Putting Price Into Perspective

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Boy, those Harvard Business Review guys sure know how to put things into perspective… I learned that minimum wage employees in Venezuela would need to work 7,063 hours (in other words, more than three years) to buy an iPhone 13. (Here in good ole’ USA, you’d need to work a mere 114 hours to afford that phone.). Customers in every industry are price-sensitive, but, as Allstate found when it comes to auto insurance, it’s simply not true that most will buy the least expensive plan they can find. Price for the value you create, advises Dave Gray, author of Gamestorming: a Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. In fact, the Corporate Finance Institute defines value-based pricing as adjusting the price based on perceived value rather than historical price.

At Say It For You, we perceive our primary task as blog content writers to be this – clearly demonstrating the value delivered by a business or practice to its customers and clients. By doing that, we have the power to put the price of those goods and services into perspective.

Karen Greenstreet, writing in Forbes in 2014, offered reasons you should – and reasons you shouldn’t – put pricing on your website or in your blog.  You want the chance to establish rapport before discussing pricing, she acknowledges, but many customers will not do business with a company that is not forthcoming about pricing and fees.

My own take as a blog writer and trainer is that the very purpose of blogs is to put information into perspective for visitors. The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate; the better ones give visitors at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers.

For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”  It’s not that pricing isn’t important or that it should be left out –  it’s simply one of many things readers are going to consider.

I think about putting price into perspective not only in terms of my blogging clients’ customers, but in terms of their own budget as we begin a blog marketing initiative.. Often it’s a small business owner in a retail or services field competing with giant national chains. With fewer dollars available, the little guy cannot hope to compete in purchasing ads and needs to rely on organic search to attract eyeballs.  In other words, my clients are wondering, what are their chances for success when they find themselves playing with fewer “game pieces” than their larger, better funded, competitors?

That is where blog value comes in – with consistency and commitment, they have every chance of demonstrating the value they offer, putting the price of their goods and services into proper perspective.

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Post-It Note Blogging For Business

/0 Comments/in /by

Several years ago, while serving as an English tutor at Ivy Tech Community College, I created a writing guide for my students, urging them to complete the first three steps before sitting down at their laptops to write an assigned essay. They were to use Post-It® Notes to jot down ideas. That way, the order of the different paragraphs could be switched around. Blog content writers can follow an identical process in organizing their thoughts…

Step One: Select your topic. (Hint: Your TOPIC is not necessarily the same as the title for the post. Your topic is also not the same as your thesis statement. Your topic IS the answer to the question I might ask a person who’s just finished reading your blog post: “So…what was the subject of that piece?

Step Two: Compose your thesis statement. Another way to think of your thesis statement is your “one-sentence speech”. The thesis statement tells the reader what your particular “slant” is on the topic. Are you out to explain how to use a product or service? Are you intent on raising awareness of a problem you know how to solve? Are you aiming to demonstrate your involvement in your community?

Step Three: the three-legged stool
Just as a stool will not stand firmly without having at least three legs, you should plan to have three “legs”, or points to use in proving your thesis.

Step Four: Support your points
This is where students would find statistics, or articles by authorities who have opinions that support their ideas. (Even in this digital age, I used to advise students to print out pages they were going to quote, so that they could highlight specific passages they might cite.) On a Post-It®, which they’d affix to the page, they’d capture the information needed to cite that source on their References or Works Cited page).

Step Five: Outline your paper (or blog post)
With your tools now “lined up”, you are ready to decide in what order you’ll present the ideas. (This is where you experiment by moving the Post-It notes around). Once you’ve settled on the order, it will be easier to see which element is best for capturing attention at the start, as well as which makes for a powerful ending statement. This can also be the ideal time to select a title to arouse readers’ interest.

Try Post-It® blogging for business!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Authenticity Blogging

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Get personal on social media, is Justin Mack’s advice to financial advisors – to demonstrate that you’re unique, you need to explain what you care about and what it’s like to work with you. “The right mix of personal, educational, and corporate brand content can add great value to an advisor’s social media page.” What resonates strongly with prospects, Mack says, is “personal character, culture, and behind-the-scenes content. “Both current and potential clients want to see the people who power the firm more than the firm’s latest earnings success.”

Authenticity is powerful in blog marketing. “You can talk about your goals, background, mission, and products by simply writing and publishing posts,” Livia Ryan writes on.eonetwork.org. Ryan is talking about personal posts, but at Say It For You, we think her statement very much applies to business blogging: “Readers will be provided an intimate view of your journey and what goes into developing your products and services. Connect with readers, and you create potential customers.”

Real people are the key to authentic relationships, sproutsocial agrees. Consumers want to learn more about the people behind their favorite brands. Surveys show 72% of consumers report feeling sloser to a company when employees share information about a brand online. For that very reason, thehartford.com explains, “Your employees need to understand your company, its values, its goals and its priorities.”

Company employees’ contribution to blogging
At Say It For You, when I’m working with a company to set up a business blogging strategy and I’m training that company’s employees to post blogs, quite often I hit resistance, with employees seeing blogging as just one more task in a series of duties that makes their work load heavier. Still even if my team is going to be composing the posts, it’s crucial for the business owner to enlist the support of the employees.

  • Employees are the ones in the field and on the phone with customers and clients.
  • Employees know the strengths and best uses of their own company’s products and services.
  • Employees are the best people to , in conversation with customers. to elicit testimonials and anecdotes that can be used for blog content.

One combination tactic that quite often turns out to be just right is having professionally ghostwritten posts (to maintain the regularity and research needed to win search engine rankings), but with employees providing their very special touch when time and their regular duties allow.

Blogging for business represents an ideal tool for “getting personal” and earning trust, allowing business owners to express who and “what” they are – What makes them tick?  What “ticks them off” about their own industry? In short, business blog writing needs to be real. Being real, though, doesn’t mean being sloppy about grammar and spelling – or about properly attributing quotes and ideas to their sources.

There’s a balancing act between authenticity and brand, but there’s little doubt – authenticity is powerful in blog marketing!

 

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blogging – Much More Than What Your Business Does

/0 Comments/in /by

 

 

 


Five pieces of primary information consumers use to choose a business, RevLocal says, include:

  1. price
  2. products and services offers
  3. availability of service
  4. customer service
  5. location

Coupons and offers are important, as are testimonials and reviews, RevLocal adds. “Customers want to know about your business and its history. You don’t have to write an essay, but give a brief history of your company and its core values so that consumers know enough to trust your business.” (Our Say It For You blog post earlier this week makes this very point.)

“Marketing has never been more about compassion, Shama Hyder of fastcompany.com cautions, with successful marketing requiring appealing to consumers’ emotional side. Companies must show that compassion and accountability are part of their underlying mission. Hyder cites financial institution Experian, whose business model is dedicated to addressing financial disparities in the credit system by making credit scores more inclusive.

Blogs are actually the perfect vehicles for conveying compassion, because, as guest blogger and e-commerce businessman Nick Semon wrote, “Blogging allows businesses an informal and efficient way to communicate a wide variety of ideas and topics…Our customers expect a hassle free shopping experience.  They don’t want to see a bunch of clutter when purchasing our product. Blogging allows us an area to communicate much needed information away from the store front but still very much integrated into our business.

In fact, the best website content and the best marketing blogs, we teach at Say It For You, achieve a number of different goals:

  • building good will
  • staying in touch with existing customers and clients
  • defining values
  • announcing changes in products and services
  • controlling damage when it comes to negative PR or complaints
  • recruiting employees
  • In short, the blog should give readers insight into a company’s core beliefs in addition to information about products and services that company offers.

Blogging should be about much more than what your company does – it must also be about who your company IS!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blogging Your Claim To Fame

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

 

“After reading this,” is Stephen Lang’s hope for his Big Book of American Trivia, “you may consider yourself a little more knowledgeable, maybe even a little more appreciative, of this vast, enchanting land.” With over 3,000 questions and answers, this book certainly allows readers to self-test, which is one way in which readers tend to initially engage with the content in business blogs. In fact, content writers, we teach at Say It For You, can use trivia in different ways:

  • for defining basic terminology
  • sparking curiosity about the subject
  • putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective
  • for explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way

    You can use trivia to help readers get to know the people behind the business/practice:
    – What Oscar-winning actress announced in June, 2011, that she was homeschooling her children? (Angelina Jolie)
    – What man said “I don’t know anything about cars,” then ended up being head of General Motors? (Edward Whitacre, Jr. )
    – What songwriter donated an Oscar he’d won to his hometown? ) Johnny Mercer)

In his book Tell to Win, Peter Guber points out that people want to do business with people. One important function of a business blog, we teach at Say It For You, is helping online visitors get to know the people behind the business (or the professionals behind the practice). Why did those owners choose to do what they do? What are they most passionate about?  What are they trying to add to or to change about their industry? What community causes are they involved in?

           Sharing failures as well as successes:

  • In April, 2009, Barack Obama caused controversy by bowing. To whom? (The King of Saudi Arabia)
  • What famous astronaut was cut from the TV show Dancing With the Stars”? (Buzz Aldrin)
  • What one-name pop singer declared “The Internet’s almost over”? (Prince)

“There can be success in the stories, but they have to be grounded in failure.” Stav Ziv said in Newsweek, talking about The Moth nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling. So how does all this apply to blog marketing for a business or professional practice?  It brings out a point every business owner, practitioner, and business blogger ought to keep in mind: Writing about past failures is important.
True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business. What tends to happen is the stories of failure create feelings of empathy and admiration for the entrepreneurs or professional practitioners who overcame the effects of their own errors.

Why share tidbits? Your blog readers may consider themselves a little more knowledgeable, maybe even a little more appreciative, of your value proposition – and of you!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail