Choosing topics that attract the right clients
Good topics come from three places: your sales calls, what buyers search for, and questions only you can answer. Bad topics come from guessing.
Start with the questions buyers already ask
The most productive content topics are already in your inbox and your call notes. Every prospect asks a version of the same questions before they buy. Answering those questions publicly is content that converts, because the audience arrives with the exact question you're answering.
Sources of ready-made topics
- Sales calls. Keep a running doc of every objection and question.
- Customer support. Recurring tickets are recurring content topics.
- Onboarding. Anything you have to explain twice is worth writing once.
- "Can I pick your brain?" emails. Reply — then turn the reply into a post.
The money-question test
For every topic, ask: would a buyer with money in hand type this into Google? If yes, it's a money question. If no, it might still be worth writing — but don't confuse "interesting to me" with "valuable to a buyer."
Money questions look like:
- Comparisons: "in-house vs. agency SEO"
- Cost: "how much does commercial HVAC maintenance cost"
- How-to at their level: "how to structure a Series B pricing page"
- Vendor selection: "what to ask a fractional CFO"
Three buckets of topics
Bucket 1 — Demand capture
Topics people search for. Slower to plan, but they compound. See lesson 6 on SEO and distribution for how to prioritize these.
Bucket 2 — Demand education
Topics that reframe a problem or teach a concept the buyer doesn't yet know they need. These are hard to find via search but great for email and video.
Bucket 3 — Trust and proof
Case studies, teardowns, behind-the-scenes explanations. These rarely rank but they close deals. Send them to warm prospects.
A simple prioritization matrix
Score each candidate topic 1–3 on:
- Buyer relevance — is this the exact question our buyer asks?
- Effort — can we write this well without weeks of research?
- Distribution fit — do we have a channel where this will land?
Work in descending order of total score. Ignore the rest.
What to avoid
- Industry news commentary. Expires quickly, rarely converts.
- "Ultimate guide to X" when you have nothing new to add.
- Topics your buyer never searches for. Fascinating internal debates are not marketing.
What's next
Once you have a working list of topics, you need something to give away in exchange for an email address. Lesson 3 covers lead magnets that work for service businesses.