The Strategy of Content Marketing

The University of California

Objectives: move your audience, earn your audience attention, and have a spark (passion why
this matters) through stories that relate through humor.

Structure

 Headlines that capture attention

 First few sentences to hook the audience (solve problem through information)
 Single focus point
 Proven writing techniques like stories, metaphors, concrete details, examples.
 Very specific call to action

Building your professional brand

 Own domain that ranks high in SEO

 Own domain + WordPress
 Do not build your professional brand on social media only, they can take you down or
change.
 Don’t place ads on your site, they slow you down and you can’t have total control on
the ads there (compatibility, ethics).
 Use premium WordPress themes.
 Put your portfolio + personality + writing there.
 “Friendly professionalism”. Positive. Not stuffy or boring.
 Add security. SSL.

The 7A Framework

 Agile: do more of what works and less of what doesn’t work. Avenues to explore: do
not write a lot before knowing what works.
 Authentic: not about oversharing. Shareability of your unique voice: a great writing
voice (values and human stories). Leave behind a bland corporate product that feels
like advertising. Create artisanal content.
 Attention or attraction: use headlines, hooks, meaning, and fascination. Create
relationships to gain traffic and attention. Attraction must be captured and sustained,
go beyond the click, increasing attention through:
o A domain to control.
o Email list, white papers, and reports.
o Serving a specific audience. Which audience?
 Audience: it’s made of leads, prospects, clients, past clients, and advocates. Share
their concerns, explore angles and new ideas. Build relationships in social media, listen
to social media to grow business, but lead the audience to your home.
 Authority: become an expert, no arrogance. Combine meaning and fascination in a
human relatable way, using a distinctive voice.
  Action: it could be sales and leads generation (direct response copywriting). You need
to motive and persuade (to sign up, to purchase, etc.). Hence, you need persuasive
writing (direct response marketing skills).
 Acceleration: opening doors you didn’t know existed. It’s creating relationships with
everyone + cultivate your network to maximize potential + promote and develop now.

Headlines

 They have to be useful,

 Provide a sense of urgency + intrigue,
 Offer benefits that are unique (“the promise”),
 Be ultra-specific (give reasons why).
 Never allow readers to question why they are bothering paying attention.
 Headlines have to get attention. Practice writing headlines, use hooks, write it first and
adapt it to the content later, steal and adapt headlines from major magazines outside your
topic (like Cosmopolitan) to stand out, internalize headline structure, use headlines
formulas and adapt, identify your own sensitivity. Each scenario calls for a unique headline
formula. Test headlines (be agile).

Tips:

 Use of numbers in headlines (“5 ways of…”). If percentages, do not use round numbers
(use “91.2%”). They must be specific and interesting for people to get curious.
 Include a benefit or promise or solution.
 Do not overpromise.
 Clear rather than clever.
 Ignite curiosity = gossipy
 Classic direct response headlines with question, but mention benefits.
 Urgency headline (if there is a deadline, include it in the headline).
 Meaning + fascination + useful (benefits). But beware: usefulness and meaningfulness are
determined by the audience.
 Tease the audience, let them know you have a solution.
 Use images: they are powerful and quick.
 Design and usability: old looking websites repel people. Slow loading makes them leave
your site. A clean and modern design get more social media share.

Action steps
Content marketing is marketing, it seeks to generate a direct response through persuasion.

Elements of a persuasive piece:

1. Who are you? Authority and Authenticity. You need to build trust.
a. Create a baseline of authority.
b. Help solve problems with your experience.
2. Features: inform your audience about what you have to offer. What is the product
about? What is it made of? What does it do? But it have to be meaningful and create
fascination.
3. Benefits: what does the product do for your audience? What do they get out of it?
a. Logical benefits.
 b. Emotional benefits. E.g. address fears and uncertainty in BtoB. Envision your
solution transforming the audience gracefully: use case studies and customer
stories. Emphasize emotions like confidence, reduction of stress, positivity.
People decide with their hearts and justify with their brains.
c. Work on: Trust + product or service + Emotional benefits + Logical benefits
4. Specify the Call to Action (instructions for the audience to provoke an action or
purchase). The Call to Action must be:
a. Specific.
b. Clear.
c. Not clever (e.g. use “Click here to…”)
5. Risk reversal: provide guarantee (e.g. money back). Reduce buying anxiety (people
don’t want to feel dumb). Use badges for website security. Provide testimonials (“I was
afraid but this really worked well for me”.).

Delivery options

 Email and blog: very effective and high ROI.

 Sales page.

Testing

Test different approaches: improve the wording, use Google Analytics.

Acceleration
 Expand your network: present yourself as authority. Give advice.
 Start your blog.
 Be kind and nice to everybody.
 Genuinely follow admirable people. Don’t become awestruck. Don’t critique. Don’t
over-compliment.
 Do something epic (remarkable)
o Begin tiny
o Meaningful content to make an impression
o Create your own blog to create a buzz
o Avoid bad behavior: show up, pay attention, don’t lie.

“About” page
 Call it “about” and nothing else.
 Benefits + features + how to get in touch with you. LinkedIn profile, skype, phone. In
LinkedIn, join groups and publish articles.
 Establish goals.
 Be mindful of internet trends in design.
 Be mindful of your audience and authenticity.

Audience & Authority & Confidence

 You want to motivate your audience to action.
 You need a strong personality and to show authority. Therefore you need confidence.
 Earn authority through demonstration, not claim.
 There might be a distinction between who you are and who your online persona is, but
without lying.
  Create your personal brand.
 Overcome impostor syndrome.

Mapping the Journey

The buyer’s journey is shown in the funnel. Beware that it starts without you, when they first
come across your blog or social media. Give value and usefulness at those stages.

Assimilate the hero’s journey (as in a story, like Lord of the Rings) to the buyer’s journey. They
are similar in that first there is a problem, second there is a journey or quest, third the hero
conquers. Somewhere in the journey, you have to show up, preferably by email and help the
buyer solve the problem.

You should portray yourself as a hero, but not “the” hero, which is the client. Your role is
Gandalf’s: the helpful, trusted advisor. Become the mentor. Know the prospects better than
they know themselves.

Pains + gains: use empathy mapping which will help you discover what the client is thinking,
doing, seeing, and feeling. Then, use experience mappings.

Experience maps

 The sum utility through the entire arc of being a customer.

 The ups and lows (gains and pains) they find.
 Adaptive content, and keep it simple.
 The goal is to obtain conversion optimization.

2 Essential elements for creating irresistible content

MEANING + FASCINATION

 Keep it original and interesting.

 Meaning means relevant for your audience. Fascination means fun and enjoyable,
shocking, original, using metaphors, analogies, and stories for more comprehension
and retention.
 Mix up things that apparently have nothing to do together, such as:
o Pop-culture references
o Industry inside jokes if your audience can relate
 Some articles speak stronger to some individuals than to others. That’s just how it is.
 Don’t use references that need explanations.
 Use help lists. They have no hook, but high usefulness.
 Use Promises of value (make them and deliver them) + intriguing headlines.

Audio, text, video et should have both elements + Must have meaning to the audience and
provide something they care about + create curiosity and interest with humor, a great story,
etc. with an interesting writer’s voice.

Types of content
 Attraction
 Affinity
 Action
 Authority
Attraction Content
Make it freely available for social share + search engines to index.

Objectives are to gain attention and drive traffic.

Techniques:

 Value to the right type of person.

 Give more than competitors to be seen as exceptional (Epic posts).
 Headlines are the quickest way to get better results and to communicate the value in
exchange for the time.
 Have something insightful to say. Be clear and specific.
 Trap: to think that audiences are like the copywriter and want clever things.
 Connect right away.
 Clear + specific promise + urgency =/ (not equal to) hype bombastic
 List of articles are very effective.
 Deliver the promise made in the headline.

Affinity
Identify your beliefs, passion, integrity, and values.

Use common beliefs and need for belonging.

Take into account that decisions are emotional and then they are rationalized.

Facebook is beliefs based = tribes = belonging (increased engagement).

Don’t go after everyone, but don’t be a trainwreck, picking fights with everybody. Don’t be just
wallpaper either, make a stand but the passion has to solve a problem: it has to be relevant.

Action copy
 E.g. Sign up email list (there is a business goal at the end).
 Second type of customer is one who shares even when they are out of the intended
audience.
 Make the action content actionable: practice writing elements.
 Every page is a landing page: tell people what to do next.
 Use the slippery slide: from headlines to story to call to action.
 Show your face.
 Use “I think I’m a lot like you” story.
 Help people solve problems and feel better.
 You need to have a core sales and marketing understanding to write action copy. It has
to be benefit-oriented, clear, not clever, highlighted.

Authority-building content
Make it subtle and interactive. Demonstration of expertise, not claiming expertise.

Empower your audience, make them stars. Make them feel good about reading you.

Acceleration
 Make friends with everyone.
  Follow a code of ethics:
o Never lie in your content.
o Do not exaggerate the facts.
o Lying always gets caught in the internet.
o Set small expectations.
o Have respect for your audience.
o Be the advocate for your client.
o Plagiarism and copywright law is tricky and depends of jury interpretation.
o Use pay and permission.
o Meet your deadlines.

Metrics
Data leads to information, to knowledge, and to action.

The stages are: Reporting – Analysis – Monitoring – Prediction.

Reporting and analysis tools:

 Google analytics (set up key dashboards, it’s free).

 Bing analytics.
 Email marketing tools provided by email provider.
 Power BI
 OLAP is online analytical processing (data mining)

Monitoring:

 Real time monitoring can be addictive because you get a rush, but that’s not wise. You
have to see over time and to find out WHY.
 Art + Strategy is the key. Be a killer and a poet.

Prediction

 Forecasting is about things that will stay the same.

 Prediction is about things that are variable, dependent on variables. Track past sales,
predict future sales, send coupons if those sales don’t happen, and so on.

What data should I pay attention to?

It depends on the objectives, which usually are to drive sales with the best ROI possible. Or it
could be to get more subscribers.

Multimedia Content
Non-text media have more traction.

Structure + script =/ (not equal to) “winging it”

Types of Multimedia content:

Visuals (images and animated gifs)

 Work well on Pinterest and Facebook

 2 ways to use images:
o Image is the whole message (it includes memes)
o Image is a vehicle to push other content (pairing image with content, like in
blog posts)
 Create emotional reaction to bring people back to your site.
 Include your URL on the image.

Audio

 Podcasts
 It’s the most intimate medium.
 Creates emotional bond.
 Great for sharing values.
 Great storytelling is important. Stories with values.

Video

 Youtube ranks nice in search engines.

 Video options:
o Use a good presenter
o Slideshow style with emotional response
o Animated videos (cartoons)
 Video requirements:
o Quality editing
o Strong script
o Be concise
 Combine MEANING + FASCINATION

Other things about metrics

 If there are different touch points for 1 sale, there are difficulties in measuring which
channel brought that sale.
 With a community, either you feel at home or you don’t. This is important for inbound
marketing.
 Take into account that people increasingly block ads, and there is banner blindness
(they are there, but people don’t see them).
 Measure traffic through number of visitors and number of page views.
 Measure page performance (load time must be < 5 secs over the phone).
 People google you on their phone but buy on desktop. This can change.
 Make your site mobile responsive and mobile friendly. It has to be fast.
 What your top content is? Specific page, landing page.
 Measure engagement: shares, comments, mentions in social media.
 SEO. Google use signals that change over time. E.g. time spent on page, movement
from page to page, links to the site, key phrases.

My qualification in this course was 83/100