How to win new clients through strategic content marketing

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3
L
ike many people you may have
had a shock recently. Everything
that worked for site rankings
is now less effective. Trusted
methods, paths of least resistance
and tried-and-tested systems just
don’t do it any more.
Basically, Google has moved the
goalposts for good.
In the past, Google algorithm updates
have tweaked elements of how they
rank website. But those updates of
all been part of a broader strategy to
change the way search is structured
and delivered forever.
And right now we are in the endgame
of that change.
I work with online business owners
in several countries, and they are
all telling me the same thing. Link
building doesn’t work in the same
way it did. Spamming social media
accounts to create pure volume
doesn’t work as well. Worrying about
every minor detail of your on page
SEO and tweaking it until your head
explodes does more harm than good.
What has happened is simple. Google
is stepping up the pace of overcoming
the gaming of its search engine results.
Yes you can still game it to a degree.
Yes you can get short term rankings
through linkbuilding boosts and
fresh content blasting. But if you
want that hard work and investment
to last beyond a year, then you
need to give Google what it wants,
because eventually it will become
smart enough to spot the gaming and
exclude you for good.
Welcome

4
Time To Play The Game
And Reap Big Rewards.
W
ith the evidence clear, you’ve
got to adapt. You got to
change the weapons you use.
This means jumping on the content
marketing bandwagon. You may have
heard the term content marketing
strategy, in fact I’m sure you have if
you follow marketing information
sources online.
The problem is that the term “content
marketing strategy” is being massively
confused across the Internet,
resulting in many people making key
mistakes which are costing them time
and money.
In the worst cases their misguided
efforts are earning them over-
optimisation penalties, as well as
losing significant amounts of time and
money in the process.
For your website to be a winner, you
need to understand what a content
marketing strategy really is and then
invest time, money and effort in
developing it intelligently.
For your website to be
a winner, you need to
understand what a content
marketing strategy really is

5
Case
Study
Getting The Big Rewards:
Inside Out Development.
O
ne success story to highlight
the real results that embracing
a content management
strategy can have, is that of corporate
training firm InsideOut development.
Their industry was traditionally
reluctant to share information and
best practice, for fear of giving
competitive advantage away. However
Tiffany Franz director of marketing,
and her team began to realise during
2012 that they could no longer ignore
the results they were seeing in other
industries from implementing a
proper strategy for marketing content.
They worked hard to replace their purely
outbound, sales-based communications
through email with a far more integrated
and engaging outreach.
Using a strategy that involved four key
principles, they revolutionised the way
they marketed. The four principles
were to be bite-sized, simple, visually
compelling and unique.
Working hard to excavate genuinely
useful content from colleagues within
their own company and beyond,
that team targeted themselves to
deliver regular and consistently
useful content.
The results were significant, especially
in clickthrough rates from email
marketing. Where previously they had
just chucked marketing messages
at their email database, through
engagement they had, by the middle
of 2013 achieved a 20% higher click
through rate, an 87% lower opt-out rate,
and most amazingly, generated 388%
more warm leads month on month.
They did this by sending half as
many emails as they used to, but
by engaging more. Through a
mature strategy they had increased
their overall warm leads via email
marketing to 83% of their total
generated leads.

6
As you can see this is pretty
significant. What it took was a
dedicated in-house team who had the
time, experience and determination
to soak up the information
needed and turn it into a detailed
strategy for success that was then
implemented successfully.
But the first key step was recognising
that change was needed and then
going all out to embrace it.
Whether you can do this yourself
in-house, or through partnering with
a content marketing agency who
can deliver for you, is one of the
key decisions you have to make, but
success is within your grasp if you
embrace it and go for it.
The first key step was
recognising that change
was needed and then
going all out to embrace it

7
So What Is A Content
Marketing Strategy?
T
he first thing to understand is
a content marketing strategy
is not about writing content.
That may sound ridiculous, but
the key is in the word marketing.
You are developing a strategy for
marketing your content that will
lead to an increase in traffic and
conversion rates.
What many people are confusing
right now is the developing a content
marketing strategy with creating and
actioning a content strategy.
So before we go any further, let’s
make it crystal clear what we are
talking about here with these two very
similar terms.
Your content marketing strategy is
developed from your high level, guiding
business principles. Your business
objectives and goals drive the creation
of a detailed plan for marketing your
business through content generation
and dissemination. This is your content
marketing strategy.
Your content strategy is part of your
content marketing strategy. Once
you have created your overall plan
of attack, you then use your content
strategy to actually develop the
content you will market.
So it’s important to get this distinction
clear. Your content marketing
strategy is not about creating content,
it is a plan to unify, deliver and convert
through every single piece of content
you generate.

8
Your Content Marketing
Strategy Is Your Brand.
I
n the past few years Google has
been sending out louder and
louder signals about the need
to brand yourself properly and
uniquely. Matt Cutts mentioned
branding several years ago, and
there was a brief explosion of
people talking about the need to
create a unique and sustainable
identity for their online activities.
Unfortunately as the old ways of
getting business, spam, automation
and poor quality, was still getting
results, this message was lost on all
but the few people who could spot
that the writing was on the wall.
All of a sudden, towards the middle
of 2013, people realised that the
message they had been sent for
several years was now the only way
forward if they wanted a sustainable
long-term online business.
And that message is that you must
build your clearly definable brand
through a content marketing strategy
that expresses it.
You must build your
clearly definable brand
through a content
marketing strategy that
expresses it

9
Building A Brand Makes
Things Easier. Honest.
B
efore you develop your detailed
plan, you need to define your
brand. This means clarifying
what your USP (Unique Selling Point)
is. It means defining where you sit
in your niche and nailing down how
your offer is clearly different from
those around you.
Once you have understood exactly
where you are in the market, you need
to define and develop a unique voice.
This is the unique message you send
out at all times, it is the ethos that you
live and breathe that will flow through
everything you produce.
So your brand identity must drive
everything you do.
Having this clarity makes developing
and delivering absolutely everything
much easier. There is no confusion in
your mind as to what you are trying
to achieve and why. When you work
with others to produce your content,
it’s easy for you to explain your brand
because you have defined it so well.
And it’s not just making things easier
for you, the hard work of developing
your brand will pay off in the search
engine results in time.
The reason for this is simple, as
Google has been trying to tell you for
five years. Developing a consistent,
high quality online presence, that is
recognisable and widely discussed,
leads to legitimacy.
Legitimacy leads to trust.
Once Google trusts you, then it will let
you in through the golden doors.
So now you understand how vital
branding is for kickstarting your online
marketing, let’s go through the detail of
gaining legitimacy and how it gives you
authority right now.

10
Case
Study
How Driving Unique Branding
Can Bring Great Results.
B
efore we go any further, let’s
give you an example of how
creating a great brand, or
refreshing an existing one, can
bring results fast. Don’t be fooled
into thinking that branding is
something lightweight that doesn’t
really matter, it is the foundation
on which a successful marketing
strategy is built. Without branding,
you are marketing a company with
no identity.
Ironmongery direct is U.K.’s largest
online supplier of trade ironmongery
products. They have an online
catalogue of 13,000 products in stock.
Despite being a traditional industry,
with lots of competitors, they had a
unique position that they had built
up over many years hard work. They
offered next day delivery if you ordered
before 7:30 PM and a no quibble 30
day moneyback guarantee. That was
an unbeatable offer in the industry.
However, the company felt they were
still struggling with being seen as old-
fashioned. They also felt that website
and brand image did not reflect
the full product range and staff
knowledge proposition they offered
the general public.
So they worked hard to get some ideas
together for a full brand refresh. This
refresh would then be implemented
across the communication strategy
the company already had, which itself
would then be refreshed based on the
branding results. So branding driving a
content marketing strategy.
They changed their strapline to
“Masters Of Our Trade”, to better
reflect the values and expertise within
the company. The message was clear,
we are the best place to come online
for Ironmongery products and advice.
This refresh also included TV
advertising for the first time.
Year-on-year, profits increased 25%
after the refresh. That aim in the
next few years is to hit £50 million
turnover year.
So you can see, a carefully thought
out brand, marketed through an
intelligent content marketing strategy,
can reap big rewards.

11
Legitimacy Is The Key To
Google’s Golden Doors.
W
hen we talk about
legitimacy in your online
presence, we are talking
about you having a genuine,
consistent and high quality output
in everything you do. Put together,
every element of what you produce
online will link to form an obvious
and unique brand that delivers a
unified message.
There are several key elements to
convincing Google of your legitimacy.
Onsite this means content. It means
producing joined up content that
interlinks to create a truly useful and
original resource.
Your content needs to be high quality
and in-depth. It needs to address all
the key points within your niche in
a genuinely useful way. The content
needs to be produced on a consistent
and ongoing basis, not chucked up
once every six months. You need to
demonstrate you are an ongoing and
high quality destination.
We will cover this in more detail later,
but it means distributing your high
quality content via every available
media type. This means creating smart
content that can be “sliced and diced”
for marketing through all channels.
Offsite it means interaction. You need a
strong social media presence across all
the major social networks. And when
we say strong social media presence,
we are talking about a real one. With
high quality and regular interactions,
sharing and contribution. It doesn’t
mean building up massive lists of
useless followers to try and fake things,
Your content needs to
address all the key points
within your niche in a
genuinely useful way

12
it means demonstrating you are useful
and respected contributor.
Although this description of what you
need to do to achieve legitimacy is by
necessity brief and simplistic, once you
go down that path you will realise how
powerful it can be.
The reason for it being so powerful is
because it will create a growing army of
raving fans.
Once you have an army of raving fans,
then your search engine rankings will
really start to grow naturally. When
people like something they talk about
it, they link to it, they share it. Other
people marketing for you, free.
Google claims that social signals do
not directly affect page rankings in
the search results. However, the
the search industry noise clearly
demonstrates that there really is a
correlation between high quality social
presence, especially on Google+, and
increased rankings.
Whatever you believe, you have to
always keep in mind the new reality is
legitimate branding. Legitimate brands
interact in a high quality and consistent
way. It also means looking to the
future and seeing that the influence
of social on search engine results will
only increase, so at some stage you are
going to lose out unless you get ahead
of the game now.

13
Brand > Legitimacy >
Authority > Success.
W
orking hard to create a truly
unique online brand will
grow your legitimacy. The
more your legitimacy grows the more
you will be seen as an authority, both
by people and Google.
The benefits of authority are massive.
Authority sites, that used to be referred
to as “hubs” by the SEO industry, rank
strongly. The more you are seen as a
trustworthy source of information, the
more your authority will grow. That’s
why people clamoured to get their links
into Wikipedia for example.
As well as search engine growth,
being seen as an authority opens the
door to many opportunities. It makes
people see you as a valuable resource,
which leads to effortless growth in
followers and interactions on social
media. People come to you and want
to interact with you, where as most of
us are desperately trying to get the
attention of the gatekeepers and big
players within our niche.
It means those people will share our
content, across social media and
through their own sites. This means
natural link building and it means
growth with minimal investment.
• Authority sites are trusted
• Authority sites rank strongly
• Authority sites are destinations
• Authority sites get opportunities
• Authority sites draw people in
effort free
The problem with authority is simple,
it doesn’t come quickly, cheaply, or
easily. And this is why so many online
businesses are now in trouble. They
have thrown time and money at
the easier path of automation and
massive upscaling to get their short-
term results. However as each of
their campaigns gets slapped out of
the search results, they are finding it
difficult to now build and rank for the
long-term. The old methods don’t work
as well, and the new reality takes time.
So starting down the
path to legitimacy
right now is essential.
The sooner you create
a clear brand identity,
work hard to grow it
and get it seen as a
legitimate resource,
the sooner you will
see a growth in
your authority.

14
How To Develop A
Plan For Your Brand.
A
s with anything online, you
will need to do your own
research and create your own
path to a certain extent. However
there are key areas we can focus
on right now to help you develop a
unique identity – your brand.
There are two key areas you need
to focus on to undertake simple but
effective brand development.
1. Visual identity.
This is the most straightforward
element of developing a brand. This
is having a consistent look and feel
across all of your online real estate.
Your logo should be the same on
everything. It should be professionally
designed and reflect the niche you are
in. The logo should also display your
brand colouring.
Yes it may sound obvious, but you’ll
be amazed how many people have
no idea about colours as part of
their marketing.
Pick a set of colours that you will use
to brand everything you do. There
are online tools you can use to create
palettes of complimentary colours and
shades such as http://colllor.com/.
Although you may not even realise
it, you associate a website with its
colours. Take a look at some of your
favourite sites and you will start
to realise how this works and how
powerful it can be. It creates an
instant association in the mind, a
visual attachment to that website.
Linked with the logo, it can be a
powerful and instant recognition
across all media platforms that creates
emotional attachment to your brand.
2. Your core values, position in the
market, and key messages.
This is a combination of the intangible
and the tangible. The intangible part
is your values and key messages. This
is comes from inside you and drives

15
everything you do online. The tangible
part is knowing your position in your
own niche, and being able to market
your products to reflect that position.
Determining your core values can be
tough. But you need to make sure you
have this nailed down hard, because
doing so drives the consistent key
messages you want to deliver, which will
drive your content marketing strategy.
For example, if you are selling high-
quality gold widgets, then your core
values and messages need to be
around quality and luxury. There is
no point in positioning yourself in one
part of the market, and then delivering
a conflicting message.
So if your content partly goes on
about high-quality gold widgets, do
you want to muddy the waters by also
being involved in trying to sell mass
volume inferior blue widgets? Quality
is where it’s at, but volume is good as
well? Confused marketing.
So at the start of the branding process,
you need to nail down exactly where
you are positioning yourself within
your niche. Of course if you have set
up your online business as you should
have done, you will already have done
this through your business plan.
• What is my position within
the market?
• What is my Unique Selling
Point (USP)?
• What is my target audience?
• What core values do I have?
• What key messages do I want to
deliver?
Once you understand where you sit
in the marketplace, then you can to
develop fully your core values and
messages that will flow through every
single thing you produce in terms of
marketing materials. If you are not
100% consistent in the key values and
messages, you are creating confusion
which will lead to abandonment. Have
an angle and stick to it.
On top of that, when you fully
understand the market you are
positioned in then it will be easier
to position your content strategy
more clearly for that market. Using
language and structure that potential
buyers will look for and understand
is incredibly useful as it builds instant
trust. Speak their language and they
will accept you.
Now that you have a consistent visual
identity, a core message to deliver,
strong and legitimate values and
you are clear on your position in the
market, you are ready to develop your

16
The Basics Of A Successful
Content Marketing Strategy.
W
ould you like to hear
something truly
astonishing? Okay, here
goes. In a recent survey from the
Content Marketing Institute*
48% of the people who responded
said they didn’t have a content
marketing strategy in place at all.
This means, if we extrapolate that
data, that around half of online
businesses are yet to respond to the
changes in the search landscape. This
is despite the fact the writing has been
on the wall the three years.
So there is massive opportunity here if
you get started right now.
Your content marketing strategy
needs to be properly joined up set
of tasks and principles that drive the
content you produce for consumption
online. The goal is to make your
business one that delivers value for
people, making you a destination and
a resource that is recommended.
The first thing to understand is that
as with so much of what is done in
business online, there is no fixed path
to success. How you create, deliver
and further develop your content
marketing strategy is down to you,
there is no singular approach you
can take. There will be elements of
guesswork, intuition and correcting
errors as you go on the journey.
Expect things to go wrong early on
and accept they will, then react quickly
and positively.
You must not get bogged down in
detail, especially not initially. Your
content marketing strategy should
be a high level overview document,
driven by the branding we have already
discussed and the available resources
you have to hand. Add detail as it
develops and you gain experience,
don’t try and cover everything at once
or you will just set yourself up to feel
like you’re not achieving.
The important point here is to
start a proper content marketing
strategy now.
Now you understand what will drive
your content marketing strategy and
that how you construct and deliver
it will vary considerably, it’s time to
discuss some of the key elements that
will be in your strategy, regardless of
its structure.
*http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/02/small-
business-2014-content-marketing-research/

17
1. Determine what your key
content themes will be. Develop
each in detail, to act as a
springboard for each fresh piece
of content. Understand how
each content theme will lead
down a clear conversion path.
2. We will cover this in a moment,
but you need to understand
how the content you create
must be designed to be varied
in structure for dissemination
across all media types.
3. You need to do keyword and
topicality research, so that
you can ensure every piece
of content you produce ties
together tightly in the eyes of
both Google and the person
searching on the topic.
4. Understand clearly how the
person consuming your content
will go on a journey, which will
flow through your sales funnel
to conversion. If you don’t
understand the journey you
want them to go on, you can’t
expect them to complete it.
5. Know in detail what your
conversion goals are and how you
will measure and adjust them.
6. Have a plan in place to recycle
and redistribute your successful
content in variation, to squeeze
even more out of your initial work.
Know in detail what your
conversion goals are and
how you will measure
and adjust them

18
Understand What Real
Success Will Look Like
A
s you have just read, a
key consideration is to
understand in advance what
your goals are. How you going to
know what success looks like?
It is too simplistic, especially initially,
to measure your return on investment
simply through conversions or profit.
You need to break down your analysis
so that you can focus on a progressive
improvement of all metrics, starting
with those that seed conversions.
This will tie in to your goals. When
you create your content marketing
strategy, you should have a clear
idea of what your objective is. It may
be more money, it may be increased
conversions, it may be an improved
spend per conversion, or it might
be something less financially driven
(initially) such as increased social
interactions and followers or mailing
list subscribers.
So break down targets per channel
and then measure them in terms of
views, shares and clicks. What that
means is for each piece of content,
you will be aiming to spread it via all
media types and channels. You need
to track and measure how successful
you are being in each of these. Only
when you see improving metrics
for views shares and clicks, will you
then usually start to see a potential
improvement financially through
actual conversions.
Obviously in terms of organic
search traffic this can me measured
on conversions straight away, so
segmentation of your measurements
is the key.
If you focus purely on hard financial
targets with a content marketing
strategy, you will give up quickly.
There are stages to developing your
strategy that you need to understand.
You create the content, you build your
brand and trust, then you build your
conversions. Only when you get to the
stage of building conversions can you
really start to target improving them.
If you focus purely on
hard financial targets
with a content marketing
strategy, you will give
up quickly.

19
Case
Study
Content Marketing Is
Universal In It’s Potential.
H
aving a content marketing
strategy is vital to your
success whatever your
niche or industry. Don’t think that
because you are in “X industry” that
marketing through content delivery
won’t work. If people read your stuff,
then you can market to them, even
non-profit organisations do it.
An example of an unusual niche is in
the renewable energy sector. This is a
complicated and controversial topic,
which struggles to communicate clearly
and effectively. One company seems to
have done this.
SmartestEnergy is the leading buyer of
renewable energy from independent
renewable energy generators in the
UK. That team decided they wanted
to create a major piece of content to
build their leadership in the renewable
energy sector.
In 2012, they spotted an opportunity
to produce a piece of research that
would be of interest to anyone looking
to renewable energy is a sector. It took
them six months to collect the data they
needed, for publication of a new report.
The structure of the report was
deliberately light on, writing, focusing
instead on graphics and key facts boxes,
which could be plucked out individually
and used across any media source.
This was a clever marketing strategy, as
in effect it grouped together multiple
information structures for people to
pick from as needed.
A freelance copywriter and design
team were put together to write
the report from a fresh viewpoint.
They were particularly keen to
influence journalists.
That aim was to get 20 pieces
of mainstream media coverage.
The actual total was 54 pieces of
mainstream media coverage, from a
total of 506 downloads of the report.
As you can see, though the downloads
total was low, the content was so
effective in its structure, both for
an information and design is a
smorgasbord, that it generated an
incredible amount of publicity.
This is a clear example of one piece
a brilliantly structured “epic” content
delivering massive publicity that rolls
on and on.

20
Comprehend Comprehensive
Content Reach.
B
efore you get into the detail of
your content marketing strategy
development, you will need to
clearly understand the most efficient
way of distributing your content for
maximum return on investment.
To understand, you need to be made
aware of the huge lie most people
who jump into content marketing
currently believe.
They believe that content works for
content’s sake.
The message has been that tons of
content will drive rankings, because
of its freshness. This has resulted in
people churning out tons of poorly
targeted, obviously cheaply produced
content. It has created a logic fail,
which most people seem to be
completely ignorant of:
Unless you create content that
generates further action, all you’re
ultimately doing is paying to increase
your bounce rate.
So more is not better. One piece of
very high quality content with massive
discussion potential, will do more for
your business within the scope of a
content marketing strategy, than 100
“price of a beer” pieces will ever do.
And this is the key message in all of
this, so pay attention:

21
Focus your content marketing strategy
on driving content distribution, not
driving content creation.
O
ne single piece a brilliantly
crafted work, can drive your
entire content marketing
strategy for months. You do
not need endless content, just
the ability to know how to craft
content that can be marketed and
remarketed indefinitely.
The key to this is producing content that
can be reformatted for distribution, in
whole, parts or variation, across all the
major media types:
• Text (articles, blog posts, video
transcripts, audio transcripts)
• Video (YouTube, Vimeo, Vine)
• Social media (LinkedIn, Twitter,
Pinterest, Facebook)
• Audio (podcasts)
• Downloads (Ebooks,
whitepapers, case studies)
• Press releases
• Direct marketing (email,
newsletters, auto responder
sequences)
• “Smorgasbord” content that
contains multiple formats for
selection by the consumer
A piece of great content, written so that
it can be sliced and diced into a format
for all of the above options, can be
enough to launch your entire strategy
and maintain it for months.
Get somebody to read your piece by
audio, put it in an ebook, strip it down
with examples make a case study,
serialise it into an auto responder
sequence, get somebody to read it out
on a white background video.

22
And it doesn’t stop there. Aim to
reinforce success, exactly as successful
generals have in history.
Good generals learned never to
reinforce failure, but always to strip
resources from parts of the battlefield
where they were failing, and to instead
push harder for success in the areas
they were having it. Athough you
can never guarantee victory, you can
weight your chances in the gamble.
Monitor your content across all its
distributionchannels, and where you
see traction, put your efforts into
maximising it quickly. This means
learning how to juggle and it means
knowing when to drop one of the balls.
It means your content marketing
strategy needs to contain a clear plan
on how you will capitalise on success.
One word of caution. You know your
business and your market. So don’t
spend time and money spreading your
content through channels for which
it may be a poor fit. Facebook for
example is great for some markets, but
atrocious for others.
Ask yourself the question: why are
these people using this social media
channel? Don’t just look at the size of
the userbase, or the ease of access to
them, look at the content they love to
read and discuss and decide if your
content will be a great fit.
“Share the right content with the
right people, for the right reasons.”
Good generals learned
never to reinforce failure,
but always to strip
resources from parts of
the battlefield where they
were failing

23
Plan To Serve Up Content
For Easy Eating
T
he number of mobile devices
being bought globally is now
greater than the number of
computers being bought. On top of
that, the number of webpages served
to mobile devices now exceeds
that served to dedicated desktop
computers.
And you want more?
It is predicted that video traffic will
account for at least 55% of all Internet
traffic by 2016.
These basic facts should tell you
clearly which way the wind is
blowing. Adapting now will leave your
competitors all at sea.
When you are planning to hit multiple
channels, you also need to take into
account the devices they will be read
on. It is very rare for people to read
detailed content, such as an ebook
on a mobile phone, however they will
watch videos or listen to audio readily.
This means you need to consider your
delivery methods. If you are going for
video distribution, can the storage
location of your video cope with
demand? Is it third-party hosted or is it
on your own website?
• Are the locations your fantastic
content will be served from easily
accessible?
• Is your website fully device
responsive?
• Is navigation and paths to
content the same however that
content is served?
These are key questions that need
to be built into your preparation of
a content management strategy.
Understanding the channels you will
use and just as importantly how the
people who use them will consume the
content, is key to your success.

24
Content Strategy:
Create Great Content
T
he moment has arrived,
you now have two get that
fantastic content created. You
understand now how a single piece
of content can be structured for
delivery and redelivery across all
media types, to wring every last drop
of value out of it.
Now we need to discuss the key
elements of creating content that will
fulfil that aim.
1. More content is not better.
If you want to deliver boring and
mechanical rubbish that fails to
achieve any of the goals you set out
in your content marketing strategy,
then you will be a person who has not
understood the message that more is
not better.
This in part is a hangover from the
old way of doing things. Link building
was all about volume, traffic was all
about volume (endless blog creation
and article spinning). That is a mindset
that has infected content marketing
strategies, where volume of content
created is the goal rather than what
each piece of content can actually do
in terms of conversion.
So lets say it again so it’s clear: in the
beginning focus on one great piece
of content. A piece that hits a key
business message, that will generate
opinions and discussion, and that can
be broken down for digestion through
any channel you want.
2. Invest in your content.
Visit any marketing Forum online and
you will see people asking “Where can

25
I get cheap content?”, “Is five dollars
too much to pay for 500 words?”,
“How can I hire a reliable and
excellent writer who doesn’t charge
much money?”.
The above quotes are genuine
questions I have seen on the biggest
marketing Forum on the Internet. It
shows that people simply do not get
it. They are setting themselves up to
fail by focusing on the last thing they
should be focusing on: cost.
If the first goal in your creation of
content is costs virtually nothing,
then you can guarantee your content
marketing strategy will produce
virtually nothing in terms of results.
You might get lucky, but I’m sure
you’ve heard the saying “You get what
you pay for.” If you pay the price of
beer the 500 words, what do you
expect to get?
It will be frothy, and its effects will last
a few hours.
The obsession that will sink you can
be made even worse if while trying to
pay as little as possible you are also
obsessed with word count. Good words
work, bad words don’t, regardless of
how many of them you publish.
The person who is churning out this
content, and they will need to churn it
out in order to make enough money
per hour to live, won’t care. They won’t
care what your strategy is, and they
certainly won’t buy into it. The five
dollars they will just find something
online and vaguely fits the topic,
reword it, take the money and run.
You need to find a quality writer to
team up with. Someone who will buy
into your ethos, is have the brains to
understand what you are trying to
achieve, and who can be there for the
long-term as a strategic partner.
Those people are not cheap. They
don’t have to be expensive, but you
have to see the content you want to
distribute as an investment for your
brand, and that means developing
really high quality stuff.
As a rule of thumb, you should expect
to pay $15-$30 per 500 words for
exceptional content. Anything less and
every piece is a gamble.
Peanuts attract monkeys.

26
Can You Cut Costs
And Do It Yourself?
T
he moment has arrived,
you now have two get that
fantastic content created. You
understand now how a single piece
of content can be structured for
delivery and redelivery across all
media types, to wring every last drop
of value out of it.
Well, this could be the million-dollar
question. I would suggest that the
answer is generally no you can’t, for
several key reasons.
Unless you are a great all-rounder,
with years of experience, then you
really are going to struggle. No matter
how good you think you are, that
is taking a big risk with your time
and money.
You need to understand the
disciplines of writing. General writing
principles, how they are adapted to
the Internet and sales copywriting.
You need to understand how to
structure a piece. How to write
great headlines.
How to break the text up so that
scanning with your eyes allows the key
points to be taken in.
• It means understanding
how writing for the Internet
generation is different to formal
writing.
• It means grabbing their attention
instantly, and never letting it go.
• It means understanding how to
hook people in and deliver.
“You cannot bore people into
buying your product; you can only
interest them in buying it.”

27
And is not just the writing you need
to understand if you want to do
it yourself.
• Do you know how to use social
media channels expertly?
• Have you got the time, energy
and knowledge to interact to a
high standard across all these
platforms?
• Can you have unlimited fresh
ideas to slice and dice your
content and deliver it effectively
across them?
And then there is the graphics and
design side of it. Are you great and
I mean great, at producing sharp
visuals? Do you understand layout
rules? The lists go on and on and on.
So the chances are, you may do an
adequate job at best. But lets face
it, with the competition out there,
adequate is not good enough.
So don’t pretend you can do it yourself,
unless you have been doing it yourself
successfully for some time.
Focus instead on getting a team
around you who can help. Set up trials
the people who can help you with
graphics, content and distribution.
Don’t patronise them by asking them
to do a trial, remember they are
all professionals and treat them as
such. Telling them you want to trial
them is code for “I don’t trust you, or
think you can do it and I want to pay
you peanuts.”
Explain your goals and that you want
to get close team around you the long-
term collaboration. Make sure they
understand the benefit to themselves
from jumping through the hoops initially.
You can ditch someone at any time, so
there is no need to make them react
negatively by saying the “trial” word.
Once you get your team around you, you
can then share your content marketing
strategy with them, get advice and
suggestions for improvement, and most
importantly develop creative buy-in from
your freelancers.
If you don’t get your team in place
before you start implementing your
content management strategy, you
will be firefighting. Firefighting is a
headache and costs more money in the
long run.
g the channels
you will use
and just as
importantly
how the people
who use them
will consume
the content,
is key to
your success.

28
Do You Really Have The
Time To Create That Content?
U
ltimately you have to weigh up
the quality of work you can do
in the time you have. If after
reading the last section you still
feel you can create great content
without a team, you also need to be
clear on how much time it will take.
Only then can you see if it will be
detrimental to the core running of
your business.
One great piece of content will, with
brainstorming, drafts, running it past
people and final touches, take you at
least 8 hours for just 500 words.
Then you have to slice and dice that
content to make it fit into the media
channels you will be distributing it
through. That is another 2-4 hours
per channel.
You also need to look at the “hooks”.
The things that will grab people, so
it’s creating create headlines and
social media posts, which could take
an hour per channel.
And you have to format it all so it looks
GREAT however and wherever it’s
viewed. Another hour or two per piece.
That one seed article to kickstart your
content marketing strategy could take
you as long as 30 hours to prepare
for launch.
Can you afford to take yourself out of
your core business role for nearly a
week? What will that cost you against
potential gains?
Only when you have done this
exercise in detail can you see if
outsourcing to a team you construct,
or an agency who can deliver the
entire package for you effort free, is
the way to go instead.

29
The Key Considerations For
Producing Great Content
W
hatever the structure you
put in place, great content
will have the following
key elements:
• It will target your audience
and tell your story
• It will resonate with potential
and current clients
• It will engage universally,
through social, journalistic
and blogging channels
• It will influence buying decisions
• It will build your brand reputation
• It will build your
authority and trust
• It will grow your audience
• It will be concise and precise
• It will contain cynical
elements that target
discussion and sharing
As well as hitting the above
considerations, you also need to be
fully aware of the customer journey in
the content you create:
Awareness > Interest > Consideration >
Purchase > Retention > Advocacy
The content you produce must be
targeted to the steps of the customer
journey and leads them through it. If
you do not create content that creates
clear thought within the customer, you
will create confusion that will lead to
abandonment.
“Create A Meaningful Experience
That Attracts And Engages Your
Target Audience.”
Good generals learned
never to reinforce failure,
but always to strip
resources from parts of
the battlefield where they
were failing

30
Give Your Content A Heart.
A
great way of benchmarking
the quality of your content is to
give it some HEART.
Is your content:
• Helpful
• Entertaining
• Authentic
• Relevant
• Timely
This is a simple but great way of
analysing the structure of a piece of
content by asking each of the above
questions in turn. Give your content
some heart and watch it get better
and better with every draft.

31
Serve Your Content
From Trusted Sources.
T
here is no point in creating
fantastic content at a price,
if you then chuck it at people
through channels that do not
seem authoritative.
If you’re going to use Twitter, which is
going to be better, a highly respected
account that you have taken time and
effort to build up a real rapport with
people around you from, or account
that doesn’t interact with other people
and has 15,000 fake followers?
If you have a Facebook page, will it
build trust if your 15,000 likes seem to
come from people on the other side of
the world whose own Facebook feeds
seem to be filled with mindless spam?
And even if you are using nurtured
accounts, do those account feeds fully
represent the message you want to
send? If you are spouting off personal
opinions about things outside of
your core business message, you will
not only dilute what you’re trying to
achieve but you will also risk alienation.
So once you have established the
channels you want to use, it may
well be a good thing to do a full audit
to make sure that they are “clean”
channels. If they are not, invest some
time in creating a clean channel for a
few months before it is to be used.
Will it build trust if your
15,000 likes seem to
come from people on the
other side of the world
whose own Facebook
feeds seem to be filled
with mindless spam?

32
Analyse, Adapt, Aim, Fire.
P
art of your content marketing
strategy, as we’ve already
discussed, will be knowing
exactly how you’re going to analyse
your content once it is distributed
for success.
This analysis will allow you to spot
success, adapt the content further,
then distribute again.
The title of this section puts that
strategy into four words.
Make use of all the available
measurement channels and set
them up in advance. To most people
this means using Google analytics
at the very least. It means tracking
clicks through analytics, through
URL shortening services, or through
plugins within a content management
system such as WordPress.
You can set up campaigns,
conversions and goals within Google
analytics to track each element of your
campaign. You can track easily every
single path you have disseminated
your content through.
Your analysis should look to reinforce
success as we have already discussed,
by shifting your resources rapidly to
do that.
You analysis should constantly be
watching for opportunities to develop
or reconstruct your content to push it
out in another version through those
successful channels.
Make use of all the
available measurement
channels and set them up
in advance.

33
Out With The Old...
In With The Old
D
on’t just look at new content
creation when you are
starting out in creating your
strategy. Ask how your existing
content can be part of your new
• Can your existing content be
sharpened to go with a high
quality message?
• Can it’s relevance or accuracy
be improved?
• Can it be refocused to better
support your new content?
• Can it be used as a seed to
work from?
• Can the content be brought up
to date?
• Does old content meet your new
content standard aspirations?
• Can old content be repackaged
to make ebooks or another
different format to the original to
increase its freshness?
The last point is something a lot of
people miss. Check out copyblogger.
com and join their free members
option. You can then download a ton
of fantastic ebooks about copywriting.
When you open them and compare
them to old blog posts on their site you
will realise they are constructed from
those old posts, just slightly edited and
packaged together by theme to make
the ebooks. Classic repackaging to add
depth to a new strategy.

34
Case
Study
Does Content Marketing
Actually Work?
U
nequivocally, the answer is yes.
Just ask cloud-based telecoms
company ShoreTel Sky.
Realising that they needed a
proper content marketing strategy
implemented, they turned to an
agency who delivered it expertly for
them as a package.
Amber Newman realized her company
lacked the manpower to fuel a
sustainable strategy that could build
her brand as a reliable resource for
business phone system shoppers. Her
team eam were writing blog content
internally, but wanted to up the ante.
The company also needed a partner
that could help it break into new
formats. She decided to use daily
industry news content to power
consistent updates and turned to
the services of a specialist content
management provider to assist with
her goals.
The result for ShoreTel was a 51%
increase in organic site traffic year on
year in their Q3 2013.
The key is having clear goals that align
with your key business aims, and
teaming up with the right people to
deliver great results.
The result for ShoreTel
was a 51% increase in
organic site traffic year on
year in their Q3 2013.

35
I Don’t Want To
Deal With All This!!
T
You may be reading this,
getting new insight and
inspiration, but at the same
time feeling a problem growing in
your mind.
The doubt about actually wanting to
invest significant time in creating, and
driving a content marketing strategy
yourself. And let’s be honest here,
to do it justice will take a significant
investment in time, effort and money.
• The doubt about dealing with
the process of finding different
freelancers to create a team.
• The doubt about knowing
enough about what needs to be
done to get that team working to
high capacity.
Maybe you just want to focus on what
drives your business: your passion for
it. It’s completely understandable that
you will want to put all your energy
into delivering the absolute best you
can for your clients, which means
you do not want to divert energy to
content marketing.
And of course, that makes complete
sense. You will make more money
focusing on what you are good at,
rather than if you divert that “money
time” to something you may not be
able to do with any success.
Well, there is another option that
will deliver you a complete content
marketing strategy, fully implemented
and benchmarked for results.
That option is to team up with a
reputable content marketing agency,
who have the expertise to take the
pressure off you. Partnering with a
great company will allow you to agree
on goals that you want your content
marketing strategy to reach, verbalise
your key messages, and then sit back
and let things happen expertly.

36
So if time, skill or desire
is making you avoid
implementing a content
management strategy,
then teaming up with a
content management
specialist is the answer.
As an example, Kavit Haria’s “Done
For You Content Traffic System” is a
complete content management strategy
that can really simplify the whole
content marketing process for you.
Kavit’s team will work closely with you
to understand your business, identify
the key indicator you want to improve,
and then construct and deliver a careful
strategy to reach your goals. You don’t
have to do anything other than focus
on the core of your business, while they
construct and deliver quality content
across all the media channels we have
discussed, hitting the right keywords,
sending the right message, delivering
the right traffic.
So if time, skill or desire is making
you avoid implementing a content
management strategy, then teaming up
with a content management specialist
is the answer. A quality service is not
cheap, but you have to look at the
return on your investment and the
time, energy and money it would take
to get the results yourself.
Go to the website
www.insiderinternetsuccess.
com/traffic-system to find out
more about the Content Traffic
System and how we can help
you build authority, increase
your rankings, drive more traffic
and get more new clients.

37
It Is Time To Get Serious
About Your Content.
I
am sure you will now be churning
all of this over in your mind and are
keen to get things moving quickly.
A great strategy for content marketing
takes time and skill to build and deliver.
However, using the information in this
guide you can speed up the process
and make less mistakes along the way.
If you don’t want to be distracted
from your core business role, then
outsourcing either to a team you build
or a company with a team in place is the
cost-effective way to get fast results.
Whichever path you choose,
implementing a complete strategy
with clear goals and adapting as you
go is the key to success, and do not
underestimate the ongoing effort
required to maintain that success.
Case Study Citations
Shoretel Sky
http://www.brafton.com/blog/content-marketing-case-study-shoretel-sky-lifts-traffic-and-sales
InsideOut
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/content-marketing-leads-4-step-strategy#
Ironmongery Direct
http://www.b2bmarketing.net/knowledgebank/branding/case-studies/case-study-ironmongerydirect-brand-refresh
SmartestEnergy
http://www.wiseupmedia.co.uk/blog/an-inspiring-green-content-marketing-case-study-the-energy-entrepreneurs-report

38
About Kavit Haria and
Insider Internet Success
About Kavit Haria
Kavit is called upon by businesses
globally to advise them on their online
marketing strategy using cutting-edge
tactics to get more targeted website
visitors, more enquiries, more clients
and more profit.
He imbibes the philosophy that
marketing is the biggest money-
making skill in the world and believes
that the biggest change comes
from entrepreneurial success. One
entrepreneur succeeding in good
business will impact hundreds
or thousands of customers, their
families, and the business’s staff and
their families.
Known for telling it like it is and from
the heart, Kavit has spoken to tens
of thousands of people in audiences
in the UK, Australia and America,
and to over a hundred different
countries through his webinars. He
has writes a powerful daily e-mail
tip for subscribers online. You can
subscribe for his Daily Tip for free at
About Insider Internet Success
If you’re looking to build a lifestyle
business – and you need more traffic,
more leads, and more sales – so that
you can have more time off and make
a difference with your business, you’re
in the right place.
At Insider Internet Success, our
goal is to guide and provide you,
the savvy entrepreneur and small
business owner, with the training and
services to help you build authority,
drive traffic, get more enquiries and
increase your sales.
We deal in meaningful, purposeful
businesses online that support who
you are, the people you serve and the
lifestyle you love.
If you’re ready to build your own
lifestyle business online, or create
automated systems that help you
increase your rankings through solid
content, driving more traffic and sales
from your website, we can help.
Visit us online at

We deal in meaningful,
purposeful businesses online
that support who you are,
the people you serve and the
lifestyle you love.

How to win new clients through strategic content marketing

How to win new clients through strategic content marketing

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