A hot topic this past year, and I am sure it will be again in the new one, is giving things away things for free as a way to attract customers. We all know the tactic of giving away a free food sample in the store to get you to buy the newest ready made frozen carb loaded artificial heart attack causer. Now many B2B companies are coming around to the marketing realization that giving away something of value to a prospect early in the buying cycle may be a good tactic.
Many have now heard about inbound marketing and giving away content in the form of a webinar, e-book, white paper, or other 'valuable' information in an effort to attract viewers who are then nurtured and turned into customers eventually....hopefully.
The trick is to understand your prospects and how they buy products as well as seek and consume information about possible products and services.
Empathy. The key is understanding from thier perspective what is valuable. What you think is valuable is not so important.
Something I always tell our clients, but few actually do on a consistent basis, is to ask your customers questions about what they want to see in terms of information and value.
- Do they read blogs? If so which ones.
- Would they attend a free webinar you host on a relevant topic?
- Would they read your e-book? What subjects are issues for them and that they would be interested in reading about?
- What about social media? Who do they follow? How often do they pay attention?
- Will they read an e-newsletter?
- What shows do they attend?
- What magazines do they read?
Create personas for your target prospects and make sure you answer these questions BEFORE you start creating content with no plan or focus.
Creating and marketing content is a marketing trend that cannot be ignored - how you focus your precious time will make all the difference in whether you have a list of followers that will ultimately buy from you or not.
