It’s important to learn how to market yourself strategically on the web. Learning the correct techniques will allow you to easily grow your business with limited effort.
The foundation of the approach we teach our clients is content marketing. The following article shares what content marketing is and how incorporating it into your strategy will dramatically increase your ability to sell.
How to marketing yourself strategically on the web:
What is content marketing and why do I need it?
Content marketing is a marketing process that involves generating and distributing valuable content to a specific audience. The goal is to attract and engage the intended demographic with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
This form of marketing takes into account the long-standing sales approach that customers only buy from companies they trust. That trust, is quickly established when a company becomes an expert — a resource for their people — and is able to solve the problems of their target market.
Thinking like a content marketer
If you shift the focus from: “how can I sell more?” to “how can I be of assistance to people in my target market?” selling products and services becomes a natural, seamless process that involves minimal sales effort.
When your company is an expert in your industry, potential business will naturally come to you. That expertise that you demonstrate through content marketing removes or weakens the resistance toward a sales come-on.
The important part is to show them your expertise every time they look for a solution to a problem. That will have them come to you for many things, not just when they need to buy something you provide. A content marketing approach allows you to change your business’ overall brand conversation and establish that you are more than just another corporation selling widgets or services.
You step away from solely being the provider of a product. You become the ultimate resource.
A brief explanation of a content marketing approach
The following example was written for the Material Handling industry. We do a lot of work in this arena. However, the words “warehouse manager” and “rack” in the example below can easily be swapped out for any other product and service.
Example: Think of it this way, a warehouse manager needs to buy more rack for his warehouse. You could be one of two things for that potential customer:
Option 1: You’re the company he chooses to buy from among a selection of similar racking companies. He comes to you when he needs rack. And only when he needs rack. He chooses to buy rack from your company because his company has purchased from you before.
Option 2: You’re the company he chooses because your brand is cooler than everyone else’s. He visits your web site often because it’s a refreshing experience. When he comes to your site it’s not just all pictures of rack and prices. He sees the faces of sales and service people he actually knows and innately he feels a connection.
He found your site from a Google search when he was looking for racking design support. And he has returned to your site many times because you helped him solve his problems – even if he has never purchased from you before.
When it comes to buying rack, he doesn’t even consider any other providers. Even though your rack is a bit more expensive, he’ll get so much more from you than he will from the competition.
Option 2 is much more effective. The company in this example is taking a content marketing approach. They are putting effort into sharing themselves and building their brand as an expert resource. This way, they have become a go-to resource for people in their target market.
This approach works for almost every industry. If you are a plastic surgeon, share your knowledge about patient procedures to build credibility. If you operate a residential cleaning business, put your effort into writing and posting article about cleaning, like: “Microwave a lemon in water for 5 minutes to steam clean your microwave with minimal effort”.
To learn more about content marketing order a copy of our FREE ebook: Digital Marketing Secrets Revealed. We actually give away our complete proven-results digital marketing strategy in this book. To get yours now, CLICK HERE.
