster that way. So infographics and images with minimal text can also work well. Mix it up a bit.

Carousels

Carousels are those “slideshows” you can scroll through on platforms like Linkedin. Generally, 7-9 slides work well, supported with a short text post.

Video

The King of content. At least at the time of writing. And I’m in danger of giving away my secret sauce here, but I’ll practice what I preach and share what I think works best. And it’s video. Shorts and longer form. I use shorts under 1 minute on social media, and longer videos, up to 40 minutes on YouTube.

And the best part? I find video is the easiest form of content to make. I’m not fooling. In the time it takes me to write this article I could shoot 6 high quality videos! I’ll share how I do that in a moment.

Creating the Marketing Content

Here are the steps I go through in content creation. And I’ll be 100% transparent in how I do it, so that you can use this article as an example or case study.

Content Ideation

I wanted to promote the idea of video marketing as the best content marketing strategy for many if not most businesses. But I needed to create a “context” within which to explain it. In this way, the reader who be able to assess the different types of content marketing and determine if video marketing would work for them. And what to do next.

Content Structure and Purpose

I started out with the title, and sub heading structure. In this way I ended up with a contents page, that then just required me to write in the details under each heading.

I didn’t get it right first time. As I was writing I realised I need to talk about the client avatar as an important first steps added that in early in the process.

Adding Value with Your Content

I wanted to share the types of content marketing that I have tried and what I find works best. It wasn’t running live events that cost $20,000 a time to provide. It’s the online marketing I explain here. It’s about what worked for me, rather than what felt good. I ran live events for decades and published 6 books for example. But it’s video marketing that really moved the dial for me. I hope my competitors don’t read this! Seriously. Because they are really bad at it.

Repurposing Your Content

This is another piece of the magic and why I think video marketing is the easiest to do.

By repurposing your content, what I mean is taking the same content and producing it in different forms. So, having written this article, how do you think I could repurpose it?

I could easily:

Create a video from it.
Create an animated video.
Break it into smaller bite sized social media posts.
Use it as the basis for a Carousel or Infographic.

In this case I started with an article, as I needed one for the website and I found it useful to structure the content in this way, as I collected my thoughts.

But I normally do it starting with the video! This is probably the first long form blog post I have written, in 20 years! Why? I suppose I wanted to show you my content creation learning journey and what I found works.

But usually, I start with the video. Last Sunday for example I shot 10 videos in one afternoon. This is my process / workflow. And you’ll realise why I love video so much.

I come up with the video idea and purpose.
On a 15 cm x 10 cm card. I write the title and maybe 5-6 bullet points.
I then think of a call to action and add that. It might be asking a question to elicit comments and engagement.
I’ll prepare 4 or 5 video cards like that.
I then sit in front of the camera, with the card pinned up next to the lens.
I shoot the video. In one take. If I stumble, I pause and keep going.
Then I do the next videos.
I then upload them to cloud storage.
My video editor downloads them and edits them. He adds a background, edits out any glitches, adds captions if required and so on.
My social media manager then posts the videos, and…
Re-purposes the videos, using the transcript, into articles, blogs, carousels, download guides and so on. More on that role in a later article.
My video editor then creates shorts from the videos with zero input from me.

This process allows me to run 2 businesses, 4 YouTube channels, about 5 websites and countless social media accounts. Three hours in one afternoon, once a month, shooting 5 videos, is all it takes.

Content Marketing – Calls to Action

Don’t forget the “call to action” at the end of your content. Always have one! If only to encourage engagement and sharing. Here are some examples:

Pose a simple question and ask for comments.

Ask to like and share.

Add a link to one of your products / services.

Provide something to download. An “opt-in” that requires them to provide contact details.

Or as here, make an offer. (I said I was going to be totally transparent about how to do this).

Where to Find a Great Video Editor

You need to think about how many videos you’ll be producing. And also, what else a video editor could do for you. Most are really good at also creating shorts, graphics, carousels and so on.

Hire a Local Video Editor

I did this when I first started making videos about 20 yeas ago. But it became very expensive very quickly as I started producing more. I had a “contractor” who would charge me based on the length of each video.

Hire an Offshore Video Editor

I soon realised this was a better option for me. Someone full time, professionally trained, who could get to know me and my business, and handle lots of other things as well as editing.

My current video editor is really creative. As a change to our normal videos, I’ll often just send him 12 short lines of text that tell a story. And he’ll use library footage from our online account to create a very professional video with captions. Those take me 5 minutes to come up with the text.

My video editor works in my Philippines “back office” that operates within Virtual Done Well. Virtual Done Well is a social enterprise that I founded back in 2012, and all my back-office team work from there supporting my consulting business.

Virtual Done Well now also provides back-office support to many other businesses around the World.

If you think you might benefit from having a highly professional offshore Video Editor, working in a modern well-equipped office with great local support and benefits why not reach out for a chat? You’ll probably end up chatting to me.