Content that is strategically designed for marketing

I love content. Because I love ideas and concepts.

Even more though, I love content marketing. In fact, it’s called education-based marketing for a reason. Because you are using content that educates while you are marketing.

And I mean ALL content that you send out should do marketing for you.

That includes the content leading up to a funnel; the content in the middle of a funnel; the content in a follow-up sequence…

Strategically designed content

All of it should be strategically designed for marketing. In other words, you should have a strategic marketing objective for every piece of content you write and send out.

Let’s say on a Friday you plan to send out an email for an offer about coaching.

Earlier in the week you should send out an educational piece about how the greatest athletes learn from mentors, and the benefits of working with a coach, and why it doesn’t make any sense to try to do this sort of thing on your own.

What you are doing with this valuable information, besides teaching a lesson, is you are also shaping their perspective, and pre-framing. That is a strategic objective.

And you are covering potential objections in the context of content and value.

You are never just creating content for the sake of creating content. Not as marketers; we don’t do that.

Now if you have a personal blog or something like that, or you simply want to disseminate a message and that’s it and there’s intention for building a business or gaining a profit, that’s one thing

But if you are sharing content as a way to continue to expand, build, and grow your tribe, there must always be a reason for why you’re publishing the content. It’s connected to a bigger objective.

For instance, I won’t write an article on TeeSpring just to talk about selling t-shirts as a one-time opportunity. No, I would write an article to talk about how you want to grow your own business. About why you need to focus on learning how to create marketing funnels; number one, because I believe it, and number two, because there’s a strategic objective for me in writing that.

It’s not sneaky

Some people may question this and ask, “Isn’t that kind of sneaky, or shady?”

I firmly believe that it is not. You are educating people on things they need to know; you are delivering massive value.

The things you are teaching, and the beliefs you are helping them establish, are definitely tied to a bigger objective. But that objective – buy your service or product – is one that you believe is in their best interest.

We’re in business. So it’s content marketing, not just content.

One thing to be careful about. Many people think, from the title, that it’s about marketing the content. They think, “It’s all about me creating this one piece of content and then figuring out how to market the content. How do distribute it on YouTube and on article sites and new release sites. How do I market this piece of content?”

I don’t believe that’s the way to look at it. And it’s certainly not the way to grow your business. Instead, it’s using content to do the marketing for you. That’s the difference.

And remember, too, the more you do your marketing well up front, usually with education-based marketing, keeping your strategic objective in mind, the less selling you need to do at the end.

So if you aren’t using content to do your marketing for you yet, now is the time to get started!