What is the best type of content to create?

As many companies have come to realise, the digital era and the “connected customer” is here to stay. Looking at the companies that have been successful in the market, they all have one thing in common, “Put the Customer First” or “Knowing their Customer”. These companies have created relationships with their customers based on the one thing that all business is based upon, Trust.

“How do I establish trust?”, well the answer is easy answer their questions. One of the greatest advantages companies in the digital age have is that they have almost unlimited access to their customers. For some reason many companies shy away from answering their customers questions, without realizing how much benefit this holds for them.

Center your content around your customers Questions. When we center our content strategy around our customers questions, we do not have to constantly look for new content ideas or copy our competitors, we simply let our customers questions guide us and select the best content format to answer their questions.

Marcus Sheridan the man who pioneered the idea, and author of the book “They Ask You Answer” believes that Trust is the most important factor in any business transaction. Marcus further explains that the way to get consumer trust, is to remove fear from the Business process, how do we do this, easy we answer their questions.

So, the equation that we need to keep in the back of our mind is:

Trust = Buying Process – Fear.

The approach is so simple and yet so powerful and is what we will be discussing down below.

How do we Remove Fear and create Trust?

The answer may not surprise you, but it is as simple as doing the things most companies aren’t willing to do. Things like:

• Admit you have a problem if consumers don’t trust you or your industry.

• Adopt the mindset of a teacher. Teach your customers and help them to achieve the best solution for them, even if it is not your solution.

• By putting Customer Trust First. Ask the question “How can we re-earn Customer Trust?”

What Type of Content will help me create Trust?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, when you create content only focus your customer. Don’t make the mistake of focusing to much on your competitors and their content. If we set out to remove the fear from the buying process for our customers, our competitors will become irrelevant.

According to Marcus Sheridan, every customer wants to understand 5 Things before they do business. Businesses however shy away from answering these 5 questions. The problem with avoiding talking about these subjects are, the assumption that your consumers are ignorant or cannot find their desired results online, which in a digitally connected world is almost criminal.

Instead of hiding away, answering these questions provides you with an opportunity to establish trust with your customers, to remove friction from their buying experience and to take control of the conversation surrounding these questions. Answering these questions will also allow you to filter the customers and improving your lead quality.

Let’s look at each of these questions and think about the content we can create around it:

1. Problems/Negatives – What is Wrong with it?

Before making any buying decision, we all want to know about the risks involved…. What could go wrong? Buyer’s remorse is a very unpleasant feeling. So, what do we do to prevent this from happening? We go searching for what could go wrong.  

As a business we have our target customer and we know that our offering is not suited to certain customers. So why is it that we are afraid to tell consumers that this offering might not be for you? If we come out of the gate and address the fears people have before buying, we will not only put our customers at ease and build trust, but we will also tell those customers who are not suited to our offerings that we are not the solution they are looking for and save ourselves and them a lot of time that is destined to end in disappointment for both parties.

These negatives or problems can be anything from, industry problems or issues, quality concerns, concerns your competitors raise about your offering, address them in your content (video/blog/social) and show your customers you want the best solution for their specific needs.

2. Cost/Price/Rate – How much does it Cost?

The struggle to find prices online creates so much frustration every time I am looking to buy something online. If these companies only knew how many times, they have lost my business because I could not find basic pricing information. Somehow marketers and businesses are forgetting to communicate one of the traditional P’s of the 4P’s of the Marketing Mix, Price!

So by know you might be thinking “But you don’t understand our pricing depends on a number of variables!” or “But we don’t want our competitors to know our pricing strategy!” or even “But what if the pricing scares away our customers?” Let’s take a look at each of these questions separately.‍

“But you don’t understand our pricing depends on a number of variables!”‍

I understand that your pricing might be dependent on the customers requirements and other variables, but why not just tell customer? Create a content piece explaining how the pricing or the quote will work what will factor into their quoted price. If your prices range depending on customer requirements tell your customers what this range is and tell them why it ranges.

“But we don’t want our competitors to know our pricing strategy!”

Let’s not beat around the bush, your competitors have probably done their research and they already know your prices and you probably know theirs.

“But what if the pricing scares away our customers?”

This is the one that I really don’t understand, are you just never going to tell the customer what it will cost them. If the price scares them away initially why would it be any different when they get the quote after a tedious process? Always remember some customers aren’t a good fit for your business and this only helps improve the quality of your potential leads.    

3. Comparisons – How does it compare with the other alternatives?

Our customers have access to more information every day, our customers know about our competitors they know what they are looking for and many times they compare our offering to alternatives. How can we remove the friction and the fear from our customers buying process? By providing them with unbiased content comparing your offer to alternatives. When is your product better? When is the alternative better? Establish trust and remember you are looking for high quality leads.

4. Reviews – What do other people say about it?

Create unbiased reviews of the top solutions in your space. Do not include yourself in this list, do not attempt to devalue your competitors offering, be honest and help your customer. Assume that consumers know about your competitors and show them that you only want the best solution for them, build your relationship on trust.

5. Best – Who has the best specific feature etc.?

Within our industries many companies operate and specialize in different niches, some companies are better at certain things than others. Another unbiased review of who is best at what, will only strengthen your authority and build trust with consumer.

Conclusion

Not only is this a great strategy for content creation but it is a great strategy to develop customer relationships and establish an authoritative voice in your market that customers will recognize. The best thing about this strategy is that no matter how our environment changes the principle of “They ask, You Answer” will remain relevant. Why? Because it is a system that focuses your customers.

The strategy ties in with everything we always say, keep the customer first. With this content strategy you are making the process to interact as easy and friction less as possible for your customers. Answering their questions with your content will not only achieve that, but give you the one thing every business wants, Trust.