Content marketing Steps
YouTube stands as a pivotal platform for businesses aiming to expand their reach and engage with a broader audience. Yet it can be very confusing on how to start, grow and scale.
Here are some key strategies for building and growing, offering a roadmap for businesses and creators to use YouTube, and content in general, effectively.
Defining Your Audience and Solving Their Problems
Understanding your audience is crucial. By clearly defining who your content is for (and who it’s not for), and addressing the specific problems they face, you create a more targeted and effective content strategy.
Creating content that answers specific questions your audience may have positions you as an authority in your field and caters to the audience’s search for specific, actionable information.
Authority and Experience Positioning
- Niche-Specific Authority: Focus on becoming an authority in a specific niche where you have genuine expertise and experience.
- Personal Experiences Over General Advice: Share personal stories and experiences rather than generic advice. This makes your content more relatable and credible. Avoid speaking on topics where you lack depth and experience.
- Authenticity in Teaching: Be honest about what you know and don’t know. Admitting your limitations can build more trust and authority. Your channel should make a clear promise to its viewers about what it offers, whether it’s entertainment, education, or insights, and consistently deliver on that promise.
- Detailed Consumer Segmentation: Targeting specific audience segments with tailored content can significantly increase engagement and effectiveness.
It's important to regularly assess whether your channel's topic aligns with your overall goals and be willing to pivot if necessary.
Content Marketing Phases
A principle that Daniel Priestley talks about is the 7-11-4 formula. This is about building bonds with people and potential customers.
In particular, it relates to you having 7 hours worth of interesting content available - blogs, videos, articles, interviews, books, etc – so people can spend time with you.
11 is about the number of interactions you have with those people. People who had about 11 interactions with a brand are considerably more likely to buy from that brand.
4 relates to locations and suggests that you connect in at least 4 different ‘places’ – face to face, blog, as an author of a book, seeing a presentation or meeting socially then levels of trust increase.
Video is the easiest medium to build up the 7 hours that people spend time with you.
The 5 Phases of Content Marketing - How To Get Started
Understand the five phases of content marketing, from simply posting content to maximizing platform potential and creating a content marketing machine.
- Phase One - Post Something: The initial step is simply to start posting content, anywhere and at any time.
- Phase Two - Post Consistently: Develop a regular cadence for posting content, such as weekly, on a platform you’re comfortable with.
- Phase Three - Post Reliably Across All Platforms: Increase your posting volume by sharing content across multiple platforms.
- Phase Four - Maximize Platform Potential: Understand the maximum posting capacity of each platform and adjust your content volume accordingly.
- Phase Five - Capture and Create: Move beyond just creating content to capturing content across channels, enhancing reach and volume.
Focus on Lead Nurture and Customer Acquisition
In the initial phases, focus on lead nurture to support sales. In later phases, aim for customer acquisition through quality content.
Objectives:
- Phases 1 & 2: Focus on lead nurture. The goal is to provide the sales process with content to engage prospects and test different hooks and headlines.
- Phases 3, 4 & 5: Aim to generate new customers from content. This involves creating quality content that platforms will serve to new audiences, including calls to action to convert viewers into customers.
Content Marketing Strategies
Consistency in posting builds a loyal audience base and establishes your channel as a go-to source for current information.
1. Trend Surfing
Regular updates and news about your industry keep your content fresh and relevant. Capitalizing on current trends can lead to viral growth. This strategy involves creating content that resonates with what’s currently popular or widely discussed, meaning you increase the chances of your content reaching a larger audience.
2. Showcase Expertise
The most obvious way to build trust and gain the credibility you need from your audience so you can eventually sell your products or services.
You don’t need a lot of experience or expertise to share with others. People are looking for answers and often hearing this from someone who is only a few steps ahead of them is more relatable than a senior 26 steps ahead of the viewer.
As a business, this means you are answering your audience’s most-asked questions and providing as much value as possible to the people you target.
3. Build In Public
If you are starting from zero on your content journey, an effective way to build trust and credibility is to build and share in public. This means that you share the learnings from building a business and more importantly the wins. Testimonials and case studies will be very effective here.
4. Collaborate
Expand your reach by collaborating with other niche leaders in your industry. Interviews with experts or thought leaders can get you new insights and bring their followers to your channel.
5. Product/Service Reviews
Reviews, especially comparative ones, are incredibly effective. They attract viewers who are in the decision-making phase of purchasing, providing them with valuable insights and potentially swaying their choices.
Here is a more in-depth resource: Essential YouTube Videos Every New Business Should Create.
Continuous Strategy Refinement
Use feedback and data to continuously refine your strategy. This adaptive approach ensures that your content remains relevant and effective.
Look back at what content you created 4-6 months ago see what did well and repackage those ideas and improve them with the 1% rule.
Recognize the investment required for content marketing, both in terms of time and resources, especially if using it as a primary method for customer acquisition.
Considerations
- Content marketing as a customer acquisition tool requires investment similar to paid marketing.
- Small businesses can focus on the first two phases to maintain legitimacy and support sales.
- For larger-scale operations, investing in vendors and eventually in-house teams is necessary to maximize content production and distribution.
Monetization
This is a whole topic by itself that we will cover in more depth.
Here is a recent video on this.
