Aiming Content at Aspirational Appeal

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“Leaders must foster empathy – a deep understanding f the customers’ needs, emotions, and aspirations,” Ali Safaraz, CEO of Pathway Group advises in Britain’s The Business Influencer  Magazine. Knowledge of those aspirations must drive your approach, he explains.

Joel Swenson, writing in the July/August issue of Success Magazine, echoes that advice when it comes to making decisions about incorporating AI. In “Choose Wisely”, Swanson says that not only is it important to decide what data will be used in the decision-making process and how results will be tested, but also to understand the “aspiration”. In other words, what will “success” look like?

“An aspirational goal imagines what could be possible for your organization if there were no limits,” hypergrowthmarketer.com explains. “Even if unmet, aspirational goals can result in incredible achievements.”

To reify is to make something abstract more concrete or real, and, as authors Chevette Alston and Lesley Chapel explain in study.com, reification can turn language abstractions into tangible understanding. One of the challenges we face as content marketers is explaining abstract concepts in the right way. In fact, doing just that makes the difference between business success and business failure.

Over the years of creating content for Say It For You clients, I’ve come to realize, while we’re writing about very real products and services, describing those, not in the abstract, but in a very real sense, we can go “further and deeper”, aiming for the aspirational, introducing possibilities for utility and wellness readers hadn’t ever considered.

What I believe content writing is really about, I explain to business and practice owners, is providing those who find your site with a taste of what it would be like to have you working alongside them to help with their challenges and issues. You want to broaden their field of vision for what can be accomplished, given the right tools and the right advice.

Content marketing can be more, much more, when content is aimed at aspirational appeal.

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“What-Just-Happened?” Content Marketing

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“Write a short story in which a person wakes up to find the world outside the front door has changed dramatically. What can they figure out in the first hour of this new situation?” Writer’s Digest contributor Amy Jones suggests to authors looking for fresh ideas.

Problem solution selling is a sales approach that aims to solve customer problems rather than just focusing on selling a product or service, Breakcold explains. “It requires a deep understanding of the customer’s pain points and challenges, and the ability to present a tailored solution that addresses those specific needs.”

While, in this Say It For You blog, we’ve often stressed how very important it is for content creators to understand the needs and concerns of the target audience, I think Amy Jones’ “What-just-happened?” approach goes a step further. When marketing a product or service that those prospects might very well have a need to use in the event of a future catastrophe or scarcity, the content marketing goal is to spur preventative action now.

Certainly, “disaster preparedness “ a set of actions before an event, can “avoid or at least lessen negative outcomes”,  but the challenge in marketing preventative tools – from back-up generators to regular HVAC checkups to long term care insurance — lies in evoking that “what-just-happened?” short story in readers’ minds.

“Agents must get customers to focus on the risks they face and the appropriate coverages, not on the price, Insurance Thought Leadership cautions.” .Without getting prospects to visualize “expensive emergency repairs and premature failures” , the advice given by an HVAC company to its prospects packs minimum power.

As content writers, we cannot position ourselves (or our clients) within the marketplace without studying the surroundings for our target audience. And, for content pieces to be effective, they must serve as positioning and differentiating statements to let readers know who’s asking for the action. That “action”, however, is unlikely to take place until and unless prospects are able to visualize that “what-just-happened?” scenario.

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Tell Them What They’re Getting for Their 1%

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Over time, in the financial planning industry, advisors went from phoning clients and executing transactions to fee-based money management. “It’s becoming a 1% business,” one advisor grumbled, noting that sometimes clients don’t “get” the total value of the relationship and the many ways planners can help their clients. Don’t those clients ever ask, he wonders, “What do I get for my 1%?”

The author, Bryce Sanders, proceeds to discuss different tangible benefits effective advisors can offer their money management clients, including

  • a dedicated advisor with whom you can meet face to face
  • a live person answering the phone
  • someone to help measure your progress towards your goals
  • college planning, retirement planning, and even some estate planning advice
  • referrals to specialists when needed

Sanders conclude his article with a point I find highly relevant to the work we do in content marketing: Advisors who seek to build long term relationships with clients, he emphasizes, “need to bring substantial value to the table to make this case. If the client feels they are getting substantial value, cost often becomes secondary.”

That is precisely the reader reaction we are after as business content writers, we realize at Say It For You. Content writers must learn to become value creators, and blog content is all about value, not pricing. . “People like to know how much stuff costs,” Marcus Sheridan of social media examiner.com warned. Still, at Say It For You, we don’t think price is the No. 1 consumer question on the minds of web searchers who land on our clients’ content. Instead, what the writing needs to do is provide value – answer questions, offer perspective and thought leadership.

Yes, inquiring minds want to know, and searchers need to know they’re being introduced to a business or practice where they can find value. Rather than emphasizing the 1%, tell ’em what they will be getting for their 1%!

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Can Nature Journaling Help Your Content Writing?

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“As you begin to explore a regular nature journaling practice, your skills will improve…You’ll aspire to write with more clarity, draw with more accurateness and learn about the flora, fauna, and natural phenomena that you’re observing,” Christine Elder tells kids and teens.

Nature journaling can help your writing in general, Marie Bengston asserts in Writer’s Digest.  “We need to conjure our written world with evocative, multi-sensory detail that immediately resonates with our reader,” she suggests.

For us creators of marketing content (our topic may or may not be related to nature), I think Bengston’s Three Prompts will prove particularly helpful: 

  1. I notice that…..
  2. I wonder if…..
  3. It reminds me of….:

I notice that… it’s essential for blog content writers to focus on a target audience, showing readers you’ve “noticed” them and have taken note of their unique preferences and needs.

I wonder if…In content marketing, the goal is to induce “wonder” in searchers who found their way to your site. Your post should have served up just enough food for thought to make them wonder if, after all, there are even more ways in which what you have to offer is exactly what they have to have! 

It reminds me of…In writing for business, the variety comes from the details you fill in around the central themes. Different examples of ways the company or practitioner helped solve various unusual problems in the past help reinforce the core advantages being offered.

  For content marketers, “journaling” might take the form of an “idea folder”. This could be an actual paper folder which we stuff with newspaper and magazine clippings, a notebook kept in a purse or pocket, or a digital file on a phone or tablet. Since at Say It For You, we train freelance content writers to “learn around”, the material they save up in that folder can help them keep track of what they notice, what they wonder, and what those tidbits call to mind.

Could getting into a journaling habit help your content writing?

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Another and Yet Another Almanac Tidbit

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Tuesday’s Say It For You blog post centered around one information tidbit from Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac, explaining what the “sugar plums” famously mentioned in “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. Today I’ll cite some other tidbits from the Almanac that I and fellow content marketers can put to good use in our content…

Tidbits about the history of popular products:

(Possible content writing purpose: educating readers about the history of the product the client manufactures or sells)

  1.  The origin of Rubik’s Cube
    The Rubik’s Cube, never intended as a toy, was a 3-D model used by a Hungarian professor more than fifty years ago to explain spatial relationships to design students.
  1. The origin of Post-It Notes
    A chemist at 3M Company found the slips of paper he used to mark his place in the church hymnal book would not stay put. Wondering if an adhesive previously created by a colleague (a product which had been considered useless because it was not very sticky or strong) might work on paper…  

Tidbits about company or product names:

(Possible content writing purpose: educating readers about the history of the company and choice of company name) 

  1. The sport of volleyball
    As educational director of the YMCA in Holyoke, Mass, William Morgan noticed that not al the men had the vigor and stamina needed to play basketball. He invented s sport he called “mintonette”, asking A.G. Spaulding & Bros. to develop a ball for the new sport. The game proved a hit, but one delegate was troubled by the name and suggested “volleyball”.
  2. From one code to another
    When Drexel Institute of Technology graduates Joseph Woodland and Bernard Sliver discovered a way to stock and track inventory, they filed a patent describing  “article classification through the medium of identifying patterns”. Since Woodland knew Morse Code, the new technology was named the barcode.

Tasty “almanac tidbits” help content readers who visit the website feel an “I’m-in-the-know” connection with the providers of products and services.

 

 

 

 

 

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