Hey,
Last week, I emailed you about “How to” versus “How I” content. I mentioned that you don’t always need to choose — you can combine both these approaches in a single piece of content. If you missed the issue, you can catch up here. Go on, I’ll wait.
Ready?
OK, let’s dig in and dismantle a common myth: you attract users with content writing and convert them with copywriting.
It’s the most common funnel approach:
- Lure users with a good piece of content (like a blog post or a whitepaper)
- Get their contact information
- Send them MORE content until they trust you
- Send them to a sales page where they convert into paying customers
This approach is so widespread because it has decent results. But a lot of things can go wrong, and most leads end up falling through the cracks of the funnel.
So why not speed things up a bit? Let’s see what happens when you combine “how to” content with “how I” content and content writing with copywriting.
I call this formula “The Accelerated Funnel” because it moves readers faster through the funnel. Before I tell you what the formula is, a quick primer:
- This is NOT a hack: you need proof that the approach you’re describing is working. Thus, you need some (successful) background in your field.
- I’ve used this formula to grow my agency AND for a lot of our clients with excellent results (read: direct conversions from blog posts).
- You don’t need to follow all the steps below in the exact same order. I encourage you to play with it and make it your own.
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Scroll to the end of the email to find a link to the template and examples.
The Accelerated Funnel content writing formula
Start by choosing a massive pain point you know you can solve for your readers. Your title should be something along these lines:
How to [solve massive ICP pain point]
There are four parts to this formula:
1. The contrarian take
Open by discussing a popular approach that you disagree with. Explain why it has such an appeal (perhaps it’s an easy way out), then proceed to tear it down.
Example: most content writers use AI to generate at least part of their SEO blog posts. It’s very easy (AI can spew an entire blog post in minutes) and fairly cheap, so it’s hard to resist the temptation.
However, AI hallucinates, invents sources, and creates run-of-mill, boring content. There’s a better way to do it.
2. (Optional) Credential yourself
If you’re going to take a contrarian approach, explain why people should trust YOU instead of the vast majority that supports the opposing view. I did this when I introduced last week’s topic in a LinkedIn post:
My LinkedIn audience knows me well and they usually resonate with my contrarian takes. They trust me but very few of them know I also own a content writing agency. So I added the quick mention above to up my trust levels a bit.
If you’re writing to an audience that knows you well and trusts you a lot, you can skip this step.
3. The better way to do it (your detailed process)
It’s now time to introduce your proprietary solution. Following up on the example above, if I were to write a blog post about my agency’s services, I would go on to say:
In my agency, we only use AI for the ideation process, never to generate content. Yes, it’s more time-consuming this way but it’s also much better. Here’s why:
- Unique perspectives instead of canned content
- No risk of being penalized by search engines
- We work extra hard to emulate our clients’ tone of voice and infuse personality into the content we create for them
- We create content that converts, not just ranks
4. Offer proof
This is different from credentialing yourself — even world-class experts can get things wrong. So use social proof, case studies, or screenshots of metrics to prove your approach works.
My approach is to link to our case studies. This way, our readers can see that the content we create (with minimal AI involvement) ranks AND converts.
Optional (use if you charge above-average fees)
Now that you’ve taken your readers through your approach, it’s the perfect time to discuss your above-average pricing. Since you do things better than your competitors and your clients have better results, they expect you to charge more for your work.
My agency can charge more than content mills because we write the content manually AND because we hire costly specialists like marketers and engineers. I found a great way to mention this in a guest post for SiteProNews:
While this guest article doesn’t follow the full formula, it uses a lot of its elements. See the use of “lucky” above? It tells you that my agency is unique — you won’t find this skill set anywhere else, so you should expect to pay above-average fees.
Why it works
My Accelerated Funnel formula checks four important boxes in persuasive writing and marketing:
- It starts with a contrarian take to pique readers’ curiosity: whether they believe in the mainstream approach or not, they’ll be curious to see a novel take.
- It combines “how to” and “how I” content, which means it’s broad enough to appeal to more people but also focused on your successful approach.
- Alternating between “how to” and “how I” gives you the perfect opportunity to add elements that you usually find on sales pages: social proof and pricing.
- The leads you get through it are very easy to convert AND a pleasure to work with. Since they already trust you (you’ve established your expertise), you don’t need to keep proving your worth.
Where to use this formula
I’ve built my agency on this formula and its variations. Our clients have generated thousands of leads with it. We use it every chance we get. It works, provided you have the expertise and background to back up your claims.
By far, the best use case for it is guest posting, the tactic that brought us most of our clients. Guest posting gives you a great opportunity to tap into new audiences and to use every bit of this formula, from credentialing yourself to social proof and pricing.
Before you use it in a guest article, make sure to read the editorial guidelines: not all media outlets will allow you to link to your website more than once or to mention your pricing. You can still hint at it, though.
Other great uses for the Accelerated Funnel content formula:
- Blog posts (send them to leads or in cold emails)
- Social media posts
- Emails
- Podcasts and videos
Template and examples
I call this a template for lack of a better word but it’s more of a starting point. You don’t need to use the entire formula every time, just take what fits the context.
For instance, when you give advice you can almost always use your own background and past success stories as an example — and this is a great way to establish your authority without sacrificing the breadth of the piece.
You can download the template here. Don’t forget to make a copy so you can edit it yourself.
Lastly, a few examples of the Accelerated Funnel formula in action:
- A piece on usage-based pricing in SaaS for a client of my agency’s. The entire piece revolves around showing usage-based pricing is scummy and that the industry can do better. Can you guess who does pricing better? Yep, it’s our client!
- This guest post of mine about writing on complex topics. It got us seven leads and three clients within the first after it was published.
You’ll see that neither of these pieces follows the formula to a T. But they use elements from it and the core tactic: educate and sell at the same time.
You don’t have to choose between “how to” and “how I”. You can use them both in the same piece with much better results than either of them can get on their own.
By the way, did you notice that this entire email doubles up as a sales page for my agency? I’ve just figured it out myself! I used this formula so much that it’s ingrained by now.
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Adriana’s Picks
- AI is coming to LinkedIn InMail. Prepare for AI-powered unsolicited DMs.
- Facebook launched a tool that uses AI to generate music for you. It’s not bad at all. If you ever dreamed to be a composer, you can try it here.
- In protest of Reddit’s new API pricing increase, over 7,000 subreddits went private or read-only yesterday. Reddit is currently eyeing an IPO, so it’s very interesting to see how this will unfold: should community-powered platforms stay free or turn a profit?
That’s it from me today!
See you next week in your inbox!
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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