Why a Cookie-Cutter Plan Won’t Cut It – in Just 7 Minutes with Lacy Boggs

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What I put together for you guys is a content marketing calendar template. So, that will help you do that backwards plan. You can put everything in the calendar and then plan it backwards. You can find that at www.lacyboggs.com/scaleology. That's a really great way to get started with the backwards planning that I'm talking about.

Summary:

Lacy Boggs is a content strategist, author of the bestselling Kindle ebook, "Make a Killing With Content," and the director of The Content Direction Agency. She helps small business owners fill their program or practice with organic traffic through content marketing. To learn more, go to lacyboggs.com/undercover

Here are the highlights of this episode:

1:24 Lacy’s ideal Client: I tend to work with small business owners who are someone in the 6 to 7 figure range. They probably have a small team of people who are contractors or maybe they have some employees. But the point is, they're not ready for a full-time marketing person on their team, so we come in and fill that role to help them create awesome content and content strategy.

2:01 Problem Lacy helps solve: Most often is that they don't really have a plan around the type of content that they're creating. So, they may be creating lots of content and different formats but there's no overarching plans tying it all together. There's no strategy behind it, there's no 30,000-foot view. So, what we do is we help create that big picture plan, and we can take it one step further and actually create the content on their behalf in which when you're a solopreneur or somebody wearing most of the hats, it can be very helpful to outsource some of that. That's where we really come in and help. 

2:55 Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Lacy: The first one is, lack of time. They want to be creating more content, they know it's important but it keeps falling off on the to-do list. Because content marketing tends to fall on that 'important but not urgent' quadrant. If you're spending all your time in your business, delivering to customers or whatever it may be, that tends to fall on the bottom of the to-do list. The second one is confusion; if they're feeling super confused about what type of content to create, what the message should be, how to make content actually drive sales and do something to support your business. The third one is that they have tried some sort of blueprint, formula, or system that they purchased somewhere else or read a book about, and it's just not quite working. They don't know how to retool that system to work in their specific business. This is why I talk about why cookie-cutter marketing plan isn't necessarily going to cut it for every business. You have to get really specific about what's going to work for you. 

4:23 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Lacy and her solution: This one is a lack of applying. A lot of times people will just throw content on the wall and try to see what sticks. But spaghetti is not a strategy, that's not how we grow our businesses. Having a plan, understanding how each piece of content that you're creating is actually going to move your business forward is a HUGE one that I think people forget. The second one is understanding that there are two WHYs for every piece of content. The first WHY is "why does your audience care, why are they listening?" but the second WHY is "what is it doing for your business, why does your business need this piece of content?". And if you can’t answer both WHYs, you're missing the boat, you're only doing one or the other. Finally, the biggest problem I see is understanding how that content is actually going to move people toward a sale. A lot of times I see people falling into it because they are creating great content, people love it, they come back but it’s not actually driving sales or revenue in any way. Unless you can figure out how to marry the two, it's really kind of a time-suck and it's not necessarily building your business.

5:42 Lacy’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): The biggest action I can say is start planning backwards; and what I mean by that is, take a look at your calendar, see what's your next 'big' see if it's a launch, if it's a promotion, a sale, or even something that influences your business coming up. And then plan your content backwards from that thing, because that's actually how you're going to create that journey for your customer. Briefly, if I'm going to launch a new product, I would start 6 to 8 weeks ahead of time warming people up to that idea, overcoming objections, getting them excited about before I ever let them know that they can buy something. Because that way, the content is actually pushing them along that journey. And they're ready to be like "take my money! I want your thing!". So, planning backwards is probably something I can test.

6:51 Lacy’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): What I put together for you guys is a content marketing calendar template. So, that will help you do that backwards plan. You can put everything in the calendar and then plan it backwards. You can find that at lacyboggs.com/scaleology. That's a really great way to get started with the backwards planning that I'm talking about.

7:28 You said cookie-cutting is not the answer, so what is the answer? For me, it's what I call 'leadership marketing' in which if you're a leader in your business, you should also be a leader in your marketing. And what I mean by that is, we don't have to reinvent the wheel, we don't need to come up with new tactics, but figure out how to take the tactics that exist, and put them together in a way that makes the most sense for your business. Look at your data, look at your ideal customer, and look at your brand voice to figure out which tactics are right for you to create your own leadership marketing plan.