Blog Marketing to Increase Choice Confidence

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“Choice confidence is an important driver of buying behavior,” Associate Professor of Marketing Demetra Andrews writes in the Indianapolis Business Journal. Together with colleagues, Andrews examined the influence different forms and quantities of information on consumers’ willingness to buy, naming certain types that tend to be most effective in building buyer confidence:

  1. Information that is diagnostic makes it easier for prospects to distinguish the differences among available options.
  2. Increasing the number of “cues” (individual pieces of information) increases customers’ perception of their own knowledge.
  3. Information presented in verbal format (vs. numbers) is most effective in building purchase intentions.
  4. Product ratings increase choice confidence.
  5. Testimonials from “influencers”, including consumers who provide insights into their own experience with the product or service encourage confidence.

Each of these valuable insights can be translated into blog content creation:

Diagnostic information
In order to facilitate informed decisions by readers, data needs to be presented and “analyzed” and broken down in terms of results. Remember, searchers are asking themselves “What’s in it for me?” Along with features, effective blog posts describe benefits.

Increasing the number of “cues”
Chunking refers to the strategy of breaking down information into bite-sized pieces so the brain can more easily digest new information. Blog posts are ideal for serving up “bites” of information, creating impact over weeks and months.

Ratings and comparisons
One core function of blogs for business is explaining yourself, your business philosophy, your products, and your processes.  An effective blog clarifies what sales trainers like to call your “unique value proposition” in terms readers can understand.

Testimonials
Customer success stories and client testimonials boost your credibility with new prospects, helping them decide to do business with you. But, as webcopyplus.com explains, website testimonials “also foster commitment from those providing the testimonials.”

“By tailoring information form, format, quantity and source, businesses can help customers make better, more confident choices that will meet their needs,” Andrews concludes. By tailoring the presentation of information as presented in blog posts, content writers can enhance blog readers’ confidence and encourage them to become customers.

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Blogging for Window Shoppers and Tire Kickers

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“Many of the folks who come to see me aren’t necessarily looking for a new plan or a new planner,” financial advisor Zach Fox, AAMS®, says. “They may just be looking for confidence in their existing plan.”

Diane Wingerter, certified grantwriter and owner of GrantWriting for Goodness™, agrees. “Yes”, “no”, “maybe”, or “not now” are all possible responses by people who are seeking funding – or, indeed, by funders themselves, she notes.

Blog marketers need to approach readers with a similar mindset. Will blog marketing “close deals” in the same manner as a face-to-face encounter between a prospect and a sales professional? Of course not. Hubspot blogger Corey Wainwright lists some of the indirect selling benefits of blogs and their place in the sales process:

  • If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes.
  • Prospects that have been reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales process more educated about your place in the market, your industry, and what you have to offer.
  • Salespeople who encounter specific questions that require in-depth explanation or a documented answer can pull from an archive of blog posts.

Blogging is what marketing firm pardot.com calls stage-based, meaning that prospects move through different stages of the sales cycle. In one study, Pardot found that B2B consumers started their research with Google, then returned two or three times for more specific information. For prospects at the top of the “funnel”, the most effective content will be light, educational and product-neutral. Later in the cycle, readers who are already sold on your industry, just deciding among vendors or providers, need more specific information.

The “maybes”, the “not nows”, and readers looking only to bolster their confidence in their existing plans or product choices will come away with a positive experience and valuable information. On the other hand, readers who have reached the final decision-making stage might just be ready to consider your unique value propositions and to follow one of your Calls to Action.

In blog marketing, don’t ignore the window shoppers and tire-kickers!

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Calls to Action Must make Clear Who’s Asking – and of Whom

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For blog content writers, there’s a moral to the following humorous anecdote I found in Readers Digest:

          Eating breakfast at a diner, a man who had a cup of coffee but no spoon called out to the waitress, “Excuse me, but this coffee is too hot to stir with my finger.” A minute later, the waitress returned with another cup of coffee saying “Here, this one isn’t so hot.”

Sometimes the same type of misunderstanding can elicit the wrong reaction from readers of our blog posts. “We live in a culture of information-saturation. Consumers today are highly-distracted, which is why you need to end your posts with a bang, by including enticing, well-written calls to action,” writtent.com suggests.

In the story, of course, the diner did not know the waitress. Perhaps he thought the humorous approach (talking about stirring the coffee with his finger) would stimulate a smile plus a quick response from the server. He obviously judged the situation incorrectly. As the Brussels event planning firm Spacehuntr cautions, in blogging you have to know your target audience before asking them to act.

When building a plan to connect with an audience, Francesca Pinder advises, consider not only age, gender, and nationality, but where your target readers “hang out”, what they read and watch, and what they’re saying on social media.. Interviews, focus groups, and a lot of very alert listening can help you understand what causes they support.

As content writers, we cannot position ourselves (or our clients) within the marketplace without studying the surroundings for our target audience. And, for blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning and differentiating statements to let readers know who’s asking for the action.

Years ago, I heard a speaker say that if your marketing isn’t working, you might have the wrong story, the wrong stuff, or the wrong audience. In the Readers Digest story, the “audience” was the right one (the server was the correct person from whom to request a utensil); what was wrong was the way the request was worded.

In blogging for business, if you know your target audience, you’re more likely to find the right way to approach them in asking them to take action.

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Easy Martha Stewart-Inspired Updates for Blog Content

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“To invigorate the look of old china on your table,” Martha Stewart advises on the “Easy Updates” page of her latest Living magazine issue, “identify common shapes and details to weave through the new elements.” Stewart suggests three specific updating techniques:

  1. Add new patterns.
  2. Play up one color.
  3. Mix mod materials.

Along with antique tableware, blog content can benefit from updating, as we teach at Say It For You, and each of Martha’s tips can serve as a guide for giving a bygone blog post a freshening-up. After all, as Richard Harding Davis so aptly remarked, “The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way, or an old thing in an old way.”

Add New Patterns
“Stick to the colors of your old china to keep the table cohesive, but mix in a serving piece with another motif that compliments it.” In composing blog content, it’s a good idea to repeat themes already covered in former posts, but the trick is to change the pattern by a) adding new information and b) using a different format – listicle, Q&A, comparison, etc.

 

Play Up One Color
“Choose a shade from your pattern that you want to highlight, and let it fly in accent pieces like linens or glasses.” In a blog post or series, link new information to themes you’ve emphasized in former posts, “coloring” new concepts or information by referring to concepts you’ve introduced months or even years ago. As Martha Stewart suggests, the old and new are unified through “color”.

 

Mix Mod Materials
“Elevate older porcelain with glass, wood, metal, or ceramic items that add texture and dimension to your table,” Finding word combinations that resonate with blog readers is a big part of the challenge involved in blog content writing. Since there is a definite generational factor involved in language, knowing your target audience is key. In different posts, therefore, you can alternate a friendly, even humorous tone with a professional, authoritative one.

 

In table settings or in blog content writing, invigorate the look of the old “china” with new patterns and colors.

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All You Have to Do is Blog

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According to the 1-800-GOT-JUNK commercial, when you want something removed from your home or yard, “All you have to do is point” As a blog content writer, I love that commercial.

“Persuasive ads are advertisements designed to elicit a desired action,” Mary Lister writes in Wordstream. Ad campaigns for products or services are designed to communicate two main ideas:

  1. Problems your product or service solves
  2. Ways your product or service does that better/quicker/cheaper than that of your competitors.

Confession – for me as a consumer, there’s always been a third piece. I’m not handy. And, since I don’t know how to assemble, much less fix, mechanical devices or pieces of furniture, I’m always looking for what’s going to be required of me in the process of achieving a solution to my problem or fulfilling my need.

The 1-800-GOT-JUNK motto must have been made for people like me. Right up front, they’re assuring me that they will handle the issue, do the dirty work, figure it out. All I have to do is identify the problem.

All business owners and practitioners have products and services to sell. But sometimes, the marketing and advertising skips over the convenience factor.

A little over ten years ago, an editorial cartoon in the Indianapolis Business Journal showed a harried lady returning a gadget to a merchant’s Returns window. “It’s not that I don’t like the product,” she said – “I just can’t get it out of the package!”

  • Yes, you understand your target audience and the specific problems they’re facing.
  • Yes, your product or service provides a way to solve those problems.
  • Yes, your product/service compares favorably to others on the market.
  • Yes, but…but…but, just how much effort am I going to need to expend to “get it out of the package”?

Put yourself in the shoes of your online visitors:

How easy is it for them to navigate your website? Follow your Calls to Action? Set up an appointment with you? Pick up the phone and call if they choose to? (Is your phone number clearly displayed on the page?)

How easy is it going to be for a prospect to: get started on that program you’re touting? Start on the diet plan? Install the app or get the device to function?

Let them know – “all you have to do is…….._!

Borrowing the line from 1-800-GOT-JUNK, blog marketers’ new mantra might well be this:

All you have to do is blog!

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