The status quo of modern marketing isn't designed for you and me.The hard truth is that most marketing strategies are designed for massive corporations, while small businesses, consultants, coaches, and other experts are left feeling that the advice they’re given just doesn’t fit—and they’re right. We have two choices: we can struggle to force our businesses into an ill-fitting mold, or we can reinvent a system that works for us and allows us to thrive. I don’t know about you, I prefer door number two. 💌 Reach our team at hello@smco.studio. 🌟 Ready to work together? https://sarahmoon.net/get-started
Let's Flip the How to Script 🤸🏻♀️
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Hello Reader, Have you ever asked Siri or Google how to do something? Here are some examples:
Fun-ish fact: I generated all of those examples using Google's autocomplete searches. Those are phrases that pop up when you type into the browser. A lot of searches start with "how," both in search engines and in places like YouTube and Pinterest. We humans are curious and we want to know "how." Unfortunately, the concept of how to is deeply misunderstood and often maligned. Here's where things go sideways with how to content: People replicate their actual services with instructions that replace their expertise. For example (this is lightly fictionalized to remove identifying characteristics), once I audited a web designer's website and their most popular content was a tutorial (beginning with "how to" because that ranks) that described exactly how to create a specific function in Squarespace. This would be fine if they were a coding wizard who was targeting people who wanted to hire someone to do one off coding projects. But they weren't—they offered comprehensive brand and website design. So they need a different strategy. The intention of the searchers for that how to content and the search intention of their ideal clients were at odds. Their post became simply a public service and not a marketing tool. Did it help people and is that a good thing on its own? Sure! But does that help the bottom like in a super competitive field? Nope! What would have been a better leveraging of the powerful how to tool?
You get the picture... this is a shift in understanding what the audience who's qualified to work with them is wondering about before they ever reach out. It helps your brand become sticky (especially if you have a great opt in and continue to build a relationship with them via an email newsletter), and creates trust and authority. Here's the hard truth: It is incredibly difficult to convert a DIYer into a done for you client. That's why you need to flip the script on how to content. Stop instructing and start inspiring. You can use the reality that we humans want to know "how." We want to be informed. We want to reach out to other humans we're thinking of working with and look smart and educated. This is buying psychology—people don't want to feel lost and confused, they worry about judgement and not asking the right thing. Now, you may have seen folks on the internet spouting off that savvy buyers don't want to know "how to." I'm going to tell you that while these people likely mean well, they aren't looking at the data. Fortunately, I have access to loads of Google-fueled data that tells me what real people are searching for and this assumption just doesn't hold true. Their "hows" are simply different.
You've probably guessed by now (and I've mentioned it previously), that this is the next workshop in my series about SEO for knowledge businesses. Coming up on April 24, I'm teaching Flip the Script on How Tos. Like all of my live workshops, this is the absolute best price it'll be offered at, so if this subject is intriguing to you, this is the time to grab it at a budget friendly price. I'd love to invite you to join me. (Yes, this also comes with access to my SEO Strategy group to ask questions.) If you want to create articles like this one, which performs very well for me in terms of leads and client acquisition as well as newsletter subscribers, sign up and start thinking about this kind of content in a new way. Here's that link to sign up! See you on the 24th! Talk soon, Sarah |
Hi! I'm Sarah Moon!
The status quo of modern marketing isn't designed for you and me.The hard truth is that most marketing strategies are designed for massive corporations, while small businesses, consultants, coaches, and other experts are left feeling that the advice they’re given just doesn’t fit—and they’re right. We have two choices: we can struggle to force our businesses into an ill-fitting mold, or we can reinvent a system that works for us and allows us to thrive. I don’t know about you, I prefer door number two. 💌 Reach our team at hello@smco.studio. 🌟 Ready to work together? https://sarahmoon.net/get-started
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