6 Questions Your Boss Should Ask Before Approving Your Content Marketing

Last week, I launched a brand-new video podcast called Jay Today. I upload a new, 3-minute video every business day, where I talk about social media, content marketing, business and life. It’s a way for me to talk about what’s in my head RIGHT NOW.
Here’s a Jay Today video about how to get approval for your content marketing programs in a company environment (transcript below, if you prefer)

JayToday is available on Youtube, iTunes (as a video podcast), and at JayToday.tv. The show is sponsored by Sprout Social (which I use for my social media), and Candidio (a great video editing service).

How to Get Your Content Marketing Approved

Hey, it’s Jay Baer with another Jay Today.
So today I wanted to talk about content and content approvals. My friend, Arnie Kuenn, from Vertical Measures, a great firm by the way, asked me to answer a question for a series that they’re doing, and the question is this:
“How can you get approval? How can you get your boss to agree to go all in on content marketing?”
I thought it was such a good question, I’d share it here at Jay Today as well.
Here’s how I answered it.
How do you get your boss to go all in on content? Well, frankly, you don’t, because let’s remember the goal is not to be good at content marketing. The goal is to be good at business because of content marketing.
At best, content is a means to an end. I’m not just making these videos for fun. I’m hoping that you and I interact in some way that eventually benefits you and me.
So if you’re going to try to get support for a content initiative in your company, any boss worth their salt, any executive is going to want to hear about that in a different terminology. They’re going to hear about what content can do for the business, things like:

• Do you plan to use content to increase awareness at the top of the funnel?
• Do you plan to use content to increase leads at the middle of the funnel?
• Do you plan to use content to improve your conversion rate at the bottom of the funnel?
• Do you plan to use content to increase average order size or increase order frequency?
• Do you plan to use content to encourage current customers to tell their friends about you?
• Do you plan to use content to decrease customer service cost?

All of those are incredibly valid and valuable things that content can do for your company.
So if you’re going to walk into somebody’s office and try and get permission and try and get budget and try and get them to believe in the magic of content marketing, I’m telling you the way to do it is to talk in the language that they care about, which is dollars and cents, not clicks and impressions.

Business executives care about dollars and cents, not clicks and impressions. (click to tweet)

See you tomorrow on Jay Today. Thanks.

Get More Jay Today

Feedback on the new show has been great – especially the snackable length. I would be so honored if you watched the episode above and/or some others. I’d love your thoughts too!
Here’s a list of all shows so far:
What is your talk trigger that creates WOW?
Build trust by telling people to NOT hire you
Why you need to pick a smartphone for life
The key to become a successful blogger
Why Twitter bios are more important than ever
Why courage is the most important words in business
Why Twitter needs to stop copying and start innovating
Facebook’s Trust problem