188 | Your 5-Step Plan to Turn Your Content Into a Sales Machine

If you are a business owner or entrepreneur who has been pouring time and energy into creating long-form content, whether a podcast or YouTube videos, or just tons and tons of social media, and all of that had the goal of growing your business, but you really haven't gotten the audience growth revenue and personal brain growth that you set out for in the beginning, this video is for you. Today, I'm going to reveal the five key components that every successful content-driven business needs in order to be at a place where you create content, that content-grows your audience, and that audience buys your stuff and becomes your paying customers. When you have what I call content-driven business, you create content all the time, that content grows your audience, and that audience wants to buy your stuff so you have lower marketing costs and easier sales. And the best part about getting this right is that it actually is going to mean less work on content than you're currently doing because you're going to be able to create one episode of your show or one video, and that one piece of long-form content is going to cascade into a flywheel that drives the next step in the sales marketing and fulfillment process. So if you've been feeling like you're on a content hamster wheel, constantly cranking out episodes, but really not seeing any increase in audience growth or authority or revenue or sales, what I'm going to outline will show you what you might be missing within your system and where you should focus your energy to get the whole thing on stuff. This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps business owners grow their business and their brands by growing their podcast. My name is Kevin. I've used this exact approach to generate more than 3 million in revenue for my business in just three years, and I've held more than 400 other entrepreneurs do the same thing. And what I found in working with these entrepreneurs is that the most successful ones don't just create content. They don't just make episodes willy-nilly. They build a system that fuels their entire business and their marketing and sales process. They understand that long-form content is only one piece of the puzzle and short-form content is also just one piece of the puzzle and that there's three other pieces as well. And without all five, your efforts fall short. So whether you're just starting out creating content for your business or you're already producing an on-regular basis, what I'm going to share will give you the clarity and direction you need to make every piece of content count. So let's dig into the five key components of a content-driven business. You see, I used to think that just publishing a podcast putting out episodes week after week was enough if you wanted to be successful with content marketing. But over the years, I've seen firsthand the massive drawbacks that podcasts have and how relying 100% on a podcast prevents a business owner from reaching their full potential of audience growth, lower marketing costs, and more easy sales. Time and time again, when I come across an entrepreneur who has really cracks the code, they publish great content, their audience is growing like crazy, their audience is buying their stuff, they have all five components of the content-driven business working at least proficiently. They're not perfect at all of them, but they've got them going. So what are the five pieces? Let's start with component one, long-form content, aka podcast episodes or YouTube videos. And we're going to start here for a couple of reasons. If you have an expertise-based business like coaching or consulting or agency or some sort of expert service business, in my opinion, there really is no better lead nurturing mechanism than long-form content. When people consume your videos or your audio episodes for 10 to 60 minutes, at the end, they're ready to buy. And when you get this right, your long-form episodes become the engine to the content flywheel. They become the thing that you focus on, creating week after week, and then the rest of the system flows from that, and your team does the other stuff via leverage and repurposing. We'll get there in a minute. But like I said, the first one is long-form content, and we need the other four because there are shortfalls, there are pitfalls to long-form content. And by the way, for the rest of this video, I'm going to refer to long-form content as a podcast. Whether you believe it's audio video, I don't really care, I'm going to use that word. It's easier. So here's why relying on a podcast alone is tough. So if your podcast is on YouTube, you have to get really good at the YouTube algorithm. You got to understand titles and thumbnails and keyword research and click for the rates. You also have to make sure that your video setup and your editing is at least passively good, which trust me gets expensive really fast. And you don't have to go as crazy as I do with the setup, but it is an important ingredient. It's got to look good. So all of those factors are going to be on top of making great long-form episodes, and it's going to keep you from getting long-form off the ground all by itself. And if you're someone whose podcast is audio only, it's even harder to grow your audience. It is very hard. It is audience growth on expert mode. I've devoted my life over the past five years to podcast growth. And what I know now is it's the hardest one. So it's also true about podcasts and long form is that it can be tough to get people to buy your stuff right then and there while they're consuming your long-form content. And that's because they're doing something else. They're working out. They're driving whatever. I'm going to pull over and buy your course right then and there. So long form content is really good at lead nurturing and authority building, but it is not good at getting people to take action right now or lead generation, getting new people to discover that you exist. So how can you make things easier and how can you make up for those shortfalls? Well, you start by introducing component to short form social media. There is no better way to generate leads, aka get your ideal avatar to discover that you exist. And social media, it's where everybody's attention is right now. So to really get the most out of your long form content, you want to also show up regularly on social media and post native short form social media content. That's going to give us a couple things that we don't get from long form content alone. The first thing is retargeting, aka reminding people who already know that your show exists and that you exist, that you do. You have to do this. You can't rely 100% on them to subscribe or follow the show on Apple podcasts or Spotify or even YouTube. It's just not reliable. You gotta say, hey, everybody, I have this new thing available. But in addition to that, short form social gives you discoverability, fast discoverability. Case in point, I recently had a client lunch a podcast with her sister about their favorite romance fantasy book series. They started making short form videos right away about these books and within three months their audience had grown to over 100,000 and they had gotten more than a million downloads of their podcast. That was largely driven by short form social media. As you want to learn more about that, I did an episode with her. Her name is Nicole Holliman. You can get that episode on the girl the show feed. Now, I know what you're thinking, Kevin. I don't want to have to dance on TikTok. Kevin, I'm not a social media person. I hate social media. I'm not good at social media. Can I just hire my niece or a VA in the Philippines to do all the social media for me? Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You don't have to make dancing videos and you hate social media because you're bad at it. It makes you feel dumb and you don't like to feel dumb. But it only makes you feel dumb because you don't know yet how to use it. I promise you though, once you learn how it works and how to create content that gets reached, you're not going to hate it anymore. In fact, you're going to have to install blockers on your phone because you're on it too much. Everybody in your life is suddenly going to think that you're one of those good at social media people and you're going to laugh at the idea that you wanted to pass off the single greatest source of fast wealth of all time to a VA in the Philippines. I do have good news though. First off, you only need one social media platform to get this right. You don't have to be on all platforms at once and it's better to master one before you worry about all of them. If you don't already have momentum on any platforms, just pick one. Your favorite one and go all in on it until you have at least 10,000 followers. I call that the one to 10,000 role. I generally these days recommend for business owners Instagram or LinkedIn, but TikTok, X, Facebook, Threads, they're all good, just pick one. You can be on all platforms later once you're making more money and you have more resources than a team to put behind your social media presence. In summary, short form social media is really good at lead generation, getting new people and lead retargeting, getting people who already know that you exist but kind of forgot to remember that you exist, but it's not good at audience access. What do I mean by that? Well, even if you're a world class at social media, you're one of the best in the game, you're lucky to reach three to five percent of your audience, of the people who followed you who opted into seeing your stuff on a regular basis. The social media algorithms are fickle and what's working on social media, the tactics, change is really fast. That's all true. And when it comes to getting people to buy, getting people to cross over the line and convert them and get them to buy your stuff, it's okay. You can get people to buy your stuff from social media, but that's not for everybody. You can only reach a tiny portion of your audience and what's also true is the more you ask people to buy on social media, the more you're going to get punished by the algorithm. So social media also has some shortfalls which means we're ready for the third component of a contenture in business and that is your email list. Now, like I said before, your social media audience, you can expect if you're doing well to access maybe one to five percent of that audience. The standard within email list is that you're going to be able to access 20%. I usually average 40 to 50%. I've seen people who have 70% open rates. So this means that email gives you the ability to contact your audience fairly on demand where you will actually reach them. You will send a message and they will see it. That is not the case with long form and it is extremely fickle with short form unless you're DMing everybody. What's also great about email is that you're able to reach their audience when they're in the best situation to take action and buy. People click on stuff in their emails and they buy stuff from their emails more so than when they're watching a video or when they're scrolling on social media. Email is hands down the thing that brings you the most buyers and it is simply in my experience the best place to get people to buy. Your email list is also going to serve as retargeting like your social media does because it reminds people to consume your long form episodes who otherwise wouldn't have noticed that there was a new episode available. So when you add your email list to the equation, now you have a way to generate tons of leads from social media, your long form content nurtures the crap out of them and gets them ready to buy and your email list contacts them and invites them to take the next step and buy something now. But wait a minute, hold on a second. What isn't that they are actually going to buy? How are you going to make money? Well, that's the fourth component of a content driven business. Your core offer and core is the key word. This is where you want to have a flagship thing that is your default thing that you sell. For business owners or CEOs who are running companies that already have multiple offers, I'm not saying you should can your other offers, right? It's good to have multiple offers. But what I am saying is that you want to have one flagship thing that you send your audience to as like the core thing. And this is even more important for you solo printers out there who currently offer six different courses, a membership with three tiers of pricing, three different tiers of one on one coaching and app subscription. It's just too much. Your audience is confused. So instead of trying to sell 10 different things, why don't we get really good at selling one thing first? That core offer is going to be the thing that generates the most ROI and pays the bills. Like I said, it's the flagship. It's the foundation. It is the baseline. It is the thing that you sell directly to your listener base. I can be a done for you service, a digital course or a product, coaching or consulting, a high ticket program, a membership, a Patreon, a mastermind, physical products, whatever it is. You should pick one thing that is your core offer. This is the main thing. Now I know you might be a business owner who already has a core offer and you say duh. Of course, I need to have an offer to sell. I started my show. I started creating content to sell that thing. But I also know that some of you don't have a core offer. Some of you have podcasts that are impressively large. But all of your revenue comes from advertisers. You have nothing to sell your audience. Now there's nothing wrong with that. But I know for a fact, advertisers can be fickle. It's feast or famine. And it is also not fun when sponsors are your boss. And if that's you, consider creating and launching a core offer. I believe you're going to make more money and your business is going to be more stable. Now if you're a solo printer who does not have a flagship offer or program, that one thing where you're said this is how I can help you where your audience can choose, yes or no, I would stop worrying about audience growth and get that settled. Clean up what you're offering. Make it one thing and then worry about getting more people to discover that one thing. So your core offer is the fourth component of the content driven business. That is what gives you money, the cheddar cheese, monetization, right? Content without a core offer is a fun side project in my opinion. Content with an offer behind it is a business. Now when you've got your social media generating leads, your long form content is nurturing leads and getting them to know, like and trust you. And an email list is getting those leads to do something virtually on command that core offer gives you the thing to sell to that audience, hopefully at scale. But there's one problem with the core offer. There's one thing that it's missing and that is this, it ain't going to sell itself. That's why we need the fifth and final component of the content driven business. And that is the sales funnel. Now there's a lot of discourse online about sales funnel and tons of gurus trying to sell you on which type of funnel you should do, aka, whether you should buy their course on their type of sales funnel. So which one is the best? Here's the answer. The one that you use and the one that you understand. A sales funnel is a designed step by step process that takes somebody from lead. They find out that you exist to customer. They have paid you and they're happy that they did it. Actually a funnel doesn't make them happy, but that's your job. Anyway, and it's a funnel because when somebody is in the sales funnel, there's only one next step for them to take at a time. There's many different types of sales funnels. There's application funnels where they apply and then they'll go call. There's discovery call funnels where it's like book of call and we'll talk about your problems. There's a sales page funnel where it's just, here's the sales page. You want to buy the thing? There's webinar funnels that take them through a presentation either recorded or live. And there's countless more, I feel like every week on Instagram I get an ad for a new type of funnel that says, don't do those other types of funnels. They don't work anymore, right? So there's tons of ways that you can do it. Whichever type of funnel you choose, there's a couple reasons why you need at least one dedicated sales funnel to sell your core offer. And this is the biggest reason. If you try to do all of your selling from your content, from social media, from long form, even email and you want them to buy right then and there, your content is not going to perform well. You will be punished by all the algorithms because you're asking people to buy all the time and they don't like that. There's a big time creator who's really smart. Some people like, some people hate, I'm not going to tell you who it is. But that person says all the time, you want to give in public and sell in private. You also need a way for prospects to have their questions answered. Every person that is considering buying your stuff has individual questions and objections and they are not going to buy until those things are handled. So you've got to have some way for their questions to be answered and their objections to be handled. Whether that is an hour long discovery call, a live webinar or just a sales page that has an FAQ, you need something that's going to take your individual one by one prospects by the hand and walk them over the line to buy and become a customer. You don't want your long form, your short form and your email list to try to play that role because like I said before, it's going to sabotage the success of and growth of those platforms. Once you have a sales funnel live and converting, that is when we really get the magic. And that's because all five of the components are now working together. You've got your long form episodes nurturing the crap out of people. You've got your short form getting you new leads. You've got your email list converting them and sending them into the sales funnel. You've got your sales funnel that takes them along the process of buying at the end of which they buy your core offer, which is something that is repeatable and scalable. And once you have those things in motion, that's where the good stuff starts. Now note that all of those things have to be linked together and we do that via CTAs or calls to action. This is where you tell the person to go do something else, like subscribe to the newsletter or enter the sales funnel or something like that. And so you want to make it so that each part of the content driven business, CTAs to the other part. So your podcast episode, CTAs your newsletter and get some on your email list. Your social media content, CTAs the long form content, right? It gets them to watch the long thing. Your newsletter, CTAs your podcast and your social so people go to the other things and all three of those things get people to enter your sales funnel so people buy your core offer and you make money. Now here's the beautiful thing about your long form content. It creates the fuel for this whole system to work because I know this is a lot of stuff, right? What do you mean? I got to set up all these things. When you set up, you get what's called a flywheel. And a flywheel is a system that once running fuels itself, right? So the content driven business flywheel runs like this. Number one, you as the CEO, as the creator, once a week create long form content that solves problems, answers questions, shares realization that you had and tells stories. I remember that as PQRS. That's what you're doing in your content. My content today is solving a problem for you and answering questions. And I have shared a couple of stories, right? I haven't showed any realizations yet, maybe I'll do that next week. So that's what your long form content does. Use and use the insights from that long form episode to create short form content for social media. Think about it. This video that you've watched so far, I can probably make about 20 different pieces of social media content from all the stuff I've shared with you right now. So I make this video once I take all the insights and I make short form content throughout the week. Then in the middle of your short form and your long form content, you CTA people to join your email list like this. If you're somebody who has struggled to grow your podcasts and it's not doing what you wanted to do, check out my free email course. It's called 12 Days of Podcast Growth. You can go to one two days of podcast growth.com. It's a 12 day course that's going to walk you through exactly what to do to get your podcast growing so that it brings you more leads and sales. The link is in the show notes. Once again, that's one two 12 days of podcast growth dot com. So then when people are consuming your content, they go to 12 days of podcast growth dot com. They give me their email. They're on my email list. Some of them will enter my sales funnel, aka book a call with me to understand what it would look like for me to come into their business and build this out alongside them. That's my sales funnel. They then buy my core offer, which is the Grow the Show Accelerator. And here's the key as I am fulfilling that offer as I am working with my clients. I solve problems. I answer questions. I have realizations and I encounter stories and all of those things I turn into long form content and the cycle continues. Now I know this was a lot, but my goal today with this episode was to show you the five components of a successful content driven business. And my hope is that in seeing those, you can identify which components are missing or are the weak link in the chain. Now if you want my help with that, click the link in the show notes and I can walk you through what it's missing and how you can fix it or just make sure you are some described to grow the show because every future episode of this show is going to be here to help you with those five things. So that ultimately you can have a growing thriving content driven business. That is going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. Now I have a quick favorite to ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating. And if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests and it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment. Leave us a five-star rating. Maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten and I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post-production by podcast boutique. And if you want your show to be post-produced with quality really freaking fast and if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with podcast boutique. Just head to podcastboutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them because I spent no time editing this episode and neither should you. All right, that's going to do it for Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmittlin. I'll see you next time.