How Startups Execute a Sales-Driven Content Marketing Plan

Going from Zero to One to Millions

Great content delivered to an engaged audience can be rocket fuel for sales. But when that content is delivered into a vacuum, it’s a waste of talent, effort and money.

In order for content marketing to lead to sales, it has to perpetually attract a growing audience while at the same time educating, engaging and building trust with that audience to convert them to customers. This kind of cycle does not happen automatically, nor does it happen overnight.

But it does happen.

In my last post, I covered how to create a content marketing plan that leads to sales, including how to build a perpetually growing audience of potential converts.

In this post, we’ll talk about the execution of that content marketing plan, tracking the results and expanding that audience as it evolves into a community and then a market.

Implementing the Plan

I already covered choosing your publishing platform, settling on your publishing cadence and pre-loading your content. Now let’s talk about how to make the pieces work together.

Your Primary Destination

You can and should repost your content to as many places as possible, but you should always choose a primary destination for each post, whether that’s a publishing platform like Medium, a social network or even a guest post in a third-party publication.

The primary destination doesn’t have to be the same for every post, but for the sake of SEO, there should be a single primary destination for each post, and you should include a canonical reference to that primary destination every time you repost.

On a side note: When a third-party publication agrees to post your content, let them know about your intent to repost. Beyond wanting a short period of exclusivity, like a week or two, most publications won’t have a problem with this as long as you’re not reposting to other third-party publications.

Your website should include links to the posts on their primary outlets, and maybe the SEO description or a couple paragraphs of preview. You can…