I had a 438% INCREASE in sales week over week last month… what would you do with a HUGE increase like that?
Here’s the story…
I’ve been publishing content consistently for over 25 years now. (Heck, I wrote a syndicated newspaper column for 10 years straight!)
Every Wednesday we send out a newsletter and every Thursday we send out the “article of the week.”
We’ve settled into a rhythm where we know, plus or minus, pretty much what we’re going to make every time we send that content out.
It’s not a special promotion or anything extra, it’s a part of our business that people are used to receiving every week. If anything, they may be a little jaded because they get it so regularly, but it keeps us front and center on people’s radar.
Plus, I really enjoy sharing the content and adding value to people’s lives every single week.
So a few weeks ago, we did a “Story Sprint” where we took the members of our Content Marketing Scripts through a five-day workshop.
For one week we jumped on a live workshop for an hour and used a different story wizard from the member site.
We taught everybody a quick lesson then, in real time, we each created a story and then spent the last half of the workshop giving everybody direct feedback on how their content turned out.
Then everybody was supposed to distribute their stories to promote their business.
That week I was so busy, I decided I would create the content I needed for the week as part of the workshop along with everybody else.
That Wednesday, I published the story I created in my newsletter. Then, on Thursday, we sent a different story as the Article Of The Week.
Friday morning, my wife, who’s also my bookkeeper, asked me as I was making coffee, “Hey, did you do a special promotion the last couple of days?”
And I said, “No, we just sent out the newsletter and the article the week like usual. Why?”
She said, “Well, sales of Seven Day Ebook are off the charts!”.
I said, “Really?!”
“Yep!” she said, “So whatever you did, do it again!”
I sent an email to Soosan and said, “Hey, what are the sales looking like, compared to last week?”
We ran a simple report and realized that sales had jumped up 438% week over week… Holy crap! That’s great!
But was it just an anomaly? I didn’t know. So I sat down and really analyzed what happened.
I looked back at when we’ve had bumps in sales versus just average or normal results.
And the pattern I started seeing shocked me!
I saw that when we stopped just giving away “how to” information and shared stories and other non-how-to content, people resonated with it and our sales went up!
So I decided to try it again the next week under the EXACT SAME CONDITIONS.
We sent out a different kind of content than we normally send. I did a piece on beliefs and another article on mistakes.
Guess what? Sales were UP again!
So it really got me thinking about the fact that sometimes we’re overloading people with too much information that falls into the “How To” category.
Because we’re overloading people with more information than they can act on, we become like that teacher who always gave out too much homework. You might have liked the topic, heck, you might have even liked the teacher, but all that homework became a real pain in the butt!
Why does this matter to you and what you’re doing to build your business (no matter what business you’re in)?
Because as they continue to get bombarded with information, people need more from us than just “more homework.”
To me, that means I need diversify the type of content we send and not just default to giving people more homework.
By the way, if you’d like to create a wide variety of VERY compelling content that helps you to connect with, influence, and impact the people you are called to serve, I’ve got a brand NEW training for you here at Content Marketing Scripts! We’ll teach you the three secrets of how to explode your business with content marketing so you can make more sales and get more leads while providing massive value in your marketplace!
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