Relationship Marketing: Focus On People Before Your Pitch

Are you feeling anxious to jump into social media and tell the world about your business? I have some bad news for you.

The hard truth? No one cares.

Many people believe that showing up is enough. They believe that crafting a great headline or selling a great product is enough to compel other people to care about it (or you) and buy. But it’s not.
If you expect the money to come rolling in the minute you tweet out your sales pitch, you’re going to be disappointed.
No one cares about your product unless you give them a reason to care. Your sales pitch won’t work without first building an audience who cares about it and/or your brand.
Taking the time to build relationships with your customers is a necessity. It’s also better for you and your business in the long-term.

The value of your network

Relationship marketing is not new, but, with the ongoing evolution of social media and inbound marketing, the way you attract and retain customers is.
By nature, the online world parallels real life. While the same principles of offline lead generation, sales, and customer service hold true online, your message and your brand are amplified, reaching a greater number of people in less time.
You might have a reach of 200 people in real life. At any given time, you are physically near only 2-4 of them. If you complain about the service at the coffee shop downstairs from your office, only those 2-4 people hear it.
On social media, however, you might have 2000-4000 followers. When you complain about the same coffee shop, you’re amplifying that message x 1000. Plus, if any of those followers share your message, it amplifies it to their network too.
Positive or negative, people will talk about you in their network. Create an exceptional customer experience, and people will tell their friends how great you are. Disappoint them, and they won’t hesitate to complain about you.
That’s why the relationship with your network and your customers is so important.

What do relationships have to do with sales?

The most powerful thing you can do in the online space is not making a sale. It’s building meaningful, lasting relationships with your customers. The amplification of your messaging and transparency of your brand online makes it that much more important to conduct business with honesty and integrity.
Beyond the benefits to your reputation, a network of prospects who know, like and trust you are also more likely to buy from you. And if you provide them with enough value, they will likely bring in referrals and repeat business after the initial sale.
How much of a difference does this really make? Just look at the age-old practice of cold calling.
Cold calling for leads can bring in some business, but it’s a high effort/ low reward activity. In our office, we break it down like this:
30 – thirty dials on cold leads
10 – to reach ten people
3 – three of those will meet with you
1 – one of those three will result in a sale
By comparison, here are the numbers for referrals and prospects you already know:
5 – five people referred to your product or service
2 – two of those five agree to meet with you
1 – one of those two will likely result in a sale
Using these numbers, the cold calling success ratio is 30:1. Sales from people who already know and like you averages 5:1. Less effort, more reward. Which would you rather do?
Online, the same logic holds true. According to Hubspot, 71% of people are more likely to purchase when referred by social media. The relationships you have with your prospects and customers make all the difference.

How to get Started

1. Change your perspective: People don’t like advertisements telling them what they should think, but they do like to feel understood. Stop treating your prospects like someone you need to sell. Instead, look at your business from their perspective. A little empathy goes a long way.
2. Start having conversations: Instead of broadcasting your message or sharing self-serving content, try having a conversation with your customers. Listen to what they say, and respond to their comments, questions and concerns. Find opportunities to reach out and engage with your customers and they will be more inclined to engage with you.
3. Bring value: Find ways to bring a tremendous amount of value to your customers. Providing them with an exceptional value in product (and the service behind it) is one of the key ways you can forge a strong relationship.
What additional steps have you taken to foster meaningful relationships with your customers?

Content Marketing: Can We Really Trust Your Brand?

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!”
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Can your brand be trusted?

Of course your first answer is to assure me that, of course, I can trust your brand.  You’ve been around for X number of years. You have The Most Amazing Social Proof Ever in the perfectly optimized position on your website.  You’ve even have declared yourself an expert in your field. 

But I want to know whether I can trust your brand at a deeper level. And here’s what I mean.

What does your brand stand for?

You might have a mission or value statement.  You might support a charity.  You might have had a company retreat and talked about authenticity, for all I know.

But if something suddenly happened to your website and I couldn’t read those carefully crafted statements, well, then what? If I couldn’t find your web page and couldn’t read the content that talks about your brand’s passion for providing fresh water in impoverished areas or I couldn’t see your links to Seth Godin’s posts on authenticity, but I could see the rest of the content on your site and your social platforms, would I really be able to tell that those things matter?

I recently read a story about a little experiment done at a corporate retreat. A brand wanted to see if who they thought they were and how they were perceived online matched up.

It was a simple experiment, and you could easily harness the exact same tool this multi-billion dollar brand used and examine the authenticity of your own content marketing.

They took a representative example of their content and put it into a word cloud tool called Wordle. Many people see it as a great graphic tool to make artistic images of text communication.  And it is.
But it also helps you dig a little more deeply into your word choices and see what you’re talking about frequently – and what you’re not talking about at all.

For this company, it was stunning. They discovered that there was a pretty serious disconnect between what they were parading as the “important stuff” and what they were communicating online.
You might think that your followers don’t care about that level of detail. But even if they can’t exactly put their finger on it, that’s one of the ways they decide if you’re truly authentic and if they want to do business with you.

If your content isn’t aligned with who you say you are as an organization (and that counts for single person brands all the way up to large multinational corporations), you’re telling a story that is disjointed, unclear, and possibly even flat-out contradictory.  The bottom line is this: over time, your brand will appear less trustworthy. And when your potential clients have a choice, they’ll choose your competitor whose message is more clearly aligned.

How to Align Your Content With Your Brand’s Story

1. Know your purpose
2. Use your purpose to formulate the core message of your brand
3. Evaluate every piece of content against your core message and purpose

Is your content supporting your brand’s story or are you missing the mark?

Tips for Creating Pinnable Content

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Most marketers are aware that Pinterest can take a website from unknown to super successful with a single pin. However, up until now, finding the secret formula for content that will take off and go viral has been largely based on experiment. Marketers have been scrambling to find a way to reach the largest market possible using Pinterest as the medium.

While there’s no surefire method for finding Pinterest success, using the right combination of content, images and infographics seems to key. Follow the tips below to create pinnable content that meets or exceeds your expectations for the network while reaching the largest audience possible.

Content

Content marketing is important. It’s a way to increase search rankings and to be shared across multiple networks and social media platforms. It’s no different on Pinterest. But, just like old content cannot be relied upon to drive new traffic to a website, it can’t be relied upon to gain attention on Pinterest. If a site is not regularly updated, there’s nothing new to share on the network. This puts any company looking to maximize reach on Pinterest at a disadvantage.

Whether your brand creates and sells a single product or an entire line of retail goods or services, new content is a necessity. If a pin is not a success the first time, it can’t be relied upon over and over again. Instead, new content should be produced on an ongoing basis and regularly pinned to your brand’s account. Using searchable keywords and images that speak to the content that has been created are a must. Think of information that matters to your target market; what are they searching for? What questions do they ask? What news stories pertain to their interests? Use these as inspiration for content creation.

Think about lists and actionable ideas that Pinterest users may be interested in, like this list by CopyBlogger. In most cases, those who use Pinterest on a regular basis are looking for projects and recipes—you can provide these easily.

Images

Many Pinterest users have entire boards of images: images that speak to them, images that are dynamic, images that are humorous and so on. Visually appealing pieces of information attract users on all social networks, Pinterest operates in the same way, maybe even more so. This is also a great way to supplement content creation. Snapping a photo takes a few seconds and can have a huge impact in driving website traffic.

An image can come from a cell phone or digital camera, a novice or a professional. Just make sure it’s clear and in jpeg form for optimal Pinterest viewing.

Think of images that speak to your target audience. 12 Keys, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, did this with their Pinterest image campaign that used controversial images of children with drinks and drugs and the caption “They Are More Like You Than You Think.” These images sparked just enough controversy to encourage pinning while speaking to viewers in a way that content alone could not. For marketers, Pinterest images are a necessity.

Infographics

Long live the infographic! This is just as true on Pinterest as any other social network. Infographics provide an easy way to break down complex pieces of information or statistics in a way that speaks to the visual side of the viewer’s brain. Because of this, these dynamic pieces of information are more easily shared than traditional content, especially on a site that operates on simplicity and visual appeal.

To create an infographic that is likely to be shared on Pinterest, think of something that your target audience could be instructed on, or a recent study that shares data and statistics that that audience would find interesting. Think of how you could break it down in a single image or “videographic” format. Use various font sizes and colors to make certain details stand out more than others depending on interest level.

An infographic entitled “The Cost of Providing Drugs to the World,” by Clarity Way does this in a memorable way. By comparing the cost of creating and consuming prescription drugs with their effectiveness and popularity based upon a recent FDA news item, the center broke down an otherwise forgettable piece of information into something that speaks to their target market while leaving a long term impression. This is exactly what an infographic should do; pieces like this are most likely to go viral on Pinterest.

In some ways, finding success on Pinterest is still somewhat hit or miss for marketers. But, because of the potential for posts to go viral, it should be a part of any strategic marketing campaign. Marketers looking to create pinnable content should focus on blog posts, images and infographics. It only takes one sharable piece of information to make an impact; don’t neglect this possibility.