How I built my marketing and lead funnel for SalesMVP Lab

In the very early days of starting a business, the fastest way to get clients is to do outbound prospecting and generate referrals from friendlies.

Milk this for as long as you can.

But at a certain point, you need to start thinking about a sustainable marketing engine that will consistently feed you leads over time, so you can grow.

Here’s how I’ve set-up my marketing at SalesMVP Lab.

In this newsletter, we’ll go through how I’ve created a never-ending content engine that feeds all of my different marketing channels, and how it’s helped generate business.

Table of Contents

• It starts with positioning and your story

• Create cornerstone content

• Chunk your cornerstone content

• How I productized and distributed the content

  • Low ticket products

  • Distribution is key

It starts with positioning and your story

First thing I did was complete the positioning exercise for SalesMVP Lab.

• Write out the market alternatives - for me, that was DIY learning, books, courses, mentors, and other coaches

• Write out all of the ways you’re different (not better) than the alternatives - for me, when it came to coaching, was my unique set of experience in both sales and marketing at very early stage startups

• Write out the value of your differentiators (problems solved, outcomes, etc) - for me, I’ve worked directly with founders multiple times at the $0-100k MRR stage. I deeply understand how hard it is to get a business off the ground when nobody knows you exist. It made me different than other coaches/mentors who’ve never done this stage. So the value I bring here is understanding exactly the mental blockers that founders face when it comes to sales. But also the tactics that help them break through.

• Write out who really cares about that value - for me, that’s mostly technical founders who need to do sales for the first time.

Once you have your positioning, and you understand the key points and differentiators, you turn this into a sales story.

Your story should include:

1. Polarizing insight - what’s your unique point of view on the market. This presents your positioning from the start.

2. The alternatives (positioning the market) - list off pros and cons of different ways to solve the problem.

3. Reframing the problem - the problem behind the problem. They why. The void in the market.

4. Ideal world - the objectives, goals, and results they want to get to. The new way of doing things.

5. Your solution - A brief description of your capabilities. Focus on what makes you unique.

Here’s how it translates into a sales story for SalesMVP Lab

This positioning and story becomes the basis for the next piece, your cornerstone content.

Create cornerstone content

You need a major asset of sorts. For me, that was an ebook. You don’t necessarily need to publish it, although you can. But you need something that outlines your entire methodology.

When I first decided to launch SalesMVP Lab, I though my product was coaching. But it was really hard for me to articulate what I was doing. It was really hard to create enough marketing content to get an engine running.

So what I did was write out all of my frameworks into one document.

What was it that I was teaching folks in coaching? What value did they get? What stuck? What didn’t stick? What worked for me and my sales teams in the past?

I started collecting all the playbooks I had.

And started writing. And writing. And writing.

I explained my story. I explained why it’s hard for founders to do sales.

Then I went into the basics of doing sales. What do you really need to know as a founder?

I added the components that aren’t really included in other sales methodologies, like positioning and sales story.

And I kept going.

Eventually, I had a master document that was about 40 pages long.

But I had everything. The problems I solve, the content, the frameworks, the solutions.

All of it could be implemented by founders.

So I published this as an ebook.

And that became the cornerstone of my marketing strategy.

Chunk your cornerstone content

Once you’ve created a piece of cornerstone content, the rest of your content marketing becomes very easy.

Everything will be a chunk of your cornerstone content.

You’ll create blog posts for specific topics of your cornerstone content.

You create newsletters.

You’ll create presentations.

You’ll create social media posts. Videos. Cold emails.

The list goes on.

Once you’ve created the cornerstone content, everything else is easy.

You can even build a custom GPT and train it with your cornerstone content to help you brainstorm ideas and write 80% of the secondary content. It works great.

How I productized and distributed the content

There are many ways you can use this type of content strategy.

For me, I’ve used it to create low-ticket products and for lead gen.

Low ticket products

I’ve done two things with my cornerstone content.

First one was edit and publish the ebook. I decided to do it as a paid ebook. For me, I want to attract leads that are willing to make a change. That’s very important for coaching. Free leads rarely work in the coaching business.

So I priced it at USD $36, and includes a workbook to implement the contents of the ebook. Not super expensive. But it signals to me that if someone is willing to pay a little bit of money to learn about sales, they’re serious about making a change. So I don’t get a ton of leads from this ebook, but I get very high quality leads.

The second thing I did was turn the ebook into a course, which I host in the SalesMVP Lab community. It has 7 modules, for each part of the ebook/framework. It goes into more details, with more examples. The community also has discussion groups, other resources, and a monthly live webinar (which I also build the presentations from the cornerstone content). I decided to price it at the cost of a monthly lunch. USD $17/mth, with a 7 day free trial. Same reasoning here - the folks who are willing to pay recurring to get this kind of value are more likely to become coaching clients for me than a free community. So going for quality over quantity again.

Distribution is key

I learned this from Ross Simmonds of Foundation Marketing years ago. Create once, distribute forever.

And this is really the idea behind the cornerstone marketing content.

One big piece of content, that you chunk up, and publish over and over again.

A lot of folks think you constantly have to create something new, or your audience will get bored.

But the reality is, only you get bored of your content. Most content you publish gets seen by very few people. Even if it does get seen, it needs to be seen 7+ times by someone before they remember it.

Really think about that. You constantly have to make impressions on your ICP to get them to pay attention to you.

And there’s no way, as a founder, that you have time to pump out unique content all the time. It’s hard. It’s time consuming.

So create something once. Then publish it over and over again as much as you can.

Here’s how I distribute my content:

• BOPA (borrow other people’s audiences) - I find that one of the fastest ways for me to generate leads is to speak in front of founders. So I’ve done a few speaking gigs with MicroConf Remote and Mastermind groups. I’ll take a topic from my framework, and go deep for an hour. I already have the content created from the ebook and courses, so repurposing this in front of others is pretty easy to get done. This is by far my best lead-generation source. I also promote the ebook with a special coupon at the end of my speaking gigs. That gives me motivated leads, and also helps pay for my time.

• Weekly newsletter - I’ll take all of my ebook signups and push them to newsletter. Any lead I’ve spoken to I also push to newsletter. And I have my free newsletter signup on LinkedIn and my website. My list is small, but super targeted. I publish something weekly. My content is helpful and educational, and I usually give enough details to take action. I always think about “if someone read this, could they implement it today in their own business?” That’s what I go for. And I promote my courses and coaching in the newsletter. It usually generates 2-3 community signups per month. And 2-3 coaching clients per month. That’s enough for me to sustain growth. As the list gets larger, the lead volume goes up as well. This is the best “free” way to learn my sales framework. But I get direct contact with founders.

• LinkedIn content - I will chunk up parts of my sales story and the cornerstone content into bite-sized posts on LinkedIn. I’ve also optimized my profile to reflect my sales story, positioning, and cornerstone content. Which acts as a second website for me. I post daily, Monday to Friday. That generates impressions, sometimes leads. I try to connect with 10-20 founders per day to grow my audience as well. This is the worst way to get my content for free, since it’s not consistently showing in front of a targeted audience, and it’s limited to character count. But it drives enough interest and leads for me that I keep going. And it doesn’t take a long time to do.

I’ve done some cold email, some SEO, but not consistently. I have to pick and choose what I focus on given I’m a founder, and my time for sales and marketing is limited. So this is where I’ve spent the bulk of my time.

What’s on my mind to do next? Targeted SEO to course + ebook signups (best way to qualify coaching leads for me). And doing public webinars like LinkedIn live, or to my email list. Focus there is to generate new leads to promote the ebook/community. I already do deep dives in my community for members.

There you have it - that’s the basis of my marketing strategy. It’s not overly complicated. It works enough for me, given the time that I have. Anything more complicated would either cost too much time or money, so I stay away from it for now.

Let me know what you think of the newsletter! Always want to cover topics that you care about.

For more practical early-stage sales tips, connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for more hands-on help implementing your first sales process, reach out for coaching packages.

P.S. I have two seats left open for September 19 start. Ping me if you’re interested.