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The Importance of Audience Segmentation

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The Importance of Audience Segmentation in Marketing

Logic dictates that the larger your target audience, the more customers you will convert. After all, sales is a numbers game – the more people you pitch, the more product you sell. The issue with this logic lies in the pitch itself and the advantages of relationship building in content marketing.

Marketing messages lobbed at all females between the ages of 18 and 25 are not likely to land. Consumers are looking for a more personal experience. They want to develop a relationship with the brands they choose to do business with. Often the choice between one brand and another offering the same product is made based on the brand feel that resonates with the consumer.

Segmenting Your Audience

Within the demographic of females between the age of 18 and 25, there are many variations. Some of those women are still in school while others are beginning their career. Some ride public transportation to their favorite night spot, others ride their bikes to the public library. Some are planning their wedding, some are planning a vacation with their parents, some are pregnant with their first child.

To reach your target audience with marketing messages, you have to know who they are and where to find them. If you can speak to one segment of your female audience, the ones who ride public transportation for example, you can craft a message that will resonate with them. You can connect with that segment on a personal level; Each individual might believe you are speaking directly to her. Deliver that message in a bus stop or a subway station and your conversion rate doubles.

Benefits of Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is the difference between marketing to thousands and connecting with 1% or reaching out to hundreds and resonating with 10%. As your conversion rate goes higher, your cost per lead or cost per customer goes down. Here are some clear benefits to marketing to a select target audience:

Reinforce customer-centered messaging
Potential customers want to hear about themselves. That’s what gets their attention and engages them with your brand. When you talk as if you know them, you know what their lives are like and why they need your services, they hear you. The more specific you get about defining your audience, the easier it is to craft messages that will make them feel like you are speaking directly to them and you understand who they are and what they need.

Lower acquisition costs
Your cost per customer will be lower because your sales cycle will be shorter. If it takes five touches for you to convert a customer, with a more targeted marketing approach you can reduce that to three touches. Think of your sales cycle like your production facility. Every time you have to move materials, each time a team member has to touch the product, it costs you more money. When you keep the number of touches down to a minimum, you eliminate wasted motions and increase efficiency, reducing your production costs. If your marketing messages go straight to making a direct connection with your audience, even if that audience is smaller, you will convert in fewer touches, reducing your cost per sale.

Highlights new opportunities
While you are slicing and dicing your audience into smaller, more specific segments, you may uncover a niche you hadn’t considered. Those females who ride public transportation could be a good example. While you are reviewing their demographics, you might discover that the bus riders live further out from the city center than the subway riders do. Maybe the subway riders are more likely to be renters while the bus riders tend to own single-family homes. Now you have an opportunity to craft a different message and maybe even add a new product or service specifically designed for those bus riders who come in from the suburbs.

The idea of audience segmentation suggests dividing your audience into smaller pieces, and that can sound counter-productive. After all, you want to make more sales, not fewer. Why would you pitch to a smaller audience? The bottom line on audience segmentation is that it protects your bottom line. Targeted marketing messages are going to convert at a higher rate than more general pitches. 

The Balance of Branding

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The Balance of Branding

Every generation grows up with at least one memorable brand. Those brands become iconic as they are embraced and embedded in the culture, many surviving longer than the business itself. The framework of a brand is essential to its growth and survival.

Brand longevity relies on a connection to its roots and the ability to evolve with time and business growth. Without change, a brand will stagnate and die. With too much change, away from where it began, a brand gets stretched out of shape and falls away from its customer base.

Business growth is the easiest indicator to recognize when it’s time to refresh a brand. When you are ready to go after new markets or grow your product offerings in a new direction, your brand needs to flex with you. Evolution of the brand helps knit new parts of your business together so all aspects benefit from and contribute to the strength of your brand.

If you evolve your brand too far from its roots, it may go spinning out of control. Change is important, but so is change management. You may not realize the value of your brand legacy, but your customers will miss that connection when it’s gone.

Increasing pressure on business owners to expand their reach to new marketing platforms (Tik Tok, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram), and constantly changing advertising channels with new streaming formats, create an urgency to stay in front of the trends. The key is to maintain a connection to your brand’s history through all the changes.

Is your brand in good shape?
Pizza Hut is an excellent example of a brand twisted out of shape until it was no longer recognizable. If you grew up in the 1980s, you probably remember the sights and smells of the old Pizza Hut restaurant. Families sat in those wooden booths with big red plastic cups of soda waiting for a hot pan pizza to be delivered to the table while children amused themselves in the adjacent arcade. You can probably still smell the combination of simmering sauce and baking pizza coming out of the kitchen and remember those family dinners.

That’s the legacy that Pizza Hut had with its brand and how it connected to consumers. That was the essence, the connection with its audience, and the brand feel that ultimately rolled into other brands, setting a standard for franchise pizza concepts. Ironically, Pizza Hut could still be achieving that, if not for losing sight of who they were, how to translate that for new audiences, and understanding the importance of maintaining a legacy, versus changing everything about themselves in pursuit of a new audience.

Today, Pizza Hut is more of an option than a standout brand, one of many half-time choices among Papa Johns, Domino’s, Marcos, or any neighborhood place delivering a good pie. They are primarily a mobile app, with coupons and quick delivery, usually connected to a Taco Bell or a KFC, with no trace of the four walls or even the concept of a “hut.”

Certainly, today’s mobile audiences look for quick and efficient solutions, but that doesn’t mean the legacy of a brand can’t withstand changes while holding onto its roots – the framework it originally built. You don’t necessarily need those four walls, but you do need the vision to communicate what your brand stood for while translating those brand values for a new audience.

Will you take a balanced approach to brand evolution?
Darden Restaurants, owner of dining chains such as The Capital Grille, LongHorn Steakhouse, and Olive Garden, is taking the long view in its marketing strategy instead of relying heavily on the shorter-term strategy of marketing promotions. They are focusing on the importance of their brand, its further growth with audiences, and most importantly the experience that customers both remember and will remember with each visit.

The concept is simple. Remain true to the core values of what built your brand at the start – your framework. The need to adapt will always be necessary, as promotions, technology, audiences, and communication platforms will undoubtedly continue to change. The essence of who your brand is should only evolve, not change completely.

Remaining true to your brand values should be the key for any brand looking for continued growth, not just sustainability. The relationship between consumers and companies is the core of success with any initiative or campaign; the creation of a bond that emotionally engages audiences is what makes your brand a choice, not just another option.

The bottom line is that if you aren’t connected to those consumers on a deeper level, you become just an option versus their choice. So while we may no longer have the days of freshly-baked pan pies, endless arcade tokens, organ music, or even those big red plastic red soda cups, we can still have the connection and loyalty to a brand that was built upon those pillars.

How will you evolve your brand without losing touch with its original framework? Let’s start with a brand audit to uncover your roots and sketch out a natural evolution for your brand.

Unearth the Value of a Marketing Audit

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Unearth the Value of a Marketing Audit

In the highly competitive construction industry, effective marketing is essential for business growth and success. You can ensure your construction company’s marketing efforts are delivering the desired results by regularly conducting a comprehensive marketing audit. 

A marketing audit evaluates your current marketing strategies, identifies strengths and weaknesses, and provides valuable insights to enhance your marketing initiatives. A periodic audit keeps your marketing efforts fresh and is valuable in achieving your business goals. 

The primary reasons a marketing audit would be valuable to your construction company include the following:

Assessing Marketing Performance
A marketing audit provides an opportunity to evaluate your construction company’s marketing performance objectively. It involves a detailed analysis of your marketing strategies and campaigns, and their impact on your target audience. By examining key performance indicators such as website traffic, lead generation, conversion rates and customer feedback, you can determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. This evaluation helps identify areas that require improvement or realignment to optimize your marketing budget and resources.

Example: A marketing audit could show that your lead generation form is not working as well as it should. Maybe a required field is preventing many potential customers from completing and submitting their information. By changing that form field, you could begin generating 10% more leads from your website.

Identifying Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is crucial for effective marketing. A marketing audit helps you gain valuable insights into your customers’ preferences, needs and behaviors. By examining customer data, conducting surveys or leveraging market research, you can identify your ideal customer profile. This information
enables you to tailor your marketing strategies, messaging and channels to reach the right audience with the right message, increasing your chances of generating quality leads and converting them into loyal customers.

Example: Because of recent interest rate spikes, you may discover your target audience is spending more on existing homes than building new ones. You could use that information to pivot your marketing strategy to emphasize renovation services over new construction.

Evaluating Branding & Positioning
Your construction company’s brand image and positioning play a significant role in shaping customer perceptions. A marketing audit allows you to evaluate your branding strategy and assess if it aligns with your company’s vision, values and market positioning. It helps you determine if your brand messaging is consistent,
compelling and effectively differentiates you from competitors. By identifying gaps or inconsistencies, you can refine your brand identity, messaging, and visual elements to enhance brand recognition and build trust among your target audience.

Example: The most famous brands in the world continue to be recognizable with simple melodies, symbols or color schemes because they are consistently evaluating the return on their strategies. The effects of your marketing strategy will likely be more subtle, but the famous examples illustrate the lasting importance of maintaining brand alignment with your company’s values. Brand positioning and marketing strategy should be reviewed regularly to avoid serious missteps.

Assessing Marketing Channels
With the number of marketing channels available today, it’s crucial to invest in the right ones for your construction company. A marketing audit examines your current marketing channels, such as website, social media, email marketing, traditional advertising and more. It assesses their effectiveness, reach and engagement levels. This evaluation enables you to identify channels that are driving results and those that may require adjustment or elimination. By reallocating resources to the most effective channels, you can maximize your marketing return on investment (ROI) and ensure your message reaches the right audience at the right time.

Example: One common debate, especially with small- to medium-sized businesses, is whether Facebook is an appropriate channel and what can be gained from maintaining a presence there. The answer to this question for your business may change over time. An audit will pick up on these changes and suggest updates to your marketing strategy.

Analyzing Competitor Landscape
Understanding your competitors’ marketing strategies and positioning is essential to gain a competitive edge. A marketing audit helps you analyze your competitors’ activities, strengths, weaknesses and market share. By benchmarking against industry leaders and identifying areas where you can differentiate yourself, you
can fine-tune your marketing strategies for better positioning. Furthermore, analyzing successful campaigns and industry trends can provide inspiration for innovative marketing approaches within the construction sector.

Example: One of your competitors may be marketing to high-end buyers. As they work to attract that segment of the market, there may be an opening for you to position your business for projects at a different price point. If your competitor is advertising complete renovation packages, maybe you want to focus on new builds, or partner with a landscaper to provide renovation packages that include a refreshed appearance.

A marketing audit is a vital process that construction companies should undertake regularly to assess their marketing performance, identify areas of improvement and capitalize on market opportunities. By conducting a comprehensive audit, you gain valuable insights into your target audience, brand positioning, marketing channels and competitors. This knowledge allows you to make informed decisions, refine your strategies and allocate resources more effectively. Ultimately, a marketing audit empowers your construction company to enhance its market presence, generate more qualified leads and build lasting customer relationships, leading to sustainable growth and success in a competitive industry.

*Published in the October 2023 issue of Construction Business Owners Magazine:
https://www.constructionbusinessowner.com/marketing/unearth-value-marketing-audit

Does Your Brand Need a Refresh?

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Does Your Brand Need a Refresh?

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day or running your business and neglect your branding. You put a lot of effort into developing your brand identity, but just like your website, it is not a set-it-and-forget-it element of your business. (Do you know any parts of your business that truly work that way?)

It’s kind of like painting your house. The new paint looks fresh and clean. But how long does that freshness last? When do you need to update it with the next new coat of paint? You look at your house every day. Will you notice when the luster wears off?

How do you know when it’s time for a brand refresh? Ask yourself these five questions:

1. Is your brand identity visually inconsistent?
Wherever your brand appears, in print or online, even on t-shirts, it should look the same. It should be rendered in the same way with a consistent color palette. The visual consistency is part of what helps people identify your brand and connect with your business. Over time and without strong guidelines and strict enforcement, your brand starts to lose that visual consistency. The font may vary between mediums or the primary color could be off.  

2. Are your services noticeably different from your competitors?
You may not be the only business in town that builds treehouses, but a strong brand identity requires that your company stand out in some way from the competition. Consumers have several choices in the marketplace. What will make them choose your company over the others? If the answer to that question is not clear, it may be time to refresh your brand.

3. Does your brand align with your values?
It’s easy to get off course as you’re growing your business and focusing on increasing revenue. Maybe you established your brand on a value of long-term relationships, but then you got really good at selling one-off services. The disconnect between your brand that promotes the value of long-term relationships and your marketing efforts that pitch quick deals will eventually slow business growth.

4. Are the multiple divisions of your company tied together with branding
Growing a business with multiple departments or coordinated divisions of services takes dedication and focus. You may wake up one day and realize your branding does not accurately reflect the relationships among various parts of your business. You must first draft an organizational chart that defines the relationship between those various parts. Then, it is time to refresh your branding to reinforce those relationships for your team as well as your customers.

5. Are your customers confused about your offerings?
If you get a lot of calls and emails asking for clarification, your branding needs to be refreshed. Brand visuals need to reinforce your business values and suggest the type of services and products you offer. Your treehouse building business does not have time for too many inquiries about buying shrubs and bushes, for example. Refreshing your branding can help eliminate customer confusion and simplify your marketing efforts.

Branding is as fluid as your business itself. It needs to flex and bend with changes in your offerings, your customer base, and your industry. A solid branding system will allow some flexibility, but beyond a certain point, it’s time for a refresh. Your current brand might be able to absorb a few new product or service launches. Or, it may remain solid for several years, depending on how your company grows during that time. Keeping up-to-date with your branding will make your marketing efforts easier and more effective.




How to Create a Powerful Brand Identity

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How to Create a Powerful Brand Identity

If you remember the sneaker wars of the 1990s, you understand how important a brand can be. Nike emerged the winner, and you may not remember the brand they ultimately beat out. Professional athletes took sides and even want-to-be Saturday amateurs pledged their allegiance by sporting their brand of choice.

In the previous decade, Apple kicked-off a brand war in the home computer industry. To this day, most computer users clearly identify themselves as Mac or PC, a phenomenon that advertisers seized on in the early 2000s with the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ad campaign.

You’re not selling sneakers or computers, but developing powerful brand identity can help you beat out the competitors in your market. Brand identity can become the framework for your marketing strategy, driving growth in your business. Here are the actions you’ll need to take to develop a powerful brand identity:

Research first.
Good marketing strategies are data-driven, so building a brand identity needs to start with research. Research your market, your competitors, and your customers. Understand how your products and services compare to what customers are looking for and what competitors are offering. Figure out what customer needs are underserved in your market. Brand positioning and marketing strategy will be based on your research results.

Establish business values.
Knowing what product or service you will offer is one important part of developing your brand, but an equally important part is understanding your company’s values. Figure out what is important to you as a business owner because you’ll want your brand identity to convey that to potential customers. Maybe you build pools because you want to bring a little fun to everyone’s backyard. You develop a work environment that incorporates a fun vibe to share this value with your employees, and they bring it to your customers.

Define your ideal customer.
Creating a customer persona will help refine your audience and your message. Take some time to understand who you want to sell your products and services to. What are their demographics? What are their lives like? What problem will your company solve for them? How will you solve it better than any of your competitors? You can sell your services to anyone who is willing to buy, but when you target your marketing efforts on one specific persons, the results will be better.

Strike a tone.
Will your brand be fun, serious, helpful, playful…Determine what style your brand will exhibit. Your tone should be something that resonates with your ideal customer. Think about how serious or professional your communications will be with your customers when you are explaining your products and services. A fun or playful tone might be appropriate for your pool services, but if you provide fire and water restoration services, a more serious voice would work best.

Write your brand story.
Every brand has a story. That’s the part that customers want to connect with. Where did your company come from? How has it evolved? If your business is new, your brand story goes back before its conception to when you first had the idea to create the brand. Consider your motivation and your personal history that led you to launch your brand. Your brand story will connect your business’s values to your product and service offerings. It explains your “why” to potential customers. When that “why” resonates with them or they can identify with your story, you’ve made a long-term customer.

Get visual.
Colors and images can tie your brand directly to your target audience’s emotions. Establish how you want them to feel when they encounter your brand and find a way to represent that visually. Images can be powerful communication tools – think about how smiling faces make you feel or fluffy puppies. Develop a look and feel for your brand that reflects your values and the tone of your brand.

You started out  building a business, but building a brand is a more compelling pursuit. A powerful brand identity will attract your ideal customers and keep them engaged in a long-term relationship with your business.

Understanding the Value of Content Marketing

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Understanding the Value of Content Marketing

Content marketing is the best way to improve sales in your online business. To begin with, you are reaching customers where they are, online, and where they can buy what you are selling. The other important aspect to content marketing is selling through not selling.

That’s right. Content marketing improves sales without trying to sell anything. It is like a stealth strategy that customers don’t see coming. People don’t want to be pitched at all day long. Instead, they long for meaningful engagement.

Content marketing engages customers and potential customers without the pressure to buy anything. It is like giving them free stuff before they make a purchase. You share valuable information and give them a sense of belonging to your brand’s tribe without asking for anything (much) in return.

The Value of Membership Content Marketing Delivers
You probably did not go into business to build a community and manage a social group. Ultimately, you have a product or service to sell, and that is how you sustain your business. Unless you operate a fitness club, you may not see the value of membership.

Think of it this way…a sale is a one-time event, but membership is long term. Members of your brand’s tribe, customers, raving fans of your company will bring more than the revenue from one sale.

They will be repeat customers, exponentially increasing the return on your investment to make them customers in the first place.

They will be brand ambassadors, spreading the name of your company everywhere they go.

They will recruit new customers who will also become raving fans and make multiple purchases.

They will be your market research team, giving valuable feedback on your products and services and suggesting new items to add to your line.

They will help you recruit rockstar employees as you grow your business.

It is almost impossible to calculate the value of a loyal customer base in dollars and cents. They are the secret sauce to brand development and business expansion.

Building that Customer Base for Your Brand
Traditional advertising techniques that focus on making a sale look for places where your target audience gathers. The idea is to go to those places, make your offer, and sales will happen. This sales model has limited value.

Content marketing turns this theory upside down. Instead of looking for places where your audience gathers, you are giving them a place to gather — your website. The key, of course, is getting them there.

People are attracted by the information you put out. The words you publish on your webpage draw them in. The goal is to offer so much value in information that your customers stick around. The longer they stay on your website, the more likely they are to buy.

Adding new content frequently keeps customers coming back. It gives them a reason to visit your website on a regular basis. That consistent content also improves your search ranking in Google, so more people can find your website.

Making an investment in content marketing can blow up your business over time. The results start slow, but once the momentum begins, it will grow exponentially. When your website traffic increases, so does your opportunity to generate leads directly from your own platform.

Learn More
Check out our Content Connection package in Quick Builds. Imagine where your business could be after six months of solid content marketing execution.

Turn Customers into Raving Fans

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Turn Customers into Raving Fans

If you are running a small business, a significant portion of your resources are probably devoted to converting random people into customers. You identify the characteristics of the people most likely to buy your products or services and focus your efforts on helping them see the value you have to offer their lives.

Then, they buy and you move on to the next sale. You are constantly stuck in this place of convincing people to buy. With each new lead, you start over educating them about your product and its benefits. You have the introduction committed to memory.

What if you could get someone to educate potential customers for you? As the owner of the business, you are the best person to talk about the value and benefits of the products and services you sell. Except…there is one person who would be better at it. That is your customer.

A customer, someone who has already purchased from you, not only knows your product from personal experience but is also part of your target demographic. Your customer knows other people just like himself, and he would love to share his positive experience with them.

Where Raving Fans Come From
Raving fans are like customers on steroids (no, not literally). They have such an exceptional experience purchasing from your company that they want to do it again. Beyond that, they connect with your company philosophy and see themselves as part of your brand. They are members of your tribe.

After you convert random people into customers, you can turn them into raving fans with these three easy steps:

1. Provide an outstanding product or service.
There is no shortcut around the quality of what you sell to your customers. If you are going to be successful in business, you must put your heart and soul into your product design and development and don’t let up when it comes to production. It is better to offer one exceptional product than ten average ones.

2. Solve the customer’s problems.
When something goes wrong, and sometimes it does, don’t wait for your customer to ask for a refund. At the first sign of a malfunction, even if it is something beyond your control, step in to help. You need to stand behind your work and the work of anyone else involved in the delivery process. If it was your supplier who came up short, you can make up the difference. When a faulty installation ruins the outcome, fix it, even if installation was not your job.

3. Talk to your customers.
It sounds silly, but you have to communicate with your customers to turn them into fans of your business. Direct communication is the number one thing all humans on the planet want. It validates their existence and makes them feel special. Connecting directly with your customers will seal the deal on their membership in your number one fan club.

Talking to the customers of your online business can be a challenge, but that is what your business blog is for. Each post serves as an individual message directed specifically to one person. The one person just happens to be your ideal customer. By talking to your ideal customer, you are talking to all of your customers because they share many characteristics.

Take advantage of the opportunity to talk to your customers by posting to your business blog frequently. Before long, your customers will turn into raving fans and start recruiting new customers to your business on their own – or with a subtle nudge from you.

Not sure what to say to your customers to turn them into raving fans? Sign up for our content writing subscription service and let us handle the content piece. You focus on amazing products and solving customer products and let the professional writers take care of the communication.

The Secret to Writing Viral Content

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The Secret to Writing Viral Content

Let’s face it, when you run a business, time is precious. There are a lot of tasks you need to complete in a day, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the time and energy required to create new ideas to grow your business and stay ahead of your competition.

A huge portion of your time is probably devoted to creating content for your website and feeding the social media machine. The thing about SEO is that it takes time and it goes on forever. Inching your way to the top of the search results takes persistence and a boatload of copy.

If you are going to put the time into writing content for your website, it would be good to know that thousands of people are reading it. Here are some secret strategies for writing content that goes viral:

Keep it short.
Believe it or not, most people will not spend a whole minute reading your business blog. Get to the point and make it easy to read. They may not make it to the end, but if your blog impresses readers, they are more likely to share.

Start with a pithy headline.
This is not the place for click-bait because that gets old, fast. Instead, give your readers something juicy and clever. Capture their attention by teasing the best nugget your blog has to offer. Creating a little suspense or intrigue is good as long as you follow it up with the resolution.

Be emotional.
Scary movies are popular despite the obvious negative emotions because people like to feel. When you grab them by the heart, they are drawn into your story. Use words that elicit emotion from your reader and they will fall in love with your brand and want to share your content.

Paint a picture.
Visuals are especially helpful in this digital age. Use your choice of words to paint a picture, and pair your blog with vivid imagery. The pictures will help you tell the story and engage your readers on an emotional level.

Give freely.
Think of your blog as a free gift to your customers. Give them all you have to offer in the form of knowledge and information. Show your love for your customers and do not hold back. They should leave your blog with at least one actionable idea. It is okay to remind readers to share your content and spread the love.

Play the odds.
The more content you post on your website, the more likely you are to end up with a viral blog. The math is similar to sales: the more calls you make, the more sales you’ll make. Some days content marketing might feel like a big black hole, but it is not. With more frequent posting you can get your website ranked in Google and send your blogs viral.

The secret is out, the more you blog the more unique visitors you can attract to your website. Use these secrets of viral content to breathe some new life into your content, and keep writing. If you want a little help to double your output, check out our content writing service.

Tackling the Content Marketing Mountain

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Tackling the Content Marketing Mountain

You did your research, so you understand the importance of adding fresh, relevant content to your website every week. Potential customers will not see your website or know about what your company has to offer unless you come up in Google search results. Content marketing is the best way to improve your website’s organic search ranking.

Now, you are stuck with the idea of making this happen. Creating content about your products and services is not that big a deal. The problem is that it takes time, one resource that is in short supply for a small business owner.

The minimum you can do to make an impact is 500 words once a week. This effort needs to go on for many, many weeks in a row. In fact, for the foreseeable future of your business, you need to post new content to your website every week.

Make a Schedule for Content Marketing
Just like organizing anything else in your business, content marketing starts with a schedule. This is how the pros do it. Decide what day each week you will publish a new blog post on your website. The day of the week matters less to your readers than it does to you.

Block out one full hour each week, at the same time on the same day, to post new content on your website. When you get a procedure in place, you can probably accomplish this task in less than an hour. You can use the remaining time to review your site and see if you need to make any other changes.

Your schedule also needs to include time to develop content ideas and create the content. We don’t suggest you do this all at once. Instead, schedule two separate times, one for brainstorming content ideas and the other for actually writing your blog posts.

Your brainstorming session can be short, maybe just 30 minutes. And it does not have to happen every week. You could come up with ideas for several new pieces of content marketing in one session, so maybe squeeze in one or two brainstorming sessions each month.

The content writing is what will be time-intensive. For this part you need a solid block of uninterrupted time to focus on your writing. Start by scheduling two hours. With practice, you may eventually be able to write a 500-word blog post in about an hour.

Follow Through
As a business owner, you already know that follow-through is one of the most important aspects of accomplishment. Planning is key, but without follow-through nothing really happens. Gaining visibility for your website in Google searches is essential to growing your business online, but it takes time and consistency.

Just like any other aspect of your business, you cannot miss a deadline. Each week you have to follow through on your content writing schedule. You must create and publish new and engaging content on your website consistently to see any results.

If the mountain of work involved in consistent content creation seems insurmountable with your other responsibilities in running your business, you may need professional help. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many business owners do not write their own web content, although it appears as if they do. Check out our content writing subscription service. We’ll never tell!

Learn to Dribble or Craft Good Content – Your Choice

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Learn to Dribble or Craft Good Content - Your Choice

Writing is a skill like athleticism. You could be the fastest runner in the world, but not be able to dribble a basketball. A good athlete may be strong and well-coordinated, but he or she is not necessarily good at every type of sport.

Good writers, like accomplished athletes, practice regularly. If you were a good writer when you were in college, you may be out of practice by now. With proper instruction and practice, however, anyone can become a good writer. It is not dependent on raw talent or innate abilities.

In this age of technology, you do not even need the physical dexterity to hold a pencil in order to be a good writer. You could peck out some words on a keyboard and be brilliant! If you are writing haiku, a few syllables artfully arranged in three lines could make you a good writer.

Writing a haiku, however, is not a writing skill that will win you any awards for business writing. Are there awards for good business writing? Sure there are. They come in the form of more customers, better sales and higher revenue.

Eye the Goal: Grow Your Business
As a business owner, you probably realize that you can achieve anything as long as you know what the goal is. Working used to be a status symbol until accomplishment took its place. Figure out what you are trying to accomplish, and you are halfway there.

The goal of business writing is increased business, of course, but what does that look like? When it comes to content marketing, good writing entices, informs and entertains your audience. It makes them want to click on your offer, buy your product and return to visit your website often.

Good writing can keep your customer base engaged and create a feeling of community for them around your brand. It can solve the problems of the day and bring about world peace. Okay, maybe not that, but you get the picture.

Define the Audience: Get More Customers
Writing that appeals to women between the ages of 50 and 65 will not resonate with millennials of any gender. You may be able to engage an audience of camping enthusiasts on topics related to survival and outdoor exploration, but environmental allergy sufferers will not be interested in joining that discussion.

When it comes to writing, the demographics of your audience may be the most important determining factor. Millennials are not likely to connect with text that tells them to mind their P’s and Q’s or warns that loose lips sink ships. An older audience may be lost with suggestions to google it and check their newsfeed.

Before you begin writing, it is important to define your audience. Who are you talking to? Are they already customers of yours or are they part of a new market you are trying to attract? How old are they, and what are some of their hobbies?

Get to Work Building Marketing Content
When you know your goal and who you’re writing for, you are ready to begin. If writing fluency is an issue for you, just start writing anything that comes to mind. Imagine you are talking to one of your audience members, and write what you would say. You can always go back and edit your work later. It is easier to cross words out than make them up.

Here are some other things to keep in mind while you are developing written content for your website, social media and ad campaigns:

Take the customer’s perspective.
Instead of writing the information you want your customer to know, think about what he or she is looking for. Business owners make this mistake all the time. Their content or marketing copy is all about their qualifications, features of their products and services or other professional achievements that set them apart. They do not realize how irrelevant these details are to the customer.

We worked with one client who was updating their website content and wasn’t aware of this rule. On the About page, they detailed their business story from the beginning. This was a great idea, except they took it from the perspective of sales and revenue. In most businesses, customers are not interested in your revenue, they want to know what you will do for them.

Customers want to know that you understand their problems. When you write your website content from their perspective, instead of your own, they will connect with it. Even if you are describing the history of your business, the emphasis should be on what you did to help customers, and how you adapted your business over time to better meet customers’ needs.

Emote a little.
People are emotional creatures. Even the most stoic among us can be driven by emotions. Feelings, good and bad, are one thing that connect us to each other as human beings.

You want your blog writing to connect with website visitors, so put some emotion into it. It may not be professional to talk about your feelings, but you have to tap into emotions to connect with readers. Mostly, you want to write about their feelings, and keep it positive.

Use emotion-words to describe the customer experience with your company. When you write about your products or services, include the emotions that satisfied customers experience. Your readers will identify with positive emotions, and your writing will connect those emotions to your product and services.

Cut the fat.
Good for your heart; good for your content marketing. People are in a hurry — always! They are not going to spend a lot of time reading the text on your website. If you want to get a point across, you’ll have to make it fast.

The fastest way to convey written information is by making the best use of each word. The old adage in the writing industry goes like this: write tight. Eliminate words like good, nice, very, really, and other words you may think are descriptive. Instead choose delicious, comfortable, affordable, and other words that carry specific meaning and elicit emotion from your reader.

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. If you are telling a narrative, only include the steps that are most important to the point of your story. Use contractions and other informal language to keep your tone conversational.

Outsourcing is Always an Option
Although you are a good writer, it may take a long time for you to develop good content for your website. Just like what you do for your customers, content writing is a specific skill. When you are trying to balance your time as a business owner, outsourcing certain tasks is essential. Check out our monthly content marketing package and compare the cost to the value of your time when it could be spent doing other things.