Are You Targeting Cat Owners or Dog Owners?

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Reading through the Harvard Business Review the other day, I discovered a startling piece of scientific information that content marketers need yo know: Cat owners are more cautious consumers than dog owners! Professor Xiaojing Yang of the University of Southern California explains that consumer behaviors are driven by two opposing mindsets:

  • a promotion focus (eagerness, risk seeking, desire to maximize gains) – Dogs’ openness and adaptability are associated with a promotion focus.
  • a prevention focus (caution, risk aversion, priority on minimizing losses – Cats’ wariness and aloofness are association with a prevention focus.

Given the prevalence of pets in our society, Yang concluded, “:they’re an important part of our socialization”. How can this understanding be put to use in marketing products and services? When the features and benefits are mostly promotion-related, Prof Yang suggests, companies might feature dogs in their marketing materials. When they have more to do with prevention, cats would be a better choice.

Calls to Action in persuasive blog posts, as we know at Say It For You, can succeed only if our content has tapped into an underlying need or “desire” on the part of the reader. In the book Well Spoken, Kevin Mayer lists possible “wants”, or persuasive appeals to help prospects be willing to move forward and take the desired action, including approval by others, cleanliness, convenience, safety, health, or safety, each goal may be understood from either a promotion focus or a prevention focus.

No blog – and certainly no blog post – can be all things to all people. Each post must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who are most likely to want to do business with you.  That way, the appeals, as well as the way they are presented, can be chosen specifically for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, even the title of each blog entry.

In your content, are you targeting cat owners or dog owners?

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Things-You-Never-Knew Content Marketing

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“Time to take a look at how amazing (and a bit freaky!) we all are,” says Patricia S. Daniels of National Geographic. And we want to do this why? To: 1. discover healthy living 2. improve function 3. explore the latest discoveries. The special issue offers no fewer than 100 things you never knew”, in the form of “tidbits” of information about the human body..

Things-you-never-knew tidbits are super-valuable when it comes to content marketing. For one thing, tidbits showcase the knowledge and expertise of the business owners or practitioner, while at the same time softening the effect of any strong opinions expressed in the article or blog.

In content writing, word tidbits and tag lines are both designed to help readers remember something– a concept, a company, a product, a service. But, while a tag line may be catchy, even memorable – it’s pure advertising, revealing little to nothing about product or service, the company or the experience in store for the buyer. The right word tidbit in contrast, can capture the sense of the owners and how much those owners care about continuing their decades-long relationship with customers.

The “things-you-never-knew” concept is successful because it relates to the fact that web visitors tend to be curious creatures, particularly when it comes to testing their own knowledge and learning more about themselves. In fact, “self-tests” tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to the information presented in a blog or other marketing content On the other hand, online searchers are looking for more than just information; they need perspective. Yes, the National Geographic issue is designed to help readers become aware of these fascinating details of bodily function, ls, they need help discovering what to do about those details in order to achieve a more healthy lifestyle.

Business blog posts, for example, much like those individual things-you-never-knew pieces in National Geographic, should be designed to spark reader curiosity, playing on our natural desire to self-test, then offer technical information “in chewable tablet form”.

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Great Attributes of Great Financial Advisors and Great Blog Posts

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Business blog content writers, I couldn’t help thinking, would do well to focus on developing those great attributes that dimensional.com believes are signs of great financial advisors.

Purposeful – they have a clear mission to serve clients and help them reach their goals.
Particularly in the opening lines of a business blog post, it’s important to be purposeful, leaving no doubt in searchers’ minds that they’ve come to the right place to find the information, products, and services they need.

Authentic – they reveal their true selves to clients.
Use emotional content to evoke feelings that drive people to share and to act. Reveal your own cherished beliefs, creating a feeling in your audience of being connected with you and the people in your business or practice.

Empathetic – they know they cannot effectively serve clients without genuinely relating to them.
Researchers at the University of Bath created a measurement for ads called the Emotive Power Score to gauge if the ad is going to change feelings about the brand. Readers of bogs seeking iformation to support their hobbies, interests, and beliefs will seek “empathetic” content.

Intellectually curious – they continue to learn and to search for solutions, are open to new ideas and committed to honing their own knowledge and skills.
How can we ghost bloggers write for business owners and professional clients without being trained in those fields ourselves? The answer is constant curiosity and learning.
As content writers, we offer our clients’ blog visitors a more personal and even a more analytical perspective on the information they might find on the company website.  Often, precisely because we’re industry “outsiders”, learners, we are actually better able to approach the subject in ways online searchers will understand.

Use questions to better understand needs before suggesting action.
While in a blog post, you’re often providing answers to questions that your potential customer might ask, the very fact that it’s in the form of a question allows readers to feel you’re helping them form them form their own opinions.

Honest – set reasonable expectations about outcomes.
Blogging honestly about your business’ capabilities and “incapabilities” helps set reasonable expectations tha prospects appreciate.

Disciplined – they don’t let media messages or market swings drive impulsive actions.
Drill sergeant discipline is required for content marketing, with web rankings are based at least partially on frequency of posting new content.  And, while successful marketing blog content writers don’t aim for “trendy”, they can tie blog content to current events.

Great attributes of great business leaders make for really great business blog posts!

 

 

 

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Blogging Starts and Grows Because of Trust

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“In business, we need our customers and potential customers to trust us….otherwise they simply won’t want to invest time and resources into us and our business,” Safarz Ali writes in the Business Influencer. How do you prove that you are trustworthy? Ali suggests the biggest three ways:

1. Show, don’t tell. Live up to your promises and use client case studies to prove it.
At Say it for You, we emphasize that case studies chronicle a customer or client who had a problem or need, taking readers through the various stages of using the product or service to solve that problem.

2. Practice honest communication, brushing no issues under the rug.
Problems with customer service are going to arise, but those very situations offer you an opportunity to shine by making things right. Empower Then use writing for business as one excellent vehicle to tell about your own mistakes and the way you offer outstanding customer service by making things right.

3. Prove you know your customers.
Your blog can’t be all things to all people, any more than your business can be all things to everybody.  The blog must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who will want to do business with you.  Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for that customer  – the words you use, how technical you get and how sophisticated your approach..

The top five best communication traits of a successful leader, Rebecca Weintraub and Stan Lowes think, are these:

1. walking the talk
The typical online searcher is leery of hype and unrealistic claims, and honesty in content writing has power.

2. authenticity (understand yourself first)
To demonstrate that you’re unique, you need to explain what you care about and what it’s like to work with you.

3. embracing a communication culture
Use your blog to demonstrate your full engagement and concern for your customer’s welfare, and allow real-time feedback from your target audience.

4. storytelling
You have to have a point, conveying the reason you’re sharing the story.

5. listening
When I’m ghost-blogging for a business, I need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, on what’s in the news, and about what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my client sells and what it does for its clients.

Blogging starts and grows because of trust!

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Elevate Your Word Game in Blogging for Business

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“I learned the hard way that my marriage was on the edge of collapse – again” and “The Bitter Truths I learned About My Eating Disorder – After Being Pregnant” are both decent titles for a pitch, says Estelle Erasmus, who, in Writer’s Digest this month, teaches writers tactics for capturing the attention of an editor. (The expression “the bitter truths” is quite cliché, Erasmus noted, but having an eating disorder rear its head during pregnancy is different enough to catch attention. She suggested changing the title to “Getting Pregnant Spiraled Me Into an Eating Disorder”.)

Tips offered by Erasmus that are remarkably relevant for business blog content creators include:

Clarity is key, more important than beautiful language.
Titles represent crucial elements in capturing the interest of both search engines and online searchers. But, aside from Search Engine Optimization considerations, the title of a blog post constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors that if they choose to click on the title, it will lead them to a blog post with information on the topic named in that title.

Find the emotional implication behind what you’re writing about. There has to be a transformation that takes place, one to which readers can relate.
In blog marketing, those who make the most emotionally persuasive argument win. The goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message.

Active verbs work best, helping to paint a picture for readers.
The very purpose of the blog content is to showcase the accomplishments of the business and products and services it brings to customers. That’s why using the active voice makes so much sense in corporate blog writing.

Focus on a small moment in time, not a a broad all-encompassing saga.
At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the Power of One, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience.

Elevate your word game, learning to think in sound bites by watching TV with the captions on.
Blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  That’s what makes it so feasible to use blogs to achieve the frequency that’s needed to win online search engine rankings.

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