Question #1: What is your goal? It all comes down to your goals. When I ask clients about their content marketing goals, their answers determine my suggestions and strategy. That’s why every single Strategy Session I run starts with this question, and we don’t move on until we’ve got a clear goal we can track. Then it comes time to launch your thing and … it goes poorly. If the overall business goal was sales, then the number of downloads of a podcast is the wrong metric to track — because, in this example, downloads don’t correlate to sales. And that is why so many people get frustrated with blogging and content marketing in their businesses! Once a client and I determine their goals during a Strategy Session, we take the time to ask ourselves what metrics will indicate progress toward the goal … or not. The problem isn’t that these businesses don’t have a goal; almost every business owner you talk to knows her goal is to make more sales. But when you choose the right rocks in the right places at the right time, and know how they work together to lead to a sale, you can create a content strategy that has a real impact on your business.
There’s a big difference between tactics and strategy when it comes to content marketing.
As a content strategist, I often hear from business owners who feel like they’ve tried every tactic in the book. Blog posts, podcasting, email marketing, Facebook Live, Instastories, YouTube — you name it, they’ve tried it.
But they haven’t seen the kinds of results they wanted or expected. And so they’ve become frustrated with content marketing altogether.
As we dig deeper, however, I usually discover they have one thing in common: no global strategy tying all those tactics together into a cohesive plan.
They’ve just been throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks — and spaghetti is not a strategy.
As different as all the businesses I work with are (from a guy who sells men’s clothing to a woman who coaches people through healing IBS and beyond), I start every Strategy Session with three basic questions.
The answers to those questions guide me as I craft a big-picture strategy to help them get the results they’re dreaming of, and they can help you do the same.
Question #1: What is your goal?
It all comes down to your goals.
When I ask clients about their content marketing goals, their answers determine my suggestions and strategy.
Because the goal dictates the strategy.
Say it again for the people in the back: The Goal Dictates The Strategy.
But more often than you might guess, my clients don’t know what the goal for their content is.
I recently got on a consult call and asked the client this exact question.
She told me her practice is full, and she wants to keep blogging every week just to maintain her online presence — so when someone comes to her website, it looks current and relevant.
Okay, that’s legit, but when we dug deeper, she mentioned she’s planning to launch an online course next year to help her scale.
That’s when mauve warning lights started flashing in my brain.
Suddenly, blogging every week just so the lights are on is no longer a strategy. We want to collect email addresses and leads, nurture them, and get them to the point they will happily fling money at her as soon as she announces her course.
Her goal was to sell a course in the future. And she knew her current content wasn’t attracting a lot of leads or the right kind of leads.
Yet she didn’t see that her content could solve those problems now — instead of waiting until six weeks before her launch.
Sometimes identifying how content will support business goals is challenging. But when you have a clear goal, we can work backwards to find a content strategy to support it.
That’s why every single Strategy Session I run starts with this question, and we don’t move on until we’ve got a clear goal we can track. Which leads us to …
Question #2: How will you track your progress?
I used to be big time anti-numbers in my business.
I’m a words girl. After nearly flunking out of honors algebra, I went to a liberal arts college that did not require any math classes. (True story!)
But then I saw how easily one can apply some math to business goals in order to see better, faster results, and I was hooked.
In order for this mathmagic to work, however, you must focus on the right numbers. Because focusing on the wrong numbers can make things worse.
Let’s say,…
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