Content Marketing: Why Telling Trumps Selling

Content Marketing: Why Telling Trumps Selling:
A guest post by Jared Fabac of Idea Bright Marketing.
Our culture no longer has patience for commercials. We fast-forward through them. We do anything we can to avoid them. We endure them only when we have to.
That same mentality is taking place whenever a sales message is presented. We are slightly distrustful of what a company has to say about itself, whether the message reaches us through a traditional salesperson, traditional media, or even online media.

Prove It

The Web has created in us an expectation to be able to evaluate a sales message. Somebody says to us, “We have great stuff.” You say nothing to them in return but make a mental note of “We’ll see…” And we then storm the search engines to avail ourselves to the vast amount of information available to us to review those claims. When you are pouring your heart into how much your product will do for your clients, they are reacting with the same apprehension. You are subtly saying, “Our stuff is cool,” and prospects are subtly saying, “I don’t trust you yet.”

Count Your Blessings… and Your Curses

Marketing on the Web is blessing and curse. It is a blessing because of the tremendous reach we have in communicating our message; it is a curse in that the mentality of a prospect is to hold up the process buying process until they have had time to review your claims. If there was ever any emotive function in the buying process, it is dissipating as the Internet evolves. Prospects and clients want the entire truth—and they want it to be verified. They neither need nor want hype.

All in How You Look at It

Savvy companies and marketers can use the both the Web and customers’ desire for verification to their advantage by engaging in content marketing. Content marketing can be a subjective term, but in its simplest definition, content marketing is making facts about your products available and discoverable to lead prospects into your marketing funnel. Content marketing takes advantage of an aspect of human nature that makes us more trusting to solutions that we discover ourselves over those that are presented to us.

What Makes Content Marketing So Effective

What makes content marketing so effective is that it uses Internet channels, such as the search engines, video marketing, and social media, to provide solutions to problems that exist in the everyday lives of prospects. Content marketers make solutions available for clients and prospects to find. Of course, marketers who do content marketing well conduct research on where those problems are being discussed and pondered.
Are these problems being discussed in an industry-related forum? Are they being discussed in a social media group on Facebook or LinkedIn? Are they being queried on search engines (such as Google and Bing) or video-sharing sites like YouTube?  A needed skill in content marketing is finding out what the key questions are and where they are being asked.

The Home Improvement Companies Get It

Home improvement companies, such as Lowes and Home Depot, are light years ahead of other industries in doing this. A simple Internet search for problems, such as “how to fix a leaky faucet,” will present to searchers myriad instructional videos on how a customer can undertake that venture.
A careful screening of the videos provides a couple of clues on the nature of content marketing.

• The basis for the video is solving a problem—not to selling their products.
• The companies (Lowes and Home Depot) are transparent in their presentation. They are not holding themselves out as the only place to solve the problem.

The home improvement companies have successfully mapped the pain points of their target customers. They have provided information to help them solve perplexing issues—instead of selling them on how wonderful their store is. Helpful information is strategically placed; people who have problems can find solutions. The information is formatted, so it can be shared easily online.
When considering content marketing, ask yourself the following questions.

• Is there a better way to build a brand than to truly help a prospect—instead to selling them on how helpful you are?
• Can you associate your brand or your company as a solution-oriented partner at the point at which a prospect’s problems are most mystifying to them?
• Can you use the power of the Internet to be present when the most common problems are being discussed?  (If you can, you can overcome the human element of a prospect to distrust you when you need state your call to action for them to buy. You can also build stronger relationships for the longer term.)

Companies can focus on marketing buzzwords, such as SEO, social media, and inbound marketing, and all those are necessary to undertake. It is pretty easy to get a YouTube channel, a Facebook Fan page or even to pay someone to make you visible in the search engines. But are you willing to use these channels to be customer-oriented before a sale is made? Are you willing to use those channels to position yourself as a problem solver? If you are, you will successfully embrace all the power that the Internet has to help you to market your business.
Jared Fabac is the director of Strategy at Idea Bright Marketing, an industrial marketing agency focusing primarily on Web-based strategy.
(Photo courtesy of Bigstock: Business Colleagues)