The Content Marketing Plan To Stay In Business

So I’m not personally sure what your exact situation and circumstances are right now, but I’m going to share with you something that you can apply right now even if your business is partly or completely shut down so that you can stay in business long term.

I’m going to give you a little clue right now… it’s not that complicated! 

So keep reading or watch below, I’m going to go over the content marketing plan to stay in business.

How I Came Up With The Plan…

So I was in a digital meeting over video call last night and a lot of people were wondering okay, you know, there’s a situation in the world right now: It’s very hard to do business and what are they going to do about it?

Some people were quite positive, some people were maybe… I didn’t hear them talk but, by the look on their faces, they were not really feeling that great about the situation right now and how they’re going to keep going.

So in that meeting, a plan was basically outlined using what’s called content marketing (which I’m going to go over a lot in this video)… and I thought well, wouldn’t it be nice if people had a very step-by-step way of going about following through with this plan?

Wouldn’t it be nice if I give actual examples of what you can do and show how we ourselves use this plan to get leads and to get sales?

There ARE Still Businesses Running

Even now we’ve had an inquiry most days of the week for pretty decent work and this is right now while business is supposedly shut down worldwide. So everybody’s not asleep.

There are a lot of businesses still in the game looking to see how they can get going now and get going as soon as everything opens up again. So keep reading and I will help you with this plan.

This is a DIGITAL Plan, Why?

So the first thing I’m going to go over is why are we going to be talking about digital channels?

It’s pretty obvious!

It’s very hard to go and meet somebody in person right now. It’s very hard to organize meetings in the actual physical world. It’s hard to get physical products to people and hard to run a physical place of work which staff are required to come to.

You Can Still Send Out Digital Communication and (sell) Digital Products!

What you can do, you can send people a video. You can send a lot of people a video…

• You can send people emails.
• You can put things out on social media.
• You can advertise on social media.
• You can do a Facebook Lives.
• You can do YouTubes.

There’s a lot you can still do to reach a lot of people and a lot of people are still interested and right now people are consuming content online like crazy.

So that’s why we’re going to talk about digital means of reaching people right now because it’s a way that is still completely wide open and actually probably increasing right now over the world.

Ok Great, Well What Is Content Marketing Then?

So content marketing is based on this lovely little principle that you demonstrate that you can help somebody by actually helping them.

Pretty mind-blowing! Right?!

So how do we do this?

Well, very, very simply if you’re a business owner, if you’re an entrepreneur, what you know has a lot of value and the reason people buy from you, the reason people build relationships with you in business, is because you have valuable knowledge.

Your valuable knowledge enables you to provide the services and skills that people have been paying you money for all along.

What You Know has VALUE

So stop thinking of yourself as just somebody who knows how to run a business and realize that you actually have a lot of value as a consultant. And value as somebody with a lot of knowledge and a lot of competence.

So I just want you to think about that for a little bit of a second and just go “Wow I know things that are very, very valuable to the people that I work with!”

Please take a moment RIGHT NOW, think about it, have that realization and then, keep reading.

Ok, so that’s the first thing to realize.

Serving This Valuable Knowledge To An Audience

Now content marketing is all about taking what you know, taking what the people in your team know, it’s about taking what your network connections know, and then offering that knowledge and those skills to your audience as something valuable that they can then use to achieve what they really want.

I’ll give you an example…

So we offer websites for authors. It’s one of our main services. So what we do… we’ve created a series of blog articles on our websites that give authors beautiful examples of some of the top websites in the world.

There’s actually 67 of them and this has gotten us a lot of attention from some very very big networks that support authors all around the world.

We’ve probably got more leads from these blog articles than anything else and those leads have led to many sales.

We also create videos and write blogs just like you’re reading right now. What I’m doing right now is part of Rocket Expansion’s content marketing strategy. I’m creating this video and article for free to give you a valuable plan that you can go and use in your own business. I want you to keep going and want you to keep the wheels of your business turning right now.

Packaging This Knowledge Into Content

So the way you can package this content can be in many different forms.

You can simply do what I’ve done right here.

This content was originally created in the form of a video which you see above…

I mean look this is not very complicated. I’m just sitting there. I’ve got a phone. I’m filming with an iPhone and I’m just talking. Yes, I made a few notes of what I’m going to talk about but it’s not like a full-on staged production. Then I just downloaded the transcript from YouTube and turned it into this article.

Simple! Two great valuable pieces of content DONE.

Don’t Worry About Fancy. Care Only About VALUE TO YOUR AUDIENCE

You can do it very unfancy, see? You can just go simple. You don’t have to go and get a hold of the stage lighting and get like, you know, a massive production crew from a film studio to do this.

Just get an idea of what your audience is interested in learning about and you can start filming. You can write a blog. You can write emails, but think, “Wow, what right now in my area of expertise for my audience does my audience really need to know that’s going to help them, that’s going to strengthen our relationship?”

This is going to build a lot of goodwill with your audience and that’s going to then make your audience that much more likely to reach out to you and say:

“I want to order something!”

So that’s all about who you are doing this for. Make sure you’re doing this for them. Make sure the value there that you’re providing is for your people. Not just like “look at me I’ve done this and I’m so great, blah blah blah”, right?

Keep your audience in mind.

Make Offers In Your Content

Now there’s another thing to realize here (people have different opinions on this).

I believe that you should make offers within your content. I mean we’re doing this to help you. But obviously, if you want help with this you should just reach out to us.

If you want us to help you with your content marketing plan and different parts of it just reach out to us. You can simply contact us by any of the channels (email, enquiry form, etc) found on this page: https://rocketexpansion.com/contact/

I think you should do what I’ve just done right now in your content marketing.

You should create value for your audience, but you should also make offers.

You should just say, “Listen I’ve made this thing on how to help you with your garden services and requirements.”

Or, I don’t know, maybe you’re trying to sell a book. So let’s say “I’ve done this thing to help you know other great books in my genre.” That’s maybe something your audience is interested in: The reviews of the best books in the genre that you write about, and you say “I actually myself have a book in this genre and I’d love for you to check it out and if you like it you can buy it. Here, as a free…” (you know again you can give them away something free to give them a bit more of a taste, more value, more goodwill for you) “here’s the first three chapters of the book for free”.

And then they’ll probably get involved. Some of those people will buy from you.

So don’t think that in this content you can’t make offers. Just don’t make offers that are like “BUY MY STUFF RIGHT NOW!!” because that’s not really providing value.

Make offers in such a way that it’s valuable. It’s an offer.

You say “okay, well, you know this is available. You can have this if you want it” and then you just keep on talking and you just keep on giving them the more value of how they can do everything you’ve already been talking about.

Right, so that’s something to keep in mind in this whole content marketing plan. Make offers. I think you’ve got that point now.

It’s All About the Follow Up

Now there is another aspect to this that really, really, really works with content marketing.

So if you’re trying to sell something there are basically three categories of people you can talk to, right?

• There are the people that want to buy it right now
• There are the people that will buy it at some stage in the future. (let’s say three to six weeks time)
• and there’s the people that are never ever ever going to buy anything from you ever.

Obviously we’re not interested in the third group because they are not part of your target market. They will never become your potential audience of buyers.

But what’s interesting about the first two categories the people that will buy now are probably maximum, maximum, maximum 5% of your potential buyers.

The people that will buy in the future, let’s say three to six weeks in the future, are probably as much as 85% of your buyers.

And then, maybe that 10% that’s left will buy a little bit later on from you right?

So where should all your attention go?

I’m sure you guessed it. It should go to the group that is going to buy from you in future.

And the beauty of this whole content marketing approach is that if you keep on putting out this content, if you keep on building this relationship, in three to six weeks week time that 85 % of the people that you spoke to are going to reach out to you.

They’re going to go “Well, who am I going to go and ask for a proposal for? Get a quote from? Who am I going to have a sales meeting with?” and who are they going to come to, banging down the door (even if it’s in virtual land) to speak to?

It’s going to be the people who provided them so much value, gave them great advice, gave them a lot of free tools and plans and all sorts of great things. Things that they can then take and they’ve used and they’ve gone “Oh wow, these people clearly know what they’re doing, let me buy from them!”

So that should be really something you think of in your content marketing process.

Build The Follow Up Into Your Content Marketing Process

So we’ve established that using this content marketing strategy and really any sales and marketing strategy it’s all about the follow-up.

You’re going to start the relationship. People are just going to get to know who you are. You’re then going to give away these valuable pieces of content, like I’m doing right now, and you’re going to stay in touch with your people.

You’re going to not just make one piece of content. You’re going to make one piece of content that then follows another piece of content, then another piece of content.

You’re going to give people opportunities to stay connected with you.

For example, you’ll give them a piece of content like an e-book or like a free video seminar or webinar, or whatever makes sense for your audience. And to “pay” for that all they have to do is give their email address and their contact details.

Maybe you want to be a little bit more aggressive and even ask for a phone number? Then you can phone up people.

There’s all sorts of interesting ways of encouraging this opportunity for you to have a follow-up but what you really want to do is you want to get that follow-up.

On Facebook you can do an amazing thing which is you can make a video like this. Then you can decide “Well, anybody who’s watched more than 50% of my video, I will then retarget them with advertising” (which is very inexpensive) with another video.

So now, you know, in the second video you are only talking to people that are actually interested in what you have to say! And those people are much, much more likely to buy from you.

Plus, this is only the second video they’ve watched from you.

Imagine the third or the fourth or the fifth?

Those people really, really are interested in what you have to offer and those people are going to be much, much, much more likely to buy something from you.

So that’s something to keep in mind.

Build a Value Ladder

Now in this whole follow up sequence what you want to do, you want to build what’s commonly known as a “value ladder”.

You can think of this, firstly, as introductory free services and products.

Like right now you could think of what I’m doing now as an introductory article or video (above) that kind of covers what the general plan is of what I’m going over.

These things could be as simple as just putting on your camera, making a few notes (I have my notes actually right here in front of me while filming just to refer to right under the camera so it doesn’t look like I’m you know looking away.) And you just want to go “okay, well what would be a good overview of what I can talk about?”

And then you just want to talk!

Now realize that the knowledge you have is probably going to be quite a lot more than the knowledge your audience has. So don’t think that you don’t know anything! You know quite a lot.

So you first want to start the beginning of your value ladder as something like a simple free introductory service or product. Like a video, like an e-book.

Don’t even think that you have to make your content fancy!

It can literally be a Google document. I’ve seen some of the most valuable content as simple google documents or simple hand shot videos with an iPhone and all the value is in what’s said.

It’s gold to that audience that really needs it.

I promise you that.

Now, the next step of your value ladder, what you can do, is you can have the person opt-in.

You can get them to connect by email. You can give them an offer.

Maybe you can start with a very low-level offer. You could make one of these videos.

Maybe it’s a little bit more extensive… you can put a little bit more effort into it. You can really provide something that is worth something to somebody. And you can charge a price for it. Maybe you can charge $50 for it maybe you can charge $5 for it.

The beautiful thing about this is, with your whole system that you’re building here, you’re going to automate it.

So that the more people watch or read the first one, or whatever that content is made of, the more people automatically get involved in the next step.

They are then going to go over into your paid offer.

More of those people, seeing that you had something valuable to offer for free, are going to go “Well, that’s what they’re giving away for free! My goodness! What must they be giving away for a few bucks?”

And right now people are just waiting to consume good digital content. They must be so bored with Netflix and video games right now it’s not even funny! Right?

So give them something a bit different

Give them what you can do and help them with their future business themselves or, if you sell directly to the consumer, help them with the entertainment or whatever it is you’ll feel that you’re offering.

So that’s something to keep in mind.

You have another rung on the value letter that’s maybe a cheaper introductory product.

If you have a service that’s online of course then (you see it all the time) you can give away free trials, you can give away limited access. It doesn’t cost very much. Give it away as a first sort of tier.

This Works For Expensive Products and Services As Well!

If you sell big things.. I mean we use the system regularly to sell $3,000 products and up. It is 100% possible. I can promise you it is because this is exactly the method we use all the time.

We’ve got a client on Monday that’s 100% through this system and don’t think that this is a cheap products only system. Actually some of the most expensive products use this type of marketing more than any other type of marketing.

Just SHARE KNOWLEDGE, Don’t Worry About Being Perfect

Okay, so now let’s say you’ve got this little system going. You’ve realized okay I’m going to film myself now. I’m just going to start putting out content.

Do not worry about looking stupid

or saying silly things or writing a bunch of nonsense. It doesn’t matter as much as simply doing it. You will get better at it.

Don’t go into perfectionism.

The first stuff I made was horrible. I’m sure in two years I’ll look back at this and go what the hell was I doing? I’ll be at a whole nother level. This is like practice it makes perfect! 

But realize that if you just get and start making content what you know is valuable. You have a role as a consultant and people will appreciate that. They’ll appreciate you giving them this and goodwill is worth gold.

Connect with EXISTING AUDIENCES

Okay good! So now once you’re starting to build up this content and once you’ve got something valuable to offer there is a very very powerful step that you then go and do.

Doing this takes this whole thing from being awesome to being absolutely spectacular.

So this is what you do…

So you’ve got these videos. You’ve got these blog posts or whatever content you’ve started to build. Now go online and search for people in similar related audiences to you that already have a following.

I’ll give you an example.

So like I mentioned earlier, we work with authors. So we’ve written this blog, a very, very extensive blog that I mentioned a few times before, because it’s so awesome for us.

It’s called 67 author websites with delicious designs and captivating content.

Now, we wanted to not just use this tool for our own audience.

We wanted to go, well let’s see how many different audiences we can get this in front of?

So I then looked online and saw okay well who is writing about authors? Who is serving authors? Who has a big audience?

And I just simply emailed a few people.

I found, okay well, there’s this woman Stephanie. She is the CEO of a few different associations related to authors. I like the content she’s putting out. She puts out a ton of content herself, maybe she’d like to work with us?

So I just emailed her. I just wrote a very casual, real email.

You can see it right here:

Don’t write a spammy email, just write whatever your minds on, whatever you think about them according to their content.

Don’t find and use an email template that somebody has put online on how to do this!

That’s a recipe for being rejected as a spammer!

Just literally think “okay, if I was just being real and just actually emailing a real person what would I write?”

A way that can often work is basically along the lines of “Hey, we have a similar audience. I’ve created this that I think your audience might like. Can I share it on your platform in some way.”

Do NOT use this (or the example above) as a template though. You can use that kind of approach but make it real. People can spot fake from a mile away.

Anyway back to the story… She then replied that she liked my article. I said well can I write a guest post? This is the next step. When you connect with these audiences you want to get some of your content onto their platform.

Now the value of that is now with your content on their platform you’re providing value firstly to them, the owner or the person who’s created that audience, and as a secondary thing, that audience now has exposure to you.

Some of that audience can then come and become part of your audience

They’ll start consuming your content and get along your little value ladder and then eventually some of those people buy from you.

This is exactly how… I mentioned the client I just got 2 days ago… I reached out to somebody else who was holding a seminar called the Children’s Book Mastery Summit.

I then did a webinar for them and it was all about authors and how to make money online as an author and how to sell books and how to have a brilliant website. That served that purpose and one of the members who watched this then watched my seminar and said “okay, well this is the guy I want. This is the agency we want to get to do our website.”

So then they contacted me. They went on to our website afterward. They contacted me.

They’re like “Oh look, I can schedule a call with this guy. This is amazing!” So they scheduled the call with me. We had this fantastic call. They were so excited and pretty much within the day they’re like “okay, how do we get started?”

That’s all because I decided I’m going to go and connect with somebody else’s audience.

So what you do once you’ve started building up this content so people can learn about you and build a relationship… You then go and take some of this and put content on other people’s platforms.

You don’t even have to be original

There are so many people in this world. Even if you say pretty much exactly the same thing 50 times over, I mean if you listen to what I say I’m not reinventing the wheel here, I’m just saying what I basically know. I’m just using examples that are real to that audience and just relating to that audience.

You don’t have to be a screaming genius. You just have to say what you already know, because chances are people in that audience only know the basics, but you know much more because this is what you do for a living right.

So now once you’ve connected to these other audiences it kind of creates this chain reaction.

So you’ve now gone on this other channel and you’ve talked about what you know.

I’ve used the example of our author audience. I told people how to make an author website that helps them sell their books online. A lot of people watched that. I think 2,000 people watched that. A few hundred of those people have now become our audience! They’ve come from that 2000.

They have subscribed to our email list and regularly get our emails and more of them are reaching out and more and more of them out of that original 2,000 will become clients of ours. So that’s just one little group there.

Now that content that I put on that summit is still there. People will still watch that for who knows how long. Now I’ve got another audience here who I mentioned before this woman who’s the CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association. There’s another whole audience there. I think her audience is extensive. With all the different channels there’s something like a hundred thousand people and we’ve got a few inquiries from her audience just because of the content I’ve put out there.

I’m going to be featured at the Nonfiction Writers Conference in May. That’s going to expose me to that audience.

This is how you do it. You just simply reach out. Don’t be scared of people. People actually really, really welcome experts and you are an expert if you have a business or if you’re doing anything at all really.

You are an expert in something.

People welcome and want content from experts

You just go there. You share your knowledge and make sure you direct them back to your own content on your site, and your audience will just grow, and out of that audience, they’ll climb up that value ladder that we talked about that you’ve built.

They’ll get your little emails and, before long, you’ll get this new and growing audience reaching out for more and more of what you have to offer.

Let’s say you’re a business that’s heavily, heavily dependent on physical universe things where you actually have to deliver a product or may manufacture something in a place that you need to be. In that case, you can build up a lot of people who are interested in your products and services so you can just deliver it right away as soon as everything opens up again.

We’re here for you if you need us

Thank you very much for reading this far! If you’ve made it to the end I’m guessing you found some value in our content.

I hope that it’s been helpful.

Obviously I’ve gone over a huge amount of stuff here and if you’d like me to break this down for you in more of the specific step by steps and if you’d like us as an agency to help you execute this plan please reach out to us.

We’d love to help you out!

Keep productive and I’ll see you again soon.