Take Your Content to Your Customers
Content marketing is so ingrained in today’s business world that it’s almost an afterthought. The problem is that over the years, as we’ve morphed (been duped?) into believing “if you build it they will come,” we’ve forgotten that it’s still important to take that content (blog posts, videos, how-to guides, etc.) to our customers rather than just putting it somewhere we hope they’ll find it.
Yes, I said “we,” and very intentionally.
When Worlds Collide
When I started my coaching and consulting business, I was introduced to a very new sales environment. I came out of the medical device industry into a digital sales world of communicating with people electronically through email and social networks rather than knocking on doors and speaking face to face with gatekeepers and prospects. I knew medical was a bit sluggish in terms of this kind of adoption, but wow, this was pretty incredible!
I saw people championing the idea of regularly creating and curating content, putting it in places for people to see it, and then trying to make room on their schedule for all of the interested buyers with wallets already out. I even had a mentor who had built a business by taking this approach before it was even a “thing.”
I already had experience using content to start conversations with new prospects. I would take clinical studies or journal articles to surgeons, pull out a couple of key points worth talking about, and I’d ask for a meeting. I’d attach my business card to the piece with a short note alluding to the idea that their colleagues were talking about this issue. Where did they stand on it? It was an intuitive way for me to sell, and that’s how I was so successful in my former sales life. This was going to be a slam dunk.
Content Marketing Becomes Content Selling in 2021
It’s almost six years later, but it didn’t take me that long to realize there’s more to it. Like most things, what was once a scarce resource is now an effluent commodity. Everybody’s creating content, and quite frankly, many of those putting their thoughts out daily probably shouldn’t be. There are 4.4 million blog posts published every day! The average value of the content in your social media feeds is less than zero, which is one of the reasons I took some of my best work and put a price tag on it.
So, is content marketing a thing of the past? Has it jumped the shark and do we need to move onto something else? Absolutely not. You need to make your content work for you, but the content itself is not your work.
This is my prospecting mantra:
Be someone worth talking to
Have something worth talking about
It’s assumed that good content will accomplish both of those objectives, but it doesn’t. In fact, even really good content won’t accomplish that at the rate you’d expect because it’s buried underneath the tons of garbage out there. You may have noticed that a lot of companies are out there succeeding, not because their ideas are better than everyone else’s or that the way they’re packaged is superior, but because they take those concepts and ideas directly to the people who can use them: their customers.
Some of those should be your customers.
Take your content marketing mindset of letting people find their way to you, and convert it to a selling mindset, where you take it to them. It’s a simple shift but a profound one.
Take a more tactical approach, and take back the control. Take those great thoughts and ideas that you have and that you find and put them in front of your prospects. Use those ideas to create the context to ask really provocative questions and get them thinking. Now you’re in the driver’s seat rather than sitting back and waiting (hoping) for someone to pick you.
I could have hoped my surgeon customers of the past would stumble on those articles and studies on their own, but they probably wouldn’t. They also wouldn’t have gone out on their own, done some research about how to solve for those issues, and then found me at the top of the list of people they wanted to talk to. That’s just not how it works for the overwhelming majority of people buying what you sell.
Need help with this? It’s pretty straightforward once you understand the concept, but it helps to be pointed in the right direction. I know a guy who can help.
Want to weigh in on this subject? Join our conversation in the Rethink The Way You Sell Community.
Jeff Bajorek
Real. Authentic. Experience.
There’s a big difference between knowing how to sell and being able to. Jeff Bajorek spent over a decade in the field as a top performer. He’s been in your shoes. He knows what it will take. He can help you succeed.
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