7 Steps to Content Marketing Strategy That Converts
Content marketing strategy is key to communicating to grow your business. It’s a strategic plan for creating, sharing, and repurposing information and it all stems from your core purpose and message. It’s the most effective way to add value, attract the right customers, and establish relationships that lead to collaborations, referrals, and sales.
Why Content Marketing Strategy Works
My 7 Steps to Content Marketing Strategy That Converts follows a thread from your core purpose and message all the way through to your social media online presence. These 7 steps become the foundation for all your create—your content. It includes what you share verbally, in writing, on video, and live streaming. It’s how you show up online (and off) in a way that is consistent, clear, and true to your calling. Each step builds upon the one that came before it in this order:
- Grounding in Core Purpose and Message – Get clear, concise, and purposeful about your big WHY.
- Elevator Invitation – Two to three sentence summary of you, your target market, their results.
- Website Copy – Describe you, your services, and boil it down for your Home Page.
- Opt-in/Lead Magnet/Free Gift – Pathway from your core message to your core service/program.
- List Nurturing and List Building – Communicate to attract more people and nurture your existing audience.
- Blogging – Valuable, targeted messaging with purposeful calls to action.
- Social Media – To connect, share, engage, and invite.
When you approach your business communication from this framework, you create an unending source of content. It’s a matter of always starting from the first step—your grounding. Why you’re in business in the first place. How you serve. Who you serve. Their results. Not your features. Your big WHY is central to this. Keep it front and center.
How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy Plan
Elevator Invitation
Craft an elevator invitation from the key elements of your grounding exercise around your core message. Get clear about who you serve, what they gain from working with you, and your big WHY. Be sure to use language that speaks to who you are at your core. What makes you different than all the other “fill-in-the-blanks” that do similar work? If you’re edgy, your elevator invitation should be edgy. This is your first crack at getting people interested to want to learn more.
Website
Create a website, a home base online, where people can go to learn more. Focus on your About Me, Service Descriptions, and the Home Page. Convey your core message. Define how you serve and the ways that people can work with you. Focus on the results they’ll get. Your Home Page should capture all of this clearly, concisely, and with impact. Make an impression that counts.
Opt-In
Create a free gift, an opt-in, of value that establishes your expertise. Give people something that addresses their challenge. It’s a first step on the pathway of potentially working with you. Be sure the step is on the right path. Don’t pick a catchy topic out of a hat. Get in their heads. Listen to what they’re asking for. Have it ultimately lead to a deeper way to work with you—a low-cost product, a higher-end service or program. This is the pathway. Your opt-in points them in the right direction.
List Building and List Nurturing
Build your list and nurture the people on it. Nurture these people who have kindly given you their email addresses. Remind them of how they can put your opt-in to use in their lives, in their business. Continue to give them value and let them know other ways they can connect with you. Communicate with them regularly. These relationships are like gold. Their number is not that important. The value is in the relationship itself. Nurture it. Value it. Value the people behind the relationship. And continue to share your opt-in with others to build more relationships, too.
Blogging
When writing for your blog, start by reviewing your core purpose and message. Get grounded in why you’re writing a blog post in the first place. Not because it’s due. Not because everyone says businesses that blog do better. Blog because it’s a way to convey your core purpose and message. Write because the value you share helps your target audience to do, feel, think, or become inspired about something. Add value. Blog for the people you want to help. Don’t blog for Google. Blog for Joe Shmoe who needs the information you have. Then invite him to an offer you have that can help him further.
Social Media
Business is social if you’re planning to work with people. Have a presence on social media to connect with others; attract the right people; establish, build, and nurture relationships. Add value when you post. Give more than you sell. A lot more! Give from the place of your big WHY. Demonstrate your knowledge. Share your content, share other people’s content, support others, and, in smaller doses, promote your offers. Above all, be a person, not just a brand. Step out from behind your logo.
How Does Your Current Content Marketing Strategy Stack Up?
Consider your content along this continuum. It’s all interrelated. It’s a tapestry of who you are, what you contribute, and how you invite people to know you, work with you, collaborate with you. You create and distribute content for your target audience—those you’re meant to serve—potential clients. Don’t discount all the other valuable relationships you reach with your messaging. Referral sources, collaborators, supporters abound. We just need to be sure we aren’t pushing past them as we clamor for customers. The value of a referral partner can be exceedingly deep. Don’t be short-sighted while trying to gain customers.
Does content marketing strategy speak to you? I’d love to know in the comments below. And if this makes sense, relax into it. Trust that if you believe in its premise—give value, create relationships, solve challenges—your marketing messages are already inside you. We just need to uncover them at the core.
Focus on why you’re in business and then convey your messages with strategy that gets you noticed in a noisy online world so you can build the business you deserve. If I can help, it would be my honor to support you through the steps of content marketing strategy. Reach out here and let’s explore how.
