content marketing

Aug

2018

Email Marketing: How Many Content vs Sales Messages?

Email Marketing: 3 Content Messages to 1 Sales Message

Email Marketing Messages: 3 Content to 1 Sales Message

You want your emails to your customers and prospects to be opened and read. After all, that’s why you send them — right?

So, it’s important to offer them what they want. How do you know what they want? One way is to watch which emails they open. If there’s a link in the email, does it get clicked?

Another way to determine what they want is with the promise that you made when they signed up. Did you give them a special report or ebook about a topic that relates to your offerings? Did you promise coupons or special offers?

When customers or prospects give you their email addresses it’s important to deliver the value you promised. If you assured them they would get coupons or special offers, they may open your emails at first, But if your offers are not relevant things they want to buy from you, they’ll start ignoring or deleting your messages. To avoid that you can segment your list and send only relevant offers of the products they want to buy.

If your customer or prospect traded their valuable contact info for an educational piece, more than likely, they’ll want more of the same type of content. Does this mean you should never sell to them or make them an offer? Of course not, today’s consumers are not so naive as to believe you will never sell to them.

It is important, though, to give them more of what they signed up for. You can do this by sending interesting articles and blog posts that will help them make healthy decisions. You can add a ‘soft offer’ at the end of the information with a “click to see how easy getting your daily dose of herb/vitamin/mineral can be” link.

When you see that your emails are getting a good open rate and links are being followed, you’ll know you’re hitting the sweet spot for your audience. If sales are being generated with the ‘soft offers’ you don’t have to worry about sending a ‘sales’ email unless you’re having a sale or other special offer.

New product emails are definitely an occasion to combine the rollout with an educational article — or series of articles if the product warrants such.

Experts abound in the email marketing arena. Some say to send three content emails for every one sales message. Others say one to one. Let your audience decide what they want from you and your company and fulfill their wishes to create a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship.

Email comes right into your list members’ homes or is carried with them on phones 24/7, so it’s a very personal medium. Use that intimacy to create a trusting relationship, and you’ll create customers for life.

Would you like to have a no cost, no obligation, discussion about your email campaigns? We can analyze your copy and timing to see if there are possible improvements. Just schedule a meeting here.

Jul

2018

In Search of Natural Health: What It Means to Your Customer

You have products that help people feel better, live more productive and fulfilling lives. Have you thought about the affects your products have on your customers’ lives? Can you guide them to live better naturally?

Your customers seek more than just living pain free. They seek natural health — the ability to create all the things they want to accomplish in their relationships, material wealth, spirituality, skills and recreation.

When marketing your product, it’s important to know why your customers want what you offer. Sure, they want to move without joint pain. But what are they moving for? A better tennis game, to keep up with the kids, walk the dog, swim to stay lean, feel more vibrant/younger? Why do they want to do those things? To strengthen ongoing relationships or perhaps attract a new companion into their lives? Maybe playing competitive games is a stress release that they want to pursue.

Your marketing messaging should tap into several levels of reasons why your customer buys your product. They might buy from you because of your sustainable/green business practices. Perhaps you donate a percentage of your sales to charity. Maybe you have a rewards or discount program that makes buying from you attractive.

There are so many choices people have to make when buying natural health products. Why should they choose you and your product? What makes you stand out from your competition? Is it the source or processing of your raw goods? Your guarantee of potency, purity?

How can you possibly know why your customers buy from you? Well, you can ask them. You can ask them to rate your products with an easy to use format or use an open-ended question survey. Multiple choice surveys are not usually the best way to find out what people really think because the provided answers are often not accurate, so they force people to make a choice when the truth lies somewhere between the answers.

People have different natural health goals. You can start to think about some of those goals by asking like minded friends what they want to accomplish with naturally healthy living. Think of your own goals for health.

Some natural health aspirations your customers may have:

Living prescription drug free
Living pain free
Using only sustainably/green sourced products
Be emotionally balanced so life’s pitfalls don’t send you into a tailspin
Be physically fit
Be able to think clearly
Improve your physical skills such as running, swimming, hiking, climbing, or favorite recreational sport
Improve your mental skills for career advancement or competition
Stay emotionally aware of others in order to have good relationships
Stay at a healthy weight without hunger

The physical segment of natural health is the one most people focus on, but emotional and mental health are necessary for a healthy body. A healthy body is necessary for emotional and mental health.

When people focus on their physical health, they get the positive side effects of positive mood and clear thinking.

Go deep into your customer’s untold desires for natural health — that is where your marketing message hides.

If you would like to explore the deeper reaches of successful marketing messages, I would be happy to be your guide. Set up a short, free call here.

Dec

2017

How to Create Valuable Marketing Messages

There are times when the things we write are all about me and mine. My recent holiday greetings letter comes to mind. I wrote it to share our year with friends and relatives who are geographically distant.

This message is often the only communication we have all year. That seems silly. Why would people who don’t communicate all year even care what’s going on in our lives? I don’t know the answer, but I sure look forward to hearing about their lives once a year. Perhaps it’s just that we share a history or genealogy, and we want to know that life is going on for them just as it is for us.

Marketing messages, though, should have the opposite focus. The message should be about the people we are writing to. Now, this can seem silly, too. How can we write about people who we’ve never even met? How can we know their trials and tribulations? How can we convince them that our product will solve their pain or problems?

Beyond the technology and science of marketing comes the art of the message. The copywriter must delve into the lives of their prospects. Imagine their happiest moments and worst nightmares. Then craft a message that resonates with their desires, so they will buy your solution to their problems.

If your solution is the only one of its kind, this can be rather straightforward. If your product is one of many that can help solve the problem, you’ll have to find the difference – the shining star – that makes your solution outshine the rest. This difference can be obvious: lowest price for example. It can be more subtle: sustainably sourced and produced. The second example will appeal to a smaller audience, but this group will be a more faithful following.

The product, the audience and your marketing goals will determine whether you want to form a relationship with your customers or just sell the inventory you have.

Since selling to repeat customers has a higher ROI than acquiring new customers, it makes sense to nurture the relationship. You have a history. Is it enough to contact them once a year or only when you want to sell them something? Are they that invested in your history to hear about you or do you need to give them value to keep them interested?

Value is the key to successful marketing content messages. Whether you deliver your messages via email or social media, providing value is the key.

What can you give your prospects and customers that costs them nothing more than their time? What can that gift provide you in terms of your relationships?