September 21, 2022
As an online business owner, you know you need to stay front of mind for your audience in order to keep making sales. The missing piece that allows you to do that? Content. And not just any content — strategic content. Because content for content’s sake might build that know, like, and trust factor, but it won’t necessarily convert to sales.
In this post, I’m walking you through a simple 5-step system to take your content from idea to eyeballs without the chaos of trying to piece it together on the fly! Let’s dive in.
Psst: If you prefer to listen in, you can do that here…
Before you put pen to paper, you need to know who you’re going to be talking to! So start with an ideal client in mind. This can be based off ideal clients you’ve worked with in the past or simply clients you want to attract in the future.
Draw on past surveys, polls and interviews to learn about your ideal client. You want to get a sense of who they are on a demographic level (age, location, job, income, etc) but also who they are on a psychographic level (their pain points, desires, mistaken beliefs, big questions, and objections). This will help you form an ideal client persona that’s based on real data, instead of assuming what your ideal clients are thinking. You can then use this data to guide your content ideas and writing to ensure it will actually resonate with your reader.
Creating content for the sake of being consistent is futile unless there’s strategy behind it that directly relates to your sales goals.
Therefore, once you know who you’re talking to, you need to know what you’re promoting. If you’re an online course creator or coach, you might think in terms of quarterly launches. If you’re a service provider or sell evergreen digital products, you might simply think of this as a marketing push.
Regardless of the type of offer you’re promoting, you should be marketing something every month and every quarter.
Let’s consider an example: Say you’re an Instagram coach and you’re planning to launch a course on creating Reels that sell. In this case, it’s crucial to align your content strategy with your launch goals. Start by mapping out a content plan that builds anticipation and primes your audience for the course.
Here are 3 phases you should consider:
Create content that prepares your audience for your offer, helping them understand why (or why not) they need it. This content can include blog posts, podcast episodes, or social media content. The goal here is to pique your audience’s interest and capture their contact information via a lead magnet to build an email list of ideal subscribers.
After your course has launched, pick more cash up off the table with post-launch content. This could include sharing a downsell or simply asking your audience why they didn’t join your course (so you can address their concerns and upsell them on the backend, or add them to the waitlist for your next launch).
By tailoring your content strategy to your launch goals, you ensure that every piece of content serves a purpose.
If you have a launch on the horizon and you need help planning the content for it, my free $50K Course Launch Roadmap is the perfect resource to help you! It covers the 10 steps you need to take if you want to hit $50K in your next course launch, from pre-launch right through to cart close.
Your voice of customer data is the most important part of your research because it shows you exactly what your clients or audience is thinking — the questions, desires, and pain points they have, the solutions they’ve tried before, the obstacles they’ve had to overcome, and the objections they have to your offer or industry.
Voice of customer data is simply anywhere you’ve got a record of what your ideal clients or audience is saying. This could be in the form of surveys, polls, enquiry forms, sales calls scripts, new client intake forms, social media comments or questions, and more.
If you’re starting a new online business and don’t have this information on hand, you can swipe it by reading Reddit forums on your niche, and comment sections on your competitors’ YouTube channels, Facebook ads, Instagram posts, and more! Basically, anywhere your ideal clients are expressing their opinions is a great place for you to find content ideas.
Here’s a snippet of data from one of my surveys:
Here’s how I would draw content ideas from these two frustrations:
Now that you have a list of ideas and themes, it’s time to combine them in your content calendar. You want to make sure the ideas are relevant to your audience, as well as your business goals for each quarter.
For example: if your theme for the month is website design, maybe the topics could be “How to plan the design for your new website”, “How to prepare your website for an upcoming launch”, and “How to design a sales page that converts”.
If you’re an Instagram strategist and your theme for the month is feed posts, maybe your topics could be “How to plan out 30 days of content ideas for your Instagram feed”, “How to create a client-attracting Instagram Reels in just 10 minutes” or “My simple system for creating share-worthy carousel posts for Instagram”.
Drive more attention to your offers by creating posts about them. Here’s how I could do this for my copywriting services:
Brand Messaging and Website Copywriting
Launch Copywriting
Monthly Content Management
Try this out for your own offers, and make sure you link to them throughout your content to drive action.
If you need some help getting the ball rolling on your content ideas, grab my Plug-and-Play Content Calendar right here >>
Now that you’ve got a solid idea of who your ideal client is, the monthly themes that will pique your readers’ interest, and the type of content that’ll catch your ideal clients’ attention and fuel your goals, you’re ready to set a release schedule. Here are some things to consider:
Once you’ve got a release schedule mapped out, lock it in and move on to actually creating your content!
Content creation can feel intimidating. Most people don’t create because they 1) don’t make time to create and/or 2) create as they go instead of batching out content ahead of time.
In my experience (especially as a mum with a crazy schedule), I find it so much easier to plan ahead if my content is mapped out with a pre-determined release schedule.
As I have a theme for my content each month, this is a natural way to break up my content creation. So, I batch out my content for the month ahead. Here’s what my content workflow looks like:
If you have the budget to outsource your content creation and would prefer an expert handle it all for you, that’s where my team and I can help you! Preview our Monthly Content Management Services to see how we can help you share consistent content without the overwhelm of having to create it all yourself!
It’s all well and good to have GREAT content, but if it doesn’t move your dream client or customer towards your goals (booking more clients, making more course sales, etc), then it’s just content for content’s sake.
Ensure your content is strategic by aligning it with your website copy. This means you should be speaking to the same ICA, having a consistent brand voice, and highlighting your paid (and free) offers in both your web copy and your content.
If you want to make sure your website copy is actually doing the job it should (aka connecting with and converting dream clients), swipe my Ultimate Website Copywriting Checklist.
It takes you through everything you need to include on your Home, About, and Services pages to maximise conversions. Grab the checklist now.
Alright, that’s it! 6 actionable tips for creating consistent content in your business.
Remember, creating content simply for the sake of being consistent is futile. If you want content that strategically drives your sales goals, you need to make sure it is based off voice of customer data, and that it relates to the offers you’re launching or marketing each quarter.
If you have an upcoming course launch and you want to make sure your content attracts the right buyers, you need my $50K Course Launch Roadmap.
It covers the 10 steps you need to take if you want to hit $50K in your next course launch, from pre-launch right through to cart close.
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