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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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First, Offer Readers the Right Questions

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When it comes to interest rates, “investors are seeking the right answers to the wrong questions,” Boston-based MFS investment management portfolio manager and global investment strategist Robert Almeida suspects.  When planning a long-term investment portfolio strategy, the precise timing of a Fed rate cut is not the issue.  We should be asking what the fact that rate cuts are even being considered reveals about the fundamental health of our economy, Almeida asserts…

The most serious mistakes are not the result of wrong answers, the Corporate Learning Network editors agree.” The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.” Why is that so? “A wrong answer to the right question can, as a rule, be repaired and salvaged. But if you ask the wrong question and get the right answer, chances are it will take a lot longer to discover and inevitably lead to even more costly errors. As an example, the editors quote a comment by Steve Jobs on the birth of the automobile industry: “If Ford had asked people in a focus group what they wanted they would have said ‘faster horses’.”  Translation – your marketing content cannot focus on satisfying a need for your client’s product or service without prospects first recognizing that need! “You have to start with figuring out what problem you’re solving, instead of searching for the answer,” Nicolas Cole writes in Inc. Magazine. ” Great ideas are answers to the right questions.”

Duotech Services lists questions business owners should be asking possible vendors and suppliers, including:

  • Does your company have experience with a business like ours and understand our needs?
  • If there was a boost in productivity could your adjust to meet our increased needs? If we needed to slow down production, are you flexible enough to adjust to that reality?

(Notice that these questions are not centered around  cost, but around ease of communication and adaptability.)

Blog posts, as we so often stress at Say It For You, are not advertisements or sales pieces (even if increasing sales is the ultimate goal of the business owner).  Whatever “selling” goes on in effective content is indirect and comes out of business owners sharing their passion special expertise and insights in their field.  When content marketing “works”, readers are moved to think, “I want to do business with them!”.

Before offering solutions or answers, offer readers the right questions!

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Society-Happens-Here Content Marketing – Thanksgiving Food for Thought

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The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals a new paradox at the heart of society. Rapid innovation offers the promise of a new era of prosperity, yet most institutions, including government and the media, are not trusted to introduce these new innovations to society, and so people are looking to business leaders for guidance. That means business owners are expected to comment, not only on their own products and services, but on societal changes that affect their industry or profession…

At Say It For You, our content writers know readers are trusting our business owner and professional practitioner clients to help them with more than good products and skilled services. In addition to information, searchers need help making sense of all the changes happening in their neighborhoods and in their world.

“When customers provide more data, they expect better experiences,” salesforce.com cautions, so marketers need to create experiences that are:

  1. connected
  2. personalized
  3. immersive

What I’ve learned over the years of creating blog content for dozens and dozens of clients in different industries and professions is that, in order to “turn readers on”, we must incorporate one important ingredient – opinion. Taking a stance, I’ve found, is what gives content its “zip”. We must be influencers, I advise clients and blog content writers alike. Whether it’s business-to-business or business-to-consumer writing, the content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.
We need to be coming from a place of “who we are” as much as from a place of “what we offer”.

A content marketing alert: This Thanksgiving, an important part of our “food for thought” menu needs to be Society-happens-here content marketing.

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Tell Them How You Ship the Diamonds

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In Tuesday’s blog post I used the “Hear your happy holidays” headline of an AudioNova ad in the Indianapolis Star to illustrate the importance of results-driven marketing, suggesting that content marketers need to focus on results of using the product or service rather than on its features…

There’s more to it than that, however. As Seth Godin points out in his book This Is Marketing, as content marketers we need to differentiate the path our business owner or practitioner clients choose to take in helping their customers achieve those results. Diamonds, for example, can be transported in an armored car or put in a package and sent by mail. What is more likely to be valued by your customer – speed of delivery or safety? Dedicate effort to empathize with your audience, comprehend their obstacles, and reflect on how your offerings can assist them in reaching their objectives, Godin urges content creators.

“To put it as succinctly as possible, a key differentiator is a brand’s distinct and unique value that sets itself apart from its competitors within the market,” brandmasteracademy.com explains. Also known as the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) the differentiator answers the question: “Why should I choose this brand over its competitors?”

Interestingly, as Elizabeth Harr and Lee Frederiksen, PH.D point out in hingemarketing.com, many so-called differentiators make a company sound more like their competitors! To be effective, the authors explain, a differentiator must meet three criteria:

  • It must be true.
  • It must be relevant to potential clients.
  • It must be provable.

In Get Different: Marketing That Can’t Be Ignored, Mike Michalowicz remarks that, to customers, “better” might not actually be better. Different is better.The author tells business owners to discover their best “est” – Are you the oddest? Hokiest? Sharpest? Fastest? Safest?

In all your content marketing, tell them just how AudioNova will help them hear the holidays. What about your diamonds? Will you be shipping them via the U.S. Postal Service or using armored cars?

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Hearing-Your-Happy Results-Driven Content

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As I worked my way through the news stories in my Indianapolis Star newspaper (yes, I still enjoy the print version), my eye was caught by an AudioNova hearing aid ad on page 6. The headline read: “Hear your happy holidays”.

At Say It For You, we understand that the focus in both the headline and the body of content written to market a product or service needs to be on the results of using the product or service rather than on its features. While online visitors may lack experience with the latest processes or the technology in your field of expertise, they know what their own needs are. The creators of the AudioNova ad know exactly what their buyers want – they want to hear! What outcomes are going to mean the most to members of your target audience? Lead with those.

“The psychology of advertising focuses on building empathy towards a product or service to help you become more inclined to buy or use it,” Psych Central explains. “Think of amusement park commercials that show people having fun, riding roller coasters, and enjoying an activity-filled day. This creates excitement around the park and lets you believe that you can recreate this excitement if you visit.” As shown in the AudioNova ad, the concept is to have prospects envision themselves enjoying the results a purchase might bring to them.

Ad executive David Ogilvy said that, on the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar, he would say. In other words, to create a successful piece, spend 80% of your time nailing the headline. storychief.io agrees: “Direct headlines clearly state the purpose of the ad or key offer upfront. They summarize the core benefit or product in a concise, often single-sentence headline and ought to be:

  • attention-stealing
  • informative
  • relevant to the target audience.

Of course, it’s not only the headline of a content marketing piece that must be relevant; the content of the article or post itself must deliver on its purpose, Story Chief stresses, “going to the heart of the reader’s problem – their confusion, their doubt, their ambition…” What content creation is all about is “handing readers tools with which to reach their goals.”

Results-driven content helps readers “hear their happy”!

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