Brand Publishing vs. The Cold Call
So you’re thinking of ways to propose brand publishing or a new content marketing approach to your sales centric and profit-minded boss? In most cases said supervisor has been in the game for a long time. He or she believes only what they can see, feel and completely understand. It is human nature for those in senior leadership to only buy in one hundred percent to an approach that they fully understand and believe they can control the outcomes. There is really no fault in having this point of view but it can and will lead to missed opportunities that could have grown their business exponentially quicker.
Let’s take the concept of a “sale.” There are three main elements that form a foundation on which a sale is made. Those elements are (in no particular order) credibility, contact, and trust. Until the introduction of brand publishing, there was no option available that could accomplish all three of these building blocks.
There is a point when your sales tem will need to meet with a prospect. While this step remains a required part in a sales transaction in the water and wastewater market, that meeting can take several forms and is no longer limited to person to person. What’s intriguing however is that the opportunity in which you connect initially with a potential buyer is directly impacted by the content you have created and the story you are telling.
Content marketing gives you a story, a background, and legitimacy in the minds of your potential customers. It is the essence of the credibility building block. Trust comes from the exchange you are extracting. You are offering non promotional and helpful information because you have the knowledge that can actually help your prospects. That same information is what they crave to consume. They don’t want a sales pitch, they want help (and in some cases entertainment or both).
When looking at the crucial “contact” piece of the trifecta, where you promote your content is key. If you aren’t tracking who is interacting with your content, you lose out on this being valuable. Take a business as intimate as retirement planning and money management as an example. Sheri Fitts, Chief Marketing Officer at Sheridan Road Financial sums it up perfectly when she states, "Truly helpful content creates a relationship faster than a cold call ever will."
It’s important to note that content marketing can’t completely replace all other forms of your prospecting process. It will however make every other aspect better and make an impact on your bottom line.
Think about it from the standpoint of a cold call versus content. A prospect is MUCH more likely to enter your orbit through good engaging content then they are to warmly accept a cold call from a sales person or distributor. In one scenario you are giving them something of value (knowledge, entertainment, narrative) and in the other scenario you are taking something away from them (their time).
Image credit: "using iphone 6 on business meeting," Perzonseo Webbyra © 2015, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/