Why this coaching business invests in content marketing
Published: March 02 2023
When you think of marketing in 2023, it’s understandable if your mind goes right to digital advertising. Running ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the multitude of other digital platforms available continues to be a popular and well-known way to reach a larger audience, increase brand awareness and drive sales. And while this can certainly be an effective strategy when properly and strategically implemented, digital advertising is not a one size fits all solution.
For many clients, especially business to business (B2B) and service providers, digital ads are not always the most effective place to invest dollars, time and energy.
In 2022, we worked with TallTrees Leadership, a team of coaches who serve leaders in healthcare, on a well-rounded slate of marketing tactics, and found the most valuable investment was the work put into content marketing.
Here’s an overview of the content marketing tactics we worked on with TallTrees Leadership, and why it was a good fit for their business.
Why content marketing?
If you have an e-commerce business that sells $30 products, your sales funnel is generally a short sprint. A potential customer discovers your business, learns more about your product, compares it to competitors (maybe), decides to buy it and then makes the purchase. As any online shopper can attest, this whole process can happen very quickly!
For a business like this, your primary goal should be to bring people in at the top of the funnel. Once they discover you, they will make their way down the funnel without much additional assistance, granted they are in your target audience.
But for a service-based business like TallTrees Leadership, the sales funnel takes a bit longer for a prospective client to make their way through. Accessing coaching or consulting services is a long term investment, and there are many factors that go into both deciding to access the service and choosing a specific provider of the service.
Content marketing is an especially effective tactic for businesses with a long sales funnel because it can be used to reach prospective customers at every phase of their journey. While a relevant blog might not be the reason someone picks up the phone and calls you, it might be the reason that, during the evaluation phase, they call you instead of your competitor.
Posting current and relevant content lets prospective customers know your business is active and that your expertise is current. When’s the last time you looked at a blog that hadn’t been updated since 2018? It’s usually not a good look!
The content marketing strategy
Content marketing refers to any marketing activity that is focused on creating relevant, high quality content that will attract a particular audience to engage with a brand. “Content” could include blogs, newsletters, social media posts, print materials, lead generation tools and more.
TallTrees Leadership’s content strategy for 2022 included one to two blogs per month, regular social media posts and a monthly newsletter. Each of these content streams flowed into one another, maximizing the impact of the overall strategy.
The topics of the content were chosen based on three primary goals:
- Pull people into the top of the sales funnel by using relevant and commonly searched keywords to rank blog posts in search results.
- Establish a presence as a thought leader in the industry to position TallTrees Leadership as a coaching firm of choice to those in the evaluation phase of the sales funnel.
- Lean on TallTrees Leadership’s network of very happy former clients by developing testimonial content.
Example 1: Leveraging relevant search terms
Leveraging relevant search terms, especially ones that are trending in online conversations, is a great way to increase consumer awareness of a brand. This type of content strategy allows you to get in front of people who are already showing some interest in your service or at least in topics related to your service.
For example, we wrote a blog called “How to Find the Right Coach.” The goal was to have this blog show up when people are searching for that phrase, because if they are searching for those keywords, they are likely a qualified lead—someone who is serious about purchasing a service that TallTrees Leadership offers.
These types of topics also work well in newsletters and on social media, as they engage those on your contact list who are most likely to actually make a purchase or do business with you.
Example 2: Establishing the brand as a thought leader
Unlike deciding between, say, two different pairs of shoes, deciding between different coaches can be deeply personal and many factors may go into a person’s choice, including their areas of expertise, recognition in the industry and visibility online.
To help elevate TallTrees in the minds of healthcare leaders, we focused a good portion of content on thought leadership around topics that healthcare leaders often show interest in.
Topics included:
- How Canada’s Great Resignation is Impacting Healthcare
- How to Stop Bullying in Your Healthcare Workplace
- How to Stop Worrying About the Things You Can’t Control
One of the most successful topics we wrote into was in September 2022, when everyone was talking about “quiet quitting.” The concept was a great fit for TallTrees’ audience of healthcare leaders and professionals. We worked with them to craft a blog post with their own spin on the topic: “How to re-engage the ‘quiet quitters’ in your workplace.”
We then repurposed that content into a newsletter, which had one of their highest open rates of all time at 39.2% (above the industry average of 35%) and a click rate of 8.6% (well above the industry average of 0.92%).
Example 3: Amplify the word-of-mouth
Through conversations with the co-founders of TallTrees Leadership, we learned that a large portion of their business comes from referrals. The fact is that people are more likely to consider a coach that they know is knowledgeable and capable of helping them with their particular situation.
For this reason, we felt it important to include testimonials as part of our content strategy. We worked with TallTrees Leadership to produce a testimonial video of one of their past coaching clients to display on the homepage of their website, where other paid and organic campaigns were driving the most traffic.
Struggling to get new leads?
If you’re a service-based business like TallTrees Leadership looking to drive new leads and grow your business, let’s chat. We’d love to help you develop a strategy.