Question: We have relationships with clients, but we need marketing to be in front of them now ”” they”™re not thinking about us. How do we stay on their minds for when it”™s time for them to buy?
Thoughts of the day: Know your audience. Be a leader and a follower. Use multiple approaches to distributing content. Keep your sales organization informed.
Who is your audience? What do they want to know about? How do they receive information? Even if you”™re doing business-to-business marketing, you”™re still reaching out to connect with people. Find out what they look at, where they go for information, who they find influential. The best marketing campaign has to be located where your audience will likely find it, filled with content your audience will pick up on.
Create content that positions your company as an expert. Provide your audience with new, useful, useable and even repackaged information. Make sure it”™s engaging, grammatically correct and understandable, at or below the technical level of your average reader. Present information accompanied by appealing visuals. Remember that a picture can speak a thousand words.
“Inform” is the key word. Find out what people in your target audience want to know more about, are confused about, are hoping to better understand, are already interested in and curious about. Don”™t assume that your audience comes equipped with a highly technical background. Provide content that people can quickly skim through and pause to read again if they”™re interested. Set hooks along the way to draw attention to key points that are likely reader hot buttons.
Avoid reputation-losing mistakes. Don”™t stray too far afield attempting to cover subjects that you”™re unsure about. It won”™t make you look smarter. Mistakes can drive eyeballs away permanently. Draw attention by presenting your company as an expert on the topics it knows best.
Read up on competitors. See what they”™re doing to attract attention and educate the marketplace. You don”™t want to be a copycat, but you may get some ideas on information that isn”™t being presented or topics that could be discussed more thoroughly. Look for opportunities to draw conclusions that others aren”™t drawing, synthesize multiple points of view and fill in gaps in understanding.
Books are easier to write and distribute than you might think. And they are still respected as knowledge sources. Take a course to learn how to get a book out. Read online suggestions about e-books from marketers who are trying to attract your eyeballs. Make an outline. Write a chapter each week or month. As with everything else you”™re going to do in marketing, write about something you know about that your audience is also interested in. And try not to take yourself too seriously.
Try video to tell a story. Make it professional enough that your audience will be engaged ”” not turned off. Ask current clients for a critique as you prepare content and shoot clips. Be ruthless in editing as time is your enemy. Short and to the point is usually best. Keep the interest of casual viewers. Give interested viewers a way to dig deeper.
Build a community. Search the term. You”™ll find tons of advice out there on how to do it and lots of venues through which to launch. Start by joining some communities and participating regularly with informative content. See how many followers you can attract.
Make sure your sales organization knows what you”™re putting out and how to use that to draw in sales. Salespeople need to be at least as informed as the target market that has been paying attention to what you”™ve put out. They need to know the purpose ”” why was that content distributed ”” and how to turn that content into connections. Make it a full circle by getting sales people to gather client feedback and make suggestions for future efforts.
Looking for a good book? “Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less” by Joe Pulizzi.
Andi Gray is president of Strategy Leaders Inc., a business-consulting firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurial firms grow. She can be reached by phone at 877-238-3535. Do you have a question for Andi? Send it via email to AskAndi@strategyleaders. Visit AskAndi.com for an entire library of Ask Andi articles.
