Why Lead Generation Is NOT The Only Reason To Do Content Marketing
Sleep is the competition.
When Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was asked about competition from other streaming services, like Amazon or YouTube, Hastings said sleep is the real competition.
“You know, think about it, when you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night,” he said.
“We’re competing with sleep, on the margin.”
Content has become a product. And time and awareness are resources.
How long can WE stay in business if WE don’t have a product that brings US time and awareness?
Content Marketing Is A Product We Must Have
One of the biggest challenges that businesses, solo real estate agents, lenders face is finding the time and ideas for content marketing.
We're struggling to find time. Or once we do have the time, you don't have the ideas.
We know we need to have marketing and sales. (Even if you're a non-profit, you need to have some sort of marketing team or awareness team getting the word out about you and then someone that's capturing the donations for you.)
And I believe, Content Marketing is one of the most important strategies to use for marketing and sales… but not just for marketing and sales.
In this article we’re going to cover three reasons to do content marketing for your business:
Do content marketing not just for lead generation
Why content marketing is a huge leverage piece
Crystalize your ideas
Now let's find out what are the three reasons to do content marketing…
1. For Audience Building, Not Just Lead Generation
A more important reason to use content marketing is not just for trying to generate leads, is to build an audience.
Lead generation is simply the capturing of information or data.
Let's say we have a CRM, email marketing system or a database capturing email addresses, phone numbers and physical addresses. Then we're trying to stay in touch with those people.
But what’s even more powerful than capturing someone's information?
Capturing their attention.
I remember being a young lad going to the grocery store with my mom. There wa these raffle boxes to win a microwave or a bread maker or a trip somewhere. And my mom would stop and fill out the form, fold it up and put it in the box.
Now I realize what they were doing is capturing information. That was a form of lead generation.
They were willing to give away a trip or a bread maker so that they would be able to create a list. Then they would probably sell that list to a bunch of other places. (Those were probably the telemarketers that were calling us during dinner time.)
Yes, they had the information, but they never had our attention because they were contacting us about something that we didn't really want.
A few things that we want to do when we're looking at audience building:
Know where your audience hangs out. You don't need to be on every platform. Start with one.
Know when in the process they are. If you’re creating content about understanding Title Reports, you’re probably missed the opportunity to get that audience as a client. They are too far down the path.
Know what motivates them. There are 4 Elements that gets people to take action. Be clear about all four and communicate to these Elements.
“A lead in your database gives you their info. An audience gives you their attention.””
2. A huge leverage piece
Content marketing is a huge leverage piece.
I have a wife, two kids, a dog, try to stay fit and healthy. I have other things I want to do with my life than trying to make 100 phone calls or 100 door knocks in a day.
When I do a piece of content marketing, conservatively it's probably going to be seen by a couple hundred people, when I start posting it online, pushing it to my networks and promoting it to email list.
Then, if I wanted to really leverage that piece of content, the two pieces of leverage are this…
I can put some money behind it and do paid online ads.
And then I could come back to it next month and do that again, again, again.
People can discover it on their own time and schedule. They can find it as they're going along.
This is one of the things we teach to all members of our real estate coaching. Before you start promoting anything in that fashion, you want to stock your social media platforms, blogs and website platforms. You want to stock that with content because people stalk once they find you.
Once you have this leverage piece in place, you have one piece of content, the leverage play is the more you have, the more they’re going to stay.
3. It helps you crystallize your own ideas
Creating content helps you get clear about how you think, how you feel, and how you process information about a certain topic. And then, whatever your form of content creation is, whether that's written word, audio, video, or how you get it out there. You start thinking out loud about it, you're thinking while you're writing and you're getting clear about it.
So now when you get in front of clients you're not having to regurgitate a script, that’s probably 40 years old.
I think more powerful than regurgitating a script is saying your own words and your own thoughts because you've processed through thinking. You’re sharing with a prospect, with a lead, with your client, your own words, your own interpretation, your own thoughts, your own feelings and your own experiences instead of someone else's.
That's going to engage way better than you regurgitating someone else's script.
Even if you have never published the content you’re creating, just keeping a private journal and you wrote down your thoughts on these things… There's huge value in it.
Any one of those three reasons is a great one. All three put together gives you a very powerful reason to start your own content marketing strategy.
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