Incredibly Good Writing - for your business Why creating good customer content can be a lot like online dating By Claudine Weeks
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An introduction to creating content Creating effective content to convince people to become customers and buy from you, has a lot in common with the modern day phenomenon that is online dating don t believe me? Read on. In my experience across marketing, public relations and communications, all business comes down to the basic fundamental of trying to entice people to buy your products or services from you. Trends and techniques come and go but that is the basic principle of any business. Content marketing has literally boomed in popularity thanks to the growth of the internet, with many businesses now relying completely on online traffic and growth to operate at all. With content marketing however, it s not just a case of writing a load of blogs and social media posts and hoping for the best well, not if you want your business to last anyway! There needs to be a strategy and that s where my comparison with dating comes in as there are four key stages to enticing in a customer, and each stage needs a different style of content and different approach to writing for it: Attract Inspire Convince Keep
Attract So, in dating terms, attract would be setting out and writing your perfect online dating profile, choosing the words really carefully to describe yourself and your interests, and selecting the best photographs to capture your personality. It s about attracting interest from complete strangers. It s the same in business. You need to attract in potential new customers who have never heard of your business before, don t know who you are and have no idea what makes you different from all the other companies out there who offer the same product or service. At this stage it s all about raising awareness and informing people about who you are and what you do which involves creating a particular type of content and using a particular style of writing to create it. It s about setting the messages you want to get across to clients to differentiate yourself from everyone else It s about establishing the tone of voice for your business It s about coming up with straplines and slogans you want to use for your products It s about deciding on your brand personality and writing for it The idea is to raise awareness of your products and services, and the particular problems they can solve for your potential clients. Your content needs to interest people enough to drive them to your website to find out more. Some of the types of content you would need in the Attract phase of business are: Blog posts and social media updates Infographics and photographs Podcasts and E-newsletters
Inspire Once you have your potential customers interested and visiting your website, you need them to engage with your products or services. So the Inspire stage would be encouraging prospective dates who have visited your profile to actually take you out on a first date. It s an introduction. Your aim here is to help to educate your audience so that they will want to try out your product. The type of content here is what is called Lead Magnet it makes them want to try out the product or service and so they are willing to give you their contact details and take that relationship forward. It s about educating, encouraging and persuading. There are a number of ways you can achieve this with content: Firstly Educational Resources give them something useful they can download in return for their contact details such as a case study, white paper, free guide. Secondly Useful Resources give them something they can use in return for their contact details such as a toolkit or a cheat sheet. Thirdly Tripwire Offer get them to buy a very low cost, but valuable offer, like a book for 5, and then when they buy it, take them into the next content page which will be for a higher priced item. The important thing in this phase is that you need to show your potential customer that your lead magnet, whatever it might be, can solve a very specific problem for them. The aim is to build trust in the relationship, let them try out your company for free or low-cost, so they begin to trust you and will come back to you again for more. You need that second date!
Convince Now that the potential customer has tried out your services for free or at low-cost, comes the most important element getting them to buy your key products and services to actually become a customer. The dating equivalent would be moving from dating to a marriage proposal or moving in together. It s a big next step to achieve. The aim at the Convince stage is to offer content, written in such a way that your potential customers will have no doubt about buying from you now, and also in the future. This is about convincing, persuading and pitching the benefits which your products or services will bring to their lives and the solutions you are offering for their problems. The type of content they are receiving now should be much higher value and very specific, to help them choose your products or services over the competition. You need to be writing elements like: Demo/free trial Customer stories Product comparison Spec sheets Webinar/event Mini class Each of these will have a call to action at the end, encouraging them to buy. You need to make it as easy as possible for them to buy from you and it is far more of a sales pitch stage now as they are warm leads.
Keep The final stage in the content marketing journey is the one which gets most overlooked and that is working on the customer relationship to nurture them and keep them coming back help them to be loyal customers to you and don t let them drift over to the competition. In dating terms, it s a case of working at that relationship to keep the spark alive! For this phase you want to make them feel appreciated for the support and custom they are continuing to give to your company, and make them feel a part of your business community. This is about nurturing, appreciating and communicating regularly with all of your customers to keep that relationship alive and ongoing so the choice of writing style is different again. The type of content you need to be creating here includes elements like: Thank you emails Warranty/guarantee on product they have bought Customer service information Exclusive past customer offers and discounts Newsletters Keeping in touch with customers and offering them rewards for their loyalty can work wonders for your business as it costs far more and takes far more effort to start at the beginning from Attract, for new customers, than it does to grow and nurture those you already have.
Conclusion At each stage that a prospective customer interacts with your business, before becoming a loyal customer, you need to create different types of content, with different styles of messaging. Writing skills come to the fore in all of these elements as each stage requires a different approach and tone of voice. Someone who has already tried a sample and likes your product needs very different information to someone who has never heard of you. Attract raising awareness and informing Inspire educating, encouraging and persuading Convince convincing, persuading, pitching the benefits Keep nurturing, appreciating, communicating In business, just as in dating, you need to attract the right person, persuade them you are also right for them, convince them to make a commitment and then build that relationship together.
Introducing the Incredibly Good Writers Club Do you want to become a better writer for your business? Have you enjoyed reading about the concepts here but would like to know a lot more detail? Would you benefit from an online course which goes through each of the four phases of content marketing in much more depth? Would you like guidance on how to write and create each of the content types outlined here, and many more besides? The Incredibly Good Writers Club is an online membership club which offers: An online training course to improve your business writing skills Facebook group for support and advice Opportunities to have your work critiqued Tips and tricks delivered to your inbox If you d like to find out more and be kept informed about the Incredibly Good Writers Club, you can visit here to leave your details: https://incrediblygoodwriting.com/landing/incredibly-good-writers-club/ or email me at: Claudine@igwdigital.com
Useful Resources Here are some resources which I use all the time to help improve my writing, which you might like to try to: www.grammarly.com a free site where you can check your spelling and grammar before sending your work over to a client www.copyscape.com a site you can use to double-check that your work is plagiarism free. It s also useful if you ve written something and you want to find out if it has been published on the internet. www.journoportfolio.com if you need to create an online writing portfolio, this site is great for journalists and copywriters www.quora.com one for raising your profile you can answer questions people are asking about your area of specialism and become an expert www.medium.com great self-publishing site if you want somewhere to publish your blogs or articles, with many specific niche audiences on there. And of course, don t forget to visit: www.incrediblygoodwriting.com