Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / The Content Sales Funnel: How to Get Seen, Get Engaged, and Get Sales

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The Content Sales Funnel: How to Get Seen, Get Engaged, and Get Sales · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. It's a squalling, saturated,
• 0:05
  soaked Sunday morning over here in Abuja.
• 0:08
  So let's get down to business. Let's see how we can get seated
• 0:10
  with sales strategies on how to grow our businesses.
• 0:14
  So following on the conversation that we had yesterday, today is
• 0:18
  also going to be content related and we're going to look at how
• 0:22
  we can use distribution and engagement to get your content
• 0:27
  seen and interacted with. So why are we talking about
• 0:30
  distribution and engagement today?
• 0:33
  It's because people have to see your content before you can
• 0:37
  establish, know, like, and trust.
• 0:39
  People have to see the photos, videos, listen to the audio, you
• 0:42
  know all the things you're putting out there before you can
• 0:44
  achieve brand awareness. And people also have to see and
• 0:47
  engage in your content before they can figure out who you are,
• 0:51
  what you do, and how what you can do can help them.
• 0:55
  In other words, like I keep advocating over here on the
• 0:58
  podcast, don't create content and have it live in a vacuum.
• 1:02
  If you're putting stuff up on your Instagram handle, but you
• 1:05
  don't have a strategy for distribution and engagement,
• 1:08
  you're just wasting your time. Nobody's seeing it.
• 1:11
  It depends on who you ask. Some people say somewhere
• 1:15
  between three percent, 5%. Either way, it's not much.
• 1:19
  So if you have 1000 followers on Instagram, you throw up your
• 1:23
  stuff on Instagram, depending on who you ask, only three to 5% of
• 1:27
  people that are seeing it. And 3% of 1000 or 5% of 1000
• 1:34
  isn't much, or at least it's not enough to get you the kind of
• 1:38
  brand awareness and the kind of engagement that is going to move
• 1:41
  the needle forward, which is sales.
• 1:45
  So why is interaction important? That's the next question that I
• 1:48
  think we should ask if we're going to consider distribution
• 1:51
  and engagement. So why is interaction important?
• 1:55
  Interaction is important because the more people interact with
• 2:00
  your content, it's going to give a validation to the algorithm.
• 2:04
  So back to the Instagram example, if we're talking
• 2:09
  Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever, the more people
• 2:13
  interact with something, it provides validation to the
• 2:16
  algorithm. And so they know that this is
• 2:18
  valuable content and then the algorithm is going to do its
• 2:21
  thing and share it and promote it to other people.
• 2:25
  So if people interact, it's really, really important.
• 2:29
  In other words, if you have 1000 users on Instagram and you put
• 2:34
  up a piece of content, but you don't have a strategy for
• 2:36
  distribution and engagement, and only 3% of the people see it.
• 2:41
  And maybe out of those 3% who see it, maybe 0.1% like or
• 2:45
  something, it's not a good sign. But then if you have 1000
• 2:50
  followers, you put out a piece of content and you have a
• 2:54
  strategy for distribution and engagement.
• 2:56
  And even though you have 1000 followers, maybe 304 hundred
• 2:59
  people are liking every single post.
• 3:02
  It provides some sort of validation to the algorithm.
• 3:05
  The algorithm now thinks this is valuable content and the
• 3:07
  algorithm starts sharing it to other people.
• 3:09
  Then you can now achieve your know, like and trust.
• 3:13
  People know you, like you and trust you.
• 3:15
  You can achieve the brand, achieve the brand awareness and
• 3:18
  you have a greater chance to tell people who you are, what
• 3:21
  you do, how you can help and how they can buy from you.
• 3:24
  So This is why interaction is important.
• 3:27
  So since the next part of the equation as per distribution and
• 3:32
  engagement, getting your content seen and interacted with.
• 3:35
  Since engagement, sorry, distribution is a part of the
• 3:38
  the equation, we now have to ask that question as well.
• 3:42
  We've created the content. How are we going to distribute?
• 3:47
  Now there are lots of fancy ways of looking about this, how you
• 3:49
  distribute your content. But what I advocate is a 2 step
• 3:54
  approach, more or less. Number one, I tell folks, go to
• 3:58
  where your audience is, go to where your ideal customer
• 4:04
  profile, your target audience, your whatever, go where they
• 4:07
  are. So if your folks are not on
• 4:11
  YouTube, then it doesn't profit you to be on YouTube.
• 4:15
  If your folks are not on Instagram, it profited for you
• 4:18
  not to be on Instagram. If your folks are on Tiktok,
• 4:26
  even though you're much more comfortable with Instagram.
• 4:29
  Well, anyway, that's debatable, but that's the first.
• 4:34
  The first tip that I give folks who are discussing these sorts
• 4:36
  of things, where's your audience?
• 4:38
  Go to where they are. Make it work.
• 4:41
  Then the 2nd and the least effective is which do you find
• 4:47
  most comfortable? And then using that, adapt it to
• 4:52
  whatever goals it is you're trying to solve.
• 4:54
  So I think I'm a better writer, but the reason why I'm doing
• 4:58
  podcasting is because podcasting is easy.
• 5:02
  I can get on the microphone, talk for 20 or 30 minutes and
• 5:06
  I'm done. If the Internet is really bad,
• 5:09
  it'll take me another 7 minutes to try and upload it up onto the
• 5:11
  podcast. But bottom line is I can be done
• 5:13
  with content production every day in 30-40 minutes flat.
• 5:18
  If I were going to write A blog post, if I was going to do
• 5:20
  something newsletter related, even though it's going to be of
• 5:23
  better quality because I think I'm a damn good writer, The
• 5:26
  thing is, it'll probably be taking me close to two hours
• 5:28
  every day just to get my content out.
• 5:31
  And so I focus on what it is that I find most comfortable.
• 5:34
  That is a podcasting medium and then I look for where to share
• 5:39
  that podcasting content. So in my case, I figured that
• 5:43
  since I'm talking about things that are sales and business
• 5:46
  development related, business related, sometimes career
• 5:49
  related, I figured LinkedIn would be a good fit.
• 5:53
  And so far the gamble seems to be working that I'm paying most
• 5:56
  of my attention to LinkedIn and which leads over into a third,
• 6:01
  which is that consistency is key.
• 6:04
  Consistency is better than spread.
• 6:08
  You'll find in the beginning that when you want to distribute
• 6:10
  your content, most of you are going to start throwing yourself
• 6:13
  all over the place. And believe me, I did the same
• 6:15
  thing too. I've tried to make sure that my
• 6:17
  stuff was over on what's this thing called?
• 6:21
  There's a website called Niger Niger, something I can't
• 6:24
  remember, but it's a huge website where people get
• 6:26
  together and argue and gossip and do all sorts of things
• 6:29
  related to politics, business, movie and music culture, which I
• 6:38
  could remember the name of the site anyway.
• 6:40
  OK, so I tried to make sure I was on that site.
• 6:43
  I tried to make sure I was on Facebook.
• 6:45
  I tried to make sure I was on LinkedIn.
• 6:46
  I tried to make sure I was on Twitter.
• 6:48
  I tried to make sure I was on Threads.
• 6:50
  When Threads came out, I tried to make sure I was on any.
• 6:54
  You get the point. If I could have figured out the
• 6:56
  strategy for Pinterest, I probably would have been on
• 7:00
  Pinterest as well. Also with Pinterest from my
• 7:02
  wedding photography days, but I couldn't see how I would make a
• 7:06
  podcast and try to promote it over on Pinterest.
• 7:10
  And so excuse me, yeah, YouTube. I also try to be on YouTube as
• 7:14
  well. Now, the problem with spreading
• 7:17
  yourself all over the place is you can't distribute content
• 7:21
  consistently because you get tired, because it's easy.
• 7:25
  It's just copy and paste, So you think, or it's easy because you
• 7:30
  just tweak a few things here and there and then you put on
• 7:32
  another platform when you wake up every single day.
• 7:35
  And then you start your rounds first on Facebook, then on
• 7:38
  Instagram, then on Twitter, then on Threads, then on WhatsApp,
• 7:43
  then on YouTube, then on what else, Pinterest, and then then
• 7:50
  on whatever is the more popular website of the day or blogs of
• 7:53
  the day. After a while you get tired.
• 7:55
  So in my own case, what I like to advise people is let's pick
• 7:59
  one or two and let's be consistent over time rather than
• 8:04
  trying to spread it far and wide.
• 8:07
  So distribution, those are the two or three things, let's say
• 8:10
  three that I tell folks to pay attention to #1 trying to figure
• 8:14
  out where your audience is. If they're on Pinterest, then go
• 8:16
  to Pinterest #2 just do what it is that you find most
• 8:20
  comfortable. If your audience primarily is on
• 8:23
  Pinterest, but you think you can find some of them on LinkedIn
• 8:26
  and you're most comfortable with LinkedIn and no problem, come up
• 8:28
  with the LinkedIn strategy. But just make sure that you are
• 8:31
  consistent. You do it on the daily, you do
• 8:34
  it on the weekly, whatever your cadence is.
• 8:36
  If your cadence is monthly, I've been saying it here on the on
• 8:39
  the podcast, If your cadence is monthly, that is not going to
• 8:42
  work. There's no, OK, let me not say
• 8:44
  there's no. Now some businesses like I think
• 8:47
  those of you who are in the construction space, you probably
• 8:50
  don't have to post things on the daily or on the weekly.
• 8:53
  I'm sure a monthly school for you guys, but for the rest of us
• 8:56
  who are trying to sell either business to business or consumer
• 9:01
  level stuff like if you're trying to sell diapers, updating
• 9:04
  your Instagram on a monthly, distributing things on a monthly
• 9:08
  is not going to work. If you're selling diapers, if
• 9:10
  you're selling baby cream, if you're selling pajamas or if you
• 9:13
  sell, let's say you're a fishmonger, yeah, in Lagos or
• 9:18
  Abuja and you sell a lot of fish over on Instagram, a monthly
• 9:22
  cadence is not going to work. In fact, for those sorts of
• 9:24
  things, meat, fish, I assume you guys need to have a daily
• 9:30
  cadence, sometimes maybe twice a day.
• 9:33
  So maybe on Monday morning you come back from the market and
• 9:36
  then you make the video. This is all the fish that we've
• 9:38
  got. Look at Crocker, look at this,
• 9:39
  look at that. And maybe later on in the
• 9:41
  afternoon when you guys are chopping it up on packaging it,
• 9:43
  you make another Instagram view. So packing the fish right now
• 9:47
  for deliveries and then another one, four O clock in the evening
• 9:50
  where you're sending out deliveries, you make another
• 9:52
  post saying it's in and it's now going out.
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  Fresh croaker, fresh catfish being delivered to places near
• 10:00
  you in Abuja. If you're interested, hit us up
• 10:03
  WhatsApp number, blah, blah, blah.
• 10:05
  DM us. You know, this, this this da da
• 10:07
  da. So in this case, your cadence
• 10:10
  will have to be daily, at worst several times a day, I think at
• 10:15
  best most optimum. And I'm sure you guys are going
• 10:17
  to find ways to do it. So that is how you distribute.
• 10:20
  Where's your audience? That's question #1 what do you
• 10:23
  find most comfortable? Question #2 And then #3 just be
• 10:27
  consistent. If you try to spread yourself
• 10:29
  in, then this thing is not going to work.
• 10:31
  Now, let's use an example. Let's go back to the painter
• 10:34
  example that I started with yesterday.
• 10:37
  So if you are a painter, and I tried to clarify yesterday that
• 10:41
  when I say painter, I don't mean an artist.
• 10:43
  Like you have canvas and then you paint, but you're a painter.
• 10:47
  You have buckets of paint, you take a ladder, you go to a
• 10:50
  house, you stick the ladder by the side of the house, you start
• 10:52
  painting the building, and then when you're done, you paint the
• 10:55
  interior. So that kind of painter, my
• 10:58
  assumption is, by the way, I'm not in the painting space, so
• 11:01
  this is just a guess. If you are a painter or you're
• 11:05
  in this building industry, you know, you'll be able to know
• 11:08
  better what the ICP is. But for the benefit of other
• 11:11
  people, let me just freestyle so you can see how this thing
• 11:13
  works. So if you're a painter, my
• 11:15
  assumption is you're going to be putting out content for people
• 11:18
  who are interested in interior design that is part of your ICP.
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  And yes, that those things exist.
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  There are people who have Instagram handles and they
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  scroll all day and they look at the combination of the furniture
• 11:32
  to the carpets to the painting to the whatever.
• 11:35
  And yeah, my wife is one of those people.
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  She likes watching BBCBBC Lifestyle on DSTV.
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  They have the architecture show, they have the small building
• 11:46
  show, they have the, what's it called, shows on different
• 11:51
  things. You know, how you design your
• 11:52
  house, how you style your kitchen, how you do this, how
• 11:54
  you do that. Those people exist and they're
• 11:57
  on Instagram. For those of us who are men who
• 12:00
  are interested in these sorts of things, you might find it
• 12:02
  shocking. But yeah, people are interested
• 12:03
  in those sorts of things. So if you're a painter, sorry.
• 12:07
  Excuse me, my sore throat is on the way out.
• 12:11
  What was I? OK, so if you're a painter, the
• 12:15
  ICP might be people who are into interior design, material design
• 12:19
  enthusiasts. And then your ICP, that's your
• 12:22
  ideal customer profile, your ideal customer avatar, your
• 12:26
  ideal audience. The people you love doing
• 12:27
  business with might also be professional contractors,
• 12:31
  painters, developers, all those sorts of things.
• 12:35
  So that's the ICP when we're trying to come up with a
• 12:37
  strategy for distribution and engagement, before we start
• 12:40
  distributing and engaging, we have to know who we're targeting
• 12:43
  in the 1st place. I say it time and time again on
• 12:45
  the podcast, you need to know who you're chasing.
• 12:48
  You need to know who you are pursuing, as we say in Nigeria
• 12:51
  before you start doing anything. Because if you don't come up
• 12:55
  with who you're chasing or who you're pursuing, you end up
• 12:57
  pursuing the wrong person. You end up spending money and
• 13:01
  time with the wrong person. And there's no how you can get
• 13:05
  the right kind of business if you are chasing the wrong
• 13:08
  person. So this is always comes first.
• 13:12
  Then the kinds of content that you can put up could be before
• 13:15
  and afters, you know, so seen people do those sorts of things
• 13:18
  on on Instagram. I saw one beautifully done was a
• 13:22
  carpentry thing, but this was in Ghana.
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  They showed the empty space, you know, you just do a camera sweep
• 13:27
  through and then next thing they showed the after and the thing
• 13:30
  looked like, you know, like one of those upscale Scandinavian
• 13:35
  designs as anything was, was on point, was real cool.
• 13:38
  And it was impressive. And then the next couple of
• 13:41
  days, the videos that followed were, you know, showing the step
• 13:44
  by step, you know, the carpenters, the detailers, the
• 13:46
  different people talking like, OK, for this house, we decided
• 13:49
  to do this. We decided to do it and blah,
• 13:50
  blah, blah. And, you know, break it down.
• 13:52
  So for those of you who listened to the episode where I spoke
• 13:54
  about how you can make one quality piece of content and
• 13:56
  then repurpose, you can see that this is how it works.
• 14:00
  So yeah, back to the painters. So the content you can do can be
• 14:04
  before and after. You can do tutorials and
• 14:06
  techniques. You know, this is how you hold
• 14:08
  your brush. This is how you do detailing.
• 14:10
  This is how you, I don't know, whatever it is that you painters
• 14:14
  do. Then you can also have content
• 14:16
  about colours and trends and fads and things like that.
• 14:19
  You can do a feature focus. You know, today we're going to
• 14:24
  feature and focus on the colour pink.
• 14:26
  This is how you can use pink to fancy up your living room or
• 14:30
  fancy up your baby's room or whatever.
• 14:33
  You know, the sorts of things that you paint as we talk about
• 14:35
  then tips on choosing paints for rooms or different parts of the
• 14:40
  houses, you know, things like that.
• 14:42
  Then when it comes to engagement, the sort of
• 14:44
  engagement that you could be looking for is you could have
• 14:47
  question and answer sessions, Q&A sessions on Instagram Live,
• 14:51
  for instance, with design experts.
• 14:57
  You know, if you're a painter, you can have someone who does
• 15:00
  OK, like a cousin of mine friends and she does pillows.
• 15:03
  That's what she does. So you can have a session with,
• 15:06
  you know, someone who is into pillows, for instance, making
• 15:08
  people's living rooms look all nice and fancy.
• 15:11
  You guys can do AQ and a session together where people get to ask
• 15:14
  questions. You can do contests, you can do
• 15:16
  polls, You can do all these sorts of things.
• 15:18
  Now on the question of platforms, I'm sure that you
• 15:20
  guys have figured out that I'm running with Instagram because
• 15:24
  this is my guess. Remember, I am not a painter, so
• 15:28
  painters will be able to tell me whether I'm right or wrong.
• 15:31
  Well, my guess is if you're doing something like paint, then
• 15:34
  you should probably be looking at Instagram, Pinterest, Tiktok,
• 15:38
  or YouTube. You should be looking at stuff
• 15:40
  that are visual. That is my guess.
• 15:42
  I'm assuming that as a painter, you can grow your business by
• 15:46
  doing the newsletter or something.
• 15:48
  But then again, like I said, it is a guest.
• 15:51
  A guest. So if I was to ever work with a
• 15:53
  painter, these are some of the assumptions that I would like to
• 15:56
  be challenged. You know, I would start off by,
• 15:57
  OK, trying to figure out what the problem is, what is the goal
• 16:02
  we're trying to reach? And then when it comes down to
• 16:03
  the whole thing of platforms, that would be my first question,
• 16:05
  like, OK, so my guess is we're doing Instagram, Pinterest or
• 16:08
  YouTube. What do you think newsletters
• 16:12
  out of the questions do? How would you guys even use
• 16:15
  newsletters if we're going to make that a part of your content
• 16:17
  strategy? So we'd have those sorts of
• 16:20
  conversations then. OK, so we're done with who the
• 16:24
  ICP is, we're done with the platform.
• 16:26
  So now distribution and engagement.
• 16:29
  So first of all, we have to use organic content to see what
• 16:32
  resonates. So put out those videos, put out
• 16:34
  those photos and see what it is that people like depending on
• 16:38
  what it is that people like. That is where you are going to
• 16:41
  get the idea for which post to boost and what kind of
• 16:45
  advertisements to run and what kind of posts to promote as we
• 16:50
  start throwing money behind it. Now the CT as the call to
• 16:53
  action, not everything should have a call to action, but you
• 16:58
  should have a healthy mix of content out there that tells
• 17:01
  people this is what you do next. Because you cannot have people
• 17:06
  become customers if all you do is you keep putting out
• 17:08
  entertaining and educational content.
• 17:10
  But there's nothing ever telling them this is what to do next.
• 17:13
  This is how to buy. This is how to take this
• 17:15
  relationship further. So your call to actions can be
• 17:18
  anything like shop now or buy now or link to store in bio or
• 17:26
  click the link to WhatsApp to place an order or DM me now or
• 17:31
  something like that. So all those shop now call to
• 17:33
  actions in your content. Another call to action could be
• 17:38
  are you inspired or do you want to get some more inspiration?
• 17:40
  Would you like to learn more? Click link in bio with websites
• 17:44
  you know to learn more. Click link in bio to join
• 17:47
  newsletter. Send message in WhatsApp to join
• 17:51
  the community. Send message in Telegram to join
• 17:55
  the training community or you know, for training courses,
• 17:59
  whatever. Then there's the more sales
• 18:04
  there are more sales prone. CTA is called actions like click
• 18:07
  on this for free consultation. The whole idea behind free
• 18:10
  consultation is you're hoping to do discovery calls with people
• 18:14
  who could become potential clients.
• 18:16
  A discovery call is basically when you get to know someone who
• 18:18
  they are, what they're about, the problem that they solve, and
• 18:20
  to try and figure out if your product or service can help
• 18:22
  solve them, solve their problems.
• 18:25
  So if you have a call to action that is free consultation,
• 18:28
  discovery calls, then hopefully the kind of people that will be
• 18:31
  calling you will be mummies who have just had babies or who are
• 18:34
  looking to have a baby and who want the room painted.
• 18:36
  Or daddies who are moving into a new house and they want to make
• 18:39
  sure that everything is all painted and cool.
• 18:41
  Or property developers who are building, I don't know, 561020 a
• 18:46
  hundred houses in Abuja and want a cost effective quote to paint
• 18:51
  the houses. If you're having those sorts of
• 18:53
  free consultations and discovery goals, then the chances that you
• 18:56
  get to do some business from those sorts of people goes up.
• 19:00
  Then another call to action is follow for more.
• 19:03
  Yeah, so follow here, like subscribe, you know, for more
• 19:06
  tips, more tricks, more whatever.
• 19:08
  And then of course, share because remember, we're trying
• 19:12
  to achieve brand awareness as well.
• 19:13
  We're trying to achieve know like and trust for more people
• 19:16
  to know us, like us and trust us.
• 19:18
  And then we also want more people to know who we are, what
• 19:21
  we do, what our product or services and how we can help.
• 19:26
  So that is a OK 19 minutes. So let me bring it to a close.
• 19:30
  I think that's a tight deal of example for how we can put these
• 19:33
  things into play. But remember, the goal of having
• 19:37
  content seen and interacted with is to get more sales.
• 19:43
  Let me repeat that again. The goal of having content seen
• 19:47
  and interacted with is to get more sales.
• 19:50
  I have to point this out because lots of people get comfortable
• 19:55
  spinning their wheels on social media and going nowhere.
• 19:58
  They get obsessed with the number of likes and all these
• 20:01
  things that they get. But that is not the ultimate
• 20:04
  goal. The ultimate goal?
• 20:06
  Of putting out videos, blog post, podcast, whatever I get
• 20:10
  people interact with them is to get more sales.
• 20:14
  So brand building is good engagements and likes and shares
• 20:19
  it's good. No like and trust it's good.
• 20:22
  But ultimately, if these things are not facilitating more sales
• 20:27
  and more business growth, you'll be wasting your time.
• 20:30
  And after a while, you will get tired because which painter,
• 20:33
  whether in Abuja, in Lagos or London or Dubai, spends six days
• 20:39
  a week on Instagram putting out stuff?
• 20:42
  You've done it for two years, You've not gotten a single deal.
• 20:45
  After a while, you'll stop. So remember, the ultimate goal
• 20:50
  of having content seen and interacted with is to get more
• 20:55
  sales. So thank you very much for your
• 20:57
  time and attention. I'm Tavish Shima Ayede, the host
• 21:00
  of the show. You can connect with me on
• 21:02
  LinkedIn. You can confirm the spelling of
• 21:04
  my name from the link where you're listening to this
• 21:07
  episode. Also connect with me on
• 21:08
  WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140.
• 21:15
  The country code is +234. For those of you who are not
• 21:17
  Nigerian, thank you very much for your time and attention.
• 21:20
  I'll catch you guys in the next episode where I'll be sharing a
• 21:22
  really interesting interaction that I have with the young man
• 21:26
  who reached out to me over here on well, reached out to me on
• 21:29
  WhatsApp or from YouTube. And I wanted to make this a
• 21:34
  one-on-one conversation I have with the young man.
• 21:36
  But the fellow didn't take me up on that.
• 21:39
  He refused. He didn't return my call.
• 21:41
  So I figured, let me just make this podcast episode so that
• 21:44
  those of us out there, young men who are on the hostel, on the
• 21:46
  ground, trying to grow our business won't end up making the
• 21:49
  mistake that this fellow made. And yeah, and also, hopefully
• 21:56
  when the young man listens to this podcast episode, he's going
• 21:58
  to get the gist of what I wanted to talk to him over on the phone
• 22:03
  about. So of course, I'm not going to
• 22:05
  be sharing his name. But for those of us who are
• 22:07
  youngish, those of us who are between the ages of 18, that
• 22:11
  kind 20 to maybe 30 years old, listen up for that so that we're
• 22:17
  going to stop making these mistakes when we're trying to do
• 22:20
  outreach to grow our businesses. So thanks for the time and
• 22:22
  attention. I'll catch you guys in the next
• 22:24
  episode.