How to reach out to Eric:
How do you grow content from 9 downloads a day to 100,000 downloads a month?
Digital Marketing thought leader Eric Siu knows how. He has worked with major brands like Amazon. As the host of two seriously successful podcasts (Growth Everywhere and Marketing School) with a combined 700,000+ monthly downloads, he understands the work and the value of content marketing for business growth.
He joins us on this week’s podcast to explain how to be successful when starting out in content marketing, his creation-to-promotion ratio, the future of digital marketing, and more.
The Top Marketing Mistake
Eric found that every client makes one major mistake:
Their marketing funnel.
Some clients have a bad funnel, others don’t have one at all. Marketing requires that a great funnel to be in place and drive people to the point of sale.
The funnel is broken when email automation isn’t really set up, the marketing plan is one-dimensional, and the client relies entirely on paid advertising to make up the difference. “[It] generally doesn’t work that well,” Eric remarks.
Think Big: Digital Marketing Strategy
To solve the problem, Eric gives us some insight into how his company successfully markets itself.
The key is to be holistic.
Single Grain clients arrive looking for one specific service. But, one service can’t make a complete digital marketing strategy.
The Single Grain strategy includes a strong sales funnel, paid ads, content marketing, website chatbot, and a range of (growing!) social media accounts. There’s no one answer. The mix of digital marketing strategies ensures “it all rises together.”
Starting Out in Digital Content Marketing
When you start building branded content, no one knows who you are. And that’s ok. “Everyone likes to compare themselves to a chapter 25 when they’re starting at chapter 1 and that’s not fair.”
At chapter 1, you need to build your audience by serious content promotion.
Eric recommends a 10/90 time ratio. Use 10% of your time creating the content and 90% promoting it.
For your initial content promotion budget, he finds an 80/20 ratio works well. Spend 80% of your budget on content promotion. Only 20% is spent dragging them further down the digital marketing funnel. Growing your audience is the primary focus.
SEO is still a strong tool in 2018. Video content marketing also offers huge value because video combined with large social media platforms build relationships at scale. You can even target customer views: those that watch just the first 10 seconds or first 25% of the video. Reaching these views is cost effective for the scale.
How to Measure Marketing ROI
Clients (and colleagues!) want to see short-term results. What is the ROI on content marketing this quarter? This year?
Eric takes the opposite approach. He is extremely patient and will “wait forever for something great to happen.”
Success didn’t come right away with Eric’s podcast content. When Growth Everywhere launched, Eric spent 6 hours on it every week. In the first year, he had 9 downloads a day. At this point, most people would have given up. Year two: 30 downloads a day. But in 2017: 100,000 downloads a month. His podcast with Neil Patel: 600,000 downloads each month.
Eric’s tip: consistency.
Without this leveling up going on, you don’t get to the kind of success that they’re seeing with the podcast. Creating great content takes a lot of work. It’s a foundation.
Content marketing is a long-term game. You’ve got to know your numbers, but you also need to give time for content strategies to work.
How does Eric know content marketing is successful?
“All of our clients are from content marketing.”
KEY INSIGHTS
- Content marketing is a long-term strategy. Don’t expect immediate ROI, but good content will grow your business
- When you start in content marketing, you need to invest time and money in growing your audience. Spend the majority of your time and your budget promoting your content.
- SEO and video content marketing are key tools in 2018. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be a major feature of future content marketing.
ERIC’S TAKEAWAYS
- Strengthen your marketing funnel. It’s a common mistake and a pillar of your marketing strategy.
- Audit your time. Track where you’re spending your time and ensure you’re spending the right amount of time creating content and promoting it.
- Automatization will take the monotonous work out of digital marketing. Click Flow, a new SaaS product Eric’s building offers an automated dashboard to improve organic click-through rates.
Check Out More from Eric:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
