Here we are at the beginning of 2019 with an entire year’s worth of content marketing – blog posts, email messages, and social media updates ahead of you. It sounds like the perfect time to talk about the privilege you’ve been granted to interact with your audience, and about truly serving that audience.
Permission, Attention, and Trust
At its core, permission marketing is the privilege of talking with people who would miss you if you were gone. It’s the recognition that attention is available, but in limited supply, and only for what matters most to us. It’s permission granted, possibly only for a period of time to those who have gained our interest. It is kept only by developing trust with our reader, viewer or listener.
How does this apply to your business? We all have a favorite way of reaching out to our customers, prospects, and leads. It may be through an email list, push notifications, through social media, or even simply by phone. In each case, your audience for this communication has at one time agreed to hear from you. They perceived value from your product, service or personality. In short, they liked the piece of your story that you initially shared.
Now how do you keep that tiny, little piece of trust intact, and build on it? How do you rise above the noise to be the person or company that your audience can’t wait to hear from again and again? There’s no single, linear process to accomplish this, of course. But there is a starting point from which every path flows. That starting point is defining the change your audience cares about.
Marketing – The Art of Making Change Happen
Seth Godin, in his most recent book “This is Marketing” redefines marketing itself. He says that marketing is the art of making change happen. This idea rang true for me, and I instantly saw where so many of us are missing the boat. If we look at marketing as defined in the dictionary “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising” – the focus is on us. That’s backwards because it’s what WE want.
Change Your Perspective
“How do I get my phone to ring” sounds like the right question for a service business. But making your phone ring isn’t a priority for anyone but you. Your customers and customers-to-be simply want their questions answered, their needs met.
Don’t wing it. Find out what their questions and service needs are, and address your content in response. This is how you build relevance and trust. People aren’t going to respond to your content marketing because it’s important to you, but they will respond if it’s important to them.
What are your customers’ pain points? How can you eliminate that pain? What brings them joy? How can you increase the frequency?
It begins and ends with listening and learning how you can you make change happen for your ideal customer.
Baby Steps to Better Content Marketing
Before you send out another email, push notification, blog or social media update, work through the following exercise:
1. What is my overall goal for this list, blog, or social media platform? Note that “more customers” is not a goal. “Build my email list” is not a goal. Likewise, “more service calls” is not really a goal. Goals require specificity.
I like to set S.M.A.R.T. goals – specific, measurable, actionable or attainable, relevant, and time-sensitive. Address those goals to serve your business AND your customer. Look beyond the obvious. Don’t limit yourself to one goal. (Once I got out of my own way and looked beyond the obvious, I found three previously unrecognized goals for this blog.)
Fill in the blanks: This (blog/email list/social media account) serves __________ information and commentary, tips and tutorials, for the __________ market/audience. This meets their need for __________. We publish (daily/weekly/monthly) to (desired number of readers) by (date).
2. If you don’t know who your audience is, where to find them, or what they need/want or what questions they have – research. Ask questions, listen, adapt your message, and go back to step one. You cannot get the results you want without understanding your audience.
After saying all of this I want to be sure this type of information is relevant for you. And, I’d like to learn how we can best help you through our blog posts, emails, and social media updates. Please comment below with your answers. I truly appreciate your taking the time to respond.
- What is the biggest challenge related to your marketing and/or growth of your business?
- What type of content do you prefer – articles, video, audio, or some of each?
- Are you a business owner? Marketing director? Other?
Thank you for taking the time to respond! I look forward to reading your answers.
