In Episode #294, Eric and Neil discuss the 7 question to ask yourself before investing in content marketing. Tune in to learn why these questions are necessary for you to answer in deciding whether or not content marketing is right for you. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: 7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Investing in Content Marketing 00:36 – Question 1: what are your goals? Are you trying to get more traffic or are you trying to get more leads? What is informed branding? What are you trying to do, specifically, that will shape your campaign? 00:46 – If you don’t have goals, you can’t manage what you’re doing 01:01 – The action that you take will depend on your goal 01:16 – Second is, how long are you going to make an investment? 01:22 – “If you’re not willing to make the investment for a year without seeing an ROI, content marketing isn’t for you” 01:17 – Content marketing is a long-term play 01:39 – Third is, who is your target audience? 01:51 – Figure out your target audience first then figure out the personas you’re trying to create 02:07 – Fourth is, can you produce 3 pieces of blog content a week? 02:12 – If you can’t, then it is not right for you 02:24 – Producing 3 articles a week should be done in over a year 02:27 – You can hire people from Problogger if you have the budget 02:39 – Fifth is, what do you want to share and why you do want to share? 02:56 – When producing content, think about why sharing it will help you accomplish your objectives? 03:29 – People tend to produce content just for the sake of it which is a BIG mistake 03:44 – Sixth is, is one of your competitors already doing content marketing and is successful at it? Is there someone you want to model after? 03:52 – Typically, what works for your competition will work for you, too 04:00 – If there are people in your space who are doing content marketing, use BuzzSumo and Ahrefs to figure out what drives them traffic and copy them 04:13 – Last is, what can you do differently? 04:20 – Podcasts are getting popular and most marketing people are still doing blog posts 04:51 – Search for Blue Ocean Strategy and apply the concepts for doing content marketing 05:14 – Marketing School is giving away a free subscription to FunnelDash which helps you track the lifetime ROI of your Facebook campaigns 05:27 – Subscribe, rate and review Marketing School 05:31 – Text MARKETINGSCHOOL to 33444 05:53 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Establish clear and concise goals—this will guide your actions. Producing valuable content thrice a week is essential for the success of content marketing. Look around your space and see how people are doing it—if it works for them, it might work for you, too. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.