Marketing & Sales: Understanding The Content Marketing Ecosystem Playbook? To Drive Revenue For Service Businesses

Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. To do it properly, you need to build it into your marketing strategy from the get-go. You also must be realistic about your resources, why it's important for your business to focus on content marketing, and have a clear vision of what success looks like in this arena.

Many marketers & businesses struggle to do content because of a lack of understanding regarding what content marketing is, and how it can drive revenue for their operations. There are so many myths about the process of content marketing and each person has a different opinion on it. The main reason why many businesses fail to leverage the full power of content marketing even after spending thousands on this initiative and having several teams of content creators, writers, and agencies, is that they don't understand what a focused approach to content marketing really is.

Imagine if you had a guide that could help you organize your efforts for creating killer content. That would make your life easier, right? Well, The Content Marketing Ecosystem Playbook does exactly that!

Today, I'll walk you through The Content Marketing Ecosystem? Playbook framework-a roadmap used by our clients and ourselves today. Will be sharing this has yielded success for those that have implemented it.

If you are still reading this, then you are interested in creating content that drives sales & revenue, and not just the fluff.

This playbook has worked for SAAS,Fintech,Tech consultancies,independent consultants,and online businesses.So,if you are wondering, "Tanya.are you really offering a "trick" or are you helping people to sharpen the techniques in their toolbox?"

I personally do not believe in tricks, which I would often refer to as tactics. Tactics are fleeting, they can come and go, however, strategy based on fundamentals, PRINCIPLES, remains and are a lot more fluid. This approach is primarily rooted in principles.

It is about you actually getting the manufacturing pass to create strategies and techniques. Because let's be frank, a technique that works today, might not work tomorrow. This playbook works fantastically well when leveraging digital marketing, but I assure could work just as well offline, because it is based on the fundamentals of marketing, not trends.

It is a well-established fact presently that Content is the most e?ective way to drive revenue, increase sales pipeline,& generate high project win rates & Closing rates resulting in high-income months for businesses

Here are the major problems though

Many businesses end up churning out content like a fax machine, writing every day on Social Media, podcasting, and giving value,& outside of likes, comments, and saves, it is a sloth to generate revenue, they aren’t seeing a return on investment

Sometimes even with a somewhat marketing system that works, the problem becomes the hand o? process between marketing & sales. This breaks down leading to you having leads but being unable to convert them

The content marketing ecosystem playbook eliminates all this by infusing sales into marketing, but also adding a content-selling system within its sequencing that doesn’t send prospects running for the hills. This system is all about speed, simplicity,& driving revenue

To understand how it works, we need to understand the marketing funnel

If you aren't familiar with what a marketing funnel is, a quick crash course here. An article by https://sproutsocial.com/glossary/marketing-funnel/ explains it as follows

A marketing funnel describes your customer’s journey with you. From the initial stages when someone learns about your business, to the purchasing stage, marketing funnels map routes to conversion and beyond. With careful analysis, a marketing funnel lets you know what your company must do to influence consumers at certain stages.

When you have this firmly under your belt, you can potentially drive greater sales, more loyalty, and stronger brand awareness.

Here is the kicker, a lot of businesses have a purely sales-led approach to generating revenue, primarily focusing on the bottom of the funnel, so much so that the activities that drive brand awareness and consideration are the ones that they deem frivolous, however, look at all the brands you are aware of, they all invest heavily at the top.

I want to draw your attention to the following. There are 3 functions that drive your P&L statement, Finance, Marketing,& Sales. Without marketing, you definitely can make sales, but your potential for growth becomes heavily hampered.

Let me illustrate, If I say Luxury brand for nouveau richer, your mind immediately goes to Gucci or Louis Vuitton. From Asia to North America, back to South Africa, you will notice that trend.

Do you think that is a coincidence? No, these are deliberate moves by the brands to associate themselves in that manner.

Back to our argument, so, you are able to generate revenue without doing brand awareness activities or influencing the purchase, however, not only will closing deals feel like pulling teeth if you know what you are doing because marketing enables sales to be easier, but I am making the assumption that you know what you are doing. If you don't, it actually results in a lot of time and resources wasted

So, how does the content marketing ecosystem playbook enables sales?

We primarily identify your economic buyers, The ones who are most likely to purchase from you, which allows you to configure the conversation to speak to them explicitly. After this is done, we are able to bring them to us by hacking the traffic.

This program leverages content at all 3 levels, thus allowing you to develop brand awareness and affinity while shifting beliefs that could hinder you and your prospects from doing business together

Why content though you may ask?

It has been said that people love to buy, but hate to be sold

The content marketing ecosystem playbook is about hacking the sales process by having the sales conversation subconsciously. A famous study by behavioral psychologists mentioned that sales often trigger ?ght or ?ight in prospects. Essentially, they feel threatened

The content marketing ecosystem playbook allows you to have the sales conversation with the prospect in a non-threatening manner

Why it works really well?

I mentioned that sales have proven to trigger a “?ght or ?ee” reaction in people. This results in them having their guard up & tuning you out. Furthermore, B2B buying has changed. B2Bbuyers now want to be able to do most of the buying on their own, without a sales Rep presence, unless they request to speak to one

Think about it

How many times have you clicked on a video on YouTube on a subject, and when an ad for the same subject, by someone else popped up before the video started, you clicked “skip ad”.This is because subconsciously you have programmed yourself to tune out sales messages

So, to counter this, you need to be less threatening. The content marketing ecosystem playbook is about leveraging these opportunities where you are less likely to be tuned out to put your o?er in front of them, thus giving you a chance to persuade your prospect to do business with you, instead of them shutting you out

This is a holistic, TRADITIONAL marketing approach that focuses on product, place, price, and

promotion: The entire marketing mix. Coupled with a targeted focus on who are we selling to, what are we selling, and positioning it properly in front of our Ideal Clients

The content marketing ecosystem playbook is a system that accounts for the fact that entrepreneurs & executives' time is valuable, so reversing the funnel and putting the content out there helps them identify key elements of the problem and desired outcome

It ensures that whatever time they eventually spend with a sales consultant feels valuable because it simply becomes a matter of helping them understand the solution will help them achieve the desired outcome. And they are happy to have the sales conversation because they raised their hands to possibly work with you. This marketing approach takes control of way more of the customer’s journey. It moves the buying processes at scale in a manner that still feels personalized to individual prospects.

This is so that when buyers are coming to your website, booking appointments or demos, they say “I would love to talk to you about x o?er, can I speak to someone or book a demo".So instead of you cold dming, cold calling, or cold emailing prospects trying to get them to buy or have a meeting with you, you bring them to you asking for the meeting, and this increases your win/closing rates by 40% at the least because people are pre-sold on you and what you o?er

So, in SUMMARY, Creating a ?ywheel with your marketing that is focused on acquiring leads, educating,& pre-selling them on your o?er, its bene?t,& how it solves their problems

What needs to be understood here is that since content is the currency of the web, we will soon all be media companies. Our small and medium businesses will have to act like media companies to maintain a competitive edge. Most small and medium businesses don't realize this.

If you need more indication that people are going this route, look at what's happening in digital marketing. Big brands are dropping millions of dollars on digital advertising and branded content because it works. They're doing it because it works, not because they have money to burn. This is not a novelty you can choose to seat out. You do it, or you crash and burn.

Since we established our own content marketing strategy, we have been able to increase our sales conversion rate by 40-50%. We also increased the number of clients acquired through word-of-mouth and social channels by 75%, and most importantly, we were able to generate leads for clients at a cost 4x cheaper than any other marketing channel.

The Content Marketing Ecosystem Playbook? is a practical and clear-cut system that's a step-by-step guide to creating an effective content marketing strategy – which includes a detailed strategy map, if you would like guidance in possibly deploying this strategy and playbook in your business, book a consultation here to speak to our team

About the author

Tanya Kabuya is a Business Coach and Marketing strategist who works with people of influence such as?speakers, coaches, entrepreneurs, authors, consultants, and SMBs to amplify their marketing?message and increase their impact while remaining true to their core.?Her work centers around teaching her clients to leverage content & social media to create a client acquisition system that attracts premium clients and opportunities.?She is the Founder & CEO of Wizz Digital Academy, a digital company that aims to equip consulting firms & Independent consultants with the skills to market and sell their services with ease. Book a?consultation here ?if you require assistance

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