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Customers Do Not Like Your Products

People Do Not Like Your Products B2B Marketing CeekueDo you still think your customers like your products? In that case I have news for you. They don’t.

Your customers do not like your products. They also do not like to buy them. Because buying products means stress:

  • do I make the right decision to buy?
  • am I buying the right product?
  • am I not paying too much?
  • what will my colleagues or (worse) my boss think of me buying this product?

You can take away this stress by not letting your customers buy your products. Start selling them benefits. 

So if your products

  • save energy or
  • improve the quality of production or
  • speed-up processes or
  • prevent downtime and unwanted stops or
  • save time or
  • make your customers save money in some other way or
  • have some kind of other benefits,

then make sure you start selling these instead of your products.

People Ask Questions – You Should Be The One To Answer

Answer Questions B2B Marketing CeekueThe best way to promote your company or products is by helping people. Using your expertise to answer people’s questions is one of the most effective marketing activities you can imagine.

Nowadays people are not only searching. People try to find the information they are looking for by asking questions. There are a number of websites like Yahoo Answers or Answers.com that offer these people a platform for their questions.

These websites offer you the possibility to find the questions you may be able to answer. To find the people that are in need of your expertise. To find customers.

If you know more websites like Yahoo Answers or Answers.com please share them with us.

Related links:
> Yahoo Answers
> Answers.com

The Contents Matters, Not The Headline

Write Compelling Headlines Blogs B2B Marketing CeekueThe vast and ever growing amount of information that reaches me every day makes it impossible to really pay attention to everything I read or hear about.

I am following only 32 people on Twitter at the moment. Mostly people that share information (links) with me. Resulting in well over one hundred links to interesting posts, websites and articles every day. Besides that I try to keep up with over forty blogs in Google Reader. Some of them, like Mashable and SocialmediaBiz, publishing several posts every day.

Of course I am not able to read 150 or more articles each day. So what do I do? I mainly read headlines. And if I think (or better guess) it is something interesting, I click. 

Or, if I have really little time available, I do something else …

Tricks And Clicks

So it looks obvious what you should do to grab my attention. Write compelling headlines that makes me click. Because if a headline does not do it for me, there is a big chance I move on to the next Tweet, post or blog. 

There are a few tricks to make people click. I am sure you have seen them before.

  • Use numbers in your headline (3 Tips To Improve Your Position in Google)
  • Ask questions (Is Social Conversation A Myth?)
  • Make a bold statement (Social media is a fad)
  • Offer a takeway (Get more visitors by …)
  • Use words in your headline like ‘new’, ‘tips’, ‘better’, ‘best way’, ‘stop’ or ‘avoid’

And there are probably more tricks like this to get more clicks.

Be Aware

I don’t like these tricks.

Too many people use numbers in (almost) all their headlines or ask a question in every headline they write. And too often the promise made in the headline is not fulfilled in the post or article.

No matter how compelling your headlines are, if the stories behind these headlines are not interesting, there is a big chance people stop following you or your blog. They will spend the little time they have to read other posts and articles or to click on other links to interesting websites.

In that case your power-headlines only bring you one-time visitors. They will never return and you will never be able to build an audience.

The Tip

There is only one tip that makes sense. Write compelling contents. Only by doing that you are able to really grab people’s attention with your posts and articles.

So next time you write an article, white paper or post, start with the contents. Then when you are finished, think of a strong headline that covers what you have written. Of course this headline can be a question or contain a figure or whatever. But only if what you have written really fulfills the promise you make in your headline.

And the ‘something else’ I do as mentioned earlier in this post? If my time is really limited, I only read Tweets or posts coming from people that I know in advance are interesting. Independent from the headlines they use.

Google Realtime Search A Great Tool For Marketing

Google has introduced Realtime Search. With Realtime Search Google gathers the latest updates from blog posts and social networks like Facebook and Twitter in a constantly refreshing information stream.

With Google Realtime Search you are not only able to be informed about the latest entries and comments about the topics you are interested in. The new service also enables you to look back in time to see what people have been saying about a topic in the past. You are able to browse the entire conversation from the initial entry to the latest comments. A timeline in the top of the Google Realtime Search window also allows you to scroll through the results and look for comments at a specific moment in time.

Google Realtime Search allows you to get only the results from nearby your own location or from a specific country or town. A link at the bottom of the page enables you to subscribe to an email alert for one or more topics.

For (B2B) marketing Google Realtime Search can be a great tool. Not only to be informed about when your products are mentioned in blogs and social media, but also to be able to track back to where these comments originate from. Giving you the possibility to track a negative source and take the action that is needed to correct things that possibly went wrong in the past. Or track positive sources and reward the people that promote your products.    

Related links:
> Google.com/realtime