Content Really is King

At the beginning of January 2014 I decided not to take on any new clients for the next few months. We’ve had some changes at Appletree recently in terms of staff and the direction we want to take. In addition I’ve been working on a new Business Plan that focuses on regrouping and looking after our existing clients for a few months, before going after any new ones. We’ve got enough work to keep us busy for the moment and I don?t have a huge amount of spare time to spend on networking and looking for new clients.

So what happened in my first week back at work? I took on two new clients! I didn’t go looking for them – they both got in touch and asked for our help! If I wasn’t looking for them, where did they come from?

John runs a business locally and I first met him at least a year ago at a networking meeting. I’ve seen him there every now and then since the first time and we’ve chatted a few times. I gave him some advice about buying a Skoda (you’ll see from my last blog that I’m a big fan), along with some general marketing advice, for which he was grateful. I asked if he could help me with some equipment for my office, but at the time he couldn’t. I had never actively pursued him as a client, so I was delighted when he called and asked for my help. By the time you read this, we will have had our first monthly Marketing Mentoring session and John will have started putting together a plan for the marketing he needs to do over the next six months.

Toby is a consultant in London, who I’ve known for quite a few years. He has a simple website that really doesn’t do justice to his experience. It doesn’t show off his credibility to potential clients who are recommended to contact him. He’s asked us to write new copy for his site, to make sure that anyone who visits the site, as a result of a recommendation, then picks up the phone and calls him. Toby likes the Appletree website and wants his to do the same for him as ours does for us.

So why is content king? Because the content of what you say and what you write is incredibly important. In the conversations I’ve had with John, I’ve focused on giving him useful advice rather than trying to sell to him. The Appletree website does contain some ‘sales’ copy about the different services we provide. But mostly it gives visitors useful advice and resources that you can use in your marketing. The blog, the newsletters, the help sheets and the tweets are all there to show that we know what we’re talking about and that we’re happy to share our knowledge with you.

What can you do to improve the content of what you’re saying and writing? Does your networking need a refresh? What can you add to your website to help it give away more? Think about how you can improve your content and perhaps clients will just start to turn up on your doorstep too