How to write web content
In 2001 and fresh out of college, Marcus Sheridan stumbled across his first business with two friends and began installing swimming pools out of the back of a beat-up pickup truck. Nine years later, and with the help of incredible innovations through INBOUND and content marketing, Sheridan’s company overcame the collapse of the housing market and became one of the largest pool installers in the US and currently has the most visited swimming pool web site in the world... River Pools and Spas. With such success, in late 2009, Sheridan started his sales/marketing/and personal development blog — The Sales Lion, the New York Times refer to Marcus as the web marketing guru. At INBOUND18 Marcus shared the 7 ways to create content that dramatically moves the sales and marketing needle.
MARCUS SHERIDAN - ORATOR
Openly talk about the negative
Be honest with your customers and tell the problems upfront. They already know the answer. Before making a purchase on a product customers will research the web for pros and cons, if you don't publish the answers someone else will or already has. Be the authority on products you sell and build trust with your potential customers and say it first.
Share your (not so) secret sauce
Are you a manufacturer? Show your entire manufacturing process. These days most processes for building similar products are the same, if its a well known process and everyone does it the same, it’s not a secret (but make it sound like one). Create videos (long videos) of how your product is made. If a customer is going to make a large purchase they want to know more about the product and will give you more of their time to do so. How it’s made videos add personality to your brand and differentiate you from others.
our review obsessed society
Embrace
In two years product review searches have grown over 35%. In two years videos with the word review in the title has grown more than 50,000 years worth of watch time. Marcus Sheridan’s company wrote an article on “The 5 best pool builders in the Richmond, Virginia” area, but did not include his own company on this list. Why? When a customer is looking for a company they will do the research of who is best to go with. When they type in “Who are the best pool companies in Richmond, Virginia?” Guess where they will find the answer, on Marcus Sheridan’s website. As soon as you land on the page they instantly show expertise by stating they have met with well over 100 households in the area with respect to their in ground swimming pool installation and give a sense of trust by stating “We're never ones to shy away from being blatantly honest with respect to competition, and we want our customers to be as informed as possible”. The article ranks first place on Google searches and 2nd to Yelp for relevant queries.
Make the customer feel special. Sheridan presented subject lines from two different emails and asked the audience which one was more effective to them,
A. Following up or
B. Hey <Name>, I made this video for you.
Personalisation in emails or the content of emails requested by the customer increases engagement and establishes a strong relationship with an existing or potential customer.
Make it
personalized
Go the extra mile for a customer but don’t sound robotic or desperate. Wix.com is a great example of a website that personalizes a customer experience when building a website.
the power
Unleash
of self selection
More people are asking the Internet personal questions, should i? What should? What is best for me? Companies must create content that answers those types of queries. He added that whichever website “gives you what you’re looking for online” often ends up getting the first contact and ultimately the sale from the consumer.
Focus
on the money
Don’t hide the price. The perfect example the effect of hiding the price can have is dining at a restaurant, There’s Lobster on the menu but it displays as “market price” instead of a number. This causes the customer to skip over the lobster because they don’t want to have to ask the price and then not order it. No one wants to look cheap!
The same goes for choosing a restaurant and considering different ones, the restaurant that doesn't publish their pricing has less of a chance of you dining there than the one that does show prices.
Show it Don’t say it
When highlighting what your company can do, show it, don’t say it. The best way to show it, Video. Using video rather than just writing a statement on what you do helps the customer visualize the product / service they are buying into. Using employees in videos creates personality and humanity behind the brand.