Dan Martell - July 15, 2019


How to Create a Content Strategy That Attracts High Quality Prospects


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

195.47939

Word Count

2,730

Sentence Count

150

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur,
00:00:01.880 investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:04.280 In this episode, I'm going to share with you
00:00:06.880 how to create a content marketing strategy that
00:00:09.040 attracts high-quality customers and prospects.
00:00:12.120 Now, you might be frustrated with having people show up,
00:00:15.240 spending a lot of time on content that doesn't actually
00:00:17.920 convert or even attract the right people.
00:00:20.480 We're going to solve that in this video.
00:00:22.440 And be sure to stay at the end, where
00:00:24.040 I'm going to share with you access to my winning webinar
00:00:26.960 method, which will help you not only
00:00:28.880 deliver content to your audience,
00:00:30.920 but actually get you customers through that strategy.
00:00:34.320 Let's get into it.
00:00:48.060 Now, real quick, I've been building content marketing
00:00:50.780 strategies for over a decade.
00:00:52.740 I did it with my company, Flowtown.
00:00:54.360 We built a blog that was generating 350,000 uniques
00:00:57.600 per month, which is a primary channel for our SaaS product
00:01:01.500 Flowtown.
00:01:02.400 Did it again with Clarity, where we got even more ninja
00:01:06.420 and actually got the community to contribute the article.
00:01:09.600 So built a whole content marketing and development
00:01:12.720 process that essentially our experts created the content
00:01:16.620 for the blog.
00:01:17.620 And then more recently, with essentially the Dan Martell
00:01:20.220 website, my coaching business, using content
00:01:23.300 to generate hundreds of new leads every week,
00:01:27.260 high quality, very focused and motivated leads.
00:01:30.700 And it's something that I teach my coaching clients
00:01:32.780 that when we start off, I don't think
00:01:35.120 that you should be spending all your time producing content.
00:01:37.580 I think a lot of people just go full in without a strategy.
00:01:41.440 What I show them is a whole different framework
00:01:44.260 to allow them to spend the least amount of time,
00:01:46.740 what I call the minimum effective dose,
00:01:48.760 in regards to content that's going
00:01:50.500 to generate the biggest results and impact
00:01:53.120 when it comes to generating leads and customers for your SaaS.
00:01:56.660 So let's get into it.
00:01:57.720 Number one, start with your ICP.
00:02:00.980 Now, ICP stands for ideal customer profile.
00:02:04.040 Maybe you've heard the term avatar, core customer,
00:02:06.900 et cetera.
00:02:07.760 They all mean the same thing.
00:02:09.160 But if you get that part wrong, if you
00:02:11.480 don't understand who is your perfect customer,
00:02:14.180 then the rest of it falls apart.
00:02:15.680 So for example, when I start working with a new coaching
00:02:18.120 client, the first thing we do is say,
00:02:19.360 where are you at right now from a monthly reoccurring revenue
00:02:21.740 point of view?
00:02:22.480 Where do you want to be in 12 months?
00:02:24.000 Get excited.
00:02:24.720 Let's set a big audacious goal.
00:02:26.480 Let's make it fun.
00:02:28.180 And then ask ourselves, if we had
00:02:30.260 to hang the business on one customer type,
00:02:34.200 based on the product that we have, the speed to buy,
00:02:37.640 and the unmet needs of their market, who would that be?
00:02:41.720 And we define them.
00:02:42.760 We get really clear on the industry,
00:02:44.540 and the size of the business, and the employee numbers,
00:02:46.920 and their specific pain, and maybe some other technologies
00:02:49.240 that they're using.
00:02:49.740 So we can get really, really, really clear
00:02:52.340 on who that customer is.
00:02:53.520 And then we lock it in.
00:02:54.560 We name them, and everything we talk about going forward
00:02:58.160 in this episode is based on that.
00:03:00.860 If you don't have that, recently I
00:03:02.480 was working with a new client, and they were really
00:03:05.120 having a hard time picking that person
00:03:06.820 because they had such a broad, horizontal product
00:03:09.620 that they just felt like, oh, but if I choose that,
00:03:12.200 then the bigger opportunity could be some results.
00:03:15.140 And all I said is, we don't need to make it a forever decision.
00:03:17.760 We just need to make it for the next 12 months.
00:03:19.940 And all we're trying to do is build up our MRR,
00:03:22.360 build up our revenue so that we can then reinvest in growth
00:03:25.060 and we can broaden our strategy.
00:03:27.100 But if we don't pick today, the rest of the content
00:03:30.300 is not going to support our marketing channel.
00:03:32.800 It's not going to produce the results that you want.
00:03:34.840 So number one, be sure to choose the right ideal customer
00:03:38.060 profile.
00:03:38.840 Number two, five frustrations.
00:03:41.320 This is the way I think about it.
00:03:42.740 Once we have that ICP, that customer profile,
00:03:45.160 we give him a name.
00:03:45.860 Let's call him John.
00:03:46.920 We then got to ask ourselves, for John,
00:03:49.600 What are the five frustrations that show up in his world
00:03:53.840 as it pertains to his job?
00:03:55.420 He could be the CEO, or he could have a role like leading
00:03:57.980 the marketing department.
00:03:59.620 And we've got to ask ourselves, if we were sitting there
00:04:02.360 as a fly on the wall, listening to John complain
00:04:06.360 about the challenges that he's facing in his business,
00:04:09.720 what are some of those frustrations, those challenges,
00:04:12.880 those issues that John might be having that we can help him
00:04:17.660 with with our product.
00:04:19.620 And that to me is the first core area
00:04:22.460 that we need to focus on is what are those five categories
00:04:26.200 of frustrations that John's having, your ideal customer,
00:04:30.480 so that we can start thinking about the types of content
00:04:33.440 that we can produce.
00:04:34.280 Because what we want to do, I call it chocolate broccoli,
00:04:37.340 is we need to produce content that speaks to the chocolate,
00:04:41.760 the need, the frustrations that John has,
00:04:44.760 so that we can create a bridge, which I'm going to share
00:04:47.460 how to do that so that we can present the broccoli,
00:04:50.300 what we know John needs, which is our solution.
00:04:53.240 So if you haven't figured out the three minimum, but ideally
00:04:56.740 five frustration flows that your ideal customer has.
00:05:00.620 So for example, in my business, working with SaaS founders,
00:05:03.660 it's things like churn, pricing, sales, team leadership,
00:05:09.220 and obviously marketing, demand generation.
00:05:12.120 Those are my five.
00:05:13.120 So all my different types of content
00:05:15.060 kind of follows within those five frustration flows,
00:05:18.000 because those are things that I can help them with.
00:05:19.820 But I'm giving them the chocolate first.
00:05:21.560 For example, I know content around top of funnel,
00:05:24.840 marketing, et cetera, is going to produce way better engagement
00:05:27.940 than something around retention and churn.
00:05:30.060 But I also know that that's the chocolate
00:05:32.460 and this is the broccoli.
00:05:34.020 And the reason why we do those five
00:05:35.640 is because our ideal customer profile
00:05:37.460 could be in market for different pains
00:05:40.200 that they're trying to solve at different times of the year.
00:05:43.060 So if we just talk about one of those,
00:05:44.980 then if they're not feeling that frustration,
00:05:46.900 they're not going to engage with our content.
00:05:48.700 But if we can figure out three to five of those frustration
00:05:51.540 flows, then we're going to get John
00:05:53.200 based on where he's at in the cycle
00:05:56.020 of just being frustrated and looking for a solution
00:05:58.620 to solve that problem.
00:05:59.720 So figure out your five.
00:06:00.900 Number three, teach to solve.
00:06:03.180 Here's the way I think about it.
00:06:04.360 It's education-based marketing.
00:06:05.780 It's one of the most powerful marketing strategies
00:06:08.440 because not only do we create a lot of value up front,
00:06:11.180 We actually build authority and thought leadership
00:06:13.940 in our market.
00:06:14.840 And we show our prospects
00:06:16.760 that we know the problem that they're having
00:06:18.800 and how to solve it.
00:06:20.100 So the way I think about it is once
00:06:21.500 we have those five frustration flows,
00:06:23.280 we then want to ask ourselves, what
00:06:25.140 are the 10 types of areas around that,
00:06:28.380 different segments of pains or things
00:06:31.540 that we could share with them to really educate them
00:06:33.880 on becoming better at that area?
00:06:36.520 Or maybe just go deeper on subcategories of challenges
00:06:39.460 they're having around each one of those frustrations.
00:06:41.920 Because if we get 10 for each five,
00:06:45.040 then that's if we publish once a week,
00:06:46.460 that's 50 pieces of content per year,
00:06:48.700 and we create our whole content marketing schedule.
00:06:51.820 So here's a way to think about it.
00:06:53.860 Ask them, OK?
00:06:55.140 Ryan Levesque, one of my coaching clients
00:06:57.140 and a good friend of mine, has a book called Ask.
00:06:59.420 And in the book, he talks about the SMIQ,
00:07:03.760 the single most important question.
00:07:05.680 And it's really asking your clients or your customers
00:07:08.400 or the market, based on this challenge,
00:07:11.260 you pick one of the five, what is the single biggest challenge
00:07:15.060 you have around solving that problem?
00:07:16.440 So around that problem, what is the single biggest challenge
00:07:18.560 you have solving that problem?
00:07:19.840 And then you use that to create the articles around that.
00:07:22.860 And the reason why, I'm going to tell you in the next step,
00:07:25.460 is we want to really kind of explore
00:07:28.320 the pains of our customers around that frustration
00:07:30.880 from their words.
00:07:32.360 Too often, we create content based
00:07:34.480 on what we think they want.
00:07:35.980 We use terms that they don't use.
00:07:38.280 We talk about things at a very detailed and technical level
00:07:41.940 where they may not be at that level.
00:07:43.600 So we need to make sure that we use their language, their world
00:07:46.040 from the market and use that to drive the content strategy
00:07:49.880 itself.
00:07:50.380 So these are the headlines of the blog post or the videos
00:07:53.060 that you're going to produce.
00:07:54.180 Number four, offer a bribe.
00:07:56.700 So the big thing, no matter what kind of content
00:07:59.260 you produce, right, once you get the five frustration flows
00:08:01.480 and you have this content strategy,
00:08:02.780 kind of high level, the 10 articles for each one of them,
00:08:05.540 You then got to ask yourself, what content bribe can I
00:08:08.960 create, right?
00:08:10.100 What I call, in my world, a beacon lead magnet.
00:08:12.360 That's what I teach my coaching clients.
00:08:13.920 What can I create that allows anybody
00:08:17.540 that has one of those five frustrations the solution
00:08:20.660 to that frustration?
00:08:21.660 And here's why.
00:08:22.520 So if it's, let's say, churn in my world,
00:08:24.980 I have a framework called the Churn Buster Cheat Sheet.
00:08:27.440 So anytime I talk about retention
00:08:30.020 or increasing your expansion revenue
00:08:32.300 or anything around kind of pricing, et cetera,
00:08:35.600 I'm always going to offer the churn buster cheat sheet
00:08:38.400 because that is the bribe for that piece of content that's
00:08:43.460 going to fit the best.
00:08:44.760 The reason I share this strategy with you
00:08:46.800 because I think a lot of people just produce content,
00:08:48.800 just continue to produce content, lead magnets, blog
00:08:51.020 posts, et cetera, without a strategy.
00:08:53.120 This framework's going to allow you
00:08:54.380 to spend the least amount of time to get the biggest impact.
00:08:57.520 So for me, the best lead magnets, or what I call beacon lead
00:09:00.780 magnet has, really, first part of it is that it's sage, OK?
00:09:04.540 And I got this from my buddy, Taki Moore.
00:09:06.000 Sage means simple or short, actionable, goal-oriented,
00:09:09.860 and easy.
00:09:10.900 The days of the 75-page e-books or the ultimate blog post,
00:09:14.580 that's great for top of funnel.
00:09:16.140 But if we want to get somebody to download something
00:09:18.060 we know can get them a result, just give them
00:09:20.040 the checklist, the blueprint, et cetera.
00:09:21.960 Short, actionable, goal-oriented, and easy.
00:09:24.560 Three parts, though, when we design this lead magnet.
00:09:28.100 First part is position your product.
00:09:30.540 Talk about who you are as an author
00:09:31.980 and the product that you've built and how it helps clients.
00:09:34.320 So that's the first page.
00:09:35.660 Then you talk about solving the problem that you've promised.
00:09:38.540 You made a promise for why they're downloading this thing.
00:09:40.620 Give it to them.
00:09:41.340 That's the middle part.
00:09:42.720 And then at the end, you want to have a call to action,
00:09:45.000 essentially saying, if you're having this problem,
00:09:48.120 you've probably tried all these things.
00:09:49.920 Our product will help get you these results.
00:09:52.160 Click the button to start a trial or to schedule a demo.
00:09:55.680 In the beacon lead magnet, in the PDF,
00:09:58.320 you need to have a call to action that
00:09:59.640 clicks into your trial or your demo.
00:10:02.680 So that way, think about it.
00:10:03.860 We have top of funnel content that's
00:10:05.680 producing really great information to help them.
00:10:07.980 We have the call to action on that post
00:10:10.080 to download our lead magnet, our bribe.
00:10:13.080 And then in there, we have a call to action
00:10:15.180 to get them into our trial or demo.
00:10:18.200 That is why this process works so effectively.
00:10:21.700 And number five, write for you.
00:10:24.100 Now, I'm not going to give you the template
00:10:25.760 for how to create a great blog article and what's involved.
00:10:28.340 But I will say this.
00:10:29.600 Too often, I work with clients that come to me
00:10:32.360 and they have a blog, and I look at the content
00:10:34.560 and I go, who wrote this?
00:10:35.460 And they're like, we hired a writer and we stopped
00:10:37.840 about two months ago, just wasn't producing anything.
00:10:40.700 And I ask them a simple question.
00:10:42.140 Would you read the content your writer wrote?
00:10:45.500 And they go, no.
00:10:47.340 If you aren't the first consumer of the content,
00:10:53.000 then don't produce it.
00:10:54.800 To me, it's right for you.
00:10:56.520 You write it because you really enjoy the research
00:10:59.220 and understanding the problem so that you
00:11:00.840 can use that to connect with the customer better,
00:11:02.640 so you can make better product decisions.
00:11:04.480 So you solve it, you write it for yourself,
00:11:06.660 and look at it as almost like producing content
00:11:09.520 to learn more about your customer's pain, right?
00:11:11.700 Because I really believe we need to fall in love
00:11:13.160 with the problem.
00:11:14.040 We don't want to fall in love with the solution,
00:11:15.600 because that's going to change around.
00:11:17.840 But then if you do that, great, because you're hopefully
00:11:20.880 writing something you would read because you wrote it.
00:11:22.880 Other than that, you hire writers to produce content.
00:11:25.400 You need to make sure that they produce stuff
00:11:26.980 that you would want to read.
00:11:28.220 Because if you don't want to read it, trust me,
00:11:30.200 your prospects and the visitors don't want to read it either.
00:11:32.740 It's just information.
00:11:33.820 It's not marketing.
00:11:34.900 So I also believe there's a zen diagram between information
00:11:37.940 and marketing content, right?
00:11:39.460 So information content is just like about.com.
00:11:43.340 Content marketing has a call to action.
00:11:45.760 And that, to me, is the key differentiator.
00:11:47.960 It has a CTA.
00:11:49.560 So on the blog post, at the top third,
00:11:51.740 you want to have a call to action
00:11:52.940 to download your lead magnet.
00:11:54.220 On the bottom, you want to have a big image of it
00:11:56.140 with a big opt-in form so they can download it.
00:11:58.640 And if you do that, not only does it
00:12:01.060 attract the perfect ideal customer profile,
00:12:04.120 you can also use it in your sales process
00:12:07.000 to help prospects understand how your product can serve better.
00:12:11.220 So it's even great for top, middle, and bottom
00:12:13.540 of the funnel content for your sales team
00:12:15.880 or to use in your trial campaigns
00:12:17.860 to really engage your customers.
00:12:19.340 Incredible strategy, simple, minimum effective dose,
00:12:22.300 essentially the 80-20 rule applied to content marketing.
00:12:25.240 So quick recap.
00:12:26.140 Number one, start with your ICP, your ideal customer profile.
00:12:29.560 Number two, figure out their five frustrations
00:12:32.820 that you can help them, that your product can help them with.
00:12:35.560 Three, teach to solve.
00:12:37.540 Make sure you ask them their challenges
00:12:39.160 around those specific frustrations
00:12:40.840 and educate them to build great marketing content.
00:12:43.480 Four, offer a bribe.
00:12:45.460 We need to create something that is short, actionable, goal
00:12:48.600 oriented, and easy that's going to get them to give us
00:12:51.180 their email address.
00:12:52.860 And number five, we want to write for you, essentially for us.
00:12:57.120 Either we write it because we're excited to learn,
00:12:59.240 or B, that something you would want to read.
00:13:02.160 As I mentioned at the beginning, I
00:13:03.380 want to share with you access to an incredible training
00:13:06.160 called the Winning Webinar Method.
00:13:07.860 Recently, one of my clients, Trevor,
00:13:09.900 used this webinar strategy to add an extra million dollars
00:13:13.500 in new ARR to their business in six months.
00:13:16.660 And the neat part is I've always trained my clients
00:13:19.660 to do it for top of funnel marketing,
00:13:21.360 but Trevor used it for selling his existing customers
00:13:24.720 through an upsell strategy and a cross-sell.
00:13:26.620 So it works for both lead generation, adding a ton of value,
00:13:30.340 and also getting you new customers,
00:13:31.740 as well as expanding your revenue to existing customers.
00:13:35.340 It's awesome.
00:13:35.900 Click the link below to get access to that.
00:13:38.160 If you like this video, be sure to smash the like button.
00:13:40.540 Subscribe to this channel.
00:13:41.940 And leave a comment and let me know
00:13:43.420 what part of this framework was the most valuable for you.
00:13:47.500 As per usual, I want to challenge you
00:13:48.940 to live a bigger life, and a bigger business,
00:13:50.820 and I'll see you next Monday.
00:13:55.140 Perfect.
00:13:55.980 It's good, eh?
00:13:56.820 It's just ridiculous.