I love creating content for my audience and my ideal clients that they can connect with on a weekly basis. Whether you use a podcast, a YouTube channel, Facebook Lives, or a blog to get content out to your audience, it’s a commitment. I get that and I see you!
One thing that I do in my business is take the content that I create each week and I break it down into micro-content. That way, we can use all of the excellent things to build a content strategy for the entire year. This has become a really effective strategy for me.
The video recording of my podcast is my source piece of content. From that, we create a YouTube video, a podcast episode, social media posts, a blog post, and a nurture email. All of these micro-pieces of content created from my source content help to grow my business, increase our revenue, and scale our impact. And aren’t those the main goals of any business owner?
Content Batching Magic
I think, sometimes, for business owners, creating content can be difficult. You don’t have a lot of extra time in your day. One thing that we do really effectively here at Virtual Marketing Experts is batching content. This is always one of my top suggestions for any business owner who says they don’t have time for content creation.
Look at what your goals are and what your themes or ideas are for your marketing over the course of several months and then batch out the content once a month. Take a day (or less) each month to batch your content for the upcoming month.
For me, I recorded my source content (podcast episodes) only about a week or two ahead because I like to stay pretty close to what’s going on in the industry. That way, if there are large changes to one of the social media platforms or an iOS update, I’m able to stay on top of that information and get it out to my audience in a timely manner. Keep that in mind while batching your content, you don’t want to get too far ahead!
But, how can you use your content strategy to amplify your lead generation? First, let’s look at the basics of lead generation.
Lead Generation, what’s the big deal?
It’s time to get real. If you don’t have leads, we don’t have sales, and we don’t really have a business. Lead generation is the essential, core piece of your business that you must have in order to grow.
When we’re talking about lead generation, it can come in a variety of ways. But, having consistent leads coming in the door is so important to real growth. One of the things that happened this past year with Facebook ads is that the cost of ads has gone up. Plus, the sales cycle in Facebook ads has shifted and changed.
We’ve started to look at our client’s ads as their lead generation source. They bring leads in through the door with the ads. Then, they convert those leads into sales through other methods. This strategy has worked really well for our clients.
Let’s Talk Ads
When you’re developing ad campaigns, look at the different types of ads you should be running.
Building Awareness
Think about this… if you’re running ads to cold traffic (meaning people who might not even know they have a problem, let alone that you’re the solution to that problem) there are specific types of ads that you want to be running in order to warm those leads up before you ever even ask them to take action. In this situation, you’re looking to run an awareness campaign. You need to first bring awareness to the fact that they even have a problem!
Create content and push it out for awareness, so that people see you and think, “Oh that might be my problem, I need to talk to her/him about that problem.” If someone does not know who you are, what you do, and who you serve… how will they ever be able to ask themselves that question? Awareness campaigns are what will help you to develop a warm audience. Creating content on a regular basis and feeding it to the world is what will help you do this.
Let’s face it, organic traffic, on most platforms, just does not get as far as it used to. When you put a little money behind the content you are creating and batching anyway, you’re able to bring in a new audience, warm them up, and turn them into new leads.
Consideration Phase
This is the audience who is aware that they have a problem and also aware that you may potentially have the solution they need. In this phase, you are developing a connection with this new audience and bringing them off of social media so you can control how you’re connecting with them, the message, it’s timing, and your sales cycle. Basically, you want to move your leads off of social media and onto your email list.
Keep this in mind as well, if you lose access to your account and the only way you are connecting with your audience is on social media, you’ve lost your audience entirely. This is why the consideration phase is so, so important! Get them on your email list!
Decision Making
It’s in this phase that you actually begin selling to your warmed-up audience. This is also where you’ll be utilizing retargeting ads. Paid traffic should 100% play a supporting role in that. While you’ll do your primary sales through you’re email list, having the retargeting allows people who saw your email and considered your offer, but got distracted – a second chance to realize that they want what you’re offering!
Those three phases of paid traffic are the essential pieces to creating effective marketing campaigns through paid traffic.