C1 Content

There are two parts to the first of the 7C’s of Marketing. I will pay lip service to the first part because this is covered in great detail in many other books on marketing, and we also give it ample coverage in the Accelerate development program. Most of our attention will focus on the second, more creative part of the first C, Content.

Before you get into your practical marketing, make sure you have completed your foundations. These are the items we have covered previously in the earlier part of this book, including your big reason why, your vision, values and culture. If need be, remind yourself of these elements and then come back to this part.

In addition to the foundations, you must ensure your content includes all the research. Without the research and without the planning that hangs from the research, you cannot progress with any great clarity of purpose. You cannot progress your understanding of the best content to use to win hearts and minds and then convert into meaningful business. The research I speak of is as follows:

What are the details of your target market?

Your one big ‘Why’ and your ‘How’ will set the scene for this, and then you can look in detail. Be specific. The more specific, the better (see note 1). At this point, you also need to make sure there is a gap in the market and a market in the gap and create a differential that will allow you to stand out from the crowd. The more crowded the pond you are fishing in, the more important this becomes.

Details of your client ‘Avatar.’

From your work on your target market, you can now start to refine this further into more detial. The detail should be all about the person or persons you are going to be reaching out to with your marketing. The more you understand them, the more you can target your content to appeal to them; the right content will be attractive to them. This goes beyond simple demographics; you want to construct a detailed pen picture from which you gain inspiration for content worth sharing with your client Avatar—more on this subject in other courses on this platform.

The Landscape

When it comes to the landscape again, research needs to be reasonably detailed. Understanding the market size, the opportunity, the framework people are working to, and legal and regulatory considerations all have their place in this research. To assist with this, you can use some very useful tools, for example, PESTLE (see note 2).

The Competition

Who is your competition? You should document the main competitors that you need to be concerned with. It is to your advantage to understand what they are doing well and not so well. How and where do they differ from you? What are their strengths and their weaknesses? How do these compare with your own? You need to understand who your closest direct and indirect competition is. These are the organisations that are vying directly for the same dollar that you are going to be pitching for.

Note 1 – Let me give you a brief example. I had identified my big reason why and from that, it was clear that to change the world of the start-up and micro-business one business at a time; I would need to focus on start-ups and micro-businesses. But that is too wide. I needed to focus, and so the market was reduced to the following target market:

My target market was refined into the following – Start-Up and micro businesses that were not heavily funded by well-established parent companies already supplying coaching and mentoring internally. Start-up and micro businesses that were serious about creating exceptional and sustainable results, serious about creating scale and creating a business that will work for them, rather than them working for it.

You can see from this that we excluded many well-founded subsidiary companies and any business where the owner wanted to simply use their technical skill to earn a living on the tools just for themselves.

Note 2 – PESTLE is a model widely used by those responsible for business and marketing planning. It allows them to consider a range of influences on their business and, therefore, their marketing activities. PESTLE stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental influences in the marketplace, which impact your machine and your clients.

Once you have taken your time to plan and you understand your target market, your client avatar, the market landscape and the competition, you can take all of that data, collate it and then use it to help you with the next task in creating the right Content.

Reaching out to your target market with content.

With the research completed, we can now reach out to your target market with some well-thought-out and focused content. In my experience, this is one of those chokepoints for many who are not used to producing content. There are two areas we should look at, they are:

• Mindset
• Creativity

Mindset

We have dealt with this subject earlier in the program, but we need to remind ourselves of some very important points. The most important of which is to remind you that you, all of us for that matter, become what we think about the most. If you start this process by telling yourself you can’t, then congratulations, you won’t! Look at it this way. You know your business the best. Therefore you are the best qualified to talk about it. So you absolutely can, should and will.

Never let others bring you down, and do not sabotage yourself with your negative self-talk. You have a skill; you have an opinion based on that skill. You have the technical knowledge and a central inspired reason why that contributes to the story of you and your business. A story that people will want to hear. You need to and should want to share it. I need you to embrace the opportunity to share your story through good content with your market so they, too, can get excited about your business and its compelling ‘Why.’

Creativity

We cannot all be Shakespeare, we can’t all be Steve Jobs, we can’t all be Spielberg, but we are all creative in some way; it is in us to be that way. Instead of thinking about who you are not like, think about who is not like you. Oh yes, that will be almost everyone. In my book, that makes you pretty blooming special; your skill and back story, combined with your uniqueness, gives you something to shout about. When it comes to being creative, use the medium or mediums that suit you best. Learn the craft one step at a time and slowly but surely add to your capability. Creativity will come with consistent activity. Creativity will come with a backstory and passion. Creativity will come from desire. You can help this process by putting together a plan. Your plan will give you the push you need to get those first important steps underway.

Design a content plan

Take some time to sit down and design a content plan. This is always time well spent, and to get you thinking along the right lines, here is one of my early content plans for you to use as a simple template; I have deleted some of the details so I don’t distract you from your creative thoughts. You can add those items back when you design your plan. The items deleted are the time and date of the content and posting and where it was to be posted, as these items will be specific to your needs and research.

You can get the idea from this plan that if you write an article or a paper about your technical skill to educate your market, or something related to your business back story, these can be used in various ways to attract people into your process. Content is the first step, and once you have content out there, you can begin to create the traction you need for your business to flourish. The example given only has a few entries; in reality, you will need to have significantly more material to use. I say this because this is a long burn; like most marketing, you must repeat this multiple times to get the traction you need and want.

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