forget going viral, focus on this instead

Summary

15 years of content marketing. two Inc. 500 brands. 25,000+ customers in the fitness business. $30M+ in revenue. I’ve never been an expert at social media and I’ve never gone viral. the strategy is simple, evergreen, and most people skip it because it isn’t sexy.

content is deposits. sales are withdrawals. you can’t withdraw before you deposit. most people try and the business dies in three months.

phase 1 is the strong base, built on three pillars: content, delivery, marketing.

content as deposits.

• consistent publishing on a calendar (the 12-week rule).
• story-driven, so it triggers reciprocity and liking. people work with people they know, like, and trust.
• your website is the heart of the system. own the asset.

delivery.

• authority and consensus (Cialdini). put your numbers, your customers, and your wins where people can see them.
• email is the #1 channel. own it. don’t chase platforms you don’t own.
• the 2-to-1 rule: give twice before you sell once.

marketing.

• smart segmentation. find out who wants what before you sell to them.
• broadcasts, segmentations, and launches each have a job. don’t confuse them.
• offers vs products: the same product can be re-sold endlessly through different offers.
• plan 6 offers a year. that’s the long-game calendar.

forget viral. forget hacks. content + delivery + marketing. on a calendar. for years. that’s the whole game.

Transcript

: my 15-year journey in content marketing ($30m proven results)

I’ve been doing content marketing for over 15 years. In my B2B brand, we have hit the Inc. 500 two different times, meaning we are amongst the fastest growing companies in the United States. In my fitness brand, we’ve had over 25,000 different customers. And all revenue aside, that’s a lot of volume most businesses will never be able to achieve. And we’ve done it with one very simple content marketing strategy. And I’m going to give you the whole thing in this presentation.

So, I’m about to flip to a presentation. and it’s a little over 28 minutes in length and it’ll give you every single thing that I’ve done in the strategy we’ve outlined in our content marketing for the last 15 years. But here’s the deal. I’ve never been an expert with social media or anything like that. This is a very simple triedand-true method anybody can do.

: the simple content marketing strategy that built 2 inc 500 brands

It’s generated over $30 million of revenue for us. So if you implement this from start to finish, you invest the next 28 minutes of your life into actually learning and applying a strategy, you can have a business strategy that stands the test of time, is evergreen, and can absolutely grow your business. So without any further ado, let’s switch to the presentation. Enjoy. All right, we’re talking digital business today. So this is going to be phase one of the three phases that we’re going to go through.

So phase one is going to be all about building a strong base. So, we’re going to be going over content delivery and marketing and how these things kind of all work together and how you how we make sure you have a good plan in a digital business as a entire system because a lot of what’s being taught out there today is just how can we market, how can we sell and those are great tactics and strategies and I do think that you need to sharpen the axe on getting better at marketing and at selling things online and we’ll go over the email campaigns that you need to put in place and things that you need to be doing.

But ultimately, if you don’t have a strong base and you’re not doing some of these very simple tactics and ideas, you’re going to run out of steam and you’re not going to have a business that’s going to last for very long. Now, what I’m going over today is a lot of proven uh marketing strategies and things that I’ve been doing. But at the same time, this is pursuing mastery. This is building the really strong foundation of what you need to do to operate a digital business for a long period of time.

If uh you just want to broadcast and sell something to your email list every week, uh you’ll have a you’ll have a digital business for about a month, you know, maybe three months and then it’ll it’ll be over. You’ll stop making money.

: phase 1: building a strong base for long-term content marketing success

If you’re in this for the long game, do not skip building a strong base. And you build that strong base through content, delivery, and marketing. So, let’s get into it.

: why most content marketing fails (and how to fix it)

First, we’ll go over content.

: content as deposits: the core principle of sustainable marketing

Now content I like you’ll see in the white letters under content I call it deposits. So you got to think of your business as a as a deposit and withdrawal system. So every time you ask somebody to buy something you are withdrawing some of that social capital. Every time you provide them valuable keyword valuable information that helps them improve their lives in some way that is that is a deposit. The more deposits you put in, the more likely you will be able to take out a withdrawal.

And what a lot of content or what a lot of marketers are doing in the online space is they’re only ever focusing on that withdrawal piece. And that’s the sexy piece. What can we sell? What’s the new Facebook campaign? How do we market?

: psychology of content marketing: reciprocity & liking

But if you’re not on top of this deposit side, which is content, like I said, you’re not going to have a digital business for very long. So, this is very important and you need to make sure that you’re doing it properly. Now on the left there you’ll see uh psyche so reciprocity and liking. I’m going to have some psychological principles for everything that we’re doing in this phase. And I just want you to know that you know a great book the six principles of persuasion by Robert Chaldini.

Um so he has two great books I recommend. I think it’s uh persuasion and persuasion. Both phenomenal books. I highly recommend reading them because when you’re trying to foster an online community, how do you do that? How do you actually build a relationship with another human being without ever truly meeting them? How can that be done? So, when I talk about these psychological principles, it’s not something I researched and then I was like, “Oh, yeah. How do I trick people into buying stuff?” My research and the path I started to go down several years ago was how can I actually develop a relationship with another human being without ever meeting them?

How can I do that in my messaging? You know, what do I need to be saying? How do I get someone to like me? So, the two psychological principles you are hitting with content is reciprocity and liking. So, reciprocity is a simple one is you’re giving somebody something for free. All of your content should be valuable. It should be of use. It should be helpful. And you know, the more you give somebody, it’s just a psychological principle that, hey, if you keep giving me something, I might do something in return.

Like, say we were hanging out for a weekend and every time we went out to eat, you just you bought my meals for no reason. You’re just like, “No, I got it. I’ll buy it.” And say you bought I let you do that and you bought all my meals and then you asked me for something simple at the end of the weekend. You’re like, “Hey, man. I got to I got to move this uh refrigerator out of my garage over to my parents house.

Can you help me out?” Absolutely. I’m going to help you out. You know, there’s just these small principles that, you know, are in action in our brains at all times, even if we don’t really know it. Now, that’s the reciprocity principle. You don’t have to do anything or think about anything to have that principle in place. Reciprocity is simply you’re providing the content. So, just provide the freaking content. That’s what you need to be doing. Now, the liking piece, you do need to do something in your content because no one wants a robot providing content.

Robots providing content is not helpful. So, whatever you’re providing, if you’re just basically spitting out a research article, you know, or something that’s relatively boring, but could be helpful, that’s not that’s not getting someone to like you. And so, you need to throw in something to get people to like you. And that’s pretty simple, guys. Share personal stories. Let people know that you have a family and friends.

: how to build trust and connection through story-driven content

Let people know about your failures and successes. Add these kind of things into your messaging, into your content. Make sure you’re telling that story every time you provide content. And if I want to provide a story about or if I want to provide content about how to get stronger, I could just simply go out there, link to the research articles and the programs and say, “This is how you get stronger.” But if I have a story along with those research articles and programs and I’m like, “Hey, here’s what happened to me or here’s what happened to somebody.

Here’s my story. Here’s the full story about that.” And then I fit that into my content, people are starting to like me a little bit more because they know more about my story. they know more about my journey. So, make sure you’re throwing that kind of messaging into your content. And it might seem like a strategy at first, but the more you start providing content and start doing this, it’ll just be a part of your style and it’s something that you need to do.

So, that’s the psyche behind content is reciprocity and liking.

: the “no-fail” content publishing calendar (12-week rule)

Next, frequency. What is your no fail publishing calendar? All caps, no fail. So if you’re going to be doing content and then your content can be anything and it can be multiple forms. So if you want to write articles, if you want to do videos, if you want to do a podcast, whatever it is that you want to do, you need to do it and you need to stick to it. And I generally recommend that you stick to it for a minimum of 12 weeks before you decide that you’re going to abandon it and you don’t want to do it.

Not only 12 weeks, 12 weeks at what frequency? I recommend at a minimum once per week. So, say you publish whatever your content is every Monday, every Wednesday, every Friday, whatever it is. Now, you could publish multiple times. If you want to publish Monday through Friday, that’s great. But you need a no fail publishing calendar. And when I say no fail, I mean for at least a minimum of 12 weeks, three months, you publish something, some new form of content on like a Monday. and you don’t ever stray from that.

It is a no fail part of your business. So, if it’s once a week, great. You publish it on Monday. And I also want this to be published on your website. So, if you’re talking, if you’re thinking like, “Yeah, I’m going to I’m going to do some awesome Instagram post.” We’ll get into that.

: why your website is the heart of your content marketing system

We’ll get into that in the delivery section. I want all of your content published on your website first. Even if it’s going to go to Instagram, YouTube, wherever else, you need to think of your website as the main thing. Why? Your website is the only thing you actually own. Your website is the only thing you actually own. You think you own your Instagram account. You don’t. Facebook could decide that they want to shut down Instagram tomorrow and you would be screwed.

Same with Facebook. Same with Twitter. Same with YouTube. Now I don’t think these platforms are going anywhere but how they distribute your content and how they you know decide who sees it and who doesn’t see it you have no control over that and so you need to be publishing on your own website first then you can move to the social channels you need to think of these social channels as just a way to broaden your reach of your content not to only be your content.

So make sure you set a no fail publishing calendar. Write down what that is and do not skip whatever it is for at least three months. Next, your audience or niche. I’m I’m just going to, you know, if you want to talk to runners or whatever your niche is, you need to decide on that and that’s who you’re talking to. Don’t try and be super broad and uh, you know, I’m just going to take care of everybody.

My content is for every human on the planet. That’s a that’s a fast track to nowhere. So broad equals bad is the only message I want to get across to you.

: define your audience and niche for better content marketing results

Make sure you’re niching down to some degree. It doesn’t need to be like a super crazy niche. You know, underwater basket weaving who also likes to run and has three kids. Like, it doesn’t need to be that crazy, but broad is bad. So, make sure that you’ve niched down to a specific population and you know what your content is going to be about. That way, every time you produce content, you have that audience in mind.

: what makes your content different (and why people should care)

Now, the last thing, this is a little bit more challenging, especially early on when you’re creating content frequently, but who cares? Like, who cares about your content? Like, why would anyone care about it? What makes you different? There are at least a thousand people publishing the same message that you’re publishing. So, why would anyone or why should anyone care at all? Now, this is not a mandatory checkbox here, but I really want you to, you know, sit and think about it and even write a statement down if you have one.

But what makes you different than other people who are like you? Why should anyone care about your content versus someone else producing the same type of content? Answer that question and you will be on your way to success, more success with content than most other people ever achieve. All right. Now, building that strong base, let’s get to delivery.

: content delivery: turning posts into real reach

So, the delivery piece here, the psychological principles that we’re hitting is authority and consensus. So, I’m assuming if you’re providing content, you are some sort of authority in your space. uh whether that’s through a degree, whether that’s through a certification, you know, whatever it is that makes you able to say the things that you want to say. And if uh if you are venturing a little bit past your scope as an authority, then your authority becomes your story, you know, or your results that you’ve gotten for people.

But you need to make sure that’s known when in the delivery of your content. And this is fairly easy. You can provide this in your email signature. If you have letters next to your name, put it in your Instagram bio.

: authority & consensus in content marketing (cialdini principles)

Uh things like that. Just making sure people are aware that you’re not just some random person on the street spouting off nonsense. Now, consensus, when you are delivering your messaging to people, let’s say through email, you need to let them know that other people are doing this, too. going back to that content delivery your content like what kind of stories can you weave in about Fred who’s done the same thing or Johnny or whatever getting you know they’re kind of like uh masked testimonials even if they’re not your testimonials you could be like a majority of people do this and this is how you fix that problem.

So once people know that you’re an authority and that other large groups of people are doing the same thing or doing the same thing improperly and you’re going to fix it, it gets them more on board with uh going down the path with you with whatever information you’re going to provide. So in the delivery, make sure that you are you’re not you’re not beating people over the head with authority. It’s just subtly in there. Like I said, email signature, something like that, and that you have a consensus.

You’re talking about other people who have done it, large groups, so on and so forth. Now, what is the frequency of your delivery? So, big picture, what is delivery? If I write an article on my website, I need it’s out there, right? But most people don’t like this is this is not, you know, early 2000s, late 90s where people are like just can’t wait to read your blog and they go and check your blog. So, if I write an article, I need to I need to deliver that article now somehow.

Remember content goes on the website first. So how do I do that? Well, here’s where I could provide a video go, you know, briefly describing the article and putting a link to it in YouTube and saying, “Hey, go check out this article.” That’s one distribution or delivery channel. I can now put the same like a modified version of content on Instagram and tell people to go click the link in my bio. I’m delivering that now through Instagram.

I can do the same on Facebook. So what is the frequency of delivery? And it can be different of content frequency. So if you and the reason I say that is if you produce four pieces of content per week, you could do one newsletter as your delivery method and like one social media blast and not have to do it every single time.

: content distribution frequency & delivery channels explained

Like here’s kind of like a roundup of the all the content. If you are a heavy content producer, you don’t need to email someone every time that you have a new piece of content. You don’t need to be like, “Yeah, I create something every day, Monday through Friday, so I’m going to email them every day.” You could, but you might get burnt out. I don’t think it’s something you’ll stick to. So, what is your frequency of delivery?

How often? What are you going to do? And so, that’s just something you need to decide on. What is your frequency of delivery? So if you write an article, if you if you decide your content is going to be uh a podcast on Mondays, when do you deliver that? Do you deliver that same on Mondays? Let people know.

: the #1 content marketing delivery method: email

It can be that simple. Or you can make it more complicated. And how are you going to get it out to those distribution channels? Now, what is your no fail method of delivery? I’ve spoken about this in the past, but for us, it’s email. Going back to what do I own? I own my communication with people who have given me their email address because Facebook can’t decide who sees and who doesn’t see the message. People are in charge of that when they open their inbox whether they want to see my message or not see my message.

So my no fail method of delivery is email. Everyone’s going to get an email when I have new content and I provide new things. So that is my no fail method of delivery. When I say no fail, what do you think that means? It means no freaking fail. That means it happens no matter what. You do not miss it. If you guys knew the numbers or you tracked the numbers on like email marketing, like for me, I send out a weekly fiveline Friday.

Everything’s trackable about that through different software that I’m using. So, I know the ROI of every email. Now, it’s a long term. It’s not like I send an email on Friday for my Five Life Friday emails and I make $1,000 that day from that from that email. But the ROI over time turns out to be a lot higher than you would expect. So for me to miss, you know, there’s 52 weeks in a year. For me to miss one of these Fridays cost the company several thousand dollar.

So I don’t fail. I don’t miss my five line Friday emails.

: real roi of email in content marketing

They happen every week. And you need to start getting into that same mindset. What is it that if you want to if you want to have a digital business, your delivery like if you create new content and you’re delivering that out to your audience, this isn’t something like if you get around to it or a nice to do. This is absolutely something you have to do. It’s part of being serious in digital business. What is your no fail method of delivery?

I do highly recommend that. The first piece being email. Next would be social. So if you are big on Instagram or whatever, then what is your what is your publishing calendar? How are you getting that content out there? Like I said, website first and then you go to Instagram. So, is it daily? Is it weekly? You know, how are you going to do it? So, and decide which social channel you’re going to be on. You can’t be on all of them.

That’s time consuming. Which one do you want to own?

: why you should own one channel: not chase them all

Is it Instagram? Is it YouTube? Is do you really primarily want to stick to your website and email? You know, that’s what we’ve done is website and email and very we have social presence, but it’s not something that we focus on. Um, and so yeah, and you can go a long way with just your website in and email. So decide on your no fail method of delivery. What’s that going to be? Email, a social channel, etc.

And now we can move on. All right. Lastly, going on to marketing. Okay. So you see that I have marketing here stated as withdrawals.

: content marketing = deposits; sales = withdrawals

And I mentioned earlier that content is your deposit. Marketing and sales um in the con in the digital space. I’m not going to really get into sales. It’s all kind of just marketing to me because content marketing can sell things without you even asking to sell them. Uh so that we don’t need to kind of differentiate the two like you would in other spaces.

: the 2-to-1 rule: give twice before you sell once

So marketing is your withdrawals. This is where you’re asking people to buy things. People don’t generally like it. You know, people don’t if you’re asking every week for someone to buy something, that would be annoying. And you don’t want to be that person who’s always doing that. So, we’ll talk about some brief strategies on that. But my little rule of thumb is also there in white. For every withdrawal, every time you ask to buy, you must provide at least two deposits.

And so when you start thinking about that, it might change your marketing efforts a little bit more. So if you’re like, “Hey, I’m going to blast my email list and say, hey, buy my new awesome product or course.” Okay, you’ve done that now. You now owe your audience two valuable pieces of content that can help them. So just think about it. Start thinking about it like that. that would that would give you a loose framework for having a marketing calendar because if you’re on this content roller coaster and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to ask people to buy something.” Now, you’re forced if you follow the rules to provide more valuable content.

So, I’m going to start down here at the right segment nearly always. So, talking about having a business for a long time, not burning out your list. So, there are broadcast emails. You might want to write this down. There are broadcast emails where you’re just broadcasting everyone on your list. Say I have 10,000 people on my list. Who am I going to What am I going to communicate to all 10,000 of these people at a time?

: smart segmentation for effective content marketing campaigns

The first thing would be content. Everyone on your list gets content. It’s free, awesome stuff. Everyone gets it. So, if I have a 10,000 person list, all 10,000 people get my awesome content. The second thing that you’re going to broadcast to everyone else would be a segmentation campaign. And the third thing is going to be a launch. And I’ll get to that in a minute. So the third is segmentation. So, if you have something that you want to offer, say I have a squat program, I would send out an email, maybe with some content, maybe just as a question, and be like, “Hey, I am putting together this awesome course on squatting, and I’ I’d love to know who’s interested in this information.

Click here if you are.” It could be that simple. Most email uh service providers now will let you know who clicked on what and you could probably tag them based off of that click. So, say I broadcast to 10,000 people, hey, are you interested in learning more about squatting in a squat program? Say 1,000 people, which I think would be high, but say 1,000 people clicked on yes, I’m interested in learning more about this squat program.

So, when I go to sell this squat program, I’m not going to send it to all 10,000 people. I’m only going to send it to those 1,000 people who said they were interested. Because if I ask you if you’re interested, and then I send you something to buy, but you said you were interested, then you’re not going to be offended by that. And this keeps your list alive for a long time. Because if you always want to be selling something, like I said, you’re going to burn out your list.

That’s not what you want to do. If you want to segment, nearly always, really, it’s like 90% of the time, nearly always, you should segment your list before you try and sell something. This is also going to help you realize if what you’re offering is a good idea. If I had 10,000 people on my list and I said, “Hey, putting together some information on a squat program. Click this link if you’re interested in hearing about that.”

: broadcasts, segmentations, and launches: when to use each

Well, what if one person out of 10,000 clicks on that? Do you think that’s something I should even worth pursuing? I should do you think it’s worth pursuing? Something I should do? something I should spend time on? Probably not. So, it lets you know if you should press forward with a marketing campaign. Uh, and it also lets people opt in to hearing more about that information. So, you’re going to broadcast content, you’re going to broadcast segmentation emails, and then the last thing is a launch.

And that’s why segmentation is not always and it’s near nearly always. So, if you have a new big thing, a new big product or course, um, everyone needs to hear about it. You know, if this is a big thing that you’ve been putting together for a long time, you want everyone on your list to know about it. It’s a big launch, you can do that. So, you know, sending three emails, getting trying to get people to buy your brand new thing, you email all 10,000 people, you know, over the course of the week, trying to get them to buy, that’s fine.

That’s like a once or twice per year type thing at most.

: how to write content marketing emails that actually convert

Once or twice per year, could you do a full-on launch, email everyone, here’s what I’m buying. Otherwise, you should be doing segmentation and then after people are segmenting, you’re asking those people to buy. Now, how often should we be doing this? And really, I think you should be running a marketing campaign segmentation um every month. and then trying to sell something every month. But I’m going to challenge everyone in right now to only do six. Um, and it’s not something you absolutely have to do, but it’s it’s something I want you to start wrapping your brain around.

Now, going back to scarcity and consistency. Scarcity is something that you’re going to want to put in your marketing campaign. So, let’s say we have now segmented people. They said, “Yeah, I’m interested in this squat program.” Okay.

: using scarcity & consistency in content marketing campaigns

When you email that se segmented portion of people about your squat program, you’re going to say you have to put a time limit on it. This is not fake scarcity. You’re not trying to trick people, but you need to put a time limit on it or else there’s no reason for someone to take action. So, is there a discount for a certain amount of time, you know, like, hey, this is going to cost $200. I’m going to do it for $149 for the next 5 days.

If you’re interested in getting involved, get involved now. And now there’s a scarcity reason. like people are like, “Oh, well, uh, if I want to get that discount, I have to take action.” Or it could just be, “This thing is closing. Hey, I’m getting 50 people into my new squat program. After I got 50 people in there, I’m just shutting it down. Don’t know when I’ll open again. If you’re interested, please get in the program.” There has to be a reason.

So, scarcity is another is a psychological principle you really need to work in to your marketing. And it needs to be authentic scarcity, not fake scarcity, not like, you know, yeah, this is discounted for the next 5 days, but then people were like, oh, it’s always discounted, so they were lying. You know, that kind of goes against some of the psychological principles of like liking we talked about earlier. And then consistency goes with segmentation. So people are people in general, they want to do what they said that they’re going to do.

So if you’ve segmented them and said, “Hey, are you interested in squatting?” and they said, “Yes, I’m interested in squatting.” And then your messaging for selling would be like, “Hey, you said you’re interested in squatting. Here’s some a course on squatting.” People want to be consistent with their behavior. They’ll be more likely to buy if you segmented first and you make sure that the psychological principle of consistency is there because they want to do what they say that they said they would do.

So, those are the psychological principles at play here in marketing. Now, the six offers. This is kind of your assignment. I want you to put together six offers. Something that you could run across you could do every single um every other month actually. So we’re not going 12. I think it’s too aggressive. Now there’s a difference between an offer and a product and I want to be real clear on that. If I have a squat program that is a product, I could create six offers around that one product.

So an offer and a product are different. Now, if you have a bunch of different products, that’s fine, too.

: offers vs products: the secret to re-using content to sell more

Then you can have a bunch of different offers. But if you only have like three products or one product, you need to think of different ways you can offer this product. And that’s normally adding something of value to it. So, it’s like, hey, I have the squat program and I’m going to sell it in January, but the offer is going to be, you know, get a 30-minute phone call with me plus the squat program for this much.

That’s an offer. That’s like a bundle. and then I’m going to try and sell it again in the summer and the offer will be, you know, get the squat program plus my uh my shoulder program uh for the same price as a squat program. Now, you’re you’re technically selling pro two programs, but you’re really trying to get that squat program out the door and you have a new offer.

: plan 6 content marketing offers per year (the long-game strategy)

So, there are a lot of ways just think about how you could um add value. So, write down all the products that you currently have. If that’s one, that’s fine. You know, if it’s multiple, that’s fine. But then start thinking about different ways you can add value to that product to have different offerings. Because what I would love for people to do is if we were to work on just a monthly calendar, and that’s something we will develop, but January, say you do a big launch in January, February, you do segmentation.

So you’re like, I’m going to I’m going send a couple segmentation emails, see who’s interested in squatting. March, I’m going to sell to this people who got segmented. And by the way, in segmentation, it’s not one email. You typically have to send like three or four emails to make sure these people are segmented properly. And so March, uh, you so February, you segment. March, you sell to the segmentation. And all this time, you’re still sending out content on your on your calendar, you know, whatever every single week, whatever frequency you’ve decided on.

: phase 1 recap: content + delivery + marketing = a business that lasts

And then say April, you um you could do another segmentation campaign. Maybe you want to do another launch. It’s up to you. You’re now into the second quarter. In the first quarter, all we’ve done is one launch, one segmentation campaign, and then we’re selling to uh you know, people who said they were interested in something. And you maybe you could even skip April and then go to the next. But you’re going to go segmentation. And the goal is having up six would be the max for what we’re doing right now.

So six different offers you could you could do throughout the year and when they would when they would be done. So if that’s that’s a launch great. If it’s a it’s an offer of this for segmentation product that’s great too. Just start thinking about those and then we can start building our marketing calendars and that kind of will be the next step uh after you’ve kind of wrapped your head around all of these things. All right, that is building a strong base here in phase one and that’s content delivery and marketing.

And we’ll head to uh phase two and three after this. Uh but this is where we start.