What Kinds of Results Can You Expect from a Cornerstone Content Package (And How Quickly Will You Start Seeing Them?)

I recently asked a few small business owners and service providers within my ideal audience demographic a question. 

“If you were considering investing in my cornerstone content package, what’s the one question you’d want the answer to before jumping in?”

As a quick reminder, a cornerstone content package gives you a set of high-quality and evergreen posts for your business blog, written to convert and make sales by addressing your ideal customers, answering their questions, and offering solutions to their problems. 

My bit of impromptu market research echoed my suspicion based on conversations with past clients and prospects. By far the most common question people want the answer to is this:

“What kind of results can I expect from this, and when will I start seeing them?”

If you’re reading this post, I assume you are wondering the same thing. 

And I totally get it! 

A cornerstone content package for your business is a significant investment. You want to be sure it’ll work for you and be worth the money. You’d also like some idea of when you can start expecting results.

Well, read on, because I am going to answer this question for you as comprehensively as I can. 

First, A Disclaimer

As you read, you may notice that I’ve deliberately tried to avoid concrete figures in this post. There are a couple of very good reasons for this. 

First, I do not believe in making false promises or giving you guarantees I cannot offer with a reasonable degree of certainty. Therefore, I am not going to promise you that you’ll sign five new clients within a month, make back your investment within 90 days, or be hitting 10k months before the end of the year. 

Anyone who makes you a promise like that is (at best) guessing and (at worst) lying to you. 

Second, the exact outcomes are different for every business, for all kinds of reasons. Your offer, your customers, your industry, buying cycles and behaviours, the age of your business, the size of your existing audience (if any), and even your personal business goals are all unique and all make a difference.  

What Kinds of Results Can You Expect from a Cornerstone Content Package? 

With all that said, let’s talk about some of the results you can expect from a cornerstone content package. 

Build Your Reputation and Showcase Expertise 

Cornerstone content, by definition, is longform and in-depth. When we work together, my goal is to build comprehensive resources around core topics that are highly relevant to your target audience. 

You’re an expert. I’ll create content that positions you as one. 

Cornerstone content gives you a place to really show how much you know, highlighting your experience and thought leadership. This builds trust with your audience, demonstrating that you’re the person who can help them.

Improve Your Search Performance 

I’ve written before about how my approach to cornerstone content is not, first and foremost, a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy. Instead of creating content for the search algorithm, it’s all about creating content that your ideal customer needs to read before they buy from you. 

This is because traffic, by itself, is a meaningless metric. 

However, that doesn’t mean cornerstone content has no SEO benefits. Quite the opposite! 

Though I write for humans, not search algorithms, keyword research still forms a part of my overall cornerstone content creation process. This, combined with my “deep understanding of search intent” (thank you, lovely past client), results in highly relevant content that matches the search intent of your ideal customer. 

This not only increases the chances that they’ll find you on their search engine of choice, but that they’ll stick around when they do. 

Other SEO benefits of cornerstone content may include: 

• Building strong and logical internal links between multiple pieces of authoritative content 
• Building backlinks naturally by making your content shareworthy 
• Demonstrating Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, the four pillars that make up Google’s E-E-A-T quality evaluation framework 

And, because evergreen blog posts are timeless assets, their search performance can compound and grow over time. 

Develop A Consistent and Compelling Brand Voice 

When entrepreneurs and business owners post content inconsistently or without strategy, their brand voice tends to be a little… all over the place.

This is completely understandable. You’re super busy and creating content just feels like one more thing to pull you away from your zone of genius. 

Because your cornerstone content is created as a cohesive package, we’ll build a consistent brand voice that is not only irresistible to your ideal buyers, but feels unmistakably YOU. 

Lay the Foundations of an Ongoing Content Marketing Strategy

I want you to get the best possible return on your content marketing investment. That’s why cornerstone content packages are evergreen and built for the long haul. 

My goal, when I create your posts, is that they’ll still be making you money five or even ten years from now.

With your cornerstone content, we’ll lay a strong foundation that all your future content marketing efforts can be built on. You’ll come back to them again and again in your email marketing, social media marketing, and any other channels you decide to use now or in the future (and trust me–this will save you so. much. time.) 

Reclaim Your Time from the Blogging and Social Media Hamster Wheels

Speaking of saving time, are you sick of how much of your week you’re sinking into writing blog posts that don’t convert or fighting the social media algorithm because someone told you “just be consistent and it’ll all pay off”? 

How would it feel to have all that time back? 

Because cornerstone content doesn’t go out of date, requires only a little maintenance, and virtually writes all your future content marketing messaging for you, you’ll gain hours of time back every month. 

Stop Guessing and Wasting Time on Content That Doesn’t Convert 

How many times have you hit “publish” on a blog post, marketing email, or piece of social media content that you felt lukewarm about, just because posting something felt better than posting nothing? 

Cornerstone content takes the guesswork out of content marketing. Instead, we’ll build your content based on data, research, and real audience intel so you can stop guessing and start selling. 

Make Sales, Get Clients, and Close Deals! 

Yes, cornerstone content can help you to sell your products or sign new clients for your services! It can achieve this in several ways: 

• Showing prospects that you’re a genuine, trustworthy expert 
• Building regard and goodwill (read: making people like you!) because you’re genuinely helping them 
• Presenting the solution to a specific problem right when high-intent buyers are searching for it 
• Shows buyers who are problem-aware but not yet solution-aware that you’re the ideal answer to their current challenge 
• Making you memorable, so that “not right now” prospects are more likely to remember you and return when they’re ready to buy 
• Giving you clear, consistent messaging which you can repeat again and again through your other marketing channels 
• Bringing people into your marketing ecosystem (for example, by getting them on your email list) so you can keep building a relationship and selling to them 

How Quickly Can You Expect to See Results from This Strategy?

The good news is that you’ll likely see at least some of the above results pretty quickly: cutting the time you’re spending on marketing, taking away the guesswork, building your brand voice, and laying the foundations of an ongoing content marketing strategy can all be achieved by the time your package of cornerstone content is written and published. 

The other areas–deepening and enhancing your reputation as an expert, growing your search performance, and actually making sales or getting clients–can take a little longer. 

The frustrating answer, but the most honest one, is always going to be “it depends.”

Again: any provider who guarantees you a certain number of sales or a specific revenue number within a set timeframe isn’t being honest with you.

Some of the factors influencing how long it can take to see significant returns include: 

• The age of your business and size of your current audience (a business with an established audience may see results quicker than one that is just starting out and building an audience from scratch)
• Typical audience behaviours and buying cycles, which can vary significantly from industry to industry 
• The platforms you use to distribute, promote, and repurpose your content 
• The level of competition in your niche and for your product or service 
• Your domain authority and SEO baseline (an established site with good existing backlinks will likely see results more quickly than a brand new site) 

Something I like to make clear to all my clients: Content marketing is a long game and it is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. 

The consistency and quality of your ongoing content marketing efforts once your cornerstone content is live will play a large role in determining how well this strategy works for you. (I can also handle all of this for you, with ongoing monthly retainers starting from just two hours.) 

On average, with high quality content and a consistent sharing and repurposing strategy across the relevant platforms, most businesses start to see good results from content marketing within six months and a significant return on their investment within a year. 

Ultimately, I can’t tell you when you will make your first sale as a direct or indirect result of your cornerstone content package. (Sorry! I really wish I could!) What I can tell you is that if your offer is strong, your content is high quality, and you share your messaging consistently with the right people, results will come. 

But first, you need to start.

Start Your Journey to the Results You Deserve 

Tired of guessing what might work? I know exactly how draining this is, and how much of your time and energy it’s likely taking away from what matters most to you.

If trying to DIY it isn’t working for you, or if you’re launching a new venture or offer and looking to start off on the right foot, now is the perfect time to invest in a cornerstone content package.

You’ll get: 

 ✔️ 10-20 (depending on the package you choose) pieces of longform, evergreen blog content designed to convert by addressing the real needs, questions, and objections of your ideal customers

✔️ 5 ideas per post (so 50-200 in total!) for ways to utilise your cornerstone content in your ongoing marketing by email, on social media, or through whatever other channels you use 

✔️ A deep, strategic approach rooted in experience, research, and audience insight 

 → Book a free discovery call to start hitting your goals.