Content: Your First Step in Marketing

Marketing is filled with steps, strategies, and methods. There is Guerrilla Marketing, Permission Marketing, Gravitational Marketing, Book Yourself Solid Marketing, and even a 4-hour workweek marketing method.

I personally have hundreds of books on the subject that I reference frequently. With all these options, it’s no wonder that the majority of small business owners are in a quandary about how to market their business effectively.

Here’s the secret you need to know that makes marketing work best.

All of the marketing philosophies mentioned above are great. In fact, they are better than great; every one of them is excellent.

All you have to do is pick one and follow it. Don’t get distracted by the newest, latest and greatest. Pick a method that resonates with you and stay with it.

However, before you pick your method, there is something very important that you have to realize.

No one cares about you. They only care about what you know that can help them. You have to offer prospective clients something they want before they will buy.

Forget about need. People tune out what they need. Prove it to yourself through personal observation. Do candy bars sell better than vegetables?

The reason why is people want the candy bar even though they really need to eat more veggies.

You have to offer a value the prospective buyer wants before you try to talk about a purchase.

The best way to do that is through content that focuses on educating.

It’s easy. All you have to do is share your expertise, talent, and knowledge to establish interest, trust, and credibility.

Take it step-by-step. Ask for permission to communicate. Offer valuable information that your prospect wants. Move them through a communication funnel that educates and leads to the conclusion that your offer fits their desires best. Make the sale.

Repeat until you reach your sales goals.

Here’s how to share your knowledge effectively.

Write an article. Have a designer lay it out for you. Print it and use it as a sales lead generation tool.

If you don’t want to go the expense of printing, have the designer lay it out in PDF form for easy emailing or Web site downloading.

Repeat the process until you have a stable of articles you can use.

Plug in your article strategy to the marketing method you choose. Reap the benefits.

If you can’t write, hire someone to do it for you. When I write for a client, I’ll typically interview them, write a first draft, send it to them for comments and corrections, create a final, save it as a PDF and POOF, one piece of content done.

If hiring someone to write content for you is not in the budget, check out the article I wrote called, “What to Write if You Cannot Write at All” for complete instructions on how to create articles.

Modern marketing is easy to understand. Just remember that content is the first step. Strategies, methods, ideas and tactics build around it.