Building a Content Engine to Drive New Users
A founder in my Slack community shared that they’re struggling with building a content engine to drive acquisition. I’m excited to have a guest post today from an expert on that topic, Emily Claypool. As HVL’s Director of Marketing Communications, Emily has a wealth of experience to share. Remember you can always ask for help from experts like Emily in the community.
As you’re working to scale your startup, you’ll inevitably run into the challenge of having enough time in the day to get everything done. Crafting and deploying marketing campaigns to drive new users is no exception.
We’ve all heard that nearly 80 percent of B2B buyers do more than half their research before the first touchpoint with a company (Source). That means creating compelling and engaging content that educates, entertains or inspires your prospects is critical to gaining users. If you are currently muscling your way through one-off posts or a haphazard publishing schedule, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to automate your content marketing efforts and focus your efforts.
That’s where building a content marketing engine comes in. A marketing engine will help you create a repeatable system for content creation, distribution and impact measurement. It helps you do more with less – a scalable framework helps you churn out great content on a consistent basis instead of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. It’ll also alleviate the need to hire too early because you can effectively run the engine yourself, even if you’re not a marketer by trade.
The core elements that make up an efficient content engine are: campaigns, content, distribution, tools and impact. So, let’s jump in to learn how to actually build a content engine to drive new users.
Campaigns
Focus is the name of the game for startups (and in life generally). The same is true when crafting a content marketing plan. Without focus, you’ll end up with a bunch of random content that doesn’t connect or have a purpose. Creating campaigns helps you organize your content strategy, tactics and timelines and metrics so your engine runs smoothly. There are a number of ways you can do this. For example, my team uses a Google Doc to plan out the campaign. Then we organize everything in Asana, so we can assign roles, deadlines and metrics. You can also use tools like Monday.com, Notion, etc. – whatever works for you.
Here are a few key elements to consider including in your content campaigns:
Campaign goals: Create a goal for your campaign such as, “increase organic website traffic by 5% in the next 30 days” or “generate 10 form submissions within the next week.” Be sure to use the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework to ensure you’re not just “doing content for the sake of doing content.”
Target Audience: Define the specific target audience or buyer personas for the campaign.
Key Messages and Value Proposition: Outline the core messages and value proposition that the content should convey.
Formats and Channels: Identify the content formats that will be used in the campaign, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, social media posts, or whitepapers.
Topics and Themes: Your topics should align with the target audience's interests, address their pain points, and be relevant to the campaign's goal.
SEO: Outline any specific SEO guidelines or keyword strategies that should be incorporated into the content. This may include target keywords, meta tags, or other SEO best practices to optimize content for search visibility.
Distribution Plan: Detail how the content will be distributed and promoted to reach your target audience effectively. Specify the channels, timing, and frequency of content distribution, as well as any planned advertising or promotion strategies.
Content
There are a million ways to think about creating content–but again we’re all about focus here–which is why I recommend taking a simple yet effective three-pronged approach. It consists of creating interruption, fostering connection and offering call-to-action. This trio is proven to work, and applies magically to any medium you plan on using to distribute content.
Interruption (the hook)
As I mentioned earlier, we all have priorities and not enough time to prioritize them. The same is true for our prospects–that’s why we must politely (or not so politely, depending on your branding) interrupt their daily lives with a strategic message about your product. Research has shown that 80% of readers only scan headlines. Unless you intrude in a well-thought-out way, you won’t get attention and therefore you won’t reach your goal of getting new users. Your hook should be concise, speak to your audience’s pain or aspiration, and include one or more of your keywords. Catch and Kisi do a great job of creating an impactful interruption message.
Connection (the story)
Once you’ve captured your audience’s attention with your hook, you’ll want to focus on connecting with them on a deeper level. This is where you can speak more to the problem they are trying to overcome or the thing they are aspiring to achieve and how your product helps them reach this outcome. This is also known as a value proposition. Alex Hormozi, author of $100M Offers, defines a product’s value as:
Dream Outcome = Problem worth solving
Perceived Likelihood of Achievement = Testimonials and case studies
Time Delay = How can we make it faster? How can we show progress?
Effort & Sacrifice = How can we make this easier?
As you’re addressing the above points, be sure to focus on your audience as the hero of their story. Don’t spend too much time on the benefits and features of your product. It’s human nature to enjoy hearing about yourself–so position your product as a supportive partner that helps your prospect achieve their goal. Be empathetic to what they are trying to achieve and use language that demonstrates you understand their pain, frustration, aspiration or desire.
Call-to-Action (the offer)
The offer is the exchange of money for the guarantee of a successful outcome – supported by your unique differentiators and value proposition. Think about your own business – can you identify your offer? If not, you should revisit it and ensure it addresses the above value variables, so that your prospect would be silly to pass it up.
An example of a company with a simple but effective offer is Dominos. They are one of many pizza companies in a very saturated market and aren’t differentiated on taste or price. So, they decided to create their offer based on speed: Get your pizza within 30 minutes or it’s free. This offer appeals to the value of time–and it has been wildly successful in differentiating them from their competitors. They’ve even incorporated robotic delivery options to further double down on their commitment to a speedy delivery time.
Types of Content
Once you’ve crafted your campaign elements, along with your hook, story and offer, you’ll want to think about how to package it all together. There are a number of different content types out there, so you’ll want to consider your product, ICP, niche, market, and experiment with different content vehicles. A few examples of various content angles:
Thought Leadership
This type of content generates insights for your audience, showcases the expertise of business or industry leaders.
How-to’s
This content type helps your audience better understand your product or a related topic. You can speak directly to how your product works or about another related topic to create trust with your audience.
FAQs
Frequently asked question content serves as a reference page for prospects to address any objections or questions they may have about your product.
Visuals
Whether it be your branding, an illustration, an infographic, a graph or something else – is an engaging way to display data or key messages about your product.
Lead Magnets
These can be whitepapers, case studies, research reports, quizzes and blog articles that you typically give away for free or for the exchange of contact information such as an email address.
Videos
These can feature product demos, explainers, webinars or other visual content.
Customer testimonials
Testimonials can be written, video or both and provide social proof for your product.
Distribution
Distribution is the core of your content engine because it is where you get the most mileage from your effort. It is the mechanism by which you can more effectively spread your content throughout different channels. You want to essentially think of yourself as a publishing house, churning out content and getting it in front of your customer.
First, research where your ideal customers congregate and focus on distributing content there to see if it resonates. You’ll experiment on different distribution channels and track against the content goals you’ve set. This will keep you focused and working toward the highest leverage points.
A big thing to remember is that an effective content engine isn’t necessarily about creating tons of different content on various topics week after week, but is more about maximizing how you distribute one great piece of content at a time to drive results. For example, you could start with a blog post. Once you’ve distributed it on your website, you can repurpose it in a number of different ways, depending on where your ICP lives:
Host a webinar or live event
Launch a podcast episode
Create a checklist or white paper for a lead magnet
Pitch your blog to another thought leader to feature on their website
Craft a Twitter thread, Facebook post, Tik Tok, or IG and LinkedIn Carousel
Record a summary with chapters for Youtube
Tools
This is the fun part–automating and streamlining your engine. There are a plethora of free or low-cost tools available. Below are a few of my recommendations:
Google Sheets – Yes, you read that right. If you’re just starting out (or even if you’re a more seasoned startup) and need a cheap and easy way to create a content calendar, GSheets is a great option. If you want to automate it further, I’d recommend using Asana.
ChatGPT - Need help generating content? ChatGPT is a great place to start. Although it’s not a turnkey solution, it can certainly help aggregate information from around the web to get you started.
Canva - create graphics, videos, animations and even post to your socials from one platform.
Loom - record and share videos (for free!)
Smarterqueue - A lower-cost social media planning and scheduling tool that also allows you to schedule and resurface old posts on a regular basis so you aren’t constantly creating new content.
Measuring Success
As a founder, your ultimate goal is to grow your customer base. So how do you measure your content engine’s effectiveness? A few metrics to keep in mind when creating and deploying your content campaigns include:
Traffic
To get more paying customers, you have to get more people to visit your website. Your content marketing engine should be focused on increasing your website traffic over time through awareness, so more prospects have the opportunity to learn about your product and be converted.
Bounce rate:
This metric shows whether people are staying on your site and engaging with content or instead leaving quickly. Not only that, but it can also tell you about whether the audience you're aiming for is being reached by your content or if the messages are resonating.
User engagement
User engagement is more than simply tracking how many people share or comment on your content; it's about gauging whether your initiatives are having the desired effect. Are you driving trials? Attracting targeted customers? Generating conversions?
Conversion rate
When you are trying to determine the success of your content, what matters most are conversions. Conversions will be different for each product and the stage of your prospects’ buying intent. Top-of-the-funnel prospects can be measured by impressions, shares, comments and link clicks; middle-of-the-funnel prospects show intent from lead magnet downloads, form fills and demo requests, and bottom-of-the-funnel prospect intent is typically measured by trial or paid signups.
As a founder, your most valuable asset is your time–that’s why it’s essential you approach content marketing from the lens of building an engine that simplifies and streamlines your effort. With a well-oiled engine in place, you’ll be able to produce, distribute and monitor the impact of your content with minimal effort and make the most of the time you have to grow your business.
Thanks again to Emily for contributing this post.
Join the Slack community to let me know what other topics you’d like to hear about.