Tips tricks and best practice for using content to acquire customers and retain customers. This presentation is broken down into direct sales, lead capture and nurturing, it explore different types of content (like video and animated gifs) and also discusses how to attract referrals and up selling & cross-selling your customer base. There is a BONUS section for amplification and promotion of content.

1. 20 Ways Of Using Content To
Drive Sales
1 September, 2016
Coltrane
Presented by: Boris Gefter
Founder of STACKCRM.IO – email me on boris@coltrane.com.au

2. Executive Summary
Coltrane
There are a lot of misunderstandings about how to monetise content. Many
marketers believe content to be something one engages in for the sake of
audience engagement.
Other marketers believe that content is this ethereal force that is just generally
good, but have no way of measuring it. Then, there are marketers who claim to
know about content marketing, and claim that they get a bunch of ROI from it, but
they don’t really.
So first, let’s clear up a few ways that content can drive revenue, and then we can
dive into how to do this.
Let’s start off by splitting channels into ‘Acquisition’ and ‘Retention’.

3. About me:
Coltrane
Boris Gefter
Founder (serial entrepreneur, customer acquisition &
UX guru, data nut, growth hacker)
Founder of Stackcrm.io
Founder of Coltrane – web consultancy
General Manager of The Knot, Homehound & IDM
Marketing Director & CMO of Beyond Insurance (QBE)
Marketing Manager of CUDO
Acquisition Manager of Vistaprint
WPP, Group M Consultant
Founder of BOCKERS
Founder of Coltrane Internet Consultancy
Bachelor of Medical Science USYD
Responsible for $50M+ Marketing Budgets
Thought leader & innovator
Email: boris@coltrane.com.au

4. Attract leads and expressions of interest
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The following tactics have consistently worked for me:
• Popups (exit intent / time on site triggered / scroll triggered).
• Content upgrades (give really juicy info to those that pony up their email
addresses).
• E-book / case study download in exchange for registration.
• Competitions (with a prize of over $200).
• Live chat (surprisingly powerful).

5. Attract direct sales
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• Have a look at Neil Patel’s blog – it is does a couple of things perfectly;
• It provides detailed, long form content (which convinces you that he
knows what he is talking about & helps from an SEO point of view).
• It is designed like a web infographic (not like a regular blog post) –
this makes it fun to read, interesting and most importantly different.
Do that. How? Use fiverr to get your infographic designed, and sliced
into HTML.
• Video is awesome – try:
• Putting yourself in the video – tell the audience about your story,
share your passion.

6. Coltrane
https://player.vimeo.com/video/175169621
https://player.vimeo.com/video/175169621
Vend video: Case-study clients – ask them to share how they use your product
and what a difference it has made.

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/PBEQfnbiBoQ
Osmo video: show your product being used – try and capture that “AHA!” moment.

8. More video tips
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• Make sure the video is relevant to the content in which it is embedded.
• Don’t waste qualification – if someone has already spent 2-5 min watching
your video, don’t let them leave without offering them a call to action. Wistia
has an awesome feature to do this.

9. New tricks (very few using them)
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An awesome hybrid of video and images are animated gifs. They are now being
used by some creative companies to stand-out and also circumvent ad blockers
which would stop ads on pages.
http://www.coltrane.com.au/wp-
content/uploads/2016/09/Animate
dStack.gif

10. New tricks (very few using them)
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• Content is not enough – consider: badges, SSL with EV, use third party logos of
publications you were mentioned in or clients, testimonials & social validation.
• Use content upgrades – which I discuss in my previous blog post here (this post
also has a content upgrade).

11. Nurture / warm your leads
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• Build trust – the best way to do this is what Garry V calls ‘Jab, Jab, Jab, Right
Hook’.
• Qualify – make your customers jump through hoops. Make them click on “next
page”, fill in forms, ‘like’ you on Facebook, send you an email etc. Don’t think of
this as hurting conversion, think of it as causing qualification. The key to
making this successful is delivering enough “jabs” or value to make the “hook”
or the hoop worthwhile for your customers.
• Quantify – build a model of a funnel. Think about what stage of the funnel
people can fall into when they seek to buy your product. Then, create content
to help customers in that stage. Measure conversion % between each stage.

12. Nurture / warm your leads
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13. Nurture / warm your leads
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• Interact – it is a crucial tactical error to assume that content is a one way,
passive experience. It should, in fact be interactive. Include live chat, phone
number call outs, polls, quizzes and even games!
• Curate – with millions upon millions of articles in the wild on the web, what are
the chances that you will end up creating something that is comprehensive?
You could also complement your weekly content creation with fortnightly
curation. I love Revue for this.
• Revue holds a sacred place in the top right hand corner of Chrome:
• I read between 20 to 50 blogs a day, and when I stumble upon something
awesome that I want to share with my audience – I simply click my beloved
Revue icon to add it to my clipboard.

14. Nurture / warm your leads
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Then, I literally spend 10 min curating 5
to 10 of my favourite stories to my
audience. Revue is an easy and powerful
way to maintain engagement with
minimal effort!

15. Keep existing customers engaged
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• Checkout goodemailcopy.com, reallygoodemails.com and pintrest for awesome
inspiration for email content.
• Good infographics go a long way to shifting the perception of you as a thought
leader in the eyes of your customers, instead of just being a pushy retailer.
• Do giveaways and competitions.
• Hide Easter Eggs on your site – super powerful.
• Offer courses and certifications for your clients, then invite them to speak at
events and functions you hold – Exact Target does a great job of this!

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17. Get existing customers to purchase again
(up-sell and cross-sell)
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• Get external validation in the form of guest blogs, badges, awards etc to prove
to your customers that new features your product is valuable and useful.
• Offer free use of your product in exchange for documentation and ‘case-
studification’ of your customers experience to convince others.
• Go crazy with animated gifs – show step by step how new features / new
products can be used in conjunction with the old product.

18. Reactivate dormant customers
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• Scarcity works wonders – niftyimages.com is an awesome tool for generating
images without countdown timers.
• Flank sceptical customers by providing sheer volume of free and highly
valuable content. Don’t even hint at transactions. It will take them completely
off guard.
• Flatter your customers by asking them to contribute to your content, interview
them. The effort is worth it, trust me!

19. Get Referrals
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• Create a special little section for your active users. Shower them with unique
content, and have a little love heart or some such icon to suggest referral.
SaasSquatch does a really good job of natively integrating into apps.
• Create little micro tools that can be accessed by customers only if they
authorise their gmail contacts or facebook contacts to the app (hey, it worked
for linkedin!).

20. //UNLOCK THE ESSENTIAL LIST FOR
PROMOTING YOUR CONTENT//
Coltrane
I am putting together these presentations in the hope of delivering real value to
people. If you are interested in unlocking the bonus content, please register on
the next screen of slideshare or please go to Coltrane.com.au and sign-up to my
newsletter.

21. How to promote your content
(beginners to advanced users):
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Facebook ads– target groups, behaviours, connections of competitors with a really
low CPC. You can get registrations at an effective cost of around $3 per user if you
are smart about it!

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Google display network – target keywords, audiences and remarketing lists
through the GDN. PRO TIP: Use text ads in addition to dynamically generated
HTML 5 banners to capture placements that most would miss out on. PRO TIP 2:
Target Gmail with awesome rich targeting and ad features!

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• Partnerships – source them by mentioning people and tools in your blog posts
(like someone you know ;), then do a bunch of google searches to find bloggers
who attract audiences that are similar to yours but not competing with your
product – approach them, see what happens!
• Content amplification – I have had significant success with Outbrain and
Taboola. You can get effective leads generated for as low as $0.5 – seriously –
you must try them.
• Influencer seeking
• Linkedin – upgrade your linkedin to get inmail credits, join a bunch of
groups, then start seeking out active users with many followers. Ask for
their expert opinions, humble yourself before them and recognise their
efforts and achievements.
• Followerwonk + Anymail = great way to extract influencers on mass! You
can use STACK to email these leads and qualify them.

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• Slideshare – one of the most underrated sources of leads. You can bait out your
slide shows (or convert content into slideshows) and push calls to action for
people to register to hear more from you.
• Facebook groups – do a facebook search for groups that match your interest. If
you are accepted into those groups, consider yourself fortunate. Facebook
groups are extremely highly engaged due to the fact that there is no noms de
guerre that would exist in communities like reddit – so everyone is super nice
(for the most part). I am part of the Growth Hacking Australia group run by Dan
Siepen and I love my interactions within that community of like-minded
people.
• Communities – these are self explanatory. Highly engaged vertical communities
that reward engagement. The more you give, the more you’ll get!
• Hackernews
• Growthhackers
• Producthunt
• Quora

25. Coltrane
Stumbleupon – did you know that you can get paid stumbles? I have had mixed
success with this, but may be worth a try!