Content Marketing Tips

Content Marketing Tips

Content Marketing

Content Marketing Tips

Content Marketing is one the most accessible ways for a small business to create loyal customers. Here are some content marketing tips that will help you with getting your message to the right potential customer.

Your content goals
Before you get started ask yourself these questions:

What is the purpose of your content?

Who are you helping?

How will your business help them in a way no one else can?

 

Where to post?
What social platforms are best for your business?

Ask: Where is your audience and where do they get their information from; LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and so on.

Ask: Where are your competitors? You need to be where they are.

 

Your brand story
Your business has its own important story. When creating content add things like:

Why you do what you do?

How you do what you do?

This helps to differentiate your business from the others

Do something!

Sometimes we get caught up in a lot of strategy that may bog you down. But as a small business sometimes you just have to get your content started.  Remember if you are saying nothing then no one will see you.

 

Make it relevant to a potential buyer.

Many small businesses think that just posting what you have done is enough to attract potential customers. They will post pictures of their work, or a completed product built in their factory. Don’t assume that this is all that you need to do to attract potential interest.

Although it is good that you are doing something. Remember if you are saying nothing then no one will see you.

Find something that will resonate with a potential customer!

 

Talk about your customer!
Your customer bought something from you because they needed to solve a problem that they had. Let’s say it was to save electricity costs or they needed to extract heat from their factory. Whatever the story is, talk about that. For example, “our customer wanted to save costs on their power usage, so we installed a system that would give them less reliance on the grid”.

Don’t stop your marketing Activities

No matter how good your or bad your business is going. If you are still doing some marketing do not stop it! When it’s all over the last thing you want to be doing is having to start it all up again from scratch. You have been doing a lot of hard work to get customers to notice you and be at the forefront of their purchasing minds don’t let it go!

 

Increase what you are doing online

If you are still putting things online this is the time to increase what you are doing. As people work from home, we have noticed that more people are posting things online. So, if your message pre-crisis was getting say 20% of the views it now will most likely go down to 10%. This is because there are simply more things being posted and are now cluttering up everyone’s feed. If you were doing say 2 posts a week you now need to increase this to one every day even more.

 

Hit it hard!

A lot of people think that they are annoying people by what and how much their business posts online. You are not! I repeat you are not annoying anyone! What you are doing is increasing your chances of being seen. If your friend says “you post too much” just take them as a friend and not a potential buyer. A potential buyer needs to see your business through the clutter of everything else. The way to get through that clutter is by relevance, consistency, and now volume.

 

Start some activities

If you aren’t doing any marketing, you need to start it now. I’m not talking advertising that costs too much and things may be tight. I’m talking about being on social media and getting your business in front of potential customers. People need to be aware of you for when they are ready to buy.

 

Be seen!

By following these simple steps, you will ensure that your potential to getting noticed will increase. And you want to be in the forefront of people’s minds when they are ready to buy!

That means:

More posts online

More content to give your potential audience help

Start to get noticed

 

Building a good story
When you post on social media you it is good to create a consistent story that relates to your business and the way you help your customers. We are all in business to solve customer problems. Tell your story about how your business solved a customer problem.

When you tell your story have your past, current, and future customers in mind.

Solve customers’ problems.
With your social media posts, you want to attract similar people. The target audience is other people who are like your customer. Other people who are looking to do the same thing or solve a similar problem. They will see your post and it will trigger an interest for them. They will become interested because it is something that interests them.

Remember! A good story lasts years. Start telling yours!

Melbourne Software Reseller Increases Sales By Using Content Marketing

Melbourne Software Reseller Increases Sales By Using Content Marketing

Melbourne Software Reseller Increases Sales By Using Content Marketing

Stephen Mullens is the owner of SNC Solutions a local IT company and reseller of the Hexagon RADAN range of sheet metal software for the Australia and New Zealand market.

Melbourne Software Reseller Increases Sales By Using Content Marketing

Tell us about SNC Solutions?

I’ve been in Sheetmetal fab for a long time. I first started on the floor as a machine operator. I started to move into a more IT software role. I have always had a passion for computers ever since I bought my first Commadore 64 in the 80’s. I helped the company I was working for with their software and CAD / CAM applications. I started SNC Solutions because I saw a need for Sheetmetal fab companies to have more control over their processes. There is some good software that can help with managing their operations.

What does SNC Solutions do?

We offer Sheetmetal IT services and in particular CAD/CAM and MES/ERP software that has a total solution for their operation. We have been selling Hexagons’ RADAN solutions into Australia and New Zealand for a few years.

What is RADAN?

RADAN software is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading PC based solutions for the Sheetmetal Cutting industry. Our product portfolio has grown into other Hexagon software such as a full range of CAD/CAM and MES/ERP applications. It is a full solution including RADAN, Designer, Radtube and even the MES/ERP applications such as Workplan. We have put our heart and soul into these products and the results are coming.

What did you want from your marketing?

We wanted to increase our awareness within the market. We identified that LinkedIn and Facebook were great places for us to find new business. So, what we needed was to gain more followers we just didn’t know how to do that, and we certainly didn’t have the time.

Why did you choose Assertive Marketing?

I had seen some of the content material that they had been doing for a customer of ours CMTS Sheetmetal Machines. I asked Michael the owner who was doing their marketing? He put me on to Assertive Marketing. I called Gerard and he came around the next day and we talked about what we wanted to achieve, and he explained the possible ways we could do it. He explained how it all worked and how we needed to start our content marketing to gain awareness and of course increase followers.

It’s not just about posting material on Online.

Gerard explained to us that we needed to do more than just post Online about our products and what we are doing. It’s not about what we do as so much about how we can help. So, they went and started creating stories and content that helped, educated, and drew interest from our potential audience. Every post or story had to have a page or link to our website that led a potential customer to find out more information. Together we created so much content that we could have a consistent strategy with posts going out daily. This gained an audience for us in no time.

How did you find Assertive Marketing to deal with?

Excellent! Very knowledgeable. They know their stuff and they talk in a down to earth manner. The best thing was they also know manufacturing, so you don’t have to explain everything to them. It’s good to work with someone that knows our industry. I would ring them and ask if I could do this or I’d come up with an idea, and they would get on to it straight away. Nothing was too much trouble for them. Stories, videos you name it.

Have you seen any results from the marketing?

The marketing has been fantastic! We have grown our LinkedIn followers and our sales have grown. In fact, we just won the Hexagon global “Outstanding Achievement Award – Sheet Metal” at the Global Reseller Conference 2021. Their main points for the award were:

Your relentless efforts to grow business are being recognised through this award on account of following key achievements as a HEXAGON Distributor of sheet metal solutions.

  • Consistent year on year sales growth (even during the pandemic times)
  • Taking initiative to successfully launch & implement “End to End Complete Solution for Sheet Metal” at multiple accounts
  • Continuous marketing activities / information sharing through your own social media channels
  • ……and many more

It was so good to get this acknowledgement from such a large international company. It was also good to see the results of our marketing activities.

What’s the future for SNC Solutions?

We are looking for more growth. We have just hired a new staff member, so we need to keep things growing. And that includes the marketing. We are a small business, so we do not have the resources to hire a full-time marketing person. That’s where Assertive Marketing comes in. They are external but it is like they are a part of our team. Its our close relationship with them that allows us to work together and have that trust that things will get done.

How often should you blog or post on social media?

How often should you blog or post on social media?

I often get asked the question about how often should you blog or post on social media. This is always a hard question to answer. But here are some things to consider:

Your Audience. 

What does your audience want? It all depends on them. If you are targeting people who want to go to your restaurant, you might want to blog or post often but keep them short. If you write very technical blogs for a more thought out purchase, you could write less often because there is a lot to digest in them.

Be consistent.

Don’t do it all at once or you will burn out.

Have a Plan. 

Having a content calendar means you don’t need inspiration every time you sit down to write content. It also encourages you to create the content because you have it in the diary.

Get Inspiration. 

Just start writing! And keep writing until you have a blog. Then leave it, come back to it and edit it.

A Great Example of Creating Content Marketing

A Great Example of Creating Content Marketing

Content that informs

Here’s a great example of creating content marketing that informs and gives a possible audience some interest without selling your own brand. DPA Solar are a distributor of Solar equipment and Swan Hill Solar are an installer of Solar systems. The interview/article talks more about the end customer than it does about DPA Solar or Swan Hill Solar. It talks about why the end customer needed to get Solar.

 

Similar problems to solve

The reason for this is that by talking about the end user it will trigger a similar potential end user. Someone who has a similar problem that needs solving. As I keep saying content marketing is all about offering information that helps. When you offer information that helps someone with a problem you will gain the trust of that person/customer.
Problem – Solution – Trust.

 

Who your audience is

DPA Solar doesn’t want to talk to the end user they want the interest of the Solar Installer.

 

The stategy works

So, the strategy we embarked on is to drive interest in the result, a Solar System. By helping to create that interest DPA Solar will increase the size of the market that they exist in. If someone comes across this article online, they will not only be informed about the Solar System (their interest) but who to get the system from.

The strategy is also a good collaboration between the customer and the supplier.

Nice work all round!

How to get leads from your content marketing

How to get leads from your content marketing

HOW TO GET LEADS FROM YOUR CONTENT MARKETING

CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

Download the e-book

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How to get leads from your content marketing

About The Book

How to get leads from your content marketing

This eBook How to get leads from your content marketing outlines the processes that you should undertake to get traffic and leads from your website with a solid content Marketing strategy.

The formula for being successful with your content marketing strategy is simple:

  • Get Found (drive traffic to your site)
  • Generate leads and customers from that traffic)
  • Analyse (be smart about what worked and what didn’t).

This methodology maps nicely to a list of core services that you should do to drive better results to your website.

Download the e-book

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How to create your content marketing strategy

How to create your content marketing strategy

Here’s some help on how to create your content marketing strategy. You need to start with the reason for your content marketing. What is the purpose of your content? Who are you helping? As well as how you will help them in a way no one else can. Businesses often use content marketing to build an audience and to achieve at least one of these results:

  • Increased revenue
  • lower costs
  • Find better customers

Your content marketing plan

Your content marketing plan should be very tactical. It must document the specifics of how you will execute your strategy. It’s important to understand that you need a content marketing strategy BEFORE you build your content plan. It’s a marketing plan that specifically relates to content and it should include:

  • The key topic areas you will cover
  • What content you will create
  • When and how to share your content
  • And specific calls to action

Why documenting your strategy is important?

With a documented content marketing strategy you will become more effective in the process of content marketing. It will help you understand the use of all content marketing tactics and social media channels. It allows you to gain a better perspective of why and how you are doing things.

What to include in your content marketing strategy?

Your content marketing strategy outlines your key business and customer needs. It details how you will use content to address them. Your content plan should be unique to your business. Here are some components that you should include:

Your audience personas:
  • Describe the specific audiences for whom you will create content. What are their needs, and what their content engagement cycle might look like.
Your brand story:
  • Your business has its own important story. Describe your content marketing in terms of what ideas and messages you want to communicate from that story. How do the messages differ from the competition?
Your channel plan:
  • What platforms are best for your business. Where is your audience and where do they get their information from; LinkedIn, Facebook Instagram and so on. Include the platforms you will use to tell your story; what your criteria, processes, and objectives are for each one.
Measurement and metrics

This could be:

  • Increase website traffic
  • Add to the sales pipeline marketing-qualified leads per year
  • Generate revenue

We all know that it is hard to put plans together. That’s why a simple one-page plan should be enough for you to understand why, what and how you want to achieve your content marketing goals.

Remember! A good story lasts years. Start telling yours!

Good luck with your content Marketing.