Business Article Marketing Works
Business Article Marketing is an effective, but underutilized tool by main street businesses.
While it is widely practiced by internet marketers, the technique can work as well, if not better, for main street businesses.
Your potential customer is looking for several things when they go shopping.
For most higher price items, they need and want information to help make a wiser purchase decision.
They also want to be confident in the vendor they end up buying from.
Business article marketing is the perfect approach to deal with both of these customer needs.
What makes it even more attractive, is that it is virtually free, and ultimately the customer comes to you rather than you needing to search for the customer.
Here's how it works.
First choose a single product you want to sell.
Then brainstorm with your sales staff on the key questions prospective customers have when they consider buying.
Your approach will vary depending on whether there are many key questions or just a few.
Assuming there are just a few, you will do two things.
One is to write a simple web page to be tacked on to your corporate web site specifically dedicated to this one product.
It will be written in such a manner as to answer all the likely questions and objections a buyer may have.
This page need not be fancy and is probably more effective the less fancy it is.
The information used to create the web page is then rewritten into a variety of articles of 400-600 words or so.
These articles are titled with specific information the customer might be likely to use on a computer search engine.
Such as: "Brand Name Chainsaw QR23", or "Chainsaws for Professionals" or "Chainsaws for Women.
" The purpose of the titles is to get your article found.
They need not be attention grabbing.
You want to write a specific article for every major keyword phrase your customers are likely to do a computer search on.
You can reuse much of the material from one article to the next, but try to vary them enough so that they appear different.
If you are selling a chainsaw to women, make sure you explain why women will like the lightweight but powerful chainsaw, etc.
These articles are then going to be posted on as many of the thousands of article directories as possible.
There are inexpensive services that will post these to the directories for you.
The article directories exist to provide useful articles for blog writers, ezine editors and others to use.
All of these people will be allowed to reprint your article on their sites for free, as long as they include a live link to a resource box that you will add to the bottom of each article.
Your resource box will include a link to the specific page on your website dedicated to your product.
People will read about it, and then click through to your page.
Many will then read much the same information on your page and make their decision to buy.
If you have a complicated product you will not put much information on the product page.
Instead you will display the product and offer a free report that the visitor can download in exchange for their email information.
Once they provide that to you, you will send them a well written informative report outlining the merits of the product and the information they will need on the options and any considerations they need to keep in mind.
Rather than leaving it at that, you will follow-up with them periodically with additional informational emails.
These are designed to offer more information, establish a positive relationship with the prospect and to keep you in front of your prospect during their decision making process.
The reason business article marketing works, is that people are increasing searching for information online prior to making a buying decision.
They tend to resist sales pressure, but will eat up useful information.
This is particularly true if they first find that information on an apparently neutral third party location.
By providing the information they need, you will be giving them what they want, It also helps build their respect for you as a vendor.
You are now seen as a resource and not a seller.
While it is widely practiced by internet marketers, the technique can work as well, if not better, for main street businesses.
Your potential customer is looking for several things when they go shopping.
For most higher price items, they need and want information to help make a wiser purchase decision.
They also want to be confident in the vendor they end up buying from.
Business article marketing is the perfect approach to deal with both of these customer needs.
What makes it even more attractive, is that it is virtually free, and ultimately the customer comes to you rather than you needing to search for the customer.
Here's how it works.
First choose a single product you want to sell.
Then brainstorm with your sales staff on the key questions prospective customers have when they consider buying.
Your approach will vary depending on whether there are many key questions or just a few.
Assuming there are just a few, you will do two things.
One is to write a simple web page to be tacked on to your corporate web site specifically dedicated to this one product.
It will be written in such a manner as to answer all the likely questions and objections a buyer may have.
This page need not be fancy and is probably more effective the less fancy it is.
The information used to create the web page is then rewritten into a variety of articles of 400-600 words or so.
These articles are titled with specific information the customer might be likely to use on a computer search engine.
Such as: "Brand Name Chainsaw QR23", or "Chainsaws for Professionals" or "Chainsaws for Women.
" The purpose of the titles is to get your article found.
They need not be attention grabbing.
You want to write a specific article for every major keyword phrase your customers are likely to do a computer search on.
You can reuse much of the material from one article to the next, but try to vary them enough so that they appear different.
If you are selling a chainsaw to women, make sure you explain why women will like the lightweight but powerful chainsaw, etc.
These articles are then going to be posted on as many of the thousands of article directories as possible.
There are inexpensive services that will post these to the directories for you.
The article directories exist to provide useful articles for blog writers, ezine editors and others to use.
All of these people will be allowed to reprint your article on their sites for free, as long as they include a live link to a resource box that you will add to the bottom of each article.
Your resource box will include a link to the specific page on your website dedicated to your product.
People will read about it, and then click through to your page.
Many will then read much the same information on your page and make their decision to buy.
If you have a complicated product you will not put much information on the product page.
Instead you will display the product and offer a free report that the visitor can download in exchange for their email information.
Once they provide that to you, you will send them a well written informative report outlining the merits of the product and the information they will need on the options and any considerations they need to keep in mind.
Rather than leaving it at that, you will follow-up with them periodically with additional informational emails.
These are designed to offer more information, establish a positive relationship with the prospect and to keep you in front of your prospect during their decision making process.
The reason business article marketing works, is that people are increasing searching for information online prior to making a buying decision.
They tend to resist sales pressure, but will eat up useful information.
This is particularly true if they first find that information on an apparently neutral third party location.
By providing the information they need, you will be giving them what they want, It also helps build their respect for you as a vendor.
You are now seen as a resource and not a seller.
