Hello - I’m Jon

@Jn_Norris

▪ Editor at Crunch▪ Online accountancy for SMEs

▪ Launch to Top 100 firm in five years

▪ Mission to educate & support business owners

▪ Freelance writer▪ Guardian

▪ Wired

▪ The Next Web

▪ etc.

Consume customer

consciousness for colossal

content creation(and some other stuff)

Content marketing is the what happens

when sales and editorial make love

Each has a distinct aim

Editorial

Attract an audience

Sales

Sell stuff

Each has distinct tools

Editorial

Personas

▪ Who are our

audience?

▪ What are they

interested in?

Sales

Buying cycles

▪ Where are people

in our sales funnel?

▪ When are people

likely to buy?

These tools can - and should - inform

one another

What we did

Know your audience better and you can

engage them, and sell to them, more

effectively

Step 1 - Know your audience

▪ Asked our client-facing staff

▪ Interrogated support tickets & chat logs

▪ Looked at site search queries & popular

pages

▪ Crawled forums

and lastly…

▪ We asked them

Step 1 - Know your audience

Decided on four stages

▪ Stage 1 - Full-time employed, wanting more

▪ Stage 2 - Moonlighting

▪ Stage 3 - Beginner business owner

▪ Stage 4 - Successful entrepreneur, thinking

about growing

Step 1 - Know your audience

Some of the output from the workshops -

Step 2 - Audit your content

▪ Get everything into a spreadsheet

▪ Tally your content against each issue

▪ Identify strong / weak areas

Step 2 - Audit your content

Hooray! Bugger

Step 3 - Lets get creating!

But wait!

There’s loads of information in here

Learn from the data...

This is a

persona

▪ Want to keep their

freelancing a secret

▪ Struggling with time

management

▪ Works evenings &

weekends

▪ Very little tax knowledge

Learn from the data...

Want to keep their

freelancing a secret

Don’t send emails to

work addresses!

Struggling with time

management

Work evenings &

weekends

Very little tax

knowledge

Give them something

digestible (e.g. podcast)

Send stuff on Saturday!

Make sure everything is

beginner-level

Editorial

Sales ?

Learn from the data...

This is a buying cycle

Learn from the data...

People tend to buy from here onwards

Depending on what content they show interest in, we can

infer the best time to sell.

CTAs in practice

Just want

information.

Offer:

▪ Newsletter

▪ Freebies

▪ YouTube

subscription

Almost ready to

buy.

▪ Start

introducing

product

Potential customer!

Offer:

▪ Free demo

▪ Free

consultation

▪ Live chat

▪ Invitation to

events

▪ etc.

Should really

be a customer

by now

▪ Address

common

objections

Be smarter with email campaigns

Stage

1

Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4

Creating this way means

sales and editorial have an

equal presence in your

content strategy

Thank you!

@Jn_Norris

www.crunch.co.uk