7a Frameworks PDF

T H E 7 A F R A M E W O R K F O R E F F E C T I V E CO N T E N T M A R K E T I N G
In this session, Brian Clark discusses the strategic content framework he used
to build Copyblogger Media from a blog to a multi-million dollar business. This
framework can be used for any industry, any type of company, and is just as
applicable to your business as a writer as it is to your clients’.
Let’s get it started ...

Brian Clark: So today, we’re talking strategy, and this is incredibly important
because this has happened throughout the course of advertising and
marketing, but it’s happening once again with content marketing.
You’ll have your clients or you’ll have even consultants who know they have to
be creating content to get out there, to get found and to create that expertise
and presence, and they just barge right into it, have no idea what they’re
doing and end up with a big mess on their hands.
So we’re not even ready to talk about the different types of content that we’re
going to create. That will be in the next session.
What we need to talk about today is how to develop a strategy that

works for you as a content marketer who attracts clients and for the
implementation of the work that you do for those clients that you attract.
Copyr i ght © 2 0 1 4 Am e r i ca n Wr i te rs & Ar t i st s I nc. and Co py b lo gger M edia, L LC
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A strategic framework for content marketing

The great thing is that we have this strategy framework, it’s called The 7A
Strategy Framework For Effective Content Marketing, that will work for any
content marketing initiative, basically what you do to attract clients.
It works for the industry online expert model. It works for the local model that
we talked about last time. It even works if you want to be a generalist. It’s just
a little bit harder that way, but it’ll work for your own marketing and then once
you get the client, once you convince them that you’re the right person for the
job, you’re effectively doing for them what you did to them.
So that makes it kind of neat. It’s not a bunch of different strategy

implementations for different industries or different clients.
You can fit within this framework everything that you need to accomplish
for yourself and for your clients.
Okay. So let’s revisit some of what we’ve talked about before. In B2B, 60%
of the sales process is over before your internal sales team is even
contacted, before they’re even aware that this prospect is out there.
So therefore, you’ve got content out there in the world that people find on
their own, not because you blasted it out or anything. You have content that
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begins the sales experience without anyone feeling sold, and the reason
why is because this content is informative and valuable. It answers questions
and it solves problems and it overcomes objections, without you really making
a pitch yet.
And this is a big aspect of what sales is about. Some of the best in-person
salespeople will tell you it’s all about education and likeability and being in
service and yet, sometimes as we’ve seen with online marketing, people are
trying to beat people over the head in social media and other places when
that’s not what people want and they’re going to push you away.
Okay. So you say, “Well, wait a minute Brian, you told us that the content we
create has to directly facilitate the sale. It’s got to lead to it.”
Education and informative content

Yes. That means that it has to provide that education. It does have to answer
questions. It does have to overcome objections. But that doesn’t mean that
you’re necessarily pitching. People are trying to get a preliminary feel for your
client or you as a content marketing consultant.
So again, it has to be on point in order to attract attention in the first place.

And of course, attention has always been the first step of leading to a sale,
because if they don’t find you during their initial journey, if they don’t find you
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in social media or if they don’t find you in search, you’re not even in the game.
The content progression

But if they do find you by social and search, which is why we have that
progression, a process -- from content to social to search to email to sale
-- they’ll find you where you are in the game. And if you get them to the email
stage, you’re not only in the game; you’re a serious contender.
So that’s the progression that we have to go through. But remember, the

content has to be useful in a sense that it answers the questions they have,
for the problem they have with the buyer that they have.
So this 7A framework, it’s kind of neat how they all start with A, right? Well, it
only took me seven years to come up with all the elements that started with
A. But it did come together, and that is the framework that we’re going to talk
about today and I really want you to pay attention.
Of course, you’ll have access to the slides and all of that, but I want you
to understand that no matter who you’re working for, whether your own
marketing or for someone else, these are the elements in the progression that
you go through in the broader content marketing process of content, social,
search, email and sale.
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#1: Agile
So the seven elements as you can see, Agile.
Basically, this is a mindset. This is the way things work when you are in a real
time environment, such as the web, online, the Internet. You’re always doing
something and getting feedback and that’s the basis of not a static strategy,
but one that can adapt and that’s very important.
#2: Authentic
Authentic is, in essence, the human voice, the friendliness, the story that is
being told. But as we’ll see, the story is the one that the prospect or the
audience is interested in hearing, not necessarily the one you’re interested
in telling. Unless you find out what that is and there’s a congruence between
the two, which we’ll go into in more detail.
#3: Attention
Attention. Now almost every copywriting or advertising formula out there
starts with attention. That’s what you have to do be in the game of course. But
if you haven’t done the first two steps or created the right mindset for your
strategy, you’re going to find that attention is much harder to achieve. So
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we’re going to drill down into the process and where attention fits in that.
#4: Audience
And again, we’re not going from attention to action, attention to sale or
steps in between. In a content marketing context, we talk about building an
audience.
This is an audience of prospective customers and clients, yes, but we think

in terms of media, in terms of audience instead of just prospects, even though
there has to be a congruence between those two things.
#5: Authority
And you’ll recognize the next A, authority. We’ve been talking about it from
the very beginning and we’ll talk about it to the very end. This is what we’re
trying to achieve with our audience.
It’s not enough just to have an audience -- it’s how that audience feels
about you. Are you the expert, the likeable expert? That again, applies to
your own marketing, which is why it helps to be an industry expert or a local
expert, because that creates that authority as opposed to a generalist.
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#6: Action
Finally, to get to the point of action.
Now, as you’ll see when we go through this, you’re asking for action
throughout. You can’t take attention and turn it into an audience if you’re
not asking for them to sign up for the email list. So there are calls to action
throughout.
You’re not going to best take advantage of your authority if you’re not asking
people to share and tell their friends and all of that kind of thing. That’s where
your audience really starts to grow, both for you and for your clients.
But at this point of action, we’re really talking about the kind of action we
talk about in copywriting and sales, moving further and further down that
conversion funnel into the point that we have a sale.
#7: Acceleration
And then acceleration is something that a lot of people don’t think about in
the normal sale context. But when you build an audience, when you build this
media asset, build your own website and your client’s websites, all of these
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other opportunities come to light, I’ve mentioned a few. For example, with the
local marketing model, you start off selling marketing services, but you could
also branch into real estate or local events or all these kinds of things.
The acceleration phase is the cool thing. It’s really how the Copyblogger media
was built. Once I had the audience and authority and started demonstrating
that I could get that audience to take action, I got all sorts of opportunities
that came my way, which ultimately resulted in Copyblogger Media as you see
it today.
Drilling deeper
Okay. So let’s drill down deeper into each of the seven As. The first thing is
agile. Agile means flexible, adaptive.
It’s a term that has really come out of different disciplines. Originally agile
software development meant that you created a kind of a baseline product
and then you iterated, which means you continually improved the version of
the software based on feedback, bugs that were found, things you didn’t think
through.
It’s basically, instead of trying to get everything perfect and then execute
on this rigid plan, you get to a point where you launch, you’re out there
and then you get feedback and from there you refine, you get better, you
correct mistakes that you might have made, because it’s very difficult to get
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everything right.
I don’t think it’s ever truly been the case without a big healthy dose of luck
that you just dream something up, you make it, and everyone loves it. That’s a
big exception to the rule.
So you had agile software development and some of you may have heard the
latest trend in the start-up world which is the “lean start-up.” That’s the same
concept. You basically start with a product, you put it out there, and then
you improve it, thanks to the feedback -- and the Internet makes this very
possible.
Back in 2006 when I started Copyblogger, I was actually doing this agile
iterative approach to content.
I would try something, I would see what happened and that would inform the
next thing I would try. Or if something was successful, I’d do more of that. If
something was not, I do less of that. It makes perfect common sense to me.
And it wasn’t later until I met Tony Clark, no relation, but he’s now our Chief
Operations Officer and he was my first business partner, that he told me that
I was doing this agile lean thing. Like I said, I just thought it made common
sense.
But because of the environment that we operate in, online, immediate
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feedback, or lack of feedback in the case of if you do something that just

misfires and no one cares, or if you do something that people are divided on.
This is all incredible feedback. And that’s how your strategy has to operate.
You can create the best, in your mind, strategy in the world, put it down on
paper and plod through it to the next year and fail miserably because you
weren’t paying attention to what actually happened in response. You’ve
got to be responsive to an audience. Media companies have known this for
years, now marketers have to act that way as well.
Jerry Seinfeld and agile content marketing

So the best way I’ve found to explain to people how this process works is
using standup comedians as an example. Now some people might think that
Jerry Seinfeld writes some jokes and then he gets up on stage and he tells
them and everyone loves it, cracks up and it’s a wonderful hit. That’s not how it
works, not for Jerry Seinfeld, not for any comedian.
Basically, they sit down, they write some jokes. They go to a small night club
and they try them out. Some of them work, some of them don’t. They go back.
They cut the jokes that don’t work, they work on the ones that did, they write
other jokes to replace that ones that didn’t work.
Again, that’s what iterative means. That’s what agile means. You take
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feedback, you go back, and you refine and then you go back again. So
then the next time that the next set for the comedian is created, they go back
to the small club, try it out, see what happens.
In the process of doing that, you get to an act that is solid and you take it to
a big venue and everyone loves it and they think you’re a genius. But really
what it was was a lot of hard work, paying attention to feedback, seeing what
worked and what doesn’t, coming back with something new and continuing
to refine the process.
So it’s important for you to understand this when you’re mapping out your
own strategy in the things that you try, paying attention to what worked and
what didn’t.
Help your clients understand the agile content

process
But it’s also important that your clients understand this. If they want a five-year
plan or even a five-month plan, you can say, “I’d be happy to do that for you,”
the five-month and not the five-year,
“But you have to understand, we are going to adapt
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based on what actually happens. And that’s a good

thing, because the market -- the audience -- is going
to tell us what it likes and what it doesn’t like. And
that is going to save us a lot of time and frustration
of plodding along with something that we thought
would work that doesn’t actually work.”
Okay. The next A is authentic. Now, if you’ve paid attention to blogging or

social media circles over the last five, three years, whatever, you’ve heard the
authentic or authenticity thrown around in a pretty indiscriminate manner
and I think it’s one of the most misunderstood concepts when it comes to
online marketing.
What “authentic” actually means for marketers

Now on one hand, yes, online, certainly a more authentic genuine engaging
voice -- and voice meaning your written materials -- really the whole world
of your client’s material should come across very human and not filled with
corporate jargon and very dry brochure-like material. That is the opposite of
what we’re trying to accomplish with obviously, with the engaging valuable
content.
At the same time, it doesn’t mean sharing necessarily what you had for
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lunch or worse. This whole aspect of over sharing or too much transparency
or not thinking through what kind of message your client or even you in your
own marketing, wants to make.
Now there are people out there, like Erika who works for me on the Boulder
site, she has a very radical personality and it works for her because she attracts
the kind of people she wants to work for. But when she works for me, she
knows she can’t be that way.
So there are lines and there are choices about what is authentic. I can tell you
that is really Erika’s personality and she is true to herself, but it wouldn’t work
for everyone and it certainly doesn’t work for everyone wanting to hire her. All
that matters for her is that she’s attracting enough business and the people
that she wants to work with.
But the real essence of authenticity is the story that your prospective
customer or client wants to hear. That’s a very important thing. It’s authentic
to them.
Now, I’m not saying you just make something up. But there’s a great book
called All Marketers Are Storytellers Now by Seth Godin. It was originally called
All Marketers Are Liars and he made a mistake and misjudged his audience by
saying that. He didn’t really mean that a good marketer is a liar. He meant the
opposite.
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Stories that resonate

What he meant was that you tell a story that the people you’re trying to
reach will resonate with. It resonates with their world view. It’s what they
believe already -- and then you have to be willing to live it 100%. That’s how
it becomes authentic.
You’re truly living and providing through products and services the story that
that particular group of people, that Tribe as Godin called it, really wants to
hear. And that is in essence of his strategy; and we’ll talk about this more when
we get down into content creation, how important research is to this process.
You can talk to any old school direct response copywriter up to the cutting
edge SEOs, to what are now the cutting edge content marketers, research is
where the battle is won or lost.
You have to understand the audience you’re after better than they understand
themselves and that is possible to do, especially if you put yourself in their
own shoes.
Again, this is why beyond Authorship and all of the benefits they get from
specialization in a topic, you need to be able to understand the people
you’re working with. Because you’re one of them in some sense. You
understand them. It really comes down to empathy.
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Okay. So let me get a little mystical on you for a second, and you’re going
to see in the next session how this really, powerful human motivator that’s
been with us since the beginning of mankind, matches up perfectly with
the modern content marketing sales funnel that we talked about. It may not
seem that at first. Now, when I talk about the hero’s journey also known as the
Monomyth. This came from a book by Joseph Campbell called A Hero with a
Thousand Faces.
The hero’s journey for your audience

Campbell basically found this recurring bedrock myth that dated back to the
very beginning of humankind that that followed the same path: this hero’s
journey.
And so he identified it in its ancient myths. It’s present in the story of Moses
and Jesus, of Buddha, and it’s also the foundation of Star Wars and the Matrix
and just about every blockbuster movie you’ve ever seen, because it resonates
so strongly with us as people.
So what does this have to do with content marketing? Well, every time
someone has a problem or desire and they set out online, either with search
or with social, they’re going on a journey and it’s ultimately a journey of
transformation. They want to go from having this problem to not having that
problem. They want to go from having this desire to not having this desire or
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satisfying that desire, I should say.
So when you think about the buying cycle, the sales funnel, in terms of a
journey and you realize that an authentic story is the one that helps the
person on that journey and it’s a story they’re telling themselves really.
Your content is acting as the form of mentor until they get to the point when
they’re ready to invest in your product or service. So I don’t want to go too
deep on this right now, but you have to understand that you’re telling a story,
you’re taking them on a journey and your content is facilitating each step
of that journey until the process. So that is what we mean by authentic. It
rings true to them, not only in the way you communicate, but in the way you
focus on them as opposed to focusing on the company.
Your clients need to get this

I have faith in you guys that you get that, that your prospective customer
or clients need to be the focus of your marketing. Sometimes it’s hard to
convince them of it. But like I said, the thing about picking the right clients is
often the ones who get it, the ones who are willing to pay you well and the
ones who are going to let you do your job in the way that works.
And I can tell you from experience, we’ve used this hero’s journey process for
product launches, but also for every segment of the content marketing
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we’ve done for ourselves over the last eight years. And when we get down
into content creation, we’ll talk a little bit more about that.
Understanding the attention economy

All right. So here we’re at our familiar friend attention and we have these
proclamations that we live in an attention economy, that attention is actually
more valuable than money to a certain extent -- because if you don’t have it,
you certainly don’t get any money.
And I think all that is true. The problem is people don’t do the proper research,
they don’t understand the importance of the telling the right story. They don’t
understand that this is an adaptive process that when you try things you learn
more each time.
And that’s why we’ve had the three preceding A’s before we ever get to
attention. But on the other hand, without attention we can’t move forward.
So we have done our preparation in filling out our strategic framework.

Now it comes down to creating content that is valuable, that is useful, that
facilitates the sales process and it attracts attention. And by attention,
generally in our progression, in our process, that is going to come from social
media.
Remember, social media is a distribution channel for content, which is the
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synonym for your content is getting attention. It’s getting seen, it’s getting
read or consumed, and it’s getting passed along into relevant networks,
because you’re not going to want to share content online with people who
aren’t interested in it.
That’s why it’s important to have the right social media presence, for example
on LinkedIn, where it is very industry focused with the content sharing.
But even on Twitter, people follow people for certain reasons. People follow
Copyblogger because we Tweet out our own content, but also other people’s
content that’s relevant to content marketing and we become an editorial
service in that we share other people’s content as well as our own. So this, in
the process, is what gets attention, initial attention, to your content.
And then of course as we discussed, that social media attention leads to

signals, to Google, including links, traffic, time on site, all of these elements
that Google looks at to say, “You know what? This page, it’s more important
than other pages on this topic.” And that’s the other more valuable long-term
form of attention you get. When someone does a search and you or your client
are the ones who show up and when they click through and they’re satisfied
with what you’ve done, that’s the most valuable form of attention you can get.
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Content that gets attention and serves the sales

process
Okay, so we’re going to go into this much deeper in the content creation
phase, but as long as your content is basically satisfying the sales process, it’s
beginning the sales process, it’s satisfying the initial questions and getting
people to pay attention to you, then this is the part of the strategy that you
have to come up with. And it really ties into the voice and the authentic story
that you came up with from your research.
But even then, one piece of content that’s just as good as another piece of
content will not necessarily be created equal or performed equally. And
everyone who has studied copy writing understands there’s one headline
against another headline and there’s a world of difference in performance.
Also tied into that is the hook or the angle. That’s just the slant that you take
with the piece of content.
Journalists do it when trying to tell a compelling news story. Copywriters

do it when creating a sales page. Again, one angle will sell the one-legged
golfer angle and headline for John Carlton much more than the proceeding
approach which would be last control. That’s what I’m talking about with
headlines and hooks you tie together.
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You need to keep your promises

One word of warning here, and I think everyone who’s studied copy writing
gets this, but it always needs to be reinforced.
Your headline is a promise, the hook is an angle, but if the actual content
does not satisfy the promise of the headline and that the angle is wrong or
inappropriate for the usefulness that you’re trying to convey, it’s not going to
perform as well -- or it’s going to get the opposite reaction. So always use your
good judgment, while not being afraid to be creative.
The importance of headlines

So again, anyone who’s taking the AWAI course on copywriting remembers
the 5As for headlines. I think they’re all also applicable to content. That was
the original premise of Copyblogger in the beginning, that applying direct
response copy writing to content in a context-appropriate way, would make
that content perform better and we certainly practice what we preach there.
But for content of the 5As’, I think you need to focus on these three. Number
one is useful. We’ve been talking about that the whole time, and that
really goes back to that red arrow between content and sales. It’s got to
be addressing a problem or a desire that the ultimate product or service
satisfies.
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Never forget that and that’s the usefulness aspect here. It’s got to provide real
independent value, information that actually facilitates the buyer’s journey
that we talked about and you shouldn’t feel like you’re giving too much away
in the useful department. I see that mistake all the time.
People, especially with services, they don’t want to do it themselves. If they’re

looking for a product to solve a problem, they want you to provide that
solution. Trust me. I mean, people want to buy the thing that it will solve
their problem or satisfy their desire. The issue is, do they trust you enough to
choose you? It really comes down to that.
The other aspect of these type of headlines and angles is the unique factor,
and this can be done in a lot of ways and of course, it’s always got to be
audience appropriate, but it’s really taking something that might be boring,
maybe it’s a business-to-business software issue or it’s a manufacturing issue
or if it’s dentistry or real estate or whatever, these things that we have to deal
with, insurance, we don’t want to necessarily, but we do have to and the more
that we can create a unique approach to communicating the answer to
the question that’s being asked by social or search, the more engaging the
content is.
And then finally, the other element here that I think is important, is being very
specific instead of being clever and vague and hip with your headline, both
for search engine and for social media.
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If someone can tell what this piece of content is about and yes, it does address
the problem or desire that I’m trying to solve and does it have an element
that’s unique and engaging, that takes this very ultra specific headline to pull
off. So therefore, you don’t want to be cute and vague.
Some established marketers get away with this because they have been
around for ten years. I mean, it’s not the same thing when it’s you creating
your own content and certainly, not for the clients that you attract. So just
make sure that you are actually conveying enough information, because on
Twitter, the headline is all you see. The same way with subject lines in email,
the same thing that people use RSS, people are just scanning looking for
something that’s useful and interesting.
So in the ultra-specific department, again, it’s conveying the headline, but

is satisfied in the content, you need to combine the right combination of
meaning and fascination, meaning it’s a usefulness and fascination is the
unique aspect of it. So really, ultra specific is a combination of useful and
unique for content headlines.
Attention is not enough

Okay. So you get attention, but attention isn’t enough. Attention stops at your
website, reads your article, leaves and never returns. That is of no value to
you or your clients with this model. If they don’t ultimately follow over time
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-- and remember the permission phase of the funnel, which is right before
conversion. If they don’t raise their hand and say, “Hey, I want to follow you
over time,” then they’re not really part of your audience.
Now, there’s been a lot of focus over the last few years about Facebook likes
and Twitter followers and LinkedIn this and all that, but ... and that is part of
your audience, but it’s a weaker aspect of your audience. Remember what we
talked about in the local marketing model? How I did attract those Facebook
likes, but I also had the plan in place to convert those Facebook followers
and link relationships into an email relationship, which is stronger.
So, social media and blog readers are important for your audience but there
are rings of trust in an audience, and social media is on the outside, the
weakest levels of trust.
As you move them into a general email list, and then specific email lists
that may be more focused on conversion, and then going on to become a
customer, a repeat customer, and then a recurring customer -- the holy grail
-- when they pay you every month, which that’s what we’re trying to get,
remember, retainer agreements. Well that’s the way to think about audience to
the point where you’re always optimizing that audience to come in closer
to you.
Now, so we talked at the beginning about how this whole concept of agile
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and lean, all the rage in the start-up world, and one of the concepts of the lean
start-up by a guy named Eric Ries, really took this from manufacturing. Lean
is a process that was actually started in Toyota for manufacturing cars to be
more efficient. Anyway, so the lean start-up movement has been called the
minimum viable product where you don’t try to create a full-fledged iPhone
or a full-fledged piece of functional software, you’re only basically floating out
the general framework of the idea. You find a way to get attention to it and
then from the feedback, you make it into what the market actually wants.
Building the Minimum Viable Audience

So again, this is how we developed our content from the very beginning, the
same agile lean process and so now the whole concept of the minimum viable
audience, which isn’t a concept that I came up with, it actually appeared in the
New York Times bestselling book, The Lean Entrepreneur.
The idea is, you start with an audience before you try to sell a product
or service. And I think this is going to help, even when you know what you
want to sell and even though your clients have an existing product, you get all
this incredible feedback that helps them do better even on the product and
service front.
Specifically what I’m talking about here is building a minimum viable

audience in the context that once you get to a certain point and during the
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early days of any content marketing initiative, both yours and for clients,
content promotion becomes very important.
The importance of content promotion

And by content promotion I mean you’ve got to work behind the scenes.
You’ve got to work social media. You’ve got to reach out to people and get
attention to that initial content, because just publishing it on the web, “Build
it and they will come,” doesn’t work. Trust me.
The first three months of Copyblogger were like crickets chirping most of the
time, but I never gave up. I kept trying things. I saw what worked. I saw what
didn’t and that allowed me to finally break through to achieve a minimum
viable audience. And what that means is you’re starting to get enough of
that feedback for everything you published to where you can make smarter
content decisions going forward. The audience is essentially telling you what
to create.
Now, they won’t tell you directly. Don’t make the mistake of asking necessarily.
I think there is a place for surveys and whatnot, but observing what they do
and how they react -- in the comments they leave and the sharing amounts
and all that -- that’s the true feedback, because you know that they’re not
telling you what you want to hear.
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That’s one of the major failings of focus groups. You pay a whole bunch of
money to get people in a room and you ask them questions and they tell you
one thing and then they go out and it turns out the product flops because
the process wasn’t honest. Their answers were a result of the circumstances as
opposed to an honest unscripted answer.
And that’s why social media -- and the Internet in general -- are so valuable as
a market research tool. Anything you want to know about anything, you could
find a forum or a social network or someone to follow or a blog or on and
on, where there will be a community and they will be talking to each other
and they will be honest, maybe more honest than you’d like, but that’s the
important thing.
So essentially step one, your audience is starting to tell you what kind of
content to create.
Second, this is the good thing. So you have to hustle during the early days,
both for yourself and for your clients, about getting the word out, contacting
influential people who might share your content, building your social
network, sharing other content so that yours can get attention too.
But then you get to a point where the audience starts building itself because
every time you publish, you have a minimum viable audience that will
automatically share that content with all their networks as well.
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Now, that doesn’t mean that you want to stop any kind of outreach program
or whatever.
Remember, I pay Erika more money because she has these established
networks and she’s always promoting the content she creates because
that’s part of her job. That’s part of what it means to be a Content Marketing
Consultant. It’s not just about creating words, it’s about creating
distribution for that content as well.
But when you get the audience to start doing it automatically every time,
as this point, a good friend of mine named Greg Boser, he’s one of the really
smart guys that were technical SEOs, maybe spent a little more time tricking
Google than he ought to, now he’s completely on the content side, but he
effectively says that Copyblogger’s SEO strategy right now is “Hit publish.”
That’s not entirely true. There’s a little bit more to that, but the exposure and
the sharing and the links, they just happen because we got to the point
where we had a real audience, pointing to the importance of the audience
aspect of the strategy. How are you going to get to enough of an audience to
where you hit publish and the sharing and the links happen?
And then finally of course, what we already alluded to, even if you know what
you’re selling for yourself or for your clients, the audience is going to give
you more ideas and that kind of applies later to the acceleration phase.
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You’re going to have real viable feedback that says, “Hey, we should do this
and we’re really going to run away with our current market or maybe we
should add this and this is a viable new line of business.”
Authority comes from your audience

Okay. Authority, the thing we’ve been talking about throughout the course
and we’ll continue to talk about is really a milestone achievement. Now
achieving the minimum viable audience seems pretty cool, right? But
authority is the immediate outgrowth of achieving that minimum viable
audience. It’s the thing that results from it. Just think about it.
One of the most important tenets of content marketing is what other people
say about you or your client is more important than what you say about
yourself or what you say about your client.
It’s better to demonstrate then claim, and so this is again, why social media
and search engine results are so powerful because it’s not you saying your
content is good, it’s someone out there with a network of people that are not
aware of you that just became aware of you or you or your client and so this
piece of content that was shared, word of mouth, right?
Word of mouth marketing has always been the most effective form there is
and social media with content puts it on steroids, completely. I mean, you
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can reach people that you would have had no ability to do even with a large
advertising budget, because we tend to tune out advertising or either not
believe it as credible than what our own friends tell us.
The domino effect of audience, authority, and sales

So authority is the result of having that minimum viable audience because
they’re telling people that you, in this case, are a local marketing expert or you
are an industry marketing expert. You have to achieve the same thing for your
clients. They might already have a good deal of authority because they’re out
there selling whatever it is they sell, so in essence, by building the audience
you’re enhancing that authority, which enhances the size of the audience,
which enhances sales. You can see how it’s a domino effect at this point.
And this is really what we’re trying to achieve, and I think you understand
this point, but it’s good to reflect on it, both you as a marketing consultant
and your clients, whoever they choose to be the voice or it could be multiple
people, that create content and have their own authorship or they rely on
yours, remember it could go either way and both ways are lucrative for you.
But authority is about being someone that people like, they want to
listen to, they want to follow, they know, like and trust. And this is not
just a content marketing or a media concept, although it’s central to both,
this is a salesmanship concept. This is why people buy from other people and
that’s really again, ties into the whole authorship concept of a person being
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more important than a website or a company. Here, we buy from people, not
necessarily companies and that’s why the whole concept of authorship and
authority in building an audience, really does transfer into sales.
Again, I’ve lived it from day one. We’ve done nothing but content and that’s
the basis of our entire business, but there are many, many other stories out
there that are similar to ours and there’s more being created every day as
content marketing has really gone mainstream.
Okay. So now, we’re at the point where we’re getting people closer to what
we’re really after, which is becoming a customer or a client. And again, going
towards -- even in the classic AIDA structure, there are things in between
attention and action. And in this model, there’s things, important things that
happen before attention. And I think again, every great copywriter has always
functioned this way, it’s just a different way of transmitting messages over
time as opposed to each separate element of the sales letter.
Content strategy as a sales letter delivered over

time
If you really look at the entire content marketing strategy that you’re putting
together, including the elements of authority and social proof and all the
things that make social media distribution work, you’re really writing a
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very long sales letter. You just are not presenting it as a sales letter. It comes
across much more useful. It gets much more distribution than a sales letter
would and ultimately, it results in higher conversions and more of the actual
objective being made.
I can give you a micro example of this. The data shows that if you send
pay-per-click traffic to a sales letter you’ll get X amount of conversion rate,
depending on the copy and what’s being sold. If you send that same traffic
you get them to opt into a content stream -- that is a mini version of this 7A
Process that we’re talking about -- the conversion rate is remarkably higher.
It’s because getting people to pay attention to content as opposed to an
immediate call to action for a sale, is just the way the Internet works.
This framework can be used for product launches, it can be used for pay-
per-click, autoresponder streams, but in the broader sense, the way that
companies have to operate now you have media companies. That means they
have to pay you to create this content over and over each month as you play
out this 7A Framework over and over again, depending on where a person is
in the buyer’s journey.
Taking prospects the last mile with copywriting

Content can attract a large amount of people, thanks to social media and
search. You can build a huge email list as a result of that, and that alone is
going to result in more sales than other methods. However, at the same time,
32
once you get to that point, you can start doing traditional A/B testing, testing
headlines, tweaking, approving copy, all of this sort of things that we know as
traditional copywriters can improve performance amazingly.
This is where it gets down to data. This is where it gets down to testing. And
of course, conversion optimization is a discipline all unto itself. It can be very
technical. Some writers don’t like that; some love it. Again, this can be a part
of your team building if you don’t feel comfortable, but if you’re also coming
from the direct response world, you’re able to offer the entire package from
the initial forms of content that we’ll go over in the next session, all the way
down to optimizing the point of sale.
And that’s another thing, because you can convince your client that they need
to create a magazine style presence or an Internet radio show, or video show,
whatever the case may be, and that may perform spectacularly and just the
additional traffic and attention and trust and knowing and liking, all of that
stuff, is going to improve their revenue and their profits and yet, the place that
you’re sending all that attention, all that audience, all that trust, could be just
really poorly done. It could be an old brochure type site. It could be talking
about features and not benefits. All the stuff that is copywriting 101, they’re
not offering risk reversal by providing a guarantee.
This is the last mile and then you can actually offer these services as well and
once you’ve got the traffic coming in, converting more of them to customers
and clients, is always a welcome thing from the client and for yourself,
33
obviously. So, remember that once you get to this point, it really is the science
of copywriting that many people in the direct mail industry know backwards
and forward, it’s just in the new context and there’s a new point in the strategy
where the sale and the optimization is made for this stage of it.
And then finally, acceleration. So this is something that you generally don’t
find when you advertise on television or radio or if you do direct mail. You’re
able to do much of the same sort of optimizing, finding the new control, what
works better, this or that, all those type of things are actually easier to do
online than they are in any other medium, but there’s an aspect to a content
marketing approach that is really unique and to me is the most fascinating as
an entrepreneur.
Accelerating your opportunities

So even if you start out as a content consultant, taking clients, I tried to
reiterate throughout this course that if you do this correctly, if you are
providing a service for your clients, if you are attracting this client with your
own web presence, your own content, then that is not the end of the story.
Even if you grew into a huge content marketing agency, there would always
be other opportunities. Because when you have an audience as I found with
the local Boulder site, and of course as I’ve found with Copyblogger, people
will come to you left and right with opportunities because they don’t have
that audience but they have something else.
34
There was a quote, one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs is, “It’s now
what you say yes to it’s what you say no to.” You’ll have the opportunity for
acceleration. Some people will bring you things that might make you money
but you would be selling out your audience. Right? It’s not the right thing. It’s
kind of shady or it’s t’s just not congruent with where you want to go long-
term. Those are the things you say no to and sometimes that can be difficult.
It never was for me, because there was no way I would ever sell anything to
the audience that would sacrifice the long term value of what that audience
and what the website itself, the media property, the potential that it had going
forward is way more lucrative, and in short-term, affiliate gaining or something
like that.
That said, during the course of all those years, all the things I said no to during
those times, five things came to me that I said yes to and those five things
were merged together into one company that’s now a completely functional
software and trading company that covers every single base. Every single
objective that I had from the beginning, I’ve now been able to achieve and
again, never taking any money, never putting out more than $1,000 of my
own money before it was recouped, it was all due to the audience.
So this is something I really want to get through to you, because I care about
you more than anyone else, it’s the writers and the content creators that I
think are way more powerful than at any other time in history because
you don’t have to ask for permission. There are no gatekeepers, there’s no TV
35
station or radio station or network that you have to send a script to or send
a manuscript to in order to get permission to get an audience, no, you get to
build that on your own if you follow this strategy.
There’s always more down the line

But don’t forget that there’s always going to be more down the line. So when
you’re building and there’s days you get a little frustrated and it seems like
a lot of hard work during those first six months when you’re not getting
the attention you deserve, this is the kind of thing I think that keeps people
hanging in there, that not only will you break through and attract the clients
and the right kind of clients and the well-paying clients, but that there are
always going to be more opportunities for acceleration the further you keep
going. The longer you keep producing content, the bigger you grow your
audience and your influence, it will always bring you new and interesting
things.
So when you get to a point in your life, maybe you have a built a decent size
agency and its starting to wear on you, dealing with clients and all that, you’ll
always know that you’re like, “Well, I know I could go off in another direction
while I’m still getting paid from this,” and that’s a good feeling to have.
36
So okay, here are the five key things I want you to

focus on.
Number one, know your audience. Know who you’re after, both as a
consultant looking for these retainer-based clients who get it and who let you
do the work that needs to be done to help them. Understand them inside and
out. But also for them, once you have these clients, you get compensated, this
is part of what you get paid for, but you’ve got to understand who they are
trying to reach and what their problems and desires are.
And again, beating a dead horse, but this is why specialization, the specialist is
going to beat the generalist every time with this aspect of things, because you
will start to fundamentally understand a lot of things that a generalist would
have to spend time and money researching. You can walk in and go, “I know
this, this and this.” I need to look at this and then we’re going to figure out
exactly what your audience, the ideal audience, that you’re trying to attract
looks like.
Number two, and this goes to the agile phase, you can think and you can plan
and you can strategize and you can fret and draft and edit, but you will never
know anything until you put it out there. And you’re going to get this first
on your own behalf, your own marketing. You have that to start publishing
content, get some attention to it, take the feedback good or bad because
you’re going to learn something regardless and you’re going to know what to
do next.
37
But the worst thing you can do is sit there inside your own head and not put
anything out there because you’re afraid or you’re not sure it’s right. Who
knows if it’s right? It’s not right unless the audience thinks it’s right.
So put it out there, get the feedback and go from there, which is really point
three, adapt and conquer. Anytime you get feedback, whether good or bad,
it’s more valuable than anything you could think up in your head. It’s the real
world. It’s what’s happening in real time with the people you’re trying to reach.
The only thing I would say about the adapt and conquer phase is you can’t
adapt if you’re not getting feedback and you can’t get feedback unless you
find a way to get some attention to that content.
So if you work really hard and are communicating on Twitter with an industry
influencer and you get them to share your content, that itself is a form of
feedback. This person who has their own audience and their own reputation,
was willing to put my work out there. That’s an important first step. But what
results from that is that audience, hopefully, will give feedback as well and it
goes from there. So you have to get the content out there, both for yourself
and for your clients, or you don’t really know where to go, you’re just guessing
and as smart as we like to think we are, we get better at guessing, yes, but
we’re still guessing.
Number four, remember that of all the 7As, authority is central. It even falls
centrally in the list because this is what creates the snowball effect. This is
what causes the audience to grow even larger over and over again. It’s what
38
gets people to know, like, and trust you so that they will consider your offer. I
mean, having a great offer is half the battle.
The right product or service on the right terms with the right guarantee,
but getting people to consider the offer and not just tune it out or delete
the email, that’s the other half of the battle. In fact, that may be 85% of the
battle, getting the initial attention, convincing them that you’re worth paying
attention to over time, that you know what you’re talking about, that’s when
they consider your offer. And even if they don’t buy, they’re not annoyed by it
like they are when they get hit over the head with something out of the blue.
And then finally, number five, both for yourself and for the clients that
you advise and execute on this strategy for, think like a media company.
Marketing has become less a function of buying media, which is advertising
or influencing media, which is PR. Marketing is now becoming media. Brands
are becoming publishers, video producers, audio producers and this applies to
businesses big and small, including yours.
So get a media mindset for yourself and truly live it and then you’re going
to have such passion about the fact that this stuff works and I’ve got about
50,000 examples now that content marketing has gone mainstream. Imagine
how I felt back in 2006.
So you’re in a much better position but you still have to act -- you got to walk
the talk, okay? You got to practice what you preach and if it works in attracting
clients, you’ve got to be right because they fell for it, right? Fell for it is the
39
wrong word, but it worked on them and therefore they are more primed to
understand that this is the way marketing works online. And luckily, you’ve got
a lot of support out there to back you up.
So that is the 7A Strategy framework. You can take these seven elements,
just put them down on a piece of paper and start filling out the aspects of
how you’re going to execute initially on the strategy and then of course,
because the first step is to be agile, you’re going to adapt as you learn things.
But just don’t forget, without the research phase, you’ll never come up with
the right authentic approach to content creation in the first place.
So work on this framework until the next session and then we will talk
specifically about the types of content that work in implementing the overall
strategy that we’re talking about here.
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T H E 7 A F R A M E W O R K F O R E F F E C T I V E CO N T E N T M A R K E T I N G

Let’s get it started ...

What we need to talk about today is how to develop a strategy that

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A strategic framework for content marketing

So that makes it kind of neat. It’s not a bunch of different strategy

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Education and informative content

So again, it has to be on point in order to attract attention in the first place.

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The content progression

So that’s the progression that we have to go through. But remember, the

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This is an audience of prospective customers and clients, yes, but we think

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But because of the environment that we operate in, online, immediate

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feedback, or lack of feedback in the case of if you do something that just

Jerry Seinfeld and agile content marketing

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Help your clients understand the agile content

“But you have to understand, we are going to adapt

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based on what actually happens. And that’s a good

Okay. The next A is authentic. Now, if you’ve paid attention to blogging or

What “authentic” actually means for marketers

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Stories that resonate

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The hero’s journey for your audience

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satisfying that desire, I should say.

Your clients need to get this

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Understanding the attention economy

So we have done our preparation in filling out our strategic framework.

Remember, social media is a distribution channel for content, which is the

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And then of course as we discussed, that social media attention leads to

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Content that gets attention and serves the sales

Journalists do it when trying to tell a compelling news story. Copywriters

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You need to keep your promises

The importance of headlines

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People, especially with services, they don’t want to do it themselves. If they’re

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So in the ultra-specific department, again, it’s conveying the headline, but

Attention is not enough

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Building the Minimum Viable Audience

Specifically what I’m talking about here is building a minimum viable

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The importance of content promotion

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