Welcome to Marketing By One, the weekly newsletter for time-starved, budget-conscious solo entrepreneurs, creators, and marketers, created by Ann Gynn.
The Hotline
How Do You Gain Customers’ Confidence?
This week, I’m answering a question posed by an entrepreneur who’s launching a service-oriented business.
Q: I operate a service-oriented business, and it’s my first time communicating with a large audience. What strategy should I apply in my content to gain customers’ trust and confidence?
A: Well, first, congratulations on recognizing something that many entrepreneurs overlook: to earn your customers’ business, you must first earn their trust. The level of confidence required for people to purchase a commodity, such as peanut butter, is minimal. However, hiring a service provider requires more trust than that.
Publishing original content can be an effective way to attract an audience and establish yourself as the go-to resource for helping solve their pain points. How do you do that? You must consistently deliver relevant, valuable content.
To do that, you need a content marketing strategy, and research shows writing it down makes all the difference. It doesn’t need to take hours. Start with this format (or download the template available in The Challenge section later in this newsletter.)
Recognize your business objective. In this case, it’s to build trust with the audience so they’re likely to buy your service.
Detail your target audience. Who would be most likely to buy your services AND consume your content?
Identify potential topics. Think of it like a Venn diagram. One circle is your audience’s interests and needs. One circle is your business’ interests and solutions. The intersection reveals your primary topic categories.
Select one content format. Maybe it’s a blog. Maybe it’s video. Deliver what your audience is most likely to consume (and pick a format that can be easily broken into smaller snackbites of content to expand its use.)
Stick to one channel. It’s OK to republish on more channels, but invest most of your publishing time and energy on a single channel (preferably one your target audience already uses :-) Once that’s successful, add another.
Assess how frequently you can create the content. Your credibility depends on consistency. How much time can you spend on it? Be realistic. Start small. You can always publish more often.
Grow your database. You can focus on followers and likes, but that won’t do much for your business. Make subscriptions the call to action for your content. Then, you can regularly contact your audience, regardless of what the social media algorithms do.
By understanding your audience, what they want to know, and what you want them to do in relation to your business, you lay the groundwork for a successful marketing strategy, whether it involves content or otherwise.
The Challenge
My challenge to you this week: Download this template and answer seven questions to create your one-page content marketing strategy.
Want an AI assist? Input the target audience and business goals. Include how much time you can devote to content each week. Then, ask it to create a content marketing strategy, including format, channels, frequency, calls to action, and metrics. Review closely and adjust based on your parameters.
BY THE WAY: I’ve gone through the seven-step process with a faux financial services company. Scroll down to the end of this blog post to see the results.
GOT A QUESTION for THE HOTLINE? Reply to this email or DM me on LinkedIn.
The Marketing Minute
Stop Now
Choose one social media platform to stop spending energy on this month. Pin a post at the top to let audiences know you won’t be around and leave an email address so they can contact you directly. Delete the app from your phone.
Next month? See how much not being on the platform hurt your business. If it had minimal impact, don’t go back.
The Shortlist
AI-tested, so you don’t have to. Peter Yang tested OpenAI Atlas, Perplexity Comet, and Dia across several use cases, including research, email management, and summarizing across multiple tabs. Find out what he concluded to see if it can help you.
Quizzes work. Milly Tamati, founder of Generalist World, utilized quizzes to attract 25,000 new subscribers to her community for multi-passionate professionals in just four months. Go deep into learning about her success in this 50-minute interview with Growth in Reverse. Interested in learning more about quiz success? Here’s an article I wrote about how Direct Energy Canada won an award for its personality quizzes.
Talk to LinkedIn. Have you found that what you type into a search bar these days sounds more like a prompt for AI? (I certainly have.) LinkedIn’s getting more “chatty” with users in its search bar, responding and encouraging those AI-type conversations.
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Got a question you’d like me to answer in The Hotline? Email me or DM me on LinkedIn.