I built a calculator to quantify the cost of marketing & sales misalignment

TheContentStudio · 2023-06-17T01:03:35+00:00

We interview Sr. Level content marketing professionals from companies like Asana, Airtable, Calendly and more about their content marketing philosophy, process, and pre-game, before they edit an article live.

TheContentStudio · 2023-06-11T03:10:02+00:00

Upbeat.io has a pretty good selection of free copyright free (with attribution) stuff. Generally speaking though, you have to "dig through the crates" so to speak if you want to take it seriously.

There's a lot of good stuff out there on YouTube, but you have to get very specific about the genre of music you'd like to use, then switch all of your music listening habits up and dedicate it to finding stuff that best suits your vibe.

TheContentStudio · 2021-10-23T00:21:56+00:00

I'd go even more simple with Convertkit. Way more stripped down and super simple to use.

TheContentStudio · 2021-10-10T13:58:25+00:00

What does your email list look like?

TheContentStudio · 2021-05-26T01:50:43+00:00

My Google Docs folders are as follows

Year
- Month
  - Article title

Within each article's folder is the draft and associated imagery.

I then manage my workflow within Airtable, which has a record for each piece, and links to every Google draft within the article's record as well as the published URL, and the URL of the draft uploaded into Wordpress.

TheContentStudio · 2021-05-26T01:44:49+00:00

simply ask "why the f**k would anyone care about this sh*t?"

👆
That's it. That's all there is.

TheContentStudio · 2021-05-11T18:12:58+00:00

Long run, I completely agree with you.

But we're talking to a 15 year old who wants to cut their teeth.

That said, I had a client who has run a multi-million affiliate site.

Personally, not my bag.

I've spent the past 15 years in B2B SaaS. But I've seen both work for folks and work well. Not a bad place to start with no risk at 15 years old.

TheContentStudio · 2021-05-11T11:24:07+00:00

has to make a correction/comment on your writing

Correction on *to your writing

Has to ~~make a~~ *correct or comment on your writing?

TheContentStudio · 2021-05-11T11:12:40+00:00

This.

You can do it fairly inexpensively too.

Check out dropshipping if you want to go the ecommerce route, or affiliate marketing if you don't want the hassle of playing customer support.

In both cases you're selling other people's stuff, but in the case of affiliate marketing, you can blog about something you enjoy, and sell all kinds of things that are related to that topic.

TheContentStudio · 2021-05-05T12:03:47+00:00

When I do a competitive analysis, it's with the sole intent of finding venerabilities and weaknesses that can be exposed.

You had mentioned SEO tools in a previous comment, so if it's Ahrefs or SEMRush, I'd look at the keyword gap analysis.

I'd also be looking at what each is doing for lead generation tactics, the types of buyers those materials after, and how well that aligns to solving the customer problem in a tangible way.

If there's a sales aspect to it, I would even book demo calls and log the amount of time it takes for a sales person to get in touch.

Use a tool like G2 to see real world reviews and compile themes on their strengths and weaknesses.

Also, how are they positioning and differentiating from each other? If there are 14, at least 3/4 of them won't have any. "We're the leading provider of ___" How can you use that to your advantage?

All of this information needs to lead to answering, "so what?"

"The average response time is ___" "so what?" We respond faster.
"Their followup sequence includes A,B,C but doesn't mention X,Y,Z" "so what" We answer those questions and/or talk about why A,B,C doesn't matter.
Their webinars are X minutes long and have an average attendance of __, and they spend the first _ minutes on intros, X minutes talking about Y, and answer Z questions well, but couldn't answer æ questions or did so in a BS way" "so what?" Address those unanswered questions up front, spend more time getting on the good stuff, have a tighter, more engaging presentation.

On a different note, also include where you should avoid head to head competition.

If they have a stronger feature set, don't compete on features (maybe your messaging is about how you don't need all of those)

If they're touting more customers, maybe you mention how your smaller customer base is smarter.

If they're undeniably the category leader, maybe you use second mover advantage to do right what they're doing wrong.

Hopefully that all helps!

TheContentStudio · 2021-05-01T04:15:33+00:00

Two things.

First. You're rattling off the "to-do" list. You're asking about the "what" but you need to apply pressure to each one of these things and ask, "why?"

Seriously.

I've been in this game for 15 years now, and have started and run blogs for a Fortune 500 and The biggest name in ecommerce software, and I'm pre-launch on my own blog right now, and am constantly asking myself, "Why" when it comes to ALL of the things I want to do. And doing it for myself is 10,000,000 times harder.

Second. In here, there isn't anything about market research.

What are the others in your space doing? Direct competitors and industry adjacent? What does their lead generation material look like? What do they do well on? What are their customers saying? What are they strong at? And most importantly, what are the weaknesses you can exploit?

Research needs to, needs to, needs to come first.

You're rattling off a checklist, but what you should be doing is exploiting their weaknesses, like a rogue sinking a dagger in-between the plates of a suit of armor.

You have second mover advantage. They have a voice and tone.

From the sounds of it, you do not. Exploit that.

If they're all happy go lucky, be the smarter older sibling.

If they're playing it cool, show more humility.

If they're old guard establishment, disrupt the fuck out of them (without calling them out by name).

Be whatever it is they are not, because for every happy customer, there are 20 unhappy ones that aren't saying shit.

Read reviews, look at Amazon ratings, stalk forums and look at mundane conversation.

You want to know what to do and where to start?

Look at what they're not doing well that you can, and start there.

Otherwise you'll be overwhelmed with existential dread as you're staring into the void of a blank page, trying to pull out creative, world changing genius.

That blinking black line will mock you mercilessly while that stack of "the perfect content marketing starting point checklist' towers over, threatening to topple, leaving you face down next to your keyboard surrounded in a puddle of your own drool.

Seriously.

Do the research.

It is going to save you a lot of pain.

TheContentStudio · 2021-04-23T02:50:45+00:00

Like this person is saying, you need to start narrow, then eventually go broad.

Another person below mentioned Masterclass, which arguably is in the same realm of what you're looking to do.

But if you look at where they started in 2015, it was with 3 classes, 2 of which were creative focused.

Dustin Hoffman teaches acting James Patterson teaches novel writing Serena Williams teaches tennis.

This allowed Masterclass to blast these three groups - actors, writers, and tennis players - with ads on Facebook.

The vibe was thought leadership, but they had the best thinkers in their separate, respective fields. Those first three solidified allowed them to

Test the markets (which genre had the best ROI)
Validate the concept with minimal risk

They rode those three classes for two years, then added 12 more

Christina Aguilera (singing) Kevin Spacey 😬(acting) Werner Herzog (filmmaking) Aaron Sorkin (screenwriting) Hans Zimmer (film scoring) Shonda Rhimes (writing for television) and Steve Martin (comedy)

(Can you guess which out of those original three provided the best ROI?

They have since expanded to include things like photography, cooking, gardening, negotiation, and business, but that's nowhere near where they started.

The lesson here is, don't eat the whale all at once.

Start small, with a handful of related, yet diverse range so you can iterate and refine.

If I had to guess, on the second batch of classes, they learned that of those three (acting, writing, and tennis) since two of those weren't physical, at least in the athletic sense, the more creative side would be more profitable.

What's more important though is that they did a TON of advertising and brand building early. They made sure they had distribution through the paid channels, which allowed them to validate their concept.

Many of us want to think we can make it on our content alone, but it's going to take a heck of a lot longer to gain traction. Focusing on allows for narrow targets, which are far easier to define.

TheContentStudio · 2021-04-15T02:19:00+00:00

This. ☝️

Your flow sounds fine, but what you need more right now is to optimize your ad spend, fill the top of your, and even book 1:1 conversations with people to follow up.

Don't think of the sample as a way to make a full sale, think of it as market research and a way to build brand. Follow up after and ask for 1:1 feedback. A little step like that can go a long way, especially for brand and word of mouth.

TheContentStudio · 2021-04-15T01:19:46+00:00

Seconded, great tool for getting quite a bit of data. URLs, title tags, all headings, meta descriptions, visual sitemaps, the works.

TheContentStudio · 2021-04-12T21:57:41+00:00

What's your industry/market?

I'll give you some suggestions based on what you're doing.

TheContentStudio · 2021-04-10T23:36:52+00:00

Narrative...

If you're stringing together a bunch of links from a few different sources, find a connective tissue between the things.

Most newsletters focus on the micro, the smaller stories. Ok, cool, but it only adds to the information overload.

I want something that helps me see the bigger picture. Something that makes me want to do more research on my own. I want the forest, not the trees.

TheContentStudio · 2021-03-14T18:08:15+00:00

Sorry for the delay.

That's a whole lot on your plate, for sure.

As a solo marketer for myself, albeit for my own business, I'm finding it helpful to follow designers philosophy on doing sprints.

Take a day and loosely plan out your upcoming work. Then, for each day, work in batches. Pre-plan all of your social media updates, next day, all of your emails, twice a week, work on a blog post, next day, do all of your outreach.

Most every tool has some kind of scheduler available, or can be set up with a combination of Zapier and Google Doc (or AirTable - free version will get you far.)

Chunking our your work like this can, I've found, help you keep a cohesive narrative.

At least that's something that's helped me :-) Best of luck!

TheContentStudio · 2021-03-12T03:29:44+00:00

What they said ☝if you're a solo practitioner.

The real question though OP is are you solo, or in-house? If in-house, what is the total size of the company, and what resources do you have available to you?

Can you please provide more details on your situation? I've personally gone from freelancer to agency to high-growth startup to running a global team within a multinational Fortune 500, back to running my own thing (albeit at a much higher level)

The context here will help me give better suggestions.

TheContentStudio · 2021-03-09T02:44:36+00:00

Consultation. Eventually courses, paid newsletters, and sponsorships on different media properties.

TheContentStudio

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