If you’re a small business the chances are highly likely that you are using social media to advertise in the attempt to attract leads to your business.
Now there are 2 types of advertising
1. Brand awareness
2. Direct response
Brand awareness is where Coca-Cola advertise online and offline using ads that are highly polished with a particular target audience (usually beautiful people) all having fun throwing beach balls and drinking glass bottle of the black stuff. Their prime directive o be in the public eye and to let everyone know that they are still around and still the leaders. Not really asking anyone to do anything other than subliminal messaging you to go out and buy the stuff (but that’s for another article)
Direct response on the other side is for business owners that want to attract a particular audience, position an irresistible offer in exchange for database details and then start the conversation hopefully leading towards a purchase. Which most importantly can me micro measured with the data optimized for max ROI.
I want to talk about the later
Now there are 2 ways that I believe you can use direct response marketing.
1. The push method – an irresistible offer that is what your consumer needs and wants OR
2. The pull method – bring people to recognize that you are the expert in your field and build your credibility through ongoing content and education.
Both have their place, however, from experience, I believe the pull method once created can yield a better bang for your buck and time invested.
So how do you go about creating the right attraction magnet? (Useful, informative content that will connect with your prospect and inspire them to start a conversation that leads to a sale of your product and or service)
Well here goes:
a. Understand your prospect or Avatar – The more research you do on understand the better you can educate and motivate people to consume your content which in turn increases your credibility, trust and connection. You want to know how they purchase, what they are looking for, what keeps them up at night and what will consuming your offer do for them ( also called future pacing )
b. Figure out what you specialize in or what your expertise is that you can share – there are a 100 things as a business owner that you can offer but getting super targeted and or linear on what you want to be recognized for is crucial. Sometimes stripping away information and making it easy for the laymen to consume is 10 X better than making confusing or super technical to understand ( unless you need to demonstrate that level of expertise for your target audience )
c. Make a list of the subject matter you can talk about – The key here is to keep to some type of story and or theme. Think about it like a colour Pantone chart. It doesn’t go from blue to red there are shades that are in between and slight colour edited versions of each other. Having a theme allows the prospect to recognize you for your knowledge and begins the positioning process. Think about Garry V ( Garry Veynerchuck ) He’s all about “the hustle”
d. Bite-size content chucks are key – whenever you create content be it online or off you must ensure that it is easy to consume and most importantly useful to the person consuming it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen business owners create long-winded videos or blogs that go forever. Good rule of thumb is 3- 5 min for video and A4 ish for written content. I like to use templates that make it super quick, format and easy to create content that rocks.
e.Giveaway ALL your good stuff- Now before you have a heart attack let’s look at this from a consumer perspective. If you giveaway real good , useful and most importantly applicable content, tools tips and tech bits etc and the person consuming this creates a win outcome from it would it be possible that they would highly likely feel a better connection and trust to what you have to say? PLUS if your best is what you give away what would working with you and or purchasing your product or service equal. BTW Robert Cialdini in his groundbreaking book Influence called this “The law of Reciprocity”
f. Ensure your content comes with a CTA or next step directions – I know too many business owners that have given selflessly without one critical piece called asking for business and or asking the prospect to begin the conversation. Now I know a lot of business owners are fearful of rejection but lets face it you can’t sustain a business on likes or comments alone.
Remember what you are working toward here is for your prospects to get to know you, to get to understand you and importantly to subconsciously start to formulate a decision that YOU are the person that they feel comfortable transacting with.
Have fun and remember it’s not perfection its progress
Kindness Always
Nick “the content machine” Psaila
