Conquering Content Marketing with a Simplified Framework
Anyone can take a sheet of paper and jot down a content marketing plan: one blog a week and a white paper. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
The problem is that this kind of “plan” either doesn’t happen at all, or the posts are boilerplate text with no staying power.
It’s not that people can’t or don’t want to create quality assets. The problem is time, or the lack of it.
In 2018, Social Media Examiner reported that over 81% of surveyed marketers increased traffic within a few months — by spending just six hours a week at content marketing.
Six hours in a busy week might seem like a lot, but compare investment to value. If those weekly six hours are filling your pipeline and increasing your sales conversions, then that is high-value time.
So “time” in content marketing doesn’t mean, “You have to have lots of time to do it, or you might as well give up and go home.”
It means, “You have the time to use a repeatable process that consistently generates quality content to fill your pipeline.”
Yes, Virginia, Anyone Who Needs to Market Can Do Content Marketing
Small marketing teams and solopreneurs need time to plan, create, and produce high-quality content each quarter. An efficient content creation framework lets you create multiple high-quality assets that attracts more qualified leads. And you grow your content hub over time for even better returns.
Don’t assume that content marketing is a big-time affair focused on the enterprise. They get all the press, and it does work for them.
But content marketing works for all sizes of companies and teams, including solopreneurs.
Don’t assume that a large corporate marketing team is automatically better at content marketing than you are. If you are on a centralized marketing team in a large enterprise, then you’re dealing with some large-scale tasks: multi-channel marketing, brand awareness, marketing automation, and a content marketing budget the size of a small country.
But large teams can have more complex problems because they have a bevy of people to keep happy: managers, directors, general managers, CEOs, CMOs, and anyone else who is holds a stake in content marketing success.
This exact same simplified framework will work for teams of any size; the only difference is scope. Features and benefits remain the same: they just scale accordingly. (Don’t assume that because you don’t like writing, or don’t think you have time for it, that you’re doomed. You’re not. The basis of the framework is written content, and I will teach you to efficiently produce that content. Seriously, no worries.)
Is content marketing “fun and easy”? Nope. But it is satisfying, it is creative, and it works.
“Only charlatans sell the idea that you should be able to have what you want without real effort on your part.” (Anthony Iannarino, Eat Their Lunch)
The Giant Pain Point of Content Marketing: Or, If Content Marketing Is So Great, Why Don’t More People Do It?
Content marketing is a challenge. But there is one giant pain point that keeps marketing teams from achieving their content marketing objectives:
WHO HAS THE TIME?
When you’re struggling to produce enough decent content in the first place, content marketing looks more like an expensive paperweight than marketing’s secret weapon. To get the returns you need you need time:
- Time to plan.
- Time to create effective content.
#1: Time to Plan (Planning is Confusing and Takes Too Long)
Marketers may have too many ideas or too few ideas, may stare for days at the editorial calendar and give up, or decide that a few posts constitute their entire plan.
- “We already have too many good ideas for content, we don’t need to plan.”
- “We used to take days to plan, but we always got off the plan. So what’s the point?”
- “Our plans need subject matter experts, but they never get around to creating the content.”
- “Frankly, our planning sucks. It’s too complicated and confusing.”
- “We know what we need already, we’ll just say two blogs a week and call it good.”
Sure, you can download hundreds of editorial calendars, ranging from simple Excel spreadsheet to an annual subscription to CoSchedule or HubSpot.
But editorial calendars only help you schedule your content marketing. They’re useful but they cannot magically build your strategy. That requires you and only you: understanding your customer, understanding their pain points, understanding where their pain points and your solution intersect, and creating key marketing messages to match.
#2: Time to Create Effective Content: (Sick of the Hamster Wheel?
You also need time to create quality content to raise your search results and accelerate your lead generation. Without enough time you won’t create content at all, or you’ll create mediocre content, or you’ll create well-written content that your customers don’t care about.
But honestly, what can you really do? When was the last time that you thought seriously to yourself, “I have way too much time on my hands, I guess I’ll do some content.” Yeah, right. You’re more likely to say the following:
- “I’ve got plenty of ideas, I just need to flesh them out.”
- “I make videos, I hate to write.”
- “I don’t even own a website, how am I going to start a blog?”
- “The launch just got moved up. So much for content marketing.”
The key is following a simplified plan, the one you developed out of customer pain points and key messaging strategy. If you have that efficient content system, then you won’t waste any more time. You’ll create.
The Good News: Find the Time, Banish the Confusion
Here is the good news: you can have enough time to plan, and to create high quality content that consistently attracts qualified leads. The secret is a simplified content plan that works for any marketing team or individual. The plan is an efficient framework that lets you build a hub of consistent, high-quality content over time.
- Consistent means producing a repository of content every quarter. All content pieces strategically integrate with your marketing messages and with each other. Internal links between the related pieces raise your search results and increase page stickiness, which encourages more customer attention and interaction.
- Quality means that the content is well written and well done. Quality also means that your content effectively communicates your solution to customers who are actively searching for a way to solve a serious problem.
Introducing the Simplified Content Plan
The simplified content planner is based on quarters: long enough to create a hub of valuable content, and short enough to make course corrections.
- Set quarterly content marketing objectives
- Identify the top customer pain points
- Identify key marketing messages
- Create long-form anchor post
- Leverage into multiple assets
Step 1: Set Your Quarterly Marketing Objectives
7 Critical Objectives
Regardless of your team’s size, content marketing objectives boil down into 7 critical concerns:
- Increase sales. What were last quarter’s sales metrics? The basic metric is the amount of revenue minus cost. Set a gosl for this quarter’s sales objectives and costs.
- Generate leads. A lead is a prospect who engages with us. In terms of content marketing, this could be an email response, a phone call in response to a call to action, or a download. How many leads do you intend on capturing this quarter?
- Get new customers. How many leads will convert into new customers this quarter?
- Retain customers. How many existing customers do intend to keep? 100% sounds like a no-brainer, but is probably not accurate. Rather than just sticking in 100%, think about how you’re going to retain your existing customers with extra attention and helpful content.
- Increase website traffic and stickiness. What traffic are starting out with, to which pages? If visitors are only staying 30 seconds, how much longer do you want them to stay? Do you have action goals for website visitors?
- Increase social interaction. How often were your tweets liked and shared? How many people visited your profile LinkedIn, and better yet, asked for engagement? How has your Facebook group grown, and how many of the group members have reached out to you?
- Launch new products or solutions. How has your content marketing succeeded with launches? How many sign-ups did you get free webinar? How many actual attendees of live webinar or on a replay? How many people signed up for your new membership site?
Set these objectives and track them. They’re not particularly difficult. Basic record keeping and the judicious use of Google Analytics will get you the answers that you need. If you’re getting the growth you want, great! If not, tracking will help you identify weak topics and channels.
Step 2: Identify the Top Customer Pain Points that You Solve
You can publish great content that your customers don’t care about. What a colossal waste of your time. Your customers must be interested in in your content to consume it, and this starts by identifying and writing to their big pain points. Know what your customers’ top pain points are, which ones your solution solves, and which pain/solution nets you the most profit.
There are probably multiple pain points/solutions that fit. For the quarter, pick the primary pain point that you can efficiently target with your content marketing.
You will get better attention and results if you focus on one or two for this time period. Your content strategy should position you as a specialist in solving distinct pain points, not a generalist who is all over the map. Don’t worry about abandoning important solutions: as you go quarter by quarter, your content marketing will take up the slack and strengthen your messaging around multiple pain points and solutions.
Step 3: Identify Your Top 2-3 Marketing Messages
Once you identify the paint point to build your strategy around, create your key marketing messages. A key marketing message is an important detail about your company or offering that builds the case for your solution.
For example, this quarter my clients’ pain point is time and quality: How to create enough quality content in a quarter to attract Google attention and increase lead gen?
My current company key message is: I’m an experienced content planner and content creator for mid-sized, SMB, and micro marketing teams.
My current offering key messages are: I teach an easy-to-learn system that simplifies content marketing planning and creation. A simplified content planning and marketing system results in more leads, visitors, and conversions.
Now that you have the top pain point and supporting key marketing messages, you have your quarterly content theme and messaging framework. You’re on your way!
Step 4: Create Your Long-Form Anchor Post
Start by writing a high quality, long-form post of 2000-4000 words. This post illustrates your customers’ pain points, introduces your key marketing messages, and demonstrates your ability to solve your customer’s pressing problems. If you’re used to writing, then 2000-4000 words isn’t hard. If you don’t have the time, assign it to an experienced staff writer or freelancer.
If you’re not a writer and don’t want to be, don’t worry. (Remember Rule #1 from the supremely weird Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC.)
If it’s simpler and faster for you to talk it out, then do that instead. Videotape your content or record it, and transcribe it into a written anchor piece.
Why the Longer Piece?
- As of 2019, most blog posts are shorter than 500 words. When you’re building your presence and offering, an authoritative anchor posts attracts more back links, shows better results in Google organic traffic, and increases user engagement.
- If the post is evergreen, even better. The long post will also go a long way towards building your authority in your marketplace.
- Finally, the longform presents so much information that it’s very efficient to break out multiple assets from this single piece.
When you have written and refined it, then post it onto your blog. (Don’t have a blog? Start one.)
“You have to create long-form content, meaning 2000+ words high-quality blog posts. This needs to be your new content strategy. I am a big believer in evergreen long-form content pieces. They perform better and add immense value to your audience by going beyond just scratching the surface.” (Neil Patel)
Step 5: Leverage the Anchor Post into Multiple Assets
As soon as you publish your post, turn the content into an attractive eBook or white paper. If you are appealing to a business audience, you’ll want an attractive look that’s businesslike. If you’re appealing to a consumer readership, you can make a little flashier. Just be certain that the message is in the content, not just the design. Design serves content.
Decide if you’re going to gate the e-book or not. Gating simply means that a reader can only download the e-book in response to some information. If you prefer not to gate, consider asking for their email address for more great information. Best of all, test and see how many sign-ups you get.
Once you upload your eBook, start breaking out content from the long-form post to plan and create even more assets for the remainder of the quarter – usually two months. A good mix is the anchor post and its eBook, 1 blog a week for two months (which you share to social media), a LinkedIn Slideshow or Facebook Story, new web content, and rich media: videos and/or podcasts. Include a call to action (CTA) in your new assets with the download link to the eBook, as well as internal links.
Sample Monthly Plan
- Month 1
- Create and publish the long-form anchor post
- Format and upload the eBook version
- Month 2, repeat in Month 3
- 1-2 shorter blog posts a week. (If you can keep up the quality and length, go for it. 1200 words is ideal for a weekly post.)
- Turn the posts into LinkedIn articles or Facebook Stories.
- Refer to the new articles/posts in status updates and tweets. If visual mediums like Instagram and Pinterest work for you, post there.
- Create slideshow presentation.
- Film videos and upload to YouTube.
- Record weekly or bi-monthly podcasts.
This sound like a lot for two months. But by leveraging your anchor piece, creation time becomes muchmore efficient. Even if you create 8 blogs a month, 1 slideshow presentation, 1 video a week, and 2 podcasts a month, that’s about 20 hours a month, about 5 hours a week. And a lot of effective content and excellent exposure.
Step 6: Rinse and Repeat
At the end of the quarter, review your marketing objectives and make any adjustments. Now repeat the process that you did at the beginning of the quarter: pain points, key marketing messages (including any new launches), the 2000-4000-word anchor post, and go to town with a repeatable and sustainable system.