I Found Traction In The Templates

One of the things that’s gotten me tons of traction in my web marketing has been releasing free marketing templates.

I created my first one with some collaborators and then put it up on my website.

It fit on a single page as a double-sided PDF. People were downloading it every day, but I only had to put in the effort to create it once!

That’s more or less been an ongoing facet of my marketing for the last six or seven years.

These templates have been a key part of creating a fast track to target customers knowing, liking, and trusting me enough to become part of my audience long term.

After seeing so much success with templates I now heavily favor them over blog posts. Blog posts definitely serve their purpose, but they have diminishing returns over time.

Templates are typically much more evergreen or can be refreshed with only a few small changes.

When someone is looking for a template they’re in a much more active state of mind than when they’re just looking to take in a blog post.

This difference of mindset is what I believe has given us a much higher conversion rate on the CTAs we package along with our templates versus blog posts.

Don’t Skip On Keywords & Backlinks

I recommend you start out with doing some keyword research to determine what people are looking for in your market.

This can save you a bunch of time and you avoid the problem of creating something no one wants. The next step is to craft a webpage with strong SEO.

This is typically done using two techniques, relevant keywords in your copy and by creating authority in the form of backlinks.

Pay careful attention to what you make the headline of your document because those are the terms Google is going to be indexing you for.

You’ll always have a plethora of ideas of what to create as far as content goes, but it’s difficult to know which ones to ignore and which to say yes to. I find it does take a bit of experimentation to find what’ll work for your market.

I suggest you start out by taking a cue from another marketer that’s aspirational to you and create something similar.

For me, I found that templates got me a lot more traction than blog articles so I stuck to them.

I began to create dozens of them, at least one for every facet of online marketing. Give yourself permission to let everything else go.

There’s no need to be an expert at every corner of the online world. You’ll drive yourself bonkers, and also it’s impossible!

Every 90 days I sit down with my business partner and plan out our goals for the quarter. This then becomes my filter for what projects we’ll work on during that stretch of time.

Always take a look at your metrics to see how you’re performing and make course corrections as you go.

Action Steps

  1. Experiment with different forms of web content and track which one performs the best for you in your key metrics.
  2. Do keyword research to learn about the market demand in your space.
  3. Build authority by cultivating strong backlinks.
  4. Focus on content that is evergreen if possible, it’ll give you the most bang for your buck.
  5. Review your goals quarterly and make changes to improve your KPIs.

 

Result You Will Achieve

Content that will have your business focused on getting the most traction.

Mentor: Adam Franklin

Author of Web Marketing That Works at Bluewire Media. Adam gets 1000 email subscribers on autopilot each month from things he set up years ago. He sets deadlines around projects. This practice allows him to travel 3 months a year.

This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.