Can Silence Sell in Content Marketing?

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“In all the noise from sales training, the underrated power of silence often speaks volumes,” Matt Nettleton of Sandler Trustpointe comments. “Handled correctly, silence allows prospects to reveal their deepest concerns and desires.” Skilled salespeople, the message is, listen intently, allowing the customer to speak.

“Successful selling requires a delicate balance between talking and listening. While you need to provide enough information to communicate your product’s value, you also have to make sure your prospect feels heard,” Aditya Kothadiya writes. “In our age of constant communication and short span of attention, genuine listening is a rare commodity and a great gift,” he adds. All those things are true only when you meet in person, Kothadiva admits. Even video conferencing, where salesperson and prospect can see each other’s faces, doesn’t create the same emotional connection as an iin-person encounter.

“Listening to customers isn’t just hearing about their problems. It’s not picking up the phone or answering the ringing bell at your service desk. It involves paying close attention to their needs and understanding how you can help them achieve their goals,” Sophia Bernazzani Barron says in Hubspot.

But how does all this work when it comes to online marketing? “Social listening”, InMarket’s Digital Marketing Playbook explains, involves monitoring keywords and paying attention to what people are saying about your brand. “You can leverage positive comments that you receive from customers about your products and service in your marketing strategy, sharing them on your website and other channels,” Hannah Smiddy of Swanky adds.

Certainly, as was discovered in a Schwab benchmarking study for Registered Investment Advisors, “when providers focus on the unique needs of their target audience, they can develop an experience that is perceived as valuable by those clients.” At Say It For You, we know that content must be tailor-made for your ideal customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry, all must focus on things you know about your target market – their needs, their preferences, their questions – and only secondarily on how wonderful you and your staff are at satisfying those needs and preferences.

Still, how can “silence sell” in content marketing, when, by definition, you are ‘sending out” messaging rather than remaining silent? Over the years, we’ve come to realize, “silencing” the features and benefits of your products and services, while “sounding” the voice of the people behind those products and services. After all, the people who find your blog are those who are already online looking for information, products, or services that relate to what you know, what you have, and what you do! Your online marketing challenge is not to seek out the people, but to help them seek you out and then show them you’ve been listening to “who they are”.

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Close Reading and Reading Around

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In the latest issue of Poets and Writers magazine, Natalie Schriefer describes what she calls her habit of “close reading”. Writing reviews of other people’s writing has made her a better writer, she’s convinced. “I read anything I could get my hands on”, she shares, “jotting down my favorite lines and unusual words.”

“Along the way,” Schriefer adds, “my reviews ended up being so much more useful than just a log of what I’d read. From them I learned how to write about writing, which in turn helped me develop my writing style.” As you read other’s work,” she advises, “consider their characters, plot, imagery, themes, extended metaphors, unexpected twists, and then consider your own intentions for your piece”.

For many years now, I’ve been “preaching” the same message to content writers: In order to create valuable marketing content, it’s going to take equal parts reading and writing.

There are a number of reasons what I dub “reading around” is so important for blog writers:

  • to keep up with news, including problems and questions that might be surfacing that relate to your industry or profession (or that of your client)
  • to keep a constant flow of content topics and styling ideas.
  • to get ideas about selling and marketing
  • to get ideas for tailoring individual posts to series to different segments of the client’s customer base
  • to find “tidbits” that can liven up our content
  • to curate others’ content for the benefit of our own readers
  • to develop our own storytelling structuring
  • to unlock our own creativity

The not-so-secret weapon for us content writers might take the form of an “idea folder” (that folder could be an actual folder in which newspaper and magazine clippings are collected, a little notebook you carry around, or take the form of a digital file on a phone or tablet).  We “load up” our folder with ideas for future posts and stay current in the “now” by reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to each of our clients’ business fields.

With content marketing both a science and an art, it pays to do our own “close reading” so that engaged readers will pay “close attention”!
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Focusing on the Reader of the Story

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“Here’s how to introduce yourself to a reporter so that you will be a source for a news story on the subject,” consultant Janet Falk writes. The five W’s, she advises (who, what, when, where, why) should serve as the framework for your pitch.

In blog marketing, the “Who”, of course, denotes narrowing down your audience in order to “target” the content to those you most hope will be reading your post. “Be as specific as possible,” Falk cautions.

The “what?” has two components: What idea or concept will you present? Then, what will they do next with that idea? Think of readers’ situation before they learned this information; compared to after they hear about it, Falk writes.

Translated into content marketing, the “what” relates to the “where”. In the Call to Action, what alternatives are you offering for next steps? There should be more than one: those ready to buy should be enabled to do that right away (link or phone number). Those who need more information before making a decision should be able to message you. For those not quite ready for any of those steps, provide a link to a video or white paper. Navigation to that “where” needs to be very easy.

The “Why” is the most important question of all, Falk explains. “How will your idea help someone save time, save money or make more money?”

When it comes to blog marketing, there’s a lot of talk about “traffic”. Yes, blogging is part of business owners’ and professional practitioners’ “pull marketing” strategy, designed to attract readers’ eyeballs. In practice, however, fewer might actually prove better, I explain to Say It For You clients. The real goal is attracting readers of “the right kind“, customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in your content.

 

In the scenario Janet Falk describes, you are introducing oneself to a reporter as a source for a news story, In content marketing, the “reporter” is the search engine algorithm, which serves as a “gateway” for you to tell your story to the target reader. “Social media algorithms can be a powerful ally in growing one’s online audience. Think of them as virtual matchmakers designed to match users with content that suits their interests,” sproutsocial,com explains.

Whether you’re introducing yourself to a reporter or to an algorithm, define your five W’s, always focusing on the ultimate reader of the story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Don’t Lead Readers Into Content Word Traps

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My favorite article in the monthly Mensa Bulletin always seem to come from Richard Lederer, who excels in making witty observations about the use of language. In his latest “April Foolishness”, Lederer demonstrates how easy it is to unintentionally mislead readers….

  • “Pronounce out loud the words formed by each of these titles: B-O-A-S-T, C-O-A-S-T, R-O-A-S-T. Now, what do we put in a toaster?” (See how easy it is to answer TOAST? You don’t put toast into a toaster; you put in bread and it comes out toast!)
  • “How many times can you subtract 5 from 25?” (Only once. After that, the number is 20.)
  • What was the highest mountain on earth before Mount Everest was discovered? (Before it was discovered, it was there!)

Did you get all three answers right??

Mythbusting

Mythbusting is used in many fields to counteract what researchers suspect is counterproductive thinking, and I’m a firm believer in using debunking in content marketing. In the normal course of doing business, misunderstandings about your product or surface might surface in the form of customer questions and comments.  (It’s even worse when those myths and misunderstandings don’t surface, but still have the power to interrupt the selling process!)

The technique of mythbuting is not without risk, because customers and prospects don’t like to be proven wrong or feel stupid.  The trick is to engage interest, but not in “Gotcha!” fashion. In other words, business owners and professional practitioners can use blog, newsletter, and landing page content to showcase their own expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it.

Engaging, but honest headlines

Don’t mislead readers by using sensational headlines, fastercapital.com cautions, because readers will be turned off if they feel they’ve been tricked into clicking on your content. It’s OK to use attention-grabbing words that evoke curiosity and emotion, but be specific about what readers can expect to learn or gain, Prova Biswas writes in Quora.

Unclear words and phrases

“On the surface, language traps refer to words or phrases whose meaning isn’t clear to readers and, worse, can potentially mislead them into thinking you mean something you don’t, hureywrite.com explains.

Mis/disinformation

“Knowing how to shield your company from mis/disinformation can be challenging. Your audience may lack the ability to critically evaluate media content, and this can negatively impact your brand,” Clara Doyle admits in publicrelay.com. “If you are not prepared to manage fake news, your audience may be likely to believe stories containing misleading information.” Since, at Say It For You, our writing team often functions as “communications director” for clients who hire us to bring their message to online readers, we know the important for mounting a strong defensive “play” in the form of blog content.

Content marketing is actually the perfect vehicle for defusing false news, correcting misunderstandings, and protecting readers from word traps.

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Connecting With Buyers A’ La Ford

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“Ford Motor Co. set out to put the world on wheels with the Model T.  Here’s how the company attempted to brand itself through advertising and how it pitched its product to early everyday drivers including women,” USA Network writes in the special section of the March 10 issue of my newspaper.

As I analyzed the Model T ad reproduced  in my Indianapolis Star (an ad created fully one hundred years ago!) I noticed a number of smart marketing principles at work, guidelines we content marketers can put to use today…

Market with the end in mind

“To the woman at the wheel of a Ford car, every road seems straight and smooth; hills melt away and rough places are easy.”  The goal of content marketing should be to leave readers absolutely knowing why they need to care, not about your product or service, but about the way they are going to feel after using it! 

Your Unique Selling Proposition

“Don’t tell them what you do.  Tell them what you do for them,” Certified Business Coach Andrew Valley advised in a guest post years ago in this Say It For You blog. “You must tell the listener how your product or service can benefit that person, and how you can do it better or differently than others who do what you do.”

 

Understand buyers’ concerns

“When a woman hesitates to manage a heavy car, when she needs an extra one for personal of family use, or when her means forbid the drain of high upkeep cost…” In content marketing, making claims such as “least expensive, or “most affordable” are totally ineffective compared to communicating that you understand and are ready to address buyers’ deepest concerns.

In his business skills and development book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Carmine Gallo reminds marketers to focus on results. “Remember, your widget doesn’t inspire,” he reminds us. Ford marketers obviously knew how to address potential buyers’ deepest concerns. – “She should have the easily handled, easily parked, reliable service of a Ford,”

Aim to inspire

While a company’s website, brochure and blog typically explain what products and services are offered, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate, the better content pieces give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.

As the author of the piece on the Model-T observes, “This ad uses the automobile as a symbol of freedom”.

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