Archives for April 2014

Need a reason to embrace content marketing?

People tend to fear what they do not understand.

Therefore, they are unlikely to work with your business if they do not understand your process for helping them.

Your current customers are your customers because you have earned they trust. They know, like, and understand you and your business.

The others are simply not ready to step forward because they have doubts that are holding them back. Your content marketing can remove those obstacles.

You understand your current customers well, so naturally your business seeks to attract more folks just like them. They are out there in the communities your business serves, but there are challenges that may include the following.

• They don’t recognize they need help
• They are not quite ready to change
• They are unwilling to do the work
• Use your content marketing and social media to remove these three obstacles, and more.

#1 – Help Buyers Understand How You Can Help Them

In the film A River Runs Through It, Jesse asks Norman: “Why is it the people that need the most help won’t take it?”

There are plenty of buyers out there that your business can help, but for whatever reason they are not ready. Use your content marketing to help them recognize they have a problem.

If you bend to accommodate them you will then compromise your ability to help others. This often comes in the form of cutting prices, which we all know doesn’t work. So, don’t do it.

Instead, refine and share your success stories to clarify what your business does well and why it is unique. These stories create memorable and shareable content that prepares prospective buyers to be your next customers.

#2 – Increase The Pain that Your Solution Eliminates

This is probably the most important time to be committed to your process for helping your customers.

When you seek to put a “Band-Aid solution” on a big problem your value plummets. If a Band-Aid will do, then how necessary is your premium solution?

Without sensationalizing, take bold moves to help your buyer feel the pain.

Buyers are people, so they will differently respond to different stimuli. Some will have to see how your solutions work, some feel it, and others hear it.

Therefore, use the available multi-media formats to create content that reaches all types of buyers. Here’s a tip:

Help your buyer feel good about their pain; it means they care about something. Tweet this

#3 – Remove Obstacles to Adopting Your Solutions

When you build trust with buyers they will share the truth with you.

We learned early on at the landscape business I founded that many buyers wanted to upgrade their landscape, but only if they could be assured it would be properly maintained.

We quickly realized we had to launch a maintenance division to remove this obstacle. We also had to create tutorials for those that preferred to do the work themselves.

I’m sure you will not be surprised that to learn that many that initially did the work themselves later called us in to do the heavy lifting, such as the spring cleanup, tree trimming, and mulching. Why? Because our content marketing helped them understand there are no shortcuts to doing things right. (#1 above).

How about your business?

Helping is the New Selling

Your content marketing will sell more business if you design it to be helpful. Every single piece of educational content you create (such as a blog post) is either a stand-alone tutorial, or a portion of something more comprehensive (such as an eBook or printed reference guide).

Helping people understand how you can help them goes beyond answering questions. Facts and figures are useful, but they are impersonal and easily forgotten. Stories are relatable, and therefore memorable.

Your stories should help buyers understand how you can help them, why you want to help them, and why they will enjoy working with you.

When you do that you will make emotional connections that will move buyers to sign on the line which is dotted.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business – (Wiley)  

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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