Stop Creating More Marketing Content than you Need

Private Practice and Business Owners are often creating too much marketing content; way more than they need – sometimes 50% more!!!

And creating more means taking more time, and I know you all want to save time too. You have way better things to do than marketing your practice or business! You want to be working with clients, making the revenue that brings you financial freedom! And freedom to have the time to spend with family and friends … not doing more marketing.

Today, I want to make sure you understand what “too much” marketing content looks like so that you can be saving as much time as possible.

One thing I have discovered, having done over one hundred Marketing Assessments for practice and business owners, is that most folks create at least 50% more marketing content than they need to be effective.

Yep, you heard me: 50% more than you need to attract clients.

That’s a lot of content… and even more time!

This is often why folks are feeling like they spend more time marketing than they do working with clients … because you are spending a lot of time.

Here’s how it happens, and this is an actual experience I had with a member in my Thrive Marketing Academy except names have been changed to protect the … Guilty? Innocent? Hmmmm, let’s go with newly enlightened!!! 😊

So when I do a marketing assessment, we always review the marketing content folks publish online on social media, on their blogs and in their emails.

I’m checking for two main things:

1. Do they have a good mix of content? i.e. some content is business, some sales and some persona content. (I teach folks to follow a % mix of these to avoid being too salesy – See this previous article on my blog to understand this more: 7 Places to use CTAs when Marketing your Practice to Boost Sales.)
2. Are they repurposing their social media content from their main Anchor Content they created for their newsletter/blog? Here’s where I find the extra content – almost always, and almost always more than double what they need.

Now, to understand this we need to recap what Anchor Content is.

Anchor Content is the main article you create and publish on your website – typically as a blog or podcast.

Then you create Catalyst Content to get people to consume that main Anchor Content.

Catalyst Content is your newsletter and social media content that helps them read the main article (Anchor Content) which may be in the form of a newsletter or pieces of social media posts intended to get people to click and read the blog (Anchor Content).

(You can get a more in-depth explanation when you read this article: The 2 Types of Marketing Content you Need to Attract Clients to get all the details, but in summary Anchor Content is the main article you write and post on your website – i.e. as a blog.)

It’s in this check #2 when we were looking at the content, that I found the following with “Jane” when we did her assessment.

Here’s what she was publishing each month for marketing content:

• Sending an email twice a month, her newsletter.
• Posting a blog on her website once a week.
• Posting on average 4 posts a week on her Facebook Page. (20/month total)
• A daily post on Instagram in the feed. (20/month in total)
• Three posts a week on her LinkedIn Profile. (12/month in total)

This did not take into account her 2-3 daily IG Stories either.

Diving deeper into the content, I found she was actually creating:

• 6 pieces of Anchor Content. Her 4 Blog posts and the 2 Newsletter articles. They were all different articles!
• 4 more pieces of Anchor Content. This came from the Facebook and Instagram posts. Four were longer than 400 words (almost 2000 characters) and not the same content as the Blogs/Newsletters. That makes them 4 more pieces of Anchor Content.
• No Catalyst Content. So, none of the content posted was what I call a Blog Promotional Post: a post that entices people to click the link and read the blog. She had these new blogs she was posting on her website but not actually enticing anyone to read them.

In reality, each month she was creating about 10 pieces of Anchor Content – new articles/lessons that ranged from 350 words or more.

That’s a lot of the content!

We consider it 10 pieces of Anchor content because what we found was 10 different articles/focus topics. ALL NEW!

Now, she wasn’t following the Thrive Marketing Method but that’s because she didn’t know about it.

She was being consistent with her marketing and posting a lot of content. That’s what she thought she was supposed to do.

Yes, consistency is key with marketing. But …

She was one of those folks I mentioned who are creating 50% more marketing content than they need.

When I showed her how the Thrive Marketing Method works, she was blown away by the numbers when we imagined using the method with her content.

Here’s what she could have been doing with it:

1. Use 2 new articles each month as a blog post
2. Take those same 2 articles and use them as the main content in the 2 newsletters.
3. From each article, she would use those words as the basis to create.

— A. 3 Images to use with each article (6 in total)

— B. 3 Blog Promotional Posts to share on FB/LI to encourage people to click and read the blog. (6 in total)

— C. 3 Brilliance Tips posts. These are short posts or lessons from the content to share on IG or FB or LI that shares an idea or tip or strategy – something of value. (6 in total)

So now she has 2 newsletters, 2 blogs and 12 pieces of social media content to use over the month in her marketing + 3 images.

If she was repurposing and posting those social media content pieces on the different channels (FB/IG/LI) then she could turn them into 30 pieces of content in total for the month.

Why 30? When they are shared on the different channels on different days they come across as different content. (6 Blog Promo posts on FB/LI each = 12, and 6 Brilliance tips on FB/LI/IG = 18, the total = 30)

In reality, it is the same content, but when posted on another channel turns it into another piece of content.

That is just enough for what she needs.

AKA The Goldilocks Amount of Marketing Content… Just enough.

Now, think about it … if she did this type of schedule each month, those 10 articles would cover her for 5 months!

She was doing 5 months worth of marketing every month!

She was a little shocked I will admit. 😲

Then we talked time. 😥

How much time did those 6 articles and 4 longer posts take her to create?

She shared that the blogs and newsletters took about 45 minutes to an hour each and the Facebook long posts about 20 minutes each. That was just writing them, not posting them.

That added up to 360 minutes at the low end.

6 hours just to create the content – and that was just the articles, not the other social media posts and images.

I’m going to leave it there because at this stage you see the point. Jane did.

She was creating 50% more content than she needed and taking way more time away from her practice to create all this marketing, that wasn’t getting the results she wanted either.

(And she wasn’t the only one either, I’ve experienced the same results from those marketing assessments/checkups with many other clients over the years.)

Jane was burnt out from it all and exhausted. Which is actually why she booked the assessment with me; to find out why all the time she spent marketing wasn’t working.

What’s your Action Step from this lesson?

Do a check up on your marketing. If this is how you are being consistent with your marketing, just imagine the time and energy you could save when you have a system and plan to follow like the one I shared with Jane. If you aren’t sure how to do this, you can book a Marketing Assessment Session with me.

It IS possible to create less content, take less time doing it and get more results.

I say “more results” because that’s what happens.

I’m happy to report three months after making those changes, Jane’s numbers showed an increase in her website traffic … she had more leads too!

People were visiting her blogs. She had more signups on her email list from CTAs on those blogs to download her free nutrition guide. And you guessed it – she had more requests for consults and those were leading to more clients.

Most practice owners look at social media as the be all and end all solution to finding clients… social media is only one tool in your marketing toolkit. It works with the other 4 pillars of marketing a thriving practice or business; be sure you don’t skip the plans or foundations that help make your marketing easier. That’s what Jane WAS doing, but not anymore.

If you find yourself just creating content, and more content, and more, and not getting results, you may need to do an assessment and find a better way.

 

Are you ready to stop spending more time on marketing than you do working with clients?  

Discover a system to streamline your marketing that has been used by hundreds of practitioners and business owners. You will see exactly how to create LESS content for your marketing. Grab this free guide that comes with samples of how this works too!