Creating Content That Drives Business

Posted on 31. May, 2011 by tim in Business, Marketing, Social Media

Photo Credit: shoebappa via Flickr

When it comes to producing marketing content for your business, too often businesses focus on producing tri-folds, brochures, online content, you-name-it, that preaches and pushes selling down the throats of your customers. It’s content written from your (the business owner’s) perspective. It’s what you want to hear. But I think we need to reverse that.

Think about this: say you’re in the construction industry, what if you handed a prospective remodel client a folder that walked them step-by-step through the process of what it would be like to do business with you and your company. The ease of the process, the savings, as painless as possible, headaches kept to a minimum. It’s like doing business with family. And you really focus on what “you as the homeowner will get by doing business with us.”

Rather than, Sure we can knock this wall down – oh no we knocked it down and it looks like it was a load bearing wall. Or we tore your exterior off and you have mold everywhere! It will be another $10k to fix that. Take the focus off of what is easiest for you and your company and put the focus on the customer experience.

Can you create customer expectations through content? Can you shift business culture in your industry that is otherwise stuck doing marketing the same way (think cellular phone marketing, construction, pizza delivery)?

What if you focused in on the core issues with your clients and discovered what they need in the sector of the buying process they are in? Then you could create a piece that would guide them, answer the questions they need answering, and lead them down the path of logical and ethical business with their best interests in mind.

It may take some time to build the content needed in each specific area of your business. But what if you started by going the extra mile on a proposal or needs assessment document and then started using that “extra mile” piece as a template for future pieces that fall into that same buying persona category?

Even critical mass has to start somewhere…

Tags: business, content, content driven business, creating content