Let's talk about custom content.
If we don’t know each other, I’m Josh Turner, the founder and CEO of Connect 365 & Emphatic…
And, I’ve been having conversations with a lot of my clients lately, to look at their marketing and sales processes, to fire up their sales growth... because, look, right now is a time with everything going on in the world and economy, that EVERYBODY I’m talking to realizes….
…what got you here, won’t get you where you’re trying to go.
And now is the time to get even more aggressive with marketing. Naturally, the topic of content marketing (authority, thought leadership, positioning) comes up probably 75% of the time.
“Should I be creating custom content? Is it even worth the effort? How does it impact my overall marketing and sales strategy, and how can we integrate content in our sales process, to close even more deals.” I’m having this conversation with clients pretty much every day.
So I wanted to address that topic here, and to give you some things to chew on, as well as a better way to actually get it done.
More specifically I want to walk through the THREE main reasons you absolutely SHOULD be integrating blog-style articles and custom content into your sales process and ONE reason why you shouldn’t.
Ok, so how does creating custom content impact your sales process for the better?
Reason #1 - Custom Content Gives You A Platform To Put Your Expertise On Display & Build Trust
Let me start with a pretty insane stat that I saw from a recent Hubspot study.
Marketers who prioritized blogging last year received 13X more ROI than companies that did not. (HubSpot)
Why is that? Well, there are a few reasons, but the most important is that your business blog is the perfect place to build you and your brand up as an authority. And now these days, you can repurpose that content in so many places, like LinkedIn, and use it to improve sales conversions.
When you publish your expertise out to the world, it allows you to shine a light on what YOU know that others don’t.
In other words, you get a chance to validate your status as a professional and highlight the reasons why your business… your program… your product… is worth investing in.
People want to know that they count on you to help them solve a problem. Publishing articles and blogs is your first opportunity to show them you can.
And this is your prospects’ preferred method to learn about your business. A company called DemandMetric found that 70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles, rather than advertisements.
They want to learn about you on their terms. Not yours.
Reason #2 - Custom Content (such as blogs) Drives Free Traffic to Your Site and Creates New Leads You Wouldn’t Otherwise Get
Getting consistent organic traffic to your site is the equivalent of having a gold mine right behind your house. Free money. Free exposure. Free leads. And not just any leads. Leads that are actively searching out what you do.
Businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don't. (HubSpot)
This turns into improved search rankings, and also more content sharing from your visitors.
DemandMetric, found that blogs can result in a 434% increase in indexed pages and a 97% increase in indexed links. (DemandMetric)
Now I’m not going to bore you with the technical details but that means you have a 400 percent better chance to show up in search engine searches if you’re blogging. And your prospects are searching a LOT to help solve their problems. Google alone had 3.5 BILLION searches every day in 2019.
So if you want to claim your spot at the front of the line for your prospect’s searches… the only way to do so is to blog regularly.
Reason #3 - Content Can Be Used as the Cornerstone for the Rest of Your Marketing & Sales Efforts
I’m a huge proponent of one-to-one outreach and direct communication with prospects as a starting point for any business relationship. Meaning reaching out directly to your best prospects through personal email or LinkedIn messages.
But, if you don’t have content to share, you are going to lose their attention very quickly. On the other hand, when you DO have content properly integrated, it can be the ONE THING that gets you new clients.
Take one of my clients, John McAlister of The Beringer Group, and let’s look at what he had to say:
John’s got the right attitude….because there’s only so many times you can message someone with a sales pitch, or trying to line up a conversation, or tell them about what your business does...before they tune you out, or tell you to go away.
That happens because they don’t have a reason to trust you. They don’t know you. They don’t know that you know what you’re talking about.
Your blogs can become your secret weapon here. As John did, you gotta use content as a way to show up as somebody who is providing value.
Consider This Situation...
Say I was going to send an outreach email to two different prospects.
- Prospect 1 get’s an email about how amazing my business is and how they should work with us
- And Prospect number 2 gets an email with a link to a blog that talks about the exact problem they are currently facing.
Which one do you think will be more receptive to my follow up messages, and get more value out of the communication?
Number 2. And it’s not even close. Because we provided something of VALUE upfront to break the ice and to show them we can be trusted and we’re the experts.
And your outreach is just one way to leverage your blog content into sales opportunities…
- Your blog posts are perfect to share out on your social media sites to stay top of mind with your followers...
- You can take your blog posts and turn them into scripts to create video content to share out to your network...
- You can take quotes from your blogs to make graphics for your social media pages to highlight important information...
And that’s just the start. The possibilities are pretty much endless when it comes to repurposing your cornerstone blog content.
Ok... so I’ve tal ked about three different reasons why you SHOULD be blogging for your business.
Now let’s talk about one HUGE reason why you shouldn’t.
One HUGE Reason Why You Shouldn't Be Blogging
It Takes A Lot of TimE!
There’s no way around this. Writing takes time.
And it can take away from vital areas of your business... which is why a lot of times, it just doesn’t get done, at least not as frequently as it should, right? You can’t have it cause you to drop the ball on your client work, or keeping your team on track, or taking sales calls, and really anything else that you HAVE to do to keep your business running smoothly.
That brings me to this question…
If you don’t have the time to do it but know that blogging is so important to the growth of your business… well, then what do you do?
In a few days I’m going to be sending out another video on THE most efficient and cost-effective way to create blog content for your website.
And when I say efficient, I mean it. This will be almost completely hands-off for you...it’s a really revolutionary process. So keep an eye out for that and remember this…
Excuses will always be there for you. Opportunity won’t.
So if you are ready to start making huge progress, keep an eye out in your inbox for my next video.