Make Funnels Yourself

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Is this money or marketing?

Much has been written about the pros and cons of the short-form video explosion.

In short (pun intended):

PROS - Better reach for new creators, more views, easier to produce.

CONS - Harder to build a loyal audience, monetizes poorly, needs high output.

As for long-form, the long and the short of it is (pun intended):

PROS - Monetizes well, builds strong fandom.

CONS - Harder to make, requires a lot of metadata, hard to build initial audience.

And finally, we disappear into the world of ephemeral video (pun intended):

PROS - Creation in near real-time, less 'premium' pressure, links out easily.

CONS - No content longtail, no licensing, little discoverability.

So what should you focus on as a content creator?

Completely depends on your goals!

But it's extremely important to understand where to focus your primary energy (the money) and what's in service to building that brand (the marketing).

In digital marketing, we call these 'funnels', or ways we drive customers to our objective.

For example, let's take the following scenarios:

??? You're a podcast creator where your audio content gets huge downloads and strong brand partnerships. You also post video of your podcast on YouTube for the AdSense dollars, to increase the value of your podcast sponsorships, and include links to your Spotify episode in your description box. You have shorts cut down from this content for TikTok with CTAs to download the episode. Behind-the-scenes moments on Instagram Stories and Snap also link to the audio.

In this case, the audio asset is the primary money, YouTube is the secondary money, and the rest is the marketing.

?? You're a fashion creator on YouTube, where brand deals make up most of your money. You post links to LTK in every video for affiliate revenue. You also take beautiful pictures of each outfit for Instagram and Pinterest, create cut downs for shorts platforms, and shoot some quick verite content for IG Stories, all with link-in-bios to YouTube.

YouTube is the primary money, LTK is secondary, the rest is marketing.

? You're a TikTok prankster getting huge views, and your revenue is all about song promos and D2C shout outs at scale. You don't bother with long-form content because output volume is key. You post those shorts on every platform, all with pushes back to your TikTok.

In this case, TikTok is your only money and everything else is marketing.

And in all of these cases, you can become a millionaire. But you have to keep your focus by moving your audience where you want them to go.

What's money and what's marketing?

Then optimize your content strategy to your goals on each platform.

If you try to make everything the money, you'll lose focus on the platform or two that move the needle.

If you make everything marketing, you'll never be able to sustain your business.

If everything is both, then every platform is unlikely to do particularly well at either.

Funnels can get extremely complex. For example, if you have your paid marketing strategy lead sto an e-mail list that leads to an Instagram Page, that in turn leads to your Shopify store, which leads to a sale. But most creators have the advantage of using platform algorithms and creator features to do their dirty work.

Start by simplifying, then you can do the complex stuff later.

So my mission for you: think hard about which platform is your primary money, if you have secondary money, and whether the rest are pushing marketing.

Do you know? If not, look at your revenue mix and it should be pretty clear.

Then think about the strategy of each platform and ask yourself, "Is the current strategy optimizing for the primary objective?"

If not, time to focus your strategy!

That took 2 minutes. You have 8 minutes left. Funnel your energy into growing 1% right now!

Thank you to our sponsor DoubleJack!

If the house always wins, it's time to be the house!

DoubleJack is an iGaming platform that pays the majority of platform earnings back to influencers who refer users to the platform. And if you're a management company or agency, you can make bank referring your creators to the platform.

How much? Here's a calculator to help you find out! https://doublejack.club/agency

Stop waiting for brand deals and make your own by joining DoubleJack today!

About the Author

Phil Ranta, is a 2021 LinkedIn Top Voice in Innovation & Tech and has been creating content for the internet and building internet businesses professionally for nearly 20 years, starting on MySpace and riding trends to the present. He was the Head of Gaming Creators, North America at Facebook, the first network lead at Fullscreen, the COO at Studio71, and spent 10 years as a working comedian (including 2 years on cruise ships). He's a husband, a dad of two littles, and an insufferable digital media wonk.

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