Hurt and Rescue in Blogging for Business

“When developing a business interest you have to assume a problem that you can promise to solve,” author D. Forbes Ley was advising sales professionals thirty years ago.  This week my Say It For You blog posts are devoted to some of the gems in Ley’s book “The Best Seller”. While SEO blog marketing wasn’t even a gleam in the eye when that book came out, it’s amazing how relevant the ideas are for blog content writers today.

Once buyers have developed an emotional interest in your product, they will reveal that with “buying signals”, Ley explained.  But, he continues, “when the prospects are still undecided because of lack of Want, you have to remind them of their hurt and rescue them.” Ley calls that the “Hurt and Rescue” selling tactic.

In corporate blog writing for business, a much softer approach is called for than the sort of face-to-face selling Forbes Ley was describing. Still, it occurs to me, reading that chapter of his book, that SEO marketing blogs will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers, and in the order presented here:

• It’s clear you (the business owner or professional practitioner) understand online searchers’ concerns and needs. That means calling to readers’ minds the costs, the risks, and the problems that drove them to seek information about what you know and what you know how to do.  In other words, the blog content puts the “hurt” front and center.  
   
• You and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs. That’s the “rescue”, the solutions your expertise and experience will bring to bear.

What D. Forbes Ley was advocating thirty years ago wasn’t the “hard-sell” or “scare tactic” approach (which wouldn’t have been welcomed by prospects then any more than they would today).

As a business blogging trainer, I think the lesson here to content writers is to identify ways in which something potential customers value could be in jeopardy.  We then assure searchers they’re not the only ones to find themselves in this predicament and show them we’ve solved these precise problems for customers and clients many times before.

Call it the “Hurt and Rescue” technique for blogging for business!