How to come up with content so good clients have to buy
This year has been all about content with my clients. Their biggest problem with content? Coming up with ideas. But not just any old ideas - they struggle to get views and conversions.
In this issue of The Monetize you're going to learn how to come up with middle of the funnel content that builds trust with your ideal client while still getting seen by most of your audience. (the best content for ideal clients never gets the same reach as top of funnel content - sorry, it's how the algorithms work)
Part 1: Making Content That Invokes A Feeling
Before you make any content you need to ask yourself, "Who is this for?"
Top of Funnel - If you're trying to expand your audience then you want content that gets people to find you relatable or find you are admirable. To reach the broadest audience in your market, your content should show what you've accomplished in a way that gives people a glance into who you are.
Middle of Funnel - If you're nurturing your ideal client profile then your content should demonstrate your expertise to get people to believe you. Even better is they feel understood. Typically, this is how-to content, but the biggest impact is when you demonstrate your expertise on a client or audience member who is just like the viewer or reader.
Bottom of Funnel - When you're asking people to buy in your content then it must assure them they are making a smart decision -- first to consider buying and then to act on their decision. This is made easier after prospects have consumed several hours of your middle of funnel content, but to get them over the line they have to feel like their decision is reversible (guarantee of some kind) or that not buying would be worse for them (cost of indecision).
Part 2: Ideation That Converts
There's a saying: say one thing a thousand ways. You need to become known for your one thing. The best way to do that is to find compelling content ideas.
Most experts don't go looking for compelling ideas. They focus on client problems and show their solutions. It's not a terrible strategy, but it limits your reach. I know you've experienced this when you've made content you know your ideal client is struggling with and got like 63 views. The algorithms won't even send it to all your followers.
The fix is to come up with content like YouTubers do. They look for trends and outliers to recombine into a new video. There's 2 ways to find what's trending: use Explore or an incognito tab to see what Youtube is putting on its home page.
Next is to find outliers. An outlier is any video that did far better than the average video on a channel. If a channel is getting 30,000 views per video and one has 60,000 views then it is a 2x outlier and it's a good candidate to mimic. The higher the outlier multiplier the better. A 10x outlier is a massive signal that people like the idea.
What you're trying to do is make a list of videos you can borrow from. You can use a tool like 1of10.com (no affiliation) or use Claude Cowork to analyze YouTube channels for outliers.
How to mimic viral content
I think it's best to show you.
There's a very popular format of cheap vs expensive. Mr Beast even has a playlist dedicated to all his videos using this idea.
I don't know who came up with it, but it's everywhere even in fishing channels.
But how could I use this for my B2B niche for Lumencasts.com? So, I did a search for cheap vs expensive video editing.
The big lesson is you don't need to be original. YouTubers mimic the entire packaging of these ideas from title, thumbnail and even the structure of the videos themselves.
What they do differently is put their personality and expertise into them.
Lumencasts could make cheap vs expensive edit content to show our ideal clients what they could expect by going with a random editor off of Fiverr or Upwork. This one idea could be made in multiple ways: long form video like the ones above. Then turned into Shorts and Reels. And it could be a carousel for Instagram and LinkedIn.
But I don't have to stop there...
I take the same idea, but apply it to more variations.
Beginner editor vs expert editor
Beginner with expensive software vs expert with cheap software
Battle among our editing team for a prize
Can our editors fix video shot on cheap camera?
Part 3: Building Your Idea Library
This is the easy part. I use my Apple Notes app.
I take screenshots of the videos and link to the video on Youtube. Then I jot down my notes for my variation. The link is so I can watch and analyze the script and story structure. Since I'm going for outliers, there's a good chance their hook, pacing and editing are worth mimicking too.
I guess I should warn you not to copy someone's video. Put your unique spin into your content because people need to trust you if you're going to get them to convert.
Don't complicate your library. It's important to get as many ideas as you can as fast as you can.
In a matter of a couple of hours you can have a month's worth of banger content to make.
Once you've gotten good at mimicking outliers, you can start testing your own original ideas.
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