Gone is the domain of the self-indulgent raver’s blogs where the content was all about what the writer had for their evening meal, personal interests, etc.
These days blogs are used by the marketing community as a tool to sell more products to people.
The humble blog has matured into an amazingly powerful tool. The key driver in the evolution of the blog is the need for people to have their questions answered. It’s staggering to learn 90% of people search Google with a question. What’s even more staggering is companies are optimising their sites for keywords and not questions. This is backed up by 80% of people who are clicking on organic results that answer their question.
The market has changed, outbound strategies are becoming less effective as the channels to market expand significantly and the audience dilutes across these channels.
Enter the new age blog, reinvented to cater to today’s needs.
Here are 5 tips of how to supercharge your blogging results;
1. Do the “Not Sell”
Remember you’re writing content to educate people and solve their problems. No one cares about your features and benefits “yet” because they may be in the research phase of the decision-making process. Super-serve the reader with high-quality educative information relevant to answering the question. The average person researches 10.8 blogs before they move to the decision phase of the buying cycle.
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2. Focus on one thing
One of the key concepts we need to deal with here is to drill down and focus on one single person, let’s call them your target person. The Persona is the perfect customer, not a demographic or a slice of some generic marketing segment. It needs to be laser focussed on one single person. Be specific, focus on a person in a job, with a specific set of problems. For example, you might have a Persona like the one below;
3. You’re creating digital assets that will keep on returning traffic
When you pay for advertising the reach of the ad either online or offline is limited to the money you spend. When you stop spending, the ad stops working for you. For example, Google AdWords will work for you while you spend the money, but when you stop the ads drop off and so do your leads and traffic.
The opposite happens when you use Content Marketing. When you create your content the content is then uploaded to the net and stays there indexed forever.
The cool part is that over the life of the article it will keep generating return customers to your site. That’s why here at element7digital we think of blog articles as digital assets, because once uploaded to the net, the cost of creation reduces as it generates more leads and the ROI for each of the articles increases over time. The proof is in the statistics, Content Marketing can create up to 126% more leads and be 61% more cost effective.
4. Build a sales funnel using the content in exchange for customer details
Once you’ve got your Persona and defined the problems to be solved, you can then map the content against the customer journey. There are 4 Phases to this;
- Information Search
- Refinement
- Delight
- Decision
It’s clear now the customer will require different information as they move through the customer journey. Information Search is about fact finding, researching and getting a feel for the types of businesses in the industry, if they can trust you, know what you’re doing, what proof is there of that, will you do what you say, will you do what they want, or do what they need to do, etc.
The next step of the process is refinement. In refinement, all of the options and information are compared. The companies that have failed to educate the customer are dropped off and the information that resonates will move the customer to the next step in the sales funnel.
60% of the sales cycle is completed online and before a customer actually talks to you.
Once the research and refining have happened the customer starts contacting the company.
Post sale we can keep the customer in the loop with relevant content, educating them and involving them in what seems to be something bigger than themselves. A delighted customer is going to refer you to more potential customers and buy more from you, more often.
One of the most powerful elements of this style of marketing is from the start of the information search to the decision process, you can serve the customer information that’s relevant at the right time, enabling the sales process. All of this activity can be automated and tracked in CRM and email automation tools.
Imagine a virtual sales team enabling the first 60% of the sales pipeline, resulting in stronger and more qualified marketing leads to be closed by your sales team.
5. You can be the ‘go to’ guys with the know how in your industry
There are 2 influencing factors that are working for you here;
- The Law of Reciprocal Trade
- The Law of Authority
The Law of Reciprocal Trade
This is where you give someone something with perceived value for free. How this works is when someone or a company gives you something for free, you feel obliged to purchase from them. Content is doing exactly that; free eBooks with huge takeaway value and all of the tips and tricks are for free, building a need in the client’s mind to purchase from you. The more you give, the more they will want buy from you.
The Law of Authority
People will always buy from the person in authority. If you’re seen as the best guys in the business or the ‘go to’ guys, to the one with the highest level of knowledge and expertise, people will choose you time and time again. For the customer, there is less perceived risk in the decision, which is why big brands outsell generics or lesser branding.
Content Marketing is that perfect opportunity for you to own the knowledge and expertise perception in the market. By publishing real world, actionable, relevant content you will be seen as the industry leader. When you own your content niche you will be seen as the industry leader in your sector and the Law of Authority will work for you and against your competitor’s handing you the competitive advantage.
Bonus Point
Think about down the track, when your competitors wake up and try and get into the content game, you already have a lead and also have Google ranking and by the time they have created the content to match, you’ll be evolved and have more content up. This is a truly sustainable competitive advantage, a barrier to entry to the market and a really clever defence strategy.
Content Marketing is a very powerful tool and over time will win you more customers and allow you to control the sales pipeline and generate more money.
If you would like to know more or would like to contribute to this article I want to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249-5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Website is element7digital.com.au
