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Content brainstorming can feel like a never-ending cycle of frustration, where ideas seem stale, and engagement dwindles. You’re not alone in this struggle. Many marketers find their brainstorming sessions stuck, leading to a lack of fresh, compelling content. This isn’t just your problem; it’s a widespread challenge in content marketing. I’ve been there, and I understand how disheartening it can be.
With over 250 articles under my belt in just the last two years alone, I’ve had to constantly have article ideas to keep up with the demand for new content.
I’ve found ways to have a constant stream of article ideas so that I never run out.
If you’ve struggled with content brainstorming, then this article will help you solve that problem once and for all. You’ll learn practical solutions to revitalise your brainstorming sessions, ensuring they produce actionable and effective content ideas aligned with your sales efforts.
Why Content Brainstorming Often Fails
Alright, let’s get real for a moment.
You’ve got your team together, the whiteboard ready, and you’re aiming to churn out some killer content ideas.
But then, reality hits – the session is a dud.
The ideas are weak, the energy is low, and you’re left wondering what went wrong.
Here are the main reasons why your content brainstorming might be failing:
- Lack of Clear Objectives: If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up nowhere. Imagine trying to brainstorm a blog series without a clear target audience. Your ideas will be all over the place and won’t connect with your readers
- Poor Team Alignment: When marketing and sales aren’t on the same page, your content suffers. The marketing team comes up with blog topics but doesn’t talk to the sales team about what customers are asking. You miss out on valuable insights
- Recycled Ideas: Repeating the same old content bores your audience. Your blog keeps publishing basic tips that everyone’s already seen. Readers will tune out if they don’t find anything new or useful, and you’re probably struggling to come up with new ideas because you’re so focused on recycling older ideas
- Insufficient Preparation: Going into a brainstorming session without doing your homework limits creativity. Starting a session without reviewing your latest analytics means you’re guessing what your audience wants, instead of knowing. Sometimes, analytics can help direct the brainstorming process
Understanding these issues is crucial. Once you do, you can start fixing your brainstorming sessions and produce content that truly resonates.
Solution #1: Leveraging Sales Discovery Calls
One of the best ways to generate fresh content ideas is by tapping into your sales discovery calls. These calls are a treasure trove of insights because prospects often reveal their deepest questions and concerns.
Here’s How to Extract Valuable Content Ideas from Sales Calls:
- Record and Review Calls: Make it a habit to record your sales discovery calls. Listen to them with your content team and identify recurring questions and pain points. For example, if multiple prospects ask about the same feature, that’s a signal to create content around it
- Identify Common Themes: Look for patterns in the questions and concerns raised by prospects. These themes can guide your content creation, ensuring it addresses real customer needs. For instance, if prospects are consistently concerned about pricing, create content that explains your pricing structure and value
- Collaborate with Sales Teams: Regularly meet with your sales team to discuss insights from discovery calls. This collaboration ensures that your content is aligned with what prospects are looking for. A monthly meeting where sales share their top five questions can spark countless content ideas
Read: How to Run An Effective Content Brainstorming Session
By leveraging the real-world questions and concerns from your prospects, you can create content that resonates deeply with your audience and drives engagement.
Solution #2: Analysing Lost Sales
Let’s get into the goldmine of lost sales. When you lose a sale, it’s not just a loss—it’s a learning opportunity.
Dive deep with a post-mortem analysis. Don’t stop at “we lost because of pricing.”
Dig deeper.
Maybe prospects didn’t see the full value of your product. Talk to your sales reps. They’re on the front lines and know exactly why deals fall through. Perhaps competitors offer features you don’t highlight enough.
As you dig deeper, your goal should be to develop a list of reasons or objections that contributed to losing the sale.
Then, all of you must do is take each reason and re-word it as a solution, and this becomes your blog idea.
Here’s some examples:
- Reason for Lost Sale: Prospects don’t understand the value of your product
- Blog Idea: “Understanding the True Value of [Your Product/Service]: A Comprehensive Guide”
- Reason for Lost Sale: Competitors offer a feature that you don’t highlight enough
- Blog Idea: “How [Your Product/Service] Stacks Up Against Competitors”
- Reason for Lost Sale: Prospects don’t see the ROI
- Blog Idea: “How to Get ROI When Using [Your Product/Service]”
- Reason for Lost Sale: Concerns about pricing
- Blog Idea: “Is [Your Product/Service] Worth the Investment? Full Breakdown of the Costs and Benefits”
- Reason for Lost Sale: Lack of trust or testimonials
- Blog Idea: “5 Success Stories with [Your Product/Service]”
When you look at sales that fell through the cracks, you’ll find there’s a treasure trove of content waiting to be written.
Solution #3: Use AI
The easiest way to generate content is to use AI to help you. If you have the premium subscription to ChatGPT, you can access my ‘10x Brainstorm’ Custom ChatGPT Bot here.
Once you access the bot, you simply need to use this prompt:
“Generate 145 blog ideas for my business around these products/services: [enter your product/service list]”
And then, my bot will generate you article ideas using a proven to work framework we call The Big 5.
If you don’t have ChatGPT, you’ll need to build a custom bot yourself, which can be a little tricky. If this is something you’re interested in mastering, get in touch with us here and we’ll point you in the right direction.
Solution #4: How to Run an Effective Content Brainstorming Session
For a full guide on how to run an effective content brainstorming session, check this out.
Here’s some guidelines to make sure your session is successful:
- Ensure that you have at least one sales rep and subject matter expert present in the meeting
- In your session, you’ll want to make sure you ask your sales rep/s the following questions:
- What questions do you get asked that immediately indicate the buyer is not close to ready to make a decision?
- What are the common queries you receive that hint at an unqualified buyer?
- What do your clients and buyers push back on the most?
- What are your buyer’s biggest doubts or worries (with respect to the product, the process, the company)?
- What do your buyers have to convince the key decision-makers of?
- In your session, you’ll want to make sure you ask your subject matter experts these questions:
- What information from customers helps you create the best solution for their problem?
- What do you wish the salespeople asked the customer?
- What is the question you get asked the most?
- What is a challenge that takes too much of your time?
- If you’re really struggling with content ideas, then for every answer that someone gives you, ask one or more of these follow up questions:
- Is this a real question being asked? This sounds like a silly question, but you’ll find that your sales team will, more often than not, give you questions that they say their prospects are asking, but in reality, it’s just questions that they wished their prospects were asking.
- Is this the EXACT question being asked, in the words of the prospect? Or have you reworded it in any way, based on what you know the actual problem is? NOTE it should always be in the words of your prospect, and paraphrasing SHOULD NOT occur.
- Why are they asking this question? Did they ask this proactively? Or is it in response to something we told them, asked them to do, or something else? Is it a question in response to us saying no to something?
- When are they asking this question in the sales process? Is it always at a particular stage of the sales process? Is there no specific time, just a general question that comes up randomly?
By following these steps, you can transform your brainstorming sessions into dynamic, productive meetings that generate impactful content ideas.
Solution #5: Use SEMRush
If you’re really stuck with creative ideas, lean towards data. It might sound counterintuitive, but sometimes the path through the creative process requires some logic and numbers.
So… how exactly can you do that?
The answer is to use SEMRush’s Magic Keyword Tool.
Here’s a short video on exactly how you can do that:
Solution #6: Use Your Competitors
If you’re still struggling, the easiest thing you can do is to use your competitor’s ideas. Look at their blog.
What are they publishing now? What did they publish in the past? Can you recycle any of their ideas and put your own spin on it?
Most of the time, you’ll be able to do this.
However, make sure to avoid copying them completely. Remember, their blog may be a great starting point to generate some ideas, but it shouldn’t be the end all and be all.
At the end of the day, you still need to provide unique value to your audience. So, use their ideas as a launchpad for your own ideas, and don’t copy.
So, what’s next?
Alright, here’s the bottom line. Content brainstorming doesn’t have to be a frustrating, aimless exercise.
By leveraging insights from sales discovery calls and analysing lost sales, you’re tapping into a goldmine of content ideas. And if you’re really struggling there’s always AI, SEMRush, and your competitors.
The key is to not get stuck in the brainstorming stage.
Just start.
Brainstorm, collect ideas, organise those ideas, and start writing. As you do, you’ll naturally develop more ideas, and you’ll end up with a never-ending stream of content ideation.
You’ll probably want to learn how to organise your content ideas once you’ve got them. To do that, you’ll want to learn about the 5 Stage Buyer Model:
Read: The Five Stages of Customer Awareness
