How to Create a Connection Flipbook PDF

Tips and insights on creating long-lasting customer-business connections through personal yet impressionable content mar

---

110 Views
28 Downloads
FLIP PDF 5.34MB

DOWNLOAD FLIP

REPORT DMCA

How to...

LITTLE LEAF COPY EDITING

CREATE A CONNECTION

Understand Your Customers,  Connect with Content 

Tips and insights on creating long-lasting customer-business connections through personal yet impressionable content marketing.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, "Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action" ("What Is Content Marketing?," 2019). At the heart of content marketing is the purpose of making a connection.

With traditional sales marketing, the focus is on selling and promoting a product or service. Content marketing takes a different approach. It focuses more on what customers need, and it gives customers a valuable takeaway, one which they can immediately use, sometimes without even making a purchase.

CONTENT MARKETING

HOW CONTENT MARKETING WORKS

While the goal of content marketing is to make a business’s brand visible, an even more important goal is to develop trust between the business and its customers. Every blog post, newsletter, and social media newsfeed should communicate why a business exists and how it can meet customers' needs. Even more, every piece of content should give readers something that will answer their questions, aid them in solving a problem, or prompt them to think about a service or product differently.

The return on investment with content marketing has more do to with long-term rewards than it has to do with shortterm profits. A blog, for instance, informs an audience over a span of time and with a breadth of helpful topics. Potential customers may not consider purchasing a service or product until months or years later, but the blog provides them with consistent, useful content while they are making that decision. Successful content marketers know they’ll be in their line of work for the long-haul before

they see the rewards for their efforts. But as Bernadette Jiwa notes, "As businesses owners, leaders and creators, we can adopt one of two strategies. We can build a business with the intention of getting more customers, or we can want more for our customers" ("More Customers Vs. More For Customers," December 2018). More for our customers. That is where the value of content marketing lies. Not in the reach or the likes, but in what customers take away.

LONGTERM VALUE Some marketing efforts are designed for quick responses. Take, for instance, the ten budget-friendly marketing options that John Pearson describes in "Top 10 Marketing Ideas for Small Business" (December 2018). These options, many of which rely on pounding the pavement, spreading news by word-of-mouth, boosting visibility with logos, and offering incentives, are perfect ways for small businesses to create avenues for instant and repeated discovery. But after the initial introduction (the flyer in the café, the coupon, the quick “hi, I’m here” chat) or even the sixth or seventh visual contact, something must pick up where these marketing efforts leave off. Something must go deeper than surface-level promotions to connect with customers for the long-term. This is where content marketing comes in. Consider, for instance, a monthly newsletter that offers helpful tips and tells customers of new resources, the weekly blog post that relates to customers’ problems and perspectives and establishes you as the expert in your field, the video or ebook that walks a customer through a process from beginning to end.

Content marketing builds a notable presence. It continually reminds customers why your business exists. It shares with them the value of your service or product. It encourages them to consider your business apart from someone else’s. It prompts them to come back. We all want our businesses to be first and foremost in potential customers’ minds. And, yes, we want to see an immediate return on our marketing efforts. The gradual impact that content marketing makes, however, produces the long-term results every business needs to be successful.

LONGTERM VALUE Some marketing efforts are designed for quick responses. Take, for instance, the ten budget-friendly marketing options that John Pearson describes in "Top 10 Marketing Ideas for Small Business" (December 2018). These options, many of which rely on pounding the pavement, spreading news by word-of-mouth, boosting visibility with logos, and offering incentives, are perfect ways for small businesses to create avenues for instant and repeated discovery. But after the initial introduction (the flyer in the café, the coupon, the quick “hi, I’m here” chat) or even the sixth or seventh visual contact, something must pick up where these marketing efforts leave off. Something must go deeper than surface-level promotions to connect with customers for the long-term. This is where content marketing comes in. Consider, for instance, a monthly newsletter that offers helpful tips and tells customers of new resources, the weekly blog post that relates to customers’ problems and perspectives and establishes you as the expert in your field, the video or ebook that walks a customer through a process from beginning to end.

Content marketing builds a notable presence. It continually reminds customers why your business exists. It shares with them the value of your service or product. It encourages them to consider your business apart from someone else’s. It prompts them to come back. We all want our businesses to be first and foremost in potential customers’ minds. And, yes, we want to see an immediate return on our marketing efforts. The gradual impact that content marketing makes, however, produces the long-term results every business needs to be successful.

DIGITAL MARKETING'S SHORTFALLS

Before the digital age, businesses relied on traditional advertising to reach their customers. Stores set placards on the walk outside their doors to invite customers in. On occasion, a clerk would stand outside the shop, offering samples to passers-by. News of the latest sale or the newest product spread by word-ofmouth and the Sunday paper advertisement.

ads, radio blurbs, and social media. While these methods can reach a broader audience at any time of the day, they are lacking in one particular area: connection. “Our focus on efficiency and scaling has taken us further away from our customers and made us less courageous marketers," Bernadette Jiwa notes ("Bolder, Braver, Better Marketing," May 2019).

Today, many businesses forego such tactics for more technologically-advanced methods: digital boards, T.V.

When a business has a storefront, it’s easy to bring back the more personal touches of traditional,

relationship-centered advertising. Yet online businesses also should pay attention to how they create connections, even if their customers don’t have an actual door to walk through. To leave a lasting impression, online businesses must make their experience inviting, helpful, and genuine. They must remember why they exist and whom they serve. In so doing, they must leave the distant, impersonal side of digital marketing behind.

NOT ABOUT SELLING

What are your thoughts on flash sales, clickbaits, and ads or posts that promise the latest and the greatest (but only if you act now!)? How often do you find that the sale wasn’t that great, the click wasn’t worth your time, and the promise fell short? Such ploys more often than not come across as sales-y, yucky, and downright sleazy. Yet the unfortunate truth is they work. But that doesn’t mean we business owners should use ploys for the sake of getting a quick sale. As Simon Sinek notes in his book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, marketing methods that focus on a quick profit may result in short-term advantages, but they rarely, if ever, result in loyal followers. Only authentic messages (and products or services) that inspire and are genuine will keep customers coming back. Ultimately, customers value content that serves more of a purpose than simply calling attention to itself. What counts is not what is being sold but rather how the customer feels. Effective marketing content, the type that makes viewers and readers say “I agree” or “you got me,” reaches its audience on an emotional level.

When the focus shifts from making a sale to making a connection, marketing evolves. Small businesses especially rely on connecting with customers on a more personal level. Thus, the old ways of marketing automatically get set aside. Instead of flash sales and other fear- or guilt-ridden incentives, we small business owners provide the best possible service or product with authenticity and gratitude. Our customers are what make our business. Making sales is simply proof of how well we meet our customers’ needs. But what must we really do to make a connection through our marketing content?

Regardless of what kind of marketing you do, the success of any marketing plan depends on clarifying your audience. Demographic details such as age, location, occupation, social class, etc. are important. If the content you’re writing is most suited for people within a certain group, knowing the make-up of that group is relevant. That's why marketers often develop buyer personas to determine their target audience.

Hubspot defines buyer personas as “semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on real data and some select educated speculation about customer demographics, behaviors, motivations, and goals” (Hubspot Academy, Inbound Marketing course, 2018). In many ways, buyer personas work; in other ways, not so much. How, then, do you know if buyer personas are the way to go?

KNOW  YOUR CUSTOMERS

BUYER PERSONAS: TO USE OR NOT TO USE?

At their best, buyer personas give business owners an informed perception of who they serve and why. At their worst, these personas can become too limiting, even stereotypical. In a recent article ("Do You Think Stereotypes and Personas Are Synonymous?," May 2019) where Ann Gynn and her team interviewed several marketing experts and asked them to weigh the pros and cons of buyer personas, Elliott Brown of Back Office Basics argues that marketers should take their buyer personas from “a cardboard cutout to a real persona” with identifiable problems and struggles. Similarly, Kelsey Ferrara of Ink Smith Publishing notes, “You need to acknowledge that you’re selling a product to three-dimensional people who are complicated and have a variety of interests and needs.” Whether you’re an author writing for a specific readership or a business owner targeting a unique customer base, the most thought out buyer personas mean nothing if real people don’t actually make those personas come to life.

The solution, Dana Sitar explains, is to name actual, real people who fit the personas you create. “[W]hen you force yourself to imagine real people reading your work and ask specific questions about how they’ll react, you can’t just zhuzh up your answers to align with what you’re committed to writing,” she states ("Who Is Your Target Audience? Use This Simple Trick to Figure Out If They Actually Exist," February 2019).

In all, developing buyer personas is an effective way to visualize an audience’s unique attributes and characteristics. If you find that your content isn’t getting quite the attention you’d like, though, consider replacing imaginary personas with real people. Doing so may be the key to revealing the audience you really should be marketing to.

MAKE IT PERSONAL

Once you've honed in on your target audience, you can then begin to clarify even more the focus of your content. What you write about can often determine how much your potential customers will pay attention (to the content itself and to your business).

In content marketing, we writers are advised to write content that shares something of value to customers, whether that be a solution to a problem, a lesson about a topic, or an answer to a question. Certainly, this type of content has its purpose. But such articles aren’t that engaging…unless their stories are “small.”

often best told in small and specific ways," she notes. Small stories tell about one particular situation, one particular person, one particular success. They demonstrate how a product or service works by making the situation or person or success relatable. When customers can “see” themselves in the stories Consider your reading habits. we write, they will be more apt What kinds of industry-related to take notice. That's why what Ann Handley discusses the blog posts and articles do you we write should be specific to like to read? Which ones draw difference between “small our particular brand but, even stories” and “big stories" in "Why your attention more than more, should connect with our We Need Smaller Stories in others? What makes the customers personally. Content Marketing" (February difference…the source, the topic, the length? Or the story? 2019). “Big and bold stories are

CUSTOMERS' PAIN POINTS When explaining a business’s services or products, many of us can identify the common “pain points” that these services or products solve. But do we really understand why solving those pain points matters to customers? As with all of her posts, Bernadette Jiwa prompts business owners to dig deeper into their customers’ why in "What's At Stake For Your Customers?" (March 2019). Just identifying customers’ pain points isn’t enough. We have to internalize them. “[W]e might list the pain points of someone (like my mum), who has trouble opening jars with her arthritic hands, as impaired grip, limited mobility and so on,” Jiwa states. “But we form a more complete picture when we do the work of understanding the impact of those pain points. We get a sense of the emotional cost of living with those pain points when we think about what’s at stake for the person we want to serve.” Jiwa asks us to stand in our customers’ shoes and consider how our customers feel when they can’t accomplish what they want (see the examples to the right). Understanding that emotional weight reveals much more about the customers we serve.

Take, for instance, Jiwa's first fill-in-theblank statement: “I’m tired of doing [X] and not achieving [Y].” Some of my customers may fill in this statement as “I’m tired of trying to write something and yet never achieving a clear, concise message.” Or take this statement: “I’m tired of feeling [X] and never being [Y].” For this statement, some of my customers may think, “I’m tired of feeling embarrassed and never being confident in what I'm trying to write.”

Understanding the pain points our services or products solve is helpful in knowing why certain customers come to us and others don’t. Even more, that understanding reveals much more about the story we, as business owners, should be telling. As Melinda Emerson explains, "[Customers] don’t care how much better you think your product is than the competition; they want to know how it will help them save time, money or effort" ("Sell More in Your Small Business by Highlighting Benefits in Your Sales Pitch," March 2019).

Just as many of us hate when selfcentered people brag on and on, in-your-face marketing schemes that boast about a business’s success and greatness deter more than attract. Customers set us apart when we help them, not when we sell to them. By learning how to connect with our customers, we can make that lasting impression that will keep those customers coming back.

MAKE CUSTOMERS CARE

FINAL  THOUGHTS

In the early stages of owning a business, you may feel the pressure to take on any and every client who walks through your actual or virtual door. I certainly did. Over time, though, you’ll likely discover those customers you enjoy working with the most. These are the customers who value who you are and what you do. They are the customers who may need some information but likely don’t need much persuasion. They already understand why they need the services you provide.

What results is a marketing strategy that speaks less about the tangible what and more about the emotional why behind your business.

Developing content that speaks the right way to the right customers takes some experimentation, no doubt. But the more you understand the emotional connection For me, the services I offer help behind why your customers my customers put their best buy, the more you’ll be able to writing foot forward. Some market to them with purpose. customers simply seek Similarly, the more you’ll see affirmation that what they’re them respond in return. As writing is conveying the Bernadette Jiwa notes, “[H]ow message they desire. Others the recipient [i.e., your want their content to serve a customer] feels, not only what particular purpose and aren’t she thinks, determines what quite sure how to make it she does next," ("Say It With happen. Still others desire Intention," June 2019). nothing more than for me to take the writing off their hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hi! I'm Katie. I'm a writer, an avid reader, a doggy mom, and a pizza lover. Yup, that pretty much sums me up. But to get serious here... I'm a wordsmith who is passionate about English. For over twelve years, I've used my writing skills professionally. I've reviewed grant proposals; edited theses, dissertations, and manuscripts; taught college-level composition classes; assessed writing samples for job candidates; tutored students of all ages; and written content for websites, blogs, newsletters, and promotional materials. I recently held a workshop on business writing. Throughout my personal business ventures, I've learned how to manage a business, build a unique brand, create marketing content that connects with customers, and maintain an editorial calendar that keeps my website, blog, and social media pages fresh and upto-date. Credentials: Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Southern New Hampshire University, 2017 Master of Arts in English from South Dakota State University, 2007

© 2019 Little Leaf Copy Editing/Little Leaf  Copy, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Designed and written by Katie Pavel, Copy Editor and Content Writer. Headshot by Jenilynn Photography. All other photos courtesy of Unsplash and Pixabay. Visit www.littleleafcopyediting.com to learn more!