“Oh yeah, I love their stuff!”
By this stage in the Ultimate Marketing Playbook, you’ve built a strong foundation—defining your core offer, establishing a high-converting website, setting up a smart CRM, optimizing your Google presence, crafting a lead magnet, and running paid ads.
Now it’s time to multiply your visibility and amplify your credibility.
Content marketing is the vehicle that turns casual prospects into fans and customers into loyal advocates.
What You’ll Learn
By embracing content marketing, you’ll:
Attract a consistent stream of high-quality leads—organically.
Position yourself as a trusted expert in your field, shortening sales cycles as prospects begin to seek you out.
Build Loyalty with existing customers by offering ongoing value beyond your core product or service.
Strengthen Your Brand through storytelling and memorable, shareable content that resonates long after the first interaction.
Ready to talk about what you love to talk about?
Content marketing is the strategy of producing and distributing valuable, relevant content—blog posts, videos, podcasts, and more—to engage, educate, and inspire your target audience.
Creating content helps you build authority and establish credibility so that potential customers see you as the industry’s go-to resource.
Large Brand Example: YETI
Known primarily for its premium coolers and drinkware, YETI has carved out a niche in the outdoor adventure market.
Why Their Content Works:
Adventure-Focused Videos: YETI produces high-quality short films featuring real adventurers—fishermen, hunters, and explorers—aligning the brand with rugged, outdoor lifestyles.
Storytelling as Inspiration: Each video spotlights someone’s unique journey or passion, subtly integrating YETI products without feeling overly promotional.
User Stories & Photos: YETI’s social channels regularly showcase customers’ real-life adventures, building both authenticity and a sense of aspirational community.
Small Brand Example
A local boutique bakery in Indianapolis posts short “how-to” baking videos on Instagram, along with weekly recipe newsletters. Over time, they become the neighborhood authority on artisanal baking, attracting regular foot traffic and building a loyal social media following who eagerly awaits the next recipe drop.
Where should you start when it comes to content marketing? Let’s go through it, step by step.
Identify your primary content marketing goals: brand awareness, lead generation, or customer retention.
Keep in mind your Core Offer from Module 1. Just like you narrowed down your core offer from a broad, generic offering to a specific, impactful one, your content marketing should lean into your business’s core strengths.
Align every piece of content to these objectives so that your efforts are both intentional and measurable.
If anyone knows your audience, it should be you! As an expert in knowing what people need and their most common questions, you can create the exact types of content that will help them solve their problems.
On the larger data side of things, you can use your CRM’s data to segment your audience by interests, behaviors, and demographics. If you have a strong social media presence (or you want to build one), you can track themes across comments and reactions, or see which type of content performs the best.
Lastly, you can gather insights via quick polls, surveys or social listening to ensure your content resonates deeply with your audience’s pains, desires, and goals.
(AI is a great tool for this as well. More on that below…)
When developing your content strategy, one of the greatest time-saving techniques is to use and reuse content across multiple platforms and formats.
For example, a single blog article can be posted as quotes and snippets on your social media accounts and emailed out to your audience.
If you record a podcast, a video podcast can be chopped up into short form vertical videos and re-used across mutliple platforms.
Here’s a few categories of content formats to consider:
Plan out at least one month of content in advance, ensuring consistency.
Factor in seasonal events, product launches, or trending topics that align with your brand.
You can use a social media platform to schedule posts, a 3rd party tool such as SproutSocial or Hootsuite, or Personify Users can use the built-in content calendar and post to multiple platforms.
Pro Tip
A content calendar doesn’t just keep you organized; it helps you identify the right times to release your best ideas so they resonate with your audience. For inspiration, study industry events, trending topics, and your own sales cycles to plan ahead. Tools like Trello, Asana, and Notion offer user-friendly templates and integrations that make scheduling a breeze. Regularly review and adjust your calendar based on performance metrics and audience feedback to stay agile.
Provide actionable tips, relatable stories, and real-life examples to demonstrate your expertise. More and more, people are valuing authentic, real-life content.
Use visuals—images, infographics, behind-the-scenes video, and charts—to engage and educate more effectively.
Cross-post on social media, newsletters, and partner platforms to extend your reach.
Repurpose content: turn an in-depth blog into multiple social posts or a podcast episode, and vice versa.
Respond promptly to comments or questions to foster a sense of community. Building online community can be your strongest asset!
If you subscribe to Personify, you can set up automations to follow up with individuals who engage with specific content, offering them next-step resources or special offers.
Track key metrics such as page views, watch time, conversion rates, and social shares.
When it comes to short form video, watch time is the #1 indicator of success on the platform, and the algorithms will reward watch time more than anything else.
As you build out your content strategy, replicate what works, refine what doesn’t, and continuously evolve. You’ve got this!
Pro Tip
When brainstorming ideas for your content calendar, consider looking at popular online communities like Reddit and LinkedIn groups in your niche. These platforms can reveal emerging trends, questions, and concerns that your content can address. You can also draw inspiration from your CRM data in Personify—analyzing customer questions or feedback to guide topic selection. Ultimately, the best calendars solve real customer problems in a timely and relevant way.
Engagement: Comments, shares, likes, watch time, and average time on page.
Lead Generation: Number of new subscribers or sign-ups that come directly from your content.
Conversion Rate: How many viewers or readers move from content consumption to a purchase or consultation.
SEO Performance: Growth in organic traffic, search rankings, and backlinks from credible sites.
Brand Sentiment: Online reviews, social media mentions, and feedback forms that reflect positive recognition and trust.
Personify Users
Within Personify, you can create custom dashboards just for tracking your online traffic. As you continue to create content, you can see how your website traffic grows over time.
Example of Tracking Website Visitors based on Ads, built in to the Personify Dashboard
A direct-to-consumer beauty brand that started as a beauty blog (Into the Gloss) and evolved into a full-fledged product line.
Why Their Content Works:
Customer-Centric: Glossier’s content often highlights real customers, featuring before-and-after experiences, personal beauty journeys, and community-submitted photos.
Conversational Tone: Their blogs and social posts feel like chatting with a friend—approachable and authentic.
Community Building: Glossier’s entire marketing strategy is built on nurturing its fan community via social media and interactive campaigns, fostering strong brand loyalty.
Rozelle Lawn & Landscape distinguishes itself from competitors by consistently sharing valuable, engaging content.
Their monthly newsletter is a perfect balance of practical tips for lawn care and gardening—such as when and how to reseed, eco-friendly pest control, or trimming schedules—paired with thoughtful, earthy poems that draw readers into the beauty of nature. Jay is the founder, and you can feel his passion for nature as you read it!
One of their standout offerings is a comprehensive “Native Plants” list on their website, which introduces homeowners to region-specific greenery that’s both eco-friendly and easy to maintain.
By providing both educational and inspiring material, Rozelle positions itself as a trusted local authority, attracting new clients who appreciate expert guidance as well as a poetic approach to landscaping.
If you’re feeling stretched thin, start with the bare minimum to get results:
Produce One High-Quality Post or Video per Week: This could be a blog post, a short how-to video, or a podcast episode.
Promote on 1–2 Core Channels: For instance, if your audience is on LinkedIn, share a link and key takeaways there.
Track Basic Metrics: Monitor how many people view, like, share, or subscribe from each piece of content, using Personify’s analytics or each platform’s dashboards.
We often call this stage of the process answering the question, “Do we exist?”
In other words, if someone looks you up online, can they find up-to-date, relevant content that shows your business is active? An active profile with recent posts shows your company is engaged and approachable.
If you don’t have the capacity to run several social media accounts, that’s okay! We’d rather see you focus on one or two accounts than have 7 dormant accounts where you haven’t posted for several months.
Once you’ve nailed the basics:
Expand to Multi-Channel: Repurpose content into multiple formats—YouTube videos, social media carousels, short video clips, podcast highlights, and email newsletters.
Host Webinars or Live Events: Provide in-depth training or Q&A sessions to nurture deeper trust.
Build an Editorial Team: Delegate writing, editing, design, and scheduling to specialists or virtual assistants.
Use AI Tools: Integrate advanced AI tools (including things like Personify’s built-in AI features) for topic ideas, outlines, and first drafts, freeing up time to focus on final polish and strategy.
Content marketing is best done with careful planning to maximize distribution, and using the right tools can save you a ton of time. From creating to publishing to multiplying, here are a few resources to get you started.
Content Planning: Notion, Trello, or Asana are great for editorial calendars and team collaboration.
Design & Editing: Canva is super simple for quick visuals and infographics. Popular, mobile-first video creation apps like CapCut have brought advanced video-editing features to the everyday user. For podcasts, Riverside FM or Alitu are simple, modern recording and editing apps. And Capsho is an AI-driven content maker that turns your existing content into dozens of other pieces of content.
Scheduling: Buffer, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social are very helpful for managing social posts across multiple platforms.
SEO Research: SEMrush or Ahrefs to refine keywords and track ranking improvements. (SEMrush also does a lot of great content marketing!)
CRM & Contact Segmentation: Target the right people with the right content.
Email & Text Automation: Automatically notify different segments about new blog posts, videos, or podcast episodes.
Analytics Dashboard: Track how many leads and sales stem from your content pieces.
Generate graphics for your social posts within Personify
Common Mistakes (And Quick Fixes)
Inconsistent Posting: Develop a realistic editorial calendar and stick to it, even if it’s just one quality post a week.
Overly Promotional Content: Follow an 80/20 rule—80% valuable, educational content, 20% promotional or sales-driven.
Neglecting Audience Feedback: Encourage comments, run polls, and respond promptly. Let your audience shape future content.
Ignoring Optimization: Pay attention to SEO fundamentals—use relevant keywords, engaging meta descriptions, and strategic headers.
FAQs
“How long does it take to see results?”
Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You might see small wins within a few weeks, but true authority and steady traffic often bloom over 6–12 months.
“Which format works best?”
It depends on your audience. Some demographics prefer blogs and emails, others prefer YouTube or TikTok. Use analytics to discover what resonates.
“How do I measure ROI?”
Track leads, conversions, and sales stemming from your content via Personify’s analytics. Look for correlations between content engagement and revenue growth.
Below are five AI prompt examples you can use at different stages of the content marketing process—covering research, brainstorming, outlining, drafting, and final refinement. Each prompt is intentionally open-ended so you can adapt it to your unique business needs and goals.
Purpose: Gather background data, statistics, or insights on a particular topic or industry trend before producing content.
Prompt 1
You’re an expert market researcher analyzing the [industry/topic]. Summarize the most relevant data and recent trends affecting [specific audience or problem]. Highlight any surprising or fast-growing areas that could influence our content strategy. Provide links to credible sources, and include any key statistics or quotes that demonstrate credibility.
Example Use: Before creating a series of blog posts about eco-friendly packaging, you might ask AI to find the latest data on consumer preferences for sustainable materials.
Purpose: Generate creative ideas, angles, and headlines for content pieces (blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.).
Prompt 2
Act as a creative content strategist. I need 10 fresh and engaging topic ideas for [target audience] related to [core topic or problem] including those listed in your research. Each idea should address a specific pain point, include a suggested headline, and offer a quick outline of key points to cover.
Example Use: When you’re stuck on what type of next podcast episode to produce, let AI fire off a list of potential episode titles and talking points.
Purpose: Structure the flow of a specific piece of content—such as a long-form article, how-to guide, or podcast episode.
Prompt 3
You’re an editorial planner helping me create a detailed outline for a [blog post, video script, podcast episode] on the topic of [topic]. The content should target [type of audience] and should be broken into at least five major sections, each containing key subpoints or bullet items. Also, note any visuals, examples, or data we could include for greater impact.
Example Use: Before you start writing, use AI to produce a clear, logical outline that ensures your final content covers every important point.
Purpose: Get a rough first draft that can be refined and polished by a human editor.
Prompt 4
Write a [format: blog post, LinkedIn article, social media thread, video script, etc.] on [topic] for [audience], using a friendly yet professional tone. Include real-life examples, address common objections, and highlight at least three action steps the reader can take. End with a clear call-to-action related to [product/service].
Example Use: When you have the main talking points ready, let AI create a fully fleshed-out draft that you can edit for clarity and style.
Purpose: Refine the language, improve clarity, and optimize for search engines or platform-specific algorithms.
Prompt 5
Take the following draft text and rewrite it for clarity, style, and SEO optimization. Use language that resonates with [target audience] and ensure the text includes relevant keywords like [list keywords]. Keep the tone approachable, address the main pain points, and add concise meta title and description suggestions.”
Example Use: After you’ve created a draft, let AI polish the language, enhance readability, and incorporate strategic keywords. Then finalize everything manually to ensure authenticity and brand alignment.
Add Context: Provide any relevant background about your brand voice, target audience, or specific outcomes you want.
Be Specific: When needed, specify the tone (casual, authoritative, humorous, etc.), length (e.g., 500 words), or style (listicle, Q&A, how-to).
Iterate: If the AI’s first output isn’t on point, refine your prompt, or add clarifying questions to guide it toward the desired result.
By using these prompts strategically at each content creation stage, you can streamline research, spark creative ideas, and produce higher-quality drafts—ultimately saving time and enhancing your final output.
Action Checklist
Get started on your digital ad buying right away! Copy and paste this list to your project management tool or document.
Congratulations! With a smart content marketing plan in place, you’ll not only stand out from competitors but also forge genuine connections with your audience—turning followers into loyal customers and customers into enthusiastic ambassadors for your brand.
Next Steps: When you’re ready, head to the next module to learn how to continue building authority by enlisting influencers and affiliates.
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