We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble solutions. Lee Iacocca has a winning thought here. Are you occasionally looking for help finding an answer that would solve a problem? Happens to us all, and even for our customers. Why not turn this idea into a unique marketing approach?
Marcus Sheridan, the founder of River Pools and Spas in Northern Virginia, asked himself the same question and decided to use the question to help himself while helping customers for his business. We can all learn from what he discovered.
Sheridan wrote one article on his company’s blog in 2009 that simply answered the first question on everyone’s mind when thinking about buying one of his pools, “How much does a fiberglass pool really cost?”
To this day, thanks to insights he gained from Google Analytics, he’s been able to track a minimum of $1.7 million in sales to that single article.
Solving problems – answering questions – turns out to be a potentially lucrative marketing exercise.
Related: How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement
You can do this on your own blog like Sheridan did. But why stop there? Why not answer real-life questions from living, breathing people? Sites that do this are all around us have spent lots of time and energy collecting these questions for us, and feed them up daily on a silver platter.
It’s not quite inbound marketing, but pretty close.
Plus, real questions tend to be unique and more in-depth than general frequently asked questions content you’d create on your blog, or serve up in a newsletter. But with a little work, this could be your moment to shine.
Simply show that you know the ins and outs of your market and have seen all sorts of situations that enable you to answer with authority. Share some examples would add even more credibility.
Sure, forums, Q&A sites and the like have been around a long time. Nowadays all the buzz goes to video, inbound marketing, and content marketing. But we should stop a minute and think more on the approach because it’s not like every competitor company has mastered it and it’s still potentially powerful.
This is how you build and retain credibility with consumers who’ve never worked with you before.
And like anything in life, it only works when done well.
When thinking about this subject, I perused a lot of sites with questions and answers and saw some good stuff and some bad stuff. First, the most common offenders:
Marketing approach … questions with tough answers
If you don’t know the answer, don’t bluff with opinions. Do your research and if you cannot come up with a good answer, say so. You might even ask your customers for their help.
Poor grammar and errors
This matters more than you think. Think about it this way: You wouldn’t mail out a postcard that has a glaring typo in it. You wouldn’t make a sales call or presentation you hadn’t practiced. Polish matters online.
I know that the casual environment of the web makes us all feel like it doesn’t, but it does.
So what works?
So, what works as a unique marketing approach?
Concise answers are written with clarity and void of jargon that directly address the question being asked. A non-sales approach that is a genuine reflection of your unique value.
Sounds a lot like the characteristics of great marketing copy.
Ready for a repurpose opportunity?
Marketing approach … the repurpose opportunity
Another way to do this well is to give your time investment more longevity. Take it to your blog. You’ve spent valuable time answering a question on another company’s site – now take your work and reshape it a bit into a piece of content – a piece of marketing – that works standalone on your own site.
More to read: Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts
Maybe that means reworking the question and answer a bit to appeal to more consumers or removing it from a Q&A format. Maybe it means going more in-depth.
The point is you have a solid content asset that you can build on an archive on your own site for SEO and traffic.