You’re Not Ready for Us If You Don’t Have This

Social media won’t magically fix all your problems. Way too often, leads come to us without the foundation of a successful business and think that investing in social media marketing will magically fix their low revenue or lack of leads. While social media can help with these pain points, it needs to work in tandem with other sales tactics. At the end of the day, social media marketing is brand awareness, also known as top-of-the-funnel marketing. This means the traffic you get from social media needs to be nurtured off social media.

But we aren’t just talking about email marketing and blog marketing (which we offer as well). Your core foundation as a business matters more than you think. Your branding helps your audience know, like, and trust your business.

In this article, we’ll break down what your business needs in place before you hire us, or any content marketing agency.

Offer + Unique Selling Proposition

What is your offer? If you can’t explain your offer in thirty seconds or less, start there. Your whole brand is built around your offer, thus, it is the most important part of a successful business.

Once you know exactly what you offer and how to explain it in thirty seconds or less, the next step is your unique selling proposition. What makes you unique? Why should your ideal customer choose your brand over a competitor? Being able to stand out from the crowd is crucial to making sustainable revenue.

Ideal Customer + Niche

Speaking of your ideal customer, do you know who your ideal customer is? Can you describe in detail what he or she does in a day? Knowing your ideal customer intimately shapes everything you do in marketing. If your messaging speaks to everyone, it’s actually speaking to no one! Download your free Ideal Customer Avatar workbook here.

Now let’s talk about niche. If you don’t know your niche, you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. Your niche is the specific corner of the market where your offer, message, and personality align with a group of people who truly need what you do. It’s how you stop competing on price and start standing out for your value. The tighter your niche, the stronger your message, so don’t skip this step.

Branding + Website

If you’ve made it this far, you can explain your offer in thirty seconds or less, and you have positioned your brand with a unique selling proposition that attracts your ideal customer. This is the foundation of your business. Now for the foundation of your marketing strategy, which involves your online presence: your branding and website—your digital storefront, if you will.

You need branding that speaks to your ideal audience and represents your brand’s unique selling proposition. Think about it: you wouldn’t make a tie-dye website with fun bubble letters to sell suits to businessmen, would you? No. You’d have a clean website with trustworthy colors and fonts. So use your business foundation to guide your branding strategy.

You also must have a website, storefront, or landing page to send traffic to. If you are on social media with nothing to send your leads to, then you are missing out on a ton of revenue. Most leads need seven touchpoints with your brand before they purchase, so make sure you have a place to send your leads.

Realistic Budget

Okay, now we need to talk about the taboo subject of money. We know it makes everyone squirm, but a content marketing budget is crucial to have in place before investing in social media or content marketing. Before you start shopping around, ask yourself and your team: what is a realistic budget for your content marketing? Does your current budget have room to outsource to specialists that can run with your team? Do you have an advertising budget for paid social media content? Do you need to make internal adjustments on your existing budget? Run your own numbers before you start researching agency partners. If you need an idea of what agencies charge, take a look at our services page. Bear in mind that larger agencies will likely charge more, and vice versa.

Ready to Delegate to Specialists

The last thing you absolutely must have before you work with us or any other content marketing agency is the ability to delegate. When you hire us, you get a team of experts with over thirty years of collective experience for a fraction of the cost of an in-house team. We are in the content marketing world 24/7, so trust us—we are the experts. Working with us is a collaboration and you will still need to provide content and other information, so it helps when our clients trust us as experts to run your content marketing.

We love working with nonprofits and other minority or women-owned/led service-based businesses. If this is you but you still need to add a few fundamental things to your business, reach out. We have an extensive referral network and we’d love to find you the perfect fit for your needs. And if this isn’t you and you have a need for our specialized marketing services, we’d love the opportunity to support your business. Book a Discovery Call to start the conversation.