FUNNEL MAGAZINE TRAFFIC & LEAD GEN
6 FUNNEL FEATURES
AUTOMATE
YOUR TRAFFIC, FUNNELS & FOLLOW UP WITH THE WORLD
THE INTERVIEW
102 METRICS
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32 STRATEGY & TACTICS
LEADERSHIP
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168 SOCIAL MEDIA
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VOLUME 2
FUNNEL MAGAZINE
IN EVERY EDITION
LETTER
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IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF YOUR CONTENT
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FROM THE EDITOR
TARGETING HIGH VALUE CLIENTELE?
CUSTOM PACKAGING CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR YOUR FUNNEL
NEIL PATEL
TRACK EVERYTHING
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GENERATING TRAFFIC TO CLIENT FUNNEL WITH NON-PPC OR LONG-TERM SEO
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LAUNCHING A PRODUCT IN LITERALLY 4 HOURS
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IN BUSINESS, HOW DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF?
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THE SALES OF SOCIAL PROOF
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SECRET TO 7 FIGURE VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
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LOOK FOR THE STRUGGLE AND FOCUS ON THE WIN
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GETTING S.M.A.A.R.T. ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR OF
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Dear Funnel Hackers, Thank you so much for choosing to read Funnel Magazine this month! We have a featured article full of Tracking Conversion Hacks brought to us by Neil Patel. Neil Patel was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations. He was only sixteen when he started to create his own job board. My husband and I were at a local networking event this month for entrepreneurs and business owners. We participate in this particular event monthly it’s a small but intimate group of entrepreneurs, business owners, and coaches. As we talked and mingled around the room, we found that the biggest concern of all these entrepreneurs and business owners was finding reliable employees. These business professionals were not in just in one market either they were in construction, nursing, automotive, business coaching, and more. All business owners, entrepreneurs, and coaches need help to free up their time and to be able to focus on doing what they do best! So Iwaswondering,What are theTop fiveJob Boards forthe ITand Marketing Fields? The research I did lead me to find these five job boards for those fields. Stack Overflow, AngelList, AuthenticJobs, Behance, and Dribbble. Facebook is even trying to connect their Facebook users to employers searching for reliable staff members. Under the Explore section are the Jobs on Facebook section! You can scroll down and see the available job postings for your location. All of these platforms and boards to connect people together. To me, this is mind-boggling that finding help is still such a widespread struggle for business owners, entrepreneurs, and coaches. What is the missing component? We have that answer in this issue of the magazine as well. Hawk, The Funnel Genius, and Publisher of Funnel Magazine has the missing component in his article about Automation and Delegation. The struggles with hiring employees and contractors and the better way of delegating and outsourcing to scale your business to seven plus figures. Editor- Tricia Wilkes
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VOLUME 2
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TRAFFIC & LEAD GEN
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VOLUME 2
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How to Improve the Quality of Your Content ARTICLE BY Bogdan Zlatkov
If you’re a B2B company with limited resources, how Source: Hubspot benchmark data much content should you be aiming to create? This data is super useful and definitely something you There are merits to both a quantity-heavy and a quality- should consider when planning your content marketing strategy. The issue that I take with this data, however, is heavy approach. First, let’s take a look at quantity. it only measures quantity of blog posts and quantity of Those who favor a quantity-heavy approach will traffic. Most importantly, it leaves out the quality of the typically cite stats like, “Companies that published 16+ traffic and the quality of the leads. blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts.” Then For example, working with one of our recent clients at Pixel Press, we decided to do a collaboration with they’ll add a fun chart like this… another company on an e-book we were putting out. Our client, a B2B company of about 200 people, was going to partner with another B2B company of about 2400 people. Clearly there was a huge upside to working with a company larger than us and with far more reach than us. So, we spent about a month producing a quality e-book that addressed both companies’ target markets and we pressed publish. We estimated that we would receive about 3,500 leads from the e-book.
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We were wrong, very wrong. VOLUME 2
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Not only did we surpass our 3,500 lead goal but we smashed it by securing over 14,000 leads in just 1
month! Wow! Huge win! High fives all around!
Most other content marketers agree that content strategy depends on a lot of factors. But rather than If we only took a quantity metric of this e-book it would stopping at “it depends,” let’s look at exactly what to do be counted as the best piece of content we had made at different stages in the growth of a B2B company. all year. But, being responsible content strategists of course, we also measured the quality of the leads. Position in the Market How? We do this the old school way. Not by measuring conversions (again that’s a quantity-based approach) but by talking to the actual sales team. Yes, we had real conversations with real people which, from what I understand, is pretty rare in the content agency world.
Where you are in the market should be your first step in determining how much content you produce. Ross Simmonds, an expert on digital strategy, stated it perfectly when he said, “If you’re in a competitive space where every ideal keyword has been claimed with 10x content - you’re walking up a steep hill with 50lbs on your back. In this case, it’s possible you’re going to need to take an aggressive effort as you’re truly playing catch up.”
When we spoke with the sales team we found out that the majority of the e-book leads were grossly unqualified. There were people who didn’t even recognize the If you are playing catch up to competitors who have a company name, let alone what they actually did. ton of content out already, then yes, you should churn Having poor quality leads can be attributed to a few out a content library as quickly as possible. Having a good backlog of content not only helps boost your things: SEO for keywords, but it also begins the process of • Misleading subject titles compounding returns. • Over promotion to the wrong audiences According to Hubspot, 1 in 10 blog posts are • Under-nurturing leads compounding, meaning organic search increases their • Misleading CTA traffic over time. So, the sooner you can create blog • Lack of brand placement posts, the better chance you have of hitting that 1 in 10 When creating a piece of content, there are a million shot of one of them taking off. quality metrics that contribute to making that piece of When you’re first entering a market, you don’t really content successful or not. I think this is why everyone know what works and what doesn’t from a content likes to fall back on the quantity metrics. They’re clear. perspective. You need to experiment and see what They’re easy. resonates with your audience. So yes, if you’re new to But if you only measure the amount of traffic and leads content marketing, write and write often. you’re generating, chances are you’ll be wasting your A good benchmark we recommend for new companies sales team’s time and thus wasting your money. to hit is about 4 blog posts per month without a So, while it’s true that creating more content is a good dedicated content writer, or 8 blog posts per month thing, creating content simply for boosting numbers with a dedicated writer. This guarantees that by the end of the year you’ll have 48 to 96 pieces of content. isn’t necessarily the smartest strategy. Taking that into account let’s look at...
Efficiency of the Sales Funnel
If, however, you’ve been in the content marketing game for at least a year or two, it’s time to take a more For a B2B business, the amount of content you create qualitative approach to your strategy. How qualitative should largely be based on: your approach should be is largely determined by how good your sales funnel is already. • Position in the market • Efficiency of the Sales Funnel Continuing to churn out blog posts just to increase • Size of Sales Team traffic is a fool’s errand if you’re just taking that traffic A Quality-based Approach to Content Creation
and chucking it into an inefficient sales funnel. Giving blanket advice like “this is how B2B businesses should…” is never a smart idea. You always need to The internet is full of clever ways adjust your advice based on variables of a business, to increase your sales funnel and that’s why we developed the above variables when conversion rates. From advising our clients. QUARTER 3 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM
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