Major Tom’s Three Piece Meal About Content Marketing

Content marketing has become an essential part of any digital marketer’s toolbox. It is ubiquitous, a common component of online campaigns for everyone — from mom and pop stores to multinational conglomerates.

But while more content than ever before is currently being produced, most of us are still making a colossal mistake. We are investing more of our time, money, and resources into producing the content, than we are ensuring people actually get to experience it.

It’s the worst feeling in the world. You’ve spent ages producing a great blog post, video, or whitepaper; but when you check the analytics you realize no one is reading, watching, or engaging with it.

Sound familiar?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Companies around the globe are guilty of investing too much time and budget on the production of their content, and not enough on its amplification. Often they are producing infrequent piece-meal content on an ad hoc schedule.

So what’s the proposed solution?

Introducing: The Three Piece Meal

Recognizing that this is a common challenge for marketers, Major Tom developed the concept of the “Three Piece Meal” — a content marketing campaign neatly packaged into an easily digestible format with easy-to-understand pricing.

The inspiration actually originated from the fast food sector; where meal combos that package menu items together into a quick, easy, and affordable bundle are becoming increasingly popular.

So, the agency decided to take the same approach when it came to content — only instead of combining fries, chicken, and a drink into a single combo, they’ve packaged together the top performing elements of a successful marketing and distribution campaign.

To demonstrate the concept, they produced a short video at their office’s favorite fried chicken spot. If you’re the kind of person who prefers moving pictures to the written word, then now is the time to watch the below video. It’s a nice shortcut to help you learn how to effectively amplify your own content.

The Concept

The key idea behind the “Three Piece Meal” concept is to utilize three different pieces of content to navigate people through a story across various touch points.

Understanding that people have short attention spans, this campaign is designed to engage with them across multiple digital channels and bring them to a primary endpoint for conversion. We could call this a micro-funnel or mini-funnel, but the idea here is to provide value by being informative and having depth to your story.

The Content

In this example, the three pieces of content Major Tom is using are a video, a blog post, and a landing page. They want the reader to see the blog post, then watch a video, and then if they are interested, visit the landing page where there will be a call-to-action (CTA) to encourage them to take the next step.

This concept can work with any number of content pieces working together in a customer journey. Continuing with the fast food analogy, this means you could change your combo up and get coleslaw instead of french fries, a root beer instead of Pepsi, or a whole bucket of chicken instead of a cheeseburger.

Tactics and Channels

There are numerous channels available to promote your content. Determining which ones you choose will depend on your individual business and your target audience. The key is to ensure that they work together to deliver your end goal.

The chart above shows how these various channels can work in harmony. This is available to as an editable download here.