If your business can educate customers (and potential customers) for free, you’ll build better relationships and funnel in more customers. If ACME services and installs new HVAC equipment, they should give out free maintenance advice on caring for heating, AC or air handler units. Sharing information is easy with social media and automated email campaigns. By educating buyers as to what problem you can solve or help them avoid with simple maintenance solutions, they’ll be quick to call when there is a real need.
Similarly, if you’re an automotive repair shop, tips and tricks for keeping your car running smoothly will build trust and familiarity with your brand and encourage customers to choose your business when they have a problem outside their ability to fix. Recruiting firm? Share valuable tips for candidates to review prior to interviewing with your clients. SaaS business? Share content on what problem you’re solving. Restaurant? Share recipes, tips and tricks for perfecting a homemade sauce, or tutorials on how to make a healthy snack. If a business can build familiarity, it can build a large fanbase and drive revenue. This will take time, but creating fans will lead to more customers.
Why does this work? The simple answer is that a well written piece of content lives online forever, meaning the content can be found time and time again, and be shared repeatedly. As the saying goes, build once, sell twice. The longer answer has to do with timing.
On any given day, there is no telling who in your area is specifically in need of your product or service. Sticking with the HVAC example, a person only looks for an HVAC company when there is a need. By having a plethora of social posts, blogs, and content written, your business will rise in rankings on search engines. You may even accidentally go viral with a well timed social media post. When someone needs your business, they will likely google it, or better yet, ask a friend who they know. The more your name gets out there, the higher your chances are of being recognized as a familiar option, and thus, the higher the chances of getting the call from a new customer.
One of the beautiful things about digital information is the ease with which it can be reused and posted on multiple platforms. As an example, a single 500 word blog post about how to check your air filters can be posted on your company’s website, social channels and on public sites like Medium. Every 6-8 weeks, a business can post a link to the same article to catch the eye of people who missed it last time. Taking this even further, a 10-20 minute podcast recording can be done once, an audio transcript made from the recording which can be used as the blog post, which can be shared countless times. Posting the audio over a photo on a Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, or Instagram page is another way to take advantage of the content created.
The whole point of creating this content is to put your name / business on it to build familiarity in the mind of the potential customer. As consumers, we call on companies we have heard of more frequently than those we have never heard of.
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