Contrary to popular belief, marketing isn’t about constantly promoting your business, products and services, and asking people to consider buying what you’re selling.
Instead, marketing involves influencing people’s buying decisions by educating, informing, and building a relationship with them over time. In simple words, it’s about building trust.
People buy from people they trust. And how can you build trust online? By becoming an educator whose main goal is to provide the best, most helpful answers to the questions your audience is asking.
The good news is that you’re probably already an authority in your industry. You’re running a business, so you probably know your stuff. What you might not know is how and where to share all that knowledge to entice more people to trust to buy from you.
Read on as we explain how you can build your authority and attract new customers by sharing your expertise online.
Start blogging
Blogging gives you the fantastic opportunity to showcase your expertise, skills, and personality and become an authority in your industry. Don’t sell but use this space to tell engaging stories that demonstrate your unique understanding of the challenges faced by your potential customers.
Write about your industry and provide expert-level content that answers your audience’s questions and concerns. Also, make sure that every blog post you publish is detailed and insightful, and offers helpful advice that your readers can implement right away. That’s what gets people’s attention and builds their trust in your business and offering.
(Want to learn more about your audience and the questions they’re asking? This post explains how to find your target audience and create content they care about).
The key to getting results with blogging is to be consistent so that your blog can quickly become a source of value to your audience. When you’re constantly showing up for your readers with useful tips and advice, they’ll come to trust you and feel more confident buying from you.
Not sure if blogging is the right strategy for your business, or don’t know how to get started? The following articles explain everything you need to know:
- Find out why starting a blog is more important than ever
- Get advice on choosing the perfect blog template
- Learn how to use blogging to boost sales
Guest post on relevant, authority sites
If you already have a blog but want to expand your reach, try guest blogging. Guest blogging can help get your name out there, outside of your website, blog, and regular social media circles.
If you’re not familiar with guest blogging, it involves writing content for other blogs or publications that are not only popular and trustworthy but also relevant to your business. Why consider it? Because you can reach more people than you ever could by just blogging on your own space.
The trick is finding the right blogs and publications that you can contribute to. You want to make sure that the audience on those sites is the one you want to attract to yours, and that your topics can help solve people’s problems or teach them something new. So, take some time to research and identify relevant blogs, and then engage with the editors to pitch your topics and ideas.
One major benefit of guest blogging is that you can usually include a link back to your website. This will attract new visitors to your site. Instead of adding a link to your homepage, consider sending readers to a specific landing page designed with them in mind.
Learn more about guest posting and how to develop an effective guest blogging strategy that turns readers into customers.
Document and promote a customer success story
A customer success story, also known as a case study, is another effective way to share your knowledge and expertise with the world. The best thing about it is that you get to show proof of the amazing results people can achieve with your products or services. While it’s not the only form of social proof that works, it is still one of the most popular and effective ways to nudge prospects into purchasing from you and becoming valued customers.
But what if you’re a new business? If you’re just getting started, you could donate a product or your time and expertise to an individual, a professional, or another business in exchange for being able to do a case study about the experience.
Once you release the case study on your website, make sure to also write a blog post about it. You could even do a video interview with the customer and release it on YouTube so you can reach even more people.
Not sure how to get started? We’ve got you covered with a simple guide that explains how to write a customer success story and how to make case studies an effective weapon in your digital arsenal.
Use videos to showcase your expertise
If you’re comfortable being in front of a camera, try creating videos to showcase not only your knowledge and expertise but also your personality. It will allow your audience to put a face to the brand and you can also demonstrate that you truly know your customers, business, and industry inside and out.
The truth is not many people are comfortable being in front of a camera. So, getting out of your comfort zone can also help you stand out from the crowd, especially if your competitors aren’t investing in videos either.
Make sure you take advantage and use videos not to sell your products or services but to provide real value to prospects and customers. That’ll get you one step closer to establishing yourself as a trusted voice in your industry.
Don’t know what types of videos to create? Here are eight types of videos and examples to help get you started.
Next steps
Building trust and establishing yourself as an industry expert is one of the key steps to attracting new prospects to your website. Once they’re on your blog and website, you’ll need to keep building a relationship with them to entice them to buy from you, to recommend you to others, and to keep them coming back.
In these posts you’ll find more tips and advice on how to improve your website and entice more visitors to buy from you:
