You’ve been tasked with promoting a piece of content. You didn’t create it, but you are now in charge of ensuring that it gets seen by as many people as possible. You create a solid strategy, but you notice your social posts and your emails just don’t seem to be working.
The chances are, your efforts are struggling because you are creating friction for your customers. In other words, they are getting held up by something in your promotion tactics.
So, what are the causes of this friction?
You’re Using Salesy Words
No one will want to click on your content if you seem like you’re trying to sell them something. That isn’t the point when you are sharing content. Rather, you are trying to earn trust and be an authority on a matter. You might want them to buy eventually, but that means waiting for the pitch.
Remember the point of your promotion. You are just trying to get a relevant group of people to click through, to go from your email to a landing page or from a social post to your blog. You are not trying to sell them the product in your content promotion materials.
Additionally, avoid using words like:
- Opportunity
- Buy
- Now
- Guarantee
These words scream, “I’M SELLING SOMETHING,” and you’re not. Not yet. So quit trying to sell to them on the first try. Get them to read your content first, to build a relationship. That’s how you send people down the funnel in B2B marketing.
You’re Asking Lousy Questions
Are you _______?
Is an example of the type of question that marketers sometimes ask when they’re trying to promote materials. They fill in the blank spot with an overly specific characteristic or need of someone buying. This sometimes works, if you segmented your audience properly. But sometimes, especially when you don’t know your audience as well as you think you do, it can result in people answering your question with “no.”
That often means they won’t click through to your content, even if the content is relevant. You never want to ask your prospects a question that they will say no to.
And you want to make sure that when you use questions, they are meaningful and serve to hook in your audience, rather than drive part of your audience away.
You’re Injecting Too Much Opinion
Sometimes you’ll be trying to promote something and you’ll have a hard time convincing yourself. That’s no good and you know it. You try to make up for it by using adjectives that are subjective to describe the content.
That’s a huge no-no. It’s similar to asking a bad question in your content. If you do not prove that your product is amazing, insightful or helpful before you state that it is any of those things, you are going to have problems.
It’s like your English teacher said (turns out she was right about a lot of things) “Show, don’t tell.”
Prove to the reader that your content is worth clicking, don’t just tell them it is.
You’re Overselling the Content
This falls along the same lines as the previous point. If you’re touting your content as the solution to every single one of your prospect’s problems, their boss’s problems, and a cure to cancer, you might be overstretching a bit. Keep things realistic.
Not only is this off-putting (therefore dissuading them from viewing your content) but it also dishonest in most cases. When they click your content, they’ll see how overblown your claims are. That will make your content seem like click-bait. In turn, your relationship with your audience will be harmed and the chances of you ever selling them anything in the future will be lessened.
Remember, every bit of friction in your promotions lessens the chances that someone makes moves on to become a sales opportunity. This couldn’t be more true than in the case of content promotion. It’s the easiest place to make any of these mistakes and it’s also the most critical in representing your brand.
Have you been struggling with your marketing efforts? What do you think is going wrong? Are the issues a result of friction? Let us know how it’s going in the comments section.
Great post Acadia! I really enjoyed it!