Friday Deep Dives ( How to Create a Profit-Driven Content Strategy)

Welcome to the 12th issue of Friday Deep Dives, a monthly newsletter by Dozie Anyaegbunam, where an industry expert or I go all in on one question on content marketing from you all. I'm glad you're here.

Hallos people,

It’s another Friday Deep Dive. And today, we’ve got the experienced Lashay Lewis on the beat.

Let’s dive 🌊

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes, 13 seconds.

Hey everyone, Lashay here. And excited to be doing this.

Most content marketers have been taught to create content by:

• Finding keywords with a large search volume

• Typing those keywords into Google

• Taking the top 10 results and crafting an article from the information they find

But there’s a big issue with this…

Content marketing done this way is not going to create high-converting content.

Here’s why

You’re not going to find important customer information from a Google search.

This information can only be found through interviewing internal leadership teams (sales and customer success).

But even with this lies another problem. And that’s carving out time to interview the subject matter experts within your organization.

In this deep dive, we’ll be covering the following:

• How to consolidate important company information to get freelance or in-house content writers up to speed in record time (or if you’re a freelancer, how to manage customer research better)

• How to create a customer-focused content strategy

• The key to creating content that converts

• How to create a content strategy as a one-person team

• How to think about content if your SaaS has multiple features

• And a bonus tip for those who get to the end

Let’s get into it!

First, consolidate your most important company and product information

Content leaders attempt to hire freelance writers and expect them to come in and hit the ground running with creating content. But here’s the reality:

• These freelancers know nothing about your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

• They are not subject matter experts in your industry

• They probably have other clients they’re working with, and their attention is divided

All of these factors will play into the quality the writers produce.

So the question now becomes, how do you ensure quality when hiring freelancers or even when working with in-house writers?

The best way to do this is to consolidate customer and product information to allow writers to learn about your audience deeply in record time. You need a centralized hub where writers can pull ideas from, not just ideas. Data-driven ideas that match your target ICP.

I’ve created a content marketing dashboard in Notion. You can grab it here. It consolidates information like:

• Customer research

• Product information

• Use cases

• Testimonials

• Demo walkthroughs

In addition to the customer and product research, it also includes:

Bottom-of-funnel content brief - Helping writers conceptualize how the product helps the user 

Content frameworks - Provides a plug-n-play framework for writers to create high-converting articles at scale

Keyword research workboard - A place for writers to see the content strategy over a span of months 

Content Workboard - An easy way to manage the editorial process

It’s designed as a centralized hub to run your entire content strategy.

Next, use what you learned from customer and product research to craft a customer-focused content strategy

When I create a content strategy, I don't guess at anything.

I use the information I learned from interviewing internal teams (sales and customer success) to develop a bottom-of-funnel content strategy.

The key to creating a profit-driven content strategy is to start content creation around BOFU keywords first.

BOFU keywords are usually ones that show high purchase intent. Meaning the person searching for this type of keyword is further down the buying cycle and actively looking for a solution.

Some questions you should ask Sales are:

• Are there any products or services that prospects often switch from?

• What other products or services come up in sales conversations?

• What were some of the largest deals closed in the last year?

Some questions you should ask Customer Success are:

• What are the most used features of the product?

• Who do you view as our “best customers”?

• What customers see the value of our product or service?

There are a few ways you can spot a BOFU keyword. Modifiers like:

• Best

• Vs

• Alternative

• Top

• Reviews

You can use category or industry keywords (Keywords describing what your product is or does). Common issues your audience struggles with are also a great place to start.

My process for creating high-converting content that turns visitors into demo signups

Although finding BOFU keywords is an essential piece of the strategy, that alone won’t get you results.

It’s not enough to find a keyword and start creating content.

You need to structure the content to demonstrate the customer's pain points, product features, and how those features solve those pain points.

For example, let’s say you’re creating content around the keyword “best sales enablement software.”

Your introduction should quickly touch on pain points, show an outcome and transition into the heart of the content.

BOFU articles should be written differently than TOFU and MOFU articles. But the problem is many writers use a “one-size-fits-all” approach to their content marketing when articles should be written based on where the buyer is in the buyer journey.

One-person team? Here’s how you should create your content strategy

If you’re a one-person content team, the best way to begin your content strategy is to choose one category your SaaS serves. And exhaust all BOFU terms there before then moving to the next category.

Below is a visual example of how this would be done with a company like Podia.

What if your SaaS has multiple features? Here’s how I would approach content creation

I see writers struggle with knowing who to create content for when a SaaS has multiple features and ICPs.

To make this process easier, I like to do an exercise I call “feature mapping.”

It’s breaking down the individual features and matching them to a specific ICP.

Here’s an example of this done with a company with many different ICPs like Zapier.

Bonus tip: How to track conversions from your content using Google Analytics

PSA: This section will be updated with the GA4 process in the coming weeks. 

This is probably one of the most challenging aspects of content marketing. But it’s worth being addressed.

I like to use the Google Analytics model comparison tool.

It allows you to track what specific article someone landed on and which they converted from.

This is an excellent way to know which types of articles are converting the most, and it’s also a great way to show the C-Suite how your articles contribute to pipeline and MQL goals.

You can find it in the conversions drop-down menu.

From there, you choose organic search.

Then you change your secondary dimension to show the landing page URL.

Boom 👇🏾

The ability to show this will differentiate you from other content marketers.

Please feel free to connect and ask Lashay any questions you have on LinkedIn.

If you found it helpful, let me know in the comments or by email.

Thanks for reading to the end. You all make writing this newsletter worth the trouble.

Be good out there. If you can't be good, be careful.

Dozie.

PS: If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it on LinkedIn or with a friend.