Growth is a priority for most businesses. At LegalVision,
effective and sustained content marketing played (and continues to
play) a big role in our rapid growth from a 2-person startup to a
100+ employee business in just over five years.  

Attracting new clients at pace starts with building a strong,
stable marketing funnel. It’s not enough to simply rely on the
strength of your sales pitch. Good marketing funnels start with
helping your potential and existing clients to solve their
problems before they are a paying client.
A cost-effective way of doing this is through content
marketing. 

When implemented successfully, content marketing helps
businesses: 

• increase brand awareness; and




• boost conversions and revenue by attracting new prospects and
  allowing for targeted messages throughout their buyer
  journey. 

In short, good content marketing = the foundations of a steady
pattern of growth for your services business. 

In this article, we will cover: 

• how to craft a content marketing strategy for service
  businesses; 




• how to produce content for each stage of the journey;
  and 




• how to share this content to maximise conversions and
  revenue. 

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing allows service businesses to plan, create and
distribute marketing information that addresses
their audience’s pain points and challenges. 

Take special note of the word (marketing)
“information”, as opposed to “collateral”. The
goal of your content is to educate your potential
(and existing) clients on how to solve a problem and why
your services are the best solution in the market to this
problem. But in order to do this successfully, you must
put yourself in their shoes. 

What Does a Content Strategy Look Like?

Crafting a content strategy starts with understanding your
audience and how they consume content. 

If you are not yet using a marketing platform, we recommend
setting up a basic template in a spreadsheet to allow you to budget
for and measure the results of your efforts. 

1. Define Your Audience

In order to produce content for a specific audience, first, you
need to understand:

• who your target audience is;




• what problem(s) that audience is facing; and 




• how your audience consumes content (including where, when and
  how often…).

When profiling your target audience, it is best to be as
specific as possible. Try breaking down your audience into detailed
customer types or personas. For example, if you’re a small
accounting firm, some of your personas may look like: 

• Sam, the small business owner;




• Lucy, the independent contractor;




• Dave, the property investor; and 




• The Joneses, the retired couple. 

If you find yourself with more personas than you can cater for,
try prioritising the ones that bring in the most revenue for your
business. 

Next, document as much as you can for each of these personas
using a mixture of: 

• market research;




• customer surveys;




• focus groups;




• past experience; and




• educated guesses. 

Armed with this knowledge you can then dive into which channels
are the best to reach them. But first, define some clear
goals. 

2. Set Clear Goals 

Setting clear, specific goals help you think about what
you’re trying to achieve and how to get there. When setting
goals, it’s a good idea to be relevant, clear and
specific. 

For example, you might find that leads generated from your
LinkedIn posts have the highest conversion rate so you want to
focus your efforts on increasing leads from this channel. Make this
goal measurable by quantifying your desired increase, for example,
by 10%. Another key aspect is to set a time limit on achieving your
goal, whether that’s a month, a quarter, or six months
(time-based). 

3. Map Content-Types to Your Buyer Journey 

Content marketing can take various formats depending on your
audience demographics and their stage in their buyer journey. Some
of the most common content formats include:

• written content: blog posts, ebooks, reports,
  whitepapers, service comparisons, case studies;




• visual content: infographics, videos,
  webinars, live interactions and demos; and




• audio content: podcasts

4. Set Up a Content Production Workflow

Whether your marketing team is small or large (or is just you
with a different hat!), defining a content workflow can help your
business produce more and better content by increasing efficiency
and improving visibility over the whole process. 

A content production workflow outlines:

1. where your content is sourced from; and 




2. who is in charge of ideation, producing, reviewing, approving
   and publishing it. 

It also defines specific tasks within each stage and allocates
an amount of time to complete them. 

There are plenty of tools in the market that allow you to
automate your content flow, but remember not to fall into the trap
of having too many tools in your stack, as you’re likely to end
up under-utilising them. A basic Google Sheet can allow you to
visualise the entire process and collaborate with others in your
team. But if you need something more advanced take a look at tools
like Hubspot.

If your business does not have the internal resources to make an
effective content marketing play – hope is not lost. Consider
engaging someone to write content for you, or whether you can
leverage other businesses’ content that your audience will find
valuable. For example, LegalVision encourages businesses to share
any of our content to add value to their network as part of our LVAmbassador program, allowing them to use the
power of our proven content without a cost
commitment. 

How to Share Your Content to Maximise ROI

Once created, your content will come to life when you share it
with your audience on your website, social media channels, forums,
by email or any other medium they engage with. The key here is to
understand how your audience consumes content and how it engages
with your content. 

Define Your Channel Mix 

As well as knowing your audience, another key aspect of content
creation is knowing how you’re going to distribute it and
whether you will promote it. 

There is no optimal number of channels you should have in your
mix. The key is to include a mixture of owned, earned and paid
channels and to focus your efforts on those that will maximise your
ROI. As with your audience definition, your choices should be
informed by market research.

Analyse Your Content’s Performance 

Before publishing your content, don’t forget to set clear
KPIs to help you track performance and guide your future efforts.
For example, if your goal is to increase traffic, a useful KPI is
the (unique) number of page views – by both channel and
source. These metrics depend on your distribution channels, so take
a look at Google Analytics and your social media dashboards to
familiarise yourself with the data you have available. 

Key Takeaways

Content marketing done well can help your business enter a
period of hyper-driven growth. The three most important things to
get right are: 

1. solve problems that your audience has. Don’t sell. Trust
   that the sale will follow if you deliver real value by educating
   your audience. 




2. now everything you can about your audience and segment them
   into target personas; the more you know about their behaviour and
   challenges, the more specific you will be, and the more likely it
   is you will nail the first bullet point above. 




3. build a solid content production line. If you can’t do that
   in-house, consider outsourcing options or strategic partnerships
   with businesses who already create content that your network will
   find valuable.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.