Think Like a Publisher

Marketing Content

• Get Content, Get Customers is the title of a popular book.  
• A website filled with great content gets over 1,000 visitors a week, despite being very new and having no marketing resources behind it.
• Willitblend.com grows sales over 400% with YouTube videos.

Lead generation is like fishing. You can buy a top of the line rod, reel and gear, but unless you have great bait and find the ideal spots, you probably won't catch many fish.

There's also really good news. Great content is cheaper and simpler to develop than it has been in history. What it does take is brain power.  But hey, that's free, isn't it? You probably have a lot more content than you think you do.

For great content, you want to Think Like a Publisher (title of a great podcast I did with Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage.) You want to constantly be acquiring it.

Maybe shoot some video of your CEO talking. Or one of your most senior folks. Or a customer.

Maybe interview a real expert in your industry. Record it. Commission a transcript. Listen to the recording and divvy it up by theme. Do the same thing with the transcript. You just created little audio highlights and several blog posts. You have content.

When evaluating content, you need to answer five questions:

1. Is it valuable to them? (And not us) The measure should be that they want it, whether or not they ever buy from us.
2. Is it bite-sized? One theme per. Keep it simple and short.
3. Is it matched to the persona? A piece of content for a CEO should be different from one for the Chief Financial Officer.
4. Is it matched to the buying process? The content for someone in the Untroubled/Unaware stage will be very different from someone in the Whom to Consider? phase.
5. Is the timing right? Don't overwhelm them or let them forget you. As a general rule, once a week is too often and once a month is too infrequent. I also suggest you vary the timing. Ideally, you let the prospect give you feedback as well.