You might feel great that you are producing quality conten, but great content is not an automatic money tree with instant sales and buyers. It is more of a seed you plant that needs to be cultivated with time, thought and planning. You will need to think strategically about how different types of content will contribute to the larger sales cycle.
Just like planting a tree, content marketing starts small then grows. You must sow a strategy of patience and commitment into your plan and then you will reap the benefits of your work. The commitment to the process of building your audience into customers will generate revenue for you in the long run
Plant the Seed
The first step is to grab the attention of your target. You need something big, exciting and special to draw people in. Not only does it have to be exciting, it has to show your potential audience that you know your stuff and that you solve a worthwhile problem. So raise questions. Poke around at pain points that you can address. Tell stories that resolve objections. But be subtle about it. The purpose of this content is to get your audience into a receptive state of mind before they start hearing any overt sales messages from you.
You do want marketing messages in your content to be palatable, subtle messages. You’re not closing sales here . . . this is just the beginning of the conversation.
If your content is compelling enough, your audience will stick around to find answers and how you might make their lives that much better.
Continue to Sow
Good builder marketers are great at capturing attention, but sometimes have a tough time once they have it.
The answer is to continue delivering gripping messages to your new audience, either using a blog, an email autoresponder, or both.
Here’s where you use content marketing fundamentals to start creating a commercial relationship. Obviously, you still deliver terrific quality. You teach and entertain more than you sell. Your objective thought is to create an audience of buyers, not just fans. You begin to call on more persuasive elements to your content.
The selling remains under the radar at this point, especially if you’re using a blog because at this phase, you’re establishing trust, and increasing the intensity of your audience’s desire.
Begin the Harvest
When you have a foundation of trust you can begin the harvest; send your loyal fan to a well-crafted landing page. That page does the most explicit selling, with a killer offer and a clear, direct call to action.
There’s definitely an art to writing an effective landing page, but if you’ve primed your audience with a smart content strategy, the landing page doesn’t have nearly as much work to do.