Digital marketing, using content marketing and social media to generate demand for a product or service, is the number one way to grow your business and your brand today. While chefs, photographers, trendy fashion boutiques, and people that sell adorable crafts seem to have an easy time building stunning social media accounts; what can a service-related or otherwise unsexy business do to generate the same traffic?
The truth is, you don’t have to have a sexy product or an adorable brand in order to create demand for your business. Your road might be a bit slower, but using a great content marketing strategy, the same results can be achieved. First, you need to rethink what “sexy” means in business.
To a consumer looking to connect with a brand, “sexy” would be a solution to their problem. They want to see what life will look like when using your product or service. You’re selling solutions, outcomes, and change. What does that look like? What do your customers expect it to look like?
Even in a highly regulated and vanilla service-based business, you can still showcase your expertise. You can still give great advice, and you can still have a unique personality. Try taking photos behind the scenes, highlighting employees, showing off your company culture or sharing what it looks like when you work with people. Use these photos in social media and make sure the photo captions are packed with valuable information. If you can’t provide cute pets sporting sweaters or attractive models wearing rompers, provide valuable information instead.
Industries that lack an artistic presence or beautiful photos might have a smaller following overall. It will be your job to maximize the following that you do have to its fullest potential. Indeed, you’ll probably have many more true leads in your smaller following than accounts with huge numbers. One way to take advantage of this is to make use of direct message (DM) marketing, such as on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. In an unscripted, non-intrusive way, you can slide into your customer’s DMs to answer questions, invite followers to face-to-face events, or leave helpful information. From observing the things your audience chooses to post on social media, you might see an opportunity for your business to be of immediate or short-term value. Send them a personalized message, and you will be surprised at how many people will respond.
Content marketing can be used to generate market demand and lead customers into the mouth of your sales funnel. That content could be blog articles, reports, guides, videos or even full courses. Educate your target customers on the issues that face people like them, and show them how you can be of service. Demand generation is broader than lead generation, in that you aren’t trying to close a deal with a specific buyer. Instead, you are casting a wide net, and sending out an invitation to everyone that identifies with your mission to come and learn from you.
Using some fun personality-based or outcome-based photos, and some killer informative content, you are ready to generate demand for your business. Notice that any industry can follow these steps. Good luck!
