If you’re in the early stages of marketing your startup, or you need some fresh ideas for marketing a more established business, then this marketing model is for you.
But wait, why do you need a marketing model?
Good question.
I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses on various marketing projects and have witnessed roaring success stories as well as abject failures.
The success stories usually spring from a healthy mix of research, planning, experimentation, analysis, and adaptability.
The failures, on the other hand, always result from the absence of any or all of those components.
So why not increase your chances of success by using a model that incorporates them?
Enter the Cogs of Content.
It’s designed to get the cogs turning in your mind, give you an endless source of ideas, and a framework for creating, deploying, and testing them.
How do you know if your content works?
By measuring the engagement.
So what’s a good level of engagement?
That depends on three things:
The channel.
Your following.
Content quality.
Different channels provide different levels of organic reach. For example, TikTok will give you decent organic reach, whereas Facebook won’t.
The larger your following on the platform, the more likes and comments you’ll get, and the higher your content will rank in people’s feeds.
(Substitute followers with website visitors and subscribers if you do SEO and email marketing)
Finally, the quality of your content will also determine the level of engagement. Obviously, if your content sucks, no one’s gonna engage with it.
(Except for trolls – if you’re lucky.)
So pick some metrics to measure:
Impressions
Views
Clicks
Likes
Comments
Follows
Open rates
Click through rates
Website visits
Conversions
… and see what moves the needle.
What’s the most important part of your marketing plan?
Testing.
Here’s why:
When you do market research, you’ll inevitably have to make some assumptions.
Even if you base your strategy on hard data, you can’t know for sure whether some cool piece of content that made millions for another company will do the same for you.
That’s because you won’t have the exact same:
Product
Brand
Location
Budget
Following
… and many more factors that influence whether something will work or not.
Even if everything else is equal, the timing will be different — and the marketing space moves fast.
What worked yesterday might not work today.
By the end of this video, whichever platform you’re watching it on will have updated its algorithm.
So make sure to test your assumptions.
Anyway, try out different platforms and experiment with different content formats within those platforms to see which pieces yield the best results.
What kind of content should you create to market your business?
Easy: valuable content.
But what makes content valuable? And valuable to whom?
Your content is valuable if it can:
1. Attract potential customers.
2. Convert them into customers.
3. Retain them as customers.
Not only is that kind of content valuable to your target audience – it’s also very valuable to you.
Many businesses still work under the assumption that people want to hear about what happens inside their business, such as what the CEO had for lunch.
That kind of content gets swiped on quicker than a creep on Tinder.
That’s because people mostly care about:
1. Themselves.
2. Their problems.
3. Potential solutions to those problems.
Analyzing your audience will tell you what those problems are. Analyzing your competitors will tell you how they’re addressing those problems and in which formats they do so.
Your job is to make better content.
How do you choose the best marketing channels for your business?
There’s SEO, email, paid ads, and a bunch of social media platforms to choose from – so where do you start?
Start by asking yourself these five questions:
1. Where is your audience?
2. Where is your competition?
3. What’s your budget?
4. What content can you make?
5. Which channel has the highest ROI?
It’s important not to make too many assumptions.
Just because some demographics use certain platforms more than others, you shouldn’t assume your grandmother isn’t on TikTok.
She could be looking for recipes or participating in dance challenges.
It’s worth considering all possible channels, analysing what the competition is doing, evaluating the engagement they’re getting, and experimenting with your own content before you commit.
While you’re at it, look for opportunities to repurpose content. Text, images, and video can easily be distributed across multiple platforms.
Case in point: this video.
Do you go to work with a top hat, monocle, and cane?
Probably not.
That’s because you don’t have a monopoly, which means you have competition.
Competitors can be super annoying, but they can also be incredibly useful.
Competitors are useful because they’ll do much of the legwork for you. Since you’re targeting the same audience, you might as well let them do the heavy lifting.
So sit back and relax while they…
- Research what your potential customers want
- Create content to meet those demands
- Make hilarious mistakes you can joke about with your friends
But whether your competitors’ marketing strategy is working or bombing, you should take notes.
Look at their web copy, SEO scores, blog content, social media posts, email newsletters, landing pages, lead magnets, paid ads, infographics, videos, and whatever else you can find.
Identify their strengths and weaknesses so you know how to beat them.
Do you know what your customers want?
How do you know that?
And how do you apply that knowledge?
You must answer these three questions before even thinking about marketing.
Because if you don’t, you’ll most likely:
- Waste your time and money
- Ruin people’s perception of your business
- Become more frustrated than a teenager who “can’t even”
That’s why it’s important to analyze your target audience to identify their frustrations and desires.
So how do you do what?
You could survey your existing or potential customers by asking them directly.
That’s primary research.
You could also go through the Internet with a fine-toothed comb to see what they look for on the likes of Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Reddit, and Quora.
That’s secondary research.
Analyzing your audience removes much of the guesswork so you can focus on content creation instead of content ideation.
Here’s a quick tip on how to avoid scaring your website visitors away.
Keep it simple.
Most websites use flowery language and overly complicated industry jargon.
Many people think it makes them sound smart, but it only scares visitors away.
Casual browsers have the attention span of goldfish.
That means you have a matter of seconds to get your point across and pique their interest.
Here’s how to do that:
1. Use simple language.
2. Write short sentences.
3. Break up walls of text.
Chances are they have ten of your competitors lined up in different browser tabs.
So if you don’t grab their attention immediately, you’ll get X’d out.
Here’s a quick tip on how to improve your website conversion rate.
Focus on the customer.
It sounds obvious, but most websites only talk about the business and what it does.
That’s all well and good, except nobody cares… yet.
Your potential customers only care about three things:
1. What they want.
2. How to get it.
3. What life will be like when they do.
In other words:
- Problems.
- Solutions.
- Results.
So the purpose of your website is to show that you:
- Understand their problems.
- Know how to solve them.
- How much it’ll improve their lives.
Then, and only then, will they be compelled to click that CTA button that tells them to buy now or book a call.
#copywriting #webcopy #conversionrate
