Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 26 - How To Fix Broken Nurture Content
Synopsis:
Nurture content should turn subscribers into buyers—but if you’re seeing crickets, Mike Shreeve shows exactly what’s broken and how to fix it.
You’ll learn the six failure points—tiny audiences, weak offers, “just the facts” posts, opinion-free takes, robotic delivery, and missing CTAs—and how to repair each with Peaceful Profits marketing strategies, better offers, and acquisition funnels.
Ideal for Peaceful Profits for entrepreneurs exploring Peaceful Profits services, Peaceful Profits coaching, and real Peaceful Profits success stories.
Transcript:
How To Fix Broken Nurture Content
[00:00:00] Hello my dear friends, hope you're doing well. Let's talk about fixing broken Nurture content. So just for some clarity, so we're on the same page, what is Nurture content? It's when you get a lead or a customer and then you send them content until they move up your ascension ladder or move into whatever other offer.
So for example, it could be a podcast like this. I'm sending this to you who are you've either bought in one of our little courses or you bought in one of our books or you're on our email list. So it could be podcasts, blog posts, videos, emails. The purpose of nurture content is to build a relationship with somebody so that they can move from whatever they came into your business ad as, whether a leader, [00:00:30] a customer, move them into a client or whatever, right?
We're trying to move them along in our business to a higher, more premium offers. That's what nurture content is. Now, the first thing you have to ask yourself is how do I know if my nurture content is broken? The first thing is really simple. You If you send out content, whether it's you're sending it to your email list or you're posting it on social media or whatever your platform is, and you are getting no booked calls, no product sales, and you're, you continuously send it out and nobody's doing anything, your nurture content is broken.
Okay, that's important [00:01:00] to understand. Oftentimes people will say, Oh, the platform is broken. Or, Oh, the strategy is broken. It's not. Putting nurture content in front of your audience will always result in sales and calls unless one of the, I think we have six different things here that we're gonna be talking about, unless one of the six things that is commonly broken with nurture content is broken with your nurture content, okay?
So we'll talk about that here in a second. The second sign is that Is like internal talk that you have with yourself where you keep telling to yourself you feel like you're giving [00:01:30] value But again, nobody's buying so oftentimes like I had a comment the other day on one of our social posts somewhere Somebody said I feel like i'm giving value like everyone tells me to but nobody's doing anything They're not even expressing interest or anything like that.
Okay, so you're sending content You feel like you're doing a good job of providing value to people, but nothing is happening Okay, so then that means you have probably one of these six problems. All right, the first problem might be You The easiest one, and the most frustrating one at the same time. The first one is, you need a bigger audience, [00:02:00] okay?
The thing about producing content is that the volume, the consumption volume needed for action, in other words, the number of people who have to consume your content before somebody does something, keeps getting higher and higher as more and more people figure out the power of content marketing. So 10 years ago, early when I very first started, so I've been doing this now for coming up on 16 years or maybe even 17.
I don't remember. Let's just say 15 for keep it nice around number 15, 16 years ago. You didn't have to have a very big audience. [00:02:30] You could have a couple hundred friends on Facebook post something and be completely booked. You could early, early days, LinkedIn early email list days when people were opening emails more.
But the fact of the matter is that as there becomes more noise in a marketplace, as more and more people are producing more and more content, the consumer on the other end is just less incentivized to care. Because they have more options. They feel like they've seen it all and etc. So what does that mean?
You can try really hard to become the best content marketer in the whole entire world, which is worth developing your [00:03:00] skill That's true But there's also an easier way just get a bigger audience if one out of ten people react to your content You can you know rack your brain and buy all the courses and try to get to two out of ten people reacting to your Content or you can just go get ten more people in your audience, right?
And that tends to be for example, if you have a thousand friends on Facebook, it's pretty easy to go get another thousand friends. If you have, if you're making, let's say a thousand, you have a thousand connections on LinkedIn, it's pretty easy to go get another thousand connections on LinkedIn.
And when I say easy, comparatively, right? You do have to put in the [00:03:30] work, you do have to send out the connection request, it doesn't happen overnight but, compared to reinventing the wheel. It's fairly simple, straightforward. You just got to put in the work same with an email list.
If you were able to build 500 people on your email list, just keep doing what you were doing before, get more people, et cetera. So oftentimes, people come to me and they say, I've been posting, I've been posting, I've been posting and take a look at their audience size. And I just think, oh my goodness.
The reason is you just don't have that big of an audience, right? And this is one of those things where it's easy for me to say because of my experiences and I haven't figured out a good way to transfer what's inside my brain into your brain. [00:04:00] Because. I've worked with people like Mel Robbins, and Tony Robbins, and Peter Diamandis, and Success Magazine, and all these really big, Brendan Burchard.
I've worked with a lot of people who have massive audiences, and I think you would be shocked at how little response and engagement they get, even in their big audience. And it's not a dig on them. What I'm telling you is that's the reality, right? You need a bigger audience than you probably think you need to see the kind of volume of responses from Nurture content that you probably are hoping for.
And I don't, [00:04:30] I wish there was a, I wish there was a way I could transfer the experiences I've had of actually looking at the numbers into your brain because that would, you'd be like, oh, okay, I get it now and you'd be able to do it. But you just have to take my advice and take my word for it.
Bigger audiences are definitely, probably might be an issue. Number two maybe your offer is broken. So I'll give you an example of how you can tell if your offer is broken or not. If you tell someone every secret that you have, right? So if you just get in your content, you're just giving and giving and giving and giving, you hold nothing back and they consume all of it.
And [00:05:00] then after that, they take a look at your offer and then they realize that they don't want to buy your offer. Then your offer probably isn't what it needs to be in today's market. So let me see if I can explain this. Information is free and readily available. Now you may think to yourself I have secrets that nobody else has, and that's fine that you believe that, but your audience probably doesn't, right?
Audiences, and it's about perception. It's not about reality. This is what you have to understand in marketing and advertising. [00:05:30] It's not about what's real, it's about what your audience perceives to be real. If your audience wakes up every day and has more information, free information, that other people are frankly ramming down their throats, free information, then they can consume what do you think their perception of information is.
That is low value. That is easy. I already have too much to consume. Oftentimes, as product creators in the help industry, we think that what people are buying is information. And so we sell information. [00:06:00] Now, our products and offers may have information in it, but if our offer is just information, and whether that's because that's what people think it is in the way that we've sold it, or that's what it actually is, we have a problem in 2022.
Because if your nurture content strategy is, I will give some information so I can sell more information, You're behind the times. They may say shoot, what am I going to do? This is where we get into offer improvement, right? Oftentimes. We work with clients section one of everything that we do.
Let's look [00:06:30] at your offer because you might be Sending out great nurture content for an offer that just isn't built for today's content marketing or the reality of today's market in the help Industry, so I'll give you some examples of some things that you can do. So instead of selling just information Can you templatize can you add intimate guidance?
Can you assure the outcome of the information another way to talk about those three things because we say templates and people think oh That's just more information. No, no tools is templates Guidance is help, so actual help, and assurance of the outcome is [00:07:00] just, it's just assurance of the outcome.
There's not really a better way to say that. So think about it from a buyer's perspective. I can get the information for free, but if somebody gave me the tools to get the result faster, aka templates, etc., I would pay for that. The information is free, but if somebody could help me to do it, aka guidance, or done for you, etc.,
I would pay for that. Yeah, the information is great, but if somebody could just make sure that I actually get it done, or assure me of the outcome, I would pay for that. So do you see how, changing your offer, you can tell people everything you want to tell them. You [00:07:30] can give away all of your best secrets, and have an audience that just loves everything that you do, and then sell the tools, the help, and the assurance of the outcome.
And that is it's not unimportant. It's not something to ignore. That is the, state of the union, 2022, what you need to seriously consider. And then of course, the other thing about a broken offer is that just maybe you're trying to sell something that nobody wants and that, and I'll give you the best way to to be able to tell if that's the issue is you're getting book calls from [00:08:00] your content, but nobody's buying.
That's probably the best way to understand or to see whether that's true or not. Because if you're getting book calls and people are pre sold and they get on the phone and they find out the details of your offer, it's probably because what you're trying to sell is something that they don't want.
Another way to tell if that's one of the issues that you're having is you put offer forward pieces of content out there and comparatively that content massively underperforms when compared to you just talking about a thing. So for example, if you're saying I'm gonna give you all the tips on how to be an apple farmer, [00:08:30] People are loving it.
They're watching your videos, your podcast, your blog, whatever, and then all of a sudden you come out and say, And I'm selling this tractor that's specifically built for apple farmers, and it's crickets. Nobody cares. Nobody responds to it. It might be an issue of an offer not being what what the people want.
Okay, number three. So we've talked about number one, bigger audience. Number two, maybe your offer's just broken. Number three, is that you're just sharing facts instead of showing what their problem is. So nurture content. I like the word nurture. In When you really think about nurturing as a [00:09:00] parent nurturing as a parent isn't always feel good, touchy feely, here's all your trophies, you're doing perfect as a human, you've never done anything.
Nurturing as a parent, sometimes you have to correct your child. Sometimes you have to show them where they're going wrong. Sometimes caring for someone is about helping them to see their own foibles, etc. What I see a lot of people do in content marketing is they just share facts, right? They just say, here is how to get a better headline.
Here is how to fix your relationship tomorrow. Instead [00:09:30] of showing people what their problem is. And showing them where they're messing up. And showing them why they're experiencing the pain they're experiencing. And telling them what their problem is. Why they're stuck. Why they're struggling. Why they're frustrated.
Why they're angry. Why they're not getting the results they're looking for. If you look at my podcast content, the Peaceful Profits Podcast, just go back and take a look at it. I have a couple of how how style episodes, so how to x, how to y. For example, how to fix broken nurture content. But if you really break it [00:10:00] down, the majority of even the how content, right?
So just think about what we've talked about so far is mostly how to fix a broken, this, how to avoid a mistake, how to why this is not working, et cetera. When I am creating content, I'm even the how to posts are, here's what you should be doing. And if you want help with that chat with us, let me see if I can explain this better.
If I can come to you and say, here's why you aren't getting what you want. And I can, I don't have to hold myself [00:10:30] back when I talk about it, right? I can tell you everything you need to know about what your problem is. I can reveal every single secret. I don't have to hold anything back. And then at the end, if I just say, if you want help to overcome that problem, or if you want help to implement what we just talked about, or if you want the tools to implement what we just talked about, then have a chat with us.
Rather than me giving away the exact process we use to put together our Facebook ads, I'm saying, here's how to [00:11:00] tell if your Facebook ads are broken. If you want help to fix it, give me a call. Or instead of saying, here's the exact diet you should follow to reverse type 2 diabetes, I'm saying, here's 7 signs of whether you have diabetes or not.
Type 2 diabetes, or, whatever it is. I'm thinking of Dr. Berg, Dr. Fung these really great content marketers. And what they do is they simply talk deeply about the problems About what's wrong, about how to identify [00:11:30] what is broken. So that, the next thing they can say is, if you'd like help with this, here's our solutions.
That we, that we charge money for. Okay. That's number three. Number four is that you're not sharing your opinion. Okay? In the help, so this is very specific to the help business. Whether you're a coach, consultant, whether you do, offer done for you services, you have to understand that the help business is the opinion business.
There aren't actually facts in this business. Almost every conclusion that you have reached as a [00:12:00] service provider, as a coach, as a course creator, has it's nearly impossible to objectively defend because there are arguments against all of your conclusions. We could have a whole episode on that.
And we'll save that for another time. I could go off on a tangent here. We'll save that for another time. The point is that you have to understand the help business is the opinion business. We can say it's opinions based off of factual experiences that you've had. We could say that it is opinions based off of data that you've gathered.
We could say that it is opinions based off of things that [00:12:30] you know to work 99 percent of the time. We can say all sorts of things about where those opinions come from, but it is the opinion business. Now, what's really important to understand is that the people who are buying from you, they want your opinion.
They may call it wisdom, They want your insight. You may have heard this I want your insights. I want your wisdom. I want you to give me the shortest path to where I want you to go. I want you to tell me, just tell me what I need to do. There's a lot of names for that, but really what it is the opinion.
So what happens is if you're sharing [00:13:00] bland, non opinionated content, you are cutting yourself off at the knees because You are not providing what people actually want when they're consuming content. People aren't consuming content for the fun of it, they're consuming content to figure out how to solve their problem.
So they are looking for the wisdom, they are looking for the insights, they are looking for the opinion. That's what the buyer in the help industry is looking for. Again, whether it's done for you, done with you, etc. It's [00:13:30] why you see certain people in your interest industry. Who you look at and you say, oh my gosh, they're very opinionated.
They also happen to be what some of the more successful people in your industry. It's not disconnected. Now there's you, there's a lot of things you could say about the people who are buyers in the help industry. I happen to believe and I'll give you an example here. There are a couple of different types of people in the world, right?
There's the kind of person who is just a D IY or do or die. I will do it myself. I don't need anybody's help. I'm gonna figure [00:14:00] it out. Those people are not buyers in the help industry. Then there's other people, myself included, who just is can someone just tell me what I need to do? I just want somebody else's opinion to figure this out and I'll just let them help me.
Those make, those are the type of people who make up the majority of the help industry buyers. Again, whether it's services, whether it's courses, consultants, et cetera. Understand that when you're making content, you're not just making content for an average person. You're making content for people who are wired.
towards that type of interaction in the world. And you [00:14:30] probably know these types of people, right? You may be them, just like I am. I'm a buyer in the same industry that I am a creator and a producer. Okay, so it's easy for me to understand it. But just think about the people My dad, for example, he's a DIYer all the way.
He does not ask for help. He even thinks low of people who ask for help. He's not a buyer in the help industry. Okay. If I recommend him, Hey dad, you should get this course. He's Oh no, I'm not going to get that course. So it's important that when you are creating your content, you don't hide your opinion.
The exposure to your opinion is what people are looking for when they're [00:15:00] consuming content. They're trying to find who's the person that has the wisdom, the insights, the et cetera, that I need to get what I'm looking for. All right. So that's number four. You may not be sharing your opinion up. You might just be saying, for example Here's the seven best Facebook ads of all time.
Here's their data. Okay. That's nice, but that's not going to help you sell your business. What you could do is here's the seven best performing Facebook ads of all time. And here's what I would have done to make them better. You got a little, you got that little opinion in there. You may seem a little like, Hey, that's a little sassy.
I don't know if you're conditioned, like a lot of people in Western culture and in other cultures as well to [00:15:30] not Express your opinion. You have to deprogram yourself from that because that's exactly what people are looking for. Okay. I think we've talked about that one enough.
Number five, you're trying to be something else than a human. Okay, so a lot of people when they're sharing content or creating nurture content, they feel that they have to perform like it's a performance and so they're being an actor. They feel like they have to make a presentation, like it was a presentation in school back in the olden times, right?
Like back when you were in high school or whatever, middle [00:16:00] school, and you feel like, it has to hit these certain points, and if I don't hit these certain points, it's not gonna be good. That's not how nurture content works. People don't want to be talked to, they want to be talked with. They wanna have a conversation.
And the problem is if you keep just putting on presentations you're gonna get lost in the noise. Again, maybe ten years ago you could have made presentations. And talked to no one, and just presented your facts and walked away. That's just not how it works these days. There's too much choice.
So when there's too much choice, [00:16:30] you have to think of what are the other factors that people are using to identify their purchasing decision. Or that they're using to identify the correct purchasing decision for themselves. One of them is, what? Emotional connection. Do I trust this person? How can you trust somebody who never talks with you?
Now in an ideal world? Okay, in the perfect world you would be able to scale conversation one on one conversation ultimately So that every person who ever interacted with you could have a 10 hour conversation One on one that would be the best [00:17:00] way to grow a business in terms of efficiency towards number of leads turned into sales Now that's impossible.
Okay. I don't recommend that as a strategy Maybe someday somebody will be able to figure out how to take what's in our brain and whatever I don't know but for now The best thing that we can do is to create conversational content I know that sounds like a buzzword, but just think about how I present my stuff, right?
I'm, not i'm not talking to you In a way that is different than if you and I were sitting here together if you and I were sitting in the same room [00:17:30] and those who are on my team or those who? Interact with me as private clients. They know You that the person who is showing up to this podcast is the same exact person who shows up to a private conversation.
Now I know this sounds nuanced and buzzwordy and is, I would recommend that you try it. Just try to relax in creating your content, share some good and helpful stuff, and then invite people to have a, deepen the relationship by either a call or, Hey, send me an email or whatever. I bet you'll find that your content performs [00:18:00] better.
All right, number six. is that you aren't asking for the sale. Okay? The probably, this is another one of those common ones, same with the not a big enough audience. There's this assumption out there in the world that if I make enough content, people will, they'll search me enough to find out what it is I do, and, we put sort of the impetus of action on the consumer.
But that is, that mindset, that belief, can only occur if you completely ignore reality, which is, That you're, the person [00:18:30] consuming your content, so for example, you, the listener of this podcast, if you've made it this far in the episode, I know that you listen to other podcasts. Or, maybe it's not other podcasts, maybe it's other YouTube videos, maybe it's other people's email lists, maybe it's other people's blogs.
I know that you aren't just sitting in your room, waiting for me to launch another podcast, because you're just dying to, that's not how it works these days. Okay, even the most followed again Like I said, this is from personal experience working behind the scenes of the most followed biggest audience type people No one is exclusive anymore.
There are no such thing as exclusive [00:19:00] fans I don't know if there ever was but for some reason in the past five or ten years They've developed this idea in internet marketing that you could have exclusive customers or exclusive fans That's not true people who buy and that means they're buying from other people than you.
So what? What am I trying to say here? They don't care. Okay, they don't care. They have so much other opportunity that unless you tell them what to do next, they are not going to put on themselves the responsibility to dig to find out what you do. [00:19:30] Certainly not at the scale that you need. To survive or thrive or make content creation worth it, right?
Because of course there's there's exceptions. You may make such a good piece of content that six months later, somebody reaches out and said, Oh my goodness, I read this and that's great. That's not a business strategy. That's luck, right? That's, you got lucky that somebody found your thing and they dug.
What I'm saying is. Don't assume that people know what it is that you do and don't be afraid to remind them in every single piece of content [00:20:00] Because they are busy. They are distracted. They have tons of other options. The impetus cannot be on them to come to You have to tell them what you do. You could look this is a basic principle of business It goes all the way back to the brick and mortar if you have a brick and mortar shop That's off an alleyway that nobody walks and you don't have a sign that tells people to go down the alleyway to your shop You can't realistically expect people to show up at your shop wanting to buy stuff There are tons of content creators these days who have a shop in the alleyway and they [00:20:30] don't even realize it That they may be getting all sorts of traffic to their site or whatever and people don't even know what it is that they do.
So here's a rule of thumb if a piece of content takes you more than five minutes to create it deserves a call to action Every single one call to action of some kind now, here's my recommendation. You don't need to be See sneaky. Okay, don't try to hide stuff. Don't create content and then be like i'm gonna get him Let me give you an example and this with the utmost respect [00:21:00] I'm only making this podcast so that someone will buy something from me That's genuinely the only reason that this podcast exists.
Otherwise, I'd rather be hanging out with my kids, or in my garden, or working on something else in my business. If that's why you're making content as well, meaning you're producing nurture content for a business specific purpose, then you need to attach a business specific purpose to the piece of content that you created.
In other words, an invitation to the next step. Otherwise, [00:21:30] why are you making the content? Now if you're making the content just for the sake of making the content and you don't care about the business purpose That's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Congratulations. That's a great hobby good for you for having a hobby.
I have other hobbies content creation is not one of them I only want to make stuff that's going to perform for me. So I have to ask for the sale by definition Otherwise, i've made a piece of content not for business purposes and i've wasted my time and yours right because you know Look, the reality is this content is great and other people's content is great and the free stuff is great, [00:22:00] but how often do people action free stuff?
How helpful is free stuff really? Compared to, say for example, if you were to hire my team to build your funnel, right? I don't serve you at the highest level. I don't serve myself at the highest level. If we just make content for the sake of making content, it has to have a business purpose. I would challenge you to look at anything that took you longer than five minutes to create.
Are you actually asking for the sale? Are you actually asking for the sale? Okay, so quick recap here. How to fix broken nurture content. You're out there, you're making content. It's not working, nobody's buying from you. It might be because you need a [00:22:30] bigger audience. It might be because your offer's broken.
It might be because you're sharing fake news. facts instead of showing what their problem is. So making content to point out people's problems and helping them to understand what they need to do to fix those problems and that the solution to those problems is the things that you offer. Number four, you're not sharing your opinion in an opinion industry.
Number five, you're trying to be something other than human. And of course, number six, you aren't asking for the sale. So you don't have a business purpose attached to the content that you're creating. Okay. So that's it, my friends. And speaking of call to action, here's mine for today. If you want, as [00:23:00] I said earlier, to grow a bigger audience.
to get that content really producing well. And if you'd like to upgrade the quality of that audience to go from freebie seekers to customers who are much more attentive to the content that you produce, therefore turning your existing nurture content strategies, processes, et cetera, into a much higher performing asset in your business.
Give us a call. PeacefulProfits.com/call. What we can do is we can help you to create a much bigger audience for basically zero cost, meaning that when we [00:23:30] create the asset for you, you can literally use paid ads. And the ads will pay for themselves. This is called an acquisition funnel. Very simple talk about it in a bunch of my other Podcasts and videos and things like that, but we can help you to create one of those We can also help you to fix your offer because again Maybe your offer is the reason why your nurture content isn't working And then you can also tap into our nurture content strategy as well.
So there's lots of different things. We have courses We have done for you. We have done with you. We have all sorts of different options available group coaching, et cetera even private client stuff that we can do [00:24:00] as well. Again, that's PeacefulProfits.com/call. I hope that you have a wonderful day.
Hopefully this was helpful in helping you to understand what may or may not be broken with your content and giving you some ideas on how to fix that. We won't see you in the next one.