Two weeks ago in this blog, I wrote about the problem that many small service businesses face, in that their competitors seem to be getting all the work. You can read that blog again here. Following on from this, last week we started to look at the solution to this dilemma – the fact that you need to show your potential clients what makes your business different to and better than your competitors. For a reminder of that blog, click here.

In this post I’m going to take that solution one step further and tell you about a really simple way to show your prospects why they should work with you instead of your competitors. So what’s the answer? Write a blog!

When you provide a service such as coaching, consulting, training or speaking, you don’t have a tangible ‘product’ to show to people. Unless you have a book to sell, there is nothing that prospects can pick up, look at and compare to what the next person is selling. What you’re actually selling is yourself, your time and your expertise. So how do you show that to someone who might want to buy from you? They need to see examples of your experience and knowledge and one of the best ways of doing this is by writing about it in a blog. Don’t fill up the pages by telling prospects how great you are, how cheap your service is, or how many awards you’ve won. Show them how good you are by writing about the solutions to the problems that your clients ask you about. Tell your readers how to solve their problems – just as this blog is showing you how to beat your competitors by sharing your knowledge in a blog!

In order to really stand apart from your competitors, you need to take blog writing to the next level, by including in them your Emotional USP (eUSP), which I wrote about in last week’s blog. If your eUSP is Growth, use your blog to show how your service helps your clients to grow their businesses; if it is Connection, show your readers how you can connect them to the people they need to meet. At Appletree our eUSP is Certainty – our clients work with us because they know that we will get the work done for them and get them the new clients they need. They know that if we say we’ll write a blog for them every two weeks, then we will write really good content that shows off what they do (and their eUSP) every two weeks, without them having to worry about coming up with ideas or ever having to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!)

If you haven’t already done so, go back to last week’s blog and get clear on your eUSP. Then think about the problems that you solve for your clients and how you can combine the solutions with your eUSP. We’ve recently done this at Appletree, so that we have a full schedule of blog ideas planned out for the rest of 2016 (that’s nearly 10 months of weekly topics!) Then all you have to do is get writing!

If you need some help with getting started with a blog or working out what to write about, contact us for a chat. If you actually want someone to write a blog for your business on a regular basis, then call us on 01635 578 500 or email me at Chantal@Appletreeuk.com and we can talk about our Managed Marketing service which can do all of that for you.

Image source: marleneknobbe.wikispaces.com