Content Marketing

What is content marketing, and why should you use it? Content marketing is when you use valuable content to attract fans and consumers. This writing needs to be related to whatever products or services you sell. 

Evaluation Post

In content marketing, an evaluation blog post provides helpful information to potential customers who are in the market for what you are selling, and they receive this information while they are trying to formulate their buying criteria. The majority of your blog content in this stage should be focused on helping customers make their purchase decisions by evaluating all the features available.

Customers in the evaluation stage tend to be in research mode and are using the web and social media to help them make informed purchase decisions. Therefore, it’s easy to find and connect with these types of buyers. As part of our social media training, we’re going to show you how to create an evaluation blog post:

1. Key Phrase Analysis – The first step is to look at your key phrase analysis to see if any topics jump out at you.  
2. Common Questions – The second step is to talk to your sales reps to find out what are some common questions they hear from buyers.  Blog content that answers these questions can be terrific evaluation posts.
3. Strengths – Next consider your strengths.  Which features connect well with your unique selling proposition and strong suits? If you have a terrific return policy, or you have the best prices—or other features that make you stand out—then plan on building blog posts around why these features are important to buyers.
4. Weaknesses – Next, look at the weaknesses of your top competitors and plan on building some posts about why these features can lead to buyers’ remorse.  We are not talking about pointing a finger at a competitor.  We would never recommend that.  However, if you know that the biggest competitor in town has poor service, you might consider writing a blog about how poor service can increase cost of ownership.
5. Turnabout’s Fair Play – Finally, you need to consider the strengths of your competitors and turn those strengths into weaknesses.  What are those features you know your competitor will tout about themselves?  For example, a competitor may tout that they are the biggest in town. You could write a blog post on why customers would want to do business with smaller boutique companies that will give them personalized attention versus big companies where the customer might be thought of as just a number.

Evaluation blogs can be a powerful way to connect with prospective customers.  This is a great opportunity to show off your subject matter expertise and highlight your strengths at the same time.  If you’d like more advice on social media training and content marketing, please check out our 14-day free trial, which includes our new proprietary software solution, SplashCube.