Hello again! After we talked about using content marketing to sell B2B services, this week I am focusing on product selling business owners and giving them some tips how to use visual and written content to increase their sales. It does look and sound easy because a product is something tangible that can be seen, but inexperienced marketers often fall in a trap trying to use unsuccessful or less successful strategies of selling a product online. I have prepared 6 ways, in which you can achieve awesome results by simply using your content appropriately on the Internet.
1. Celebrity Endorsement
If you are a start up or a micro business you are probably thinking "wait a minute, how would I even get a celebrity to advertise my product?". Hold on, depending on the product you are selling, it is not actually necessary to attract a world famous celebrity. All you need to do is contact an influencer on your target market. For example, if you are selling clothes or accessories, email a fashion blogger or a vlogger who has a large follower base and offer them some free samples which they show in their blog/vlog and on their social media. This can be also any public figure, who your targeted customers see as an authority. And just by the way, it is not actually that hard to get in touch with the PR team of really famous people because they too benefit from celebrity endorsement. That, however is a talk for another day.
So what's all that got to do with content? A lot. After your endorser posts your products on social media, you can repost from your account, which immediately adds value to your so-far published content. Furthermore, you can then write a blog about the endorsement and if your product was featured in a popular blog/vlog add a link to it in your post. It's a huge boost for your SEO and it will increase the traffic on your website.
2. Proof of Results
For the business that sells a product that is meant to change your life in some way, i.e. weight loss, hair growth, body feature enhancement, it is essential that they can show proof of the effectiveness of what they are offering. The most popular way to do that is to use "before" and "after" photos and populate your Instagram with them. Have your real customers do that as well from their own social media accounts and tag you. People generally only believe something when they see it. Instagram and SnapChat are some of the most useful social media platforms especially for selling products because they deal entirely with visual content and create hype. You will have to decide, though, whether their user base correspond to the people you are targeting.
Another way of proving the excellence of your products are customer reviews. Of course, you can moderate those that are left on your website or social media pages, so to an extend the ones you choose to leave contribute to your content. Do not make the mistake of allowing only positive or 5-star reviews on your online space. This is one of the first signs of a dodgy business in the eyes of a customer. No matter how great your product is, there will always be someone who is not going to be happy with it for some reason. That is ok. The sun keeps us alive, but there will always be people who can complain about it from today till tomorrow.
One last thing before I move on to the next product content marketing strategy, do use Google reviews! It is very, very helpful with SEO and the customer feedback will always show up in an organic search.
3. Pinterest
Now... you can't expect to have a huge success as a product selling business and not use Pinterest. In fact, not just use it, but get the maximum out of it. The platform has long past beyond visual content only and it is now one of the best place to share your blog on. Pinterest is now a traffic boost machine bringing hundreds if not thousands of viewers to your website. What is more, 50% of Pinterest users earn between £35,000 and £40,000 a year and another 10% have an annual income of £100,000 or more. As you can imagine, that sort of people have quite a lot of disposable income and logically they are the people who you want to be showing your products to.
The great thing about being part of a forum is that someone will always need a thing or two of what you are selling. For example, you make small gifts for celebrations and special occasions, join a mommy group on Facebook. There will always be a woman who is looking for small gifts for a baby shower, or a Christening or another significant event. And there you are selling your products by sharing your visual or written content in an online forum.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Building a successful and sustainable product selling business is very hard and takes a lot of time and energy. The good news is you don't have to do it alone. Affiliate marketing is how bloggers actually make money. Those who won't accept to endorse your products, would charge you a certain fixed price or a percentage of the sales that you recorded as a result of traffic originating from their blog.
There are also other affiliate marketing platforms where your links would be placed within a content that has been specifically created to target your particular set of customers.
6. Press Release
If you are an innovator or about shake the world with your new product there is no better way of using content to market it online (and offline) than a kickass press release. Assuming that you lack no creativity in writing and know how to use formal words but make them sound exciting, submitting a press release to major media platforms will be a ticket to Successland at no cost to you. Then again, if writing is not exactly your strong suite, it's best to look for the services of a professional copywriter because in order for your press release to be given such a massive visibility for free it would have to be grabbing and of an outstanding quality. Of course, that comes at a price, but you can arrange it with the writer you've chosen to work with.
Once you have your press release published you may get contacted by other media platforms to further expose your brand and products and generally, the customers you will start getting, will be of a more sophisticated calibre.
Do you need more tips how to market your products on- and offline and maximise your sales? It takes just seconds to contact MBC. Me and Temmie, have more secrets on content marketing, social media and branding we can share with you.
