If you own or are running a business of any size, this article is for you!!
If you are planning to start a new business, then you should especially pay attention.
The last year has been a tough one on all of us. COVID-19 punched every business in the face. Many orders were cancelled, clients stopped paying monthly payments, some of the clients even had to close their own businesses.
Even the old players that have seen the 2008 crisis were not ready for this. Although a recession was already creeping in at the end of 2019, nobody expected to be hit by a pandemic that will not allow you to even go out to your offices.
If nothing, last year taught us one thing.
Cash Flow is important
Liquid cash is oxygen for any business. When clients disappear overnight it’s the only way to sustain the business. This is why many “Startups” that were running on VC money were the first ones to see negative interest as they did not generate any cash following Amazon’s style of conducting business.
If you want your business to sustain for a long term you need to have paying customers from the first day. The only way you can get clients is marketing actively. If you don’t let people know what it is that you do and why they should pay attention, If your prospective clients are not even aware of your offering, they will never know to reach out to you.
To sell anything first you need people listening to you. Attention is the only way to sell.
NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU IN AN EMPTY ROOM.
A lot of people think that if they run advertisements on streets, TV or even social media, it should bring them customers. But think about this: When you see a poster of a new Netflix series, do you immediately watch it? No. Netflix has to advertise it to you a hundred times in YouTube pre roll ads, more than two of your friends need to tell you about that series before you will even consider adding it to your list.
So why do you think your business can just run one ad and you’ll have an influx of paying customers? Running ad campaigns is important, but when your ad brings a prospective customer to your social media profile, if you have insignificant amount of content up there, would that person consider giving you their business? Would you?
It doesn’t make any sense to invite people to your empty house, right? You invite them for a housewarming party only after you’re done with all the interior design is completed. Then why would you run ads and invite people to check you out when you don’t have any other useful content for them other than your advertisement? Are they supposed to buy whatever it is that you are selling on the first visit?
So, no matter what you plan to sell, you need to become a media company first. Creating content for your social media outlets, website and everywhere else for people to consume is the only way to go about marketing your business. You’ll hear “Content is the King” everywhere nowadays and it’s so true!
Once you digest the fact that you cannot stay away from creating content because your competitors certainly won’t, you will want to turn your business into a media business. Here are a few ideas for how to go about it.
Create an attractive landing profile
When prospective customers do end up on any of your social media or a website via an ad campaign, organic search or a word of mouth, give them a quick win. Help them understand what your business is all about in as simple a way as possible. The best way to do this is a video explaining the new visitor about your offer, and yes you have to have an offer ready for a new lead. The key is to keep it very simple and get to the point as quickly as possible.
If this is not done properly, that prospective paying customer will see an empty profile and exit your profile even before even entering the pipeline.
Tell Your Story
This is the most obvious type of content that you can generate. Not every piece of your creative has to sound like an ad. You can just tell people what you are trying to build Without using the industry jagran (don’t say “Making the world a better place” at all ).
Talk about your ideas, showcase your employees and yourself as real people and people will form a human connection with you.
Use the novelty of “Behind The Scenes” to your advantage. Everyone loves to peek behind the curtain of your corporate facade. Show people what goes on in the background when you build things.
Educate.Educate.Educate!
Educating prospective leads about your product is the best way to make them buy it. Give away as much information as you can. Give that information away for free. In the modern era, unless you are producing vaccines no information is a secret. Someone will give it away anyway.
If you are the first one to give away information and educate people you’ll have the pioneers advantage. If you create a consolidated directory of information on your profile, the prospective customers won’t have to go somewhere else, and this increases your chances of converting them from consumers of your content to paying customers of your product by a lot.
Turn your customers into creators (User Generated Content)
If you already have a substantial following on the social media, this is a lucrative option for you. Almost every individual has a secret desire to be in a limelight and if you are the brand that gives them that option, they’ll never leave you.
If your brand has a flair of entertainment, you can create a lot of competitions for your followers. In case of a corporate client, you can make video testimonials that you can then re-purpose as ad campaign material. You can also conduct Q&A sessions with your prospective clients and you will be generating content based on ideas generated in a crowd-sourcing manner.
The possibilities of creating content are endless. While creating content, do not focus on a single format of media. You can’t just create videos and do nothing else. Everyone consumes the content in different ways. You should do blog posts, videos, posts on all social media, stories for the same, podcasts and everything in between.
You cannot also skip any of the relevant social media for your industry. All the formats of contents can be repurposed on every social media platform and your websites as well. You can never guess which social media platform will shut down and which new one will explode in the next year. So it’s always better to have them all covered as much as possible.
No content posted on social media ever goes in vain. It will always keep on building value for you over the period of time. So keep creating.
If you want any help in creating content for your business, we can be your best friends. Just tap on the button below and start talking with us!!
