How Content Marketing and Marketing Automation Led to a $5,000 Retainer Client

If you are thinking about embracing content marketing to help grow your business, I hope that what I’m about to share with you will motivate you to begin immediately.

At 9am one morning last week, I hosted an online meeting with a prospective client in need of the type of help that we offer via our consulting company, Groove Digital Marketing. There were three people on the call from the prospect’s company: the owner, their copywriter, and their marketing/technology pro.

At 11:45, the call was finished, and without the need of a proposal, the owner said, “At this point, I cannot see why we will not be proceeding with you.” Two hours later, they’d made their first payment of $5,000 and we had a deal.

How Did This Happen?

Now that you know the outcome, I want to give you the back story. My hope is that when you see what happened, you will realize how powerful content marketing and marketing automation can be.

On November 5th, Brian (their technology/marketing guy) somehow found BrightIdeas.co as a part of his search for a solution to their marketing and operational challenges.

When he found my site, he decided that the free offer I make on the home page was valuable enough to become a subscriber.

The “lead magnet” I offer on the home page is access to my Conversion Tactics 4 part video training series. (If you would like to see the videos in this series, just go my home page and enter your details.)

This offer is the #1 way that I use to fill the top of my marketing funnel. Once in the funnel, subscribers are sent video #1 on day one, video #2 on day two, etc…

In Brian’s case, he watched video #2 on November the 8th and video #3 on November 9th. He watched 100% of video #1 and #2 and just 75% of video #3. I know this because I am able to track how much of my videos that each subscriber watches. In fact, the emails a subscriber receives from me actually differ, depending on how much of the videos they watch.

After watching 75% of video #3 Brian, who was unknown to me at the time, emailed me to ask if we could arrange a time to chat. I replied with a “yes” an asked him to book a time via my online calendar.

Houston, We Have Contact

Brian and I’s first call happened on November 18th and during that call, he gave me an overview of their business. He also took time to describe the problems and challenges that they wanted to overcome. Upon hearing these challenges, I knew that I could probably make a huge impact on their business over a period of time, and asked Brian to arrange another call for he and I, as well as the owner of the company.

Brian concluded by saying that his boss was a “very tough sell”, so I suggested that he have his boss listen to a few of the podcast interviews I’d done with other entrepreneurs whose businesses were more automated than Brian’s.

Houston, We Have Touchdown

The call with Brian’s boss (Paul) was a very long call and I spent most of the time asking questions. One of the challenges with conversations like this is that, with so much to talk about, the conversation can “wander around” for quite some time – and not necessarily lead to the desired outcome.

To avoid this, I decided to use a Lifecycle Marketing self assessment as a framework for the discussion. By using this framework, we were able to have a productive conversation about each area of their business. More importantly, I was able to learn a lot about Paul’s needs, wants, and desires in a very short period of time.

I was also able to learn a fair amount about Paul’s values and quickly realized that he was very passionate about his product and wanted to give his customers the best possible experience.

It probably took me a solid hour or so of questions before I ever got to the point of making any suggestions. In fact, after asking Paul to rate himself on each of the steps of Lifecycle Marketing, I would ask if he believed a change needed to be made or not. The goal of the self assessment and “is that really important to you?” questions was to figure out what Paul was most motivated to fix first.

Getting the Deal

Many inexperienced salespeople think that “closing” requires all sorts of fancy techniques and magical statements.

The truth is exactly the opposite.

The “close” is the logical conclusion to the consultative approach to selling – which is a fancy way of saying, to sell, you must ask questions – and lots of them.

The more questions I asked Paul, the more he began to trust what I had to say – and as time went by, enough trust was eventually built up for Paul to decide that we were the right fit for what he needed – so he made the decision to move forward.

Key Take Aways

Regardless of what you sell, there are always people looking for your product or service. The key is to let them find YOU. This is the primary goal of content marketing.

For over a year, I have been dutifully creating and publishing content that would help my target market to solve their problems. Had I not been publishing and promoting my content, Brian would have never found my website.

Once Brian did find my site, if I wasn’t capturing leads with a free offer (called a Lead Magnet), it would have been impossible for Brian to become a subscriber, and had he not become a subscriber, he would have never been exposed to the three videos he watched prior to reaching out to contact me.

Video is extremely powerful on the web. By using it, I was able to give Brian a first hand look at my personality and communication style. Had he not been exposed to these videos, I doubt that his motivation to reach out and ask for my assistance would have been nearly as high.

Marketing automation also played a huge role because Brian didn’t watch video #2 or #3 when I first sent him the links. He, like everyone else on the planet, was probably too busy on the day that these first emails arrived, so it wasn’t until he received a few reminders that he actually took the time to watch them. Had I not created the reminders in my funnel, it’s unlikely that I would have a new client today.

Want to Get Results Like This?

There is a very specific process to achieving success with content marketing and marketing automation and in today’s post, I have given you a glimpse of the results that can be achieved when you get the formula right.

If you have not yet implemented content marketing or marketing automation, I strongly encourage you to start today. To help you do that, I have written a book called the Digital Marketing Handbook: The Ultimate Small Business Guide to Putting Client Attraction on Autopilot that will be available for sale on December 10. If you get on the early bird list today, you will be notified the day the book is released and you will be given a coupon code to get 25% off the price. Go and register now!

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