It's a beautiful day here in Sunny Handforth. Bright sky. Blue tits tweeting in our trees. I'm full of foolish optimism that Newcastle will beat Burnley in the EFL Cup tonight. 

Just the right time to talk about “big stuff”.

Because when it comes to publishing content, if you want to succeed you have to start with the big stuff: being clear on your goals.

If you're not sure where you're heading with your content it's almost impossible to produce quality, engaging content consistently.

And even if you could, what would be the point if it didn't help you achieve your goals?

When it comes to goals for your content, everyone is somewhat unique. But in truth, we're all rather similar too.

For the vast majority of us, our big goal will be something to do with getting more and better sales through our content. 

More customers. Higher paying, better quality customers. More repeat sales from existing customers. Higher margin sales.

In other words our long term goals all have something to do with people parting with their hard earned cash.

And that's not going to happen on its own. Your content has to persuade them to do that.

One of the original definitions of content marketing was that it was about “sharing valuable information with potential customers so that ultimately they reward us with their business”.

Unfortunately the world rarely works like that.

You can't just throw useful information at people and expect that when it comes time for them to buy they abandon all their normal buying criteria and emotional responses and instead buy from you to “reward you” for sending them that useful information.

I don't buy like that, and I doubt you do too.

Providing useful and engaging information definitely helps.

When someone does that it makes me feel a bit more positive towards them. It probably raises their perception in my mind as an expert and useful resource. And it certainly makes me much more likely to pay attention to communications from them.

But on its own it's nowhere near enough to get me to buy.

So if your goal is to get people to buy, you need to understand a bit more about what it is that actually makes them buy. And then the content you publish needs to touch on those areas.

Luckily it's not rocket science. Most people tend to buy consulting, coaching and training services under a set of specific circumstances:

• They have a problem or goal they want to achieve that they feel is worth investing time and money in solving
• They believe that it's actually possible to solve that problem (or achieve that goal)
• They feel that what they're doing right now isn't working to solve the problem – and small changes won't get them there
• They believe that you understand them and are on their side
• They believe you have the expertise and/or an approach to solving the problem that will work for them – and is different to the things they've tried (and failed with) in the past
• They believe your approach is either the only option, or the best value option for them
• They believe now is the right time to address this problem

You could probably write those a bit more succinctly. And you could probably make a list more specific to your situation.

But the point is that all these factors are beliefs, feelings and perceptions. And they're all things you can influence with your content.

• You can highlight problems your potential clients didn't know they had (with a self-diagnostic for example).
• You can show them the true size of a problem or opportunity to make it clear it's a problem worth solving.
• You can share case studies of people who've successfully solved similar problems along with how they did it so they come to believe it's possible for them to solve it too – if they do something different.
• You can share your story of how you faced similar problems, or demonstrate real insight into how the problem affects them so they know you're on their side.
• You can explain your unique methodology and approaches and how they work better than what they've tried before.

That's what I mean by being clear on your goals.

Not just a high level goal of getting more sales.

But goals for what beliefs and perceptions you want to instil in your audience so they become ready to buy from you.

It just takes a little bit of time to brainstorm them and write them down. And you don't have to get them anywhere near perfect.

Then you can remind yourself of them when you sit down to create a big piece of content and think “which of my big goals is this going to help with?”.

And you'll naturally have them in the back of your mind when you do something more ad-hoc too.

So that even without using any fancy marketing techniques your content will almost automatically become more persuasive and effective.

And with that as the context, our next email will start to look at the specific challenges with content you identified.