How to Ruthlessly Cut Worthless Words from Your Sales Copy

When you’re writing sales copy for your business, showing a little personality is a good thing.

It’s also a good idea to use natural language whenever possible, so people know you’re a real person who is genuinely interested in helping your prospects and customers.

I write conversationally when I write copy, and so do a lot of other folks I trust and admire.

However, there are limits to how far you should take that advice.

Are you taking a risk when you use slang?

Unless you have proof that your audience uses slang — and wants to see it in sales copy — you should avoid using it in your persuasive emails, sales pages, and other types of “selling” collateral.

And when I say “slang,” I’m also including alternative spellings, slang abbreviations, and hyperbole.

I know there’s a high probability I sound like an old grandmother shouting at kids to stay off her lawn — but lately I’m seeing this trend more and more frequently in sales copywriting. And I suspect it’s radically decreasing conversions.

Types of slang to avoid in copy

Want to see some examples? These are all words and phrases I’ve recently noticed on sales pages and in emails that were designed to sell me something:

• BOOM!
• Pleez (or worse yet, pleeeeeeeeez)
• OMG
• FREAKING ROCKED
• LOL

Chances are, you’ve got your own list of words that annoy you when you see them in professional writing. My list could go on for a while, but I’ve chosen some of my biggest pet peeves. I wince every time I see those words in an email from a business.

Why you want to avoid them

There’s a compelling reason to avoid slang and abbreviations like the ones on the list above: they often don’t add value to your copy — and can actually distract your prospects.

When your prospective buyers read your sales page and decide whether or not your product is a good fit for them, you don’t want to distract them for a single moment. You want every line of your copy to flow seamlessly into the next, without interruption.

If you sprinkle your sales page with slang and nonsense words, there’s a good chance you’re going to interrupt that flow.

Keep prospects focused on the action you want them to take

You might innocently include “OMG” in your copy in attempt to sound conversational, but prospects could be distracted by that choice and think, “Wait, why does he say ‘OMG’ in the middle of this paragraph?”

If you’re trying to reach people who aren’t native English speakers (or who come from older generations), they might also ask, “What does ‘OMG’ mean?”

At best, the “OMG” is only a temporary distraction that slows down prospects’ decision-making processes as they read. At worst, the slang and misspelled words will turn off readers so much that they abandon your sales page forever — and you’ve just lost them as customers.

Slang words and abbreviations that belong in text messages also don’t add any value to your copy. As sales copywriters, we must choose every word carefully. Every word and phrase on the page needs to pull its weight — slang and overused exclamations like “OMG” just don’t cut it.

Think I’m wrong?

Perhaps in certain circumstances you’re correct — there are exceptions to this rule, of course.

If you performed extensive research and know for certain your prospects use this type of language — and want to see it in sales copy that promotes your product or service — you might be able to get away with using it.

You should test out these words and phrases to see if including them increases your conversion rate.
If they don’t, I recommend cutting them. Even if your prospect tolerates these words and phrases, they’re probably not contributing anything to your copy.

Get more copywriting tips

If you’re looking for more tips on how to make your copy tighter, more readable, and more persuasive, check out Copyblogger’s free ebook Copywriting 101: How to Craft Compelling Copy.
The 90-page ebook is packed full of helpful advice, including more thoughts on audience research and using your prospect’s preferred language.

Do certain words irritate you when you see them in professional copywriting? Or are there any you’re guilty of using (or overusing) yourself? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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Connection Steps that Lead to Customers

Once upon a time, there used to be a division in how people saw the web.

(Way back in 2009, I wrote a blog post about this, calling the two points of view “the cool kids” and “the internet marketers.”)

That division drew a line between online communication that intended to connect and online communication that intended to persuade and sell.

And that distinction was, of course, completely bogus.

As it happens, Brian Clark, Copyblogger’s founder, was an early heretic trying to show people that there was no difference between connection and persuasion.

Connection and persuasion belong together — because they work better together, and because it’s a natural, normal way to communicate and do business.

But as we all know, people don’t just land on your website, feel an instant sense of connection, then rush to your shopping cart and buy something. Although that would be very cool.

As a content marketer, it’s your job to build relevant paths for people to walk through your site, get a sense of what you do, and — if it’s a good fit — go on to become happy, loyal customers.

Connection matters

Good salespeople have always known that connection matters in commercial relationships.

There’s the creepy kind of salesperson who tries to connect but just comes across as clumsy and predatory. And the great kind of salesperson who actually gives a damn about prospects and long-term relationships.

Here’s the great big secret of selling online:

Internet-savvy prospects don’t have to put up with aggravating sales pitches.

Annoyed online users will block your ads. They’ll mark your irritating email as spam. Or they’ll just close the tab and never see you again.

The web gives us wonderful tools to mute the volume on people who get on our nerves. And the first targets for those tools were the salespeople and ads that tried to take our attention for granted.

How do you make that connection that keeps you out of the dreaded spam filter? It starts with being human and helpful.

Becoming a friendly authority

You might notice that we use the term “friendly authority” quite a bit around here.

To clarify, a friendly authority is:

• Not an entertaining train wreck (they’re amusing but untrustworthy)
• Not a monologue-spewing blowhard (they’re boring and offensive)
• Not a pseudo-therapist (they’re unethical and creepy)

Instead: A friendly authority is an intelligent, reasonably sane human being who clearly communicates solutions to problems in your topic.

You don’t have to over-share, and you don’t have to pretend that you’ll never sell anything. (Both of those are actually counterproductive.)

You just have to be useful, interesting, and human.

The conviction bump

If you want to go a step beyond a simple connection of one human to another, you can start thinking about how you communicate your values and the values of your organization.

It makes me sad that “values” have become a cheap buzzword.

I blame horrible mission statements like:

To be the world’s foremost provider of premier product excellence with world-class service and passion, embracing financially responsible frameworks within an optimized matrix that challenges limitations and nurtures creative solutioning …

At best, that gains an eye roll.

But those abstract nouns we call values or beliefs are also what give our lives meaning. They bring organizations and communities together.

Good businesses live by values — whether or not those values are spelled out.

But beyond that, as a writer and content creator, you have values that will help you get better at everything you’re doing today.

If you want a quick exercise you can start right now, pick five values that matter to you. These are concepts like “Family,” “Integrity,” “Freedom,” that kind of thing.

They don’t have to be terribly noble. “Fun” works. So does “Mischief.”

Write a couple of paragraphs about one. Do that with a different value every week. Maybe on Monday mornings.

When you spend a small amount of time thinking about your values, those values will start to make themselves felt in your work. Your writing, your videos, your podcasts, your graphic design, will start to resonate with something beyond the nuts and bolts of your topic.

When you’re connected with your values, you communicate with conviction.

When you communicate with conviction, others feel it — and often they’ll want to connect further.

Conversion follows

Content marketing’s purpose is to make it a whole lot easier to sell stuff.

Thoughtful, well-executed content paves the way for what we want our audience to do — whether that’s buying something, opting in, or some other activity.

We use content to create a context of persuasion, so that when we move toward a business transaction, it makes sense and feels logical and natural.

Does that mean content marketing doesn’t do any selling? Well, only if you absolutely don’t care what your audience does next.

If you’re crafting content as a hobby or to gain attention for something fun, that’s fine.

If you’re crafting content to support a business, it would be great if people bought stuff.

Conversion is what happens when interest turns into action.

Our friends the traditional copywriters are excellent at this step. They have a lot to teach about persuasive language, clear calls to action, reduction of risk, and all those other excellent copywriting topics.

We try to make those topics user-friendly and accessible (even for those who are a bit nervous about selling) right here on Copyblogger.

Conversion uses a different toolkit than connection and conviction do … but that doesn’t mean you’re going to throw your values and your relationships out the window.

Remember that making sales online — particularly in a world of spam filters and ad blocking — is about constructing paths that lead people to your business. All of the stones in each path should fit together.

The more strategic content you create, the more paths you build — and the more business you’ll attract and convert.

If you’re terrific at creating content for the relationship part of the path, but your conversion steps are clumsy or awkward, your users will stumble … and they won’t move forward.

Get education for the whole path, not just one stone

Some marketing education focuses just on conversion techniques — crafting great ads, landing pages, and sales sequences.

Some marketing education focuses just on connection and conviction techniques — earning and nurturing relationships, without any of that pesky selling.

If you want to create content that markets a business — whether it’s your own business, a client’s business, or an organization you work for — you need to hone your skills for the whole path.
That’s what we designed the Authority community of content professionals to do for you.

Our online master classes cover a wide range of topics, including:

• Persuasive copywriting and site design
• The structure of effective content
• Content creation that attracts new customers
• Strategies to nurture prospects and create a better bond with existing customers
• Productivity and mindset management
• Improving the quality of your writing
• Search engine optimization for lasting results

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4 Trust-Building Steps that Get Your Prospects to Eat Out of Your Hands

Are you scaring away your best prospects?
When you’re new to content marketing, you might inadvertently send a frightening message to your potential customers and clients.
Your heart is probably in the right place. You’re trying to provide value and put your best offers in front of people — but your approach might miss the mark.
And that wrong approach might cause terrible conversion rates for your opt-in forms and low sales of your products and services.
Want to know how to stop scaring off your prospects, build trust, and start attracting tons of subscribers and sales?
The key is learning how to get birds to eat out of your hands.

Why content marketing is like ornithology

Let’s say you have a cute little group of finches in your backyard, and your dream is to get the little fellas to eat birdseed out of your hand.
The trick to earning the trust of the birds is to move slowly and quietly, so you don’t scare them off. Stand next to the tree or bird feeder where they gather, and let them get used to you. Demonstrate your trustworthiness and let them know you’re not going to hurt them.
Then continue to take tiny steps toward your goal, all the while being careful not to scare them. Let the birds discover you’re a source of yummy food by sprinkling birdseed on the ground and hanging out nearby while they nibble.
If you are infinitely patient, take baby steps, and don’t frighten them, eventually you can train the birds to eat directly out of your hands.
Here’s what you don’t want to do:

• Scream “I HAVE BIRDSEED!” at the trees where the birds hang out
• Shove your hands in their little faces to show them what you’re offering
• Wave your arms around to get their attention
• Anything else that makes you look scary, aggressive, risky, or alarming

How this bird story affects your content marketing

If you never plan on trying to get finches to eat from your hands — who cares?
But this story has an important lesson for all content marketers: Your prospects are just like birds.
They are highly risk-averse and hypervigilant, constantly searching for a reason to take flight and leave your website.
If you offer too much too soon or shove your paid products in their faces, they’ll fly away.
And you’ll be left alone, holding a handful of birdseed, wondering what happened.

Building relationships the bird whisperer way

How can you frame your offers to avoid scaring away your prospects?

1. Start slow. Patience is essential when you’re building relationships with your audience. Be sure to establish trust before you ask for anything. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
2. Provide value first. When your website is new, it’s critical that you establish yourself as an expert (and build trust with your audience members) by giving away free value before you present your audience with an offer for your paid products and services. Start with a free report, educational video, or content library, and gather feedback from your audience on that content before you make your next move.
3. Don’t ask for multiple actions. Whether you have an email list opt-in form or free registration page for your site, one major mistake new content marketers make is trying to do too much with a single page. If you present paid offers on the same page or form as your free content, you might confuse your prospects and they won’t take any action at all.
4. Send emails with useful content to build relationships and increase trust. Once a prospect has signed up for your email list, you still need to proceed with caution. To build relationships, send consistent content notifications or email newsletters to prove your authority in your niche and provide value to your community members.

Win your prospects’ trust with a steady, consistent approach

When you approach your prospects carefully and consistently over time (and prove you’re a safe person), they’ll eventually feel comfortable buying from you.
So take small and steady steps, and don’t overdo it with aggressive sales messages. Your prospects will learn to trust you, and they’ll be far more likely to buy your products and services.
A little birdie told me you (and your prospects) are going to be a lot happier with this approach.


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What Is a Content Library? Plus Answers to 9 More Questions about This Innovative Lead Gen Approach

In May 2013, a small company with fewer than 40 unusual employees made a historic lead generation move that resulted in stunning lead generation results. (I stress “unusual” in a good way.)
The company with those odd employees, of course, was Copyblogger Media (now known as Rainmaker Digital). The story of what happened follows.

The historic move:
Up until that point, Copyblogger had been offering an email newsletter to attract and capture email subscribers. Pretty standard in the online business world.

We wanted to up the ante.

So we launched My.Copyblogger.com — a free membership site, where people sign up to access (at the time) 15 free ebooks and a 20-part email course.

Think of a content library as a password-protected source of premium content that you can access once you register with your email address.

That’s essentially what a “content library” looks like. But how did it perform? Let’s look at the results to see.

The historic results:
According to the case study by Marketing Sherpa,

• Through the first seven weeks, the free subscription page averaged a 67 percent conversion rate.
• The first week’s growth was 300 percent bigger than the best week of growth for Internet Marketing for Smart People (a previous Copyblogger 20-part email course) — closer to 400 percent, if you include new paid subscribers.
• The most visited page on Copyblogger at the time was behind the paywall — with almost a third of all traffic logging in after arrival.

Those are some substantial results, particularly in such a competitive space as content marketing.

Now, I can’t promise you the exact same outcome, but I can promise you that a content library will, at the very least, increase the number of subscribers you capture.

The key, as always, is to build trust first by providing a ton of value before asking for anything in return.

If that concept is new to you, then you can review how to build the know-like-trust factor.

In the meantime, let’s dig a little deeper into the common questions surrounding lead generating content libraries.

1. What’s a “content library?”

You’ll hear sales and marketing people refer to a content library as a bank of all the content assets owned by a company that is placed in a central, internal portal so other departments within that company can access that content.

That’s not what we are talking about here.

Yes, a content library is a bank of content, but in the way we will be using the phrase, it is full of resources that your audience can access once they register with an email address.

In other words, the public can access these resources, which makes this type of content library a lead generation tool.

2. What type of content goes into a content library?

You could include:

• Ebooks
• Videos
• Webinars
• Audio seminars
• Podcast episodes
• White papers
• Infographics
• Tutorials
• Data and analysis reports

And more.

The trick is to offer enough value that prospects view signing up for your content library as a no-brainer — an insane bargain.

See Question 5 for some examples of ways you could structure your content library.

3. What makes a content library better than a conventional email newsletter?

When you offer more resources for the same price (in this case, an email address), you are naturally going to get better results.

Our case study is one such example.

With a content library, you are likely to elevate more of your visitors into an ongoing relationship — in other words, a content library will help you convert more prospects into solid leads.

But not just any type of lead.

See, the main difference between a typical email newsletter and a content library offer is that with the content library, you can now identify your site visitors, which ultimately helps you convert more leads into sales.

Let me explain.

4. What’s the difference between an email sign up and website registration?

In both cases, it’s true that the prospect gives you an email address. With a sign-up, you have permission to send that person email — namely, your email newsletter or latest published blog posts.

With a content library registration, you give your prospect access to a site — access to exclusive resources like ebooks, videos, webinars, forums, and more.

In the first situation, the content marketer is throwing stuff at the prospect. In the second, the content marketer is inviting you to his place — which is loaded with useful resources.

And like I said before, when people visit your site as signed-in members, you can customize your promotional messages, which leads to higher conversions.

5. How many resources should you put into a content library?

There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.

However, you need to include more than one piece of content. Don’t forget: you are trying to create a sense of great value.

For example, a content library with two, five-page ebooks is not going to suggest high value. But four 50-page ebooks and seven 30-minute training videos, however, will suggest high value.

Here’s another way you could structure your content library:

• 30 exclusive podcast episodes
• 10 articles
• 3 worksheets

As you can see, the numbers of ways you can structure your content library is limitless. Which leads us to our next question.

6. Do I give access to all the content at once?

The short answer is to start by giving away a large amount of content to create a sense of high value.
The ebooks in the original My.Copyblogger content library ranged between 31 and 142 pages — and there were 15 ebooks, plus a 20-part email course.

However, you can start small and build as time goes on.

For example, make the promise of adding more content once a month (or the frequency that works for you).

That strategy has a number of benefits.

It brings all those members back to your site every time you release a new piece of exclusive content.

In other words, you don’t need all the resources in place before you launch.

If you only have four ebooks and two podcast episodes, you can launch with that offer. But as you add more resources, don’t forget to update your content library’s promotional copy and alert your members.

7. How do I get people to my content library?

If you already have an email list in place, then promote your content library to that list.

With My.Copyblogger, an announcement was sent out to our general email list, and because there were 15 ebooks, there were 15 unique email promotions sent out, each one customized to that particular topic.

We sent out one of these emails a week, usually on a Friday.

Depending on the number of resources you have, your campaign might end up lasting two or three months.

Before sending each email, suppress the email addresses of people who have already registered, so those members of your community aren’t annoyed by seeing the same pitch multiple times.

If you don’t have a list (or want to continue promoting the content library after you’ve finished the campaign to your email list), the next step is to create high-quality, tutorial-type blog content that leads to a promotion of the content library.

Once people are on your site because of this high-quality, tutorial-type blog content, give them an opportunity to register.

Here are four useful ideas:

• Include a footer at the end of each blog post that encourages visitors to register for your content library.
• Add a sidebar that appears on every page of your website.
• Create feature boxes that appear in the header of your website.
• Use pop-overs and pop-ups (yes, there is a difference).

Learn more about these strategies in Beth Hayden’s article, 4 Quick Solutions that Spawn Radical Email List Growth.

8. Won’t content that requires a registration hurt SEO efforts?

No.

True, the content behind the registration wall won’t get crawled or indexed by Google (or any search engine for that matter).

However, search “copywriting” on Google and you’ll see that Copyblogger ranks at the top of the first page of search results. The rest of the topics in our content library are also on the first page of Google for terms like “content marketing,” “landing pages,” and “SEO copywriting.”

And every single one of those pages is what we call a cornerstone content page — which drives social and search traffic to register for the content library on My.Copyblogger. 

9. Do I have to call it a “content library?”

Nope.

You can call it whatever you want to call it.

Here are my ideas for different industries like health, fashion, and cooking:

• The Cross-Fit Foundation
• 8 Beautiful Wardrobe Basics
• Your Wok Recipe Essentials

It’s a good idea to mention in the description copy that this is a library of resources — and be very specific about what is in it.

You want to give your prospect the sense that there are some really juicy resources behind that registration wall.

10. Does this mean I’m starting a membership site?!?!

I added all those question marks and exclamation points because what most people say immediately after asking that question is … I’m not ready for that!

You get a real sense they are scared out of their wits.

If that’s you, relax, because registering people as members doesn’t mean you’re suddenly running a full-fledged membership site.

It just means people are joining your community.

However, if you achieve critical membership mass, a nice touch to your content library would be to offer a simple forum where your members could chat, share ideas, and ask you questions.

Our Rainmaker Platform enables someone who is dumber than a bag of bricks when it comes to coding (like me) to set up a password-protected content library — plus a forum — by simply grunting and pointing (like I do).

In the end, what really matters is that members of your community — even if what you offer them is free — benefit from content that’s tailored to their customer journeys.


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How to Use Social Media to Engage Your Customers

SOCIAL media is not just for sharing memes and photos of friends – it’s how you build your customer base.

Old-school advertising on televisions and billboards reached consumers at home and on the road. Now, with the advent of social media sites, businesses are reaching their customers on their favorite social media sites. The average American checks their social media sites no less than 17 times a day. These websites are the perfect places for businesses to engage audiences, nurturing long-term relationships that lead to sales.

Why Engagement Matters

A study conducted by Socialbakers found that the more consumers engaged with a company on social media, the more likely they were to visit a company’s site. As social media analyst Alexandria McCulloch summarizes, “Every Like, share, comment, retweet on your status updates, photos, videos, etc. means another opportunity for website conversion. Building a loyal, engaged following improves your ability to drive sales.”

5 Tips to Anchor Your Strategy

As a company, how do you start to build engagement with social media? Business owners who are new to the digital space struggle to hone in the easiest ways to engage their audiences. Here are five easy starting points:

1. Define Your Audience

To engage an audience, you have to know who you’re speaking to every day. Instead of winging your content, define your ideal customer. The more specific you get about your buyer personas, the more clarity you bring to your conversations online.

2. Create a Schedule

Just as one workout isn’t going to help you meet your fitness goals, one tweet or Facebook message isn’t going to make a difference to your social media strategy. Set up a schedule for posting on and responding to social media — and stick to it. Start with three times a week or once a day before increasing your activity.

3. Interact with Your Audience

Customers want to interact with brands rather than passively view their posts. Use cleverly worded questions on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to start a conversation. You can also enlist the help of user-generated content with hashtags. Blogger Grace Bonney of Design Sponge developed an faithful following by asking people to share their own photos and tag them with relevant hashtags like “#dsfloors” and “#dspetsstyle.”

4. Use Original Images

Research conducted by Stone Temple Consulting reveals that new social media users benefit from attaching images to posts. Twitter users with a small following generate five to nine times the amount of retweets when they use images, and experience four to 12 times as many favorites. When you start to share content, personalize it with photos that resonate with your audience.

5. Partner with Other Businesses

Develop partnerships that give you the opportunity to tap into the audiences of other brands. If you run a clothing shop in town, for example, consider partnering with another local business — a high-end bakery, or a bookshop — to host a giveaway on social media. This kind of cross-promotion is an easy way to boost engagement in an online community.

Next time you want to engage with potential customers, head to the social media platform of your choice. Start by implementing one of these five ideas, always with the intention to foster engagement and brand awareness among your ideal audience.

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Demand Generation: The Complete Beginner’s Guide (2017)

“What is demand generation? Is it different from inbound marketing? How?”

“Why do I keep hearing this term? It sounds like something I should know about…”

Believe me, if you’re reading this article, you already do know about demand generation. You just might not know you know.

Y’know?

This guide will take apart and examine the three pillars of demand generation. I’lll also give you a 7-step walkthrough for how you can start rolling with demand generation today.

Demand generation strategies have driven most of Wishpond’s growth in the past few years. Advertising and PR are great, but since 2013 we’ve prioritized the demand gen strategies I’ll go over in this guide.

So this is something I’m really excited about, and know can have high-impact on your business as well.

Click below to navigate the guide.

What is Demand Generation?

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That’s a great question, and one we should get out of the way as soon as possible…

Demand Generation encompasses the marketing strategies designed to drive awareness and interest in a business’ products.

It’s an umbrella term which encompasses social media, inbound marketing, email marketing, real-world marketing and customer retention strategies.

It does not cover advertising or PR.

There’s two points in that demand generation definition that I’d like to pull out and take a look at before we get started:

1. “Drive Awareness”

Part of generating demand for your business’ product is about driving awareness of the fact that you exist.

This can be done through content marketing and SEO, social media, community outreach, affiliate marketing and more.

2. “Drive Interest”

Once people are aware you exist, you need to have a secondary strategy in place to communicate your value.

I don’t care that Salesforce is extremely well-known. If I don’t need a CRM platform (or don’t believe I do), why would I care?

Driving interest can also be done through all the strategies above, but it also involves the other side of demand generation – email marketing and customer retention.

Now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s get rolling with our Guide to Demand Generation…

Demand Generation: Strategies to Reach New Prospective Customers

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The strategies I’ll go over in this section are designed to get your business in front of people who might be interested in buying your products.

This can, of course, also be done with Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and a solid public relations strategy. But, for the purposes of this guide (and to align ourselves with the whole idea of demand generation), we’ll ignore those and focus instead on the three most impactful demand generation strategies to drive awareness.

Social Media

Social media, if invested in correctly and optimized (with management tools, visual marketing apps, and a well-measured approach, can be profitable without having to pay for exposure.

It’s a challenge, though, for sure. The organic reach on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest are extremely limited (as the platforms are encouraging businesses to pay-to-play).

Here’s what I recommend to get organic reach and brand awareness on social media:

• Choose a couple social platforms on which to focus your time and energy. Don’t spread yourself too thin.
• To get rolling, start off with frequent social media promotions to increase your number of Fans and Followers. Use social incentives (bonus entry rewards for Liking or Sharing your promotion) to spread the word and get more Followers. Exclude past entrants from your targeted posts when promoting a new campaign.
• Measure the success you see on social media with a comprehensive analytics tool (either within your social media management tool or the platform itself). Measure how much time you’re spending and the dollar value of engagement you receive. Remember that social media, like content marketing is a long-game. It takes several months for anything to happen (though social promotions can help you get a boost).

To learn more about social media marketing, including when you shouldn’t invest in it (and where you should invest), as well as how you can get started, check out my article, “Social Media Marketing Plan: An 11-Step Template.” To see a full guide to the tools necessary to make it profitable, check out “50 Social Media Tools: The Ultimate List 2017.”

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a huge part of driving awareness about, and generating demand for, your business.

Imagine the content you create as a megaphone. When you start out, without content, your business is only able to whisper into the buying world. As you create more and more content, your voice gets a bit louder – because you’re more likely to be found, more successful on social media, and because the more content you create the more respect you’ll get from Google.

STEP 1: SEO

When we’re talking about the content marketing strategies to reach new prospective customers, we’re primarily talking about content’s role in SEO.

SEO, very simply, comprises the strategies that businesses use to get their brand on the first page of search results when someone types in something related to them.

How to start ranking and generating awareness of your brand through search results:

• Identify key words and phrases associated with your business. For Wishpond’s marketing campaign software, we target tool searches, questions associated with how to use tools like ours, and queries associated with strategies which use our tools.
• Identify what the competition is for your keywords. If a given keyword is dominated by a competitor, create better content than what they’re produced (longer, higher density of keywords, etc) or go for lower-hanging fruit. Tools like LongTail Pro and BuzzSumo can help identify the types of content you should be creating.
• Start creating content with those key phrases as the URL and interspersed frequently throughout the content.
• Create long-form, high-quality content.

STEP 2: PROMOTION:

A big part of content marketing is also promotion. Become more active on communities like Reddit, GrowthHackers.com, Inbound.org and those which are most relevant to your business.

Tap into influencer marketing to increase the organic reach of your content. For a guide, check out “Influence Marketing: How to Amplify Your Content with Social Leaders.”

STEP 3: USING CONTENT TO GENERATE LEADS:

Content marketing is only valuable if you’re able to turn traffic into customers. And once you’re driving readers, for many businesses that means turning those readers into leads.

For a guide to using content to generate leads, check out “The Complete Guide to Gating your Content.”

To learn more about content marketing and how you can build a more powerful inbound strategy, check out my article, “How to Build a More Complete Content Marketing Strategy.” You can also grab a high-value tools guide with “77 Tremendous Tools to Make You a Content Marketing Superstar.”

Real-World Marketing

Real-world marketing still has a place in getting your business out there. Conferences, local meet-ups, job fairs – all these can showcase your business to the people who are there – and therein lies the problem of real-world marketing.

If your business is new on the stage, you need to implement strategies designed to show you to as much of that stage as possible.

This is the problem I see with a lot of early-stage, well-funded tech startups (and perhaps why so many of them fail): If you have a bunch of VC money, you’re going to hire the marketing team with the most proven experience.

Unfortunately, that often means you’re hiring people who haven’t had to “break into” their industry. If they have that experience you want, they’re likely corporate marketers who have marketed businesses who are already well-known to the entire business stage. They’re not breaking onto it, needing to try innovative strategies to be seen. They’re people who need to keep their brand top-of-mind – people who need to give buyers a reason to go with their well-known brand over a well-known competitor.

And that’s why digital marketing and the strategies of growth hacking are so powerful. They allow you reach a massive audience with a limited budget. Yes, it’s scarier, but it’s also more powerful in the early stages.

Then again, I’m a startup marketer, so I’m as biased as they come…

Demand Generation: Strategies to Engage Prospective Customers

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Now we really get into the nitty-gritty of demand generation – actually generating demand for your business. Creating awareness is only 1/3rd of the battle, we still need to get people to actually buy and then stay with us for more than a week or first purchase.

Let’s dive into those strategies which convince people who know who we are that our product is worth buying. Let’s dive into the strategies which get people to buy. After all, why else are we here?

Content Marketing

Once you’ve created a content funnel based around SEO, promotion and lead generation, you can continue to use it to generate demand for your tools.

Incorporate your content, including how-to guides, case studies, platform walkthroughs, video, “about us-style” pieces and more, into your email marketing campaigns which turn prospective customers (leads) into paying customers.

Content plays a major role in building trust and a relationship with prospective customers. After all, I’m far more likely to buy from someone I know – far more likely to buy from someone I trust.

Here’s an example of an article from the CEO and founder of Buffer, in which he is completely open about why a couple of the other co-founders are moving on:

To learn more about using content marketing to engage with the prospective customers who already know you check out my article on Content Marketing Institute, “Transparency Reveals Great Content Opportunity.”

Email Marketing

Before we dive into how you can use email marketing and where it fits within the demand generation sphere, I think it’s worth it to introduce you to a few statistics…

• For every $1 spent on email marketing, some businesses can get an average return of $38.
• People are twice as likely to sign up for your email list as they are to interact with you on Facebook.
• 72% of consumers would rather receive email than any other source of business communication.
• 61% of consumers are happy to receive promotional emails on a weekly basis, so long as those emails actually deliver value.
• Personalized emails (even the ones which you automate) receive transaction rates that are six times higher than others.

Sources: Emailmonday, Forrester, MarketingSherpa, MarketingLand

In short, email isn’t dead.

Here’s a few best practices that will enable you to succeed with email marketing right off the bat:

• Personalize where possible. It’s going to very quickly become impossible for you to send an email to every one of your prospective customers, but the more personal you can be the higher your response rates and the more frequently people will convert to a paid purchase. As a result, it’s worth learning how to incorporate merge tags and liquid code as soon as possible.
• Automate where possible. Your sales team might be able to, predominantly, email customers and prospective customers manually. But getting people from blog subscriber to sales lead takes a serious effort. My recommendation is to use a email automation tool to help you set up triggered workflows and drip campaigns which automatically turn new prospective customers into sales leads.
• Segment. Let’s say you write on a couple different blog topics (like Wishpond, who writes on more advanced growth marketing stuff as well as social media). It’s far more effective for us to email growth marketing subscribers content which is relevant to them and their business’ goals than it is to email them everything about a new Twitter algorithm.

Here’s a snapshot of a few of Wishpond’s own segments, including our three newsletter segments:

To dive into email marketing, particularly the automation side of it, check out “10 Steps to Email Automation Success.” We also have a resource giving you 19 of our highest-performing email marketing templates.

Demand Generation: Strategies to Engage Existing Customers

You need to keep people engaged with your platform or product to keep the demand for it high. Whatever your product is, it needs to be valuable enough to buyers that they keep coming back.

Recommended for You

Webcast, May 25th: How to Consistently Create High Quality Marketing Content

For software, this is done with several elements (which I’ll go over in this section). But, in general, think of it as based around three primary factors:

1. Education: If your users don’t know how to use your tool or service, they won’t see the value in it. For some software providers, especially, this may mean you need to require people attend a training call.
2. Value: If your users don’t get value from your tool, they won’t re-subscribe the next time they’re prompted.
3. Positive Opinion: If users don’t like you or have a negative experience when they interact with you, they’ll leave far faster than if they have the same experience of the tool but a positive relationship. This is where customer success and customer support work.

Let’s break down a few actionable strategies you can use to better onboard users and keep customer retention high.

Customer Onboarding

The first few weeks (or months, in some industries) are the most worrisome for any business. Once you get people over that hurdle of signing up, you need to ensure their first few experiences with you are positive ones.

This is where user onboarding comes in.

Here’s an example of a questionnaire we’re testing, which would show as soon as people enter our platform.

Information given to us from this questionnaire (it’d be five concurrent forms) allows us to better understand what our users are looking to achieve and frames how we can contact them.

Here’s an example of the video which shows up as soon as someone arrives in our landing page builder. It gives them a 26-minute walkthrough on everything they need to know about our tool:

For more on user onboarding, check out the fantastic resources at UserOnboard.com. You can also check out (and download) the emails we send our new users at “19 Proven Email Marketing Templates We Use to Sell, Nurture, Onboard, and Reach Out.”

Customer Retention

Customer retention is all about ensuring that your customers enjoy their experience with your platform or product. Keeping their demand for your product high is as important as getting them to use it in the first place.

And there’s a few elements of this…

1. A Strong Product:

Nothing else matters if your product or tool sucks. No customer support team is possibly awesome enough to make people happy if they can’t use your software or hate your UX.

Here’s an example from our own landing page builder, with everything visible, large buttons and clear choices:

2. A Strong Brand: This is actually a big one. I know I kind of belittled those corporate marketers who focus only on brand reputation over brand growth, but once you hit a few customers you need to put a bit of time into what they think of you as a company.

I’ll use your tool if it’s awesome, even if I don’t know who you are. But I’m less likely to stick around if you have a bit of downtime, I experience a bug, or I’m disappointed by a new feature.

Users are more likely to forgive their friends than they are a faceless company who has never responded to their emails.

A big part of this can be social media, particularly Instagram. Here’s an example from Hootsuite where they showcase their brand identity:

And here’s an example from Buffer, whose transparency efforts go a long way to create trust with their customers:

3. Customer Support:

This is a no-brainer. Your support team needs to be competent. They need to know your system, know your product. And that doesn’t just include the FAQs.

A good support team has more training sessions than any other team in your company. And don’t just fob this off to your most recent recent college grad. These are the people who have the most contact with your existing users, and the most potential to stop them if they want to leave.

Pay these people.

Note: A huge part of a successful customer support team is communication. If your growth team decides to run a pricing page test, your support guys need to know before it’s run. Otherwise, when they’re approached with someone asking “Yesterday I saw your product as being 49.99. Why is it now 54.99?” they won’t know how to answer. This might seem like a no-brainer, but creating solid lines of communication between product development, marketing, sales and your customer support team isn’t something to skip over.

4. Customer Success:

Whether through mandatory demos, extensive email onboarding, in-platform tool-tips or a comprehensive help center (or all of those things), you need to be showing and telling your users exactly how they can find success with your platform.

They won’t last half an hour if they don’t succeed.

Here’s an example of an automatic chat window which is shown to our platform users as soon as they launch a landing page:

How to Start Rolling with Demand Generation

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Here’s a 7-step walkthrough of actionable steps you can take today to start with demand generation for your new business.

Step 1: Start with a website you love

Start by establishing a website that you want people to see.

Don’t attend a single conference unless you know that the card you hand over has a website URL which you’ll be proud people visit.

Your website is the face of your business online. Don’t go to any parties (including advertising, blogging, PR, anything) until that face is a smiling one.

Step 2: Get rolling with blogging

Even if nobody is reading your content for the first few months, you’re establishing a digital footprint (we could get into domain authority and SEO for years, but I’d recommend you buy SEO for Dummies and go from there instead).

Step 3: Start engaging on social media networks and with online communities in your industry.

The place to start with social media really is a social promotion. There’s no better way to build your Follower list quickly and start generating engagement.

For communities, check out Wikipedia’ list of virtual communities or social networking sites to see what’s relevant to your sector.

Step 4: Start building your list

Add a list-building plugin to your blog. Create content that people might want to subscribe to.

A great strategy for this is to do something similar to Groove’s “Journey to 100k,” where they released a weekly article tracking the strategies they used to they grow.

Step 5: Start creating email-gated content

This is a big part of building your list beyond subscribers. Check out my Complete Guide to Gating your Content for a comprehensive look.

Step 6: Automate

For a while, you can do your outreach manually, but (hopefully) that’ll quickly become impossible.

Use a marketing or email automation platform to make it easier for you to effectively email your subscribers and prospective customers.

Check out “How to Create Email Drip Campaigns to Nurture Leads” for more on automating email.

Step 7: Optimize

Once you’ve started to automate, you officially have a sales funnel in place.

You’re creating content which is driving traffic; you’re collecting lead and contact data from email-gated content or a subscriber list; and you’re emailing that list either with information that encourages them to buy or a prompt to get on a call.

So you need to start thinking about optimizing that funnel.

This is where A/B testing and site optimization comes into play.

For a walkthrough on how we optimize our site and drive reliable growth, take a look at my article “How We Drive Massive Growth by Running Calculated, High-Risk Tests.”

To learn more about how to structure your sales funnel, check out “The Foundational Guide to Your Online Marketing and Sales Funnel.” For a walkthrough on creating a sales funnel focused on content marketing, you can read “A Proven Blueprint for Creating a Sales Funnel with Content.” For optimization, check out “The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization.”

Wrapping it Up

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Hopefully this article has given you a better idea of what demand generation is and how you can use it to grow your business.

It’s a pretty massive topic, but I hope I’ve covered it and illuminated some of the confusion you had.

If you have any questions whatsoever about any of the tactics or strategies you’ve seen in this article, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comment section!

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