Do you hate cold calling? How content marketing can get you sales more effectively
Call.
Next call.
Next call.
We all know the life of many sales people. It’s one cold call after another. It’s a constant slog to get new prospects interested and then to keep in contact with them.
But there is another way.
Printers should use content marketing
Cold calling can be hard work. Here’s another way to contact customers
What is content marketing? It is a way of keeping in contact with customers by giving them useful information. Information that will interest them. This can be done by newsletters, mailers blogs or e-mail to opted in prospects.
Print companies that use content as a way of keeping in touch create constant relationships with their prospects. The prospects buy in to the information that is sent to them and this engages them with the printer. Because they are engaged they are more likely to buy when the time is right. So printers who use content to keep in touch have more control over their sales pipelines. They are more likely to achieve the sales that they need.
Many printers don’t use content as a way of keeping in touch. They have to work a lot harder to achieve their sales targets. They have less control over their sales pipelines. This is because they don’t use this easy way to engage with prospects. They have ignored an easy way to create a relationship with their prospects.
Here are three reasons why content works so powerfully to engage prospects and turn them into customers. The first is all to do with timing.
Content keeps you in the prospect’s mind
You don’t know when the customer is going to buy. Occasionally people are ready to make a decision straight away. However, most of the time a wait is required until they are thinking about a print project. It is almost impossible to time cold calls to coincide with a customer starting on print projects. Even follow up calls are not an efficient way of doing this.
Using content means that the prospect is constantly reminded of your presence. So when they are ready to buy, you are in their mind. Content achieves another important purpose connected with this.
Content makes the competition’s job harder
How many times have you spoken to a customer, just to find out that they have placed work with a competitor? Many customers will place work with the company that is uppermost in their mind at the time. Providing regular content means that you are constantly in the prospect’s mind. Unless, the competition has contacted the prospect recently they are much more likely to be out of the picture.
Content also puts you ahead of the competition in another way
Content demonstrates your expertise
Content is a great way for you to show a prospect that you understand their market. And that you understand the business challenges that they face. It’s a great way for you to show how you are the right company to solve these challenges for the prospect.
That brings us to an important point about content.
Content should not just be about print
The quickest way to ensure a customer does not engage with your content is to tell them lots of technical information. Most prospects are not interested in your presses or your processes.
You need to make sure that your content focusses on their businesses and how using print will help them.
However, no matter how relevant the content, some sales people are not convinced that it is worth using it.
Doesn’t content marketing take up too much time?
Compare the number of customer touches that you can make with content marketing compared to calling. You’ll quickly come to the conclusion that content marketing is an efficient way to make customer touches.
Content marketing doesn’t replace the phone. But it does enable you to achieve much more than if you just use the phone.
Here’s how it worked for one print company
This company sent out a number of targetted mailings to a very specific market sector. Each of the mailings had content that was useful to their prospects. As the mailings continued, the company found that prospects were contacting them. It was the prospects who initiated the discussions. The company was able to turn a number of these enquiries into good business.
I hope this has inspired you to think more about using content marketing.
Here are some action points to get you going
- Work out who you want to connect with
- Build a list
- Plan your content
Content marketing is not generally an overnight change. But you should find that it starts creating new opportunities for you. However, you may still be worried.
How do you create content?
One option is to outsource your content: I can help with this. But I will give a full breakdown of the options in my next article.
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P.S. What are the right messages to send out in content marketing? Find out how other print companies are managing this successfully by signing up to the Profitable Print Relationships newsletter right now. And you’ll get a free copy of “Ten Common Print Selling Errors and What To Do About Them”.
