Do you believe in destiny? Fate? The stars aligning?

As a life-long ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ person, I may rely on cynicism a little too much. Until I saw destiny gift wrapped and delivered to me, yesterday.

Alex Lieberman of The Morning Brew posted this on the 30th of October:

Why am I so excited about this? And why is it perfect?

A little context first

Last night

Hunched over my keyboard with the glow of laptop on my face, I pondered how to create killer content for my Ideal Client Profiles. Things had been going well.

But I needed to evolve my distribution.

Up until a few weeks ago, I’d been focusing on only Twitter. It made sense, as that’s where I started my business in Jan, and it’s been a steady stream of clients for my services.

But If I’m to achieve my financial and lifestyle goals, I need a different way to tell stories that peak curiosity, create lightbulb moments, and enable me to partner with my ICPs.

My backstory

I’m 30 years old, from the UK. I like dogs (and now cats, after meeting the friendliest cat of all time Carlos - who resides at my girlfriend’s place).

I mean, come on.

I’ve been in the corporate ladder game all my working life. But I lost sight of myself. Of my purpose.

After becoming fatigued working for large enterprise for 13 years, I took the plunge in July to finally go all in on my consulting business.

This business:

• Takes the ingredients of my career in Financial Services, preps them, and..

• Cooks it nicely into an offer to help business owners sell to banks (and other FS).

I actually started this in Jan. But, I could only do one time payment projects due to the demands of juggling a 9 to 5 and a side business. It was too much context switching.

Imagine trying to cook a roast dinner and paint a sunset at the same time. Yep.

Then, a HUGE blessing in disguise occurred on a sunny Thursday July afternoon this year..

Losing my job. Redundancy. Trashed. Canned.

It was glorious.

I doubled down on my business, spent more time with my clients, acquired new ones, and really focused on what I love - writing.

I’ve also been able to gym 4 times a week, and start learning tennis with my gf.

Previous Jordan - 0

New Jordan - 15 LOVE!

Why is writing so critical for my business?

• It’s how I’ve gotten >90% of my clients.

• I’m good at it.

• It leverages my strengths (writing, expertise, network) and mitigates my gaps (solo, high volume cold emails).

• It helps me form real relationships with peers and prospects alike.

• I love it. I cannot spend my days doing something I do not love.

So, what changed from July?

I’ve been thinking. A lot.

What is the best way to package my strength and experience of Financial Services, vendor relationships and storytelling? I listed my ICPs, my areas of expertise, my advantages, my successful marketing / sales levers...

The recipe was almost there.

But it was missing one final step. The last hurdle. An unknown answer to an unknown question.

The framework. How do I deliver the right mix of content, to the right people, in the right way? How can I best serve the roast dinner I just spent 3 hours on?

The universe is billions of years old, surely someone, somewhere has done this already? Preferably every morning? Over a nice hot brew?

And that’s when I saw Alex’s post. Quite literally the plate, cutlery and Michelin star service I needed.

Fate? Luck? Randomness? Probably the latter. But I don’t care - this framework is exactly what I needed to evolve my B2B content to the next level. Dinner is ready to be served (over 6 to 8 weeks - make room).

So here’s my B2B Content Marketing Strategy (thanks Alex, hope you don’t mind).

Lift off!

Step 1: Who is my Market of 1?

• Co-Founder (+ Investor as bonus) at a growth stage Staffing / BPO Outsourcing Business (>$10m rev).

• Their talent sourcing has a USP: high quality talent or BPO services from a specific region / country. (Bonus points for the talent acquisition to be in Asia, given growth in financial service activity like digitising payment trends).

• Their business wants to double down on Financial Services and/or wants to enter the market in the region they specialise in. Example: Banks or Investment Service Providers that are prioritising Asia (e.g HSBC).

Step 2: What are the specific goals of my content strategy?

• Add ridiculous value and aha moments: Readers become avid followers, and are able to apply the practical advice to a need within 1 hour. They want to shout to the heavens about it.

  • KPI: 10 ICP decision maker followers / subscribers across target channels.

• Build trust and inbound interest: Increase inbound requests for discovery calls per quarter from decision makers.

  • KPI: 5 ICP decision makers reach out to me to ask for help, general curiosity; or I’m able to build genuine relationships via content to a point where I can outreach with a highly tailored, value packed insight

• Drive qualified pipeline: Increase pricing and offer requests per quarter.

  • KPI: 2 to 3 converted to highly engaged partners that last minimum 3 months, and we solve a real critical challenge or goal to an excellent standard.

Step 3: What channels am I focusing on?

1. Rented: Long-form timeline posts + LinkedIn articles + Quote ‘roasts / level ups’ on ICP posts

2. Owned: Weekly series themed email newsletter (this one!)

Step 4: What are my content pillars?

• Content Marketing:

  • Thought leadership focused a hybrid mix of The Beacon, The Connector, and The Challenger.

• Demand Gen:

  • Insights on Financial Service high potential ICPs and engagement strategies.

• B2B:

  • Financial Services and Outsourcing enterprise market factors and changes.

Step 5: What does my content strategy look like in practice?

1) Case Studies about successful financial service and outsourcing relationships

Series name: The Partner

Description: Deeply researched, detailed breakdown of significant failed and successful Financial Services and Outsourcing partnerships. Will break down;

• The what, why, how, when, where, and who of the partnership

• Reasons for failure / success

• Success metrics

• Team/s involved then / now

• Outcomes to date

• Opportunities to apply this for an outsourcing business.

Additional: Repurposed across all target platforms and formats.

2) Weekly/bi-weekly newsletter

Newsletter name: The Source

Description:

1. Thought leadership: Sharing opinions, ideas and frameworks on how sourcing companies can become kingmakers. Based on financial service market trends and my experience.

2. Connecting People & Resources: A long-form case study on a recent corporate event within financial services. This can be a merger, acquisition, expansion, product release, or re org. Any event that presents an opportunity for Outsourcing firms to provide value.

Immense value.

Actionable within 1 hour.

Readers should be able to do 1 of the following immediately:

• Learn something new

• Apply an insight

• Solve part of a problem

• Reach out to a prospect with an edge

3) Exec social from…  

@me.

Persona: The Vendor Enterprise Connector Guy

1-liner: Career stories, new frameworks, a sprinkle of personal stuff, what the next wave of vendors will be like, and how financial service will change with GenAI.

Additional Stuff:

1. The 90:10 ratio of value add / value extract is applied to EVERYTHING.

2. Everything will be repurposed.

3. DMs will take place with ICP people I’ve engaged with, no cold stuff.

4. Engaged = connected on LI, quote tweeted their stuff, or had a conversation. I don’t wanna add to the 100s of useless cold messages we all get.

5. I’ll be trial and erroring, fast.

6. I’ll try things I don’t normally do - videos, maybe even YouTube.

So, what’s next?

Writing. Lots of it.

Plus talking the talk:

• If you’re in outsourcing, I’d love to chat and learn about you / the business. Just reply or book a call.

and walking the walk.

The 1st releases of The Source and The Partner are live and direct. Get into it:

• The Source 

• The Partner 

Yours in all excitement,

Jordan