Happy Friday!
Depending from where in the world you are reading this, chances are that things are opening up again all around you.
It’s a good feeling to have some resemblance of a social life back! 🙌
It also means though, that all of a sudden more obligations are coming your way.
Whatsapp groups are running hot and spilling over with exciting stuff to do.
Getting hammered with friends, football games with the dudes, coffee with this new acquaintance from LinkedIn, brainstorming workshops with clients, Thai lunch with co-workers, and fancy-pancy dinners with your loved ones. 🕺💃
Hold on. You know what?
Most of those are not obligations, but choices. You don’t need to go ‘back to normal’ immediately (or ever).
Because all of the above we could do without for over a year now.
Maybe you can take it slower this time and take the opportunity to evaluate which part of the ‘old normal’ you want to carry over into the ‘new normal’.
*closing my journal and staring into the void* 😶
….uhm sorry, where was I?
Ah yeah, Happy Friday!
Go get em’ tiger!
...Today's topics
📈 Content Marketing:
How Does Content Marketing Contribute To Revenue? (Six Ways)
🧰 Tools of the Trade:
Articles, Tools and Inspiration for Marketers
⛑️ Reflections from the Trenches:
Getting Started Changes Everything
📈 Content Marketing
How Does Content Marketing Contribute To Revenue? (Six Ways)
The impact of content on the bottom line is hard to quantify. I get it.
A lot of the impact that content has on buying decisions are hidden to us marketers and business owners. The messy middle is hard to decode.
I had a bunch of conversations the past weeks with clients who want to give up on content and rather invest into paid channels. It's a mistake! If your potential customers read your competitors content to solve their problems, your competitor wins over the long run.
So I put together a list of ways that content contributes to revenue (even if you can't directly attribute it). Here we go.
1. Direct leads
The most straightforward one. People read an article, sign up and later buy the product or service.
2. Retention
Existing customers consume content and learn new ways to use your product. Educational content helps people realize the value of the product and stick around to keep using it. This means less churn (the silent killer!) and more recurring revenue.
3. Account expansions
If someone learns about a feature that’s not supported on their account tier they want to upgrade. There is no cheaper way to increase your revenue than to entice existing customers to spend more.
4. Word of Mouth
Your existing customers will teach their friends only if they themselves fully understand the platform and the problem your product or service is solving. Again, educational content helps them to just that. And btw., especially in B2B people will refer your brand just because they have read your content, even if they have never used your product ("yeah I heard about this great video marketing platform called Wistia, you should check it out").
5. Brand exposure
People prefer things they are familiar with. If you are constantly on their radar and top of mind, they will favor you when the moment comes to take a buying decision. And guess what, the reverse is also true. If they have never heard of you before, but have consumed your competitors content for years, guess who'll they purchase from?
6. Brand affinity and thought leadership
People want to use the best of the best. If you are positioned as the best, they want to use you. If you don't want to end up in a pricing race to the bottom with your competitors you need to elevate your brand to charge more. Associate yourself with the best brands in the industry. Get influential guests on your podcast. It works!
🌯 Takeaway
There are a hundred more nuanced ways how content helps to affect the bottom line. The takeaway is that if you are consistently helping your customers succeed through your content, they will trust you more, like you more and buy from you more.
🧰 Tools of the Trade:
Articles, Tools and Inspiration for Marketers
💬 The Struggle of Our Times.
"For the first time—literally—substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it."
by Peter Drucker
👨🎓 Marketing & Leadership Education
The Future of Marketing by Google (Video) - Google has had a keynote where they talked about the future of their ad platforms, google search results etc. If you are even remotely working with those technologies, you should probably have a glance at this video.
Counterintuitive Lessons on How to Get Better as You Scale - If your company is in the scale-up phase, this is a worthwhile article to read. It discusses the unique challenges and hurdles that come to marketing departments when they scale.
🤩 Brands and (digital) Products that caught my eye
Keywords in Sheets - If you do keyword research this tool will save you a ton of time. It offers Google Sheet scripts for otherwise tedious, manual tasks required for solid SEO work.
Missive - It's a unified inbox for your team. Slack, Email, Whatsapp, Twitter, Live-Chat - all in one place.
The Most Dangerous Writing App - This tool DELETES all your writing if you stop typing. I'm a chronic on-the-go-editor and this actually helps me get into flow. What a great idea!
Compress Image - Lightning fast image compression for JPGs and PNGs. I use this all the time for website images and presentation graphics. No signup, no limits, just use it for free.
📚 Interesting reads
The Age of Reopening Anxiety - This is a funny and thoughtful article from The New Yorker on how to deal with the weird feeling of "going back to normal" that many of us carry with them right now.
The Fun Scale - This article hypothesizes three kinds of fun we experience: Type 1 fun (fun while you are doing it), Type 2 fun (fun that's only fun in retrospect) and Type 3 fun (fun that isn't actually fun). A great way to check up on yourself how you are spending your off time.
⛑️ Reflections From the Trenches
Getting Started Changes Everything
If you read this newsletter, chances are high you are a knowledge worker.
And as a knowledge worker most of what you do does not come with a step-by-step manual or even have a clear, tangible outcome telling you when you are on the right path.
There is a lot of uncertainty and a million variables we could take into account for all our tasks, projects and goals.
So we start doing research. What have others done? What's the best practice?
So we draw up intricate plans. What's the optimal strategy? What's the most effective path to get there?
So we are looking for better ways to do things. How can I do this in a more productive and efficient manner? What tools would help me do this?
There is a place for all of that and to a certain degree it is necessary: It's a good idea to do SOME research. It is a good idea to have a ROUGH plan of where you are going. It's helpful to take a QUICK look if there is any software that'll help you save time.
But let's not mistake motion for action.
Because all your research, plans and tools won't matter if you never get started — aka take action.
It happened to me a million times.
I get excited about a new topic, tactic or idea and I would dive right into the motions. Reading blog posts, watching videos, listening to podcasts, talking to people, all of it. But in hindsight I ALWAYS come to the same age-old conclusion:
The map is not the territory.
Most of your plans are right out the window the second you are taking your plans into the real world. And so I'd love to leave you with this today:
Whenever you are stuck searching for the optimal plan, remember: Getting started changes everything.
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That's it for this week.
Talk soon,
Sandro