I’ve been answering this questions a lot lately.
It’s not new and I’m certainly not the first to discuss it.
But one of the traps with running a business and getting into online marketing or really any marketing is being too narrowly focused with your content.
I actually learned this lesson a few years ago when I spoke with a sales consultant. He had a lot of great insight into sales and business, but the best nugget of information he shared with me was that most of the customers you want don’t know your brand exists.
When you think about it the fact becomes fairly obvious. I felt like an idiot for not realizing it.
Finding The Main Issue Your Customer Has
So for me the realization was that our potential customers at Ghost Blog Writers didn’t need exactly what I thought they needed.
Well, I felt they would benefit from blogging. But that’s getting too far ahead of the game.
What our customers need is traffic and sales; more clients of their own.
And they look for all kinds of information around that fact.
That changed the way I thought about marketing Ghost Blog Writers especially with how we write blog posts.
Some clients are looking for blogging, but others are looking for other things relating to getting new business.
So here on the GBW Blog we do write about blogging. We’ve written a lot about that, but we also write about other topics that our target customer searches for as it relates to their business and life.
That could be social media, business operations, productivity and many other things.
Taking that wider approach makes it much easier to bring people to your site, introduce them to your brand, earn their trust and then getting them on your main website pages where you convince them how you can help with their main challenge.
So for our customers struggling to get new business we get their attention, help them with a question they have and then let them discover how blogging can help them get new customers on our main website pages.
Focus On Answering The Big Question
With all your marketing efforts – social media, blogging, ebooks, commercials, ads, etc. etc. – the best strategy seems to be answering the main questions your target customers are asking.
So if they’re wondering how to get more customers themselves, answer that question with great answers; and there can be more than one answer.
It works in the B2C world too.
People generally want to be happy and live enjoyable lives. They might not know that your herbal supplement or new t-shirt can help with that.
But if you answer their question about ways to make their lives better you can get their attention. And from there they can learn about what you do and how you can help them if they become your customer.
Your Overall Reputation Grows
What I’ve noticed at GBW is that we get a good portion of our traffic to blog posts on the general topics. And as we’ve provided more good answers to our target customers’ questions we’ve also bumped up in the rankings for narrow terms related to blogging services.
So we get that traffic too.
As your reputation grows as a valuable source of information your site becomes relevant and useful for the terms relating to your service.
Your marketing content attracts the general audience that don’t know you exist. And your other pages pull in people that are a little further down the line in the sales funnel.
It seems to work out pretty well, but it starts with focusing your marketing a little wider so you can attract the people that don’t know you exist.