The Content Sales Funnel: How to Get Seen, Get Engaged, and Get Sales

Hello and welcome to the show. It's a squalling, saturated, soaked Sunday morning over here in Abuja. So let's get down to business. Let's see how we can get seated with sales strategies on how to grow our businesses. So following on the conversation that we had yesterday, today is also going to be content related and we're going to look at how we can use distribution and engagement to get your content seen and interacted with.

So why are we talking about distribution and engagement today? It's because people have to see your content before you can establish, know, like, and trust. People have to see the photos, videos, listen to the audio, you know all the things you're putting out there before you can achieve brand awareness. And people also have to see and engage in your content before they can figure out who you are, what you do, and how what you can do can help them.

In other words, like I keep advocating over here on the podcast, don't create content and have it live in a vacuum. If you're putting stuff up on your Instagram handle, but you don't have a strategy for distribution and engagement, you're just wasting your time. Nobody's seeing it. It depends on who you ask. Some people say somewhere between three percent, 5%. Either way, it's not much. So if you have 1000 followers on Instagram, you throw up your stuff on Instagram, depending on who you ask, only three to 5% of people that are seeing it.

And 3% of 1000 or 5% of 1000 isn't much, or at least it's not enough to get you the kind of brand awareness and the kind of engagement that is going to move the needle forward, which is sales. So why is interaction important? That's the next question that I think we should ask if we're going to consider distribution and engagement. So why is interaction important? Interaction is important because the more people interact with your content, it's going to give a validation to the algorithm.

So back to the Instagram example, if we're talking Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever, the more people interact with something, it provides validation to the algorithm. And so they know that this is valuable content and then the algorithm is going to do its thing and share it and promote it to other people. So if people interact, it's really, really important. In other words, if you have 1000 users on Instagram and you put up a piece of content, but you don't have a strategy for distribution and engagement, and only 3% of the people see it.

And maybe out of those 3% who see it, maybe 0.1% like or something, it's not a good sign. But then if you have 1000 followers, you put out a piece of content and you have a strategy for distribution and engagement. And even though you have 1000 followers, maybe 304 hundred people are liking every single post. It provides some sort of validation to the algorithm. The algorithm now thinks this is valuable content and the algorithm starts sharing it to other people.

Then you can now achieve your know, like and trust. People know you, like you and trust you. You can achieve the brand, achieve the brand awareness and you have a greater chance to tell people who you are, what you do, how you can help and how they can buy from you. So This is why interaction is important. So since the next part of the equation as per distribution and engagement, getting your content seen and interacted with.

Since engagement, sorry, distribution is a part of the the equation, we now have to ask that question as well. We've created the content. How are we going to distribute? Now there are lots of fancy ways of looking about this, how you distribute your content. But what I advocate is a 2 step approach, more or less. Number one, I tell folks, go to where your audience is, go to where your ideal customer profile, your target audience,

your whatever, go where they are. So if your folks are not on YouTube, then it doesn't profit you to be on YouTube. If your folks are not on Instagram, it profited for you not to be on Instagram. If your folks are on Tiktok, even though you're much more comfortable with Instagram. Well, anyway, that's debatable, but that's the first. The first tip that I give folks who are discussing these sorts of things, where's your audience?

Go to where they are. Make it work. Then the 2nd and the least effective is which do you find most comfortable? And then using that, adapt it to whatever goals it is you're trying to solve. So I think I'm a better writer, but the reason why I'm doing podcasting is because podcasting is easy. I can get on the microphone, talk for 20 or 30 minutes and I'm done. If the Internet is really bad, it'll take me another 7 minutes to try and upload it up onto the podcast.

But bottom line is I can be done with content production every day in 30-40 minutes flat. If I were going to write A blog post, if I was going to do something newsletter related, even though it's going to be of better quality because I think I'm a damn good writer, The thing is, it'll probably be taking me close to two hours every day just to get my content out. And so I focus on what it is that I find most comfortable.

That is a podcasting medium and then I look for where to share that podcasting content. So in my case, I figured that since I'm talking about things that are sales and business development related, business related, sometimes career related, I figured LinkedIn would be a good fit. And so far the gamble seems to be working that I'm paying most of my attention to LinkedIn and which leads over into a third, which is that consistency is key.

Consistency is better than spread. You'll find in the beginning that when you want to distribute your content, most of you are going to start throwing yourself all over the place. And believe me, I did the same thing too. I've tried to make sure that my stuff was over on what's this thing called? There's a website called Niger Niger, something I can't remember, but it's a huge website where people get together and argue and gossip and do all sorts of things related to politics, business,

movie and music culture, which I could remember the name of the site anyway. OK, so I tried to make sure I was on that site. I tried to make sure I was on Facebook. I tried to make sure I was on LinkedIn. I tried to make sure I was on Twitter. I tried to make sure I was on Threads. When Threads came out, I tried to make sure I was on any. You get the point. If I could have figured out the strategy for Pinterest, I probably would have been on Pinterest as well.

Also with Pinterest from my wedding photography days, but I couldn't see how I would make a podcast and try to promote it over on Pinterest. And so excuse me, yeah, YouTube. I also try to be on YouTube as well. Now, the problem with spreading yourself all over the place is you can't distribute content consistently because you get tired, because it's easy. It's just copy and paste, So you think, or it's easy because you just tweak a few things here and there and then you put on another platform when you wake up every single day.

And then you start your rounds first on Facebook, then on Instagram, then on Twitter, then on Threads, then on WhatsApp, then on YouTube, then on what else, Pinterest, and then then on whatever is the more popular website of the day or blogs of the day. After a while you get tired. So in my own case, what I like to advise people is let's pick one or two and let's be consistent over time rather than trying to spread it far and wide.

So distribution, those are the two or three things, let's say three that I tell folks to pay attention to #1 trying to figure out where your audience is. If they're on Pinterest, then go to Pinterest #2 just do what it is that you find most comfortable. If your audience primarily is on Pinterest, but you think you can find some of them on LinkedIn and you're most comfortable with LinkedIn and no problem, come up with the LinkedIn strategy.

But just make sure that you are consistent. You do it on the daily, you do it on the weekly, whatever your cadence is. If your cadence is monthly, I've been saying it here on the on the podcast, If your cadence is monthly, that is not going to work. There's no, OK, let me not say there's no. Now some businesses like I think those of you who are in the construction space, you probably don't have to post things on the daily or on the weekly.

I'm sure a monthly school for you guys, but for the rest of us who are trying to sell either business to business or consumer level stuff like if you're trying to sell diapers, updating your Instagram on a monthly, distributing things on a monthly is not going to work. If you're selling diapers, if you're selling baby cream, if you're selling pajamas or if you sell, let's say you're a fishmonger, yeah, in Lagos or Abuja and you sell a lot of fish over on Instagram, a monthly cadence is not going to work.

In fact, for those sorts of things, meat, fish, I assume you guys need to have a daily cadence, sometimes maybe twice a day. So maybe on Monday morning you come back from the market and then you make the video. This is all the fish that we've got. Look at Crocker, look at this, look at that. And maybe later on in the afternoon when you guys are chopping it up on packaging it, you make another Instagram view. So packing the fish right now for deliveries and then another one, four O clock in the evening where you're sending out deliveries, you make another post saying it's in and it's now going out.

Fresh croaker, fresh catfish being delivered to places near you in Abuja. If you're interested, hit us up WhatsApp number, blah, blah, blah. DM us. You know, this, this this da da da. So in this case, your cadence will have to be daily, at worst several times a day, I think at best most optimum. And I'm sure you guys are going to find ways to do it. So that is how you distribute. Where's your audience? That's question #1 what do you find most comfortable?

Question #2 And then #3 just be consistent. If you try to spread yourself in, then this thing is not going to work. Now, let's use an example. Let's go back to the painter example that I started with yesterday. So if you are a painter, and I tried to clarify yesterday that when I say painter, I don't mean an artist. Like you have canvas and then you paint, but you're a painter. You have buckets of paint, you take a ladder, you go to a house, you stick the ladder by the side of the house, you start painting the building, and then when you're done, you paint the interior.

So that kind of painter, my assumption is, by the way, I'm not in the painting space, so this is just a guess. If you are a painter or you're in this building industry, you know, you'll be able to know better what the ICP is. But for the benefit of other people, let me just freestyle so you can see how this thing works. So if you're a painter, my assumption is you're going to be putting out content for people who are interested in interior design that is part of your ICP.

And yes, that those things exist. There are people who have Instagram handles and they scroll all day and they look at the combination of the furniture to the carpets to the painting to the whatever. And yeah, my wife is one of those people. She likes watching BBCBBC Lifestyle on DSTV. They have the architecture show, they have the small building show, they have the, what's it called, shows on different things. You know, how you design your house, how you style your kitchen, how you do this, how you do that.

Those people exist and they're on Instagram. For those of us who are men who are interested in these sorts of things, you might find it shocking. But yeah, people are interested in those sorts of things. So if you're a painter, sorry. Excuse me, my sore throat is on the way out. What was I? OK, so if you're a painter, the ICP might be people who are into interior design, material design enthusiasts. And then your ICP, that's your ideal customer profile, your ideal customer avatar, your ideal audience.

The people you love doing business with might also be professional contractors, painters, developers, all those sorts of things. So that's the ICP when we're trying to come up with a strategy for distribution and engagement, before we start distributing and engaging, we have to know who we're targeting in the 1st place. I say it time and time again on the podcast, you need to know who you're chasing. You need to know who you are pursuing, as we say in Nigeria before you start doing anything.

Because if you don't come up with who you're chasing or who you're pursuing, you end up pursuing the wrong person. You end up spending money and time with the wrong person. And there's no how you can get the right kind of business if you are chasing the wrong person. So this is always comes first. Then the kinds of content that you can put up could be before and afters, you know, so seen people do those sorts of things on on Instagram.

I saw one beautifully done was a carpentry thing, but this was in Ghana. They showed the empty space, you know, you just do a camera sweep through and then next thing they showed the after and the thing looked like, you know, like one of those upscale Scandinavian designs as anything was, was on point, was real cool. And it was impressive. And then the next couple of days, the videos that followed were, you know, showing the step by step, you know, the carpenters, the detailers, the different people talking like,

OK, for this house, we decided to do this. We decided to do it and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, break it down. So for those of you who listened to the episode where I spoke about how you can make one quality piece of content and then repurpose, you can see that this is how it works. So yeah, back to the painters. So the content you can do can be before and after. You can do tutorials and techniques. You know, this is how you hold your brush.

This is how you do detailing. This is how you, I don't know, whatever it is that you painters do. Then you can also have content about colours and trends and fads and things like that. You can do a feature focus. You know, today we're going to feature and focus on the colour pink. This is how you can use pink to fancy up your living room or fancy up your baby's room or whatever. You know, the sorts of things that you paint as we talk about then tips on choosing paints for rooms or different parts of the houses, you know, things like that.

Then when it comes to engagement, the sort of engagement that you could be looking for is you could have question and answer sessions, Q&A sessions on Instagram Live, for instance, with design experts. You know, if you're a painter, you can have someone who does OK, like a cousin of mine friends and she does pillows. That's what she does. So you can have a session with, you know, someone who is into pillows, for instance, making people's living rooms look all nice and fancy.

You guys can do AQ and a session together where people get to ask questions. You can do contests, you can do polls, You can do all these sorts of things. Now on the question of platforms, I'm sure that you guys have figured out that I'm running with Instagram because this is my guess. Remember, I am not a painter, so painters will be able to tell me whether I'm right or wrong. Well, my guess is if you're doing something like paint, then you should probably be looking at Instagram, Pinterest, Tiktok,

or YouTube. You should be looking at stuff that are visual. That is my guess. I'm assuming that as a painter, you can grow your business by doing the newsletter or something. But then again, like I said, it is a guest. A guest. So if I was to ever work with a painter, these are some of the assumptions that I would like to be challenged. You know, I would start off by, OK, trying to figure out what the problem is, what is the goal we're trying to reach?

And then when it comes down to the whole thing of platforms, that would be my first question, like, OK, so my guess is we're doing Instagram, Pinterest or YouTube. What do you think newsletters out of the questions do? How would you guys even use newsletters if we're going to make that a part of your content strategy? So we'd have those sorts of conversations then. OK, so we're done with who the ICP is, we're done with the platform.

So now distribution and engagement. So first of all, we have to use organic content to see what resonates. So put out those videos, put out those photos and see what it is that people like depending on what it is that people like. That is where you are going to get the idea for which post to boost and what kind of advertisements to run and what kind of posts to promote as we start throwing money behind it. Now the CT as the call to action, not everything should have a call to action, but you should have a healthy mix of content out there that tells people this is what you do next.

Because you cannot have people become customers if all you do is you keep putting out entertaining and educational content. But there's nothing ever telling them this is what to do next. This is how to buy. This is how to take this relationship further. So your call to actions can be anything like shop now or buy now or link to store in bio or click the link to WhatsApp to place an order or DM me now or something like that.

So all those shop now call to actions in your content. Another call to action could be are you inspired or do you want to get some more inspiration? Would you like to learn more? Click link in bio with websites you know to learn more. Click link in bio to join newsletter. Send message in WhatsApp to join the community. Send message in Telegram to join the training community or you know, for training courses, whatever.

Then there's the more sales there are more sales prone. CTA is called actions like click on this for free consultation. The whole idea behind free consultation is you're hoping to do discovery calls with people who could become potential clients. A discovery call is basically when you get to know someone who they are, what they're about, the problem that they solve, and to try and figure out if your product or service can help solve them, solve their problems.

So if you have a call to action that is free consultation, discovery calls, then hopefully the kind of people that will be calling you will be mummies who have just had babies or who are looking to have a baby and who want the room painted. Or daddies who are moving into a new house and they want to make sure that everything is all painted and cool. Or property developers who are building, I don't know, 561020 a hundred houses in Abuja and want a cost effective quote to paint the houses.

If you're having those sorts of free consultations and discovery goals, then the chances that you get to do some business from those sorts of people goes up. Then another call to action is follow for more. Yeah, so follow here, like subscribe, you know, for more tips, more tricks, more whatever. And then of course, share because remember, we're trying to achieve brand awareness as well. We're trying to achieve know like and trust for more people to know us, like us and trust us.

And then we also want more people to know who we are, what we do, what our product or services and how we can help. So that is a OK 19 minutes. So let me bring it to a close. I think that's a tight deal of example for how we can put these things into play. But remember, the goal of having content seen and interacted with is to get more sales. Let me repeat that again. The goal of having content seen and interacted with is to get more sales.

I have to point this out because lots of people get comfortable spinning their wheels on social media and going nowhere. They get obsessed with the number of likes and all these things that they get. But that is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal? Of putting out videos, blog post, podcast, whatever I get people interact with them is to get more sales. So brand building is good engagements and likes and shares it's good.

No like and trust it's good. But ultimately, if these things are not facilitating more sales and more business growth, you'll be wasting your time. And after a while, you will get tired because which painter, whether in Abuja, in Lagos or London or Dubai, spends six days a week on Instagram putting out stuff? You've done it for two years, You've not gotten a single deal. After a while, you'll stop. So remember, the ultimate goal of having content seen and interacted with is to get more sales.

So thank you very much for your time and attention. I'm Tavish Shima Ayede, the host of the show. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link where you're listening to this episode. Also connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys in the next episode where I'll be sharing a really interesting interaction that I have with the young man who reached out to me over here on well, reached out to me on WhatsApp or from YouTube.

And I wanted to make this a one-on-one conversation I have with the young man. But the fellow didn't take me up on that. He refused. He didn't return my call. So I figured, let me just make this podcast episode so that those of us out there, young men who are on the hostel, on the ground, trying to grow our business won't end up making the mistake that this fellow made. And yeah, and also, hopefully when the young man listens to this podcast episode, he's going to get the gist of what I wanted to talk to him over on the phone about.

So of course, I'm not going to be sharing his name. But for those of us who are youngish, those of us who are between the ages of 18, that kind 20 to maybe 30 years old, listen up for that so that we're going to stop making these mistakes when we're trying to do outreach to grow our businesses. So thanks for the time and attention. I'll catch you guys in the next episode.