Archive for Attracting Clients – Page 19

Content Marketing Biases: Your Attitude Is Showing

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, October 11th, 2010

How biased are you about peoples’ faces, ages, skin tone, body size, ethic origins? Scientists know that our attitudes and prejudices are subconscious.

We may think we’re fair and all-inclusive, but our brains operate surreptitiously, sending us intuitive messages that influence our speech, our decisions and our behavior… and if you’re a content marketer, it will permeate the content you write!

Don’t believe me? Or, maybe you believe me and are saying “So what?” You need to know how your customers and clients see your biases showing up. Your biases are reflected in everything you do, including your content marketing.

If you’re creating content that markets a product or service, how can you become aware of your prejudices, since they lie hidden in our subconscious brains?

Take the Implicit Associations Test, the IAT, offered online for free by Harvard through a site called Project Implicit.

Here are a few things they’ve discovered after hundreds of thousands of web visitors did their tests:

Findings observed in seven years of operation of the Project Implicit web site

  • Implicit biases are pervasive. They appear as statistically “large” effects that are often shown by majorities of samples of Americans. Over 80% of web respondents show negativity toward the elderly compared to the young; 75-80% of self-identified Whites and Asians show a preference for racial White relative to Black. Read More→
Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better
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Content Marketing to a Caveman’s Brain

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, October 7th, 2010

How do you gain the attention of readers? How do you get them to stay and read your blog post, your web pages, your newsletter?

Your brain is 100,000 years old. You may not wake up in the Savannah of East Africa, grab your spear and walk miles to hunt prey for food. But on your commute to work in traffic, the same stress hormones (cortisol) are surging through your body as you fight traffic to get to your office.

Once there, your senses scan the environment for prey, competitors and allies, and the same goal-seeking behaviors are at play. The male of the species, in particular, is driven to acquire and achieve to protect his family and status.

For women, it’s slightly different, but not entirely. Women tend to the feeding of their offspring and mate, attend to the shelter, and are acutely aware of emotional needs of her family members. She may also fight traffic and go to an office full of stress, competitors and allies. As a female, she multitasks many responsibilities and skillfully uses language and relationships to get things done.

Our brains haven’t changed in 100,000 years. Our world, however, has. Most significant in the last 20 years is our ability to communicate and stay informed on a global level. Marketing is changing along with this world that offers multiple media channels to spread more messages to more people. Content marketing is growing rapidly as a way to connect with consumers who have become adverse to interruptive advertising.

Here’s what I’m reading in an excellent book, The Buying Brain by A.K. Pradeep:

The questions remains, how do we engage with the primal brain – embedded deep within us – in this modern world? How do we soothe and seduce it?

How do we send it messages that are important enough to be noticed and remembered?

How do we stand out from the amazing barrage of sensory stimuli to be the one product or brand that makes sense and is embraced by the brain?

How do we make life easier and more fun for this miracle of nature that’s perpetually on guard?

More importantly, how do we start treating our customers as the smart, evolved people they are?

With respect and dignity, compassion and caring, delivered in a way that invites and engages, but doesn’t over-stimulate or alarm? Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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10 Ways to Make Content More Engaging

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

The Content Marketing Institute has hit another home-run with their question to content experts, “How do you make content more engaging?” Ten experts responded, including moi, and their answers are illuminating, especially for anyone charged with creating quality content for blogs, social media, and writing for the Web.

In my opinion and experience, marketing that engages is emotional.

The human brain is emotional at its very core.

While women process messages with more emotions than men, both must be engaged emotionally for a message to be remembered and acted upon.

Marketers must uncover the key emotional triggers their product inspires and pinpoint them in their messages.

Here is a summary of what other content marketers think about this important question:

Just as there is no single definition of engagement, there is no single way to engage with your audience:

  • Focus on what is important to your ideal reader, which is often different than what is important to your business.
    • Actively listen to your audience and respond to their needs.
    • Create buyer personas to capture key information about your readers.
    • Try to connect with your readers emotionally. Read More→
Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing for the Web
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Neuromarketing: This is your brain on advertising…

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Neuromarketing is a concept based on fact plus a lot of assumptions — and it can easily evoke a little fear as well.

It is true that the human brain responds to images and words, which is why advertising works. It hasn’t been that long since brain science has revealed what many of us suspected: most of our decisions aren’t made in our thinking brains.

We make decisions unconsciously, using split-second intuitive processing in our emotional brains. What does this mean to marketers?

That advertising and content that appeals to our primitive emotions (sex, food, danger,pleasure) will get our attention better than long text of facts, figures, and logic.

This isn’t exactly a news flash, ask any copywriter. And yet, we don’t approach content creation that way. At least most of us don’t, because we learned in schools from teachers who didn’t understand this yet. And as educated people, we value logic and reason, facts and figures.

The assumption is that marketers, by using high-tech neurological equipment such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machines that trace brain activity, could create more successful ads. The fear is that use of that knowledge could do more than stoke interest in a product — it could more or less compel interest.

In an interview with the Gallup Journal, Dr. John Fleming, responded to the question if neuromarketing is something to be feared: Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Ethics & Writing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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Engaging Content: Start with Why

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, October 4th, 2010

How do you write engaging content? How do you unlock the minds of your readers?

  • What makes your blog writing effective?
  • How do you create quality content that pulls in interested readers?
  • How can you reach, attract, and make an impact?

For that matter, how can anything you write or say actually work to market your business and bring in potential customers? Let’s face it, you’ve probably been saying some of the same things for a while now, and … so have your competitors!

How can you be engaging to your clients if your competitors are all talking about the same thing?

I wrote about this important $64,000 question last week, and I’m immersed in research about what makes content engaging right now. One of the books I’m reading is Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. He says we should start our messages with the big WHY… why we’re in business, why do we do what we do. In other words, make it clear what your higher purpose is.

“Your higher purpose is where your talents and the needs of the world meet.” ~ Aristotle

Don’t you love it when a good quote for today’s busy world comes from a 2,400-year-old guy? Here’s the content marketing version from Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute and Junta42:

“Your higher purpose is where your expertise and the needs of your customers meet.” ~ Joe Pulizzi

Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Blog Content
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Content Marketers Answer the $64,000 Question…

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

What does it mean to write content that “engages” readers? What the heck is engaging content? According to a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute, this is the #1 challenge for people charged with creating content that markets businesses.

These questions are asked and answered by a distinguished group of contributors to the Content Marketing Institute’s blog and you can read the post here: What Does Engaging Content Mean?

I contributed my take: your content must create an emotional impact in the brains of readers if you hope to influence them to take any sort of action.

Here’s a summary of the ideas, in case you’re in a hurry:

  • Make sure content is relevant to your audience and helps them with an issue they have right now.
  • Give your audience something that they can’t find anywhere else.
  • Be entertaining, educational or both.
  • Tell the audience a story.
  • Invite the viewer to engage with you further by adding a call to action. Read More→
Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits
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Content Marketing with Blogs: What Do You Believe?

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Here’s a key element for writing content that inspires clients to take action:

What does your business believe in? More importantly, as an important part of your business, what do you believe is most important for your clients? What’s your true purpose?

This is not a philosophical question, although it is grounded in profound human needs and values. This is a marketing question. You need to know why you care, and you need to communicate that to customers in your content marketing and blogs.

This question makes sense because people don’t buy from companies, they do business with people. They don’t care about your products so much as what they will do for them. Clients want to connect with values that count.

And, in a culture with an overabundance of choice, with many companies and products doing the same things, customers will always choose to do business with someone who cares about them, their world, the world, and values.

More good advice from VelocityPartners, UK. They’ve just released their B2B Marketing Manifesto, and while this is key to professionals charged with marketing in the business world, it is especially crucial to entrepreneurs, solo professionals, and small businesses… anyone writing content marketing materials.

Think about it: why should people care what you have to say in your blog unless they can identify with your values? …Unless you express to them what you really care about and why?

It doesn’t matter if you’re “green,” dedicated to a charity or not. For myself, I am passionate about saving professionals time, energy and money because I believe that content marketing with blogs should be easy and effective for everybody, not just big companies.

Here’s an excerpt from the B2B Manifesto, the second imperative for content marketing:

2. Expose your beliefs

People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content
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Content Marketing Blues: the Battle for Attention

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, September 27th, 2010

Content marketing with blogs isn’t as easy as it used to be. But like you, I can complain all I want to. It doesn’t matter.

The good news is there are more people going online to read things they need to know, to solve the problems they have.

The bad news is there are more blogs, more competition for attention.

What do you need to do to win the battle for attention and survive the WIIFM flter?

Doug Kessler and the boys over at VelocityPartnersUK ask this question in the B2B Manifesto. (You can get your copy here.) And they answer it. For example, they suggest 5 imperatives for B2B marketers. I think this is essential advice for anyone using a blog for business, not just B2B marketers.

Here’s an excerpt and my interpretation of what this means for my own business:

1. Get a World View:

Before you can sell a product or service, you need to sell a world view.

But very few marketers spend any time at all clarifying their world view.

What is a world view and why is it so important? Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing
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Writing Web Content: 5 Simple Steps for Results

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, September 24th, 2010

Organize, simplify and get better results from your Web writing by asking 5 important questions:

  1. What is the problem (pain, predicament)?
  2. Why hasn’t this problem been solved?
  3. What is possible?
  4. What is different now?
  5. What should your readers do now?

As you compose your copy, you should write out several sentences to answer each question. This will keep you on task, and lead your readers through to action. I suppose it depends on what you’re writing, but I can’t think of many web pages, blog posts, articles where these 5 questions wouldn’t be appropriate.

I’ve been re-reading Maria Velosa’s Web Copy that Sells this week. Her blueprint for creating simple copy that works to market your products and services is clear. There’s a reason it’s organized this way.

Psychologically, we’re hard wired to sit up and pay attention to problems. This is why it’s a good idea to lead off with your headline and first paragraph addressing readers’ problems and pain. Negative emotions are strong enough to wake us up and get us to read the rest of the story.

There are two things you must realize about this seemingly obvious and simple question:

  1. People who are in your target audience may not realize they have a problem (or how bad it can get). It may seem surprising, but often people are in denial, are ignoring the bad stuff, and are overly optimistic.
  2. People need to know you fully understand their pain AND CARE before they will read anything you have to say about it

Write a few sentences out about the problem. You want your readers to say, Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy
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10 Conversion Tips from Brain Science

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, September 13th, 2010

Why do people decide to buy a product online? How is it they decide to trust the information you provide, and register to download information from your blog or website? What can we learn from brain science?

This is something that intrigues me. I read a lot of research on motivation, decision making, and neuroscience to try to figure out how brain science can be applied to better content marketing.

The problem is not what you might think. We know enough about the brain and marketing today to realize people are influenced by unconscious feelings, as much as they are by logic and reasons.

Any professional who has studied content marketing and copywriting knows that you must use emotional stories to get people to take action.

The problem for content creators  is that so much of what influences and persuades is unconscious and specific for each reader. Everybody’s different, and you can’t possibly address each reader’s wants and desires.

What are the unconscious reasons for people’s actions, how do their emotions affect decisions, and how can professionals apply the principles of persuasion to create content that encourages users to take action? Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits
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