BUSINESS STRATEGY

4 Elements Of An Effective Content Marketing Plan

Do you know why you create the content you plan to create?

So you publish a blog once a week and you post on Facebook every day, but what is your plan based on? Sometimes our plans are focused on the action we want to take, not the results we want from the action. The 4 elements of an effective content marketing plan force you to think about who you are actually speaking to, why are you creating the content you want to create, what the goal is of the content, and what you eventually lead to in order to grow your business.

4 Elements of An Effective Content Marketing Plan

IS IT RELATABLE?

I start every client call and every course I have by talking about how important it is to have a target audience (seriously, so important). If you're not relating to your target audience, you’re going to have a hard time selling anything to them. When you get inside the heads of the people in your target audience, you can really understand what they want, why they want it, where to find them, instead of just selling to them.

Take Action: Make sure you're connecting with your audience on a personal level in some way. Relate to your audience just like you would with a friend. You may be attracted to someone because you have a lot in common or because you are opposites and they are really knowledgeable in certain areas that you aren’t. If your audience is never saying things like, “I feel the same way,” or “You totally get me,” then they probably aren’t relating to your content and that’s a red flag.

IS IT ENGAGING?

If your marketing is boring or generic, you don’t have an effective content marketing plan. You need to be engaging your audience by giving them things to care about and helping them in some way. If you are just talking at them and not talking with them, you are not going to be engaging them in a conversation or helping them care about what you’re saying. So ask yourself, “Why should people care?” Any time you share content whether it’s a blog post or a post on social media, think about why people should care. Are you sharing just to share or are you sharing because you have something valuable or entertaining?

Take Action: Talk to your audience and ask them what they’re thinking. What do they want? Speak to a specific person, ask them a question or try to figure out what they might be thinking or feeling, and create content that way. You’ll see what happens when you create content that engages with a specific person instead of trying to appeal to a lot of people and hope someone responds. If you hear crickets, then you're not connecting with your audience and you need to figure out why that is!

[click_to_tweet tweet=”When you get inside the heads of the people in your target audience, you can really understand what they want, why they want it, where to find them, instead of just selling to them.” quote=”When you get inside the heads of the people in your target audience, you can really understand what they want, why they want it, where to find them, instead of just selling to them.”]

IS IT ACTIONABLE?

While engaging is figuring out the why, making content actionable is the how. Once people care about your business and whatever you’re selling, how do they take the next step to work with you or buy what you're selling? You need to tell them what is it you want them to do and how they can do it.

Take Action: Give your audience the call to action! Ask them to sign up for a free training, tell them to request a discovery call. With all the noise in the business space, it’s easy to overlook an opportunity and move on. You need that extra push of telling people what to do if you don’t want people to scroll away and move on to the next thing.

IS IT LIST-BUILDING?

If your audience is on social media, your blog, or YouTube, you don't own your audience the same way you do with an email list. Social media algorithms are always changing. Even if people subscribe to your YouTube channel or follow you on social media, they only view a very small percentage of what you share. But email? Everyone checks their email. More people are likely to see your content via your email list than any social media platform, average conversion rates are higher, and YOU are in control of your email list.

I'm definitely not saying other aspects of your marketing don't matter, but if email isn't a part of your marketing strategy I would seriously think about getting started now (sooner is better than later). #trust

Take Action: You should have multiple ways for people to get on your email list. Not everyone is going to be attracted to the same opt-in. The more ways you have for people to opt in, the more they are going to do it. It could be a free email course, a challenge, a checklist, or free training like a webinar. There are a number of ways to get people to subscribe. Your email list will build your relationship with your audience and lead to that ultimate sell.

Is it time to revamp your content marketing plan? Download my free content planning worksheets to help you get started!

What I learned from 4 launches in 3 months

Some of y'all may know that in March I started to shift my business from primarily client-based work to incorporating online courses and other more “passive” forms of income. I kinda hate the term passive income because (in my experience) A LOT of work goes into creating / marketing digital products, but it is pretty damn cool to literally make money while I'm sleeping. With that said, I still enjoy one-on-one client work and am (currently) not trying to replace it completely with other income streams. I've been getting a lot of questions about launching, so I thought I'd share a few lessons I've learned from launching 3 online courses + 1 membership during the past few months!

Fail Fast + Get Better

I'm somewhat of a chronic over-planner, but for some reason this hasn't translated to my business – and I'm thankful for that. Instead of spending months planning + agonizing over every aspect of my launch plans, I can go from idea to live sales page in less than a week. I set a “minimum goal” for pre-sales and once I hit that, I create + launch within 2-3 weeks. My first launch wasn't perfect. My second launch wasn't perfect. There's always something to improve or try differently the next time and I don't really think there's such a thing as a “perfect” launch.

My “plan” for the last 3 months was essentially, fail fast + learn + tweak + repeat. I actually closed the cart on my first launch + opened the pre-sale for my second launch exactly 12 hours later. I wouldn't recommend that timeline to anyone else (take a freakin' break y'all!), but if you've been planning your launch for awhile and haven't just DONE it already – make it happen. I wouldn't consider any of my launches actual failures – I hit my minimum sales goals every time, and I hit my target sales goals most of the time. I still haven't hit my “stretch goals” for any of my launches, but I'm continuing to grow my email list, try new strategies, and tweak my sales funnels.

Key takeaway: Assuming you have an audience (even a small one) – create an MVP and put it out there. You can always make it better, but you'll never know unless you just do it.

The More Specific The Better

I talked about how finding a niche made SUCH A DIFFERENCE in my first launch vs. my second launch in this post. And a couple of launches later, I still feel the same way. As long as you can find your audience and validate your idea, I think the more specific it is, the better.

It's a little weird because you'd think a general course on something like “Photoshop for bloggers” would attract more people than something really specific like “Photoshop for nomadic food bloggers in Europe” – but in that example, I'd bet most of the nomadic food bloggers in Europe get excited about the course because it's REALLY specific to them. If you create a generic product or service, you're probably going to have a lot of competition. And if you can stand out, that's great – but it's much easier to stand out when you're doing something that no one else is doing in a particular niche!

Key takeaway: If your idea is so specific that it makes you a little uncomfortable, that's probably a good thing.

There's A Good Reason I'm My Own Boss

I'm kind of a control freak. I prefer being in charge of (most) things because I know I'm picky about the way they get done. So it's probably no surprise I was never big into team sports (I was a competitive swimmer) or group projects (my “less-motivated” friends loved being on my team for group projects because they knew I would do all the work and just put their names on it).

When it comes to launching, I like to get a LOT done in a short amount of time. My schedule is a bit manic and I wouldn't impose it on anyone else. It wouldn't be fair. While I'm not great at delegating, I'm working on it. I love my VA but we basically just check in once a month so it's not like we're actively communicating all the time. And my solo webinars have all been more profitable than my joint webinars. It's not that I can't play well with others, but I'm just more comfortable working on my on terms. And that's ok.

Key takeaway: The “best” way to launch something is the way that works for you.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”There's always something to improve or try differently the next time and I don't really think there's such a thing as a “perfect” launch.” quote=”There's always something to improve or try differently the next time and I don't really think there's such a thing as a “perfect” launch.”]

FOMO Is A Big Motivator

I've done both open/close cart launches and evergreen launches. I've experimented with price increases, bonuses, upsells, downsells, bundles, etc. but urgency has been the biggest motivator for generating sales. Meaning EVERY time I send an email about an offer ending soon, I get sales. FOMO is real y'all. People don't like to miss out.

Limited time offers are your friend, but that doesn't mean you constantly have to have “sales” or discount your products / services – on the flip side, you can always give MORE value for a limited time by offering a bonus.

Key takeaway: Wish you were getting more sales right NOW? Launch a time sensitive offer.

It's Easier To Sell To Your Existing Audience Than To Find A New One

There are a lot of articles (and a few well-known courses) out there that will tell you that you don't have to grow your audience before you launch, because you can launch with a small audience and/or grow your audience while you plan your launch. I agree to an extent (you gotta start somewhere) BUT, from my experience it's easier to create something that your existing audience already wants, rather than find a new audience to buy the thing you want to create. For my first course – I chose my course idea before I had a targeted audience (don't do this). Even though I had over 1,000 people on my email list when I launched, but only about 300 were really interested in the course. I felt like I had to spend a lot of time trying to convince people WHY they would benefit from it, and in the end it didn't convert as well as well as I wanted.

For my most recent launch – I had quadrupled the size of my email list, and I also realized that I had over 1,000 people interested in a specific product, so I created a membership based on something that I already knew people wanted. I didn't need to convince people it was good idea, because they already wanted what I was selling. It was a much easier (and more profitable) launch.

Key takeaway: Give your audience want they want, not what you think they need.

List Building + Nurturing Is Sooo Important (So Important)

Speaking of email lists, it's worth repeating that while you can launch with a small audience (especially if they are SUPER engaged), list building is soooo important if you want to sell digital products and especially if you want to sell evergreen products. If you want to sell (and keep selling), you need to keep growing your list + converting more subscribers into customers. So if your list growth is stagnant, it taps out. BUT a bigger list isn't necessarily better IF it's not targeted. Meaning if 2,500 people opt in to your email list because you gave away free stock photos, and then you try to sell them a ecourse on Facebook ads – its probably not going to convert very well. So make sure your opt-ins relate to your paid products (or services)!

Key takeaway: Focus on growing your email list if you want passive income!

What's Next

So those are a few of the key things I've learned from 4 launches in 3 months – though there could easily be a part 2 of this post with even more of the technical lessons I learned from launching (comment if that's something you'd want to see)! Now that the year is halfway over, I've been re-assessing where my business is and where I want it to be at the end of 2016 so I can plan for the next few months. Even though I keep track of things month-to-month, it's been helpful to take a step back and look at my overall goals for the year.

If you've launched digital products, can you relate to any of these lessons? And if you're thinking about launching – what questions do you have?!

3 Tips To Keep Your Business On Track When You Get “Too Busy”

I was 100% not prepared for March. I told myself I had a “plan” but in reality, what I had was a really, REALLY long “to do list” and very little strategy in place. It can be hard to keep your business on track. So needless to say, I'm glad April is here because I need a breath of fresh air. Like literally. I did not leave my apartment for 6 entire days because I was buried in work.

Moral of the story: don't be like me. As I wrapped up some projects this week, I knew I wanted to get my sh*t together before the new month so I'm better prepared for April. I've always been a planner but I've found that as a business owner, sometimes it's honestly just HARD to plan for everything. New opportunities come up when you least expect it. Great ideas sometimes turn into bad ideas. 2 hour projects can turn into 10 hour projects. If you're not building in a cushion for your workflow, you're always going going going. (Note to self: build in more cushion)

While you may not be able to prepare for everything, you can prepare for some things. It's easy to let the “little things” slip through the cracks – but planning ahead can make your life SO MUCH easier. As I prepped for April I knew that even though it will be a little less crazy, I still need to make sure I have systems in place to make things happen. So here are 3 tips to keep your business on track when you get “too busy” to eat / sleep / leave your home like a real human being.

AUTOMATE

I'm not really sure what the world was like before technology, and I'm pretty thankful for that. For those of us that don't have time to be on social media all day (that would be everyone, right?), scheduling tools are the best thing ever. I use SmarterQueue, Tailwind, IFTTT, and ConvertKit to schedule / automate a lot of my social media and email marketing which is SO helpful to keep things going when you get busy with work, life, and the unexpected.

Obviously these things require some up front work to run smoothly, but I do find that it's much easier to spend a few hours scheduling things out in advance rather than trying to keep up with doing ALL the things every single day. One of the things I didn't do in March was schedule my Instagram posts in advance, so unfortunately I went silent on the platform for almost a whole week! I was still posting for Mochi and my other accounts, but @elledrouin didn't get a lot of love. I spent a couple of hours taking photos yesterday so I'm better prepared for next month, but I honestly took too many – so if you want 20 free, feminine stock photos – you're in luck!

[click_to_tweet tweet=”I know a lot of people are hesitant to invest in support, but if you really want to grow your business, there's no way you can do ALL the things. You just can't. People don't build empires on their own.” quote=”I know a lot of people are hesitant to invest in support, but if you really want to grow your business, there's no way you can do ALL the things. You just can't. People don't build empires on their own.”]

DELEGATE

Automation is definitely a time saver, but if you can actually delegate business (or personal) tasks, that's even better. I know a lot of people are hesitant to invest in support, but if you really want to grow your business, there's no way you can do ALL the things. You just can't. People don't build empires on their own. I have a virtual assistant who helps with design, a virtual assistant who helps with social media, and honestly most days, I feel like I could hire someone else just to help me keep up with my dog's emails. (Seriously, she gets a lot of emails)

PRIORITIZE

But here's the thing – I don't really believe in perfect balance. I don't actively seek it, because I don't think its a real thing. There just aren't enough hours in a day… even if you're Beyonce. I do think you can “have it all” – just not all at the same time. As Shonda Rhimes says, “whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life.” Meaning if I'm really focused on a launch or huge client project, date night is probably not happening. And when I'm enjoying a lazy night watching Bravo tv, I'm also trying to not feel guilty that I'm not catching up on emails.

But that's fine. That's just how it is.

You can't do everything, every day – but you can prioritize so you know that at least you're getting the most important things done every day. I use Asana for project management and I love it because it helps me plan ALL the things I need to do… but on a daily basis it can be a little overwhelming. I mainly look at my tasks using the calendar view and I think because I'm only focused on a few tasks per day and only looking at 1 week at a time, this really helps me feel less overwhelmed even when I know there are 1,000 other things I'd like to get done.

So these 3 things may seem like common sense, but if you're feeling overwhelmed in your business, it's a good idea to take a step back, refocus, and make sure you have the systems in place to keep things running smoothly. Last month would have gone a bit more smoothly if I had been on top of everything, but now I know better and can start April (and the second quarter, eeek!) on the right place!

What are you automating and delegating for your business? If you want to free up some of your time to focus on your work and not on your visuals, I'm sharing 20 free feminine stock photos that you can download below!

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