5 Tips on Building Revenue-Generating Content

I am STOKED for you to meet today’s guest, Devin Reed.

Devin is a LEGEND in creating content strategies that build trust AND revenue.

The Founder of The Reeder, content strategy advisor, and former Head of Content Strategy at Gong and Clari, Devin is attacking the common misconceptions of content as being a “nice-to-have” and turning it into a MUST HAVE.

Here’s what Devin had to say about content marketing on the pod, in his own liiightly edited words.

1. Starting From 0:

“Before touching ANYTHING when it comes to your content strategy, spend 2-4 weeks on a listening tour. 

The first 30 days is where you need to go to the sales leaders, Marketing leaders, executives, and individual contributors in the Marketing department. 

You have to dive into what their take on the content is today? What’s their take on the brand today? What’s working, what’s not working? This will help you hone in the voice of the brand.

You’ll start to hear the same things in multiple places, those lead to larger opportunities.

One of the questions to ask is, what do you love and what do you hate about the content here?

This gets a really emotional response out of folks (#inmyfeels) 

Your main goal is not to come in super hot and start trying to solve all the problems, but to diagnose initial friction with the content. (Great Marketers ask questions first.)

2. The Next Step:

The second step in building your content strategy ALL starts with the CEO. 

Have your CEO identify the 3-5 strategic initiatives that the company has to do to be successful that year.

The first one is typically revenue. Second one could be something like creating or dominating a product category. The third is often times the new verticals, new products, or whatever the new big growth initiative is (AI?? Probably lol).

Then what you need to do is look at the editorial calendar. Which of these initiatives that the CEO outlined can your content support directly and indirectly? 

Ultimately the CEO and budget holders are the people you have to keep happy. It’s going to keep the lights on for the company, help you grow. 

If you deliver on that, it’s also going to help you get resources, trust, and headcount to continue to grow your team. (All because you’re actually helping move the needle.)

3. Creating Top of Funnel Content:

Most companies are really light on top of funnel in terms of the quality and the quantity, but really heavy on bottom funnel, with their case studies. 

What you need to do is to win mind share before you can win market share. That means you need to capture attention, get people to know and trust you FIRST. 

(Then you’ll pull them down your funnel with thought leadership content.) 

Do a 3 to 1 ratio of thought leadership. 1 top of funnel, 1 middle funnel, and 1 bottom of the funnel. 

You have to be really intentional about making sure there’s a connection between each piece of the funnel, so the topic resonates with your audience.

Now with your top of funnel thought leadership content, your goal should be building an owned audience. This is how you get a ton of trust and credibility at scale.

Which will then help get a lot more engagement and move people through the funnel faster because you spent that time up front building that trust.

4. Channel Distribution:

Social and email are publication and promotional channels. 

If we’re talking specifically for a B2B company’s LinkedIn there is a split. You need to have a very intentional content calendar that leans top of funnel heavy awareness content.

Educational, inspiring, informational, and entertaining content. 

But it’s also part of your job to make sure that the market knows you have new products, here’s how to use those products, and that there are customers that are happy with you.

(Distributing your content is 50% of what content creation is.)

Build a smaller section of content that promotes those narratives to support your community, customer marketing, and product teams.

Your overall goal is to convert the attention that you have on non-owned social channels into owned email. But it doesn’t just end at socials and email, audio is playing an INCREASING role.

5. Doubling Down? Or Experiment:

B2B Marketers absolutely need to double down on podcasting. There’s a reason radio has been around forever and people still listen to it.

The trust you can build with an audience through audio is unmatched. And it is perfect for increasing the shelf life of your content.

You have the ability to take a 30 minute video interview and turn it into 12 or more pieces of micro content, whether it’s video snippets or just the written content from the conversation (just like this – LOL). 

Now an avenue to experiment?? LinkedIn.

Marketers are always looking at which channels are gonna give the best reach. Right now you need to think of it as which social media channels are mature versus immature. 

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are mature. Whereas LinkedIn and TikTok are immature.

(We’re just starting to hit a tipping point of creators being on LinkedIn)

Those green spaces on the less mature platforms are an opportunity to get your flag in the ground and differentiate quickly. 

(LinkedIn’s new video feed is a GREAT example of this. The reach I know creators are getting in the industry simply because they’re posting video and LinkedIn is pushing it, is incredible.)

If you’re early to a platform once your competitors begin to take that platform seriously, they’re lightyears behind, because you’ve already been there building that audience.”