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Engaging Customers and Building Community with Copywriting and Content Marketing

How To Bring Down The #1 Competitor Sucking Away Sales

February 24, 2014 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

How To Bring Down The #1 Competitor Sucking Away Sales

Who is your competitor?Imagine toppling the king of them all!

Envision your competitors mingling in one room. Picture the face or logo to go with the title “Biggest Competitor.” Do you have one in mind? 

  • Maybe it’s a local (or virtual) big shot who gets all the sales (or so it seems).  
  • Maybe you are thinking of a mega store or brand that outsells, outproduces, outdelivers every time — even though their service can’t hold a candle to your white-glove attention.   
  • Maybe you are thinking of a business that sells what you sell, only with a slightly different quality (or in a different location, using a different method, with a different technique or system). You’re neck and neck. The casual customer wouldn’t even know the difference between you unless he paid attention. Truth be told, he’s not motivated to comb through the differences. To him, you’re all the same. You can’t think of a way to stand out, even though you racked your brain trying to figure out a way to put distance between you and this competitor. 
  • Maybe you don’t even know who your competitors are…you just know you lack sales. You scrape by…even though you advertise, and stretch to market yourself in the time and budget you can afford. 
  • Or maybe you don’t think you have any competitors. Your uniqueness attracts plenty of qualified clients, but you know you want more. You just don’t know where they are, or why they are not sniffing around. 

Biggest Competitor

The truth is, every business battles one powerful competitor who turns your ideal client’s head in the opposite direction. You want to shout, “Hey, don’t you realize I’m perfect for you? Can’t you see I can help you?” But this gargantuan competitor consumes your customer’s attention and resources. Your voice is barely a whisper.  

Your customer’s radar doesn’t even detect your efforts to get her attention.  

Even stranger, this competitor beats up every business, in every industry! Health and wellness tribes, foodies, fahionistas, software companies, crafters, beauty suppliers, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers… they all compete with one, universal, monstrous force. 

This gorilla-competitor is a huge problem for you, too. Only you can’t see it because it is invisible. Your customer doesn’t even know she’s doing business with your #1 competitor, the King Kong of all forces stealing your business.  

This powerhouse of a trickster, always “cheating” you out the sales that are rightfully yours, and effortlessly pulling your customer off your scent, is simply: 

Anything and everything else your customer spends money on…that’s your #1 competitor! 

Before you dismiss the category as too broad, I’m the first to agree. “Everything else” is too big to fail. People are natural consumers. Sure, some people get by on a lot less, but most people search for experiences, products, gadgets, ideas that make them feel good! Everyone wants to feel good. And there’s always a bright, shiny thing that generates excitement and sends your customer running off in that direction…instead of toward you! 

How you get your idea customer to run toward you with their wallets wide open?  

If you’re doing what you’ve always done to generate sales, don’t assume anything will ever change. Decide first to alter your marketing strategy, and remember the sequence that stirs the “feel-good” pot and results in a sale… 

A-I-D-A: the classic sales and marketing tenet.  

As you read through each letter in the acronym, keep in mind your tenacious, invisible competitor — everything ELSE your customers desire — instead of you! 

A – Attention. If they don’t know that gap exists in their lives… they will choose the competitor. Get their attention. 

I- Interest. If your customers don’t see the gap between what is and what could be if they worked with you… they will choose your invisible competitor every time. Make them interested in how they would feel if the gap were closed. 

D – Desire. If they are unaware of the pain, discomfort, hardship, inconvenience, dull and uninspired situation they are in now, then they will never know the ease, enjoyment, convenience, prestige, enlightenment, and fun associated with closing the gap…and they will choose instead the invisible competitor that holds that promise for them. Create desire for your offer. 

A – Action. If they never receive a compelling and specific invitation to do business with you… they will choose to spend their money with your invisible competitor. Make an offer that inspires action. 

Can you do this in one fell swoop? Indeed! Direct response copywriters (the good ones) can achieve all of these components in one long page of copy.  You still see this a lot. All the elements of A-I-D-A unfold in a single, smooth, structured form. This kind of writing is tight as a drum. In fact, think of it like thumping on different points of the surface of a drum. Over one tightly stretched surface of hide, you get different sounds and tones depending on where you strike it. At any point in the copy of a long form sales page, you will hear a pitch-perfect copywriting element that either gets attention, increases interest, creates desire, or causes action. Copywriters and salespeople are trained in the A-I-D-A structure. While it takes years to perfect this kind of writing, long sales pages are worth studying! 

You can achieve a similar result affect another way. 

A content strategy that follows A-I-D-A rules 

Less intense, but equally disarming; content you float across targeted social sites strings together a powerful and unique value proposition. Organized, well-placed, smart content persuades buyers at every point along the sales funnel. Content marketing at its best now follows this same structure great copywriters have always knows and used.  

But you don’t have to be an A-list copywriter. All you need is a structured strategy and the determination to stay consistent in providing it. Effective content touches real people at different stages of the buying cycle. Words, and secondarily, images move them along from a state of casual oblivion to the point where they are frantically pulling out their credit card at the thought of working with you, or buying your product.  

You don’t have to be in their face with the full-out frontal assault of a hard-hitting sales pitch. Social networks, email, and blogs now function together to present a case to your customers and enfold them in your story.  Valuable content attracts and entices over time, in little bitty parts, so that by the time your customer actually calls you, clicks to order from you, or visits your bricks and mortar shop; your “Invisible Competitor” has withered away to nothing… 

Your customer has already made a decision to buy from you. 

Flickr CC photo: Wing_Clipper 

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: #1 Competitor, action, AIDA, attention, battling competition, Biggest competitor, competition, competition in business, competitor, content, content strategy, copywriting, dealing with competition, desire, interest, long form copy, long sales page, marketing, online content, sales, sales pages, small business competition, stopping your competitor, web content, who is your biggest competitor?, winning business from your competition, writing content

Easy Step-By-Step Recipe for Web Content Your Audience Will Devour

October 28, 2013 by jennifer mcgahan 2 Comments

Want people to consume your web content and even come back for more? There’s a recipe for that.

 

Want to stand out from everyone else in your field? Think of one teachable moment and offer a solution in a recipe-style format.

No matter what your field of expertise, you can break common complex problems down into small, workable chunks and eloquently expand on each one. Think about it. You already do it every day.

Think of a current problem one of your clients had recently. Did you help solve it? I’ll bet it’s not the first time you’ve encountered a problem like it. In fact, you probably already have a system for delivering that particular  solution.

When you applied that solution to the customer’s problem, did it “work?” If the answer is yes, don’t hold back: share that step-by-step solution with others who have a similar complaint or roadblock.

The beauty of a soulful step-by-step solution — one that takes the time to point out the wisdom and meaning inherent in each step — is that it moves the audience to a place of possibility. While the problem itself may take some time (maybe even weeks or months) to solve; just contemplating each step exposes your ideal clients to your methods and organizational abilities. The client already senses that they are in the hands of a trusted advisor.

As they fill out a questionnaire, or listen to a discussion, or watch a slide deck or video, the step-by-step recipe you provide in your web content builds the case for your helpfulness and competence. They get a sense of what it would be like to actually work with you.

When it comes time to hire someone to help them with the job at hand, who will spring to mind? YOU.

Resorting to an habitual food analogy, I ask that you take the Beef Stew Challenge.

Pretend you have all the basic ingredients you need on hand. You open the laptop in search of a recipe. Something new, something you haven’t tried before. A new combination of steps perhaps, to give it some WOW. Enter the search bar.  Go ahead and Google “Beef Stew Recipe.” I’ll wait.

Here are a couple of my results: On one hand you find a basic beef stew recipe claiming “while there are hundreds of variations on this traditional recipe, it’s hard to improve on this version’s savory and comforting goodness.” Fine. It will do.

Then you find this… an image-heavy “let’s-build-this” missive, complete with an aside about the cook’s Basset Hound Charlie chasing a squirrel. By infusing the recipe with rich inner musings and visual details of what’s going on outside her kitchen window, the Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) truly shows you exactly how to savor the experience of simmering stew…

One moment at a time.

What makes Drummond’s recipe-style story so compelling? The anticipation. The organization. The promise of a final dish. And the step-by-step visual layout. Her stew seems richer, yummier, more adaptable to the ingredients you happen to have on hand. You get the sense that cooking in her kitchen isn’t an exact science, but an activity filled with imperfection, humor and joy.

It’s web content that pulls you in and makes you want to stay. (Added points when your readers read other blog pages or engage with you on other online social sites!)

Your industry doesn’t have to be food related to make use of the step-by-step method for creating web content. Think of the possibilities and apply this concept to your business:

  • The organization coach: With the right guidance, suddenly it seems possible to tackle that project they’ve been avoiding, like de-cluttering an overstuffed attic.
  • The business trainer: Taking time to lay out each step relieves sales managers of the overwhelm inherent in training a team on a new piece of software.
  • The relationship coach: By breaking down a stressful problem into easy, logical increments, you infuse a peaceful, can-do attitude. Eg. showing your concerned father-in-law that computer technology isn’t making the kids less teachable.
  • The financial advisor: Steps can simplify and repair even long-held habits, eg. helping a disengaged family member take on more responsibility and awareness of the family finances.
  • The dog-trainer: Even a mundane task like giving the dog a bath can be infused with soulfulness if you separate and show how to savor each step.

Don’t be the source of web content for content’s sake. Next time you’re searching for a way to transfer information, try the recipe-style content creation.

  1. List all the ingredients your client has or will need.
  2. Think through your process and list all the steps required. While you should be able to fill in every nuance and gap, don’t feel like you must go to those lengths in a blog post or white paper. It’s enough to state them and why they help move the process to the next step. When you work with your client one-no-one, then you can go into the fine details.
  3. Finally show your reader or viewer what the finished result feels like, sounds like, or looks like. The transformation should be obvious.

While you can supply the recipe in your web content, most times you can’t actually “do the cooking.” That comes next, when your client hires you for your services. The idea behind the recipe is to make your readers hungry for more.

Want to learn more about finding and building relationships with your best clients by creating compelling web content? Request a self assessment sheet for your business.

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: . web copy, blog content, blog post, content, content that connects, copywriting, copywriting and content, creating blog content, creating content, creating online content, Jen McGahan, MyTeamConnects, online content, Pioneer Woman blog, Ree Drummond, slide deck, video content, web content, website content

54 Weeks of Content Creation Ideas

February 27, 2013 by jennifer mcgahan 12 Comments

content triggers for 2017Is coming up with ideas for content getting you down? It’s not just you.

It’s one of the biggest problems plaguing small business marketers:

“I know I need content creation mixed in with my marketing. I just can’t think of anything to say week after week!”

How would you like that problem to be taken care of for you? Evergreen content creation ideas you can talk about right off the top of your head…so many of them you’ll never repeat yourself for a whole year?

Many times, my clients hire me to come up with ideas, when I KNOW they can talk about their business better than I ever could. (I’m outing myself here.)

And this is why copywriters will always have jobs, especially now that content creation is such an important piece of the online marketing mix. Your business needs to crank out content for email, blog posts and newsletters, etc. But you don’t have time, you don’t think you have the money to hire a copywriter, and the thought of coming up with something new to say every week makes your head swim.

At the risk of putting myself out of work, I decided to solve this problem for you…and share my content creation secrets!

These are exactly the go-to subjects I use when I’m writing for my clients. I’ve been collecting these for years and I finally decided to compile them for you. Wouldn’t you know, I had about 55 topics, which I use to talk about any business. All I do is apply them to the industry at hand.

It really is that easy. So whether I’m writing about shoes or software, these are the ideas I pull from.

Want a peek? Click here to get the whole deck. 

 

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: blog content, content, content creation ideas, content creation tips, content creation tools, copywriting, email content ideas, marketing, online content, small business marketing, writing to customers

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