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Blogging to the Smarter Buyer

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”Smart buyers want to gain as much as possible while spending as little as possible,” Tom Sant teaches in his book Persuasive Business Proposals. “If you don’t show them how much they gain by choosing your recommendations, they will inevitably focus on the other half of the equation, spending very little.”

Several of the elements Sant stresses concerning proposals can be especially important in blog marketing:

1. Smart buyers want a business proposal to address their issues or problems right away, giving them assurance that the recommendations will be relevant.
At Say It For You, we emphatically agree. Corporate blog writing for business, will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers, the first or which is that the business owner or professional practitioner understands online searchers’ concerns and needs. That assurance need to find expression early in the blog post content.

2.  Smart buyers want clear, specific recommendations tied back to solving those problems.
Buyers need to understand that you and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs. Since, other than the clues offered through the words searchers have chosen to type into the search bar, their individual needs are as yet unknown to you, include anecdotes as examples of common issues that have been solved using your products and expertise.

3.  Smart buyers want evidence that the vendor can deliver on time and on budget.
At Say it For You, we realize that having a specific audience in mind and choosing the best evidence for that target audience is crucial.. It’s specific evidence that will resonate with the right audience, including:

  • statistics about the problem your product or service helps solve
  • your years of experience, degrees, newspaper articles written by or about your business or practice
  • testimonials

Choosing the best blog marketing evidence is crucial!

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Blogging for Business’ Sake

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It’s a wonder more companies don’t do it,” Paul Gillin, B2b Content strategist, observes, referring to topical blogs. Topical blogs, Gillin says, connect with customers about topics that are mutually interesting. The purpose of a topical blog, he says is to “offer practical information that helps readers be more successful and productive, thereby associating the sponsor with that expertise.”

Serving as a “go-to” source for online readers can be a winning strategy for business owners, showcasing the blog content writer’s own expertise while offering useful, actionable, information to readers. This is in no way disingenuous, we firmly believe at Say It For You, because when people go online to search for information about a product or service, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to capture business.

“An advertorial is ‘softly softly’ advertising,” cautions write.co.nz. The art of writing a good advertorial, write.co explains, is getting the right balance between story and sale. “An effective call to action will act as a logical extension of your blog posts, the authors of the Ivy Tech Study Power Leaders’ Guide add. “Your calls to action should never seem abrupt, or you’ll struggle to get the reaction you’d hoped.”

According to About.Com, “a Subject Matter Expert is an individual who understands a business process or area well enough to answer questions from people in other groups who are trying to help.” Individuals designated as subject matter experts (SMEs) are sought out by others interested in solving solve specific problems meeting challenges. Provide good useful information and establish trust and credibility – sales will follow,” Think eBiz Blog concludes.

The stance we’ve adopted at Say It For You in our blog content writing is this: If the information in a blog is “topical”, meaning it’s relevant to the search, helpful and useful, with no hint of a hard-sell, most readers are perfectly OK with the concept that the company providing the information would like to have them customers or clients.

Because readers understand that they are the ones in control, we believe, they have no trouble being “softly softly sold”.

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The Importance of Communication During a Business Crisis

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This guest post was contributed by New Hampshire business advisor Kimberly Gilbert. With years of experience in health and safety consulting and a degree in Business Management, Kim Gilbert hopes to help small businesses thrive in the pandemic economy. You may visit Kim’s website at https://www.gilbertbusinessconsulting.com . 

 

 

As the leader of your business, effective and consistent communication between you and your customers is the critical factor in maintaining solid business operations. This applies not only to communications with customers during the pandemic, but also going forward in the new, unknown normal.

Here are three key points to consider when you are ensuring that your business lines of communication are open during a crisis:

Add useful content to your website
It goes without saying that, for those business owners who maintain a website, it is important to keep all contact information and hours of operation prominently displayed, as well as the business’ COVID plan if the business has direct contact with customers.

But consider going a step further and add something MORE to your site, such as a blog with helpful hints or information pertinent to your business or industry that is beneficial to your customers. This will demonstrate your full engagement and concern for your customer’s welfare, and allow real-time feedback from your target audience. A reader may comment on your suggestions, or suggest an issue that you may be able to address that you hadn’t thought of beforehand.
(If you are not able to create this type of content with the resources you have in-house, there are a host of good writers such as those at Say It For You who are ready and able to assist!)

Coordinate the use of your social media sites
Many businesses use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or other social media sites in lieu of a website. If your company already has one or more established social media sites, be sure to keep them up to date as much as possible. Consider posting on a regular schedule, or when there are updates that should be broadcasted—change in hours, new products, new services, etc.

You do not need to overload yourself on this, but be positive and provide good content. Again, if your business lacks the resources or personnel to do this type of work, a ghost writer will be your next best friend!

As mentioned above, consistency in your message is very important. To maintain uniformity of your message across multiple platforms, consider using a Customer Relation Management (CRM) service, such as Hootsuite. Your content for multiple social media sites can be updated in one centralized spot. This will save you time!

Use your best marketing tool
According to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, email marketing is 40 times more effective than social media campaigns. This opportunity can’t be passed up, especially if you already have an established customer database. Use it to the max!

Topics to include in regular emails can range from updating your customers on your company status, offering new products or services, or just checking on your customers to see how they are faring during the pandemic. You will be amazed at the response!

An email campaign is especially useful if you have moved some (or all) of your business online, and would like to notify all of your previous and current customers.

If you haven’t already, consider using a service such as MailChimp or MailerLite to compile and grow your list. If you can’t find the time to write, again, consider hiring a ghost writer, like Say It For You, to craft a message in your voice, specific to your customer’s needs. Even better, consider sending a series of themed emails as part of an outreach campaign.

Whichever methods you chose to communicate with your customers, ensure that your message is positive, consistent, and empathetic. And always remember that there are resources to assist with the content of those messages!

 

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In Blogging for Business, the Operative Word Isn’t “Anyone”!

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“What do you notice when you visit a model home in a new development? Often you will find wonderfully furnished and decorated rooms that anyone could live in.” So begins an article I received the other day from my realtor friend Gadi Boukai, stressing that “the operative word is ‘anyone’”. Professionals who set up a model home make it anonymous for a reason, the article goes on to explain. They want buyers to view it as their potential home, not someone else’s. Those professionals know – based on decades of experience, that this strategy helps sell houses faster and at a better price.

Interesting, because, at Say It For You, we realize that with blog content writing, the exact opposite might be the case. 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 are most likely to 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, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it.

The home viewers my friend Gadi is describing are clearly already interested in buying a home; they know what overall indoor and outdoor space and amenity needs they have, and they are looking to “match” those needs with the home they’re viewing. The “blanker’ the canvas, the easier it will be for that “match” to take place. Similarly, the only prospects who are likely to visit your blog are those searching for information on precisely what you sell, what you know, and what you know how to do.

The difference is, the blog content needs to ‘hit the spot” with visitors in a very targeted and individual way, differentiating your products or services from those offered by your competitors. With millions of other blogs out there for searchers to find, it’s only highly specific evidence that will resonate with the right visitors. Not only is having a focused topic important in each blog post, writing content with a specific audience in mind (rather than appealing to anyone) will make the difference between success and failure.

Gadi’s customers need to “see themselves” living in the home they’re touring, making their own mental and emotional “match” with those surroundings. With blog visitors, it’s the same, yet different. Your website content and blog posts can demonstrate that you’re offering all the right products and services, the ones your online visitors need. Despite that, you might still be experiencing a very high “bounce rate”, meaning that visitors to your blog are thinking to themselves “No, that’s not what I meant!” As part of their visit to your site, you have to appropriately signal to your visitor that you understand, serve, and most important, understand the situations and challenges they have faced in prior situations of  using your type of product or service.

Home buyers (at least it was that way pre-COVID-19!) are typically are left to roam the home on their own, “seeing” if this is the place for them. In contrast, with blog marketing, the content needs to put out targeted ‘prompts”. The business owner or professional practitioner is in essence telling the visitor -“To me, you’re not just anyone – I see you. I really see you!”

 

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