Hey there.
Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor,
and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode, I'm going to share with you how
to create a content marketing strategy that
attracts high quality customers and prospects.
Now, you might be frustrated with having people show up,
spending a lot of time on content that doesn't actually
convert, or even attract the right people.
We're going to solve that in this video.
And be sure to stay to the end, where
I'm going to share with you access to my winning webinar
method, which will help you not only deliver
content to your audience, but actually
get your customers through that strategy.
Let's get into it.
Now, real quick, I've been building content marketing
strategies for over a decade.
I did it with my company Flowtown.
We built a blog that was generating
350,000 uniques per month, which was a primary channel
for our SaaS product Flowtown.
I did it again with Clarity, where we got even more ninja,
and actually got the community to contribute to the article.
So we built a whole content marketing and development
process that essentially our experts created the content
for the blog.
And then more recently with essentially
the Dan Martell website, my coaching business,
using content to generate hundreds of new leads
every week, high quality, very focused, and motivated leads.
And it's something that I teach my coaching clients,
that when we start off, I don't think
that you should be spending all your time producing content.
I think a lot of people just go full in without a strategy.
What I show them is a whole different framework
to allow them to spend the least amount of time, what I call
the minimum effective dose, in regards
to content that's going to generate the biggest
results and impact when it comes to generating leads
and customers for your SaaS.
So let's get into it.
Number one, start with your ICP.
Now ICP stands for Ideal Customer Profile.
Maybe you've heard the term avatar, core customer,
et cetera.
They all mean the same thing, but if you get that part wrong,
if you don't understand who is your perfect customer,
then the rest of it falls apart.
So for example, when I start working with a new coaching
client, the first thing we do is say,
where are you at right now from a monthly reoccurring revenue
point of view?
Where do you want to be in 12 months?
Get excited.
Let's set a big audacious goal.
Let's make it fun.
And then ask ourselves, if we had
to hang the business on one customer type based
on the product that we have, the speed to buy,
and the unmet needs of their market, who would that be?
And we define them.
We get really clear on the industry,
and the size of the business, and the employee numbers,
and their specific pain, and maybe some other technologies
that they're using so we can be really, really,
really clear on who that customer is.
And then we lock it in.
We name them.
And everything we talk about going forward in this episode
is based on that.
If you don't have that-- recently
I was working with a new client.
And they were really having a hard time
picking that person, because they
had such a broad horizontal product, that they just
felt like, oh, but if I choose that, then I might--
the bigger opportunity could be somewhere else.
And all I said is we don't need to make it a forever decision.
We just need to make it for the next 12 months.
And all we're trying to do is build up our MRR, build up
our revenue, so that we can then reinvest in growth,
and we can broaden our strategy.
But if we don't pick today, the rest of the content
is not going to support our marketing channel.
It's not going to produce the results that you want.
So number one, be sure to choose the right ideal customer
profile.
Number two, five frustrations.
This is the way I think about it.
Once we have that ICP, that customer profile,
we give them a name.
Let's call them John.
We then have to ask ourselves, for John,
what are the five frustrations that show up in his world
as it pertains to his job?
He can be the CEO or he could have
a role like leading the marketing department.
And we've got to ask ourselves, if we're sitting there
as a fly on the wall listening to John
complain about the challenges that he's
facing in his business, what are some
of those frustrations, those challenges,
those issues that John might be having that we can help him
with our product?
And that to me, is the first core area
that we need to focus on.
What are those five categories of frustrations
that John's having--
your ideal customer-- so that we can start thinking about
the types of content that we can produce,
because what we want to do--
I call it chocolate broccoli-- is
we need to produce content that speaks
to the chocolate, the need, the frustrations
that John has, so then we can create a bridge, which I'm
going to share how to do that, so that we
can present the broccoli, what we know John needs,
which is our solution.
So if you haven't figured out the three minimum,
but ideally five, frustration flows
that your ideal customer has.
So for example, in my business working with SaaS founders,
it's things like churn, pricing, sales, team leadership,
and obviously marketing, demand generation.
Those are my five.
So all my different types of content kind of
follows within those five frustration flows,
because those are things that I can help them with.
But I'm giving them the chocolate first.
For example, I know content around top
of funnel, marketing, et cetera is
going to produce way better engagement than something
around retention and churn.
But I also know that that's the chocolate,
and this is the broccoli.
And the reason why we do those five is
because our ideal customer profile
could be in market for different pains
that they're trying to solve at different times of the year.
So if we just talk about one of those,
then if they're not feeling that frustration,
they're not going to engage with our content.
But if we can figure out three to five
of those frustration flows, then we're
going to get John based on where he's at in the cycle of just
being frustrated looking for a solution to solve that problem.
So figure out your five.
Number three, teach to solve.
Here's the way I think about it.
It's education-based marketing.
It's one of the most powerful marketing strategies,
because not only do we create a lot of value upfront.
We actually build authority and thought leadership
in our market.
And we show our prospects that we
know the problem that they're having and how to solve it.
So the way I think about it is once we have those five
frustration flows, we then want to ask ourselves,
what are the 10 types of areas around that,
different segments of pains or things,
that we could share with them to really educate them on becoming
better at that area?
Or maybe just go deeper on subcategories of challenges
they're having around each one of those frustrations.
Because if we get 10 for each five, and if we publish once
a week, that's 50 pieces of content per year.
And we create our whole content marketing schedule.
So here's a way to think about it.
Ask them.
Ryan Levesque, one of my coaching clients
and a good friend of mine has a book called Ask.
And in the book, he talks about the SMIQ, the Single Most
Important Question.
And it's really asking your clients, or your customers,
or the market based on this challenge--
you pick one of the five--
what is the single biggest challenge you
have around solving that problem?
So around that problem, what is the single biggest challenge
you have solving that problem?
And then you use that to create the articles around that.
And the reason why I'm going to tell you in the next step
is we want to really kind of explore
the pains of our customers around that frustration
from their words.
Too often we create content based
on what we think they want.
We use terms that they don't use.
We talk about things at a very detailed and technical level,
where they may not be at that level.
So we need to make sure that we use their language,
their words from the market, and use
that to drive the content strategy itself.
So these are the headlines of the blog posts or the videos
that you're going to produce.
Number four, offer a bribe.
So the big thing, no matter what kind of content
you produce, once you get the five frustration flows
and you have this content strategy
and you kind of high level the 10
articles for each one of them, you then have to ask yourself,
what content bribe can I create?
What I call in my world a beacon lead magnet.
That's what I teach my coaching clients.
What can I create that allows anybody
that has one of those five frustrations
the solution to that frustration?
And here's why.
So if it's, let's say, churn.
In my world, I have a framework called
the churn buster cheat sheet.
So anytime I talk about retention
or increasing your expansion revenue or anything around kind
of pricing, et cetera, I'm always
going to offer the churn buster cheat sheet,
because that is the bribe for that piece of content
that's going to fit the best.
The reason I share the strategy with you
is because I think a lot of people just produce content,
just continue to produce content, lead magnets,
blog posts, et cetera, without a strategy.
This framework is going to allow you
to spend the least amount of time to get the biggest impact.
So for me, the best lead magnets, or what
I call a beacon lead magnet, has really-- the first part of it
is that it's SAGE.
I got this from my buddy Taki Moore.
SAGE means Simple-- or Short, Actionable, Goal-oriented,
and Easy.
The days of the 75-page e-books or the ultimate blog post,
that's great for top of funnel.
But if we want to get somebody to download something
we know can get some result, just
give them the checklist, the blueprint, et cetera.
Short, Actual, Goal-oriented, and Easy.
Three parts, though, when we design this lead magnet.
First part is position your product.
Talk about who you are as an author, and the product
that you've built, and how it helps clients.
So that's the first page.
Then you talk about solving the problem that you've promised.
You made a promise for why they're downloading this thing.
Give it to them.
That's the middle part.
And then at the end, you want to have a call to action,
essentially saying, if you're having this problem,
you've probably tried all these things.
Our product will help get you these results.
Click the button to start a trial or to schedule a demo.
In the beacon lead magnet, in the PDF,
you need to have a call to action that clicks
into your trial or your demo.
So that way, think about it.
We have top of funnel content that's
producing really great information to help them.
We have the call to action on that post
to download our lead magnet, our bribe.
And then in there, we have a call to action
to get them into our trial or our demo.
That is why this process works so effectively.
And number five, write for you.
Now, I'm not going to give you the template for how
to create a great blog article and what's involved,
but I will say this.
Too often I work with clients that come to me,
and they have a blog, and I look at the content and I go,
who wrote this?
And they're like, we hired a writer,
and we stopped about two months ago.
It just wasn't producing anything.
And I ask them a simple question.
Would you read the content your writer wrote?
And they go, no.
If you aren't the first like consumer of the content,
then don't produce it.
To me, it's write for you.
Either you write it because you really enjoy the research,
and understanding the problem, so
that you can use that to connect with the customer better,
so you make better product decisions.
So you solve it.
You write it for yourself and look at it.
It's almost like producing content to learn more
about your customer's pain, right?
Because I really believe we need to fall in love
with the problem.
We don't want to fall in love with the solution,
because that's going to change around.
But then if you do that, great, because you're hopefully
writing something you would read, because you wrote it.
Other than that, you hire writers to produce content.
You need to make sure that they produce stuff that you would
want to read, because if you don't want to read it--
trust me--
your prospects in the visitors don't want to read it either.
It's just information.
It's not marketing.
So I also believe there's a Venn diagram between information
and marketing content, right?
So information content is just like About.com.
Content marketing has a call to action.
And that to me is the key differentiator.
It has a CTA.
So on the blog post at the top third
you want to have a call to action
to download your lead magnet.
On the bottom you want to have a big image of it
with a big opt-in form so they can download it.
And if you do that, not only does it
attract the perfect ideal customer profile,
you can also use it in your sales process to help prospects
understand how your product can serve better.
So it's even great for top, middle, and bottom
of the funnel content for your sales team
or to use in your trial campaigns
to really engage your customers.
Incredible strategy.
Simple, minimum effective dose, essentially the 80-20 rule,
applied to content marketing.
So quick recap.
Number one, start with your ICP, your Ideal Customer Profile.
Number two, figure out their five frustrations
that you can help them, that your product
can help them with.
Three, teach to solve.
Make sure you ask them their challenges
around those specific frustrations
and educate them to build great marketing content.
Four, offer a bribe.
We need to create something that is
short, actionable, goal-oriented and easy
that's going to get them to give us their email address.
And number five, we want to write for you, essentially
for us.
Either we write it because we're excited to learn,
or be something you would want to read.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I
want to share with you access to an incredible training called
the Winning Webinar Method.
Recently, one of my clients, Trevor,
used this webinar strategy to add an extra million in new ARR
to their business in six months.
And the neat part is I've always trained my clients to do it
for top of funnel marketing, but Trevor used it
for selling his existing customers
through an upscale strategy and a cross-sell.
So it works for both lead generation,
adding a ton of value, and also getting new customers,
as well as expanding your revenue to existing customers.
It's awesome.
Click the link below to get access to that.
If you like this video, be sure to smash the Like button,
subscribe to this channel, and leave a comment
and let me know what part of this framework
was the most valuable for you.
As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and a bigger business.
And I'll see you next Monday.
Perfect.
It's good, eh?
Just ridiculous.