If you have been working hard to get your blog readers or email marketing subscribers to buy from you or hire you, with little success, here’s a quick content marketing tip for you:
Switch your emphasis from selling, to educating. Instead of pushing sales messages to your readers, share your knowledge with them.
Content Marketing: A case study in how NOT to do it!
I had a comment on my marketing blog this week from Tessa Shepperson, who runs the extremely successful landlordlaw site. Tessa gave a perfect example of what happens, when a marketer places the emphasis on selling.
Here’s what Tessa said:
I was invited to view a webinar recently which promised to give me helpful information on how I could use social media to help my business.
I tuned in, intrigued by the subject matter. However the first few minutes was taken up with the speaker talking about his business and what they did. My thought was ‘How is this supposed to help me?” As he just continued with his description of his firm and its services I switched off.
Had he started in a different way, I would probably have listened to it all.
Content marketing: Why you need to give before you can receive
In his eagerness to sell, sell, sell; the speaker actually pushed prospective customers away. He probably read one of those $30 ebooks on how to run a successful webinar, which explained that you have to sell first, because people tend to leave webinars pretty quickly. That’s bad advice and 100% incorrect. People only leave BAD webinars quickly! Offer them something worth listening to and they stick around and become engaged.
Engaged people are the ones who become paying clients and customers.
The webinar guy’s sales message meant nothing at all, because he hadn’t shown any value or established any rapport. Had he simply introduced himself and got straight into the core value of his message, he could have kept people listening long enough, for them to start regarding him as an expert. Of course, having made sush a dumb-ass rookie error as this, it’s highly unlikely he knew anything worth listening to!
The key to successful Internet marketing or content marketing, is to share knowledge or expertise with your readers, which is closely aligned to your products or services. You then become the natural place for them to go, when they are looking for a provider.
It’s simple, it’s low pressure and it works amazingly well!
Photo: Pheeezy
Absolutely true. It is about building a form of relationship and trust in those first few minutes rather than boring them to death with how great you are and what you do in great detail.
Would I be correct that an elevator speech would be good as an introduction to who you are at the beginning of a webinar Jim?
Totally. No one likes being sold to, they LOVE buying things though. When people really understand what that means, they are half way there.
Thanks for the feedback, Stuart!
Hi Jim, it’s a very good point you’ve made. I don’t think people have ever enjoyed being sold to in a direct way.
The common use of social media sites has just placed greater emphasis on engagement. Recently a sales person from a roofing company came to my front door and just launched straight into his script. I let him finish and then said “did you not see the for sale sign in my garden?”
It’s a classic case of robotic sales – just repeat the same script over and over without actually paying attention or asking questions first.
I love that example, Jamie. Thanks for sharing sir.
This makes sense. When I was marketing essential oils a few years back what worked best was educating people about the benefits of using essential oils and letting them inhale them and experience them that way. They made the decision to avail themselves of the benefits. All I did was address common concerns, stress, headaches, etc, and tell them what has been shown to help. The rest was easy! Plus it made it a lot more fun for me!
Lori
Hi Lori. I agree. It’s a lot less stressful to consult with people, then sell to (or sell at) people.
Amen to this! I can relate to Tessa’s experience. I, too, tuned into a webinar once just to get a sense of what this (well known) person was all about. The first 20 (t-w-e-n-t-y!) minutes were a pitch for his book. The only reason I remained in the session was out of a sense of amazement and curiosity about how long the pitch would be. With 20 minutes of pitch up front and 30 minutes of Q&A at the end, that left 10 full minutes for content. I was impressed, but not in a good way.
It’s ironic Irene, that even some well known people make this same rookie error.
A 1 hour long webinar, which contains 10 minutes of value is sadly not that rare. Instead of winning new clients or customers, that speaker has you and maybe hundreds of others saying what a fool he/she is.
I agree with your premise. I would like your take on whether you think my ideas on a blog fit with this.
We are starting a blog connected to our Kornerking product. Our plans are to do videos of installing kitchen organization items such as rollouts, waste containers ,breadboards, etc as DIY projects. Helpful tips for the homeowner. Yes we will have these items available for sale on our site. Is offering advice such as this some of what you are referring to.
Hi there Pete.
I refrain from offering specific advice, when I know nowhere near enough about what someone needs to achieve.
Generally, content marketing works best when you provide free information, which has ‘independent value’ – In other words, when the content has value even if they do not buy your product or service.
Hi Pete,
I don’t think Jim will mind if I give you a couple of thoughts on your question. First, what is the point of showing the install videos? If it is to help people get to know you/your products yes, that’s a good type of content to include on your site. You’ll just need to be careful that they don’t come across salesy, but truly educational in nature.
Helpful tips are excellent as well. If you can use your blog to answer FAQs and tie your titles to actual search terms when you can, you’ll both help your prospects and your inbound traffic as well.
Hi Cheryl. Thanks for your comment and you are very welcome to answer people’s questions here.
I don’t give answers to individual, specific business questions on my blogs. I work on the 1-to-many approach, so, rather than invest 30 minutes of my time giving free advice to 1 person, I use that 30 minutes to write a post, which will be of value to thousands of people. It just doesn’t scale, when you get dozens of such requests every day, 7 days a week.