So here we go, so slightly different format to normal, so I’m gonna do a couple of little presentations and screen shares and things like that, this is just to mix it up a little bit, so bear with me.

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action

The Importance of  Effective Content Marketing

One of the reasons content marketing works is that it focuses on telling a lot stories and building narrative, rather than just bombarding prospects with sales messages and fallacies.

People are more likely to engage with a brand that delivers good quality, educational content than one that only focuses on selling its products.

Purchasing decisions aren’t always, if ever, rational. It’s not facts that get prospects to choose a brand over another.

The emotions and personal beliefs that come with the story are the main factors that motivate people to take action.

Consumers usually choose the brands whose narratives reflect their views and embody their ideal principles of life.

That’s not just a theory; there are numbers to prove it.

According to DemandMetric, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional advertising.

Effective Content Marketing Tips

Identify Your Target Market

This goes without saying, that if we don’t know who we’re here to serve, then we can’t actually serve anybody particularly well.

So we have to work out exactly who our target market is and then work out where they hang out. So a good example of this might be that, say for example, I was watching a programme on the BBC called Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire.

I say I was, obviously my wife was watching it and I got roped into it. But five of the women were chatting and four of them had big engagement rings on their hands and then the fifth one didn’t. And they started talking to her and they said, “Well why haven’t you met your millionaire yet? “We’ve all met millionaires, what are you doing?” And she said “Well, you know, I don’t really know. 

Content Marketing Benefits

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” And they said, “Well are you going out?” And she said, “Well no, not really.” And they said, “Well maybe you should start going out “and actually, there’s some really exclusive clubs “in Mayfair and Chelsea where millionaires go and hang out “and they pay lots of membership fees.

” So identify the target market, loads of millionaires. Where do they hang out? In exclusive clubs in Chelsea and Mayfair and places like that. So none of this stuff is rocket science, it’s quite basic stuff.

So then what we’ve got to do, is we’ve got to go to them. So basically we make it easy for them to find us. And we do that by hanging out in the places where they’re more likely to hang out.

Now we don’t this in like a stalker sort of fashion. We do this in away we just show up basically, regularly and often, with the same consistent message in the same places where they hang out, where our clients hang out, our ideal target market.

So for example, if we design websites for small businesses, where are small businesses most likely to hang out? Well more than likely it’s going be on Facebook groups,  LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or  places like that.

With over 3.6 billion global social media users, it’s easy to understand why so many businesses invest in social media marketing.

There are a number of platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat) to work with and several ways you can create and share content on each of them (e.g. photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos, stories).

So if we’re showing up there with the same consistent message, giving tips about websites and things like that, then potentially we’re gonna start piquing people’s interest. And if we’re giving away value upfront, when we show up regularly and often, with that same consistent message, then we’re more likely to get clients onboard.

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So the next thing I wanna work on, so just to complete that actually, I’m gonna go back a slide. So just to complete that scenario, so identify target market, millionaires. Where do they hang out? Exclusive clubs.

Go to those exclusive clubs and then finally, show up regularly and often with the same consistent message. Hey, I’m a really nice person, so why don’t we go out on a date? It’s not rocket science.

So identify target market, so small business owners. Where do they hang out? Let’s say Facebook groups, networking meetings and places like that. We’ve gotta make sure that we go to those networking meetings and that we go to those Facebook groups.

And then we actually turn up there with some kind of message of value, regularly and often and consistently. And we will find clients that way.

There’s another thing which I talk about, in terms of goals and activity and stuff like that, I’ll save that for another day.

If you want to know more, come and grab me. So next up, what does that message need to be? And this is one of the biggest mistakes that I see entrepreneurs making. So in this instance, what I mean by this is the message.

When we go to our clients and they say, “Well I’m looking for a website designer.” We start going, “Oh well I’m the best web designer, “we build standards-complaint websites, “which are very well optimised and Google will love them.

” Actually, that’s not necessarily what the client either probably wants, but it may be what they need. So what we’ve gotta do is look at what our marketing message looks like. So I always talk about three core pillars in business, so delivery, sales and marketing.

So remember marketing leads to sales conversations, which leads to the work which puts food on the table. But there’s an old saying which is still used, which is sell people what they need, not what they want.

Now I actually believe the saying’s kind of half right, actually what we need to do, is market to what people want and then sell them what they need. So in this example, talking about websites, rather than talking about the great features of having a standards-compliant website.

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Actually the reason why people generally want a good website, is because they want to generate more leads, which is gonna generate more business for them and ultimately lead to more sales and more money.

So what we say is, we build websites which are highly effective at converting leads, prospects into leads. And I got that completely wrong, so I’m gonna say it again. So we build awesome websites which are highly effective at converting prospects into leads.

Content is the present – and future – of marketing

‘Cause that’s what people want, people want leads, they want sales conversations, they want money. And then when we sit them down, once we’ve piqued their interest and they go, “Oh cool, well nobody else is saying “that they can do that, so I’m interested.

” When they sit down, they’ll say, “Well, how do you do that?” And that’s the point when you now have the opportunity, during a face-to-face sales meeting, of saying, “Well, how we do that is through working out “who your target market is, we’ll add on Google Analytics, “we’ll make sure the website’s search engine-optimized, “standards-compliant, etc.

” So we can go into the technical side of it, but we don’t put that in our marketing message. People don’t want to know what the features are of your products, they want to know, here we go, what the outcome is going to be.

So what I want you to do is first of all to write down ten features of your products. Now I’ve said it, don’t market the features, market the outcome.

But we’re gonna come onto that in a second. But in order to know the difference between the two, I want you to write down a feature set of your products, just ten features of your product. The next thing I want you to do, is to write down not one, but ten outcomes that your products will deliver (benefits).

And then I want you to compare the two and see what differences there are between the two of them. Because guaranteed there will be an awful lot of differences. There’s a couple of other elements to marketing which I want to cover.

Market Research

For effective content marketing, market research is important. So the first one is around market research, so again, there are several stages to market research.

And how I discovered this, I was delivering a talk at the local university to about 120 business students.

And they came up with some fantastic ideas and I said, “Cool, well now what we’ve going to do, “is take these ideas to market.”

So, if you’re in a position whereby maybe you’re just a startup, or maybe you’ve launched your product, but it’s not quite landing, the marketing message isn’t quite landing, we’ve gotta do this thing called market research.

So the first step of market research basically is to assess whether there’s a need for your product. So in the example which one of the students used, he’d created this great product which effectively was like an app, which could look inside your mouth and tell you whether you’d cleaned your teeth properly or not.

Which I thought was actually really bloody cool. So I asked 120 students who’s interested? And about 80 people put their hand up. Cool, stage one passed, because we can assess that there’s a need for this product.

The second thing is and there are three steps to this. The second step is then we ask people how much they’re willing to pay. So there might be a need, but if people aren’t willing to pay for that product, then there’s no business need for this product.

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So I started the Dutch auction, I started at five pounds, ten pounds, twenty pounds, thirty pounds. And I got to fifty pounds and there was about 20 people, out of the original 80 with their hands still left up.

So I was like, cool, so there’s actually 1,000 pounds worth of business in here. I double-checked with the guy how much does it cost to make and he said, well about ten pounds. So there’s a good profit margin in it, to cover thing like marketing, branding and the website, overheads and stuff like that.

So cool, so step two we’ve just passed, step two of market research we’ve just passed, because there’s a need for it and people will pay some money for it. And then I said and this is the really important part of it and this is all around the value proposition, the outcome that your product delivers.

So I said, “Now what we’ve going to do, “is start to mix in stories “and make it a bit more sensationalist.” And I’m going to talk more about this later.

So I said, “Right now, if you don’t buy this product, “in the next 30 days, one of your teeth is gonna fall out. “How many people now are going to buy this product? “How many people?” And more hands went up and I said, “Cool, how much money would people be willing to spend?” And I said, “I’m going to  start higher.

” And I started at 500 pounds and I went up incrementally and there was actually ten people now, who would spend 2,000 pounds on this one particular product. So now we’d grown and scaled that product, or the potential of that product, from 1,000 pounds with 20 clients, up to 20,000 pounds with just 10 clients.

So actually we could have a cheaper product, we could have a medium-quality product, and we could have a high-end product, so there’s a whole suite of different things there.

But the thing was the sensationalism, the story which sits behind the marketing message, the fact it was sensationalist and we were starting to market to the outcomes of what people wanted to hear.

If it was just simply the features, oh there’s this thing, this mirror, which you can look in your mouth and it’s connected to an app.

People don’t want that, they’re just like, what’s it going to do? So, think about that when you’re putting your marketing message together.

Marketing Tips -Features vs Outcomes

What is it that your product does? What are you going to deliver? So if you’re on Fearless, go and grab the worksheet. If you want to know more about the Fearless programme, obviously, doesn’t matter, regardless.

So what I want you to do is make your list of features and outcomes for effective content marketing tips pop them into the comments box below and then I’ll come back to you with some feedback, if you’ve got any questions at all.