A Winning Content Strategy

I want your content marketing to win. I want it to look like the results I’ve helped startups achieve. I want this for you because it ultimately leads to a few outcomes:

• Your blended CPA/CAC declines

• Your top-of-funnel volume increases

• Your customers (and prospective customers) get more value from you

• Your industry respects you as an authority

So what do you need to do so that your content marketing efforts win?

The 3 Cs Content Strategy

I’ve tested and validated the simple-to-execute 3 Cs Content Strategy several times, both in advisory roles and directly. I’ve also validated this strategy with other content marketing experts who’ve led content strategy for proptech and fintech startups.

1. Create Audience

   • Create content that is directly aimed at solving your prospective customers’ problems. These are problems both directly and tertiarily connected to the problem your flagship product/service solves for.

2. Capture Audience

   • Increase the value of articles by producing forms, guides, templates, and other downloads in order to generate Marketing Qualified Leads.

3. Cultivate Audience

   • Tailor lifecycle marketing automation and sales communication to better understand the needs of your marketing leads in order to drive sales or to create Sales Qualified Leads and schedule product demos/sales appointments.

The Strategy Breakdown

Before we get into the specifics, I need to make a disclaimer. This is a strategy breakdown, and not a step by step on how to execute the tactics. This strategy is the framework your content marketing program should operate within. This article will not serve as a magic bullet; there is still much to dig into in order to run a successful content program.

Create Audience

Create Audience is exactly what it sounds like. This is done by creating content to generate inbound, organic traffic (that’s traffic you didn’t pay for by the click). Primarily, this is long-form blog content, but can include directories, hub pages, and other types of landing pages. Organic traffic generated from this sort of content tends to be people who are unfamiliar with your brand or product. This means you’ve got a chance to generate new traffic and increase your brand’s awareness.

When creating content for the purpose of generating inbound, organic traffic, the single most important thing to focus on is solving the most painful problems your prospective customers have. By creating content that effectively identifies and provides solutions to your customers’ problems, you will increase the likelihood of your content reaching the ideal audience.

One of the common pitfalls in content creation is failing to keep the core focus on the ideal audience (your prospective customer base). Many startups kick off their content efforts as if they’re writing personal blog posts. When it comes to generating organic, inbound business through content, the content should not be about you, your product, or even your company.

If your content creation efforts are solely focused on you and your business, you’re going to fail. The purpose of your content is to solve your customers’ problems. The benefit of your content is that it’ll make your business more successful.

We don’t have enough time today to break down the content creation process—trust me, it goes deep. To get started, begin with focusing on solving your customers’ problems. Start with writing in-depth articles that deal with one of the few problems your flagship product solves for.

From the point of content creation to the point at which you start seeing results can take time. That’s why it’s so imperative to invest in your content early on. It’s not unusual for it to take 6-12 months for a content program to demonstrate strength and create momentum. Consider the image below. This shows the number of keywords my content program was ranking for, from positions 1-10. It took some time, but this effort resulted in more than a 500% YoY growth in organic traffic. It also resulted in more than 300% YoY growth in SQLs.

Capture Audience

If all people do is visit your articles and then leave, the content program will ultimately be deemed a failure. There is some value in generating traffic alone, but that’s not enough to move the needle.

Capturing Audience is simply lead generation. These leads are commonly referred to as your Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). Usually these leads have only submitted their name and email. They’ve not likely indicated their budget, timelines, intent, or other important factors that would qualify them as true Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Although, you can collect that information upfront, however, that may reduce the overall number of leads you collect as you introduce friction.

Capturing Audience or lead generation can be done very simply. Some criteria to help improve your lead generation:

1. Make sure your content (article, hub page, etc.) delivers value in solving a problem it promises to solve for.

2. Make sure your lead form promises additional value related to the original problem and is able to deliver on that promise.

That’s it. Lead generation is simply a value exchange and works well when prospective customers get the value you’ve promised them.

If someone is giving you their contact information, they will likely want something in return. Take a look at your blog pages and posts. Do you have a newsletter sign up? What promise does that newsletter sign up offer? Or does it just say “Join our newsletter”? I’m willing to bet that if there’s no significant promise attached to your newsletter form, your sign-up rates are well below where you’d like them to be. Promise value and deliver on it!

When successful with your content creation and lead generation efforts, the compounding effect overtime will help you amass sizable audiences. This is exactly what I’ve used to capture hundreds of thousands of marketing leads. Not to mention the additional SEO benefits you’ll get when you seed new content to rank (but that’s another topic for another day)

Cultivate Audience

The final stage in your content plan is one I see forgotten about all too often.

You’ll recall in the Capture Audience stage, we set up lead forms to generate marketing leads. This requires great collaboration between your content team and your lifecycle or email marketing team.

It’s great that you get some visitors who fill out your lead forms—but if you do nothing with that email, you’ve wasted the opportunity. The goal is not to simply generate traffic and get people to complete lead forms. If all you accomplish is those two actions, without ever generating demos or sales, then you’ll be stuck where you originally started.

Cultivate Audience is not the stage where I tell you to put every MQL into a 36 email and text marketing campaign that pounds leads over the head to take a demo for the next 15 days straight.

While I greatly admire persistent follow-up marketing campaigns (look up Ben Kinney’s 10 Days of Pain), cultivation is more than just follow-up emails.

Cultivation will vary based on your product offering and business model. It can include, but is not limited to:

• Regular communications via newsletters

• Multi-part sequences, based on the original lead form the prospect completed

• Automated and manual outreach from SDRs to understand need, intent, timelines, and budget

In all your communications, maintain a focus on solving your customers’ problems—regardless if the problem is directly or indirectly related to the problem your flagship product solves for.

Timing, headlines, images, keyword targets—yes, all of that is important. And if you’re unsure about those things, that’s OK. But so long as you remain focused on solving your customers’ problems, you’ll see improved results from your content marketing efforts following this framework.

Proptech News

• Habyt, an Airbnb-style platform aimed at longer stays and ‘flexible living,’ raises $42 million

• Safely (short-term rental insurance) raises $8 million

• Fundrise Innovation Fund invests $2 million into Jetty

• How DiversyFund acquired 30,000 customers during the pandemic (and why that strategy won’t work today)

• “I never felt that for Airbnb to win, hotels had to lose,” —Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb

Weekly Podcast Feature

Blueprint Micro Interviews Playlist

While at Blueprint this year, I was on site gathering thoughts from proptech leaders. These interviews are being released over the next few weeks, but you can catch a few interviews already live on the Tech Nest YouTube channel, as well as through any podcast player.

The above image will take you to the Tech Nest Youtube playlist, or click the button below to find and listen to these interviews on Apple Podcasts. Each of the Blueprint interviews are roughly 3-6 minutes in length.

You can expect more content like this in the near future. The next event I’ll be attending will be IMN’s SFR Conference in Scottsdale, AZ, December 4-6.

Have a topic you want to see written about next week? Submit your questions and suggested news links here or respond to this email.