Few sights can strike terror into the hearts of marketing content creators more quickly and brutally than a blank screen. You've probably been there; I certainly have. You sit there, mentally sweating bullets, wondering how you're supposed to turn all that nothing into something that sells. I've written about ideation before, and I doubtless will again, because it presents an ongoing challenge even for experienced writers. Then once you have the idea -- where do you allow that idea to take your content? When you're struggling to get your creative gears turning, keep the following helpful tips in mind.
Your Potential Buyer Has a Real-World Problem to Solve
Sometimes the sheer number of a business's available products and services can muddy the waters when it comes to marketing content creation. Where do you start? Well, you take a lot of the confusion out of the ideation stage by focusing on specific, individual challenges of pain points that you know your prospective buyers have. Let's say you're a roofer, for example. What worries keep your target audience members awake at night? Do they know that their roof is nearing the end of its projected lifespan? Do they see spots that might indicate damaging leaks? Do they have loose shingles littering the lawn after a storm?Do they need to spruce up their home's asking price by refurbishing the roof? These pain points give you a handle on which to hang your creative hat.
The Buyer's Problem Prompts Your Solution
Once you've described your prospective customer's needs in vivid detail, you've got that person saying, "Yes, you understand exactly what I'm dealing with! So, how can you help me?" This is your cue to segue directly into the solutions you offer. Describe in clear, simple, powerful terms exactly how you can relieve that person's pain through your products and services. Don't drown the reader in details; you can always provide details on individual web pages or (better yet) in a conversation that closes the sale. For now, focus on conveying a sense of emotional reassurance and excitement about the solution to a nagging problem.
The Bottom-Line Benefit Sells the Product or Service
When in doubt, rally your creative message around the bottom-line benefit of your product or service. Remember, your customers don't care how they get to the goal line -- they just want to make that big score. What bottom-line benefit do you provide? Well, at the end of the road, you make your customers happy. Maybe you achieve that goal by making them more physically comfortable or emotionally secure. Maybe you help them enjoy greater business efficiency or productivity, with an even deeper bottom line of helping them earn more money, which raises their quality of life and (guess what?) increases their happiness.
As you might imagine, hurdling these creative obstacles takes a certain amount of time, effort, and patience no matter how many mental triggers you employ. The more urgently you need to come up with that marketing content, and the more time your many other business activities demand, the more stress and pressure you may feel when you sit down to confront that blank screen (which, of course, doesn't exactly help you set your imagination free). If that's the problem you face, here's another helpful tip -- ask a professional marketing content writer to do the creative work for you!
