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Elements Of A Content Plan
How many times have you been frustrated because you’re putting out content, you’re showing up consistently, and yet you aren’t seeing growth in your numbers or business? If you’re marketing your business consistently, aren’t you supposed to see growth?
And the truth is, yes – and no.
Content marketing is only one half of a marketing plan. If that’s all you’re doing to market your business, then you’re missing out on part of what should be included in your marketing plan. And no, I’m not talking paid ads or anything like that. This missing piece is organic marketing as well.
Today I’m going to go over what two parts every marketing plan should have, as well as five of my favorite strategies that you can implement for that missing piece.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/
- This week’s action step: Choose ONE growth strategy to implement in the next quarter
- This week’s book recommendation: Published by Chandler Bolt
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
How many times have you been frustrated because you’re putting out content, you’re showing up consistently, and yet you aren’t seeing growth in your numbers or your business. If you’re marketing your business consistently, aren’t you supposed to see growth? And the truth is yes and no. content marketing is only one half of a marketing plan.
If that’s all you’re doing to market your business, then you’re missing out on part of what should be included in your marketing plan. And no, I’m not talking about paid ads or anything like that. This missing piece is organic marketing as well. So today I’m going to go over what two parts every marketing plan should have, as well as five of my favorite strategies that you can implement for that missing piece.
You’re listening to episode 148 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amanda warfield.com/planner.
There are two parts to every marketing plan. Nurturing your current audience and growing your audience. Nurturing your current audience means showing up for them consistently, giving value and education, and leading them into your sales processes. Because remember, marketing and sales are not the same thing.
Growing your audience. On the other hand, that means getting out and bringing new people in that you can then nurture , which sounds really simple and self-explanatory, right? But here’s the most common misconception I see around this concept. Too many entrepreneurs believe that the content marketing is a growth strategy.
can content grow your audience? Sure virality can happen, which brings in new faces. Your audience might love a piece of your content and share it, which will lead to growth, but that growth is a byproduct, not a strategy. , we all know how impossible it is to predict when a piece of content is going to be shared on a mass scale.
A lot of times we think this is gonna be great, people are gonna love it, and it’s crickets. And then other times we just throw something out there and people love it, and there’s all kinds of engagement. It’s really hard to predict what that’s gonna look like. And if you can’t guarantee that you’re getting yourself in front of new faces, it’s not a growth strategy.
Now, an exception here would be when you’re a first adopter of a new platform, and I’ve talked about this on a few different episodes now, but we’re currently seeing this with TikTok. Those that are hopping on early are able to see some viral growth because it’s not so crowded yet. So being an early adopter is a growth strategy.
You’ve gotta keep your eyes peeled for that one though. It’s not as easy to just say, I’m gonna start being an early adopter this month. You’ve gotta wait for the, the platforms to come. Now you might be thinking, okay, Amanda, you’ve convinced me that I need to focus on adding in growth strategies to my marketing, but what does that look like?
The truth is, is that there are a million ways that you can get yourself in front of a new audience, but let’s stick to organic meaning not paid marketing. So here are my top five favorite growth strategies. First is Pinterest. Pinterest is, and we’ve all heard this, Pinterest isn’t social media.
Pinterest is a search engine. It’s not the same as just social media, yada. And that’s true. We hear it all the time because it’s true. Pinterest. gets you in front of a cold audience, social media, your long form content, your podcast, your YouTube, your blog, whatever. That all gets you in front of a warm audience that has said, yes, I wanna follow them.
Yes, I wanna get their email. Yes, I wanna subscribe to their podcast or subscribe to their YouTube channel. Those people are warm audience members. Pinterest gets you in front of a cold audience. . And so if you wanna get started on Pinterest, it’s a really simple way to get started with a new growth strategy.
It is a long term growth strategy. It’s gonna take some time for it to get started and for you to really see some results with it. But highly recommend if you’re not already on Pinterest, get on it. And if you go back and listen to episode 135. Pinterest best practices for 2022 with Natalie Bardo.
She gives you a really simple way to start. I’ve put what she said in that episode into practice and saw results right away. I will preface that by saying I have been inconsistently showing up on Pinterest for years now. Yeah. And we talk about it in that episode where Pinterest, you know, I started on it.
I was doing all the things I said to do, and then there was I, Pinterest went public and everything changed and everything got really confusing and even Tailwind and some other people that were Pinterest partners didn’t know what was going on. And so I really stopped, but because I had scheduled things out so far in advance, like I was scheduling things out a year in advance which is kind of crazy.
I was still showing up not as much, but some, and so once I started actually utilizing her strategy, I did see a jump in impressions really quickly, I think because I had been showing up. That’s why it happened really quickly, but I just wanted to throw that out there to say. , what she’s teaching does work.
I’ve implemented it. And so it might not be as quick for you if you haven’t been showing up on Pinterest at all, but keep at it. It’s a really simple strategy and it is working and really building those impressions. And then once you have the impressions, you can focus on, okay, which of my pins is doing the best?
How do I make more graphics similar to that, yada yada. So episode 1 35, Pinterest Best Practices. That is a great growth strategy for getting in front of a cold audience. The next one is guesting on other podcast or YouTube shows. So aligning with people in your industry that have similar audiences and then going and being interviewed, you’re gonna have to pitch yourself for these, probably go pitch yourself and say, I can bring this value to your listeners, to your audience, and I would love to chat about this topic because I think it would be helpful for them because of X, Y, Z, and put yourself out there.
get in front of a new audience. That’s a whole new audience of people who have never heard of you before. And some of those people are gonna love what you’re talking about, and they’re gonna come follow you in other ways. You’re gonna have an opportunity to say, oh, I have this YouTube channel, or I have this blog, or, follow me on Instagram, or I have this podcast, and people are going to go follow you in those places where you can then start nurturing them with your content.
Number three, similar. , but more prep and more, I would say this is a more advanced strategy, but still worth thinking over is guest teaching in different membership communities. So there are a lot of people who have both free and paid memberships or. Facebook groups or things like that where you can get in and you can come in and teach.
And this is great because this is always super simple. If you can find someone who is looking for content, people that bring in guests on a monthly or quarterly basis are always looking for new content to bring in. And so if you can go to them and say, I know that your audience is x, y, z. , I know that you’re trying to help them do X, Y, Z.
I really think that this topic that I’m an expert in can help that mission because of X, Y, Z, and I would love to teach them abc. Tell them why you can help them and go teach in their communities. Give that value, teach those people some great things. What you know, you know things. There is something you can teach on, I promise.
That’s another way to bring in new people who frankly, if you’re going to teaching in their community and you’re interacting with ’em face-to-face, they’re gonna come in as warm leads, warm new audience members, so that you can then continue to nurture the fourth one. Little bit different track attending events and conferences where your ideal client and student is attending.
So, best case scenario, you’re doing this in person because there’s just so much more opportunity for getting to know people and having those good conversations in person. But virtual accounts too, as long as you’re intentional about it. So in the last year, I went to quite a few conferences and retreats and.
I got clients from all of them because people really listen to who you are. They see your mannerisms, they get to know you. If you’re spending multiple days together, you it. There’s just this bonding experience that happens and they begin to say, oh. This person is an expert on this. When I need that or when I know someone that needs that, I’m gonna send them to it.
And it just comes from building relationships, not for going in and saying, here’s my business card, here’s my business card. You don’t do that. Just go in and build relationships because you never know when someone might know someone that needs what you do. and the best way to build that relationship is through in-person interaction.
Especially right now as we’re all post covid, burnt out, post pandemic, tired of everything being virtual, there is so much to be said for in-person interactions, but let’s say it’s not a realistic possibility. You can’t take the time away from your family. You don’t have the budget to go travel. I get it, and I’ve been there for sure.
So virtual. Join virtual summits of where your people are going to be. and connect with them. Go into those Facebook groups and be active in that summit. A lot of times people will join summits and they’ll attend a couple presentations, and then they kind of leave it at that. But go in there and attend the presentations and be active in that Facebook community.
Talk to people, follow up with them. If maybe you’re more comfortable DMing people on Instagram versus Facebook, say, Hey, what’s your Instagram? Let’s connect and then continue a conversation. And again, this is just relationship building. . That’s really what all of this is being on people’s podcasts, being in membership communities, this, it’s all just relationship.
building relationships where people think of you when they know of someone that needs what you have, but go in there and participate in the Facebook group. Show up to the live events. A lot of times in summits, there’s live co-working or live networking show up to those. I cannot emphasize enough how great those are.
They don’t sound flashy and exciting, and they’re one of those things where you’re like, well, that’s not someone coming in and educating. And I really want to listen to this educator speak. Those live events are the number one thing you should be putting on your plate because that’s where you’re connecting with other people.
And if it’s a summit that has your ideal clients, even better, you’re connecting with ideal clients. Or you can also think, okay, what would a summit be that has not my ideal clients, but my secondary audience as it might be. . So the people who are next to your ideal clients, the people that teach your ideal clients, the people that have your ideal clients as audience members.
So let’s say that you really want to work with stay-at-home moms, okay? And. You can go to summits that are specifically for stay-at-home moms. Absolutely. And connect with them there. You also can go to summits for, let me pull something out of thin air summits that are created for Stay-at-Home Mom.
Educators. These people that want to create their own educational topics, specifically in four stay-at-home moms. They’re gonna have audiences full of stay-at-home moms. Those are people that you can work on connecting with and building relationships with because they’re growing that. I mean, if you look at just the speakers or just connect with 10, 15 attendees, that’s 10, 15 people whose audience that you might potentially, if you build a relationship, be able to eventually bring into your fold if you can get in front of them.
long-term strategy. Absolutely. But that’s, that’s another one that you can do. And then the fifth one is participating in bundles. Now, bundles are great because they bring in a large influx of people at one time. If you’ve ever been part of a bundle, you know this. But if you haven’t, what happens is a bundle is either free or paid.
It really depends on who’s creating it. , whether you pay nothing or you pay $97 is usually what I see the bundles being sold for. You pay $97 and you get access to a ton of offers that are not normally free. . So Dolly DeLonge was on the podcast a few episodes ago, right? And she did a bundle this year where it was $97 and you got access to a ton of different things.
And personally, the offer that I put in was my year in preview workshop, which is 1 97. So someone got the year in preview workshop. Multiple people, many people got the year in preview workshop for $97. when it’s normally 1 97 plus everyone else’s stuff. Like that’s how that works. So you get a ton of courses and things all at once, but, and a lot of people buy those because it’s a great deal, right?
It is an incredible deal and every single person who’s contributed is marketing that bundle to their audience. So there’s a ton of people coming in and seeing that. And it’s a numbers game, right? Tons of people end up buying and then tons of people end up. Grabbing your thing and they end up on your email list so you can then nurture them, which is great.
It’s incredible. I like, I’m always so thankful to be part of bundles. The thing to know about bundles is that a lot of those people are also gonna leave because they’re downloading, for lack of a better word, they’re downloading 30 or maybe more, 20, 30 different offers. Which means they’re getting 20 or 30 new people in their inbox, which means their inbox is crowded, which means a lot of times they go in and if they’re not super jazzed about your thing or you, they’re gonna just unsubscribe.
So bundles have a really high influx, but they also have a really high exodus. But people do stay, and I have had people from bundles go on to later purchase different offers. So they’re not a lost cause, it’s just the numbers game that you have to go in and realize. I’m gonna get a ton of people, but I can’t be excited about that number because a lot of them are gonna leave too.
But is a great way to get a ton of new eyes on your stuff and you never know. Maybe someone finds you through that bundle, unsubscribes goes through your offer, and then later finds you again because they really love your stuff. So that’s always another thing to keep in mind. So those five, my five favorite growth strategies, Pinterest.
Guesting on other podcasts or YouTube shows, guest teaching and membership communities, attending events and conferences where your ideal client or student is attending and participating in bundles. All of those. Are growth strategies. They’re getting you in front of a new audience that you can then bring into your content to nurture.
So growth and nurture strategies, you’ve gotta have both. If you are only putting content out there and you’re only nurturing your people, you’re not gonna have people to nurture and not gonna have people to sell to. . The bottom line of those five though the cohesive thread that’s running through them is connecting with others in your industry.
You cannot do this business thing solo, and I really wanna encourage you to go and listen to episode six , it’s isolation, stunting your business growth. Because I talked about this way back then. Relationships are going to be key for a successful business. Period. And we’re not doing it in a scammy way.
We’re not doing it in a gross way. We’re not building relationships just so we can see higher revenue. We’re building relationships to build relationships, and it is a back scratching type of situation, but it’s also just a, you’re a human that I would like to get to know because you have similar interests as me.
and you do that and you grow and you know, maybe a few years down the line they refer a client to you and it’s incredible and it’s great. And then maybe you think to refer a client to them, maybe you start, there’s all kinds of things. I’m, I’ve told you, the 5 growth strategies, I’m not going on on, but relationships are key.
for business, you cannot build a business in a vacuum. So your action step for today is to choose one growth strategy to implement in the next quarter. Choose one thing that you’re gonna do to implement a growth strategy. One thing that you can do to help bring in a new audience because you can’t keep launching to the same people over and over again.
and then your book recommendation for this week is published by Chandler Bolt. This is going to be very niche. If you have no interest in writing a book, this is probably not gonna interest you, but this was such a helpful tool for me when I was writing my book that I. needed to mention it. So it’s a whole, the entire book is just like an action plan for writing a book and not just writing it, but the publication phase, the editing phase, the marketing phase, all the different things.
And it was everything I needed to know to get started and believed that I could do it. And then I also went on to, you know, hire and outsource different things. I knew what I needed to outsource, what I could reasonably expect for myself. If you have any interest in writing a book, even maybe theoretically, highly recommend published by Chandler Bolt.
And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your life and biz.
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