The best part about having an online business is that the barriers to entry are relatively low…until you realize that creating content to attract clients is a BIG part of the job.
Unfortunately, this becomes a challenge when your market is already saturated with others looking to profit from a low overhead business model.
One of the keys to successfully growing an online business is to master content creation. This helps you to establish yourself as an expert and also helps new clients to discover you, even when you aren’t actively marketing yourself.
Over the last 4 years, I’ve been a copywriter in the online business space. This has given me the opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t when it comes to creating content that attracts clients.
Here are my Top 5 Ways to create content that attracts clients. Note that each step builds on the last one, so you will get the best results by considering them in order.
Step 1: Refine your message
One of the most common messaging mistakes is trying to solve too many problems.
Unless you’re selling a $10K – $30K business in a box program (which most online entrepreneurs aren’t), you can safely assume your audience is trying to solve ONE particular problem at this exact moment in their business.
Specific problems are great inspiration for effective messaging. Here’s the best part. You really only need ONE core idea to unify all the content, products and programs in your business. In fact, the more consistent you stay with your messaging, the more likely it is that members of your audience will buy 2+ offers in your product suite.
So, the direct question you need to answer is “what’s the #1 problem I want to help my audience solve?” Once you have that figured out, you can map out other related problems that can serve as great inspiration for different subsets of your content. Here’s an example:
Big Idea: How to sell a $2K+ coaching package
Sub-ideas: How to set up a website and sales page, how to decide on your coaching niche, how to close more sales calls
See how each of the sub-ideas could easily be turned into mini courses or webinars? Although the topics are different, they all fit nicely together into what could be a complete system further on down the line.
Step 2: Have at least one offer in place
Many newer online entrepreneurs forget that content creation is a mechanism with which to make sales! That’s why it’s so important to have a simple journey in mind as you create your content and your offers.
When you’re just starting out, create something that’s relatively simple to deliver on. This could be a small scope 1:1 service or simple digital product.
What you’ll find is that in the process of creating this offer, you’ll get SO MANY great content ideas. It’s a really inspiring process that also helps you to create content that is much more closely related to what you’re actually offering.
Step 3: Know the difference between free and paid content
The difference between free and paid content can be so confusing, even for more experienced online entrepreneurs. We’re told to “give free value,” but oftentimes it leaves people burned out from the content creation process AND not seeing the sales numbers that they’d like to.
Going back to the platforms where free content lives, there’s a few different ways you can approach it. The most important thing to remember is that a start to finish process or blueprint should always be PAID content. Here’s how you work around it as you create your free content.
- Share tidbits and pieces from your paid content. This is as simple as extracting them from your digital course or coaching curriculum.
- Share thoughts and inspirations that will lead to a mindset shift or a different way of thinking about the problem.
Having been behind-the-scenes of a number of high end programs, I can honestly say that the free and paid content isn’t drastically different. What is different is having support in a coaching capacity and having everything ordered into a particular system.
An analogy I love for this is paid content is like having a recipe for a cake, free content is buying the ingredients. Of course, buying the ingredients gets you CLOSER to obtaining a specific result, but it doesn’t get you ALL of the way there.
Step 4: Understand the mechanics of creating content
A content funnel is simply the way that you sequence your content. Along the way, each type of content takes more time and effort for you to consume. At the same time, the closer you get a paid offer, more people will fall out of the funnel and become less engaged.
Basically, content helps potential customers and clients make a decision about whether the offer is right for them or not. The thing about funnels is that there ot *exactly* a straight line. Here’s a general model I like to follow:
- Discover: Someone has to discover you to start learning from you. This can happen a multitude of ways, but some of the most common ones are blog posts, podcast episodes, guest posts, social media, speaking engagements and referrals.
- Nurture: This is where you build a relationship with the people in your funnel with a higher calibre of free content. This can look like email newsletters, blog posts or YouTube videos. The point here is that you’ve gone beyond one liners and quick posts and have your audience thinking more carefully about the solution that you provide.
- Sell: It’s very common for online entrepreneurs to be missing either the sell or nurture step, but you truly need both in order to get the best results. This simply means having an offer in place, and deciding if the offer is evergreen or just available at certain times (launching.)
The discover-nurture-sell framework is simple to follow and lets you fill in the blanks and customize it with the type of content AND offers that you love to create! It’s entirely customizable.
Step 5: Stay consistent as you’re creating content (find the frequency that words for you.)
One of the reasons that online entrepreneurs who aren’t entirely extroverted run into difficulties is they go through bursts of visibility. That means there can be a lot of pressure around showing up on social media consistently. On top of that, it often doesn’t feel GOOD.
There’s three solutions I can share with you for working around this based on my personal experience:
1. Focus on visibility strategies that don’t depend on social media. These include blog posts, YouTube videos and podcast episodes mainly.
2. Experiment to discover a posting schedule that feels good to you. Further limit your consumption of social media by pre-scheduling posts so that you’re really focusing on creating the content.
3. Outsource part of your content creation process. This could mean hiring someone to schedule social media or blog posts. Again, separating yourself from the parts of the process that you don’t enjoy will open up more space for creativity for you.
Now that you know my top 5 ways to create content that attracts clients, the next step is to put it all in place! Sign up for my self-study course Amplify Your Message to learn my signature framework for creating high impact content. Or, get it taken care of for you by hiring me!
