How to: marketing content for your products and services

Here’s the exact system I use to generate ideas and plan the marketing, lead nurturing and sales content for my products and services.

You can create your own copy of the Google Sheet I use here.

Real-life example

As I’m writing this, I’m finalizing a product called From 10 Questions to Compelling Lead Magnet. This is a mini course that guides you, step by step, through the process of creating a self-assessment style lead magnet.

This issue of The Weekend Solopreneur is a chronicle of how I generated and planned the content that supports this product. (If you see any of my articles or marketing for this product, you now know where it started!)

My tools

I use a simple Google Sheet to capture my ideas. This is what it starts out as:

Product name in the top, and 5 columns for the buyer’s journey. (There’s a link to copy the spreadsheet in the online version of this article.)

The buyer’s journey

Each buyer goes through a number of stages in their journey before they buy (or not). One popular model is the AIDA sales funnel - I use a slight variation to this I call UAIDA.

• Unaware (they have a problem)
• Aware (that they have a problem)
• Interest (in us and our solution)
• Decision (which one to buy)
• Action (making the purchase)

In each stage, our buyer will be asking themselves different questions.

The Unaware stage

In the Unaware stage, our buyer doesn’t know they have a problem - so they’re not even asking questions. Our job is to educate them that they may have a problem.

We can use this knowledge to craft some questions or topics for content. For example:

Note that at this point I’m just writing down ideas. The second to last one, Lead generation with a lead magnet, is potentially powerful because everyone needs more leads.

The Aware stage

In the Aware stage they know they have a problem and they’re probably using Google to figure out what they can do about it.

To see what they may be asking, I open Google and type in “lead magnet” - here’s what I get:

Google’s search engine anticipates what I may be looking for, and suggests the topics people are most looking for. This is pure gold and goes straight into my spreadsheet:

Note that I’ve added one of my own that was not in Google’s list.

The Interest stage

At this stage our lead knows about us and our solution. But they’re also probably looking at other solutions, so we have to let them know why our solution is better (and even unique).

The questions and topics we can address include:

I noted that I have potential duplicates in the list. That’s OK - at this stage I’m just gathering ideas.

The Decision stage

Our lead is now deciding which solution to buy. One of the most powerful things we can do is to tell them how unique we are, so this goes on the list. And all the other features and benefits in our product go on the list as well.

The Action stage

Our lead is ready to click the buy button. What can we tell them to overcome their fears and objections?

As you’ve probably hear me say before, offering a choice is one of the most powerful things you can do to make a sale. I’m thinking of three options.

I also remind them of the money-back guarantee and that they will have instant access.

Oops, I missed something

This is a live chronicle, so I just realized that I didn’t include testimonials (I just added it to the live version of the spreadsheet).

What now?

We have a wealth of information. It’s time to decide what to do with it. Here are my initial thoughts:

I do most of my marketing through content marketing. These are articles that go on my website and get cross-posted to Medium and LinkedIn.

For the first three stages, I will be writing a number of articles. Not every entry on my list will be a standalone article - I may combine topics into a single one.

But just at first glance, there’s 7 to 8 articles waiting to be written.

I will use snippets from these articles to create posts on LinkedIn. These posts are scheduled through Buffer, and I will keep track of which ones work well so I can re-post them (or slight variations) about 6 to 9 months after they went out.

The other content will go on my sales page, and I may even create an email course to see how well that converts.

What I have now

To summarize, here’s what I have now:

• Seven to eight ideas for articles to support the Unaware, Aware and Interest stages
• Content that has to be included in the sales page to support the Interest, Decision and Action stages
• A reminder that I need to gather testimonials (I’m running a small beta program at the time of writing)
• Ideas on what versions to offer
• A source for ideas for LinkedIn posts marketing

Two lessons you can learn from this

The first lesson is obvious: if you don’t have a system to create the marketing, lead nurturing and sales content for your products and services, this is one you can adopt and adapt for your own needs.

But there’s one more thing:

A product will only be as successful as the quality of the marketing, lead nurturing and sales that supports it.

Even an average product will do well if you pay attention to everything that precedes the sale.

Hope this helps.