Consultant Marketing Simplified—Step Two: The Content
Now that you’ve chosen your goal—your end game—and have walked it back through reverse-engineering, it’s time to talk about content and how you can link it all together so there are many points where people can engage you. (Refer to Step 1 if you haven’t yet.)
So if selling books is the goal, in the books I give the reader free access to the online Passion Course or the mini-courses. In the Passion Course they get a Creative Guidance session for free as well, so they get to work with me. On that call, I will inspire them to their passion-led future, and help them wherever they need help. Since the online Passion Course will be a relatively similar journey, the biggest value they’ll get is the coaching session with me.
Here’s an outline:
Starting point: Amazon Kindle book (with a magnetic title designed to increase search results, will need research and testing)
In the Amazon book, provide a discount code to the Passion Course or a mini course, and they get the course for free because they bought the book
Make sure your content dovetails into the freebie you’re promoting in the book
Have a value-ladder in the freebie product. For example, people can purchase one-on-one Creative Guidance sessions with me as part of their Passion Course engagement, even though they may have gotten the course as a freebie from buying the book.
But the financial side can be backwards. For example, the book may sell for $10, but if someone came to the site directly and bought the Passion Course, the investment would be $485. So that’s a bit upside down. So what’s an even better way? Go the mini-course route.
Mini-courses are a great way to drill down into a specific aspect of your client’s journey. For example, just like I would do with a book on Amazon, I can create a mini-course with video, downloads, audio etc., and have much more flexibility in the end-to-end production plus access to continually update the content as I get feedback from clients.
The value of publishing a book on Amazon it that is keeps your authorship relevant (I haven’t published a book since 2013—uh oh! LOL) and it also can provide a greater search audience, but also more competition.
Grab snippets from your core product for posts
From either the book or the mini-courses, select content elements/snippets and use them to brainstorm posts for your social media channels. You can take many different spins on one concept—even one sentence—to generate multiple posts and post types. The best part is you get to niche each snippet to your specific audience and the struggles they have around that particular concept.
Always have a call-to-action in each post that directs readers to interact/engage as well as give them access to a discount or other way they can make a purchase or sign up to your newsletter. You can do A-B testing on which converts the best. Using social media posts to propagate your content online is a great way to allow people to get to know what you’re about as well as help them solve a problem, or an aspect of a problem they’re having, even if it’s simply providing a different perspective that stimulates their own solution. You’ll become a valued resource they can follow and subscribe at the minimum.
As you can see, content posting linkage in this manner can be a two-way street. It can not only serve to showcase your expertise in how you solve problems, but it also invites new audiences to see what you’re about and lean in to subscribe, follow or purchase.
