Podcast Ep. 004: Getting Clients Online Through Content Marketing

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Welcome to the CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I’m your host, Morris Grand, and this is the show where we talk about launching online businesses and scaling online businesses to the next level.

In the last couple of episodes, we’ve been talking about content marketing. But how does your content turn into clients for you? This is the question that I want to answer in this episode. While there are many ways to make money with content marketing,

How To Get Clients?

I want to focus on getting clients, attracting potential buyers, and booking calls, which is especially important if you are a coach or consultant and even if you’re a course creator.

One thing that content marketing does, usually is that it gets a lot of attention online because it is free content, and anything that’s free, people like to click on it and check it out. Especially if the title or headline sounds intriguing or helpful. That’s why so much content is monetized through advertising.

Two Common Examples

Two very common examples are blogs and YouTube channels where the blogger or video creator focuses on creating content, getting thousands or even millions of views and readers.

Through that massive reach, they can place some ads on their page. Or ads are placed at the beginning of their YouTube video and they’ll make money through advertising.

But if you’re a coach or consultant and you need to attract clients, or if you’re a course creator and you want to sell your courses and ebooks, then you need additional steps in your content marketing sequence.

The biggest mistake that coaches, consultants, and course creators, usually make when they start out with content marketing is that they try to sell their service or product every time they create new content.

And that hurts their content marketing in two ways:

• Number one, now your content isn’t just free anymore because it is obvious to your reader or viewer that you’re expecting something in return: you want them to buy from you.

When you look at the blogging and video landscape, where there are so many creators giving away entire courses for free without ever mentioning their website or brand or products, then your videos or articles where you’re always asking them to buy something from you are not going to look as generous as the others and your perceived quality will be lower.

This is difficult to explain in words or metrics, but if you start checking out some of the content in your niche that is going viral or that everyone is sharing and is being consumed a lot, let’s say you go to YouTube and you search for a step by step guide on something that you could explain to your clients as well.

You’ll probably notice that these creators are giving away a tremendous amount of value without asking for anything in return.

• The second way how this is hurting your content is that now people are less likely to share your content or come back for more content because they’ll always feel like you’re just going to sell them anyway.

So how do you compete with that? How do you compete with free content that doesn’t try to sell anything and is just being monetized through ads?

Well, first of all, even content marketers who give away free content and are just making their revenue from ads, even if they are selling something. It might not be immediately obvious, but they are selling themselves.

What they’re doing? They’re selling the idea that:

1. They are a credible resource in the marketplace
2. They are an authority and expert
3. They are trustworthy

For example, on YouTube, what they’re really selling is the like and the subscribe button. They want to create so valuable videos that people are going to subscribe to our channel and come back for more videos.

Bloggers want their readers to bookmark their articles, share their blog posts, or forward them to their friends in an email and that should really be the purpose of your free content as well.

However, if you are a business coach, consultant, or course creator, you must collect leads and schedule calls.

That’s why at the end of your free content you want to give away more free content and you give it to them in return for their name and email address.

Two Common Strategies

Two very common strategies right now are that people sign up for your email list or that people join your private Facebook group.

Once they’ve signed up for your email list or they’ve joined your private Facebook group, you want to continue giving them more free content that helps them that’s valuable and positions you as a generous expert and as a trustworthy source.

Now, what’s really happening here? To understand this, you really have to keep in mind the ultimate goal and purpose of content marketing.

The purpose of content marketing is that people see you multiple times and that you are creating several touch points with your ideal client before they have to make a buying decision.

I’m sure you’ve heard this metric before that says a stranger has to see you between seven and twelve times before they are willing to buy anything from you. And what’s the easiest and fastest way to get someone to come back to you again and again and again so that you reach those seven to ten or even twelve touch points?

The easiest way is by giving away helpful advice for free. And that is exactly the purpose of content marketing.

Now, if you never capture someone’s email address or if you don’t get them into your private Facebook group or even something like in your discord channel, then you depend on the platform’s algorithm to keep showing your content.

So let’s say you want to create seven touch points as fast as possible. If you’re creating YouTube videos then you will depend on the YouTube platform to push your content to the right people. And once they’ve subscribed, you will still depend on YouTube to keep showing your videos to your subscribers.

But once you have their email address or they’re in your private Facebook group, or they’re on your discord channel, once you can contact them directly, then you can keep sharing your best and most valuable free content with them.

So let’s say your ideal prospect hangs out on Facebook every day and now they’re in your private Facebook group. Then every single day:

1. You can share more content with them
2. Share helpful tips
3. You can even tag them
4. Send them a DM

Depending on how you’ve built that relationship with them. And now it’s only going to take you one to two weeks to create seven touch points with that person and they’ll get to know you, like you, and trust you much faster. That’s really how you need to think about your content.

If you want to attract clients and buyers online, you want to have a sequence of content that you can give away that is so interesting, intriguing, and valuable that you can create between seven and twelve touch points very, very fast.

Once you have built that relationship with your prospect, that’s where you can invite them to schedule a discovery call with you if you’re a coach or consultant, or that’s where you can start introducing them to your paid products.

If you’re a course creator, I’ll give you a quick exercise to get started with this.

1. Take a piece of paper and write down the three most common problems that your clients usually have.
2. Now, for each of these problems, ask yourself what is the next step once that problem is solved. So for example, one of the biggest problems that my clients have is generating leads online. Once that problem is solved, the next one that pops up is how to convert those leads into more clients.
3. Then ask yourself again, once that problem is solved, what’s the next problem that pops up for them?
4. Go through each of the three problems. Keep asking yourself what’s next. And then what’s next and what are they facing as a new problem?
5. After that, write down the sequence, and then at the end of it, compare all three and see which one has the longest sequence.
6. Pick the sequence that you like best or think would be the most helpful to your potential clients.
7. Use that for your content marketing sequence and create those touch points much faster because now you will have free content.
8. At the end of that piece of content, you can already tease the next free part in the sequence.

The next free part is going to be highly relevant to your prospect because it’s going to be the next problem that they’ll be facing.

Usually after the first or second piece of content, that’s where you want to ask people to opt into your email list or join your private Facebook group in return for the next piece of content in this sequence. And that’s how you do it.

That’s how you get started. That’s how you can leverage content marketing and giving away free content, but still purposefully guide your readers and viewers to your discovery call, eBook or online course.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll be happy to answer your questions in a future episode.

.And don’t forget to subscribe on my YouTube channel, @creategrowprofit