As the old adage goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
The same is true for creating an online platform to successfully market your brand and attract “new clients.” Developing your online presence takes patience, focus, and consideration of the path that a user follows to making a purchase.
Oftentimes, a brand will fall prey to the assumption that simply putting their content out into the world will lead people to immediately take note of their services, visit their website, and convert to the client level instantly.
Unfortunately, it takes a bit more work to ensure that you are reaching your target audience, and that users at all stages of their journey to conversion are enticed by the services you can provide to them.
Recognize The Path To Purchase
Keep in mind that not everyone who visits your website may be prepared to make a purchase. For example, a user may land on a blog post in their quest to solve a problem they are facing. At the time, they may simply be searching for a “do it yourself” guide to solving their problem. How do you convert this user into a client?
Ensure that your blog post provides the solutions they need for their current problem, so that their interest is not immediately lost if they see that your site cannot give them the information they are seeking.
At the same time, you must guide the user towards the desire to employ your services to solve future problems. Links to a page where users can obtain a free quote and related blog posts promoted on a landing page are just a couple examples of ways to guide a user through the “discovery” phase and into the “purchasing” phase of their journey.
Establish Your Target Audience
Let’s say an exterior home painting company wants to market their services to suburban homeowners between the ages of 30 and 50. Would it make sense for their website to be flashy, with a funky font and wild colors and images of brightly-painted homes? Not at all!
Take time to pinpoint the demographic of your target audience. Does your brand offer classes for young children? Format your content to appeal to a younger age group, with a brighter color-scheme and images of children partaking in your classes. Is your target audience adult homeowners seeking landscaping services? Keep your website simple, with a natural color scheme to match images of homes you have previously worked on.
Identify Common Challenges
The best way to launch a content marketing strategy is to outline common challenges that users may face for which your brand can provide a solution. This may seem pretty basic, but oftentimes this step is overlooked in the eagerness to get everything you have out there all at once. Have you noticed that the majority of your current client base seems to employ your services in a particular area? Begin by highlighting your work in this area in clear, concise blog posts, including before and after images to show your work in action.
Use these blog posts as an opportunity to point out how your services surpass those of your competitors, perhaps by detailing a particular method you use to complete a task or to explain how you overcame a specific challenge within a particular project. Be sure to remind the user that, while their problem may be a common one, your solutions are not, and that’s what makes them superior!
Developing a successful marketing strategy takes time and patience. Don’t be discouraged when your conversion rate does not instantly skyrocket after making your first blog post. Understand that a viewer today could become a client tomorrow, continue to market your content towards the proper demographic, and be sure to highlight the ways in which viewers will benefit from your services, and your online marketing campaign will be a successful one!
Need help launching your online marketing campaign? Contact Sweet Rose Studios today!
