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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 18: Your Customer Cultivation Strategy

Hey y’all!  Welcome to the 18th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show!  Last week’s episode talked about cultivating customers, and I wanted to talk a bit more about that this week and give you a few very simple examples of how you can do this on Twitter by showing you how I do the same thing in growing the #blogchat community.

Show Notes:

1:20 – The problem with focusing on customer acquisition vs retaining existing customers.

2:15 – How I cultivate new members for #blogchat and how you can do the same thing to cultivate existing customers on Twitter into fans of your brand.

3:00 – Segmenting your customers and understanding how each group has different needs and how you can engage with each to move them to the next level and cultivate them into ultimately being fans of your brand.

4:15 – New #blogchat users vs new customers of your brand.  What I do to help them come back the following week and how you can do the same to convince them to keep interacting with you and buying from your brand.

9:15 – How I engage existing #blogchat members and how you can do the same with existing customers.

12:00 – How I look to engage and reward the most active members of #blogchat and ideas for how you can do the same with customers that frequently engage with you, especially in a positive way.

The idea is, how can we first identify which segment a customer falls into (New, Existing, Customer with some affinity toward our brand, Brand Advocate), and what can we do to move them to the next level?  I think this episode will really help you frame your thoughts for how to do this and create a Customer Cultivation Strategy.

Here’s where you can download the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well! Thanks for listening!

 

 

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Giving Fans Backstage Access: How Paper.li Is Embracing Its Users

All InAlmost a year ago, my friend Kelly Hungerford contacted me about working with Paper.li to help the company build structures to help it more efficiently connect with its users and create value for them.  Paper.li has a pretty devoted userbase, and a big reason why is because of the personalized customer service (or ‘customer care’ that Kelly calls it) that Paper.li has given its users.

But Paper.li’s team is like many growing companies in that team members are often required to wear many hats.  Which presented a challenge for Paper.li: How do you scale having individual relationships with users when the userbase expands from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand users?

So we started out by asking and answering those two questions that I mentioned in the last episode of #FanDamnShow:

1 – What does Paper.li get from this?

2 – What will Paper.li’s users get from this?

 

We came up with some very specific goals that we were shooting for on each end that I don’t want to get into here.  The bottom line is that Paper.li wanted to create programs and structures that help it better connect with its users, and give those users more value and more input into its marketing, product design, and feedback, moving forward.

Many of Paper.li’s planned projects are still in development, but you’ve already seen one, the #Bizheroes chat on Twitter.  This chat is run primarily by Kelly and Magda.  The topics are chosen based on a simple question: “What business and life skills would be beneficial to Paper.li’s users?”  Paper.li brings in experts each week to discuss and teach about a particular skill.  Kelly, who transitioned from Paper.li to start her own consulting business late last year, is working with Paper.li in an advisory role now with the chat.  It’s a wonderful chat that happens each Tuesday at 1pm Central, in fact the participation numbers are often at or better than #Blogchat’s levels!

Another initiative that Paper.li has just rolled out is called Backstage at Paper.li.  Paper.li believes as I do that your passionate customers hold incredible value for your company as a feedback channel.  From our first discussions, we explored the idea of creating a way to let Paper.li users not only give us feedback on existing features, but also input and opinions on possible future features, products and marketing.

To that end, Belinda Sadouk, Paper.li’s new Marketing and Communications Manager, is spearheading the launch of Backstage at Paper.li.  This is a new place that will not only give those who signup an advance ‘sneak peek’ at new features and products from Paper.li, it will also be a feedback channel to better incorporate the ideas, opinions and expertise of Paper.li’s users into future offerings.  The idea is to create a place where Paper.li can connect with its users in a deeper way, allowing them to be able to get early access to new products, features and initiatives, so that their feedback can be applied throughout the development process.  This will not only improve the quality of the ideas and products that go through Backstage, but the users will become more invested in helping those ideas be successful, since they had more input in their direction.

Paper.li CEO Edouard Lambelet talks about this on Paper.li’s blog this week, but the Paper.li platform has allowed the company to collect massive amount of data, especially around content.  What type of content resonates with users, for example, and this is user-generated data.  So part of the goal of Backstage is to take this data and give it back to the users so it can benefit them as well.  By combining the intelligence created by Paper.li’s data along with input and feedback from users, Paper.li hopes to create products that make a more positive difference in the lives of its users.

If you are a Paper.li user (or just curious!) please signup here to join Backstage at Paper.li.  I will say this: Within the next few weeks members will be given an advance look at a new app that Paper.li will be rolling out that many of you reading this blog will want.  You can find out more information on Paper.li’s blog.

One Final Takeaway

Your most passionate customers, call them fans, advocates or ambassadors, are more than simply ‘volunteer salespeople’.  Yes, fans create cash, but your fans are also a treasure trove of valuable feedback and insights into how to improve your business processes.  It pays to reach out to your most passionate customers and invest in creating stronger connections with them that drive real business growth.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Paper.li has in store for creating deeper connections with its users.

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 12: Saying ‘Thank You’ As a Marketing Strategy

Welcome to the 12th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show!  BTW before I get to the Show Notes for this episode, thank y’all for making last Tuesday the best day for downloads of the show at 66 downloads!  That’s the best in the history of the show since it was launched last May!  Thanks to everyone for listening.  I mentioned my audience goals for the show earlier this month, and while January is now the best month ever for downloads, there’s still some work to do to reach January’s goal of 750 downloads.  So any help you can give me by telling others about The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show would be greatly appreciated!  In fact if you enjoy the show please consider leaving a review on iTunes, it really helps!

Show Notes:

0:45 – Thank you to Amy Robles, Sarah Seado and Kary Delaria

1:00 – The role of saying ‘Thank you’ in building an audience

2:25 – Appreciating your customers is the great marketing equalizer

3:10 – Too many companies focus on acquiring new customers vs showing appreciation for their existing customers

4:00 – Why would you not say ‘Thank you’ to the people that are helping you reach your goals?

4:45 – The bar has been set so low that when a company appreciates us, it surprises us

 

Here’s where you can download this episode directly.  And if you can,please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.

Here’s this week’s episode:

And here’s all the episodes so far:

 

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What’s the ROI of Making Your Customers Cry?

Watch this video.  Now.

Then forward it to your boss and ask her “What would our business look like if our customers loved us that much?”

Or maybe the better question to ask is, “Why don’t we love our customers as much as Taylor Swift loves her fans?”

Because you don’t.  And you should.

I love you Taylor Swift.  And it has nothing to do with your music, it has everything to do with how you go out of your way to communicate to your fans that you love them.

Successful marketing isn’t about generating sales, it’s about generating love.  Customers that love your company, who it is and what it stands for, and tell other customers why they should love you just like they do.  Because generating the love means you generate the sales.

Two points to consider:

1 – I would bet dollars to donuts that Taylor never once thought while wrapping presents to deliver to her fans, “Wait…what’s the ROI of driving to a fan’s house with presents?”

2 – Taylor’s new album 1989 was the top-selling album of 2014.

I can’t help but wonder if these two things aren’t somehow related.

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The Passion Point: When Brand Like Turns Into Brand Love

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Earlier this decade, Patagonia made a rather bizarre plea to its customers: Stop buying our stuff.  The outdoor apparel brand launched a marketing campaign designed to ask customers to reconsider their shopping habits.  To stop buying new coats when their current one was just fine, to stop indulging in spending sprees on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  To spend less on what you want and more on just what you need.

So did Patagonia’s customers heed the brand’s advice?  They did not, as Patagonia’s sales increased by more than $150 Million over the next year.

Obviously, this approach won’t work for every brand.  And that’s the point.  It works for Patagonia because the brand has established the trust of its customers.  Its customers believe that Patagonia’s motivations behind asking customers to avoid extravagant purchases are truly to create a better world.  Many of Patagonia’s customers share these beliefs and wants.  Which means Patagonia’s marketing message to ‘buy less’ actually validates to its customers that Patagonia is a brand that they should believe in, and support.

This story also goes to the heart of truly successful marketing.  Too many brands market their products, when they should be marketing how those products fit into the lives of their customers.  Patagonia does this amazingly well.  The brand focuses on its customers and their likes and beliefs.  The company shares many of those same beliefs, such as protecting the environment, enjoying the outdoors, and sustainability.

We all have certain things we are passionate about.  Maybe it’s something specific like US military history, horseback riding or automotive repair.  Or it could be more general like design, simplicity, minimalism.  But we all have things that we are passionate about and that we love.  Things that motivate and excite us.  We can relate some of those things with some brands.

But we love the brands that we identify as being related to the things we love.  In the Patagonia example, its customers love the brand because its customers love protecting the planet and believe that the Patagonia brand has this same desire.  Patagonia is helping to facilitate the ideas and beliefs that are important to its customers: Protecting the environment, being active in the outdoors and sustainability.  Patagonia’s customers feel better about themselves for supporting the brand.

So if you truly want to make a connection with your customers, don’t promote your brand so much as you promote the things that your customers love that they associate with your brand.  For Patagonia, that’s protecting the environment, being active outdoors, and sustainability.  For Fiskars it’s scrapbooking.  For Harley-Davidson it’s the freedom of the open road.  It’s not about a parka, a pair of scissors or a motorcycle.

It’s about us.  It’s about the things we are passionate about, that we love.  How well you relate to the things we love determines how well we will relate to your brand.  When you can show us that your brand is just as passionate about these same things and can help us realize our passions, we might just love your brand as well.

Pic via Flickr user David Robert Bllwas

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How a Passionate Community Formed Around 5 Million Toys Lost At Sea

LegosOn Feb. 13, 1997, the ship Tokio Express was bound for New York when it was struck by a huge wave about 20 miles off the coast of England.  As a result, dozens of shipping containers were thrown overboard and into the sea.  Among the lost cargo was almost 5 million Lego toys and pieces.

Almost immediately, these Legos began washing up on shore in nearby Cornwall, England, and still do even today.  At first local beach-combers began to discover the unexpected treasure, but then additional possible findings were made in other locations.  Eventually, it led to the creation of an online community devoted to finding the lost toys, led by the appropriately-named Legos Lost At Sea Facebook page.  Here, passionate collectors come together to share what they know and have discovered about this event and the 5 million or so Legos that were lost at sea.  Due to the group’s research they have secured cargo manifests and know how many of each item were on the ship.

This event has become a rallying point within the Lego-collecting community.  Fans from around the world are now comparing notes in an effort to locate as many of the Legos as possible.  The majority of the findings have been on the shores of the UK, but it is believed that toys from the lost stash have been found on beaches as far away as California and Australia.

As I talk about in my book Think Like a Rock Star, a community is a group that has a shared sense of ownership in something larger than themselves.  If you’re wanting to build an online community, it’s often very difficult to do based on the product itself.  It’s far better to focus on something that brings the group together.  The Legos Lost At Sea community is a good example of this, they share the common bond of trying to locate as many of the lost Legos as possible.

So how could a brand or company become involved in an existing community like Legos Lost At Sea?  Well the first thought would be that Lego should sponsor or participate in this group.  But there might be some valid legal reasons why this wouldn’t be a good idea, perhaps participation could somehow be tied back to an admittance of fault in some way for the lost cargo, who knows?  Another idea is what if local beaches in England sponsored ‘Lego Treasure Hunt Days’, where collectors could meet and work together to clean the beaches, and at the same time (hopefully) find more of the lost Legos!  The local beaches benefit from becoming cleaner, and the local collectors benefit from not only finding Lego-booty, but also they get to meet their fellow collectors and bond over a common love of all things Lego.

Whenever you’re thinking about your community-building efforts, think about how you can work with an existing community to them it reach its goals.  The goal isn’t to join a community so you can promote your product, the goal is to join the community to help it reach its goals.  Helping an existing community reach its goals and better itself is the best promotion possible for your product.  Keep that in mind the next time you are thinking about how your company can ‘leverage’ an online community.

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IKEA Shuts Down Popular Fan Site IKEAHackers

A few years ago, the band Blink 182 was getting ready to release its new single.  It went to YouTube and found thousands of instances where fans of the band were illegally using its music in homemade videos.

The band cataloged over 100,000 instances of copyright infringement by its fans, then instead of sending lawyers after them, Blink 182 made the video for its new single from videos created by its fans.

Then the band thanked its fans.  For stealing its music.

This example is in contrast to how IKEA recently reacted when it discovered a popular fan site called IKEAHackers.  The site, which is where fans of the brand share their ‘hacks’ for making its products better, has been delivered a Cease and Desist letter from IKEA.  According to its lawyers, the brand objects to the fact that the fan running the site has inserted advertising on the site in an effort to offset the costs of maintaining it.  As the site’s owner explains:

Needless to say, I am crushed. I don’t have an issue with them protecting their trademark but I think they could have handled it better. I am a person, not a corporation. A blogger who obviously is on their side. Could they not have talked to me like normal people do without issuing a C&D?

IKEAhackers.net was set up in 2006 and truly not with the intent to exploit their mark. I was a just crazy fan. In retrospect, a naive one too. It is not an excuse but that was just how it was when I registered IKEAhackers. Over the last 8 years the site has grown so much that I could not juggle the demands of a full time job and managing IKEAhackers. It also costs quite a bit to run a site this large. Since IKEA® does not pay me a cent, I turned to advertising to support myself and this site.

To clarify, IKEA has every right to do what it feels is necessary to protect its brand and its images and likeness.  My guess is that’s the true motivation behind IKEA’s actions, and it feels if it spins that it doesn’t like the site due to the advertising on it that it might lessen the negative PR hit.

It’s also worth noting that this story will be hot for about 3-4 days, then most people will forget about it. Except for fans of the site, many of which were also IKEA fans.  Were.  

I mentioned the Blink 182 story at the start because it along with the IKEA story is a perfect example of the difference between how most rock stars view its fans and how most brands view its fans.  Both the brand and the band saw that its fans were acting in a way that could be viewed as damaging to its image and even copyright infringement.  But while Blink 182 saw fans illegally using its music as a possible opportunity, IKEA saw fans running the IKEAHackers site as a possible threat.  

That’s an incredibly important distinction.  And it brings up another equally important distinction between most brands and most bands.  Most brands have little to no connection with its fans, so as a result they don’t understand them and they don’t trust them.  While most bands are connected with its fans so they do understand them and do trust them.  Blink 182 understood that its fans weren’t trying to hurt the band with its videos on YouTube, they were trying to help the band.  IKEA apparently doesn’t see the IKEAHackers site as being helpful to its brand, instead it sees it as being hurtful.

How could IKEA have handled this situation as if it were an opportunity instead of a treat?  If the brand was really worried about advertisements on the site, then make a deal with the fan running it to have her remove all ads, and in exchange IKEA would sponsor the site for the amount she would have earned in ad revenue.

That turns a negative PR event into an incredibly positive one for IKEA.  It generates new fans for the brand, and everyone wins.

It also validates to IKEA’s fans why they were right to be fans of the brand.

The lesson: When you feel your fans are acting in a way that could hurt your brand, understand that your fans love you, and look for a way to work with them, instead of against them.  The only thing worse than ignoring your fans, is giving them a reason to stop loving you.

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Five Proven Ways to Build More Engagement On Your Brand’s Blog

One of the biggest struggles that blogging brands face is creating engagement with their customers.  It’s tough to sell your boss on how effective your blog is if none of your customers are reading your content.  Here’s five proven ways to not only build readership, but convert passive readers into active participants on your blog:

1 – Create customer-centric content.  I’ve written in the past about how much I love the content strategy of Red Bull and Patagonia.  Both brands do an amazing job of creating content that resonates with its audience.  For example, on its blog The Cleanest Line, Patagonia rarely blogs about its products, instead Patagonia creates content about the activities that its customers engage in, and the causes they support.  Patagonia understands its customers well enough to know that if they create content that actually interests them, that it will not only give those customers a reason to engage with the brand on its blog, it will give them a reason to buy from Patagonia as well.

Patagonia

For your blog, think about how you can create content that relates to your brand, but that isn’t about your brand.  If you want the science behind why this works, Facebook actually did a study a couple of years ago of their most popular brand pages, and the type of content being created by these brands.  Facebook found that, across the board, the type of brand-created content that did the best job of driving customer engagement was content related to the brand but not about the brand.  In other words, write about the activities that customers love that are related to your brand.  For example, if your brand is in the hospitality industry, create content that helps your customers be better travelers.  If your brand is an automaker, write more about driving than your cars.  Write about the topics that matter to your customers, and then your blog will matter to your customers.

2 – Post regularly and on the same core topics.  This is very easy to do and few brand blogs follow this strategy.  The idea with posting regularly is to ‘train’ your readers to know when new content is going to be up on your blog.  So if you only write one new post a week for your blog, write it the same day every week.  That way I know that every Wednesday there’s a new post on your blog.

And as for topics, the best approach is to pick 2-3 core topic buckets that you write about.  I wrote before about the process for using topic buckets for a business blog, but the process is so find 2-3 sub-topics of your blog’s larger topic that you can blog about.  For example with Patagonia’s blog above, some of its topic buckets are outdoor activities, protecting the environment and sustainability.  These are three of the topic buckets that Patagonia creates content around.  Notice that each topic bucket is also focused on a topic that’s relevant to its customers (again tying back to the first point).  By simply creating a few topic buckets for your blog, it makes the content creation process much easier.  For example, if you want to write one new blog post a week, and you have 3 topic buckets for your blog, you can easily map out your posting schedule for the month by writing one post from each topic bucket!  That gets you three week’s worth of posts, and then for the fourth week you can write an additional post for one of those topic buckets.

3 – Write better headlines.  The cold, hard reality is that most customers won’t read your blog, the best case scenario is that they will see a link to your blog with the title of your post pass by them on Facebook or Twitter.  Which means your post title has to be compelling enough to, in 2 seconds or so, convince the passive reader (who is literally scanning their social feed) to become active and click your link.  So in some respects, writing headlines is the most important skill you can possess as a blogger.

HeadlineI’ve written about how to write better headlines in the past, but I’ll share a couple of tips here.  In short, the biggest mistake that I see brand bloggers making in respect to headlines is writing a headline that summarizes the topic of the post, instead of focusing on it.  For example, a headline that summarizes this post could have been ‘Getting engagement on your blog’.  While that headline is somewhat specific, it’s also a bit boring.  You have to remember that the headline you write is going to be competing against headlines written by sites specifically trying to steal attention.  Your headline is going to be in the middle of a stream of links (and linkbait headlines) like this:

“This Man-Eating Tiger Stood Ready to Devour This Child, But What Happened Next Was Totally Unexpected And Will Break Your Heart”

” Free Download: How Twitter Can Solve 3 Major Challenges for Sales”

“Getting engagement on your blog”

“That Record-Breaking Selfie That Ellen Took at the Oscars? Here’s What Samsung Doesn’t Want You to Know About It”

See what I mean?  You have to learn to write amazing headlines to even have a chance of getting clicked in a stream such as this.  But the good news is that most bloggers are woefully bad at writing headlines.  So if you can learn how to write good headlines, it gives you a huge advantage versus the competition.  When you write your headline, review it with ‘The 2-Second Rule’.  Take two seconds to read your headline and then consider that’s at best what someone on Twitter or Facebook would give your headline.  So if your headline can’t grab your reader’s attention in 2 seconds and compel them to click the link, then it’s not a good headline.

Focus on making your headline as specific as possible, so the reader knows exactly what they are getting if they click.  Note the headline to this post, it’s very specific, and promises to give you five proven tips for building engagement.  So if you write for a brand’s blog and building engagement is a problem you are trying to solve, the headline of this post will probably (hopefully) compel you to click the link.

Remember, your headline has 2 seconds to work its magic.  Make it count.

4 – Use amazing visuals.  This goes along with writing a great headline, but consider that every time your post is shared on Facebook, it pulls up the lead image and attaches it to the link.  So if you write an amazing headline and have a visually-grabbing photo to go with it, you’re already halfway home to getting that person to click the link and read your post.  You have to constantly be aware that most people aren’t going to read your blog post by coming to you blog, they are going to read it from seeing someone else share a link to your blog.  So writing great headlines and adding amazing pictures works wonders.  

My favorite source for finding amazing photos for your blog is still Flickr, in particular the photos that have the Attrition License via Creative Commons.  You can use these photos, you can even adapt or build on them (like in a Powerpoint presentation), the only requirement is that you attribute (link) to the source.  Now recently, Getty Images has made waves by making a lot of its images free for the first time, and embeddable.  I was really excited about this at first, but unfortunately there are two big caveats to this move:

  1. Most of Getty Images photos of celebs, sporting and entertainment events are still off limits.  IOW many of its most desirable images.
  2. The images that are free to use cannot be used for commercial purposes.  And while I’m no legal expert on social media like Kerry Gorgone, I think that pretty much means your brand can’t use them.  I certainly won’t be using them and I’d advise you to check with your legal team before you do.

5 – Respond and be grateful for the engagement you do get.  The two most powerful words in social media (and probably life as well) are ‘Thank You‘.  Simply responding to and thanking readers for existing comments and engagement is a great way to get more of the same.  You want to reward the type of behavior that you want to encourage.  So if you want your readers to comment more on your blog or signup for your brand’s newsletter, or download that white-paper, you need to reward them when they engage in these activities.  When it comes to commenting, simply replying and engaging them back signals to them that you value their input, and appreciate it.

And we tend to stick around when we feel appreciated!

So there you have it, five proven ways to build engagement on your brand’s blog.  If you apply all these methods you *will* see readership and engagement on your brand’s blog increase.  And remember that now more than ever, your blog is your most important piece of social media real estate because you own it.

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Sharing Your Voice Versus Building a Platform

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Yesterday was the best traffic day ever on this blog.  I checked and the 2nd best traffic day came in January of 2011 and the 3rd best in July of 2009.  In other words, it took a long time and a lot of work to reach yesterday.

Something else I noticed as I was going through my Google Analytics yesterday was to look at how the day-to-day traffic increased.  Today I would immediately know that something was ‘wrong’ if I ‘only’ got 500 visitors tomorrow, but back in 2010 or 2011, that would have been cause for celebration.  Hopefully in 2-3 years, if I get the same amount of traffic as I did yesterday, I’ll be disappointed as well.

Whenever we talk about the significance of blogging, people always offer that they blog because they want to share their voice.  I’m a huge believer in the power of blogging for this very reason.

But there’s also incredible power in sharing your voice and using your blog to build a platform for your ideas.  And I mean ‘build’ literally as it is a LOT of work to build a blogging platform.  Since June of 2009, I’ve currently written 655 posts here.  So many hours spent on creating content.  But that content is helping me to build a platform.  In June of 2009, this blog averaged about 84 visitors a day.  Currently I get that here every hour.  That’s a huge increase in exposure for my ideas.  And yet, as I was giddy watching my traffic go up yesterday, and as I saw yesterday’s post top 250 retweets, I realized there are many bloggers that see every post get that type of exposure.

Your platform has incredible value.  Yes, it takes a ton of time and energy to build it, but that platform can open doors for you.  It brings your ideas to more people.  If you are a brand, it expands the reach of your content to more potential customers.  It becomes ‘proof of concept’ if you want to sell a publisher on why they should buy your book idea.

Want to know a secret?  Many of the people that are viewed as thought leaders today in this space started building their platform 5-10 years ago.  No one knew who they were then, but today they have a blog that’s read by 100,000 people every month, they have 100,000 people following them on Twitter and have an email list with 50,000 names on it.

All because they invested the time and work to build a platform that would allow them to share their ideas with more people.  Isn’t your voice worth the same attention? 

Pic via Flickr user nigelhowe

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What Are the Top 3-5 Reasons Why I Won’t Do Business With You?

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We are self-selecting buyers.  Thanks to the huge amounts of information, opinions and data available online, we can research any type of purchase decision beforehand, and know whether or not it makes sense for us.  This takes the ability of your brand to ‘sell’ me completely out of the equation.

Or does it?  Last week I spoke at the Bank Operations and Management Summit in Birmingham.  At one point I was discussing how to build blog readership with this room full of smart bankers.  I asked them to think about the reasons why someone chooses not to bank with them.  What are the top objections?  Take these objections or questions that their current and potential customers have, and answer them in a blog post.  When you address customer concerns and questions head on with your blog, you are re-inserting yourself into the sales cycle for that customer.  Your content then becomes a selling tool for your brand.  For example, if I don’t want to do business with your bank because I’ve heard that you charge too many checking fees, if you detail that you offer a ‘Zero Strings Attached’ checking account that charges no fees, that puts my concerns over fees at ease, and could win my business.

I do this as well with my own content.  One of the areas that has confused companies for years about social media marketing is questions about pricing.  Few companies had any idea what they should expect to pay for social media marketing services, so in 2010 I wrote a blog post detailing what companies could expect to pay for social media marketing services.  It has been viewed over 30,000 times.  In 2011 I updated the price list, which has now been viewed over 50,000 times, and which led to the biggest traffic day ever for my blog.  The most recent update to this list came in 2012 with my post ‘How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2012?‘.  That post has currently been viewed almost 85,000 times, and is the most popular blog post I’ve ever written.

Another reason why it helps to address questions and concerns head-on is because it saves time for both you, and your customers.  Around 2009 or so I started getting regular emails from companies saying they needed someone to analyze how they were using social media, and tell them if there was anything they needed to be doing that they weren’t.  They’d ask if this was a service I provided, I’d explain that I did indeed offer a social media strategy audit for companies.

What I noticed after doing this a few times is that often, the company either wasn’t interested because they would realize they didn’t need an audit after talking to me, or they did, but didn’t have the budget at that time.  But along the way, we’d likely have multiple emails and schedule phone calls, etc.  Both myself and the company ended up investing a lot of time into trying to decide if we were right to work together, only to discover that it wasn’t a good fit.

To address this, I created a page here detailing my Social Media Strategy Audit.  This page details exactly what is included in the audit, as well as the exact price.  This way I am answering many of the questions that the potential client would have upfront.  As a result, the majority of the emails I now get about my Social Media Strategy Audit are similar to “Hi Mack, I read about the Social Media Strategy Audit you offer on your site, I think this might be a good fit for our company.  When can we talk to discuss the next steps?”  And it also helps me even when the customer doesn’t see that page because I can offer it for them as information.  A few weeks ago a company emailed me asking if I could do a social media strategy audit for them, and that they wanted to know when I could talk to them about it?  I emailed them back and gave them some times I could chat with them in the coming week, but also gave them a link to my Social Media Strategy Audit page and explained to them that it would have all the information on the service, as well as the price.  Within the hour the company emailed back and said they only had $500 to spend on an audit.  By simply listing my price I saved both of us the time we would have wasted on the phone call.

So if you want to apply this same method to your own blog, make a list of the top objections that people have for doing business with you.  And it doesn’t have to be your particular business, it could be for anyone that does your type of work.  For example, I think we can all give you several reasons why we hate going to the dentist.  If you’re a dentist, you could write blog posts that address each of these objections head on, which will put my mind at ease, and increase the chances of my doing business with you.

Plus the added bonus is that you are creating more valuable content for your blog’s readers!  Which means more readers and more exposure for your business!

So the big question: If this works, why don’t more (blogging) businesses do this?

Because addressing your flaws (real or perceived) is viewed by many businesses as a sign of weakness.  That’s why you rarely see businesses that are viewed to be ‘blue chip’ brands doing this.  The few that do are typically lesser known businesses looking to make a name for themselves.

But the reality is that when you address the reasons why a customer might not do business with you, you are helping to build trust with them.  Which means that the lesser known business is addressing the actual concerns of customers, so that makes it easier to trust them, and do business with them.

Which means one day that lesser known business will not only grow its customer base to reach yours, those customers will be more loyal to that business because they trust them.

The reality is that your competition is already doing this.  They are focused on the reasons why customers would NOT want to do business with you.  They are already focused on what they can offer that you cannot.

So figure out your flaws (even flaws that your customers perceive that don’t really exist) and the reasons why customers are reluctant to do business with you, and address them head-on.  Answer their questions for them and solve their problems, and you will win their business!

Pic via Flickr user Sister72