Step four, create engaging top of funnel content. Engaging top of funnel content. We're now beginning to work backwards. We know where we want to end up. We generally know how we're going to get there. But we got to start the conversation. We can't just walk up to strangers. We got to start the conversation. Today in the digital marketing world we call this content marketing. Right, we call it content marketing. It's really nothing new. We'll talk about it a little bit more later. Content marketing has been around for a long time. Content typically is of two forms, information and entertainment. Information and entertainment. Usually it's best to be informative because being entertaining is hard. A lot of people can't pull it off. The most important thing that you need to remember when it comes to this stage if you are going to do content marketing is that it's about the customer and not the product. The biggest mistake that I see people making when they do content marketing where the ...

put out that top of funnel, and by top of funnel content we simple mean, content that is freely available it's ungated. Anybody can access it. The biggest mistake I see people making with this is they write articles about their product. As if anybody cares. That's like you're the person who when you meet somebody all you do is talk about yourself. Nobody likes that person. Right, you have to talk about them. What do they want? My buddies, they're the founders of SnackNation. SnackNation is a subscription service where they send out healthy snacks to offices. What they realize is that their customer is not the business owner it's actually the office manager or HR director. They're the ones making the decision. They don't have content about snacks, top snacks of the year and best snacks to select or organic snacking. They barely talk about snacks on their blog instead 39 Insanely Fun Team Building Activities for Work ("Trust Falls" not included). It has nothing to do with snacks. It has everything to do with the customer. It has nothing to with snacks, it has everything to do with the buyer. Stop talking about yourself and your product. That's why you are not engaging. Talk about yourself later. Keep in mind as we talked about before your product is a vehicle, it is not the destination. Another friend of mine Lori Taylor, she started a company called TruDog. They sell really, really high-end dog food. Like never frozen, super high-end dog food. They've got articles on DIY remedies to fight doggie breath. Because if you've got a dog your dog's breath stinks. That's a problem. Her product doesn't necessarily solve bad dog breath. But they know that it's an issue and something that if you can address you build a trust and you move on. If you can produce content that addresses someones needs today, if you can produce content that address what people want then you can earn the right to tell them what they need. We leverage content at the engaged stage to give people what they want so that we can earn the right to tell them what they need. We go first. We buy the first drink. Another buddy of mine Ezra, he's in the cosmetic space. Has his own line of cosmetics. Their target market is women over 50. Five make-up tips for older women by 64 year old make-up artist turned supermodel Cindy Joseph. It's calling out specifically to the market. Yeah, it's about makeup, it's about the product but it's specifically about their audience, which is women over 50. Now all of this is just pure content no real selling involved. So the question that I get is, can a sales message engage? Can a sales message engage? Have any of you ever found a sales message that was particularly engaging and you like wow that's actually pretty good. Who remembers the Squatty Potty ad? Does anybody remember the Squatty Potty? Come on, do you remember it? Can you describe? Can you hand him the mic? Describe the Squatty Potty ad for me. What happened in the Squatty Potty ad? In a magical world where you had a unicorn. Magical world and what's the unicorn doing? Like poop ice cream. Yeah, pooping rainbow ice cream. You've got a unicorn pooping rainbow ice cream. That's what happened. So here's the formula, unicorn plus poop equals viral gold. You can just take that one with you. That's free. It crushed, it did really well and they sold a lot of these tools. But what if your product or service is boring? What if your product or service has nothing to do with poop? Poop is always hilarious. At the end of the day we are are like 11 year old boys. What if it has nothing to do with it? This is an HVAC company out of Charlotte North Carolina. They produce hilarious stuff. They do mean tweets. They have their people dancing. I mean if you can't go poop white guys dancing is always hilarious also especially if they dance with air filters and things like that. So that's funny. Can anybody think of any other ads for really really boring products. Whatcha got? Dollar shave club for sure. Dollar shave club. They're selling razors. Razors been around forever. The only way razors had ever been sold was basically to make them feel like a car. You're like a guy going through I'm going to be like Roger Federer. It's all these things and then he said you know I'm just going to be funny and have people buy my razors. So yes sales messages can be entertaining. I'm going to give you another example we are going to walk through during the next segment. But it is harder. It's much harder to pull off. That's why I recommend that when it comes time to answering question number 5, How do we leverage content either in the form of information or entertainment to turn a glance into a stare. Default to information. Even all the best comedians still have writers. So for us the digital marketer, it's really simple, blog post, training videos, just go first. We're going to talk later on about how to come up with these ideas. So if you are thinking to yourself, I don't know yet what I can do there I'm going to give you some ideas.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

CreativeLive - Launch a Profitable Marketing Plan

buy this class

$00

Buy Class

Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

79.7K Students

99% Recommend this Class

00 Student Work

0 Video lessons in HD
00h 00m of class content
Exclusive bonus content
Lifetime access, anywhere, anytime
Streaming access on desktop and mobile browsers
Download and offline access with class purchase
Offline sync with our iPhone & iPad apps
100% satisfaction guarantee

Ryan Deiss

Ryan Deiss (pronounced "Dice”) is cofounder and CEO of DigitalMarketer.com, the leading provider of digital marketing training and certifications to small and mid-sized businesses. Ryan is also the founder and host of the Traffic & Conversion Summit, the largest digital marketing conference in North America, and the creator of the "Customer Value Optimization" methodology.

SEE INSTRUCTOR'S CLASSES

topics covered in this class

Business Basics Sales Marketing

Ratings and Reviews

Mike Brown

Amazing content and very well delivered. Ryan was great at covering high level strategies while providing tangible action-items! Totally recommend this class. Thanks to Ryan and Creative Live :)

Jennifer

This was a great course - truly engaging and actionable! I am a professional photographer and would highly recommend this course to anyone who maps out their own marketing strategies. This was the first time I heard Ryan Deiss present, I'm excited to watch his other courses!

a Creativelive Student

Amazing course, the best on Digital Marketing

2,000+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Create Engaging Top of Funnel Content

Create Engaging Top of Funnel Content

Lesson Info

8. Create Engaging Top of Funnel Content

Lessons

Class Introduction

The Real Goal of Marketing

The Value Journey Explained

How To Map a Value Journey

Codify Your Ascension Ladder

Splinter Your Entry-Point Offer and Lead Magnet

Deliver an "Ah-Ha" Moment