Tag: online business

We discussed in a previous post, the importance of capturing attention when carrying out marketing activities. To summarise what we covered in that post…

Marketing only works if you can first capture your prospect’s attention, otherwise all your other marketing efforts go to waste. Capturing your prospect’s attention is the combination of standing out from the crowd and providing something of value in the pursuit of one of their goals.

So that’s where we’ll pick things up.

Having won ourselves a few seconds of precious attention, nothing more, we must make the best of the time we’ve got. The question is, how can we maximise the opportunity?

Provide something valuable

We must ensure our sales patter is interesting, in that it provides some value that the prospect wants or needs in their journey towards the attainment of one or more of their goals.

A goal could be something big, like building their own business or making the next big phone app, or something small like having a clean car, or a new set of pots and pans to cook with.

There are a couple of ways to help them move towards their goals. The first is to show them your solution and explain the benefits and features of what you offer. If they are currently in the market for it, then as long as the price is right, the value is communicated, and they have enough trust in your ability to deliver on your promise, you’ll have a decent chance of them buying. Having said that, most prospects will be wary of committing straight away, without having previously built up some trust in you, your company or brand. This is particularly true if they have never heard of you before.

Build trust

There are several ways to building trust quickly. The first is to appear professional in the way you present yourself, your brand or business. You do this through your communication; such as signage, website, social media presence and literature.

The second way is to have a physical location (premises) which prospects can visit and check out. This gives the perception that you are rather more stable and dependable than if you were solely a web-based business. We’ve all experienced problems with internet only businesses who can’t be contacted easily when things go wrong.

Finally, one of the best ways of building trust quickly, particularly with regards to new prospects, is to have plenty of good, genuine customer reviews or testimonials, preferably stretching back over several years. This helps with the perception that you’ve been around a while. Good search engine rankings also help to demonstrate longevity, because they are difficult to circumvent.

Make it easy

Having minimal friction in your buying process will also give you more chance of getting a sale. The fewer hoops prospects have to jump through to buy from you, the better. This is why Amazon’s one click shopping option is so popular.

Brand building

I did say there were two ways to help move prospects towards their goal, we’ve covered what to do with those looking to buy straight away, but what about those that aren’t ready yet, but who may be in the next 30 or 60 days or so.

You can focus on building your brand with these prospects, by providing free extra value in some way. If you sell pots and pans, you may offer some great recipes that make use of those pots and pans. If you’re a car valet, you may provide free branded car air fresheners, or some tips and tricks to remove stains and spills from car upholstery.

What you’re trying to do, when giving out gifts, advice, tips and tricks, is build a relationship with prospects, so they get to know, like and trust you, so that when they are ready to buy, you are in the frame to make the sale. The things you do to provide the extra value must support your core offering, the thing you’re trying to sell to them, otherwise it won’t make any sense.

With that in mind, it’s better to keep adding value over time, rather than just doing it as a one off. By keeping your brand in the forefront of your prospects’ minds you will improve your chances of getting the sale when the time comes for them to buy.

Summary

Once you’ve captured your prospect’s attention, you have to provide something of value for them. You can do this through the benefits and features of your offering.

If prospects are ready to buy straight away, make sure your sales process is as frictionless as possible.

If they aren’t ready to buy just yet, either because they don’t want your solution right now, or they don’t trust you enough; work on building your brand with them, by providing free extra value. Keep adding value until they are ready to buy.

Check out our marketing guide for more marketing information.

Marketing requires you to first capture the attention of your prospects. If you’re unable to do so, you have no way of sharing your marketing message with them, and all your marketing efforts will go to waste.

Prospects are continually bombarded with information, as indeed we all are. To cope with the shear volume of incoming stimuli, choices are made, often on a subconscious level. We as humans tend to pay attention to things that are relevant to some kind of goal or pursuit we are trying to move towards. Everything else is ignored or filtered out from our conscious awareness, and may not even register with us.

To illustrate this point, check out this video.

Hopefully you now appreciate the fact that attention is limited, and goal focused. You ignored the gorilla because your attention was busy focusing on counting the passes of the ball. The goal required you to keep your eye on just the ball and ignore everything else that didn’t contribute to that.

Marketing to a captive audience

You might think it would be easier to market to a captive audience. For example let’s say you are advertising on the TV or on the radio or even in the pre-roll of a YouTube video. Your audience is already watching or listening, so they can’t escape your advert.

But ask yourself, when was the last time you really paid attention to the adverts in such situations. You either reach for your phone, to see what notifications you’ve missed, or you tune out, while thinking about something else.

Marketing on a busy platform

If your advertising on a busy platform, say social media, then engagement is much harder to achieve. You are then competing with everything else that can steal your prospect’s attention away. Let’s consider the example of running an advert on their Facebook feed.

Your marketing message will compete with status updates from your prospect’s friends and family. As well as engaging entertainment posts related to their interests. So you need to stop them scrolling past your advert, by appealing to their interests and/or goals.

Searching or not

Imagine you’re a florist, and Valentines day is just around the corner. You know that people are likely to be in the market for buying flowers, so presenting them with a unique offer, is probably going to get them to stop for a moment to check your advert out. If there is no special occasion imminent, then creating an excuse for them to surprise their partner may be required.

The fact that they are not actively searching for something to buy, makes the sale a little more difficult. They will probably just scroll straight past your advert, without giving it a second thought. So you may have to rely on eye-catching imagery to get them to stop and see what’s on show.

Stand out

High quality images are more attention-getting than static text, and video is often more engaging than images. You must find a way of standing out from the other content, to catch their eye.

We humans take notice of changes and differences. It’s hard-wired into us, at an instinctive, self-preservation level. If our ancestor didn’t pay attention to changes in their surroundings, it could have resulted in them being eaten by a predator. Our subconscious picks up on such things before we’re even consciously aware of it. And although we’re unlikely to be eaten when scrolling through our Facebook feed, our instinct still reacts as if we might.

So make sure your marketing message doesn’t blend in with all the other content. Make it stand out by contrasting in some noticeable way. Usually this needs to be done visually, because sound is often muted on social media. However, there is no one-fits-all solution available, only by testing alternatives can you see what works best for your particular situation.

Summary

So in summary, marketing only works if you can first capture your prospect’s attention, otherwise all your other marketing efforts go to waste. Capturing your prospect’s attention is the combination of standing out from the crowd and providing something of value in the pursuit of one of their goals.

What next

Once you’ve captured your prospect’s attention, you need to deliver a message that pulls them in to your offering, so they’ll want to find out more about you and your solution.

We’ve discussed this here: getting the sale.

Happy marketing until next time.

To successfully sell on social media, online or anywhere else, for that matter, two things are required..

Get Noticed

First, we have to get noticed. Think about it this way, what grabs you’re attention when you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed?

For adverts, that are designed to sell you something, it would usually have to provide something you want or need, a solution to a problem you have, presented in an eye-catching way.

Motion graphics will help you catch attention, and stop people scrolling past.

Call to action

The second thing required would be a clear “call to action”.

The call to action depends on what you want viewers to do after seeing your advert. The clearers and frictionless the process of carrying out that call to action is, the better.

When  talking about “friction” we’re not just talking solely about the physical things we want them to do, such as click here, enter your email address or add to cart, but also what we’re asking of them psychologically.

If they fear getting spammed by marketing messages, giving us their email address is not going to be as easy as it otherwise might be.

So whatever we are asking of them, we must make it both physically and psychologically as frictionless as possible. Make it as quick-and-easy as possible (one click is the ideal), with the minimum of risk attached to it (money back guarantee, free taster etc).

What else

Everything else you use in your advert is only required to support your call to action. Things like testimonials, engaging images and text should aim to support your message and improve trust and liking.

We can help you put out compelling promotions.

Check out our marketing guide.

Why Content is important

You’ve probably heard the term “content is king” countless times, and it’s ever more important in today’s internet-centric business environment.

The aim of content creation should be to allow your business to stand out from competitors, and help prospective customers get to know, like and trust you, so that they will, in time, consider doing business with you.

In other words content should be used to build your brand!

If you try to transact your prospects every time they interact with your brand, you will find you have to compete with all your competitors doing the same thing, and that can get expensive in terms of advertising costs.

Using advertising to first grab attention, then trying to convert prospects via a landing page or over the telephone is a big ask, and prospective customers are very guarded against slick sales messages. They will only consider you if you make the right first impression and are able to build trust quickly.

Consider an alternative solution, which is a longer term strategy but can  prepare the ground by building trust and goodwill with people that are not quite ready to buy just yet, but who might be in the next 30, 60 or 90 days. This is called content creation.

When it comes to creating content you should be looking to give visitors something for nothing, to provide value to them without asking for something in return. You should try to help your prospective customers get to know more about your brand, to get to like how you do business and allow them to build up trust in you.

So, create content that prospects want from the page they arrive at. Make sure your adverts or links from adverts or social media posts are clear, and informative and accurately reflect what you’ve promised them. Don’t promise something that you fail to follow through on, just to get them onto your website. That is the surest way to ruin your reputation and destroy trust.

Once they are on your page you need to understand who the prospective customer is, what is their desire? What solution are they seeking? What possible questions are they asking and wanting answered?

To provide value for them, you need to answer these questions effectively, thoroughly and as uniquely as possible. Don’t just regurgitate the same old information, that everyone else is doing. Instead do it in your own voice.

Some content ideas…
1. To build awareness on social media use ENGAGEMENT POSTS – any format, to get comments or a reaction (clicks) – this pushes up in news feed and can include questions, funny memes, photos with a question
2. To grow authority – Encourage testimonials, case studies, speaking engagements, you in action doing what you’re trying to sell – honoured rather than boastful
3. To get clients – leads (email list sign up or phone) and clients attraction. Questions, graphics, videos, gifs

To provide value;

• Be relevant – You must have content that interests your prospective customer, otherwise why would they be interested in what you have to say.
• Be contextual – formatted for each channel specifically. Try to reformat your content to suit where you want to be found. Vertical video works better on Facebook than it does on Youtube.
• Facilitate access,
• Be transparent – builds trust,
• Be authentic – be true to yourself,
• Inspire interaction – build community,
• Be current – so that you resonate with your audience today,
• Aim for connection – It’s better to be narrow and deep than wide and shallow- 100 loyal fans better than 10,000 none engaged followers.

Content should be made up of:

• Opinion,
• Expertise,
• Information,
• Insight,
• Access,
• Passion.

There are only 3 types of content when you boil it down.

Escapism and entertainment

Escapism – being removed from our mundane real life situation for a short time, to forget.

• humorous,
• clever,
• insightful,
• interesting (aligned with audiences interests),
• create a knowledge gap and fills it,
• curiosity,
• unexpectedness,
• surprise,
• inspirational,
• emotional,
• highlights a threat,
• challenge plot, creative plot, connection plot.

Information and utility

Providing information that will help prospects in some way to improve their understanding, increase their knowledge or make life easier or better in some way.

Core information your customers need to know about your products and company before they’ll include you in their consideration set.

• Product information,
• Customer FAQ’s,
• How – to’s,
• Styling,
• Customer ratings and review.

Ancillary content – This is the supporting and additional content. Think of ancillary content like the bonus tracks on a DVD.

• Take prospects behind-the-scenes,
• Let prospects get personal with your employees,
• Encourage customers to share photographs using your product.

Re-imagined content – Plan different versions of your content to ensure it’s contextually relevant to each specific platform. Again, this is best planned in advance to maximize resources and include it in your content creation contracts.

Provide Commentary – This is the related content and comments that your employees, customers and fans create in coordination or as a result of your core content.

Commentary works best when your audience creates it out their desire to share with their circle of friends and social connections such as Facebook and Instagram posts.

Internal content curation – This is where you maximize the value of your own previously published content by using it in the creation of new content and the re-promotion of old content, giving it new life. It has one or more of the following attributes.

• Make content contextually relevance,
• Extend content into a new format.

Some additional ideas..

• Target a new audience for old content,
• Provide access to a location, a person, an institution,
• Curation of other peoples content,
• Provide insight,
• Chart your own progress in some relevant endeavor,
  • Your journey to build your business – moving your business online,
  • Your progress in a new job,
  • Learning a new skill,
  • Put sales techniques into practice,
  • Sell something different every day testing your sales skills.
• Current niche trends,
  • Current trends/techniques,
  • Software trends if relevant,
  • Explore the topic more freely and in-depth,
  • Cover local issues,
  • Real estate – local amenities, history of area – reasons why it’s good living here,
  • Local relevant events.

Social

Connect people and community, to share ideas and stories.

Coming up with content ideas

Here are the 33 prompts that you can use to write just about ANYTHING… feel free to copy and paste them into notepad so you can use them every day when you sit down to write content.

• Ask a question,
• Reference current events,
• Create your own terms,
• Reveal news (new/introducing),
• Tell the reader to do something,
• Give stats,
• Make a comparison,
• Promise useful information,
• Direct offer,
• Tell a (quick) story,
• Make a recommendation,
• State benefits,
• Use a testimonial,
• Arouse curiosity,
• Promise to reveal a secret,
• Be ultra-specific,
• Target section of your audience,
• Time-based headline,
• Stress urgency,
• Scarcity of savings/value,
• Deliver good news,
• Challenge the reader,
• Highlight your guarantee,
• State the price (as benefit),
• Set up (seemingly),
• Contradiction,
• Address reader objection/concern,
• “As crazy as it sounds”,
• Take them to the promised land,
• Demonstrate ROI,
• Reason why headline,
• Stress cost saving and value,
• List / answer questions,
• State / deliver on reader’s goals,
• Highlight cost of mistakes.

Use this website for content ideas http://answerthepublic.com/ enter a keyword and it will suggest content ideas

Types of content

• List pages,
• Check lists,
• Resource lists,
• Lists of lists,
• News lists,
• Demonstration,
• Series,
• Infographics,
• How-to guides,
• Researched statistics,
• Timelines,
• Did you know,
• Flow charts,
• Whitepapers,
• Research,
• Trends,
• Topical guides,
• Beginner overviews,
• Downloadable guides,
• Live Blogging,
• Event coverage,
• Covering fast changing situations,
• Live Q&A’s,
• Round ups,
• News round-ups,
• From around the web,
• Summing up events,
• Q&A’s,
• Q&A session,
• Q&A for interviews,
• Q&A FAQ,
• Informal Q&A,
• Opinion pieces,
• Controversial posts,
• High level breakdown,
• Forecasting trends,
• Deep dive,
• New angle,
• Interviews,
• Industry leaders,
• Innovative companies,
• Topical expert,
• How to’s,
• Content curation,
• Case studies,
• Charts/graphs,
• Ebooks,
• Email Newsletters/Autoresponders,
• Cartoons/illustrations,
• Book Summaries,
• Tool Reviews,
• Giveaways,
• FAQ’s,
• Webinar,
• Guides,
• Dictionary,
• “Day in the life of” post,
• Interview,
• Lists,
• Mind Maps,
• Meme,
• Online Game,
• Helpful Application/tool,
• Opinion Post,
• White Papers,
• Vlog,
• Videos – screencasts, talking heads, illustrations, graphics, film roll,
• Podcasts,
• Templates,
• Surveys,
• Slideshares,
• Resources,
• Quotes,
• Polls,
• Podcasts,
• Pinboards,
• Photo Collage,
• Original Research,
• Press releases,
• Photos,
• Predictions,
• User Generated Content,
• Company news,
• Announcements,
• Timelines,
• Meme – Meme Generator and Quick Meme,

Even more..

• Social equity – introductions, access to contacts (interview, insight) – Leverage status (fame), membership (masons), contacts, relationships.
• Guides – A guide is a detailed and fairly long piece of content. Think of it as an epic blog post. It goes beyond the length, style, and approach of an ordinary blog post.
• Book reviews – A book review is a simple discussion of a book plus your take on it. You recommend good ones, critique not-so-good ones, and share the value that you glean from them. Book reviews are great because they help to position you as a thought leader.
• Opinion post (rant) – This style of post is substantially different from your typical blog post, mostly due to its tone. You may be used to publishing a careful and researched discussion of a topic. The rant or opinion, by contrast, may be stronger and more expressive. The more vociferous your position, the more it’s going to get read and shared.
• Product reviews – Like the book review, a product review can help establish authority and leadership in your industry. Every industry has its unique array of products, software, and services. When you engage key developers, manufacturers, or service providers, you gain recognition and respect. All you need to do is share your experience with the product and provide your recommendation.
• How to.. The how-to is one of the most popular types of content, especially in my niche. On my blog, I write a lot of how-to guides. How-to articles have awesome long tail search potential due to these popular long tail query introductions: “How to…” and “How do I…?”
• Lists – Lists have endless appeal. We’re wired to love them. Chance are you’re going to see or read an article today that involves some sort of a list — “5 Security Breaches You Need to Know about,” “17 Ways to Rank Higher in Google in One Month.” Hey, you’re already reading an article with the title “15 Types.”
• Link pages – link page is simply a post that provides links to great resources around the web. The great thing about link posts is that they spread link love to other sites, provide your own site with authoritative SEO signals, and assert your thought leadership within your field.
• Ebook – An ebook is long content packaged in a different format, usually as a PDF. Ebooks are often a downloadable product, available for free in exchange for joining a mailing list. Producing an ebook helps to strengthen your authority within a field, and it makes for a powerful method of sharing your knowledge with others.
• Case study – A case study explains what your product or service is and how it helped a client. The case study basically says, “here’s what we do, how we do it, and the results we get.”
• Podcast – Podcasts had their phase of popularity, and they’re still a great form of content. Plus, they’re not hard to create. Many people listen to podcasts during their commute or exercise. You have a chance to spread your message farther and better using this format than a lot of other formats.
• Interview – Every field has its leaders. When you’re able to interview a leader, you can garner a lot of respect from others in the field, not to mention huge amounts of traffic. Interviews are unique. No one else has this information — only you.
• Research and original data – Most of us work in data-intensive fields, where numbers and metrics hold a lot of value. Sharing your findings with others is a powerful way to drive traffic, build trust, and establish your authority. When you do the research, which is hard work, people respect that. What’s more, people share it.
• Contextualising,
• Communicating,
• Digesting info and regurgitating/repackaging and presenting it to your audience in a new package,
• Content curation and Content aggregation, where you filter good quality content for your readers, this adds value for them and saves them having to troll through low quality content,
• If you don’t have anything to say, DOCUMENT! – easier than having to create new content,
• If you’re not an expert in your niche you can become a well informed commentator (share stories from niche – curate content made by others and add your own commentary).
• Inspire,
• Connect.

Look after your readers

• Always reply to comments or messages,
• Say thanks,
• Use names and tag people,
• Share things – if you come across something you like share it,
• Be an investigator – Google Alerts – gives you news about a chosen keyword(s),
• Check out the results, go to a page and leave a comment as a nice gesture,
• Make navigation around the site easy,
• Decrease page load times,
• Get rid of annoyances on site such as pop-ups and distracting ads,
• Surprise audience – give something for free,
• Include transcript with podcasts or video,
• Use high quality audio and video,
• Skip the sales pitch – the best sales pitch is no sales pitch at all,
• Reply with a video,
• Invite participation – reader challenge, ask for opinion, calls to action – get people involved,
• Be honest,
• Be passionate,
• Get personal – infuse your personality and life to get deeper connection,
• Provide unique content such as provide case studios, experiments, income reports etc
• Proof read content before you post it,
• Remember who you are and who your serving,
• Always over deliver,
• Write post which is potential vehicle for income. Good quality, unique, have affiliate links in sidebar so on every post and in text,
• Create a visual representation of the information you are talking about to help you and your audience remember it,
• Transformation – what’s the transformation you want your audience to go through. Another way of putting it is what’s the purpose of your article. What’s the goal,
• Start with in this episode we are going to talk about x. by the end of this you will be able to Y using your Z,
• Tell them what you’re going to tell them, Tell them, Tell them what you told them,
• Reverse engineer the transformation. Work backwards. What supporting content do you need to include to achieve the transformation,
• Write down all possible objections and include a reply to each of these in the supporting content,
• Tell stories (more memorable) or Include case studies or Research and data. Always include the professors full name and qualifications include accurate data to the penny,
• Subdivide the article so that it is easier to understand and follow. Subdivisions could be steps, tips,
• Make the beginning and end memorable,
• Ending should have a call to action, get audience involved, show how what you have talked about actually works, surprise audience in some way (must be relevant),
• Beginning should have a video or high impact beginning,
• Aim for Consistency,
• Talk like a human being,
• You shouldn’t be vanilla – take a point of view,
• Don’t talk at your audience, talk with them. connection, interaction.

So as you can see there is a lot to consider with regards  to your content. The best advice I can give is get stuff out there and see what works best for your audience.