How to Optimize Your Content Calendar for Sales Promotions

Heather Ritchie - How to Optimize Your Content Calendar for Sales Promotions

TRANSCRIPTION

00:00 There and welcome to this presentation on how to optimize your content calendar for sales promotions. So if you don't know me, my name is Heather Ritchie i am a certified content marketing strategist, SEO content writer and AI specialist over at Rider's life for you. And I'm really excited about this topic because back in 2022 it's kind of like a light bulb switched in my head when I came up with my content planning framework where basically all your content revolves around your promotions all year long that can be affiliate promotions, what you're selling, services, digital products, courses, whatever you can think of. So when you're planning your content out around your launches and creating a content calendar based on that, it makes content creation so much easier.

00:47 It's going to help you make more sales and then reduce that workload that happens to be on you. So the biggest thing is that creating a content calendar based around your offers creates a consistency and a focus because what we want to do is we want to set your offer, your service, product, whatever it is as a solution to your people's problems, which is why pre launch content is always so important and you hear about it, but sometimes you might be like I don't know what I need to do for that. So rule of thumb is basically you want to create and publish pre launch content that basically educates your audience, sets you up as the expert, the go to expert in your niche, and then it's going to set your offers up as the solution to their problems and this is where the more sales and the easier workload come in.

01:4 So first of all, what you're going to do to start, and this is actually simpler you're actually probably going to be amazed at how simple this is people always are. It was a big light bulb moment for me so it's just amazing. Just content planning in this aspect makes your life, especially with content creation. So first, what you're going to need to do is you're going to need to create a schedule of your digital products and courses, what you're going to be promoting, and you can include affiliate promotions like I mentioned, create a schedule of what you're going to release over the next three to six months you can be ambitious and do over the next year if you want to, because I use Trello for my content lanning, so I can just easily move cards around because let's be honest, it's November of 2024 i had no idea in January or last year that I was going to be doing some of the things that I'm doing in quarter four.

02:41 So This is why having a flexible content plan is so important. So once you have that schedule out, I want you to think more about what you want from that promotion define your promotion goals do you want new leads? Do you want more subscribers increased revenue? A lot of times it's going to be increased revenue and then you're going to want to align your content types with those goals and with what your audience likes to hear or what they like to how they like to consume their content basically, are they podcast listeners do they like long blog post articles do they like full YouTube videos? Things like that because this is going to be a really important part of meeting your people, where they're at as far as helping them with solutions and making sure that they read your content, listen to it, whatever that may be.

03:31 So for a product launch when it comes to content types, two, you also want to look at using teaser posts like what's coming behind the scenes looks, you'll probably even want some educational pieces and as you get closer to launching, you're going to want to talk about your product's benefits and the outcomes or transformations that your people get really, really important. And then when the Santa launches, you're going to want to create, you know, announcement content, create countdowns, testimonials, FAQ post and different things on your sales page.

04:06 These are all really important for like helping your people make a informed decision, I should say, on whether or not they want to buy your product or service. And so having content themes and knowing the type of content that you're going to create going up to your launch is literally going to make this so much easier i, I cannot even express to you how life changing, not trying to be dramatic, but it was how life changing content planning in this aspect came for me because if I was doing affiliate launch for say the genius bloggers Cool Toolkit, and that's before my content planning framework and I was, I had an email for the Monday that it launched.

04:49 I was sometimes Sunday night writing those emails i felt like I was constantly behind. But the beauty is of knowing what's coming down the Pike and knowing what content you need to create. It just really takes away from that indecision and the overwhelm and creating content at the last minute because you could sit down and batch things out. And so here are some practical steps to help you build a focused promotion or excuse me, a promotion focused content calendar so first, start with a timeline. I recommend working backwards from your launch or sales date so that you know you're going to have enough time for pre promotion.

05:27 You hear a variety of things like start your pre launch stuff six weeks out. I say two or three months out is even better, which is again why this is so important with knowing what you're going to be promoting. Setting U that sales calendar or knowing when you're going to be releasing your offers or promoting them or launching anything like that is going to be huge in what content you need to create.

05:54 And so when you have that timeline and you work backwards, you can kind of step it back and make yourself a little, maybe some milestones like, OK, I need to have all of these emails done by then. I need to have all of my social posts done by hand then I need to have all my graphics done by now, if that makes sense. And then you can easily do content batching it's one of my favorite things i'm not the person who likes to sit down and do a tik tok video two or three times a day that's not me.

06:24 I would rather batch it. So the beauty of this batching is that you can easily bust things out like I can do all my social media graphics and email graphics in one or promotional graphics all in one setting. I can batch create all my emails and schedule them. And you can even do it like pre launch emails versus sales emails or like your first month of pre launch versus your second month of pre launch you can batch it how other way is comfortable for you, but this just takes the lack of focus and being scared of not knowing what to post when the time comes that takes all of that out of the equation for you.

07:06 And then you can also repurpose from previous launches look at content that did really well. We're not trying to recreate the wheel here just do what you can and repurposed with strategy in mind, I should say so I absolutely love doing this it has saved me so much time now, if it's a brand new launch, then yeah, you're probably going to have to create a lot more content but just think how easy it will be next time and then you want to automate where you can, you know, use tools like Ubler or Social Bee to schedule your social media post i use Convertkit, which is now kit to schedule my emails.

07:43 Anything I can do to automate the whole process just makes my life so much easier same with delivering your post purchase email sequence things like that. I do all of that through Convertkit using automations and it saves me a whole lot of time. So these are just some simple tips. I just want to remind you that a content calendar is a tool to make your life much easier, not more complex.

08:08 I know a lot of people are like, I can't stick to a calendar or I can't stick to a timeline. Well, I couldn't really either until I came up with this, you know, working all of my content around what I'm promoting. It literally was a game changer and it can help you too and it's going to make your life a lot easier you'll see it gives you the structure you need to also be inspired and be creative during these times too. I also want to remind you or encourage you just to start small. Otimize for one ucoming launch if you know you have, you know you're selling your course two months from now, start with that start easy just do one launch at a time and you will see that this whole theory and this whole framework can grow over time to encompass everything that you do.

08:59 So I can't wait to see what you do with this i just know you're going to find content creation less overwhelming and get more sales in a sustainable way that even makes it kind of fun. So see you in the next training.