As marketers our job is to make the products or services we market sound and look as sexy and appealing as possible. This task isn’t so difficult if you are marketing food, sports or exotic travel destinations. The real challenge to your marketing skills is when you find yourself marketing boring industries.
How can you make the telecom industry sound cool? What the heck are you supposed to do with a software company that targets SMBs? How can you make cloud storage super exciting? And what in the world are you supposed to write about to make a high-tech drilling company sound like the best thing since sliced bread?
These are some of the challenges we at Penguin face on a daily basis when providing content and social media marketing to our B2B high-tech clients. After years of working in these industries with these clients, we have learned that the key to creating and marketing captivating content is understanding your audience, speaking their language, and offering value.
That being said, here are 7 tips for marketing boring industries on social media and blogs that will make any industry sound awesome:
Tell a Story
Everyone loves to hear a good story. Your audience doesn’t want to be bombarded with constant updates about your products new features. What they want to hear is how your products helped improve your customer’s business and increased their revenue.
Share stories of customer success and interesting reviews. Find those customers that’ve had immense success using your product and ask them to tell their unique story through a guest blog. A first hand account will go a long way.
Check out how BlazeMeter breaks down it’s customer’s success in a unique and informative way.
Additionally, people love data. By covering case studies, say with a convenient and accessible, infographic, you will help them easily understand and see what your product or service can do for them.
Be Helpful
Where do people go when they're searching for answers? You guessed it, the internet. Your target audience will be searching the internet with questions that you can answer. If you create awesome and helpful content, you will see that your target audience will find you and will continue returning to your website or blog every time they are looking for more information about your specific industry.
Make sure to stay up to date on the hottest industry issues and news, this will give you the highest chance of trending among your target audience.
A great way to stay up to date on the latest in your industry is by checking out forums and social sites such as Reddit, Twitter, Buzzsumo, and Quora. Now that you know what’s trending you can answer those conundrums in an informative and engaging way.
Remember, don’t break your head trying to make your content sound interesting to everyone on the internet. Instead, try creating highly informative and educational content that will appeal to your buyer personas.
Cater to Your Buyer Persona(e)
Who is your ideal customer? I am sure you already have a pretty clear picture in your head of exactly who that person is, what challenges he or she is facing, and what solution he or she is searching for.
Not only do you know the challenges they face but you also know their needs, interests, attitudes, opinions, demographics, and psycho-graphics as well.
Begin creating content directed toward that specific buyer persona. The goal is to build a stronger connection with your personae by creating content they will find interesting and will want to share with their colleagues.
By now, if you don’t have your buyer personae figured out, spend some time researching your target audience’s profile and demographics. This may seem like a burden now but it will save you time and money in the long run when executing your inbound marketing strategy (for more buyer persona help click here).
Where Do They Socialize?
Where are your customer’s most active on social media? Do they sign into G+, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter? Are they more likely to sign up for a webinar, read a case study, or check out your latest blog post?
These are all questions you have to answer before creating content for your buyer persona. When creating content, make sure to promote it on social media channels your target audience spends they spend the majority of its time on.
Once you have found what their preferred social media channel is, its time to start looking for the right groups to share your content on Facebook and LinkedIn, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, and Twitter lists.
Remember, what works on Twitter wont necessarily work on Facebook and what works on Facebook wont necessarily work on LinkedIn. Figure out what type of social messaging works best for your product and adapt your content for each social media platform.
Write Like You Speak
One of the reasons why your followers may find your content boring is because you are trying to sound way too professional. Do yourself a favor and cut the business jargon. Stop trying to sound like a Harvard professor giving a lecture on rocket science - people wont understand you and you will put them to sleep.
Instead, just write like you speak and use a bit of humor every now and then. This will give your content a friendly conversational tone which will then give your company a more personal voice.
Use Images and Video
Here’s a fun scientific fact: your brain can process visual images 60,000 times faster than text. Now, how should we incorporate this into our content marketing strategy? Simple, start by adding images (especially memes), video, and GIFs to help you capture your followers attention and leave an entertaining and lasting impression in their minds.
If you aren’t having much success using images and GIFs, its probably worth investing in short 2-3 minute videos which showcase the benefits of your product along with a success story. Make sure the video content can be easily understood and gets your point across in a short amount of time.
I Tried Everything and It’s Still Boring
If you are struggling to write a 1,500-word blog post about a subject which is even putting you into snooze mode, your readers probably wont get past the first 50 words. Instead, cut your losses and strip your content down and try making it as short as possible. If you can edit that 1,500-word post into a simple 200-word post, you have a better shot at holding your reader’s attention and getting them to share your content.
There you have it, 7 tips for marketing boring industries.
Have any questions or comments? Leave them in comments section below.
For an in-depth understanding, you can check out the ultimate social media guide for B2B companies.
Now go wake up your followers with some entertaining content!
by The Penguin Team on September 27, 2015
As a leading B2B digital marketing agency, We help B2B Technology Companies, enterprise software, and hardware companies increase brand awareness, reach more qualified leads and close more customers. Penguin Strategies is a Diamond Partner of HubSpot.
