Content Marketing For Beginners

 
 
Want more kick in your content marketing efforts?

One good way to discover effective content marketing techniques is to analyze masterfully crafted sales copies. As a student of web content writing, I am fascinated with how expert copywriters persuasively promote anything without necessarily selling.

Selling is a form of pressure, and we all have this natural "defensive" reaction to sales pitches. Most likely, such a reaction is fortified by preconceived opinions that a master copywriter aims to knock down or maneuver around.

The show-don't-sell approach of content marketing should ideally be built on the basic techniques that good copy exemplifies. You may not be good at selling but, if you're good at telling, you can be a very effective Internet marketer.

So, how can you do this?

I can only outline the steps or ingredients. How you build on them is up to you. We are talking about the AIDA: attracting ATTENTION, building INTEREST, arousing DESIRE and a persuasive call to ACTION.

Attracting Attention

This concerns your initial engagement with a prospect, what is first seen in your article or sales copy. This necessitates a good choice of title or headline. In a few words, you must be able to arrest your reader's attention. You say something that concerns a nagging problem, a need or want that you know exists in the niche market you're in. Then you say it with a hint of a solution.

Building Interest

The summary, if any, and the introduction of an article should be a concise attempt to build interest in the reader, to make reading further irresistible. It briefly states the problem in a way that makes the reader mentally say "Yes, yes, my problem! What about it? What's the solution?" Then it hints on how a certain solution works.

From the perspective of longer engagement, like ongoing communication through email or a blog, this is represented by interesting rapport. You keep your readers glued to your content by making them feel confident that you have trustworthy answers to their questions. You give them quality content, they then trust the quality of your recommendations.

Having an entertaining writing style would, of course, be an asset.

Arousing Desire

This is the sexy part. Here is where you romance your readers. You may tell them what you have (product/service) or not initially. In either case, you must emphasize what's in it for them. You appeal to their emotions and tease them with irresistible benefits. Then you go on to show how your product works to deliver those benefits.

This is where demos and video presentation have become very useful. This is also where good testimonials come in. There's nothing more convincing than the successful experiences of other people that have used your product.

Persuasive Call To Action

Up to a point, what you do in the preceding steps have made your offer quite irresistible already. But unless your reader acts positively - sign up or make a purchase - you haven't succeeded yet. So, you make your offer more irresistible. This is where money-back guarantees come in, made in such a way as to remove all risks on the part of your reader while summing up the benefits that "one would be crazy enough to miss out".

Beforehand, a smart marketer knows what a prospect is likely to struggle with before making a decision. These are the objections that you must cleverly brush aside. It's like a question-and-answer discussion but without the questions being written, just the answers.

This is also the part where you apply so-called scarcity techniques. You know - time-limited or supply-limited offers. You must try to be refined, of course. Don't sound like you're pressing it. If you do your presentation well enough, your readers will most likely convince themselves to favor it.

So, my friend, that is how content marketing in its various forms is done. You get the idea, build on it, and see profits rolling in.

The author, Dan Lastrilla is the publisher of Content Marketing For Beginners, a free resource designed to help Internet marketing beginners. For more information, visit http://contentmarketingforbeginners.weebly.com.
 


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