More Than One Target Market? Create Marketing Content for Each of Them

A typical conversation about marketing strategies and implementation usually includes some discussion about a business's target market. We all spend tons of time thinking about this preferred customer base -- narrowing it down to this or that ideal buyer persona, fine-tuning our products and services for that buyer persona's projected needs, and creating marketing content aimed at tickling that buyer persona's fancy. All pretty straightforward so far -- but what if you have more than one target market to appease?

I've had plenty of writing clients who faced that question. For instance, one of my regular clients provides IT services for markets in several major cities across the U.S., each of which has its own set of technology and industrial challenges to be met. Recently I began writing articles for a promotional products franchise that has two distinct audiences: business owners who might need the products themselves, and franchisees who need to market their own promotional businesses in a more unified and effective way. The article topics that might appeal to one group aren't so likely to appeal to the other.

Can you see where this is going?

If you need to make a marketing impact on more than one target market, you need to think about how to aim the right kind of content at each of those markets. For many businesses, the answer lies in a multi-track approach. One of my real estate clients offers a prime example. Her website's home page directs her two different target audiences (career real estate investors versus ordinary folks who just need to manage a rented property) down two separate tracks. Depending on their needs, her potential customers click on one option or the other, and from that point on they go down a separate online sales funnel that addresses their concerns and offers the specific solutions they need.

My IT client serves as another case in point. Since Google slaps companies down for duplicating content across multiple websites, I ended up writing a whole new website for each major city that the company serves. The homepage for the parent location gives visitors the chance to click on their respective city, an action that sends them directly to that local city's website. Of course it takes extra time and effort to create and maintain these multiple site paths. But it also allows my client to configure each location's marketing content for that particular audience, resulting in more effective local marketing and bigger sales overall.

How about the promo products franchise? Well, we're devising a year's worth of email articles for each of the two target audiences. The company can then send the emails crafted for each audience on a rotating schedule, influencing both audiences by addressing their specific preferences, needs, questions, and concerns.

Do you want to attract more than one target market to your products or services without diluting your overall brand? Contact me and let's talk about marketing content creation for each of your ideal audiences!

Practicing Social Distancing? Focus on Social Media Marketing

If you'd never heard the phrase "social distancing" until a few days ago, you're probably familiar with it now. Social distancing is all about adopting specific strategies that prevent large groups of people from coming together -- typically to limit the spread of germs during an epidemic or pandemic. If you own a business, you may have asked your employees to telecommute. If you have customers, those customers may be looking at different ways to get their products and services. It's a confusing time -- but you can respond by making sure your customers can find you via social media and related digital marketing efforts.

There's no denying that social media can be a good thing or a bad thing, especially in its ability to spread panic or misinformation all over the world at the speed of light. But it's also a tremendous boon, not only for distributing genuinely valuable information, but also for keeping everyday communication lines open. People who are practicing social distancing can still share Facebook posts, blog articles, Instagram photos, and any other media that tickles their fancy.

These people also shop, even if they can't do much shopping in brick-and-mortar environments for the time being. Customers may not frequent stores for their discretionary shopping, but you can bet that they'll be burning up the Internet looking for online alternatives. They'll also forego in-store browsing for online browsing by searching for specific solutions through social media and Google. So ask yourself: When they search for a particular product, service, or answer to a burning question, how likely are they to land on a helpful video, blog article or webpage created by your brand?

Social distancing also changes the way businesspeople interact. Expect to see networking organizations using online conferencing platforms such as Zoom instead of shaking hands and exchanging business cards in person. If you rely on conversations with your fellow business owners to discover new opportunities and trends, you (and they) will be spending a lot more time sharing that information from your computers or smartphones. LinkedIn is about to become hotter than ever. Are you currently uploading content and contributing to conversations there?

In short, now's the time to work on your social media presence. Pick out the social media channels most likely to appeal to your target market, and start inundating those channels with relevant, helpful, compelling content. Make sure your website content is updated and effective so that when your blog articles, videos, and other social media posts lead prospects to the site, those prospects will continue the journey through your sales funnel until they become customers.

Social distancing doesn't have to be a contradiction in terms. Take the necessary steps to join the massive online conversation and get your brand's voice heard. You'll continue to reap the benefits long after the world has returned to "business as usual."

3 Rebranding Steps You Need to Consider

Are you thinking about reinventing your brand? Maybe your current brand has some negative stigma attached to it. Maybe it seems outdated in an ever-changing marketplace. Maybe it no longer reflects your values, focus, and offerings. Rebranding can make a great deal of sense for recharging and repurposing your business -- but simply slapping a new name or logo onto your current marketing efforts isn't going to get you where you need to go. Here are four important steps in any rebranding process that you need to think about.

1. Creating a New Identity (Without Torching the Old One)

While it might be wise to totally invent yourself if your brand has gone totally toxic, in most cases it makes sense to build on whatever name recognition you've achieved in the past. That's why you so often see announcements like "X company is now Y company!" You probably want to make a graceful transition to your new brand that leverages whatever positive power your old brand still possesses. At the same time, you want don't want to convey a sense that nothing meaningful has changed. Your marketing content should emphasize the new advantages, capabilities, and benefits included in this brand change so your target market will get excited about it and want to know more.

Just don't fall into the trap of bad-mouthing your previous brand; "We got this and that wrong, but we're better now." Honesty is good, but you don't want your audience thinking, "Yeah, guys, but you used to be all enthused about the old version, so why should I trust this new pitch?"

2. Rewriting Your Website

If you were rebranding a "brick-and-mortar" business's identity from top to bottom, you would no doubt remodel your stores so shoppers would experience that new identity as they browse. Well, the same goes for your virtual storefront. Your website will be entrusted with the task of presenting your new products or services, telling the story behind your new brand, and guiding visitors through the sales funnel until they're in a position to be converted into buyers.

Resist the temptation to do a patch job on your website content. By the time you've finished massaging individual bits of text to fit the new brand message, you'll be grumbling obscenities and wishing you'd just started over with a fresh new approach. You might even spend less time, money and effort by beginning with a clean slate.

3. Broadcasting the "New You" Through Social Media

Now that you've built your new brand, along with a new website to back it up, how do you let the world know that you're better than ever? In this day and age, of course you'll need to take to social media -- but don't reinvent the wheel. Remodel and rename your existing social media channels, instead of simply opening new ones, so you can carry all your existing followers with you in this transition. Fill up those channels with as many "Coming Soon" announcements, special offers, and interactive conversations as you can to get the buzz focused on your re-branding.

Don't hinge your social media success on little Tweets and Facebook one-liners. Blog your head off (with multi-channel links to and from the articles) to elaborate on all your exciting changes and keep building that wealth of relevant content Google seems to love.

These rebranding steps may sound intimidating, but you don't have to take them alone. In addition to hiring a professional copywriter for your new brand content, make use of graphic designers, digital marketing agencies, and marketing strategists to help you brand yourself for the better!

Are You Getting the Most Value From Your Marketing Content?

For the past few Novembers, the kindly folks at Healthcare.gov have sent me friendly reminders that the window for renewing my ACA health insurance policy is now open, urging me to revisit my options for coverage. If you receive these notices too, you may have seen warnings that the premium on your current policy is expected to change, or that your current coverage levels and limits may no longer line up with new circumstances. The message? Go to the marketplace, compare the available policies and providers, and shop around to see if you can do better.

This strategy always makes good sense, not just for health insurance, but also for auto insurance, mortgage rates, apartment rental rates and terms, cable packages, and any other services or programs that might vary in their relative attractiveness to you over time. It's not about whether you're getting the lowest price; it's about whether you have the right features, arranged in the right way, to do you the most good. In short, it's about value. So maybe, while you're busy comparing the relative value of various other options, you should take another look at how well your current marketing content strategies are working. Ask yourself questions such as:

• What's the marketing ROI? What clear profit has my marketing content helped to generate in terms of direct sales, qualified leads etc? What about clear but less tangible benefits such as brand awareness, reputation management, and customer retention?
• What are my online marketing metrics telling me about response rates, bounce rates, amount of time spent on which web pages, and exactly where my target audience is dropping out of the sales funnel? Which specific chunks of content are failing to shepherd the lead generation and sales processes along?
• Am I really saving money by writing my own marketing content, or am I tying up valuable billable time and shooting my productivity in the foot?
• Which social media channels are delivering the greatest value for the time, effort, and content I pump into them -- and which ones are just sapping that energy for no return?
• Which of my marketing content activities might be better off outsourced to a third-party agency or other professional, instead of occupying a sizable percentage of my key staff on a daily basis?
• Are my marketing videos delivering their intended message with the right combination of professionalism, relevance, authority and excitement -- or am I simply throwing stuff onto YouTube in the hopes of winning the "viral lottery?"
• Is my marketing agency working from a detailed, well-crafted long-term plan, or do we seem to be spending all our time putting out fires and reversing the previous month's missteps?

Lots of time and money spent on marketing doesn't necessarily add up to marketing success. Stop and look at the strong points and weak links in your marketing setup. Maybe it's time to switch your current plan for one that will do you more good in the coming year!

4 Marketing Content Demons That Could Be Haunting Your Halloween

Happy Halloween -- or is it? Even if you're enjoying the parties, decorations, and trick-or-treaters associated with this time of year, your marketing content may be turning your business into something more like a house of horrors. Here are four frightening turns in your marketing content that you'll want to exorcise ASAP.

1. Mummified Marketing

Hollywood has always gotten good scare value out of mummies, even though the real thing is nothing more than the preserved husk of a human being. But if your marketing content is similarly mummified, you may indeed have cause for concern. Websites, brochures, marketing videos and other marketing pieces that sport outdated content convey the impression that your business died a long time ago, or (at the very least) that it's stuck in a kind of suspended animation. Maybe it's time to sweep away the dust and create new, vital, relevant marketing that can take your brand into the future.

2. The Blog of the Undead

The Blog of the Undead is a close cousin to mummified marketing. Like a zombie, this blog is mostly dead but refuses to stay down, rising randomly in search of fresh brains (specifically, those of your audience). But just as one glance at a zombie will confirm that you're not really looking at a living being, viewing a blog with sporadic, erratic updates will paint a picture of a business that is unhealthy at best or may even have one foot in the grave. You need to post to your blog regularly if you want your brand to retain an image of glowing good health.

3. The Ghost in the Sales Funnel

Ghosts and haunted houses are an ever-popular Halloween theme. A typical haunted house story will feature a ghost that lurks in some particular corner of a house, springing out when it wants to scare interlopers away. If you think about your sales funnel as a complex structure that sends your prospects on a one-way journey to a desired outcome (calling you, signing up for a free gift etc.), then your marketing content should be acting as a beneficial force that guides the way from one landmark to another. If any of these landmarks is disfigured by content that asks for too much too early or simply fails to compel further action, then you might as well have a ghost in your marketing machine yelling "BOO" at the worst possible moment.

4. The Wrong Costume

You can't have Halloween without Halloween costumes, which enable you to transform yourself into a demon, witch, ghoul, or any other persona you wish. But is the face you're showing to your target audience the right one for the reaction you want to get? If you want to scare the daylights out of someone, you don't dress up as a happy bunny (unless, of course, you happen to know about that person's severe bunny phobia). By the same token, your brand is the face of your business, and your marketing content must support the persona that you want your brand to project. If your content's tone, style and vocabulary aren't supporting and reinforcing your image, then you might as well be topping off your devil costume with a happy bunny mask.

Take a hard, unflinching look at these marketing gremlins, and get whatever marketing content assistance you may need to help overcome them. It's a surefire path toward more treats and fewer tricks for your business this Halloween!

Let Me (Not) Explain: When Your Content Marketing Says Too Much

One of the most potentially tiresome elements of any story in literature, film or theater is exposition -- the delivery of information that helps the audiences understand the plot or characters but doesn't exactly thrill. The only error worse than relying on extensive exposition is stuffing all that dramatic deadwood into the beginning of the tale. Over-explaining is a surefire way to alienate readers or viewers who are there to be emotionally grabbed up and swept away -- and it's just as ineffective when it comes to marketing your products or services.

Does this mean that detailed information is inherently bad? No! Sometimes it's those little details that make what you've got more desirable than the other guy's offerings. And if you're marketing a house, car, boat or some other high-dollar item, you'd better have reams of data on hand for the careful consideration that goes into such purchases. In other words, the harder the sell, the more explaining you have to do in your marketing content. But even then, you have to think about where and when all this content needs to come up in your audience member's journey through the sales funnel.

In another post I talked about the pitfalls of the "endless home page," in which an entire website's content seems to be shoehorned into the very first screen the viewer encounters. This is an extreme example of over-explaining, but it can and does happen. Every word of that information may be valuable -- some of it may even make a major contribution toward an eventual purchase -- but it doesn't belong here. That's partly because the home page needs to present a welcoming, non-intimidating gateway to your brand, and partly because the home page is mostly about the sizzle, not the steak. Your marketing content's first task is to engage viewers on an emotional level, not an intellectual one. The initial push of excitement, wonder and/or relief you make here will carry the viewer on to the next level of discovery, whether that involves turning a page in your pamphlet or clicking on the right link to answer a burning need to know more.

At this point you can start introducing more and more detailed information because you know you've already got your visitors half sold. If you've done it right, they'll now focus on the data with the goal of confirming their initial hopes and excitement. Even the skeptics will come at the information hoping that it will prove them wrong about their doubts. Bear in mind that some of the many details you provide may provide certain visitors with reasons not to buy your product or service. If you haven't already got them on your side emotionally, you'll lose them then and there. But if you have, then they might keep pushing forward anyway to find other data that outweighs their objections.

So more often than not, "over-explaining" is really a matter of "premature explaining," or putting the intellectual cart before the emotional horse. You or your copywriter may compose marketing content bursting with sound, sensible, logical reasons to buy something -- but ultimately it's the primitive, emotional "I want this" impulse that compels the actual decision. Before you appeal to the brain, make sure you've already appealed to the trigger finger!