Know What To Say, Where To Say It, And What It Should Do Next
The Content Strategy Session gives your business a clear plan of attack. The message you repeat this month. The point you build towards this quarter. And how every piece of content you make moves a buyer closer to picking up the phone.
Most Businesses Are Not Short Of Content. They Are Short Of A Plan.
You know you should be visible. So content gets made. Someone asks what are we posting this week, the answer gets decided on a Tuesday morning, and it goes out. Next week the same conversation happens again from a standing start.
None of it is bad. That is what makes it so frustrating. It is decent work that never adds up to anything, because nothing connects to anything else.
Any of this sound familiar
- !You decide what to post the same week it goes out
- !Nobody in the business could tell you what your message is this quarter
- !Content goes live, gets a few likes, and nothing measurable happens
- !You have no real idea what a buyer sees between first hearing your name and getting in touch
- !Your best content sends people to a homepage and the trail goes cold
- !You are building an audience on a platform you do not own and cannot contact directly
- !Marketing feels like effort that starts again from zero every month
If you read that list and thought that is us, you are in the right place. This is the most common position we find good businesses in.
Content Does Not Fail Because It Is Bad. It Fails Because It Is Not Pointed At Anything.
Your customer does not go from never having heard of you to signing a contract in one move. They work through it. First they do not know they have a problem. Then they know, but they do not know what to do about it. Then they are weighing up options and comparing you against two other firms. Then, finally, they are ready.
Most businesses make content for that last group only. A handful of people who are ready to buy right now. Everyone else, the people who will be ready in four months, sees nothing that speaks to where they actually are, and quietly moves on.
Then there is the bigger miss. Even the people who are interested arrive, read, nod, and leave without you ever knowing who they were. No name. No email. No way to put anything in front of them again. You paid for that attention with your time and then handed it straight back to the platform.
A plan fixes both. That is what this session is for.
The Content Strategy Session
Ninety minutes with me, in your office where that is practical, or online where it is not. Before we sit down I go through your website, your social channels and whatever content you have already made, so we are not spending your time on things I can find out myself.
The session is not a presentation and it is not a pitch. It is a working session. We map your next twelve months of communication on the wall and you leave with it written down.
What We Work Out Together
The message that has to repeat
Businesses change their message far too often, usually out of boredom. We agree the one thing your market needs to understand about you, then break it down into what you are saying this month, what you are building towards this quarter, and where that leaves you at six and twelve months. One message, said properly, for long enough that it lands.
How your customer actually buys
How long they take. Who else is involved in the decision. What they are worried about. What they need to believe about you before they will pick up the phone. Most of this is already sitting in your head from years of sales conversations. It has just never been written down where marketing can use it.
What content sits at each stage
Now we place content against that. What earns attention from people who do not know you exist. What builds trust with people weighing you up. What closes the ones who are nearly there. Different content, different purpose, and a clear reason for every piece to exist.
Where the capture points are
This is the part almost nobody has thought through. Content should be driving people somewhere specific, and that somewhere should collect a name and an email. A guide, a price list, a scorecard, a booked call. Once you own the contact you can market to them again on your terms, run remarketing against them, and stop starting from zero every month.
What to stop doing
Just as valuable and rarely said out loud. Some of what you are making will not work for your business, your market or your sales cycle. I will tell you which parts, and why, so you stop spending time and money on them.
What You Walk Away With
- ✓A twelve month message map. What you are saying and when
- ✓Content themes broken down by quarter, with the reasoning behind each one
- ✓A stage by stage plan showing what content speaks to a buyer at each point before they contact you
- ✓Your capture points, and what happens to a contact once you have them
- ✓A priority order, so you know what to build first rather than trying to do everything at once
- ✓A written plan sent through afterwards, so you can share it with your team or your board
The plan is yours. It is written to be useable whether we work together after this or not.
Fair Warning. The Plan Is Usually Bigger Than It Looks From Here.
Most business owners get to the end of this session and say a version of the same thing. This is right. And there is no chance we are pulling all of this off on our own.
That is a good outcome, not a bad one. Far better to see the size of it clearly, on paper, than to keep making content on a Tuesday morning and wondering why nothing compounds.
From there you have three options. Run it yourself with the plan as your guide. Hand us the parts your team cannot cover. Or hand the whole thing over and let us run it. We can talk about which one makes sense while we are sat there, or you can go away and think about it. The plan does not change either way.
This Session Is Built For You If
- ✓You are a business owner or director who knows marketing needs to be better and is tired of guessing
- ✓You have a team making content without a plan behind it
- ✓You have spent money on video or social before and cannot point to what it did
- ✓You are about to spend money on it and want to get it right first time
- ✓You sell something considered, where buyers take weeks or months to decide
- ✓You want your marketing to be something you can hand over, measure and hold someone to
It Is Probably Not For You If
- –You want somebody to agree with the plan you already have
- –You are looking for one video to fix a sales problem
- –You have no intention of doing anything with the plan once you have it
How It Works
Before we meet
You fill in a short set of questions about your business, your customers and what you have tried. I audit your website, your channels and your existing content in my own time.
The session
Ninety minutes, in person or online. We work through the message, the buyer, the content and the capture points, and we build the plan as we go.
The written plan
Your plan comes back to you in writing within three working days. Clear enough to hand to your team, your marketing person or your board.
Investment
Book any production work with us within 30 days and the full £495 comes off the cost. In practice, most people who go ahead pay nothing for the session.
Questions
Can you not just tell us this on a free call?
General advice is free and I am happy to give it. A plan built around your business, your buyers and your sales cycle takes preparation and proper thinking. That is what you are paying for.
What if we do not use you for the production afterwards?
Then you keep the plan and go and use it. It is written to work with your team, a freelancer or another agency. I would rather you had a good plan and told people where it came from.
We already have a marketing person. Does this replace them?
No, it makes them far more effective. Most marketing people are asked to produce content without ever being given a clear message or a target. This gives them both, in writing.
We already know we need video. Can we skip to that?
You can, and some people do. But video made without a plan is the most expensive way to find out the plan was wrong. Ninety minutes now usually saves thousands later.
How quickly will we see results?
Content compounds rather than spikes. Expect to see engagement shift within a month or two, and enquiries follow once the capture points are live and the message has had time to repeat.
Do we need to have made video before?
No. Plenty of businesses come to this having made nothing at all. Starting with a plan rather than a camera is the right order.
You Are Going To Make Content Next Year Either Way
The time gets spent. The posts get written. Somebody films something. The only real question is whether all of that effort adds up to something by December, or whether you are having the same Tuesday morning conversation in twelve months time.
Ninety minutes and a plan is the difference.