ARE YOU HARASSING AND SPAMMING YOUR CUSTOMERS WITH BORING DIGITAL CONTENT AND CONSTANTLY ASKING THEM TO BUY YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE AND THEY ARE STILL NOT INTERESTED?
Here’s what you are doing wrong…..
You are constantly talking about your product or service in your content.
With such a tremendous saturation of content today, and very little attention span, the last thing anybody wants to know is how fast and efficient your product or service is. You only have a window of a millisecond to grab your client’s attention. You have to be very smart with your content for them to become your customer.
So, then the question is, what kind of a content should you produce that will ACTUALLY sell? Below are the proven 6 Steps that will help you gain customers and sell your product/service without sounding salesy and needy.
Step 1 — Identify your target audience/customer
Ask yourself, who is your ideal client? What is their age, their ethnicity, gender, location and their income? Get very clear on the demographics of your client.
Step 2 — Identify their needs, desires, fears
Once you have become clear about your ideal client. Figure out their psychology. Find out what their needs are, what do they hope and desire and what do they fear the most. The dreams and fears of a middle-aged man are very different from that of a 4-year-old girl. Almost all the buying decisions that people make in their lives, are driven by these two emotions — Pain and Pleasure. They move towards things that provide them pleasure and they do everything in their power to avoid the pain.
Find out how your product/service can either contribute to the pleasure, joy and happiness of your ideal customer or to the elimination of the pain and discomfort from their lives.
Remember, emotions play a key role in deciding what to purchase and what NOT to purchase. So be very mindful of that. Try to induce good emotions in them, show them that your product will alleviate the pain from their lives, bring joy and happiness to them and you are well on your path to selling successfully.
Step 3 — Choose your Medium
Figure out what kind of content are you most comfortable putting out. Is it voice, video, images or text? Deciding what medium to choose for your content marketing depends on the following factors
· How much man-power do you have?
Are you making all the content yourself, or do you have employees helping you out with that? It all comes down to how much money are you willing to invest in the content. The more help you have, the more content you can make and in more than one medium.
· Which medium is relevant to your business more?
It would be much better for a photographer to choose a medium of images, instead of choosing to start a podcast (medium of voice). Think about what medium are your customers consuming more and then start building on that.
· Time and Money
How much money and time can you afford to invest on the content. A business has so money other aspects that need to be managed. The operations, production, execution and so on. Distribute your time and money to all the aspects of your business and find out how much comes in the share of content marketing. And then decide whether you want to choose just one medium, or more.
Step 4- Hook them — something that gets their attention
Once you have gathered all the data mentioned in the above three steps, now its time for some fun — the actual content creation. You only have 0.5 seconds to grab the attention of your customer, before he/she has scrolled up and moved on to something else. How do you get their attention then? Based on the data you have collected in the Step 2, make captivating titles and imagery that hits them in their gut with their basic needs and desires. See example at the end of this article
Step 5 — Keep them– by engaging with them.
Now that you have your customer’s attention, it is very important to now keep that customer and have him/her coming back to your content. For you to do that, your content type must be one of the three as mentioned below
· Educational
Let’s say you own a retail store that sells professional photography equipment like camera, lights, backdrops etc. You can post tutorials about professional photography. You can show them tips and tricks, lighting setups and different hacks. When you put out such kind of content, guess who will come to watch it? Yes, you guessed it right, your ideal customer, the photographer!
This is what’s called educational content.
· Inspiring
Inspire your audience with stunning art, quotes or imagery. Do you have a beautiful guest house on top of the mountain? Inspire them with the beauty of the nature and culture of the area surrounding your guest house, and post the content on your digital platforms. Nature lovers and travellers, would definitely love to engage with such content and may eventually convert into your customer. Even if they don’t convert, the least they would do is share your content with their friends and family, hence spreading the word.
· Entertaining
This has proven to be the most engaging content type, out of all the three. Entertain your audience. Make something exciting, make funny memes, gifs, play quiz games and people will engage the most. Remember how the FaceApp became viral? It released a feature which would turn your face into that of an old person, or swap your gender by reversing facial features. It became huge, only because it was entertaining. Be creative and think about how you can entertain your audience that will also push your product and service at the same time.
Step 6 — Convert them
If you have reached the Step-6 in your business, Congratulations! Because this one is going to be the easiest for you, if you have done the above steps properly.
If you have already done the 5 steps above, what that means is that you have found your ideal customers, you have engaged them with your business, they keep coming back to you, to consume your content, you have built rapport with them, they like your content and they trust with what you tell them.
Now is the time to reap the benefits of the hard-work that you have done so far. Ask them! Give them a call to action, to purchase that product or that service, and they will be more than happy to do it at this stage.
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Example
Now let’s apply the above 6 steps to an example. Let’s say, Sarah is a wedding event planner and runs a wedding event planning business. Instead of just showing her portfolio and boasting about her design skills, here’s how she will apply the above-mentioned steps for creating the content for her social media and eventually selling her services to them.
Step 1 -Identify your target audience/customer
In Sarah’s case. Brides and Grooms
Step 2 -Identify their needs, desires, fears
Needs — planning wedding guests list, buying the dress, finding the venue etc. etc.
Desires — A perfect stress-free, beautiful, well-managed wedding day where everybody gets to enjoy, have fun and make lifetime memories
Fears — things not going as planned, mis-management on the wedding day, last minute panic.
Step 3 — Choose your Medium
Imagery and video are the most relevant, but blogs (text) and podcasts (voice) are no less important in a wedding business. Written articles about wedding related issues can be made and stories of brides can be shared with a podcast and a video, both. Images can be used to inspire the target customer with beautiful wedding décor ideas.
Step 4 — Hook them
Captivating titles like “Got Cold Feet? 6 perfectly normal pre-wedding jitters and how to manage them”
Captivating imagery of lavish, exquisite wedding decor
Step 5 — Keep them
Educate: Give useful information with respect to their needs, desires and fears e.g. “List of places to find the best wedding dresses in your town” or “The foolproof way to cut down the guests from your guest-list without offending them.”
Inspire: Share beautiful inspirational images of couples on the wedding day, the event design, wedding invitations, the floral arrangements, the quotes or the intimate gathering of close friends and family enjoying the BIG day.
Entertain: Share mini stories of your clients, from their wedding day. Something funny, something emotional, something that the audience can relate to. Not only will this entertain, it will also act as a “testimonial” for Sarah’s business, helping her build more trust and social proof with the audience.
Step 6 — Convert them
Sell them a product by offering a 15–20-minute free consultation with Sarah. Once the customers have made the effort to get in touch with her, now she can use her selling skills and close that deal.
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So, what have learned here?
We have learned that the difference between a failing business and a successful business is as follows
Failing Business: Ask, Ask, Ask — Give
Successful Business: Give, Give, Give — Ask
Failing business would constantly ask, ask, ask the customer to buy their product, and once they buy, only then the business GIVES them the value of the purchase.
Successful business would constantly give, give and give. And when the time is right and the trust and loyalty is there, only then it would Ask the customers to buy, which they will happily do, without any resistance.
