What The Hell Is Content Marketing?

Here’s what Wikipedia says it is:

The part I disagree with is the second statement:

“Content marketing is focused on not selling, but on simply communicating with customers and prospects.”

While it isn’t wrong, it also isn’t right.  It’s an over-generalization.

Every interaction with any prospect is a sales opportunity and your content can sell better than any direct response ad if it’s designed properly.

All you have to do is meet one simple criteria:

Be more awesome than everyone else.  Period.

If you provide more value than anyone else, you become the instant authority.  It doesn’t necessarily matter how the awesomeness is delivered.  Any format is fine.  The structure of the content is what makes the desired impact.

So, what is content marketing?

The term “content marketing” is now being thrown around to describe infographics, social media, and video marketing that is designed to inform instead of sell.  It leaves out a lot of strategies.

Real content marketing is any content in any format that is designed to lead a prospect through a process to buy your stuff.

Articles, videos, press releases, blogging, white papers, podcasts, free reports, social media posts, etc…

The flow from that content into your business is what’s important.  It’s also what 95% of businesses are doing wrong.

This is a simple content marketing strategy that’s virtually guaranteed to work in any market or niche:

Put together (or pay for) some content.  Attempt to answer the biggest questions surrounding what you sell.

If you need help putting together badass titles, check out Cracked.com

Post all of that content to one website (YouTube, EzineArticles, Articlesbase, or Sribd).

Count views against click throughs.  The one that has the most views AND the most clicks wins.  Most of the time, you’ll have an obvious winner.

Now, take that one piece of content and repurpose it into as many formats as possible. (audio, video, pdf, and text).

Post that content in as many locations as you can.

Now this is the fun part:

If you’re showing someone “3 ways to lose 3 pounds today”, the link you send them to should focus on getting an email address or low dollar sale for the same concept.  They’ve shown you they want to know about that topic, so offer them more on that exact same topic.

Don’t send them to some generic landing page with no clear call to action.  

Create a string of content that provides value to your prospects and lead them through the process of getting to know more about you and your business.  Provide real solutions.

Step 1:  “3 Ways To Lose 3 Pounds Today” infographic, article, or video.

Step 2:  Opt-In for free report on “How To Lose 10 Pounds This Week And Keep It Off”.

Step 3:  Course with Worksheets and/or Mobile App:  “How To Annihilate Your Fat This Month And Dump 20 Pounds Or More Of Excess Weight”.

Step 4:  Consulting and Coaching:  “Never Be A Fatass Again Coaching Program”

Nice and easy.

Doing all of this by hand would be tough.  For the ultimate content marketing 1-2 knockout punch grab Content Marketer and Kudani.  Kudani is drastically discounted during it’s launch and you can see my infographic bonus here.  Both tools work together to take the guesswork out of your content marketing and get brag-worthy results with far less work.

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