5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … skip this ad.
Come on; you want it too. We all want it. Moreover, we do it too.
Studies even show that 9 out of 10 people skip an ad if they have the opportunity.
Today, your customers are bombarded with advertising. More than ever before. Moreover, that, although the effect of traditional marketing methods wears off.
The answer is even more hype: louder, brighter, brighter and more aggressive. Even more bloated and exaggerated.
Moreover, generally just more, more, more.
Ads and many other methods of outbound marketing are push marketing.
Here you interrupt your customer in his workflow and force him to a message he does not want to hear. At least not at this time.
The hype is not that effective anymore.
Why is hype no longer working?
Before the Internet, there were three essential marketing channels: TV, print and radio.
Due to the nature of the media, no interaction was possible. The customer has received every message, whether he wanted it or not.
However, the digital transformation, especially the Internet, smartphones, tablets and social media, have enabled a dialogue to take place.
This has given your customer more power and changed his buying behaviour.
We also call this massive shift in consumer behaviour Zero Moment of Truth.
The Zero Moment of Truth is the moment of web research. Today, your customers tap an average of 10.4 sources before they buy your product or service.
Today you have an informed customer. Moreover, he expects answers.
We do not even want to be called but seek information from ourselves. Only then are we ready to talk to a customer service representative? Studies also show that about 60% of the B2B decision has already been made before the sales department is contacted (even if that does not seem to be always right).
However, it gets worse: in reality, you are not only fighting for attention with other companies, but also with other people. The social media streams have news from friends and family right next to business news. Personal relationships and commercial relationships are increasingly merging. In my stream, I consume what interests me.
That’s why you should not fill your customers with campaigns, excited messages or coupons, act like a good friend and deliver value.
The question now is, are you helping your customer and providing useful information that he needs?
How to start helping instead of exciting
Before you start, you should not necessarily change your strategies, tactics or methods, but first your mindset. You should change how you think about marketing.
Unlike traditional outbound marketing, inbound marketing is pull marketing. So you attract your prospects and customers. They give their attention to you voluntarily. They come to you because they want it, not because they have to.
If you want to attract these people, you must provide useful information and become a resource. Similar to a magazine. However, when I say magazine, I do not mean news magazine – that’s a mistake many companies make. I’m more of a trade magazine or a textbook.
(Therefore, you should also create profound content – a textbook always has a specific thickness.)
To create better content, you need to know what your customer needs to make a better buying decision. That’s why the right Buyer Persona is so essential.
A simple plan to get started quickly is as follows:
- Brainstorm every question you’ve ever got from a prospect or client.
- Then answer each question with your profound content.
When creating content, pay particular attention to authenticity, relevance and transparency. So you get the most out of your content.
Why you should focus on helping
If you want to be successful with social media or content marketing, one of the following two ways are recommended:
- Be entertaining.
- Be useful.
The first point is somewhat problematic: small businesses generally have a harder time talking about entertainment than larger companies. Not everyone is a born entertainer, and not everyone has creative resources at their disposal. That’s why being useful is much more comfortable. Moreover, above all, much more controllable and scalable!
However, the best is always a combination of both:
I like to use usefulness as a base and spice things up with a bit of entertainment.
The beauty of utility is that anyone can be useful, whether the one-person tax adviser or the small service company with 50 employees.
Here even, the smaller, the better.
Because you are more agile and can respond to your buyer persona or current issues much faster, if you then pair it with Evergreen Content, you can correctly map your content along the customer journey, providing an incredible customer experience.
If you help and deliver useful content, you add hundreds of pages to your content hub and make sure you’re better on social media and the search engine.
The cool thing is that your prospects qualify themselves. The best customers are often the customers who think they can do it themselves but do not want to do it.
When it comes to hype, it’s often about “from above”. The client is automatically assumed to have a lack of intelligence. However, often the problem is not the intelligence; it’s just the lack of time.
Helping is a long-term marketing strategy.
One thing must be clear to you: content marketing is a long-term game.
The success will not come overnight, but it will come. A rough guideline is 6 to 12 months. However, often, you can see the first results much earlier.
Take a look at our visitor development:
Most companies run the game for a few months, with some luck they may have their first successes, but then the first plateau comes, and they stop. However, just at the end, you get the laurels that keep growing.
Therefore, you should also regularly publish high-quality content and promote this. Most people put a link here and there, but you have to look at it more strategically and long-term if you want to get the results you want.
Content marketing is not necessarily cheaper than other forms of marketing. However, the beautiful thing is that you do not necessarily need a big budget for it — rather much time, effort, diligence and above all, creativity.
Finally, one important thing: content is an asset that yields interest and compound interest. The more Evergreen content you publish, the more your company can find through social media or the search engine. Moreover, the more guest posts you post, the more links your website gets and the higher your brand awareness.
This increases the effectiveness of your inbound marketing. Day after day. Week after week. Month for a month.
Conclusion
Thanks to the Zero Moment of Truth, your prospects and customers are getting used to consuming content before making a purchase decision.
If you do not swim here, you’ll fall back soon. Because in the future the companies will have success, inform more and promote less.
The old brochure pages were always about “See how great we are!”. The new content hubs are more about “See how useful we are! Moreover, of course, we have answers to your problems! ” — a vast difference.
Today, your customer skips ads. He does not want to be bombarded with advertising. He does not want to be forced to hear a message.
He wants useful information to help him.
Your customer wants help, not hype.
