Let’s start today with an example where you want to build a consistent income from your community. You begin by hosting a community baking contest and celebration once a month.
As time passes, you add additional items of interest like face painting, bounce houses, and live music. You begin selling baked goods, ice cream, and soda. You discover that the markup on soda and hot dogs will be your main profit driver.
Now, let’s go another route. Instead of hosting community events, you set up a yard sale. You put up a sign on the main road, attracting bargain shoppers. They come to your yard looking to lowball you and trash your place.
Retirement Plus: Use Bonds to Supplement Your Retirement
Which scenario would you prefer? These two examples show the difference between content creation and advertising. Advertising is the quickest way to traffic, but most times, the traffic is low quality.
Why is content marketing so important? Content marketing is the practice of creating original content around your product. In today’s content-rich world, consumers need at least seven “touches” before they purchase your product.
The book “Content, Inc.” lays out an entire strategy of releasing content years before you mention a product. I wholeheartedly agree with this method.
Not only will it save you money upfront, but it also allows you to shape your product to market. It’s like starting a food truck business before opening a restaurant.
Become CEO of Yourself 3
In the above example, the community events are the content. You start with a baking contest but don’t have a profit driver.
Over time, you increase value by adding children’s events and selling your baked goods. Over time, you learn that the margins on soda and hot dogs are impressive—these are the keys to your business profits.
However, without the community events, you would have no audience. You added value to the community, and your reward is selling over-priced soda and food—welcome to content marketing.
Turn Your Garden into a Business
Only advertise a mature product. It is tough to sell to strangers at the top of a sales funnel. A sales funnel grabs a random person from “the street” or “the web.” The goal is then to turn them from a cold lead to a warm lead who is willing to spend dollars.
Advertising is much easier with low-ticket items, say $20 or less. But how do you get someone to purchase your online course for $500?
Why am I writing this article? The big players want your advertising dollars. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Pinterest, and eventually TikTok want you to spend big money advertising your products and content.
Being Broke Isn’t Cute part I
However, learning to advertise on these platforms is a profession all to itself. These aren’t simple techniques that you can learn in a month. Finding the perfect adverts for one product may take a year or two.
If you don’t have a strong base product, it’ll be hard for you to determine why your product isn’t converting. This means why someone sees your ad, clicks the link, but doesn’t purchase the product.
It could be the visual advert, the time of day, the demographics, the sales page, or the price. While trying to figure out the culprit, you’ll be paying big money to these content platforms.
Blogging, email, and building an audience are essential. When you build your platform, you become the king of advertising. You want to start with your own blog. You’ll need this to establish free organic traffic from SEO techniques.
Run an Upscale Bed & Breakfast
I always tout blogging because platforms like YouTube and TikTok are momentum driven, meaning they push your content based on hype.
In 2021, Dogecoin was all the rage in the crypto-verse. How many videos do you see covering Dogecoin today? If you created a video on Dogecoin, likely, YouTube wouldn’t push it hard due to lack of interest.
With a blog, you can release content that may lay dormant for a year. Then, as the momentum shifts to these keywords and search queries, you’re well-positioned to take advantage.
You’ll also want to build an email list to access the audience directly. You can offer new deals and product insight while directing them to your content on various platforms.
USDC vs. Series “I” Bonds
How to use your content. Once you have your blog and email list running, start releasing content across one central platform. You’ll also want to host or link this content to your blog.
The difficult task is releasing content daily. Remember, your content is your advertising; this is how you reach your audience consistently.
A football analogy. Do you remember when we only watched the NFL on Sundays? Then they launched Sunday Night Football. Next, there was Thursday Night Football.
Don’t Gamble with Retirement 7
Now, analysts and talking heads discuss the NFL every day of the week, even during the off-season. This is what you need to do as well.
Most people cannot keep this pace. Creating valuable content is challenging. However, the personal growth during this journey is life-changing. Plus, it gets much easier over time.
In “Advertising in the Metaverse,” I wrote that these new Metaverse worlds would be barren and dry. The way to attract new customers will be feature-rich, original content from homemade content creators.
Finance Independence Remain Employed
If you want to see this in action, search for Minecraft content on YouTube. Imagine this on a much larger scale. Content is king moving forward.
The time and place for advertising. You can use advertising to stay top of mind and re-enforce a solid brand. Yes, an advert can go viral every once in and while, but it’s rare.
It’s more conceivable to have a piece of organic content go viral than a targeted advert. Once you find the secret sauce of your business or content, you can exploit it via adverts.
Preferred Shares vs. Treasury Bonds
Conclusion. The big media providers are hurting for advertising revenue as we enter this recession. This situation makes them push small businesses and content creators to increase their spending on their platforms.
Advertising randomly is a huge money sink and can destroy the momentum of your business. A better use of time is creating content, building an audience, and growing your organic rankings in search.
I am a massive fan of content marketing, and it will soon be the only way to sell high-ticket items. Finding a business content strategy that resonates with your audience is tough, but it is better to build with content than an advertising budget. Good Luck!
- PDF of the Month: Don’t Gamble with Retirement 7 (Free 424-Page PDF)
- Free PDF Downloads: Download FREE PDF LIST here
- Financial Mindset: Become CEO of Yourself 2 (Free 196-Page PDF)
- Retirement Planning: Your Retirement Planning Guide 2 (Free 255-Page PDF)
- Investing: How We Plan to Retire on Dividends 2 (165-Page Free PDF)
- Cryptocurrencies: Counting on Crypto 2 (Free 159-Page PDF)
- Real Estate: Financial Independence through Real Estate 2 (Free 123-Page PDF)
- Business: Retire Rich, Retire Comfortable with a Business 2 (Free 185-Page PDF)
- Latest DGWR: Don’t Gamble with Retirement 6 (Free 409-Page PDF)
- Everything!: The Biggest Book on Passive Income Ever 2! (book)(Web Edition)(Art Edition)
- I bought a Kindle Oasis: Check it out on Amazon
- Read My Books for Free: Free Kindle Books Schedule
- Crypto Exchange: My Favorite Crypto Exchange VOYAGER (Join Voyager)
- Kindle Unlimited: Why I Finally Subscribed Kindle Unlimited (learn more)
- Book Reviews: 505 Takeaways from 101 Books (pdf)
- Writing: The Publishing Chronicles (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)
- Best REIT- Fundrise: REITs vs. Homeownership (Join Fundrise)
- Follow us: On our Facebook Page and Join our Facebook Group
- Support the Channel on Cash App: $Kingmarine1981
- For more detailed analysis, join my Youtube: MFI YouTube Channel
Monthly Dividend Tracker Template: Buy on Etsy
Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. All Right Reserved Military Family Investing
Leave a Reply