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Live video has emerged as an important tool in the marketer’s arsenal. … said Melanie Cohn, social media marketing manager at Dunkin’ Donuts.
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Are you obsessed with finding and sharing the latest news and best events? Do you love writing in all forms, from listicles, to articles about interesting.
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I feel like there’s an overarching maximalist mindset in marketing these days.
And it’s easy to see why.
Brands have never had more strategies to choose from.
There’s content marketing, social media, SEO, email, PPC, and influencer marketing, just to name a few.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and this doesn’t even take into account more traditional offline techniques that many companies still utilize.
In turn, I think many brands are suffering from exhaustion and fatigue.
They’re experiencing marketing overload.
I also think marketers don’t always extract the full potential from their strategies.
Before they can see one channel through to completion, they’ve already started working on three more channels.
If I’ve learned anything during my years as a marketer, it’s that simplicity is usually the key to success.
Because of that, I choose to focus on only one marketing channel at a time.
Here’s why.
You know that old saying that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one?
I think this applies to marketing as well.
Jumping in head first and attempting to manage, say, four or five different channels can be overwhelming, and you’re unlikely to kill it at any strategy.
Even if you’re a savvy marketer who knows the ins and outs of the process, you simply can’t devote the necessary time to extract the full potential of any single channel.
Just look at the amount of time most marketers spend each week performing routine tasks:
But when you concentrate wholeheartedly on one channel, you can give it a 100% effort.
This helps you not only run your marketing campaign at a high level but also achieve the desired results faster.
Working on too many marketing channels at once is kind of like being a jack of all trades and master of none.
Placing your attention on a single channel allows you to master that channel before moving on to the next strategy.
Did you know that the average B2B content marketer creates 13 types of content?
You heard it right—13!
That, in and of itself, is a lot of work.
And just imagine combining that with multiple other channels at the same time.
Things would get hectic in a hurry.
Social media can be pretty intense as well. The average B2B content marketer is active on six different networks:
Even if you’re posting the same content on each network, it’s still going to be time-consuming.
I can almost guarantee you’ll feel burned out and the overall effectiveness of each channel will be marginal.
And this is going to be even worse if you’re new to marketing and/or have a small marketing team.
Or what if you’ve got a mountain of other business-related tasks on your plate?
There are just not enough hours in the day to devote to your marketing to ensure everything is operating at full capacity.
As a result, certain areas of your marketing campaign are bound to suffer.
Focusing on one marketing channel allows me to continually chip away at it and be highly effective.
I’m far less likely to become overwhelmed, and I can ensure that the specific channel I’m working on is reaching my target audience, generating leads, and leading to conversions.
In other words, it allows me to maximize my ROI without losing my mind along the way.
Would you rather be a virtuoso at playing one musical instrument or a sub-par musician playing four or five?
I personally would prefer to be an expert at a single instrument.
I apply the same approach to marketing.
I would much rather devote the majority of my time to a single channel and completely crush it instead of working on a handful of channels and being painfully mediocre.
After all, what’s the point of spending any time whatsoever on a tactic if it’s not giving you any tangible results?
To me, it makes way more sense to give maximum effort to a single channel and make it incredibly successful rather than working on multiple channels half-heartedly.
Working on multiple marketing channels simultaneously is a lot like multitasking because you’re constantly bouncing from one technique to another.
But numerous studies have found that multitasking isn’t as good as it may seem.
In fact, it can be quite detrimental to your efficiency and overall productivity.
A study from the University of London even “revealed that subjects who multitasked while performing brain-intensive tasks demonstrated IQ drops similar to people who are sleep-deprived or smoked marijuana.”
If you’re looking for a scientific explanation of this phenomenon, neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin offers one.
According to him,
Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking.
The founder and chief technology officer of Wordstream, Larry Kim, even stated in an article for Observer that…
…you’re actually hurting your brain by juggling several undertakings at once.
The bottom line is that trying to focus on too many marketing channels at the same time is usually counterproductive and is only going to reduce the impact of your overall campaign.
But focusing on just one at a time allows you to be as effective and efficient as possible.
There’s also the topic of money.
It’s been found that 89% of marketers are maintaining or increasing their inbound budgets.
Implementing only one marketing channel at a time will cost you considerably less than pursuing a multi-channel approach.
According to an article on LinkedIn,
…it has even been estimated that a single-channel marketing strategy can cost as much as one-third less than multiple-channel strategies.
If you’re dealing with a fairly small budget, utilizing several techniques may simply not be in the cards for you from a financial standpoint.
Things can get especially ugly if more than one of those techniques tank, and it’s obviously going to hurt your ROI.
When I was starting out, the financial resources were often scarce.
Focusing on one marketing channel at a time enabled me to maximize the money I funneled into my campaign.
When it’s all said and done, the absolute most important part of any marketing campaign is its ability to target the right demographic.
And let’s be honest. Using a smorgasbord of techniques typically means that each individual technique is less likely to hit its target.
When I divvy up my time across multiple channels, I minimize the effectiveness of any single one.
For this reason, it makes it really difficult to truly stand out from the competition and thrive within my industry.
I’m not really doing anything special or excelling at any particular strategy.
But concentrating on only one channel puts me in a position for success.
Because I eat, sleep, and breathe that one channel for a period of time, it’s more likely to flourish and grow.
In some cases, I can even dominate.
That’s because most of the competition has a maximalist mindset, trying to have their hand in everything rather than focusing on—and succeeding—in one area.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying you should limit yourself to just one marketing channel.
That’s not what I’m saying at all.
In fact, I would never recommend putting all your eggs in one basket.
What I am saying is that you’re likely to reduce your marketing impact if you go overboard and spread yourself too thin—especially during the initial stages of a campaign.
For me, it makes way more sense to focus on a single channel, bring it to full capacity, and maximize its impact.
Once it’s established and stabilized, you can move on to the next channel.
In other words, simplify your efforts by working on one channel, and get it running like a well-oiled machine before moving on.
Over time, this approach should help you develop a strong marketing campaign, with no weak links but with techniques that carry their weight.
I know it may seem tempting to experiment with a plethora of marketing channels.
After all, you’ll want to see what sticks.
But I know this mentality has gotten me into trouble in the past, and I know it can curtail the progress of each individual channel.
For me, a more effective and practical approach is to focus on one marketing channel at a time.
Doing so allows me to:
Only once I’ve gotten a channel to where it needs to be, I move on to the next.
That way I know I’m never shortchanging a marketing channel, giving it the best possible chance to prosper.
How many marketing channels are you currently implementing?
Social media marketing strategies engage target audiences with digital content they can relate to. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH. By Queen Munguti
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When Compete.com launched with credits-based pricing well over a decade ago I felt like a kid in a candy store using their competitive research tool. Recently Compete.com announced they were shutting down, but many of the link analysis & competitive research tools which leverage scraping have also started licensing clickstream data from sources like Clickstre.am & JumpShot.
These sorts of features add a lot of value to traditional keyword tools, as they can highlight the CTR on ads vs organic results & show if people click on anything after they search for a particular term.
When I read Ahref’s recent blog post about integrating clickstream data I got that same kid in a candy store feeling I got when I first used Compete. Some highlights…
As an example of how the searches with clicks feature is helpful, consider Google’s recently announced RGB conversion feature
In that image you can see how the feature displaces the result set.
What’s cool about the Ahrefs feature is you can also see what sort of impact that feature has on click volumes.
After 1 month, 20% of the searches for that keyword no longer had any clicks to an external website.
On the second month it looks like the “no click” rate was closer to 7%, so perhaps some of the initial additional search volume was driven by people searching for the related keywords after blogs covered the new feature.
But the nice thing about the feature is you can see how the click rate changes over time as the feature evolves.
In some areas like weather Google ends up dominating most the user behavior with their in-SERP feature.
About half of all weather keyword searches do not click on any listings. And then of those which do click, about 20% of people click on an ad.
That means the potential organic click volume for that keyword is only about 40% of the initial search volume estimates.
Search results keep getting more interactive features & some of them appear to be click black holes. Literally…
You guys, I’ve discovered a SERP black hole! I’m on #200 suggested PAA for this SERP?! Has anyone else seen an infinite PAA SERP before? http://pic.twitter.com/YgZDVWdWJ9— Britney Muller (@BritneyMuller) November 23, 2016
Here is a new item comparison feature table.
Has anyone ever seen this giant ‘vs’ featured snippet before? @STATrob @glenngabe @jenstar http://pic.twitter.com/qaKToKm5C4— Jesse Semchuck (@jessesem) November 22, 2016
As more of the value chain appears in the search results, more of the value chain which formerly appeared on websites disappears. This is true from a wide range of aspects including ad sales, content hosting, ad blocking & brand value.
No click into the publisher’s site means no ad revenue for the publisher. Voice search will only accelerate the declines seen from mobile, which shifted user attention away from large screens with many listings to smaller screens with fewer listings & a far higher ad ratio in the search results.
Google has already pushed hard to make hotel searches a pay-to-play vertical & yet some publishers are adopting AMP formatting in that vertical. Google is also forcing AMP down publisher’s throats in other verticals like recipes.
@rustybrick New? http://pic.twitter.com/91TzKfS7tn— Jon Hogg (@ItsHogg) November 24, 2016
If central ad networks host your content then they get better user data for your content than you do as a publisher.
Increased user tracking depresses premium ad sales & moves value from niche players to broad networks “Whether it’s a third party like Facebook or Google tracking across the web or an ISP leveraging its distribution arm, this is outside of consumer expectations. Importantly to the digital media industry, it also devalues the context and relationship of consumer trust which drives the businesses of premium publishers.”
Some large sites like Google or Facebook either pay ad blockers or technically work around them within their apps. By funding ad blockers exempting the search result page from having their ads blocked, Google is ultimately defunding competing ad networks.
As search results get noisier & more ad heavy, Google is trying to coerce brands into re-buying their pre-existing brand equity. These efforts are effective, as on some branded & navigational searches over half the click volume goes to the ads. Here are a few examples from Ahrefs. The orange bar shows what percent of the SERP clicks are on ads.
And the above doesn’t even account for…
So Google is eating the generic terms, the brand terms, and the search query pool more broadly.
There’s a reason Google’s online travel business is over twice the size of anyone else & has their biggest advertisers seeking more sustainable & more legitimate alternatives.
The biggest travel players are accustomed to Google’s moves and trying their best to adjust and work around them. Missing from this story is the fact that Google’s latest moves are making it nearly impossible for all but the smallest number of consumer travel startups to succeed. — Dennis Schaal
And some of the aggressive stuff carries over into other lines of business outside of travel. Google is also testing large image extensions on AdWords ads on cell phones that don’t leave room for even a second AdWords listing on the screen. When one invests in brand they have to start thinking about how much they are willing to pay Google as an ongoing tithing for their success. Look at the following ads where one brand bidding on a competing brand.
Google is willing to make their results worse (to the point they would consider a similar page as an ad-heavy doorway page of spam if hosted by anyone other than themselves) in order to monetize navigational searches.
What’s more, you can’t just opt out & ignore. When brands make agreements to not cross-bid Google has the FTC sue them.
On some high end fashion brands Google lists shopping ads which lead to third party sellers who sell used goods. Quite often counterfeits will also be in the mix. When the counterfeits are destroyed in the first wash, it is the brand owner who was took to the cleaners.
But there’s a solution to that… they can pay Google ever-increasing protection.
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People always ask me how I’ve built up such a huge audience for my blogs.
Part of my secret sauce? I’ve been blogging for well over a decade now.
But not everyone has been blogging for years, and I get that. Some of you may have started a blog years ago but abandoned it.
I can relate. There were several times when I almost quit blogging. I was scared it wouldn’t pan out for me. And it does take time. But I stuck with it, and I’m so happy I did.
And here’s the best part: It’s not too late for you to start blogging.
I know what you’re thinking: “There are a million blogs in my niche. Why should I even try to compete with them?”
There are two main reasons. First, you bring something unique to the table. No one else has experienced everything you have. And besides, your blog should be different from your competition’s, not a carbon copy.
Second, start seeing competition as a good thing. Competition means the niche is popular and profitable. You can actually leverage that competition to get more views on your blog.
If you fell off the blogging wagon a while back, you can (and should!) jump back on. Here’s how to get (re)started.
Here’s something that will relieve you: You don’t have to start from scratch.
If your old blog is still up, pay it a visit. It’s probably a barren wasteland, but you can salvage some useful scraps from it.
If you want to blog in the same niche you did before, I highly recommend repurposing content. It’s one of the easiest and most efficient ways to get extra mileage out of existing material.
If you still have access to any old material, pull it out and dust it off. Chances are it’s still relevant to your niche. Or maybe it just needs a few edits to make it shine again.
Assuming you remember (or can retrieve) your login information, you can use this blog to restart if you want. If you still own the domain name (and if you want to blog in the same niche), there’s no reason not to reuse your old blog. Edit your content, give it a redesign, and you’ll be off to the races.
But if you do opt for a shiny new blog, you can simply transfer your content over.
Either way, you’ll take advantage of what you did in the past to make the future easier.
You want to re-enter the blogosphere with a bang.
There are two ways you can do this.
The first approach is to jump right back into the game and start blogging regularly. If you’ve got a lot of motivation and ideas, this could be a good approach for you.
For example, you could follow in Seth Godin’s footsteps and start blogging every day.
Of course, your posts should be longer. But as an example of consistency, Seth’s blog stands head and shoulders above the rest.
But you don’t have to blog every day—you just have to blog consistently. Otherwise, there’s no point.
Decide how many posts you’ll publish per week, and get to it. You absolutely have to stick to your schedule if you want to come back on a strong note.
The second approach—and the one I wished I’d taken when I started blogging—is to stockpile your ideas before you blog. This takes a little more time, but it gives you a little more flexibility.
If you choose this, you’ll need to do two things:
First, get to writing! You’ll want to have as much content as possible when you officially start up your blog again. There’s no hard-and-fast guideline here, but about 3-4 weeks of content will give you a huge advantage.
Second, create an editorial calendar to schedule your posts. I recommend reading this post from HubSpot that shows how you can use Google Calendar to set up your editorial calendar.
Like I said, I wish I had taken this approach when I started blogging. There were many days when I was racking my brain for ideas, and a lot of them turned out to be crap.
But if you have the motivation to get out there and start right now, do it! The most important thing is to make a plan and stick to it.
You may have heard this line repurposed from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”
But that’s not true for blogging.
You have to build your blog and your audience.
You might have built an audience in the past. If you have, don’t be shy about leveraging that. If you know who read your blog, drop them a line about your return. You can also go through your old blog’s comments to see who was checking out your content.
And if you have an email list, that’s even better. Send out an email saying “I’m back!” More than likely, those subscribers will be glad to flock to your new blog.
In fact, getting your audience involved is one of the best things you can do at this point. Ask for feedback, and use that to improve your new blog.
The blog team at Unbounce did exactly this. They took a 2-week hiatus and asked readers to send in their thoughts:
Even a simple offer like this goes a long way in your readers’ minds. So, if you’ve still got a list floating around, use it!
But what happens if you have no audience at all?
It’s time to build one.
I’ll describe a couple of my favorite methods here, but I highly recommend you check out Quick Sprout’s Complete Guide to Building Your Blog Audience.
First, get a social media game plan. Lots of bloggers start out by relying on SEO, but the truth is that good SEO takes years to develop. Driving traffic through social media will help you out in the short run.
You can either buy ads or build your social profiles from the ground up. If you have the resources, I recommend a combination of both. Don’t rely 100% on ads—get involved with the community and share value with others. That’s how you’ll get people to visit your site in droves.
Second, use outreach. Outreach happens when you contact people asking them to share, promote, or look at your posts.
Reach out to your own network initially. Since you have personal connections, you can be somewhat informal here.
Next, reach out to the big names in your field—the influencers. But here’s the catch: In order to catch the attention of influencers, you’ll need top-notch content.
One of my favorite techniques for creating top-notch content is the Skyscraper Technique. Basically, you take an existing blog post, improve upon it, and send it to influencers. (You can read more about this on Brian Dean’s blog Backlinko.)
When you’re contacting influencers, you’ll need a solid email script. Here’s a good one to use:
Personalize this, and send it to your target influencers. If you’ve put some hard work into your post to make it an ultimate resource, you’ll likely get some responses.
You might have done lots of research when you started blogging. Now, you need to do more research.
You want to be at the forefront of your niche. You need to know the latest trends and ideas so you don’t fall behind.
Most importantly, take some time to size up your competition. What’s changed over the years? What types of content are your competitors posting and why?
Use this information to find your angle. You have a few options here:
Whatever you decide, make sure your angle stands out in some way. You either need to be a super high-quality or a super unique resource (ideally, you should aim to be both).
There’s a ton of truth behind the statement “it’s all in the list.”
That’s because an email list is hands-down the best way to grow and promote your blog.
Earlier, I mentioned that if you still have an email list from an old blog, you should use it. But you can’t stop there. You have to build your list every day.
List building is a long-term process, so don’t get discouraged early on. If you keep at it, you will see the results.
The best way to start is to optimize your site for capturing emails. Yes, that means popups! You might hate them, but they work.
You can have a full-screen popup like the one Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich uses:
Or you can have a scrollbox like the one we use on Crazy Egg:
Or you can use one of my favorite tools, Hello Bar:
There are a lot of options, so look around and choose carefully.
You should also consider creating a fantastic lead magnet to get more subscribers.
But I have to emphasize something here: a good lead magnet isn’t enough. It should be so good that your subscribers would be shocked to see you giving it away.
Even if you gave up all hopes of creating a successful blog, it’s not too late.
In fact, blogging is easier than ever. You’ll still need to invest some serious time and money, but there are more resources available now than ever before.
If you make a plan and stick to it, you can build a huge audience like I did.
You want to know one of my secrets? I’m nobody special.
You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, right, Mr. Huge Blogger.” But it’s true. All I did was follow some simple rules that anyone can follow and use to succeed, and that includes you.
Now, it took me years to really succeed with blogging. But I didn’t do everything right when I started out. In fact, I spent years recovering from some rookie mistakes I made.
But you don’t have to fall into the same trap. You can get off to a strong start, do things the right way, and find blogging success a lot sooner.
So, if your blog is lying around collecting dust, pick it up and brush it off. You might be surprised at the results.
Are you going to start blogging again? Or for the first time?
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What do humans and lab rats have in common?
We both have predictable behavior patterns and react similarly to the same psychological stimuli.
And while we humans are certainly more complex and sophisticated than lab rats, you can still pull the right levers and hit the right buttons with your content marketing to elicit the response you’re looking for.
I would by no means consider myself an expert in psychology, but over the years, I’ve learned a lot about how the human mind works.
I’ve found out that nearly everyone is predictable to some degree.
By understanding a few key psychological insights, I’m able to better understand my audience and deliver content that clicks with them and maximizes my results.
What’s the secret?
Neuromarketing.
TechTarget defines this term as
“the study of how people’s brains respond to advertising and other brand-related messages by scientifically monitoring brainwave activity, eye-tracking and skin response.”
It’s basically a sexy word that you get by combining neuroscience (the branch of psychology that deals with the nervous system/brain) and marketing.
The idea is that using cognitive research findings allows marketers to do their jobs with greater efficiency and ultimately boost conversions and sales while providing an optimal user experience.
Although neuromarketing is a fairly new phenomenon (it began in the 1990s), it’s gained a lot of momentum in the past 20+ years.
There are even academic institutions and publications that are devoting massive amounts of time and money to this type of research.
Of course, some people are skeptical because neuromarketing often goes against conventional wisdom.
But I’ve found it to be incredibly powerful once I started using it in my marketing.
Here are some specific neuromarketing hacks I recommend.
As hard as we try to be logical and rational, we’re all emotional beings to some extent.
There’s just no getting around it.
If you can form an emotional connection with your audience, I can guarantee that your content will have a significant impact.
There’s a particular quote I love from an article titled “The Feelings Economy.”
It goes like this:
In an oversupplied economy, customer feelings drive purchase decisions and profitability.
I think this really nails it. The brands that tend to thrive are the ones that are able to elicit the right emotions and hit the sweet spot.
How exactly do you appeal to your audience’s emotions?
Well, you start by understanding which specific emotions on average generate the biggest response:
According to research from OkDork and Buzzsumo, your best bet is to create content that evokes:
More specifically, I recommend using images and stories in your content to trigger these types of emotional responses.
That’s because they’re great at targeting the limbic system, which controls basic emotions.
You might have noticed that I use a lot of images of people’s faces in my content.
Case in point:
I also place an image of my own mug on my website:
Why?
Because, as it turns out, there is power in facial expressions. It’s basically the universal language.
Allow me to explain.
Say you’re trying to interact with someone from a foreign country who speaks an entirely different language. Communicating with words is likely to be pointless.
What they’re saying sounds like gibberish to you and vice versa.
But you can always understand facial cues.
In fact, that’s how babies largely understand the world. Before they develop language, they primarily rely upon their parents’ facial expressions and tone of voice to extract meaning.
The point I’m trying to make here is that the human brain has an innate ability to process facial cues, which makes images of people’s faces ideal for conveying emotion.
Images can also help you establish trust.
Notice how Tim Ferriss’s photo gives off the vibe that he knows his stuff and that signing up for his course should prove helpful:
You can do yourself a big favor by weaving images of people into your content. Doing so can make your audience feel a certain emotion as well as perform a specific action.
What’s another way to get your audience to feel a particular way?
Using the right colors.
Each color has a certain meaning, so using the color that matches the emotion you’re looking to target can be highly advantageous.
Here are some examples of the meanings of color in the western world:
The key is to identify the particular emotion, feeling, vibe you’re going for and incorporate the relevant color(s) in your content.
I don’t have enough time to adequately explain this topic to do it justice here. But I’ve covered it in depth before, and you can learn all about it via this resource.
Conventional marketing wisdom says that showcasing the benefits of a product/service and ways it will improve your customer’s life is the best way to go.
By explaining the positives, you can target the intrinsic pleasure-seeking part of the human brain.
But in my opinion, this isn’t the best approach to take.
In one of my posts on Inc.com, I mention the fact that “neuromarketing experts say that the brain’s pain avoidance response is almost three times stronger than the brain’s pleasure seeking response.”
I also point out that neuromarketing expert Christophe Morin states that
…humans are pain-avoiding machines.
The bottom line here is that you’re usually better off explaining how you can relieve a pain point than discussing the pleasures of using a product/service.
In other words, focusing on how you can eliminate a negative should have a bigger impact.
Have you ever had someone do something really nice for you, even when they didn’t have to, without asking for anything in return?
How did you feel toward them afterward?
The odds are good that you felt a sense of gratitude and probably wanted to consciously (or subconsciously) return the favor in some way.
This is the law of reciprocity at work.
At its core, the law of reciprocity explains why we feel indebted to someone when they do something for us.
This could be something as big as saving one’s life or as small as giving away a copy of an e-book.
Much research has actually been performed on this topic.
In fact, a study back in 2002 explored how patrons tipped in restaurants. The researchers examined how people tipped under three types of scenarios:
The researchers found that “the gift of candy increased the average tip from 15 percent to just under 18 percent.”
Although this wasn’t a dramatic increase, it definitely proves the law of reciprocity and that people feel indebted when you do something nice for them when you don’t have to.
By offering your visitors something like a free trial, a free e-book, a free online course, etc., you can expect more conversions in the long run.
We humans have some interesting tendencies and preferences.
If there’s less of something, our desire for it increases. If there’s more of something, our desire for it diminishes.
This phenomenon is known as the scarcity effect.
A now-classic psychological study from 1975 conducted by Worchel, Lee and Adewole examined the effect of scarcity on people.
It was a very simple study involving cookies, but it was very telling nonetheless.
The researchers “put 10 cookies in one jar and two of the same cookies in another jar. The cookies from the two-cookie jar received higher ratings—even though the cookies were exactly the same!”
What does this mean from a marketing standpoint?
It means that you’re far more likely to maximize your impact by leveraging scarcity. For instance, you might say that there’s a limited time offer on a product/service, or you may have a sale that only lasts 24 hours, etc.
That, right there, can increase a person’s urge to buy significantly.
Neuromarketing is legit and something I’ve found to be incredibly powerful in regards to content marketing.
Besides making it easier to build trust and rapport and generally connect better with your audience, neuromarketing is often the catalyst for increased leads and conversions.
And the hacks I covered here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s ongoing research being conducted to better understand the psychology behind marketing and what resonates with consumers.
By putting these tips to practice, you can make your content marketing more potent and get more bang for your buck.
Can you think of any other psychological principles that can help you level up your content marketing?
Social media marketing can be challenging for many businesses to pick up. There are a lot of moving parts, so it can seem a little complicated at first.
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These days, “sales” is perceived as a negative five-letter word.
Sales has gotten a bad rep. When you hear the word “sales,” you probably think of pushy salespeople or telemarketing calls.
The stigma of sales affects bloggers too. Lots of bloggers are afraid to sell to their readers. They don’t want to lose the audience they worked so hard to build.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you can successfully use your blog posts to sell without being salesy.
And no, I’m not going to recommend ads. (Surprise!)
You might be wondering how blog posts can increase your revenue.
The answer is simple: reciprocity.
Most of you have probably heard about reciprocity from Dr. Robert Cialdini’s renowned book Influence. It talks about psychological triggers that make people respond in certain ways.
Reciprocity happens when you give immense value to your audience. In return, they feel compelled to help you out. In our case, that happens when they buy from you.
It’s a simple formula. If your blog posts are top-notch, your readers will be open to buying from you. But they’re not just “buying.” They’re supporting a resource they love.
And when you pair reciprocity with blogging, the results are powerful. You’ll sell, but your readers will never think you’re selling to them. It’s a friendly offer.
I know, it sounds too good to be true. Let me prove it to you with these 9 ways of using your latest blog post to generate sales.
Value should be your number one priority as a blogger. I’ll even go a step further and say that it’s impossible to run a truly great blog without providing a crap ton of real value.
But can you sell based on value alone?
It’s a good question. So let’s look at what happens when you take price out of the equation.
Tom Morkes had a blog that people really liked, but he realized it wasn’t profitable. So he wrote an e-book and released it to a whopping 166 subscribers. Don’t laugh yet—the results will astound you.
Tom chose a pay-what-you-want method so his readers would have a choice. And lots of his readers chose a price of $0.
But Tom’s readers contributed an average of $15 per e-book. And he made an impressive $493.50 in the first month by offering something free.
See the numbers for yourself:
This is a fantastic case study to show just how well value can sell. If you have immensely valuable content, you can sell like crazy even if you offer it free.
Linking to one of your products is a simple but effective strategy for getting eyeballs to your storefront.
But here’s the catch: you have to share a relevant product.
If your blog post is about making the best pumpkin pie and you include a link to your guide to wine tasting, the conversion rate won’t be very high. That’s because your readers are there for the pumpkin pie.
But if you share a link to your guide to pumpkin-pie-making with those same readers, you’ll see much better results.
Here’s Carol Tice from Make A Living Writing using this strategy:
To give you some context, Carol’s post is about a freelancing scam. By sharing this product at the end of the blog post, she’s letting readers in on a surefire method of revenue.
Solve your readers’ problems by sharing relevant products with them, and you’ll make their day.
It makes sense why no one would want to buy your product unless they saw its benefits.
So don’t beat around the bush—show off your products’ benefits.
But it’s important that you’re not just praising your product as the best thing since sliced bread. You have to give readers specific, detailed reasons why your product is great.
MailChimp does this excellently. Their post “Why Clients Render Email Differently” mentions their Inbox Preview feature, but it doesn’t read like an advertisement for that feature.
Instead, it talks about the similarities and differences in email clients that readers should be aware of.
This part is crucial: You can get value from this article even if you don’t buy their product.
Your blog post should still be value-packed. You’re simply letting your readers know that your product provides a shortcut to the results they want.
In other words, don’t dangle your product in front of your readers’ faces and say, “You have to buy this to get anything good.” Give them the good stuff in the post itself.
Sharing your customers’ experiences with your product can work wonders. Your readers get to see how your product is benefiting real people, and they’ll become more interested without feeling pressured.
TOMS does this with its “Locals Who Give Back” blog post series. Each post profiles a TOMS customer who is making a difference in their local community.
Don’t worry—you don’t have to be TOMS to do this effectively.
All you have to do is make heroes out of your customers. Listen to ordinary people’s stories, and broadcast them to your audience. Your readers will instantly connect with these stories, and that means they’ll connect more with your brand.
There’s a reason why tried-and-true methods are tried-and-true. Affiliate marketing is no exception.
But you know what I can’t stand? When bloggers try to hide the fact that they’re using affiliate links.
If your readers really love your blog, they’ll be more than happy to help you out by buying something they were already interested in anyway.
Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income has two great rules for affiliate marketing:
Don’t be an intrusive salesperson who hawks products to their readers. Be your readers’ friend, and recommend products that will improve their lives.
People will always have problems, and they will always want to fix those problems. That’s where you come in.
By fixing your readers’ problems with your blog posts, you’re earning their trust. Eventually, they’ll want to check out what you have to offer.
SumoMe does this by regularly posting monster guides that cover a subject exhaustively. And if you look at their articles (like this guide on content upgrades), you’ll see they go over everything. They leave no stone unturned.
But you don’t have to write thousands of words to fix problems—shorter can work too. No matter the approach you choose, make sure you’re thorough when fixing your readers’ problems. Don’t give them a temporary duct tape fix—give them a long-term remedy.
You know what the trouble with a lot of products is? They’re all talk. Any product can sound great with a well-written description.
But if you know you’ve got something good, give your readers a free preview. Let them in on the action so they can see for themselves just how great your product is.
If you have a subscription service, give your readers a free trial. If you have an e-book, give away the first chapter.
Here’s my challenge to you: Give away more than you think you should.
When Seth Godin released his book Permission Marketing, instead of just giving away one chapter, he offered the first four chapters free. (And the offer still stands!) That free preview didn’t stop the book from creating a legacy with marketers all over the world.
And make sure your free preview is packed with good stuff. Don’t give away a limited free trial or an introduction. Give your readers the good stuff, and when there’s no more free content, they’ll likely pay for more.
No one can resist the offer of something free. You can leverage this by holding a contest on your blog.
You’re probably thinking, “How can I generate sales if I’m giving something free?”
This is how. Contests help you grow your audience and build interest in your brand. After a successful contest, you’ll have a lot more people to share your products with.
To get the best results with your contest, go social. For example, use Rafflecopter to give extra entries to people who perform certain social actions, such as liking and sharing your page:
(Bonus tip: You can also use contests to get tons of user-generated content.)
Every time your readers make the choice to check out your latest post, they’re investing their time in your work. By giving your audience an exclusive deal, you’re thanking them and giving back.
Don’t make the offer public anywhere else. Make it a readers-only deal, and say so. You want your readers to feel special.
Selling doesn’t have to leave you feeling slimy.
When you do it right, selling equals helping your readers. Only promote products you know will improve your readers’ lives.
After you’ve been blogging and interacting with readers for a while, you’ll realize it’s a small community. These people aren’t facts and figures. They’re humans with problems that need to be solved, and you can help.
It’s all about helping. If you’re focused on providing value, the selling part becomes a lot easier.
Your readers want to support you. All you have to do is ask.
How do you use your blog to generate sales?
