Tell stories that answer your customers’ questions, and you’ll earn their trust…and most likely, their business.
As a private investigator, you may not think you have anything to learn from a company that installs pools and spas.
You’d be wrong. Here’s why: River Pools and Spas managed to leverage a chatty website and blog to catapult a small company to one of the top 5% of pool businesses in the country. And the blog’s success prompted company owner Marcus Sheridan to create an additional business around sales and marketing called “The Sales Lion.”
What’s his secret? It’s simple. Sheridan tells stories and produces content…about pools. But it’s content that answers his customers’ basic questions, helps them be more informed pool-buyers, and even entertains them a little bit. And when it comes time to dig the hole…a whole lot of them naturally turn to the guy who supplied all that great information.
You can do the same thing—that is, create content for your website that reflects your customers’ interests, satisfies their curiosity, or even assuages their fears. The easiest way to do that is to start a company blog.
Here’s how it works: Let’s use buying a camera as a quick example. The average consumer starts looking for a camera by googling “Best cameras.” So, a savvy camera shop owner might write a series of blog posts like “Best Cameras for Families,” “Best Cameras for Outdoorsmen,” or “Best Cameras for Non-Techies.” Around this content you might build other blogs, like “7 Considerations for Buying a Camera” or “Buying a Camera On a Budget.” Having this type of content drives traffic to your website and ultimately creates trust and credibility for your company.
So that’s cameras, but what about an investigations firm? Let’s say you want to drive website traffic for your pre-employment check business. Your first blog might be: “The 8 Key Elements of Every Background Check.” You might augment with an article on “How to Find a Great Investigator for Background Checks” or “Reducing Your Business Liability with Background Checks.”
By optimizing your site for search engines and having great content that will engage potential customers, you will gain tremendous brand awareness and credibility.
Many businesses then add a final piece to push a little further—something for which the potential customer would be willing to fill out a form with contact information. The e-book or white paper has become a popular way to do this. For example, you might write a paper called “Hiring Workers for Small Business and Households: A Guide to Interviewing and Background Checks.” What a useful document! If customers would love to have it, they might consider giving you their name and email address in order to get it.
Now you’ve gone from a simple blog to a list of prospective customers that you can contact. Don’t hesitate on the question, “To blog or not to blog?” Blogs are here to stay and your website needs one now.