Dropping Some Content Strategy Knowledge | Resound Creative Blog

Did you know your content ideas can give you monopoly power in your market? That’s because when you really know your audience, your content tells them what they’re thinking and then answers it directly, helping them to know how to think about a topic.

And when they think about your topic in exactly the way you do, you win.

But before you can connect, you have to listen.

Today, I want to talk about how authentic branding, paired with an understanding of your audience, will activate relationships at the top of the marketing funnel, and all the way down.

Remember, this all doesn’t have to happen today. But if you’re intent on brand and service strategy by including your audience in the conversation, this process is for you. Don’t stress about doing this overnight. Keep it simple and then focus on the next thing.

https://youtu.be/eggheR2Mgls

“Understand who you should be talking to for maximum brand resonance.”

What does this mean? Brand resonance is a fancy way to say your brand makes sense to your audience.

Define your ideal client by creating a persona. This process involves going to different resources and finding out where your potential clients hang out. The key is to place your brand where your ideal clients already are, as they usually won’t come to your brand on their own. 

Give the persona demographic data, problems they’re encountering, key values they hold, and psychographic information about how they think. Demographics can encompass details such as income, job title, type of firm they work for, and the size of the company.

“Tap into internal insights to authentically reach your target market.”

All this means is that you should talk with other people in your firm about your clients. Build an understanding of who they are based on shared internal knowledge.

So it’s not a scientific study or focus group. Oh well. It’s easy to do, and It’s more information than you had before, and now you can test the insights you gain from each other in other ways, such as by talking to clients.

Plus, it builds a client-focused culture and lets everyone know that you’re interested in providing leads for them.

“Explore unconventional marketing channels”

Simply put: Find where your audience hangs out and engage them there.

This is the core question of all media buying. 

Related: how does your competition try to reach them? If everyone’s using the same medium or marketing channel, you just need to think things through. Maybe you go back to sending postcards or invite them to a webinar.

It helps to go back to your brand and product, and just think “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could advertise on a blimp downtown.” You may not pull that off, but that’s the kind of thinking that leads to some pretty cool ideas.

“Use existing client patterns to identify your ideal customer profile.”

In plain English, this is just looking at what’s going on around you. Who do we tend to talk to? Who are our most valuable clients? Extra points if you haven’t even tried with these people. It’s just been effortless.

Why is this good? Because it’s usually easy to serve people when you’re a great fit.

When you find these people, you want to understand them.

“Build relationships through value-driven communications.”

Or: what’s in it for them?

How can we guide them, even if they’re not in front of us? Even if they’ve never talked to one of us or even purchased from us before?

It’s like a friendship. You usually don’t plan a vacation together with another family the first time you meet them. More often, you’re at the golf course together or serving together at church. Then one thing leads to another, and you invite them over for dinner.

In business, it’s the same. They hear your name here and there. They see you on LinkedIn taking a stab at a topic. You seem a little more genuine than the other firms. So they poke around your website. They like what they see. So you give them something as an act of generosity.

You’re not planning the vacation quite yet. Neither are you getting the families together for dinner yet. You’re just giving them something of value…to show that you like to help. Something that symbolizes the kinds of tools that you offer in a fuller relationship.

For example:

“Personalize your marketing materials to reflect your unique brand identity.”

In other words, make your marketing material your own…so that it oozes your values and personality. Do it so that nobody will be able to mistake it for your competition’s materials. And then go for the audience that appreciates it.

How do you do it? Simple, just learn a branding process, schedule it out, get all of your senior leaders into a room for a day, and get them on the same page about values, personality traits, and brand story. Then the work begins.

Or you could:

The point is that you end up with a clear, well-organized brand guide that will orient everything you create toward your brand.

And a brand anthem that will orient how you talk about yourself and the core problem you solve for clients.

“Stay agile and responsive to changes in client needs and industry trends.”

Mike Tyson said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Well, marketing plans are no different. The best approach is to plan, measure, and then readjust.

You measure in a few ways:

Plans are useless. But planning is essential. Get your strategy figured out and then be ready to be wrong. This is how the best strategists do it.

How do you know you’re wrong? You measure. Early and often.

Sun Tzu said that if you know yourself and know your client, you’ll win. Or something like that.

At the top, marketing is simple. You know yourself, you know what you do, and why it matters to someone else. All other branding experiences you create get their inspiration from that.

This is a process, so don’t get impatient. But don’t take it too casually either. Like anything, if you don’t start, you’ll never take the next step. Make a commitment, carve out the necessary time, and find a way to make it work. Your firm, your clients, and your career will thank you.

In marketing, authenticity builds lasting connections. This means creating content that matters to your audience. But what happens when we introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) into this equation? Can we really maintain authenticity while leveraging AI for content creation?

To understand the topic better, Sam and I interviewed Anati Zubia a seasoned marketing professional with stints in tech startups and, most recently, Quora.

What are the rules for using AI to bolster your marketing efforts? Here’s what came out of that conversation.

https://youtu.be/lX7edQm6Qxw

Technologies and fads change, but meaningful content will always build relationships. Don’t lose sight of this, because it’s your job. Anati stressed the importance of crafting content that truly resonates with your audience and addresses their core problems.

Know your audience’s pain points. Content starts with understanding the customer’s problems. If you know their problems—and how they speak about them—you can cut through the clutter.

AI doesn’t understand these things. It doesn’t grasp the complexity of human problems and changing preferences. The dynamic nature of customer needs and market trends adds a layer of intricacy that AI is still evolving to navigate accurately.

This affects the ability to write strategy (understanding problems) and to write copy (to connect with people).

AI can certainly aid in content creation, but authentic human insights into customer pain points and desires remain at the core of content that resonates. As businesses integrate AI into their content creation strategies, the alignment between AI assistance and human understanding becomes the key to producing content that genuinely matters.

So how do you align those things? Keep reading.

AI tools like ChatGPT aren’t innately original, but they boost your creative process by leaving you lots of energy to put toward other things, like editing and asking questions. 

You can use AI-generated content as a springboard for your marketing materials. By merging AI-generated ideas with your human insights, you can craft standout content while retaining authenticity.

Why can’t AI create new ideas and connections? Because at the center of creativity is the ability to connect with people by connecting ideas that aren’t explicitly related to ideas.

And how do you train AI to see the funny side of something if the idea of “funny” is different in every situation?

The human brain possesses a unique skill in linking seemingly unrelated concepts. Effective content sometimes pairs ideas that initially appear unrelated, resulting in a perspective that conveys a sense of discovery.

Only the human mind can do that. And AI can free up more of your time for things like that if it can act as your secretary, doing the simpler tasks for you.

Where AI is strong: Using tools like ChatGPT can serve as a compass to gauge language trends and content styles. These outputs give us insights into current usage and style. In a way, it shows us what everyone else is doing.

We mentioned using AI to do the more menial tasks of marketing and content creation. Creating an FAQ is a great use and one that Anati recommends.

Since AI-powered tools can aggregate and organize industry info, it’s great at generating, organizing, and refining FAQ content to provide web content. 

Here’s how AI can help with building FAQs:

Be careful though. Don’t lean on AI like a crutch. Remember, FAQs grow with your input. Is your sales team getting the same questions over and over again? Update the FAQ. And with the mistakes AI has made with data, don’t publish without reading and verifying the answers yourself.

If AI doesn’t know what you’re really asking, it can’t answer your questions in a helpful way. This means asking well-worded questions.

Anati points out the difference between a search and an AI prompt.

Other ways Anati uses ChatGPT:

AI can analyze your conversations to find customer preferences, pain points, and interests that you might not see. These insights could point to a deeper understanding of the customer’s pain points and the kinds of messages that resonate with them and get them to see you as a great solution.

Things Anati does:

But you still need to know what you’re doing. Not only does AI lack creativity, it’s sometimes wrong or irrelevant. Remember that no company is really the same, and best practices need to be adapted. So you still have work to do.

The good news: AI isn’t replacing you anytime soon.

AI can build customer personas and even fictional characters. These personas guide content creation and help you tailor your messaging.

Anati mentioned her favorite method of persona development—the Character Diamond. A four-quadrant system often used by storytellers, the character diamond helps establish a character’s relatable identity by identifying strengths, weaknesses, core values, and potential challenges in their personality. Using this, you can create a brand voice guide.

Understanding your brand’s identity is key. By defining brand personalities, archetypes become effective in content creation. For example, matching one of the twelve archetypes to a client’s personality traits provides keywords and real-world examples that inspire content generation.

For example, Jeff Goldblum’s “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” focuses on curiosity and learning, rather than the individual. It’s more about how he thinks than who he is. This approach exudes warmth and authenticity, reflecting a genuine excitement for knowledge without ego.

Integrating AI-generated content and character-building processes can help brands develop resonant personas and stories that connect.

In the final analysis, AI is good for some things and not for others. But it can be a part of your content creation process if you keep it in its place.

By using AI to generate content, answer FAQs, and develop personas, you can save time and get more done. And when you oversee this content creation, by adding your experience, you can craft marketing campaigns that feel genuine and build meaningful connections with your customers. 

AI is a powerful tool, but your unique insights and creativity remain the cornerstone of creating authentic marketing content that truly matters.

And it’s not gonna replace you anytime soon.

If you know so much about it, why don’t you write a book? 

Imagine being able to say: “Yeah, I did that… and here it is.” 

Mic drop. 

Here, in part II of taking your brand anthem to a thoughtful, well-developed book that demonstrates your expertise, I’m making the argument that every firm (including yours) should chase that feeling. Building on last month, when I made the case for writing a book with co-authors with the partners of your firm, and over a calendar year of recorded conversations, I’ve got more thoughts on the writing process itself. 

But before I dive in, I’ll go ahead and tell you why. 

https://youtu.be/tNio5GpRXxU

Why take the effort to plan, write, edit, and publish a piece of content that based on your brand anthem, if we’re being honest, probably won’t be a bestseller, or even a moderately successful seller?

Because publishing a book is a powerful long-term strategy to build your firm’s reputation for thought leadership, and at the same time, define its position in a marketplace filled with noise. In another article we’ve published, Chief Operating Officer Chris Stadler puts it this way: 

“If your firm writes a book, it’s a sign that your thoughts and processes are time-tested and organized. Anyone who can talk deeply enough about a topic to write a book demonstrates depth and experience.”

This is especially true in professional services, where brands develop their reputation and define their place in the market through knowledge, competence, word-of-mouth, and in-depth experience with a particular topic. If you’re in accounting, law, or engineering, then your respective knowledge of case law, financial trends, or the geographical layout of the Colorado River basin is your bread and butter. With that in mind, a brand anthem book gathers all that knowledge into an eye-catching, tremendously helpful brand asset. 

Of course, knowing what you do is different from communicating that to everyone else. 

Before you get cracking on a book, your best bet is having your firm’s brand story right. 

This is where your brand anthem comes in. 

Whatever your content strategy looks like—and trust me, articles, brand videos, a podcast, a killer website, and social media accounts filled with clever posts are all a pretty great start—it should be centered on a clear, memorable brand anthem. That is, on a memorable story of how you help guide your clients to the solution they need in your unique, unduplicated way. 

The same goes for a book; it should wave your brand’s banner in an unmistakable way, even as it dives into your point of view, experience, and comprehensive knowledge of a particular topic. Even where it dovetails with your regular ongoing strategy, a book built from a truthful, memorable brand anthem should take things further. More than standalone blog posts, and even more than a viral brand video that’s trending with your target audience, a book fleshes out your brand anthem in a definitive way. 

One that commands your audience’s attention. 

A book takes all the content strategy that you’re already putting out, and condenses it into a sophisticated, reputable piece of brand content. 

All together in one package, with a clean title and an author from your firm on the cover, and listed on Amazon or stacked on a table at an annual convention, a book speaks volumes. It produces a level of reputational trust that I haven’t seen with other pieces of content that firms put out in the marketplace. 

As you can imagine, a book is even more than a summary of your brand anthem, or one source volume of content strategy. Rather, it’s a valuable, sophisticated asset for your firm and your firm’s brand. Not to mention a reputational investment in your firm’s role as a thought leader. 

You’ve probably heard that you should ‘write you know.’ But in the professional service and B2B corner of the world, a better saying would be ‘write what you want to be known for.’ 

That obviously means tapping into you and your firm’s expertise—the refined experience and thought processes you’ve acquired over years, or even decades of day in, day out business and interactions—and aiming it squarely at your target audience. 

It might mean elaborating on simply ‘what you know,’ even though the topic is one that you probably eat, breathe and sleep. Research, reading other books in the market and for the same audience, and of course gleaning as much as you can from co-authors all goes a long way in building out your book.

If nothing else, translating your proven experience into expository or, at times, instructional writing conveys another quality. It suggests that you’re capable of teaching others about your thinking—not just what you think, but how and why you think a certain way.  

If you do it well, writing as a teacher can even push you, your firm, and your co-authors into the realm of being a thought leader on that topic—something that’s much more valuable than simply sticking the book on your website and telling people to buy it.  

If they buy it, that’s a bonus. 

But the real tactical advantage of writing a book comes when your firm can use that book and the expertise it conveys as a reputational, brand-building platform. With a book to your name, you’re more likely to land speaking events, or to make an impression at conventions with people you want to work with.  

Handing someone a book is like handing them a turbo-charged resume. 

It’s proof of your knowledge, your proven experience, and your conceptual thinking, all rolled into one. 

No shame in asking. 

Nearly everyone wants to have written a book… and that writing, editing, and publishing part of the journey looks pretty daunting. 

No doubt, there is a ton of work and planning involved—but as I explained in last month’s article, the writing process itself also pays dividends when it comes to monthly content marketing. 

One strategy I talked about was writing a book by talking to people. That is, get together with the partners of your firm, or any co-authors, and schedule twelve in-depth conversations (one every month) that you’ll record, draw from, and eventually turn into chapters in your book. With that strategy in mind, I’ll be talking more about the writing and editing process, and about how your book should differentiate your firm from others in a unique, remarkable way… obviously. 

Here are a few tips on the writing process. 

Or, and to the extent that writing is nothing but refined thinking, I should probably say the thinking process that will go into your book. A good process, along with a one year, one-topic-a-month strategy, goes a long way in making the whole writing journey a worthwhile investment. 

Writing a book is a huge commitment. For every finished book, there’s a handful of would-be authors who got started but then changed their minds. 

You’re probably not writing a book about something unless it’s something you really believe, and everybody knows that. When people see a finished book, the commitment that went into taking it over the finish line speaks for itself. Even more than case studies, a website, or marketing materials that share your philosophy while laying out what your firm does, a book gives your reputation and your way of thinking a backbone. 

So what goes into this backbone? Chapter by chapter, page by page, and even paragraph by paragraph, how do you stack it all together? Aside from a keyboard, voice to text—or by the time I publish this, some flashy new copywriting bot—is there a silver bullet for translating that thinking into words and sentences? 

Beyond carving up your book into a minimum of twelve chapter topics and then filling out those topics with recorded conversations, there’s no prescription for how you stack and organize your content knowledge. At the end of the day, someone will have to transcribe those conversations, edit the writing, and publish it.

Probably more than once.

But I can say that the backbone of your book should be particular details, focused on your target audience. The common thread through each detail, as well as each chapter, is that they demonstrate your proven experience.

Here’s where you’re in luck.

Your proven experience is made up of details you already know. 

Say you’re telling someone all about your brand anthem book topic: someone like a hard-hitting journalist. While you talk, they’re hitting you with a ton of questions that force you to get more particular, more example-driven, and even more focused. 

“Okay,” they say, thinking about accounting software, jury selection, or start-up strategies, or whatever you’ve just told them. “Tell me more about your take on that.” 

“How is your take different?” they ask. “How is it Special? How is it unlike what I’ve already heard from other firms who know this topic?” 

“What have you thought about or realized that nobody else is saying?” 

“Can you demonstrate?” 

“Can you give me an example? Something from your experience that stands out and illustrates your point?”  

The more you answer these questions, the more you’re responding to an unspoken challenge: prove it, prove it, prove it. By the time you’re done, you’ve probably got a whole chapter’s worth of content, just in answering their questions. Maybe you’ve got several chapters, or even a whole book’s worth. 

This exercise forces you to get particular. Answering questions means fleshing out your proven experience in a way people can understand. If you’ve spoken to someone who’s curious about your work, but not an insider, you know that dry, flavorless exposition will leave them bored or scratching their heads. Instead, give them stories. Memorable examples. Details about the process. Give them jaw-dropping facts, anecdotes and general stats (or estimates) so they have a baseline and proper perspective. 

And when they ask how you approach your process, you’ll answer directly: ‘here’s what this means to me, and maybe even to you.’ 

In other words, in an authentic, reputable way, you have to prove it. Regardless of chapter topic, chapter order, or paragraph by paragraph flow, proving it is a pretty good plumb line. At every step, you’re showing that your way of thinking is a trustworthy map: a graspable system that helps people understand your profession, your industry, your valuable insights, and how you approach common challenges with a unique solution.

When you stack all this in a book, people can do more than grasp your way of thinking—they can test it out for themselves. They can compare something you said in chapter one to what you say in chapter nine… and see if the numbers add up. In other words, part of your thought leadership’s backbone means being falsifiable. Not stepping out on a limb for no reason, but rather, taking stand after stand that can potentially be proven false. 

It’s a scary thought, but remember that your reader is asking you, your co-authors, and book one thing: prove it. 

Nonfiction writers like to say that every book makes a promise to the reader at the very start. Any book worth its salt, from a how-to book to a sophisticated work of investigative journalism, answers that promise. 

By filling out your book’s content with falsifiable, but thoroughly supported, claims and proven experience, you show the reader your thought system works to the nth degree. You show them that you’ve used it so much (as the case should be if you’re writing about what you know) and so often over the years that it’s trustworthy and convincing. 

Writing your book means more than refining your thinking—and when all is said and done, proving your role as a thought leader in the marketplace. 

Another advantage (and another reason to do it) is that putting your knowledge or your firm’s philosophy into a falsifiable, focused book filled with proven experience means getting all your co-authors on the same page. The monthly, recorded conversations are an excellent way to do just that… and when the writing and editing process comes full circle, having co-authors weigh in, make corrections, and keep an eye on the overall project is a kind of brand refining process in and of itself. 

With the goal of carving out your firm’s position in the marketplace, you want everyone involved on the same page… singing from the same tune from the same hymn book, you might say. 

To that end, your book doesn’t need to read like a textbook.

Believe me, it doesn’t have to be this super academic, footnote-packed product you might find in a college bookstore. 

You can build your backbone and flesh out your claims with facts, details, and proven experience in a substantial way…while being approachable. Many businesses who want to write a book envision something thick and substantial, but the reality is that putting out a massive volume overestimates the number of people who might actually read it. 

Even if your book is brilliant, it faces a harsh reality. 

Most people that you encounter as potential clients will never actually read every word of it. They’ll read the parts that matter to them, or they might not even read it at all. Seeing the book and browsing its contents might be enough to make them go “Wow, you wrote the book on that? I want you as my firm.”

So if you’re thinking of putting out a brand dictionary, something that will take vast amounts of time, resources, and even budget… keep this in mind. 

As I mentioned last month, manage your expectations accordingly. 

Of course your piece of thought leadership needs to be good—I’m not saying a stylish book jacket is an easy swindle for getting people’s business. 

But while you’re writing, podcasting and recording, or editing the book into the best, most substantial and thought-through version of itself, take a deep breath… and remember why you’re doing it. 

Don’t expect a New York Times bestseller… or even to see your book on any physical bookshelf in a store. Rather, remember you’re doing this as a sophisticated way to validate everything you think internally about your firm, your industry, and your brand’s unique place in the market. 

With a book, and for those who read your approachable, systematic outline to your thinking and proven experience, you gain a little bit of monopoly power against your competition.

And that stakes out your firm’s position. 

If you love the idea of a book that can build your remarkable firm’s reputation with your audience, then ask for the help you need to make it happen.

Having written a book on B2B branding with some incredible people, I know the process back to front. I’m glad to help remarkable brands plan, outline, and even get the words right. If the end result is a proven, authentically-reading piece of thought leadership that builds your firm’s reputation, then I’m all in. 

I’d love to help make that happen. 

So if you need help, you can give the Resound team a shout. You can even check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon to see what the finish line looks like. 

If you’re itching to get recording or writing, that’s splendid. 

But don’t forget that you are remarkable.

As we all know, there’s more than one way to get your firm’s brand out into the world. Traditional content strategy with a website, ad campaigns, articles, social media, and a skillfully edited brand video is increasingly common—and not necessarily ineffective. If it’s done well and authentically, not by a long shot. 

Trust me, you don’t have to go super-outlandish with free air guitars or pregnancy test coupons in magazines to get your brand seen. 

As I wrote about last month, short videos are probably the most potent, shareable way to capture your brand anthem and communicate it with a wider audience. Video taps two of the five senses, taps memory and emotion, and speaks the common parlance of phones, tablets, and computer screens that take up people’s time. 

But even if you’re dropping money on filming or professional editing, there’s one final strategy you should not overlook. 

Writing (and, of course, publishing) your brand anthem in a book. 

A brand book, or perhaps a book containing your collected thoughts on a relevant business or marketing topic, gets people excited—especially in professional services. 

Think of a brand book as a printed, sophisticated piece of thought leadership: a respectable piece of developed, long-form content that contains your brand anthem and even raises it to a higher level of conversation. 

But writing a book raises pointed questions, with the first one being: 

How do I get there? 

How do I get my brand anthem into an actual book someone can hold in their hands? 

Do I have to write? 

What about editing and publishing—aren’t those lengthy journeys in and of themselves?

Great questions. 

But before I dive in, let me recap what any brand or topical book should be doubling down on: brand anthem. 

If you want to do something right, there’s no getting enough of the basics. 

https://youtu.be/7eJqjJevgEc

If your brand anthem is the starting point—your north star for a killer video, slick visuals and marketing, or even a product rollout—you should know exactly what it is and why it resonates with people.

 Lest we forget, a good brand anthem builds on elements of a good story (one about your clients, and how you help them) and waves them into a clear, vibrant banner. I walked through the elements of a brand anthem in detail, but they’re worth repeating—there’s the hero (your client), the problem they’re facing, the guide (that’s YOU), and then the solution. As you can probably imagine, the story goes like this: the hero had a problem, and with the help of a trusting, knowledgeable guide, the hero solved that problem. 

That story, of course, contains your brand’s unique traits and values. If it’s uniquely you—and don’t forget, whether you’re an accounting firm or a law firm or an engineering firm, you’re still the guide—then your brand anthem should set you apart from the stories that other brands are telling… in a pretty big way. 

How do you uniquely help the hero?

Which kind of hero (or better yet, which problem) are you focused on solving? 

How do you uniquely solve it? 

With what philosophy or fresh vision of a better world? How is your solution different from other brands? 

If your brand story sounds a little too familiar… then it might be time to tease it out a little more. Getting your brand anthem clear, and polished, and getting your message about who you are on point means carving out your position in the marketplace.

What’s your approach to the hero’s problem? 

What’s your unique solution? Your answer for a segment of the market that’s not being fully served? 

Potent brand anthems are usually the focused ones… and if we’re talking about writing a book on it, the more potent, the better. 

Say you’ve got all that—a brand anthem with a tight, well-messaged story, and maybe even a tagline to go with it. Say you’re developing that brand anthem with your website. Maybe you’ve started to write some blog posts that break it down for everyone. 

Great. 

If you’re there, or getting close to that state, you’re well on your way to building out the thoughtful brand book I mentioned earlier. 

If polishing up your brand anthem is step one of the process, then writing, publishing, and promoting the book is step two. 

I mention blog posts as part of step one because, for many brands, they’re an incredibly helpful content strategy… and at the same time, a helpful, preemptive, book writing hack. 

But here’s a better one. 

I mean it… but not literally. 

If you walk away thinking you can convince some ghostwriter that they’re really cranking out Mark Cuban or Elon Musk’s next business book (and for a hefty fee when the draft is done), please think again.  

I’m talking about writing your book with other people’s input, and with a content strategy that lends itself toward developing a thoughtful, in-depth book over the course of a year, even while you’re pressing out monthly, brand anthem-grade content. 

It’s no one size fits all… but it is a strategy worth considering. 

Typically, it won’t be just you writing the book; it’s a process that will involve the partners and leadership of your firm. So give yourself plenty of time. 

Start out by carving out twelve months (not five, not three) and making a calendar of topic questions. By topics, I mean every content angle, area, or conclusion you’d like your book to cover.  

A twelve month content strategy calendar is necessary because the next step is involving the key brain power behind your brand… although if that brain power involves thirty or more people, you may not get to all of them.  

Once you’ve got the brain power lined up, ask the tough question—who’s going to spearhead this? Will your book have one, or two, or even three authors? Assuming those potential authors have other full-time responsibilities, families, and a generally busy life (and assuming you’ve got one partner willing to step out with you and take the lead), how are you going to get them to dump out all that knowledge and experience they have?

How about one drip at a time, through conversation? 

Generating enough content over twelve months that can be turned into a book is not easy. But one way you can get your partners to commit to is by planning time for you and them to sit, hit the record button, and talk about the things that need to go into the book. 

That calendar, and those conversations give you plenty of material to work with, both for your book and for the monthly social media, audio, or even visual content that you want to be dripping out.   

And that’s what I mean when I say trick your leadership into writing a book. 

I’ve found that this works for one key reason—those people who are knowledgeable, experienced, and interested in being authors of a book are usually verbal. 

Think about it. 

They’re used to talking to clients all day. They’re used to having to sell and pitch the business with their mouths, with speech, communication, and facial expression. Getting them in front of a microphone is one of the best ways to get the content out of their heads and eventually into a manuscript page, paper or digital. 

I’ve also found that getting those key people involved in planning that outline pays dividends. For one thing, if your co-authors understand the strategy, you’ll get buy-in right from the beginning. 

Who knows?

By tapping your firm’s brain power as co-authors, you might also be tapping them as podcast hosts for twelve podcasts at the exact same time. One podcast episode a month can follow, and fill out a chapter in the book. 

Or not.

Keep in mind that your conversational writing sessions don’t need to be a podcast. If you’ve got a twelve month, one year content strategy set, then you and your co-author don’t need to pull out some fancy, expensive microphone when topic one rolls around. 

If it takes some pressure off, use your iPhone. Or, and with the high probability that you’re both working remotely, hop on Zoom for an hour. Just say ‘we’ll record it and we’ll see what happens.’ As long as you’re able to get their voices recorded, you’ve got content you can start to utilize—and pull from if you need quotes or soundbites for brand marketing.  

With a twelve month content calendar, and a commitment from co-authors to sit down and record twelve conversations, you can’t go wrong. 

Having built that twelve-month calendar, you might be outlining your book and deciding on its structure at the same time. Simply enough, each month’s topic is a different chapter of your book. 

Chances are, you’ll be building off your brand anthem—unless, of course, everyone at your firm just happens to have a Ph.D. in the same, unrelated subject and wants to write about it. But more likely, you’ll be drawing closely from your brand anthem with whatever topic you tackle. 

With that in mind, you can generate an outline from your brand anthem and pencil them in quite easily. If you just did a chapter on your hero, well, next up is your hero’s problem. If you just did a chapter on the guide, then move on to your unique solution and how that unlocks a new level for the hero. Next up? The outcome…

And so on.   

Or mix things up a bit. 

However you slice it, twelve months should give you twelve themes for you and your partners to talk about… and twelve fresh podcasts, (or if you’d rather not publish them as podcasts, interviews…) Or twelve wells of thoughtful, quotable content, perfect for blog articles, email newsletters, social media, or mini-marketing concepts. All for each month of the calendar year. 

How’s that for a book writing hack? 

I want to peek behind the curtain of your future here. 

Assume you’ve sharpened up your brand anthem. 

Imagine that you’ve interviewed twelve knowledgeable people, (or even, three co-authors four times each). 

Take one more leap and imagine you’ve published it. 

Why have you published it?

Believe it or not, and unless you’re extremely lucky or super well-connected in the New York City publishing world, you didn’t necessarily publish the book to sell millions of copies… enough for an advance on the next book and a ranch in Montana.

In fact, you probably didn’t even publish it to sell thousands.   

Bear with me: you published your book to establish your firm, build your credibility, and show people why you’re unique beyond any shadow of a doubt. If you think about it, those co-authors you brought on board are probably among the foremost leaders of the unique way you approach and do business. By mining their experience and expertise, and by writing it up and publishing it in a book, you’ve distilled their unique view, their philosophy, and their way of serving clients into a satisfying, readable product. 

That speaks volumes about your firm, and even reminds people that your firm truly is remarkable. 

I’m not saying that the book isn’t a product in and of itself (of course it is, even if you’ve given away much of the content for free in monthly blog posts or podcasts)… but it’s not the overarching fruit of your intention. 

Of course there are strategies to recoup the cost of writing, editing, publishing, and promoting it… but think of those benefits as incidental to the real value: establishing deep credibility for your brand.

In a way, it really does. 

The effort, time, planning, knowledge, and elbow grease that goes into a published, thought-leading product often speaks for itself. Hand someone a book and you’re a lot more likely to get invited on their podcast, or to give a lecture at a conference coming up…or win the contract with a new, big client.

That’s because a brand book shows people your unique, remarkable process, and what it looks like crossing the finish line. 

Now THAT’s a business card. 

What a way to tell, and show, and, insofar as you get some readers, continue telling them about your unique process, your unique solution to the hero’s problem, and your one-of-a-kind position in the marketplace. 

Going around and saying you have a unique position unfortunately, means nothing. 

But having written and published a book about it usually means you’ve lived it. It means you know that position from every angle, and furthermore than you’ve owned it through experience. 

All this to say, a book isn’t the only way of telling people that you’re remarkable. 

I’ll probably talk more about publishing in another article, but a book lends itself to a number of mediums. As part of the publishing process, there’s plenty of room to branch into an audio version, an e-reader or digital copy people can share or download… or like I mentioned earlier, a sign leading back to those twelve months of blogs or podcasts. 

Adding a book to twelve months of existing content is in many ways, a force multiplier. 

You’ve come to the right place. 

Having planned and written a book on B2B branding with some pretty amazing people, I can tell you all about the ins and outs of gathering audio content, getting it into words, and organizing those words into a publishable, potent, brand anthem product. 

It’s no cakewalk, but I believe it’s worth it.

If you think planning a book would be a worthwhile part of your brand’s content strategy, and if you’d like some help or consultation with that, the Resound team stands ready. Give us a shout.

You can even check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon to get a sense of what I’m all about, and why I love helping brands and companies share their story with the world. 

So dream big. 

And don’t forget that you are remarkable. 

“Smart” people make things complicated. Effective people start with a simple plan they can understand. And then they build on it. This is especially true in marketing, where you can’t know how your audience is going to interact with your message on a particular media channel. Even experienced marketers can’t really be sure most of the time. So what’s the solution? Hire a confident marketer who knows lots of fancy words, but can’t really explain what they mean? Or do you start simply, even without research, and build from there?

https://youtu.be/BFsmVCFMNS8

The simplest way to get really, really good at anything is to gain an understanding of a simple plan and build on it. Just make a plan and make it work a little bit. Then build on what success you have.

Your working hypothesis means building a simple plan, that, if your assumptions are correct, should work. It’s not like they told you in school that you should “find out everything you can” about a topic. This is going only based on what you know right now.

No hours spent on research that takes you down rabbit holes and eventually has you watching funny youtube cat videos. Just a simple plan, based on what you know.

It’s the same reason old people tell you to read old literature, like the Stoics and the Bible. It’s simple information that, if it makes sense to you, teaches you to think for yourself. If you can grasp fundamental truths, you can use those truths almost everywhere. They give you a sense of proportion that looks like wisdom and knowledge. And they help you to test every bit of information that comes in.

But if you immerse yourself in information, you’re overwhelmed. You start accepting facts before you’re able to evaluate them. It’s like in any cult — or in college if you’re not very, very careful — they give you one point of view, fill you with information that backs it up, giving you no context or sense of proportion. And pretty soon, you find yourself lost. And even though you know something’s wrong, you don’t have the words to express exactly what.

Research isn’t bad. But be sure your brain is in critical-thinking mode before you start accepting data. This will keep you objective and allow you to see things in proportion.

It’s like in closely held political arguments; we get caught up in the emotion and the need to be right. We accept things we’d never believe if we weren’t so bought-in politically. But what if every American thought about right and wrong before they heard all of the opinions and framing? What if, when you heard that a politician did something wrong, you backed up and thought about it non-politically, like they’re someone in your everyday life who did that.

Now you’re thinking, rather than being told how to think.

So let’s say you’re making a marketing plan. Who’s the person in your life who would buy your product? If you didn’t know him, where would you advertise? Facebook, an online forum, a sponsorship? What would you say in the ad? What would make him click on the ad and go to your landing page? What would you say on the landing page to convince him to click and buy?

Now, you have a working hypothesis. Make sure you can test each part of that interaction, so you know at least the number of people reached by the ad, the number of people who clicked to visit the page, and the number of people who bought. And adjust from there.

Trying to seem smart is a trap. The most effective people don’t pretend they know what they don’t know. They keep it simple and use what they know. Be like the simple person who knows what questions to ask rather than the one who knows all of the answers. Because the one who knows how to ask the right questions is the one who doesn’t work as hard and still gets more done, can see through BS, and can make a simple, actionable plan that moves things forward.

For an example of a funnel, check out Mike’s post on content marketing.

For more on the topic of simplicity, read or listen to “Solitude in Leadership” by William Deresiewicz.

Without a structured approach, strategic planning fails to touch the ground. Here are the three ways a well-structured brand strategy workshop — and importantly, the deliverables — give you everything you need to turn your vision into an organized, almost-tangible set of tasks.

https://youtu.be/db369Hm7FhE

Strategic planning is great, but what happens when everyone leaves the planning meeting? The excitement is gone and the work needs to start.

Explanation:

It’s a bummer when people show up not really understanding the meeting topic and then are expected to be involved. They soon lose interest, failing to contribute and take ownership. Especially when their comments are off-target. But a good workshop offers an explanation, creating consensus, accountability, and confidence.

Without agreement among leaders, nothing downstream can be done with any confidence. And without the ability to examine ideas and communicate them — test them against goals, running them through the gauntlet of several points of view from your team and ours — it can be difficult to a) feel like you’re in agreement and b) actually be in agreement, even if you think you are.

The solution:

Deliverables:

How do we do it? Without getting into detail, let’s just say we use Sharpies, Post-its, a slideshow, whiteboards, worksheets and a lot of hard work and engagement on the part of the participants. And there’s no reason you can’t do the same for content strategy, brand strategy or even product development.

Without agreement and involvement, leaders can’t be held accountable. They can go their own way, letting someone else make the decision. And if it doesn’t work out, they can parachute in and accuse the other person of failing.

And this doesn’t just happen in big, evil corporations full of self-serving executives. It’s also practical. Remember, everyone’s trying to do a good job, and when you’re busy, you can’t do everything. So if some bright-eyed marketing director sends you an email with brand values, colors and a logo, you have to decide, “Is this really worth a bunch of my time and energy?”

But a brand workshop invites everyone to collaborate, in real-time. It’s a chance to make decisions for the company and to engage with colleagues. It brings all of the leaders on the same page. And if they don’t engage, everyone in the workshop knows it. But if they do decide to engage, bringing their unique point of view to the table, you now have consensus, on which you can build accountability.

Now that the leaders have participated in the day-long workshop and have had the chance to disagree and test ideas, Resound turns their decisions into a description of their company. We clean out all of the noise and focus on what we heard the company say as a whole. And if we stick closely to what we heard in the workshop, delivering a report that accurately reflects what was said, there’s now accountability for the whole organization to move as one.

In other words, when we deliver the final deliverables, they’re written in black and white, with the permission of the team.

Deliverables for Resound’s workshops typically include a clearly written and thorough set of values, personality traits, and brand story.

And this brings unity to the leadership team.

Perhaps where most plans fail is in how those plans get interpreted for the doers — those people who aren’t on the management team, but end up being asked to do the tasks.

The delegation could be incomplete because the manager doesn’t know what the front-line worker doesn’t know. Sometimes the manager forgets why he was asked to get the task done. Delegation can also fail to convince if the doers are not able to see the “why” behind what they’re being asked to do.

Maybe they just don’t understand that the management is behind the work, in favor of it and in support of it.

For the rubber to meet the road, you need deliverables that reflect the workshop and bring it down to ground level. For Resound’s brand strategy workshops, this is a set of visual and verbal guidelines that front-line designers and writers can use to create brand executions that reflect the brand’s values, personality traits, and brand story in an accurate way.

And when these things are well-done, they help everyone — both inside and outside of the brand — to know what the brand is all about. And you know you’ve reached success when the writers and designers are so consistent that people can even know what the brand would and wouldn’t say.

Brand workshops are a great example of strategic planning that makes the rubber meet the road. It wrangles disparate leadership goals and ideas into a list of values, personality traits and brand story. It delivers them in a way that encourages accountability since it’s clear and concise. And it empowers creatives by giving them well-documented guidance for how to create what they’re creating.

All this works together to move your brand forward with confidence in a shared vision and express it to the world without friction or confusion.

____

If you’re looking for more brand strategy thinking just like this, consider signing up for our newsletter, or joining in on our next Brand Roundtablewhere we’ll be discussing creating compelling content and building remarkable brands with an intimate group of brand leaders and marketers like yourself.

The abundance of interesting articles makes it tough to cut through the clutter and get your message into the hearts and minds of your audience. But newspapers have it figured out — and they have for a long time. They’re famous for delivering information quickly, speaking to the lowest common denominator of people: the skimmers. The good news is that you don’t have to write for every reading style. Because if you can get the skimmers, you can get everyone. Let’s talk about how to organize your info like a newspaper.

First off, let’s give newspapers the credit they deserve: they model a great information hierarchy. And we can use this, especially for our busy B2B customers. We create messaging that will get to the point quickly. Not because everyone absorbs information in that way, but because if you can get skimmers, you can get other readers.

Apply this to your email newsletters, website, and social, and you’ll watch your substance come to the front.

Clear headlines summarize the whole article. There’s no guessing and no click-bait – exactly what skimmers love. So how do you do it?

Say it straight (then, if you can, say it “great”). Tell the whole truth really quickly, without trying to be clever. If you just landed a contract with a big company, and you want to tell people about it, consider: “Blimey Construction Wins $50 Million Bid to Build Cardinals’ Stadium.”

Then, once you’ve said it straight a few times, add a superlative like “killer,” “best,” “top,” or give a number. Tell people exactly what you’re going to tell them to do. For instance, let’s say you want to talk about how to set up a manufacturing line for ice cream, but you want it to sound interesting, and not like a manual.

Mistakes to avoid: Whatever you do, create tension with the headline. The first example above might sound happy and optimistic, but the second one sounds more interesting. Everyone wants tension. Tension organizes a story and makes you want to know more until your questions are answered. Make sure you build a little tension in the headline by telling them what they can get — or even lose — from the info in the article.

Remember, you can’t make people interested if the topic isn’t relevant. But for those for whom it’s relevant, make the topic feel so clear and organized that they can’t help but click.

A clear opening paragraph/summary — the first or second paragraph in any news story — expands on the headline, giving slightly more detail on each aspect of the headline. Like an upside-down pyramid, a clear opening paragraph (working with a clear headline), puts the bulk of the information at the top, not the bottom. It lets people know if they’re wasting their time or not.

Example from the Wall Street Journal:

Headline: Grand Jury Subpoenas Sent to John Bolton’s Publisher and Agent

Nut Graph (first paragraph): Federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to former national security adviser John Bolton’s publisher and literary agent on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, launching a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton mishandled classified information.

Notice that the nut graph expands on information contained in the headline.

How it can work for you: In any article you write, you want people to absorb the information. Write the problem first, because that’s what most people relate to, then talk about how you’ll solve it with your article. Give them everything you can right up front by summarizing.

Mistakes to avoid: Remember that newspaper articles are written to fit into a newspaper. They put the good stuff up top in the article, but leave the details toward the end. Why? Because the editor might cut the end to jam in another article on the page, or might make the article “continued on page D8.” This is where you’re different. Since you can publish your whole article, blog post, or whatever in full (plus, you want people to read your call-to-action), try to avoid answering all the questions you raised before the end. Make sure even the skimmers have a reason to read to the bottom.

Writing in the active voice forces you to use more and stronger verbs than adjectives and adverbs (modifiers). This makes the piece more active and interesting, “showing,” rather than “telling” the reader what you’re claiming.

Here’s where some examples will help:

Passive: Resound is great! They were the best to work with. Resound has indispensable knowledge and unprecedented ability to build a website for us. Once Resound was done, the website got rave reviews from our customers and employees alike. Working with Resound was a dream since the communication was always great and we were never in-the-dark.

Active: They didn’t just give us a pretty logo, they really looked inside our firm to understand our clients, our team, and our reputation in the community. Working with Resound on the firm rebrand was a great experience. They made the whole process (from brand audit to launch) run very smoothly. Their team is creative and professional. I am very excited with the final product we received from Resound.”

I highlighted the passive words in the first example and the stronger verbs in the second. The passive words, sometimes called “to be” verbs, tend to weaken the sentence. By finding those weak verbs, you can look for a better sentence structure. For example:

As we talked about before, “Say it straight, then say it great.” So take a two-step process to writing, starting with your crappy first draft. Allow yourself to use all kinds of crappy language and imprecise writing in order to get what you want down on paper. Sure, it’s crappy, but it needs to get down on paper as the first draft. Then, a day later, you go through it and cut stuff that doesn’t seem to add to the message and make the first paragraphs, headings, and summaries — and the important stuff — super clear, direct, and punchy. And you’ll be able to because you’ve written about it and are now so much more familiar with the topic.

So what mistakes come with this process? Obsessively self-editing and also trying to edit when you’re still inspired by the topic. Let’s break these down briefly.

These rules are like cheats; anyone can use them. Follow these two rules, and you’ll activate your copy and become a better writer than some who are naturally more talented than you.

The skimmers are the toughest people to engage. But often they’re the most valuable. Plus, the same article structure that makes it easy for skimmers also helps the regular reader who has a little more time. In other words, if you write clear headlines, give the main point up-front, and use an active voice, you’ll find that your articles attract more of the right readers and really engage them with a well-organized and active message.

And even though you might not write the next great American novel, you can console yourself with the engagement and leadership you build within the industry through your clear writing.

If you’re looking for more practical tips like these, consider signing up for our newsletter, or joining in on our next Brand Roundtable Chat where we’ll be discussing creating compelling content and building remarkable brands with a small group of leaders and marketers like yourself! Glean from our years of experience running our Phoenix area creative branding agency. We look forward to seeing you there!

Content strategy for B2B brands has two primary functions: to build trust and then develop that trust into working business relationships that benefit everyone involved. So how do you think about content strategy in order to set yourself up for building trust, and then converting? Let’s talk about that.

Before we get going, I want to point out that, during changing times, we need to rest upon a firm foundation of values, no matter what’s going on in the world. For this reason, we’re focusing on the fundamentals: building trust through coherent branding and then developing that trust through a series of communications, via an email-based content strategy.

Right off the bat, email should be at the core of most content strategies. Here’s why:

Email allows you to measure and understand what your customer is doing at the individual level. In other words, where your website analytics only shows anonymized summary data, email shows you an email address and a name, including how they interacted with your content every month. If email is at the core of your inbound marketing mix, measuring all your returning customers and their interactions (perhaps together with your CRM), you now have the best data on those most valuable relationships (in other words, people who want to hear from you and who have said they want to hear from you).

Trust gives you repeat customers and higher-value customers. In other words, better relationships. People who aren’t trustworthy have to lower their prices. But if your customer likes and trusts you more than anyone else, you win and they win.

Here are a few possible problems you might be solving by gaining trust.

You could find that building trust is especially important if:

If people are starved for trust, you could be the breath of fresh air they want.

You can use email powerfully to build trust and engage your customers and other stakeholders after a merger or acquisition. Email gives you a chance to talk about the merger, even go into detail, and to address objections without rigid time constraints.

In other words, you can talk to the people who said they want to hear from you and send them information to keep them in the loop. Because in a merger or acquisition, the last thing you want is for people to misunderstand. But if you’re sharing information about everything you’re doing, telling them what to think about it and why you’re doing it, then your intentions become clear and believable.

A content marketing campaign is especially valuable when you’re new to the market and people don’t know you yet. They don’t know what to think about you, they don’t know your approach to business, and they don’t know your character. A gradually growing email newsletter is a great way to help them to know how you think.

Leaders in innovation are by nature teachers. They share their vision and paint a picture of the future. Even if you’re just solving a problem in an innovative way, people need to understand how it works. If it’s a service, they may need to understand a new workflow.

Think of a new app that lets you buy stocks with no transaction fees. Instead of calling your broker, you get on your app. Now what? Some of us go to the internet to find out more about the app and whether it’s trustworthy and maybe even hints and tricks.

The problem is, there are many ways to provide products and services. By having an audience who trusts you and wants to be educated by you, you have an opportunity to help them to think like you. And if they think like you, they’re likely to think of you as an irreplaceable partner in business.

Do you have a way to help people think in a way that’s better than before? And can you offer products and services that help them to live out that new way of thinking? Email is a great way to make them unsatisfied with the old inefficient way to do it, and then empower them to do it better with you.

This leads us to conversions. Let’s say you’re a finance consultancy. You’ve found a better workflow for helping innovative companies (let’s call them companies that build new products) to evaluate their investments more efficiently through the development process to avoid sinking more money into products that could be losers.

For these investment companies, the classical way to look at finances is obsolete. But the industry continues to push classic, one-size-fits-all finance workflows.

For this reason, you know that you need to educate them gradually to the point where they’re ready to hire you as a consultant. That’s the final goal. That’s the bottom of the marketing funnel.

So what’s a marketing funnel? Glad you asked.

Let’s review the marketing funnel. A ton of people will hear about you, a few will be interested, and even fewer will develop a desire to work with you. This is a funnel.

At the top of the funnel is where people enter. They are very likely to be interested in what you’re saying, but many of them won’t descend to the next level of the funnel. Let’s look at the theory of how it works, and then let’s use our maverick finance company as an example.

It’s just classic marketing. You might talk to 500 people and get them to show interest. Out of those 500, you might talk with 100 who are willing to take the next step and email you. Out of those 100, maybe 10 will meet with you. And out of those 10, maybe two will become clients.

So if you picture a funnel, at the top or widest part of the funnel would be those 500 people you introduce yourself to. The people who take the next step would be your 100 people – a little bit narrower part of the funnel but still pretty wide. And then the people who will meet with you are the 10 (getting to the pretty narrow end of the bottom of the funnel) and then below that are the two who actually become clients – the final output of that funnel we’ve been visualizing. This might even be a similar flow to your own marketing funnel.

So let’s go back to the finance brand who is trying to get people to think about financing a different way. The top of the funnel might be people who visited the site after having clicked on one of their ads. Those ads take them to a landing page that summarizes their financing consulting service at a high level (it’s the introduction to your whole system it tells them why the system is important, what kinds of companies benefit from it, and the risk of going with that other classic model). Then the brand gives them a clear path to the next step – a free consultation.

Here’s another way to look at it:

So you’re trying to get people from the top of the funnel which is visiting your landing page, all the way down to where they become a customer or a client.

I use a funnel to help people out with advice. I get with people in half-hour increments and we talk about their problem. If it’s something we can do to solve it, I’ll let them know and we can move on to the next step. But if it’s not, I’ve helped them out a little bit and given them something to think about. In no case do I waste their time and they don’t waste my time.

This is a great funnel when the end result is taking care of people, living out your brand, and then not having your time wasted.

Remember that email marketing serves a branding effort and/or it serves a lead-generation effort. If you know what kinds of interactions you need, you can figure out what kind of funnel you have to set up. And if you know your brand, you’ll be able to do it in a way that builds your brand, even while you’re asking for customers to take action.

So we’ve now just talked about the purposes of content marketing. We’ve talked about ways to think about funnels and how to measure them. Take a minute to think about what results you want to see from your content, and then consider the kinds of results that you can get from setting up a measurable email marketing funnel.

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How do you measure content strategy? Mike talked about how to think about content strategy, setting the stage for this conversation. So do you want to build trust, or are transactions more important now? Let’s talk about the different ways to measure those two ways of thinking about content strategy.

People want to trust you. They want to say “yes” to you. But they’re also going to be paying you, so they don’t want a bunch of reservations either. Branding is probably the most important factor in whether people buy from you when reliability or collaboration matters, which makes it huge in B2B. In fact, the more important and consequential the purchase, the more important your brand will be.

Not sure if that’s true? Do a thought experiment: if you’re buying gasoline, you’re not usually as worried about the quality. If your car starts sputtering, maybe you won’t be buying gas from them again. But if you’re hiring someone to paint your house, you want to know if they have references. Are they gonna spill things? Will they leave drips? Will they take my money and leave the job half-done?

And what do you look at to see if you want to work with them? Their reputation, their record of past performance, how they present themselves or how organized they appear…you look at their brand.

So reputation is important, but how do you measure all those things you do that build your reputation? How do you measure the monetary benefit of your values?

Because brand marketing teaches people how to feel about you, it’s hard to detect and hard to attribute. You can’t always tell how someone feels, and even if you could, you can’t always know what made them feel that way. But these people pay full price. They see you as “premium.” They trust you to be organized. They’re likely to be happy with what you’re offering because they already know you and trust that you do what’s right. Because they’re happy, they’ll tell others about you. And it’s hard to measure any of that.

If someone likes you:

But they also may do some things that are measurable:

They want your way of thinking so they can develop their own philosophy around the work that involves your product or service.

It’s easiest if you sell a product or service online. If you sell it directly online, almost everything is measurable. You’re able to measure the entire funnel.

But what about those things that are a little more consulting-heavy. Resound works with a lot of clients who consult, even if they sell a product or a service. Often, they’re big-ticket items that require some explanation or require some interaction, customer-to-salesperson, to provide value beyond just the product or service itself.

This is where you can choose two different paths. Or both. You can choose to go after your existing clients and continue to build those relationships and pull them deeper into your thinking, or you can go after new customers.

Let’s talk about both.

With existing customers, you can and should use a newsletter to teach them how to think. They need to think about your stuff the way you think about it.

If you are a fleet automotive maintenance company, you might have a philosophy about maintenance that encourages people to run it on a 3-month schedule instead of a 4-month schedule. You may even be able to save them money that way. But because it sounds like more work, you may have to explain yourself. You have to share this philosophy and get it out there and show people why it will keep their vehicles running longer or how it will allow them to get more out of the vehicle and then sell it.

Are you an innovator? You may have to convince people. Especially if you’re doing something counter to what the industry is doing or you want to make their really big deal about a small difference you make that makes a difference for people.

Build an email newsletter.

The bigger the customer investment and the longer the sales cycle, the more value a content strategy offers you.

The basics of a content strategy are email (Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, etc.), a blog and social media.

Remember, this content strategy is your content strategy. It’s your list. It’s your medium. It’s a little bit like having a magazine that you create for only your customers. You own all their information, you decide where the ads go; it’s yours. You can add any kind of production value you want to make it engaging and interesting and something they want to open and read.

So how do you get from someone who doesn’t know about you to someone who’s buying from you? Here’s a little refresher: to get people who aren’t already your customers to sign up to buy your stuff, it’s a process. There’s this pyramid that many marketers become familiar with that outlines conversions.

Email supports this because it allows you to track people through the funnel and know who’s who. Google Analytics tells us how many. But it doesn’t tell you who went through and got to the bottom of the funnel. since you on this media channel, you are the one who is able to figure this out from the data. In fact, almost all platforms allow you to give this data.

To build your list, most people…

And all this is automated.

If they don’t bite on the email list, continue to give them opportunities to learn in a rich, email environment, ways to think about the job they’re trying to get done, resources that will help them, and then an opportunity to buy from you.

So now you can see the funnel.

So now what you’re trying to do is straighten the funnel. If you can you wanted to look as much like a silo as you can. You want the bottom of that funnel to spread out so that it matches the top. But this is hardly ever going to happen, and that’s okay. The point is that you’re measuring the percentage of conversions so the next level down the funnel and then doing everything you can to increase those movements down the funnel in a way that reinforces the reason people like you.

In other words, bring them down the funnel in a way that builds on the reason people like you and trust you. It’s not complicated, and there are tons of tools that will help you to do this. But usually, it involves finding the right people and delivering the right message at the right time. And how will you know that until you do it? So what are you waiting for? Start building your funnel today.

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