We are going to be talking about putting together a content marketing funnel today. It is pretty exciting if you like creating content, writing content, all of that fun stuff. My weekend was largely consumed by content because I was trying to figure out what the hell to do with it. I ended up being five hours’ worth of video material from these live streams.
Do I put them as blog posts? What I figured was why not just do a content marketing funnel video and detail how I am doing this thing, leveraging the content that we’re creating now so that we’re able to get traffic for it into the future.
That is the topic of today’s presentation.
- Content marketing funnels
- how to use your content marketing funnel, to turn traffic into customers, clients, and all of that other fun stuff.
First of all, if you have any questions, make sure that you are on our Facebook page. I know this is streaming to the profile too, but let me just grab the link here. All right, this is the page where you can go stream this thing and then ask questions. We have, right there, on the page you should be getting the link. If you are anywhere else other than the page, but whatever. Facebook.com/doneforyou.
The material that we’re going to be covering on today’s presentation, you can go ahead and grab the checklist here. The weekly checklist which we call GSD Growth Plan details some organic traffic. Then also some paid traffic strategies so that you can start to dial in your content marketing funnel without necessarily it feeling like content marketing really. You’re able to turn it into free traffic through the search engines. That is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
All right, it’s called the GSD Growth Plan, and here is the page. Basically, it’s just an opt-in box. You can hit the download now button, and fill in your email You’re going to get a PDF called GSD Weekly. This has been up for a while and this is the antithesis of the idea of these GSD dailies. I started putting together these checklists for clients to use in doing their stuff.
This particular one was weekly content plus email, plus a paid ad checklist. What should you be doing every week to add organic content, to add content, do the content marketing for your business so that not only are you attracting customers right now, but you’re attracting customers for the next weeks, months, and even years, so that you don’t ever have a slow down again?
Realistically, even at Done For You, we ranked for thousands of keyword phrases, hundreds of them on are in the top first page of Google. Really, really high-level keyword phrases. Sure there are ebbs and flows, I mean, sometimes we have good months and sometimes we have down months and sometimes we get a spike of traffic and then not so much. But at the end of the day, we can turn off all advertising and we still get lead flow.
We still get volume, we still get visitors, we still get people who are coming in and it’s all because of the content marketing funnel that is there. There are over 400 blog posts, and I wrote some of them, not all of them, we outsourced a lot of them. At the end of the day, these live streams, yes, I mean, we’re able to train people that we don’t necessarily know. I’m able to give some tactics and some strategies and to help guide you and others through this digital landscape so that you can sell your product and sell your content and all that other stuff.
Basically, make the transition from a physical location to a digital one. But at the same time, we’re able to transcribe that video/audio from your content marketing funnel, which leverages it now into the future. Not only are these videos training videos that we can throw up on the blog post, but I also turn it into a podcast Saturday. There is a GST Daily podcast, which is being approved in iTunes now. All of the live streams have gotten transcribed.
All of those are going to be added as blog posts, as podcasts. Literally, this 30-minute session is going to turn into 4,500 words. 10 sessions are enough for a book. It’s mind-blowing to think about, but when you’re able to leverage content that way, then it makes the rest of the process a whole lot easier.
Really, I have 30 minutes a day into it, and then I have some time in going through the transcription and posting the videos. For me, getting the workflow down is the biggest issue, the biggest thing. Because once I get the workflow down, then I’m able to optimize the workflow and then start posting stuff. We’re just going to jump right into it.
Now, the first thing I want to go through is just this checklist. We’re going to kick over into this. Basically, what you want to do is expand your reach through your content marketing funnel. It allows you to attract prospects into your world, into your wheelhouse, into your space, your website, without necessarily needing to spend a lot of money.
If you start with live streams, then live streams like this, or even videos that you upload to social platforms, you’re able to engage the people who you already know, your existing network, and then those people may share it with other people. You’re able to start catapulting and growing your network a little bit on social, which, doesn’t cost anything. If you’re able to spread your message and teach and train and do the things you’re passionate about, then you’re able to start to tap into people outside of your existing network right now. That’s the beauty of live streams.
Now, that content in your content marketing funnel has incredible value, not just in the format that it’s recorded in because right now we’re streaming to two groups, one page, one profile which is mine, and then one YouTube channel. We’re able to leverage those five different places, and everybody’s screaming, everybody’s receiving the same content. Ideally, those live streams, you should do three a week. Five is a little much. I mean, five is hardcore. Even this morning, it hit 10:00 and I was like, “Oh geez, time to go.”. I would definitely do three a week, and if three is a little much for you, just do two. But you need to do a couple.
I was actually reading a news article the other day by a big YouTuber and he said that his secret was doing it at the same time. The consistency was key. Consistency, showing up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11:00 AM or 3:00 PM, whatever, was the key to him unlocking his subscribers.
He’s made as much as $170,000 in ads on one video. That video was how to drive a Tesla for $86 a month or something. A financial management kind of YouTuber. Consistency apparently is key. I’ve even seen that, since we started doing it at 10:00, five times a week, then people are showing up at 10:00 to watch these things in one of the channels or on YouTube or whatever. Being consistent is crucial.
Now, each of these videos needs to be transcribed for you to unlock the words that you’re saying. Because Google, does pick up audio, so it does rank the posts in your content marketing funnel based on the words that you use, which it transcribes out of your audio, but you want to make sure that everything is transcribed as well.
Otter.ai is a really great, free transcription software. I actually just learned of this one not too long ago from Ryan Adele’s book. A computer is a thing that is actually doing the transcribing. The um’s and the ah’s and the breaks and all that other stuff actually plays out.
Now … see, um. As soon as I say something, then I just repeat it for the rest of the live stream. But anyway, the one that I use all the time, I really love, is rev.com. Rev.com is human-based transcription. It’s $1.25 a minute and it is phenomenal. What I’ve found was, Otter is great for your five or 10-minute videos that turn into blog posts because it ends up being a thousand words. But when you have these half an hour-long live streams, like I have been doing, it would probably be best just to jump right on Rev and pay the $20 or $30 to get them to transcribe it, because there are so many words that the humans are going to take out. Um’s and so’s.
It ends up being a lot more readable so that you can just copy and paste it, as opposed to needing to go in and basically do a full edit job on the words that you already spoke. Rev, really, really great platform.
Create a blog post using the content from a transcribed content marketing funnel. That blog post should have the video embed and the transcribed content. We’re going to go to Done For You and I’m actually going to show you this.
I was working on it this weekend. We go to the blog, then you’re going to see that this is a GSD Daily episode 04. It was two Thursdays ago was this particular blog post. What I did was I pinned the YouTube embed code up to the top of it and then I added a little button that sends them to, in this case, is a fully qualified lead VSL. It sends them to our sales funnel development page because that’s really what we’re talking about.
It’s not necessarily meant for the people who are watching live. If they want, we can go that way. Then I threw in a little banner for a lead magnet, and then down below is the video transcript. We have the video transcript and then we have all of the words. I linked up a good number of the keyword phrases that we’re trying to rank for.
This is, predominantly, a big ass block of text. It should be separated by subheadlines, I just didn’t have time to do it because I have 10 of these things now to get done. But ideally, what we’re going to do is someday in the future when I’m not quite so damn busy, what I’m going to do is I’m going to go through and add subheadlines, break these down and make sure that each of these keyword phrases is linking to other posts and articles in your content marketing funnel, outside I’ve done for you so that we really get the [linkatures 00:13:20] flowing.
But as of right now, this is a 4,000-word blog post that is going to rank for all kinds of keyword phrases. Eventually. Won’t now, it won’t tomorrow, it won’t in a day, but it’ll rank for everything in a month or so. Every day we’re spinning out one of these huge blog posts, these huge pieces of content, that we’re able to work with in the future, which, it’s awesome.
Now, we’re going to go back to the checklist. Make sure the subject of your blog posts includes the keyword phrase that your content is about. Before I posted this article, I went through and said, what is the phrase that I can use for this content marketing funnel? The phrase that I’m trying to rank for here is the lead funnel. The lead funnel gets a bunch of searches every month. It’s something newer, probably because of click funnels, so I make sure to use it heavily throughout this blog post.
We pasted the YouTube embed code in the blog post because Google owns YouTube. Usually, when you paste a YouTube video, you get a couple of bonus points from the organic traffic.
Then you paste the transcribed content, and then you format that transcribed content, including subheadlines, links to your offer, blog posts, and add at least one picture. I added a picture, I mean, it was a banner ad, I did not include the subheadlines. Also, I did include links to offers and other blog posts though. I also included an MP3 or MP4 file in the blog post which gets sent to the podcasting platforms. The MP4 file, which is hosted in Amazon S3, is linked in that blog post using the PowerPress Blubrry Plugin. PowerPress Podcasting Plugin for WordPress. This is the plugin that we’re using.
You add it to your WordPress site, you set it up, it creates a YouTube channel and all that other stuff. Done For You has two podcasts now, GSD Daily and then also the Done For You podcast. I added another channel and then I set that up inside this PowerPress. Now, let’s see, if we kick back, apply categories and tags, which I did, and then publish it. And then you want to share this blog post to your social profiles, which can be automated using Jetpack’s publicize feature. Jetpack is a free plugin for WordPress. It is created by the creators of WordPress. Now, once your content marketing funnel strategy is up and running, it’s fired up, we handle the second piece of this process.
I need to figure out a new camera set up or something. Once the content marketing funnel is live, then we figure out the next phase of this, which is the paid traffic. In the beginning, we talked about, when you leverage content, you’re able to spend less on paid traffic and still get the leverage without spending $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 a month on ads, you can still get a tremendous amount of leverage, both now and into the future, because you’re using the content, which is ranking in Google, and then it’s bringing traffic in the long term. The paid advertising strategy that we use is we …
Before we talk about paid ads, we want to get into the mediums. Create your live stream according to your ideal customer avatar. The person who knows nothing about your brand and is totally cold. They don’t know what your offer is, they don’t know what you’re doing, they don’t know who you are probably even. When you’re talking, you want to make sure that you’re relating to that end user who doesn’t know you.
They haven’t been pitched yet, they have no idea what’s going on. All they know is that they’re interested in your content and that’s really about all. That’s where the beginning of the know, like and trust factor comes in. It’s like dating, you don’t immediately walk up to a girl and ask her to marry you. You walk up to a girl and ask her out on a date. That’s the idea with the live streams.
Paid Advertising Strategy
Basically, we want to take that live stream and we want to push it out so. We’re attracting people who are interested in our message. People who like interests that we know our demographic likes, who do things that we know our demographic does, who searches for things that we know our demographic searches for. Then they start to learn about our content that way.
They go to Google and they search for a keyword phrase that is directly correlated to the content that we produced. In this particular case, they’re going to Google and searching for the lead funnel, or any of the hundreds of variations of the phrase lead funnel. Lead generation funnel, lead funnels, building lead funnel, lead funnel traffic, whatever. They go to Google, they search that thing, hopefully, we show up in organic, but if we don’t, we can always push the envelope and run paid traffic to this phrase.
Then they see the blog posts, the text, makes sure that we get a great quality score, and then the video bonds them to Done For You. They hit the button, they go off, they’re down the sales funnel development journey. They opt-in, they schedule a call, the whole deal. It is a nice content marketing funnel strategy that starts with content. Now, here, I’m not literally straight up pitching, “You need your sales photo, you need to blah blah blah.”.
I’m welcoming them into our world by giving them content and allowing them to learn at their own pace basically. And then they can take the plunge if they want, and if they don’t, that’s fine too. This paid advertising strategy keys into that particular skill set. Here, I’m just going to drop this PDF again. I’ll probably just slim this down, it might make the words bigger for you. No, it doesn’t.
All right. Does this work? No. Anyway. The live streams, we boost as paid traffic. Basically what we’re doing is we’re going out and we’re saying, “All right, anybody who likes this is going to be able to see this live stream.”. We might spend $10 or $15 or $20 or $30 a day on the said live stream. Most of our clients would do $250 or $500 a week promoting the live stream. What that does is attracts the people who are into that particular thing at the moment. We have a real estate coach, so he’ll record a live stream, we’ll push it out for the next week. Generally, anybody who watches more than 15 seconds of that live stream or through play, gets retargeted into the next offer. The next offer is the automated webinar signup. Sometimes it’s a lead magnet.
Basically, we’re using the live stream to pre-qualify traffic. Based on how much of that they watch, they get kicked into the next offer in the sequence. Now, sometimes if we have a big ad budget or whatever, we will actually make sure that they watch 25% of the live stream. That has worked out really well too. Oftentimes when we’re going directly for a sale and not necessarily a new lead, then we’ll go 25%, 50% of a live stream, or multiple live streams, so that we know that this is an engaged prospect. And then that they know who he is.
The cold traffic sees live stream, warmer traffic, people who watch 25% or more of a live stream. They visit the website. Also, they take some sort of an action over and above just seeing the live stream and then continuing to go. We then show them either a webinar registration ad or a lead magnet ad.
They get to download a lead magnet or sign up for a webinar, which is usually a video as well. That is usually just a 60 second to 90-second video that says, “Hey, thanks.”. Basically, it just starts a cold. Now any Facebook video needs to talk about the pandemic in some way and then shift it into the offer. You need to meet your traffic and customers where they are as opposed to what you think they should be doing.
Your hot traffic, anybody who watches, your webinar attendees, your shopping cart abandonment, all of those people. Retarget them into the next phase of your sales funnel. If they hit a product page or hit a sales page, then you want to send them into the shopping cart through a retargeted ad. Or if they sign up for the webinar, attend the webinar, and actually go all the way to the strategy session booking page, without booking a strategy session, then you want to invite them to book a strategy session. These are all things you can do with URL-based pixels inside the retargeting platform that you’re in.
Whether it’s Facebook Ads or ad role, you can basically say, if they go to this page but then don’t go to this page, show them this ad, which, sends them down the path even further. You’re always pushing them downstream. Those are the three levels of paid traffic that we end up playing with.
Now, Google Ads, we always try to get … 50% of ad budget should be Google. You want to manage your high buyer intent keyword phrases. These are multiple phrase keyword phrases, four words, five words, six words. Now with voice search, more and more people are actually using longer and longer keyword phrases, so you want to make sure to work with those. You have the same cold traffic and then retargeted traffic, sales funnel or marketing funnel, inside Google as well.
And then we finish it all up with email. They see the banner ads that are based on what they do as they go through your systems. They see the banner ads, but then when they opt-in for the lead magnet, they get emails about the webinar registration. When they are opt-in for the webinar, they get emails about the strategy session. On the same path that they’re seeing through banner ads, we make sure they’re moving down that same path in email as well.
It’s a cohesive effort. Now, this is a pretty intricate growth plan. I mean, you have your free content upfront. You have your paid traffic on the backside, your paid traffic promoting the live stream. So there’s a lot to think about and a lot to roll out here.
If you have any questions at all, go ahead and go to doneforyou.com. Fill out the little form, or you can go straight to setting up an action plan call with the team. It’s doneforyou.com/start. Now, this rollout plan can be intimidating. There’s a couple of things that you need to just be aware of and think about.
The first is, the primary piece that kicks this all off is the live streams or the videos. You, as the subject matter expert, as the expert, as the specialist, nobody can create the content better than you can and if it’s a five or 10-minute video that you deliver live through Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever, then you’re able to really connect with your end-users, your prospects.
The rest of this falls out of that video. Get your video transcribed so you will have content. You just literally embed the content in a blog post and then paste the transcribed video, and then everything that happens from an ad standpoint after that, there’s the boost button inside the Facebook page.
If you want to be more intricate, you can kick into the ad manager and actually set up the audiences and everything else. Take a little bit of action and it will tak you a long way. Organic traffic, you’re going to end up getting some search results that way, you’re going to get likes, comments, shares. People are going to share your content with other people, so you’re going to pick up some good viral growth that way.
You’re not going to get 22,000 shares because you said something witty on a live stream. At the same time, you’re going to be impacting people that you don’t know you’re impacting. You’re going to be helping people that you don’t know you’re helping. And that’s the point of this. That’s the point of organic traffic. That’s the point of literally showing up and doing what it is you do. Yes, you want to grow your business, but you want to make a difference, you want to make a change and a transformation. At the end of the day, that’s why we all do this shit.
If you need help, go to doneforyou.com/start. Make sure to download this growth plan. Just throw this in the comment section again. Tomorrow we’re going to be talking about something else cool. I’m not real sure. If you have any questions, go to doneforyou.com/gsd, and I will talk to you soon. All right, thanks. Bye.
