The Founder Factor: Transforming Your Business With Great B2B Content

Are you tired of investing in content marketing that falls flat??

Are you pouring resources into outsourcing your social content, only to find it doesn't resonate with your audience or reflect your unique voice?

After 7 years helping professional service businesses build founder-led content marketing and lead generation strategies, I've seen this scenario play out pretty often.?

In this article, I'll share the methods behind creating authentic, founder-led content that truly sets you apart in a saturated service based buisiness market.

You'll learn why generic, outsourced content often misses the mark and how the poor use of AI is making this a bigger problem for service based businesses.?

I’ll also be covering how you can begin to develop a strategy that positions you as a thought leader, builds trust with your audience, and generates a steady stream of qualified leads.?

Whether you're a CEO struggling to find time for content creation, or you're outsourcing your content creation but know it's not working, this article will transform your approach to content marketing - Well that is the intention anyway!?

The Challenges Facing Service Based Businesses

Service based businesses often struggle to differentiate themselves in their market. Fact!?

Many rely on inconsistent referrals and reactive client acquisition, which presents challenges in building trust and demonstrating value for their essential, yet often complex services.?

This is particularly true when potential clients only seek them out during times of need - “The sh*t has hit the fan. Help us!”

For many of our clients, who are typically generating seven-figures and above, paid media is frequently ruled out as an option.

They just cannot compete with the budgets of their large, corporate competitors to make investing in a paid media strategy work.?

This presents a significant hurdle, especially in professional services, as smaller businesses struggle to compete against big corporations.?

For example, we work with an exceptional financial services company that often competes against the Big Four, as well as a number of financial software companies for new business.?

Recently, they've found themselves pushed down to page three on Google due to a software provider taking ALL the top spots through their promoted content.?

It's a tricky situation, as they'll never be able to financially compete with that level of promotion.

So what’s the solution?

The Power of Founder-Led Content Marketing

Our job is to help these businesses overcome competition in crowded markets and tackle the sometimes, inconsistent demand for their services.?

We do this by developing founder-led content marketing and lead generation strategies.?

This approach positions our clients as industry experts through the founder's voice, keeps their brands top of mind, and creates a steady pipeline of qualified leads without relying on the expense of paid media or sporadic referrals (of course, we recongise they are great when they come along though ??).?

For example, with our longer-term clients (12+ months) who have invested in a founder-led content strategy, we frequently observe leads in the pipeline converting to calls when the timing aligns with their needs—whether that's 6, 12, or even 18 months later!

However, we've learned that when it comes to creating founder-led content, it works better for some clients than others.

So why is this?

Generic Outsourced Content

You can't simply unload founder-led content creation to an agency, and expect it to reflect your brand.?

It doesn’t work like this.?

If your only input into content creation is a list of bullet points in an email every month, you’ll likely only get generic content back in return.

It won't have the personality and voice that you want to convey to the prospects you are looking to get the attention of.?

If you can’t allow even a couple of hours a month to speak with your content creation team, whether that is an agency like us or your internal team, you have to be prepared that your content will not build that founder-led, personal brand that you are looking to achieve!

The Importance of Consistency in Brand Voice

There's a common nugget of advice about being ‘the same’ everywhere.?

If someone reads your LinkedIn newsletter, your personality is consistent with when you meet them in person.?

The voice they hear when they speak to you on the phone, is the same voice they hear through your social media posts.?

This is how you build trust and relationships with prospects, and can go about building an engaged audience on social media.

You can't capture that level of authenticity without some time and effort, even if you are outsourcing your content creation to an expert.?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but you deserve the truth!

Market research agency TrendCandy conducted an interesting piece of research in June, interviewing around 800 B2B content marketers about their plans, worries, and goals for 2024 (check these guys out, they are amazing at what they do!).?

The top priority that emerged for B2B marketers is personalised thought leadership content (we can help you with this BTW).

Interestingly, the research also showed a significant discrepancy: while AI is increasing content volume (84% agreed) that marketing teams are sharing, 79% said that this content is actually ineffective.

So let’s discuss this, as it’s an important aspect of the conversation.?

The Rise of AI in Content Creation: Opportunity or Threat?

The rapid progression and growth of AI this year has been huge.?

I find it both scary and full of opportunity.?

Personally, I've seen content and copywriters writers react to this in various ways:?

• Some have disappeared (I literally cannot get hold of some of the writers we used to partner with).?

• Others have started using AI to churn out generic content.

• The most successful are learning how to use AI alongside their expertise in content writing in order to build and develop their service offering to their clients.?

It's not AI that's going to replace humans; it's humans who know how to use AI that will.?

I might get some t-shirts printed with this slogan!

Forgive me for forgetting where I read this, but this concept has really stuck with me and is one of the reasons why we've been intensively learning and testing different AI tools this year in order to create new (and better) service offerings for our clients.?

Our goal is to improve our operations and efficiencies and bring new, valuable services to our clients that will enable us to do more with less (I have another article in the works right now, which shares the exact process we use to create founder-led content with the help of AI tools).?

The Key Elements of Effective Founder-Led Content

But let's return to the main point: truly founder-led content.?

Our clients are CEOs of companies turning over a minimum of $1 million each year.?

They simply don't have the time or space (and sometimes inclination) to produce blog articles every few days, build YouTube channels, engage with every comment on their posts, or even write posts daily by themselves.?

It's just not realistic. But for their content to be effective and truly position them as thought leaders, there are certain elements that we've found make the content work:

1. Allocating time at least once a month to get together and discuss key content topics: When our client’s come prepared with subject areas to discuss, client stories, insights from team discussions…essentially, fuel for their content, it is awesome!?

2. Recording the call: When we have the audio from these content discussions, this allows us to fully create content for our clients in their own tone of voice using their phrasing, terminology and personality.?

3. Regular and timely reviews: Especially at the beginning of a new client relationship, getting feedback on content before it is out in the world speaking for you and your brand is priceless.?

4. Continuous feedback loop: Using customer feedback, social media engagement and discussion points for future content creation. If your ideal clients are talking about it, you need to be sharing your own views and opinions on it!?

5. Review the metrics: Do you have an increase in followers and connections on LinkedIn??

Are your posts increasing in impressions and engagement??

Do prospects refer to your social content when you are on a sales call??

How long have they been following your content before they hop on a sales call with you and your team??

These are just some of the metrics that will help you to review and refine your founder-led content strategy.?

Maximising the Impact of Your Content

This process ensures that your content truly sounds like you, helping your brand stand out and be founder-led, rather than sounding like generic content that anyone could produce through AI alone.?

From 60 minutes of audio recording, we can usually create two or three articles, repurpose these articles into a LinkedIn newsletter as well as several LinkedIn posts, use sound bites/ video clips across social media platforms, create a whole load of ‘tweets’ as well as infographics and other visual content.?

Common Setbacks and How to Avoid Them

When this process doesn’t work as well as it could, it’s typically when a client doesn’t allow regular contact time to discuss their content.?

With 7 years under our belt and a number of clients who have been with us since our infancy, we’ve got pretty good at learning what kind of content to create as well as how to communicate our client’s true voice and personality, without a huge amount of input from them.?

That being said, there is limited success in a “set and forget” mentality when you outsource your content and if you do not want to sound generic, you will need to invest time working with your content creators, for them to understand your true voice - ? so be honest about your own commitment to this.?

If you are considering how you can build a founder-led content strategy for 2025, you may be interested in our Q4 offer.?

We want to give you the opportunity to try our content creation process out for FREE.?

You book in a 30 minute call, come armed with a relevant topic to discuss, we’ll record the session and take you through our content consultation process and then provide you with one founder-led blog article to share on your website and social channels, as well as our content repurposing guide to help you squeeze out all the juice you can from one piece of content.?

You get some free content and the chance to experience the content creation process for free, and we get the chance to show off our skills.? Just message me directly on LinkedIn, and I'll share the link to book in!