To get more customers... grow a beard
If you've ever grown out your beard you know the first 3-6 months are the hardest. If your facial hair is patchy or grows in random directions you looked like a savage during this period. The mistake most men make is to try to tame their beard by trimming it.
It doesn't work because short hair bristles are stiff and stick straight out. If you hold a short bristle of beard hair in your fingers, parallel to the ground, it's as stiff as a rod. Hold a long bristle the same way and it's going to droop towards the ground.
What they should do instead is leave it the hell alone. Don't let a pair of scissors get anywhere near it. All the while caring for it by washing, combing and moisturizing consistently. As the bristles get longer the weight of gravity is what makes the beard "lay down". That's when you get the desired effect of a manly beard.
“I wanna go viral.”
“I wanna rank on page 1.” Whether you're going the social media route or the SEO route, content marketing is a long-term play. Don't expect anything for 6-12 months. If you're lucky and catch break, 3 months is a best-case scenario. Instead of worrying about search engine ranks or going viral on TikTok, do this instead.
Month 1: set up your funnel
Talking to existing customers
Documenting your customer avatar
Documenting a content strategy
Creating at least one lead magnet
Optimizing your website to convert readers into email subscribers
Set up email automations to nurture subscribers
Months 2-6: publish daily
Daily publishing on social media
Daily to weekly publishing blogs or YouTube
Daily to weekly emailing your list
Use reader feedback to create more content
SEO favours a content velocity approach; 100 posts per month, not 4
Months 6-12: start seeing results
Review your analytics - cut out what's not working
Improve existing content to include other keywords you are ranking for
Maintain publishing momentum and don't take your foot off the gas
Months 12+: scale to the moon
By now you have an in-house media time and you're publishing daily or several times a day on every platform
Once the content machine is humming, add cold outreach or advertising or both
Keep iterating and optimizing with ruthless focus
To sum up...
Figure out a system for creating, publishing, and promoting content that solves your ideal customer's problems and stick with it for at least six months. You can do this all yourself if you're willing to spend the time and money to learn it. Or you can hire people to do it for you.
Whichever option you choose, in-house or agency, AI will a lot of the heavy lifting. You can publish 1000 articles and 1000 social media posts every single month with a small team, if you know which tools to use.
How many pieces of content do you publish every month? Do you do it yourself or have a team (in-house or agency) do it for you? Let me know in the comments.