When we spoke with Robert Rose, Senior Contributing Analyst at Digital Clarity Group (DCG) recently, he shared with us the importance of “engaging customers wherever they may be,” as customers have come to expect quality interactions and dialog in today’s digital age.
This is not such an easy feat, as you must put a good amount of thought into what points you’re making, what issues you’re addressing and if people will care, let alone show responsiveness. Creating new and original content is crucial, since you want to excite new ideas that inspire good conversation. One of the DCG blog‘s recent posts discusses three ways in which you can foster beneficial dialog with your audience:
- Listen from the customer’s viewpoint: Push aside the bottom line for a minute and look at your data from an unbiased perspective. This will help you to understand and identify what your customers care about, helping you to address the kind of topics they’re looking to learn about.
- Let the customer define what’s compelling: instead of taking your analytics data to merely determine if your prospect is ready for a quick call or some sort of outreach, think about why they took a certain action or behaved a certain way. By doing this, you will start to understand the real interest and motives that drive customers’ decisions.
- Surface conflicts – don’t avoid them: Now more than ever before, it is difficult to skirt around issues that may not seem like big problems in the moment or even in the near future. Don’t avoid these problems; instead, address them head on (and fast) so you can show that you care about your customers and are ready to work together to develop preferred solutions.
There is a lot more to beginning your content marketing strategies, but these guidelines are certainly a path in the right direction if you want to really engage your audience and bring people together to start quality discussions. And that is really what inbound marketing is all about.
