Bringing Yourself to the Page

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” For better or worse, in today’s world, everyone is a brand, and you need to develop yours and get comfortable marketing it,” Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald point out in the Harvard Business Review special spring issue. The question to ask yourself is what can you bring to the table of your industry out of your own personal experience. Two examples the authors offer:

  • You studied psychology, and have insights into human behavior.
  • You’re a UX designer who understands how to create more-accessible products.

Whatever your special talent, know-how, or experience, you can bring that to bear as an employee or executive to add value, is the point.

For us as content marketers, in essence “ghost-writing” newsletters, web page content, and blog posts for our business owner and professional practitioner clients, the concept of “bringing self to the page” has a double meaning. Yes, as Whitney Hill advises in a Writer’s Digest piece, “mining” areas of our own lives helps us connect with the right others. But since our purpose is to focus readers’ attention, not on ourselves, but on our content marketing clients, we use our own experience and wisdom to help readers “interview” those owners and practitioners in light of their own needs.

“Some articles have greater impact and reader engagement if written from personal experience, The Writer’s College explains. Writing an article from personal experience can avoid sounding generic, especially if you bring personal experiences to life with vivid sensory details, “showing” rather than just telling. Still it’s important to reflect on the impact and growth that resulted from the experiences you’re describing.

In using content marketing to translate our clients’ corporate messages into human, people-to-people terms, I prefer first and second person writing over third person “reporting”. I think people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message. I compare the interaction between content writers and online readers to behavioral job interviews, where the concept is to focus, not on facts, but on discovering the “person behind the resume”.

In bringing our clients to the page, we know that “how-we-did-it” stories make for very effective marketing content for both business owners and professional practitioners. True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business or practice, not to mention showcasing the special empathy those providers have for their clients and customers.

Through messaging, ghost writers, providers, and customers are all “brought to the page”!

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Listen to Stand Out and Be Heard

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In recent Say It For You posts, I had been discussing the importance of understanding your target audience, by being alert to their preferences and opinions as expressed on social media. I invited friend and networking colleague Joe Rutenberg, owner of CCC Solutions, to comment on “listening” to connect with a target audience….

Buyers are flooded with inbound messaging so how can you stand out and be heard? Listen to the right sources to get started. Writing content and delivering it consistently is hard. How can you deliver effective content regularly? Answer 2 questions:

  • What excites your audience?
  • What do you want them to do once they are excited?

You want to move your audience using content delivered at key stages of their decision process to achieve your goal.

The Right Goals

Do you want to: Close a sale; Entice a prospect; or Inform a customer about product benefits. Where in your Sales Funnel is each prospect? Content is based on your audience and where in the sales funnel they are. Regardless of audience type, resonating content, delivered consistently, is the goal.

Prospects and Clients

Prospects and clients have overlapping and different attributes and needs.

  • Prospects need to trust you and believe you reduce their risk.
  • Clients need to see recurring value and best pricing.

Effective content focuses on what your audience believes is important.

Resonating Content is Important

When you listen, others listen, and you build trust. When your content shows empathy and speaks to poignant topics, it becomes “sticky.” Content that “sticks” is about your audience, not you. Being “sticky” makes you top of mind and the “Go To” person in your technical area. Sticky content is remarkable because it is specific to an industry, function, market, product, or geography and is what your audience cares about.

Listen to Hear Topical Content

Listen to the marketplace to find content. In addition to AI sources, sources include:

  • Your clients – Ask clients 4-5 questions about their business, industry, and why they chose you. It is a great way to touch base.
  • Client and prospect websites – What are they talking about?
  • Industry and trade association newsletters and websites.
  • Community and Civic groups – When your audience is geographic.
  • Social media channels – Choose channels based on what you sell (B2B or B2C).

Listen to the common questions and concerns and build your “Topic Library.”

Consistent Delivery to Multiple Audiences

How can you deliver consistent content to different audiences all at once? The solutions are the right content writer and the right CRM. Depending on company size, you may have:

  • In house or outsourced content writing. Both work as it is all about talent.
  • No CRM or an enterprise CRM. A CRM is a must for marketing and sales.

A talented writer and robust CRM are a winning combination.

How to Stand Out

Use your CRM to reach your audience before they make decisions. Review your sales cycle and trigger content driven outreach prior to milestones in your sales cycle. Use content that is relevant at each stage of your sales funnel. Make your content “Sticky” and you will be remarkable!

 

Want To Stand Out In Every Crowd?

Visit www.cccsolutions.com and Close More Sales 

Explore CCC’s Marketing And Sales Strategies

 

 

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In Content Marketing, Consider Readers’ Home Bias

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When it comes to their stock portfolios, financial advisor James Cheng observes, investors tend to invest the majority of their money in domestic equities, ignoring the benefits of diversifying into foreign companies.  Home bias isn’t restricted to American investors, he explains – investors from all over the world tend to prefer investing in companies based in their own country. While being too concentrated in any one area of the market can actually be a dangerous practice, Alexander Joshi Of Barclays of London cautions, exposing an investor’s portfolio to elevated market volatility, investors would rather invest in things with which they are already familiar, rather than moving into the unknown.

While the expression “home bias” originated in finance, familiarity bias influences consumer behavior in every aspect of life. “Have you ever noticed yourself gravitating towards the same brand of coffee or choosing to watch movies from a favorite genre repeatedly?”  Octet Design Journal asks. Gravitating towards familiar faces and avoiding interactions with strangers can mean missing out on valuable relationships and opportunities.

How can sellers overcome this inherent yet irrational desire to keep something the same, even if it’s less than optimal?  While prospect theory explains that people are more averse to losing what they have than benefitting from something new, value selling can help overcome your customers’ status quo bias, David Sviel  of ROI Selling suggests. “Your job,” he tells salespeople, “is to convince them that, despite the risk of making a change, which always exists, not making a change has its own risks and consequences.”

Will blog marketing “close” deals in the same way as a face-to-face encounter between a prospect and a sales professional? The answer is obviously “no”, we explain to our Say It For You content marketing prospects. On the other hand, prospects what have been reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales process more educated on your place in the market, your industry, and what you have to offer. Consistent posting of valuable information positions you as a SME, or Subject Matter expert, offering you a much greater chance to overcome your audience’s “home bias”.

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Mining What You Know Yourself

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To make your writing more unique and richly layered, Whitney Hill advises in a Writer’s Digest piece, mine areas of your own life.  “Writing to market”, she says is a common and very viable strategy, meaning familiarizing yourself with the websites, social media, and trends preferred by your likely readers.  But, on a deeper level than “market”, there’s audience, Hill says. Market describes the places, times, and offerings; audience is the people in those places, times, and offerings. Digging deep within ourselves for inspiration can help us connect with the right others.

People

“Our families, colleagues, friends, and other people we know may spark an idea for….a narrative thread,” Hill goes on to suggest. (It’s important to remember factors such as safety, privacy, and liability, she cautions.)  My own twenty-seven year financial planning career put me in touch with a variety of teachers, speakers, and clients, each with stories and lessons…

Background

Educated in the public school system in Pittsburgh, parochial schools in New York City, University of Missouri in Kansas City, and the College of Financial Planning in Denver, Colorado, I have been exposed to a variety of learning experiences that I’m sure have found expression in my writing. 

Field

Language has always been at the core of my work. Following years teaching of Hebrew using the Voix et Image method of second language teaching, then penning a weekly financial advice column for twenty two years, I’ve been involved, for the past seventeen years, in content marketing. The “leitmotif” of finding the right words has characterized my days for as long as I can remember. 

Focusing on what we know best – ourselves – can be a way to strengthen our craft, helping us write stories that deeply connect with readers. Since, at Say It For You, our purpose is to focus readers’ attention on our content marketing clients, we are taking on the readers’ personas, rather than our own, helping them ” interview” the business owners or practitioners in light of their own needs.

While Whitney Hill is advising novelists and short story writers, the concept of “mining what you know yourself” is very appropriate for content marketers. In order to truly connect with our clients‘ readers, we need to connect with those clients’ people, backgrounds, and fields, all while finding connections to our own backgrounds, enabling us to mine what we know ourselves!

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What-Would-You-Do-If Content

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‘What animal best represents you as a person?’ How would you survive a zombie apocalypse? What would you do if you won the lottery tomorrow?

By asking questions that avoid routine, rehearsed answers, interviewers can get a glimpse into an applicant’s skills and personality, Lee Hafner explains in Employee Benefit News.  Talking about the traits of an animal reflects your own qualities, the author explains, with a lion symbolizing leadership or a dolphin characterizing communication skills. A zombie apocalypse represents crisis situations, allowing interviewees to emphasize their adaptability and resourcefulness.  The question about winning the lottery allows candidates to show they are motivated by more than money.  Applicants should be ready for such out-of-the-box questions, using the job posting itself to prepare, Hafner advises.

In marketing, as in hiring, what-would-you-do research is essential.  For one thing, as Cascade Insights points out, “Today’s sales process is largely independent, with 68% of buyers preferring to research on their own before creating a shortlist. If your website doesn’t connect with your buyer’s priorities, or your content doesn’t show up where they are looking, you are likely to lose a lot of prospects that could have been leads.”

“As a consumer, I’m more likely to be a fan of and give repeat business to brands that know what I like and cater to my interests,” Flori Needle of Hubspot observes. After all, for any business, there are going to be customers who are simply too advanced for the product or service, or who engage with your content only to gain knowledge,( not as potential buyers).Meanwhile, 94% of marketers surveyed agreed that offering a personalized experience increases sales.

Just as Lee Hafner advises job candidates to be prepared to present their own “personas” by comparing themselves to specific animals, content marketers must be prepared to demonstrate they can meet their  target buyer’s specific needs, behavior, and concerns.

At Say It For You, we know.  As content marketers, we caution our business owner and professional practitioner clients that their business or practice cannot ever be all things to all people.  We explain that the content marketing we will be doing for them will need to be tailor-made for their ideal customers.  That “tailoring” includes:

  • what words we use
  • how technical we get
  • how sophisticated the approach will be in each article or post

What-would-you-do-if content means anticipating how “they” (those readers, not the average reader) might react to or feel about our approach to the subject at hand?

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