This will be great to show some of my superiors at work!

Good copy is the menu for your business. No one orders at a cafe without reading the menu. Make it exciting and they will order.

This is how I explain content marketing in interviews and to my leadership team (I work in tech B2B):

In his book, "To Sell is Human" by Daniel Pink, the author explains that the relationship between the seller and the buyer has shifted. Pre-rise of the internet, the SELLER held most of the knowledge about the product. But with the expansion of the internet, it is often not unusual for the BUYER to know more about the product than the SALESPERSON. Sales have lost their knowledge advantage.

So to sell better, businesses have to stop relying on product knowledge and have to find ways to connect to their customer and become "trusted advisers," giving away information, not about the product, but about their industry, specialty, etc. This allows a customer to trust you by giving them something. I call this the "Miracle at 34th Street-effect."

Content Marketing allows businesses to do this - AT SCALE.

Now an example:

A junkyard company called Pull-A-Part started by creating a lot of videos on how to properly...wait for it...pull a part! Because knowing you need one isn't the same as knowing how to rip it off a car in a junkyard.

Then they started sponsoring DIY-mechanic-youtube stars to create content about how to navigate a junkyard. This videos did well in driving traffic and sales (one video got over 600,000 views:

). So the Pull-A-Part marketing head got enough to produce this:

Yep, a reality TV show. It has netted collectives over 600,000 on Youtube (and an unknown volume on other mediums). Not too bad for a junkyard. And it all started with "how to" videos and built up over time.

I have a few more examples from other content marketing heroes, but I start with this one because I can't think of a more difficult thing to content marketing than a junkyard.

Drift.com does a FANTASTIC job creating content that teaches people AND uses super obvious CTA's.

Drift created their own category - conversational marketing (those chatbots that are quickly taking over the internet).

3 things they do really well:

- Awesome Podcast (Seeking Wisdom)

- Short, fun videos that teach you something on LinkedIn

- They put their charismatic and relatable CEO, DC, front and center

When you google, 'what is conversational marketing?', their content always stands out.

https://www.drift.com/conversational-marketing/

* Maybe their superstar VP of Marketing, DG, will see this and give more details and #s of how they're Krushing it. (I'm just a fan of their content)

Hey Neville,

I found this amazing and simple example of content marketing!

Colgate’s website (https://www.colgate.com/en-us/oral-health) features articles that help educate you about oral and dental health. Instead of directly promoting its toothpaste products, the articles focus on topics that people are searching for and talking about online, such as teeth whitening, bad breath, and braces. Sharing helpful information shows that Colgate cares about your needs and wants, not just toothpaste sales. It also shows Colgate is an authority and helps it stand out from its competitors. That way, the next time you’re in the market for toothpaste, hopefully, you’ll be inclined to choose Colgate.

I hope this helps :)

If I’m going to explain to a colleague what content marketing is, it’s best to break it down and out to its moving parts.

First, what is marketing? It’s getting potential customers through the virtual or real door so you have a chance to sell them your product or service.

OK, so what is content? It’s information that your potential customer will find useful.

So now what is content marketing? It’s providing potential customers with useful information so that they will trust you enough to listen to your pitch with an open mind.

Hey Neville - I think this study of 1,117 bloggers is a great example: https://growthbadger.com/blog-statistics/ . It's my own work, but it's been live for less than a week and it's already gotten 705 shares.

Not bad for a site that's still very new and virtually unknown.

My goal with it was to create "link bait" -- something that other sites would want to cite and link back to as a resource -- and thought an original study would be perfect, since it would mean lots of new statistics you can't find elsewhere. And I wanted to have not just the typical "a zillion blog posts are published each year" type of stats, but actionable stuff that would actually be useful to me and to other bloggers and entrepreneurs.

So I ran a big survey -- the biggest recent blogging survey I know of -- to find out the difference between what successful bloggers do and what unsuccessful ones do.

How do they make money?

How *exactly* do they get email subscribers?

Do they write stuff for a very specific group or try to appeal to a broader audience? Do they make videos? Do they have podcasts?

What are their best traffic sources?

What would they say the top success factors are?

It took a ton of work to write a decent survey (harder than it sounds) and to get enough responses for it. I emailed some companies to sponsor it with free prizes for the survey-takers and ended up with over $1K worth of prizes, which really helped get all those people to take it.

Then I hired a data scientist on Upwork to turn the ugly spreadsheet of results into 19 different charts, which I then hired a graphic designer to re-make so that they'd actually look good so people will be more likely to share them on their own sites (and on social).

And then once all that was done, I reached out to a bunch of different experts for their reactions/opinions on the data.

People who would a) add value to the post by saying interesting things, and b) might share the post with their large followings once it went live.

People like your pal Noah Kagan, Brian Dean (Backlinko), Justin Cooke (Empire Flippers), Harsh Agrawal (ShoutMeLoud), Glen Allsopp (Detailed), Jon Morrow (Smart Blogger), Cyrus Shepard (Moz / Zyppy) and more.

(All people I've admired and wanted to meet anyway.)

It took 3 months of work, but since publishing it last week it's gone great. It's brought in more traffic to my site than 3 months of "OK" blog posts, and I expect it to bring in a ton of great links over time.

Plus I've learned a lot from the survey answers.

Happy to provide screenshots and/or more details if you want :).

P.S. Forgot to say your article about writing great headlines helped me write a headline for it too!

I think of content marketing as giving away a bunch of your expertise, often in the form of education. If what you give away is really good, people will want to buy more of it.

A simple example is my buddy/client Zac. Zac is a physical therapist. You show up at his clinic and he rehabs your back or fixes your foot.

He wants more clients so he starts writing about physical therapy. He writes about the courses he takes, the books he reads, and so on at his blog zaccupples.com.

At the end of each day he does a sort of mental review of what he did with his clients, the problems he’s working on, and takes notes, so I have him turn that daily review into a weekly live stream on Facebook and YouTube.

At first, just his physical therapy nerd friends are the only people watching, but over time he builds an audience that watches the live stream each week. It’s not a huge number of people, but because they really like his content, they often refer people to him. They ask him questions and he helps them understand a problem. He builds a tight relationship with people who are into the same thing he is into.

In his blog, live streams, and guest posts he talks about how you can get more free stuff in his newsletter. When he is speaking at an event and needs to promote it, or wants to sell a product, he just has to send an email to tell people about it.

Content marketing is the best way you build your authority and name recognition without spending a penny on advertising.

And I know it works. In January of 2018, I began consistently posting content on LinkedIn - a mix of copywriting and marketing advice, business dilemmas and work samples.

In that time:

1) My monthly revenue DOUBLED

2) I started getting 95% of my leads through LinkedIn

3) My LinkedIn network went from 1500 to 10,300

Plus, I caught the attention of people like Justin Blackman (a copywriter I'm obsessed with) and the head of Global Talent at Tiffany's (!).

Here are two examples of the kind of content that worked best:

Like these:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:linkedInArticle:6495708356186038272/

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6501459216669171712

And thank you, Neville, for YOUR content marketing - it's been a huge help to me, especially your article about "About Pages"!

Thanks David, we'll also be adding some more illustrated examples so it's even easier to share with colleagues!

Oh dang Chantal, that's a pretty good one!!

Nice angle on this one Brandon! I'm seeing if there's an easy way to animate this for easy consumption.

Yeah I dig their content.....easy explanations + obvious images = easy to understand!

Thanks Harkirat...even big companies getting in on the content marketing game (often times they also have a strong advantage with SEO because their domain rank is always sky high)!

Nice Andrew. I like that last summing-up line best.

Content marketing is like grocery shopping.

The customer looking up at the signs above the ends of the aisles is already interested in what's being sold once they turn down an aisle. They just choose a product based on what speaks to them - price, quality, company, or sometimes just whatever catches their eye first...

Your SEO is the signs above the aisles - if you don't put your marinara sauce in the pasta aisle, you're going to have a hard time selling any.

Your copy is the different qualities of your product brand - if you're trying to sell high-quality marinara sauce, you don't put a generic label on it. It won't speak to the people whose interest you're trying to obtain, let alone get them to pick it up off the shelf and put it in their cart.

But what do you do when you have competition also selling high-quality marinara sauce?

Put a high-quality recipe suggestion on the back of the label. With time, you'll become known, and trusted, for the quality of your recipes. And people will buy from you because of it.

That's content marketing.

Ohh dang Kyle, that kicks ass!

If you send me some relevant analytics screenshots, and maybe a link/screenshot to the survey questions you sent out, I'd be happy to publish them (along with your link) in this post!!

Send to Neville@KopywritingKourse.com

Oh awesome, love that post :)

https://copywritingcourse.com/copywriting-headlines-that-sell/

Oh nice Allen!

Yeah I actually think the medical industry is the next big thing in online courses. I follow some physical therapy channels on YouTube and they have awesome info directly from doctors.

But yes your client is on the right track....and content marketing takes a long time (I always tell people to reserve up to TWO YEARS of work before they start seeing decent payoffs).

If they can't see themselves doing it for two years, I tell them it's likely not going to work for them, and to pursue other forms of sales besides Content Marketing.

Oh wow, that's awesome Chavy!

If you can send me some analytics screenshots, I'd be happy to link this (and your articles) as good examples of content marketing on a social platform!

Email them to Neville@KopywritingKourse.com

Oh interesting, content marketing compared to grocery shopping...nice one Atalia :)

Agreed with the above posters: (1) share expertise, (2) make it easy to find, and (3) know your buyer.

Here's a quick experience we crafted for cybersecurity practitioners:

H!NT: Can You Detect the Breach?

https://www.rapid7.com/lp/hint/index.html

The mini-site walks through a company breach, investigating the incident, and common gaps in visibility today. We paired this with a successful direct-mail campaign and educational webcast series, seeking to help information security professionals securely advance and reduce their risk with confidence.

The campaign was successful in cutting through audacious claims thrown around in the infosec industry, and generated 30+ opps w/2M+ in pipeline.

Oh Chantal you beat me to it.

I always say, good content marketing is like a great waiter that gives colorful details about the food and looks for signals from the listeners to guide each in the right direction.

And finishes with an irresistible description of the desert menu as the upsell...

Done, thanks Neville!