Writing about the issues that set your product or service apart from the competition just seems the right thing to do in your blog articles. In promoting the unique service and product advantages would seem to be a great way to bring viewers to your site and attract buyers to your business. Still, even though many small business owners provide their market advantage to potential clients and customers, many miss the essential elements in promoting these advantages – especially within a blog article. Without an outline or general structure to help keep the blog article focused, many business owners may be just wasting resources in the effort.
To help develop a fundamental promotional message, take a trip down Memory Lane back to Marketing 101 and recall that at least in the ancient business world, there are four central controllable marketing elements:
Product
Price
Promotion and
Place (where purchaser would acquire the product or service)
The basic elements of the marketing mix were usually the content for Marketing – Day One in most business school programs. Today, these still constitute a good framework for putting together your marketing message – especially the message that you release on blogs and web page posts. As article placement is also an indispensable part of attracting internet traffic (SEO), looking closely at these elements can turn up a significant number of new ideas and material for future articles. By re-examining the four ‘Ps’ of the marketing mix, one can refocus compositions on the central elements of value and attract new customers with useful information.
Finding areas where new content ideas may exist is part of the value in looking at the marketing message. In examining each of the four marketing areas, look carefully and critically at each one to fully understand all advantage provided to the customer. Following this exercise, outline a series of articles that attract attention to each area of value that you discover. This enables you to develop a highly focused message surrounding specific advantages you provide your clients and customers. In the end, this assists in your effort to develop and attract new clients.
Product:
Business enterprises of all sizes generally focus their messages on service and product features. These are unique to each business, but each manager should have a firm grasp on what keeps their customers returning. In other words, a successful enterprise understands the unique product or service advantages that their customers find the most valuable. If one doesn’t have this information, it isn’t difficult to connect with a couple clients to find out. Asking customers why they keep coming back is a hugely useful exercise that can produce very valuable data to help the organization grow.
From other experience, a site operator that had an increase in internet traffic volume originally assumed that the information surrounding his product features was the element attracting the additional traffic. In working with customers though, it turned out that the website was the most expedient way to acquire a location telephone number. In this example, other data such as a telephone number – turned out to be so valuable that it served to drive up traffic to the page. Had the owner failed to request this information from his client base, he would have focused his message on other product areas rather than in making it easier for clients to contact locations by phone.
Price
Cost or ‘pricing’ is of course hugely important in the buying decision. This decision however, should be examined in context. Businesses providing long term or durable goods should probably focus its message on emphasizing the long term “cost of ownership.” It may result that even though one’s product carries a lower purchase price, the overall cost of ownership is reduced because of shorter life expectancy of the product.
Price issues should be viewed in conjunction with other costs like financing, shipping and preparation. Cost of acquisition includes all additional fees for delivery and purchase of accessory items needed for the customer to receive full value.
Another area of interest for buyers is “Cost of Ownership.” Products that require no upkeep or maintenance might justify increased purchase pricing if the customer can validate that cost savings will offset the purchase price over the longer term.
Promotion
A common misconception is that a website is purely a promotional tool. Of course internet marketing produces new customers, many operators use their sites to focus on product feature elements alone. Of course this is very important, but one shouldn’t overlook other ancillary and subtle benefits that clients may find useful.
Promotion is simply a matter of connecting with clients and the customer base. Useful information provided in an easy-to-understand format is a great method of establishing your organization as a leader in the field and as a reliable business partner.
Place (distribution point)
Where do your customers go to get your product? This is a geographic question, so consider a few other points. If you provide product delivery as part of the contract price, the geographic point of acquisition is actually at the customer’s location. This can be a key market advantage as the customer doesn’t have to journey to a warehouse or store to make the purchase. Any advantage in where customers can get your product makes for good article/blog content.
Denver SEO Consultants and author Matthew Stone assist companies improve sales using SEO.
