>> Let me give you two businesses. Business number one gets a million views this month and generates zero customers. Business two gets 500 views and generates 10 leads, three of them sign 250 grand. That's what it's worth.

Which company has the better content strategy? Obviously, number two. So, here's my question. Why are businesses still obsessed with measuring number one?

Views matter. Watch times matter. Followers matter. Engagement is another signal and it matters. But, they're signals. They're not the final business outcome.

The question I want you asking is, did the content move the right person closer to buying? And here's where businesses screw this up in the opposite direction. They hear that and say, "Great. Then every video needs to sell." No, that's not what I'm saying.

That's how you turn a content strategy into an infomercial. The job of content isn't to constantly convince people to buy. It's to systematically remove the reasons they wouldn't.

They don't know you. Fix that. They don't trust you. Fix that. They don't understand the problem. For the love of God, fix that. They don't believe your solution.

Show proof. They aren't ready to talk. Give them another step. I'm going to give you a framework you can use to diagnose exactly where your content is losing potential customers and what type of content will fix at each stage. Because there's a huge

difference between creating content and creating demand. Welcome to the Content Machine. I'm Christian Lee. This is a podcast, the Follow What Media podcast. Content Machine is our series that we have right now.

We are a full-service creative-led agency and studio infrastructure company. So, we have four studios in and around Atlanta. Please look us up at followwhatmedia.com.

Check us out if you need to have studio space and we're coming in record content. But, you don't have to live in Atlanta. You can be anywhere in the world. You can be anywhere in the United States and we can facilitate solutions and help you create a system for not only managing your content,

creating content, and distribution. That is the key. Distribution is one of the most important things because you can create content all day long. If nobody is seeing it, well, it's not going to move the needle.

You're just going through the motions. So, reach out to us with comments, concerns. You can leave um anything you want in our episode description. Um comment there. Reach out to us via the website. However, you'd like to get in touch. So, we talked about all the knowledge already sitting inside your

company. Your sales calls, your customer questions, processes, mistakes, wins, years of experience. And we talked about how much of that expertise you should actually give away. And that led into positioning.

How you become known for something. Then we moved into proof. Because you can call yourself an expert all day long, but eventually, you've got to show the receipts. Everybody wants a receipts.

Now, we arrive at the question every business eventually asks. How does any of this actually make money? Where is my ROI? When is my ROI? When am I going to see it? Because here's the thing, I'm not interested in building content factories for you or even myself. I'm interested in building demand engines.

And that's the most important thing because that's going to get you a return on this investment. An investment in time, and an investment in people, and an investment with sheer dollars. If you're only measuring the people who fill out a form, you're probably missing most of what your content is actually

doing. And I run into this all the time. Because I'm going to show you where the safe really starts, why your CRM usually can't see it, and how somebody can be buying from you for 6 months before your salesperson even knows their name.

Think about the last expensive thing you bought for your business. When did you actually start buying it? Was it when you filled out the contact form? Probably not. Maybe somebody mentioned the company 6 months earlier.

You didn't need them yet, but you remembered the name. Then you saw a video. A month later, you saw another one. Then something happened inside your company that made the problem more relevant. You visited the website. You watched another video. Then you forgot

about them again. 3 months later, the problem appeared again and it was worse. So you went you watched another video. This time, you watch a case study. And then you read some reviews. Maybe listen to a podcast episode. Now you finally fill out the form. The salesperson opens the CRM and sees new lead. No.

That's not a new lead. That's a 6-month-old relationship the salesperson just met. And that's the part of content attribution businesses struggle to understand. Because most measurement systems are really good at seeing the end of the journey. Form submitted, call booked, proposal requested, purchase

made. But they are much worse at showing everything that happened before it. And that's where content often lives. Okay, we'll use one of our favorite examples. Let's take a financial advisor. A business owner watches five mistakes business owners make before selling their company. They're not selling

today, no lead. Six months later they see how do you replace your salary after selling your business? Now we're getting closer. Then, why selling a business for 5 million doesn't necessarily mean you have 5 million to retire on.

Now the problem feels personal. A year later, they receive an offer for the company. Who do you think they're thinking about? The advisor who's been teaching them for 12 months?

The sale didn't start when the customer booked the meeting. The meeting was simply when the invisible sales process became visible. That is called demand creation.

And this changes how you evaluate content. Because instead of asking, "Did this video create a lead today?" you start asking, "What job did this video perform in the buying journey?" Maybe it created awareness, maybe it built trust, maybe it helped the customer understand the problem. Maybe it demonstrated

expertise, answered an objection, created preference. Also, different content can create different movement. And when all those pieces work together, the customer eventually raises their hand.

I got my hand. And then I hear the objection. But Christian, how do I know whether content actually influenced the sale? You may never have perfect attribution.

That's okay. Ask prospects, "What did you watch? How did you hear about us? What made you reach out? What have you seen before the call?" Sales should be capturing those answers because attribution isn't only a software problem. Sometimes it's a conversation.

And I know for some people conversations are hard. Salespeople often get credit for a decision that content spent the last 6 months creating. But once businesses understand that content can influence the sale, they often fall into another trap. They try to make every single piece of content sell. And that

can actually make the content worse. Stop asking every piece of content to sell. If you're putting book a call at the end of every video, you may actually be hurting the conversion.

I'm going to show you the six different jobs your content should be doing. And how to decide which job a piece of content has before you ever hit record. Businesses here, content should generate revenue. And suddenly, every piece of content becomes, "Here's some information. Here's another little

piece of information. And by the way, book your free consultation today." Why? Imagine meeting someone at a networking event. They introduce themselves. You talk for 2 minutes. And then you say, "So, would you like me to send you a contract?" Well, that's a little weird.

The relationship hasn't earned the that ask yet. Okay? Save your asks. Content works the same way. Different pieces of content should perform different jobs. Some content gets attention. Other creates relevance, educates, creates trust, proof, and also answers objections. And yes, some will

convert. But if you ask every piece to do everything, you usually make every piece weaker. You don't want to do that. We're going to use just one example, an IT company.

Piece number one, the email that fools even smart employees. That's attention. I'm not trying to sell cybersecurity yet. I'm trying to stop the right person.

Next, three signs your Microsoft 365 environment may be exposed. Now we're creating relevance. The business owner thinks, wait, we use 365.

Next, they watch, here's what we actually look for during a security assessment. Now we're starting to demonstrate expertise. And this is how it applies to the next video, how one company discovered its backups were useless before a ransomware attack.

Proof. And then we'll round it off with five questions you should ask your IT company about ransomware recovery. Now we're helping the buyer evaluate the category. And eventually, if you're unsure whether these protections exist in your environment, we'll run the

assessment. Now the CTA is going to make more sense. We earned the ask. And notice something, those pieces work together. The first piece didn't fail because it didn't create a consultation.

It did its damn job. That's the mindset shift. I'll give you one more example because I feel the need to break it down. And apply this to whatever industry you're in, okay?

Real estate, the Atlanta neighborhood where buyers are suddenly getting negotiating leverage. That's sheer education right there. What seller concessions actually mean.

Now you're starting to build trust. Here's how I evaluate whether a price reduction is actually a deal. Proof, a client story. Objection, should I wait for interest rates to fall?

And here's conversion. If you're relocating to North Atlanta, here's how we help you evaluate the market before you ever get on a plane. Different jobs, one system, okay? One system. Not every piece of content needs to close the customer. It just needs to move the customer.

So, if the objective is movement, we need to know exactly what we're moving people through. And here's where the most important framework in this episode comes from. If people are watching your content, but they're not becoming customers, I'm going to show you exactly how to

diagnose where you're losing them. There are several steps between getting someone's attention and getting their business. And if even one of those steps is broken, you can get views all day long and generate nothing.

Most people do. Let's walk through it. Rung one, attention. I have to stop. That's it. I don't have to trust you. I don't have to like you. I definitely don't have to hire you. I just have to stop scrolling.

That's why the hook matters so much. If nobody stops, nothing underneath it matters. You could have the greatest lesson ever recorded, but nobody hears it. That's an attention problem.

Rung two, relevance. Now I have to think, this is for me. That's different from attention. A celebrity falling off stage might get my attention. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether I need a commercial real estate broker.

Businesses confuse those constantly. Attention without relevance can create enormous reach and almost no economic value.

Don't draw your Don't draw a massive amount of eyes and under deliver. And here's rung three, trust. Now I'm asking, does this person actually know what they're talking about?

Do they? This is where depth matters. Experience, nuance, stories, frameworks, examples. Not just surface level information I could get from reading an AI summary.

Trust grows when I hear you think. And rung four, problem awareness. This is one of the most overlooked steps. The customer may know something feels wrong, but not understand the actual problem.

They think, "We need more social media." Maybe the real problem is that they don't have enough long-form expertise to feed social media. They think, "We need a new website." Maybe the website isn't the core issue.

Maybe nobody trusts the company enough to convert. And great content gives the problem language. Rung five, preference. Now I understand the problem. I believe people like you can solve it.

But why you? That's positioning. Proof, point of view, personality, methodology, experience. This is where someone starts thinking, "I like how these people think." Rung six, intent.

Now something changes. I'm not merely interested anymore. I'm considering taking action, okay? Right? Maybe the problem became urgent. Maybe budget became available. Maybe something changed inside the company.

Maybe I finally got sick of the problem and now I have the intent to solve it. And here's rung seven. The action. Call, book, subscribe, request, visit, buy.

Whatever action matters to your business. And here's why I want you to use this framework. When content isn't working, find the broken rung. Attention problem.

They stop but don't care. Relevance problem. They care but they don't believe you. Trust problem. They trust you but don't understand why they need your service.

Problem awareness problem. They understand the problem but don't really prefer you. Positioning or proof problem. They prefer you but aren't acting. Now we may have intent, offer, friction, or CTA problem. That's a diagnosis and diagnosis is a hell of a lot better than

maybe we need to post more. When content doesn't convert, don't immediately blame the CTA. Find the broken rung. And there's one rung in that ladder that deserves much more attention. Problem awareness.

Because sometimes the most valuable content you can make doesn't answer the customer's question. It changes the question entirely. Some of your most powerful content shouldn't solve the customer's problem. It should make them realize they've been solving the wrong problem in the first place. I'm going to

show you how to do that without fear-mongering and why changing the customer's understanding of the problem sometimes can completely change who they trust to solve it.

Let's make something clear. I'm not talking about manufacturing problems. I'm not talking about scaring people. I'm not being negative. I'm talking about revealing complexity the customer hasn't even considered.

Think about a commercial property owner. They say, "My building is leased. Everything's fine." Maybe. But then somebody asks, "How much of your rent roll is concentrated in your three largest tenants?" 70%?

When do those leases expire? Within 18 months? Now the problem looks different. Nothing changed about the building. The owner's understanding changed. If you're a financial advisor and the client says, "I've got 4 million.

I'm good for retirement." Maybe you are. How much is liquid? How much is tied up in the business? What happens when the business stops producing income?

What is the tax exposure? What does the lifestyle actually cost? What happens if the market drops 25% 2 years into retirement? We didn't invent a problem. We revealed the real question.

Now let's bring it into our world. A company says, "We already have a podcast." Great. Good for you. You're doing something most aren't. My question is, does anybody discover it?

Is it searchable? Is it on YouTube? Is YouTube optimized or is it just a portfolio that's housing your videos? Does each episode create short-form assets?

Does the website integrate the content? Does sales use the episodes? Does Google understand the topics you're authoritative about? And does AI have enough published information to understand what you know?

Now the question isn't, "Do we have a podcast?" The question becomes, "Do we have a content system?" That's a completely different buying conversation. And I'll be honest with you, most don't understand that.

They're like, we got a podcast. They made the time, the commitment to sit down, record it, like I'm doing right now. Does that mean anybody's going to watch it?

If it's not integrated correctly, they're not. If there's no thought behind the distribution engine, there's not. And here's why this creates demand. If the customer thinks the problem is we need 10 more reels, they're shopping for real production.

Commodity. If you help them understand the real issue is we don't have a system for capturing expertise, turning it into long-form authority, distributing it, proving what we know, and moving customers through a journey, they're shopping for something completely different. You change the criteria. And

when you change the criteria, you can also change the category you're competing in. The company that changes how the customer understands the problem often changes who the customer trusts to solve it. Because they're not looking through that lens, and they look at you, and

they go, I never looked at it that way. But it makes sense. Who's the authority now? But even after someone understands the problem, we can still lose them. And you know what? That's okay. Sometimes not because they aren't interested, because we're asking them to take a step

they're simply not ready to take. And sometimes it's about money. Sometimes they might be looking for the cheapest option. And unfortunately, those people exist.

And a lot of times as they'll see the cheaper option seldom was the best option. If people watch your content, but never take the next step. Your content may not be the problem. Your CTA may simply be asking for too much too soon.

I'm going to give you a three-level CTA system that matches the size of the ask to how ready the customer might be. Imagine somebody sees 160-second video from you and they think, "That was useful." They've known you for 60 seconds, and your response is, "Book a 40-minute

discovery call." It's a pretty big jump. It's like having one drink with somebody and asking them to move in or go home and do it. No, maybe you need another step in there. Calls to action should match intent.

Really, low-intent customers need low-friction actions. Watch this next. Here's the checklist. Subscribe. Read the case study. Those actions keep the relationship moving. If you want to look at medium intent, now maybe I can ask you to do something slightly more involved. Take an assessment. Use our

calculator. Watch a demonstration. Compare your opinions. High intent, book the call. Request the proposal. Schedule the demo. The CTA isn't supposed to drag somebody up the demand ladder because they're never going to turn out doing

what's best for them that way. It should help them take the next step to the next rung. Let's use a contractor. Three mistakes that make the kitchen remodels run over budget. At the end, book your $100,000 kitchen renovation today.

Maybe, we created a kitchen remodel planning checklist covering the questions you should answer before getting your first quote. It's below.

That's way easier and a much simpler next step. Now we have permission to continue the relationship, right? Baby steps. Five signs if you're a financial advisor, you may be financially ready to sell your business.

Instead of transfer your assets to us today, maybe you'd use take our business owner retirement ready assessment. Now the CTA matches that conversation. And here's an objection, but shouldn't we always make it easy to book?

Absolutely. I'm not saying don't have the option. I'm talking about the primary ask. The next step you emphasize should match the amount of trust you possibly have earned. A good CTA doesn't force the sale, it makes the next step an obvious choice.

And that brings us to a much bigger problem. I know I'm only talking about problems, because even if you do have great content and great CTAs, what happens when every piece of content is virtually a dead end? Don't call it a gift.

But I can usually tell in 30 seconds whether a company has a content system or just a pile of disconnected content or any content. And I'm going to give you the same test.

Pick any piece of your content your company has published last week and ask one question. Where is the customer supposed to go next?

If nobody knows, you've got a pile. This is incredibly common. YouTube over here, podcast over there, Instagram somewhere, blog sitting on the website, email doing its own thing, sales has a PDF nobody in marketing knows exists, and the website has case studies nobody links to.

You've got content, a lot of it, and you might not have any one of these things except a blog. But nothing talks to anything. That's a content pile.

A system has paths. A short creates curiosity. The short points toward the full episode. The episode deepens the idea. The description points toward a relevant source. The resource brings them into your ecosystem.

The website will show them proof. Email continues the education. Sales receives a more informed prospect. That is what we call a path. It's a road map. Essentially. And here's another important thing. Customers aren't going to consume your content in the order you published it. Episode 11 might be

somebody's first interaction with Follow Up Media. They don't care that there were 10 episodes before this. So, if somebody loves this episode, what should they watch next?

That's a strategic decision. Maybe they should watch Stop Hiding Your Expertise. Maybe claims don't build authority, proof does. Maybe there's a case study demonstrating a system. Maybe there's an article.

Maybe there's a service page. The point is, don't make them figure it out. Streaming platforms figured this out way long ago. Years ago. When one episode ends and another appears. When you finish a movie, you get a recommendation. The platform doesn't say, "Thanks for watching. Good luck.

Good night." No. Yet, that's exactly what most business content does. Video ends, relationships over. Content becomes a system when every asset knows what should happen next.

Now, if we're building paths and moving people through a journey, we also have to change how we measure success. Because this is where views can lie to you. I'm going to show you how a video with 500 views could be worth more to your business than one with 500,000.

And the two completely different scoreboards you need if you actually want to know which video won. Let's say Follow What Media makes two videos. Video A, the 10 craziest Super Bowl commercials ever, 500,000 views.

Awesome. Video B, how law firms can turn one attorney interview into 30 pieces of searchable content, 1,200 views. Which one is better?

You can't answer that until you know the objective. If we're selling advertising based on audience size, give me the 500,000. If I'm trying to build relationships with managing partners of law firms that may spend a hundred grand with us, that 1,200 person audience could be

dramatically more valuable. Because reach matters, but relevance determines economic value. This is why businesses get themselves into trouble chasing numbers without context. And I want to be very clear.

I'm not saying ignore platform analytics. Absolutely not. If nobody clicks, we have a packaging problem. If everybody leaves, we have a content problem. If nobody stops on the short, we have a hook problem.

Media performance matters, but it is only one scoreboard. The media scoreboard tells you, is the content working as media? The business scoreboard tells you, is the system working as marketing? You need both.

Because the opposite mistake is also dangerous. You can't say our videos only get 50 views, but they're the right 50 people. Maybe.

Or maybe your content just isn't very good. We still want reach. We still want retention. We still want people to click. We still want distribution.

But we want those things in service of reaching the right audience and creating the right movement. That's the distinction. Attention is the entry fee. You still have to earn it. But once you've earned it, we need to know whether that attention is doing anything economically useful. Views tell you

whether people watched, demand tells you whether it mattered. And that brings us to this final test. If your content machine is working, actually working, your sales team should feel it. They should be smiling.

Here's how you know whether your content machine is actually working. Your sales people should have less selling to do. I'm going to show you the difference between a cold prospect and a content educated prospect, because those are two completely different sales conversations.

Let's role play two calls. Prospect A. They come in cold. Who are you guys? Why are you different? Why does it cost so much? Do you have examples? Who have you worked with? How does this work? Why do I need this?

Sales spends the first 45 minutes establishing basic credibility. But prospect B, I've been watching the content machine. I saw the episode about the expertise vault.

That actually made me realize we're sitting on years of knowledge we've never documented. Then I watched the episode about proof. We definitely aren't capturing enough case studies. I've looked at the website.

I I get the system you're pitching. I think this is what we need. How would you build this for us? Same salesperson, it's the same company, completely different conversation.

Why? Because content did the early selling. It educated. It established vocabulary. It reframed the problem. It demonstrated expertise and it showed proof. It created preference. The salesperson didn't have to manufacture trust from zero. They inherited it.

That's the economic value of content. It can compress the sales cycle, pre-educate, pre-qualify, pre-handle objections, and pre-establish expertise, and create preference before the sales team even enters the room.

Bam! That's money in the bank. That's client onboarding. That's working while you sleep. That is the difference between content as media and content as infrastructure.

And now, I want to connect the entire season. Your company already has the expertise. We mine it. That's the expertise vault. We turn that vault into teaching.

Teaching will create trust. We organize those ideas around a point of view. Now we're positioning, and then we prove the claims. Case studies, results, demonstrations, client stories, testimonials.

That's the authority. And then we connect the content into paths. Those paths will move people through the demand ladder, and eventually, the right customer raises their hand.

And that's what we're building. Not a podcast, not a YouTube channel, not 30 reels a month, and not a content calendar. A system. A system that takes what your company knows, makes it visible, valuable, and trusted, and puts it in front of the people who eventually need

what you sell. Mic drop. It doesn't get simpler than that. And if you see this video and it doesn't make sense, I don't really know what to tell you.

It's logic. It's common sense. It's intention. That's the distinction I want you to remember. Content is not the objective, content is the mechanism. Demand is the business outcome, and the best content doesn't constantly beg somebody to buy. It does something much more powerful. It makes the customer

smarter, the problem clear, the expertise visible, reduces uncertainty, provides evidence, makes your company familiar, and it creates preference. And when the customer finally does need help, buying from you feels less like being sold and more like the logical next step. This is the Content Machine,

a Follow Up Media podcast. I am Christian Lee, and before your next marketing meeting, I want you to stop asking one question. What are we posting this week? Instead, ask where are we losing the customer? Do we have an attention problem? A relevance problem?

Trust problem? Proof problem? Is there a positioning problem? Where does the customer go next? And what piece of content would move them one rung further? Because when you start thinking that way, you stop producing random content. You start engineering customer movement. And when enough of

that movement compounds, you create demand. This is the Content Machine. Hit us up at followupmedia.com, subscribe, reach out to us with questions, concerns, if you just need advice.

You don't have to use us. Engage with us. We're happy to speak to you. And hopefully you get something from this content, because that's its only intention. To educate. And to help you move your digital presence

across the globe.