What Is A Service Based Business – I’m Hailey – content strategist and founder of Your Content Empire, where we help you create more profitable, targeted and productive content – and I hope you enjoy this job even more. Learn more about me here >>
Did you know that strategies for marketing service-based businesses differ from those used for marketing product-based businesses? I recently published a similar post (“The Epic Guide to Content Marketing for Product-Based Businesses”) and thought that my fellow service-based entrepreneurs deserved their own detailed guide on how to use content to effectively achieve their business goals.
What Is A Service Based Business
I firmly believe that content marketing can help you build your business, attract valuable leads, and convert them into customers and friends. Especially if you don’t have a huge team or unlimited dollars to spend on paid marketing.
Service Based Vs. Product Based Business. Which Is Better For A Digital Nomad? — Paige Brunton
So I’ve gathered my best tips for creating a content marketing strategy specifically for service-based businesses. If you’d rather jump right in, download the Strategic Content Toolkit for Service-Based Businesses to get started.
Your content goals will certainly vary from business to business and should be determined based on your overall business goals, but these are the three main categories of content goals that are almost universally applicable to service-based businesses.
One of the goals of your content is to become an expert who fully understands what your ideal customers are dealing with and struggling with, and how you can help them as a result.
This is extremely important, because as a service-based business, your customers are not only considering the purchase decision, but also the relationship decision – who do they want to work with? Who is the most empathetic about their situation? And who is most qualified to solve the problem?
Ways Content Creation Can Transform Your Service Based Business — Paige Brunton
One way to become an expert with a deep understanding of your current situation and vision? Create content that solves a problem for them. Create content that treats them as individuals. Create content that deepens your connection with your readers. And only make your offer if you’ve already established that relationship and helped them solve a problem.
Takeaway: Talk to a lot of potential customers to understand what types of problems you can solve and what solutions you can offer.
Like any online business, one of your most valuable assets is your list of vetted leads (also known as email lists) about your services. It’s the most reliable way to stay in touch after they’ve left your site. Social media algorithms are constantly changing, and you’re not really your Instagram profile or Pinterest account, it could theoretically disappear at any time. However, with an email list, you own it and take control of that relationship with potential customers and nurture it.
Build a sales funnel that aligns with your sales process to increase the number of sales conversations
How To Build A Service Based Business Around Your Blog
So we’ve covered why you want to grow your email list, but we’ve also covered why you want to have a goal for those who join your list. If someone came to your house to visit you, you probably wouldn’t invite them in and talk to them while they were there. It’s the same with your email list. It’s up to you to nurture that relationship and guide them towards booking a sales call depending on the sales process.
Your subscribers signed up for a reason – to ask for help with a problem. If you can help them even more with your paid services, that’s exactly what you should be asking them to do. Because of this, you want to make sure that every part of the funnel is connected to the paid service and supports the sales process – from the giveaway to the email sequence to the promotion of the free gift.
Here are my top proven strategy tools for a service-based business that should be in place before you even think about creating a content strategy.
If you’ve heard this before, roll your eyes. But there’s a reason why it’s become quite a cliché. If you dilute your message and try to appeal to the most people, you will end up appealing to no one.
Top Lead Generation Strategies For Your Service Based Business
Now, if you take the opposite approach (which seems a bit counterintuitive right now) and live on a customer type, your ability to articulate exactly what they struggle with and what they want most from a solution will prove that your service for them. Your message will gain the clarity and focus needed to make a significant impact.
And as an added bonus to this approach, sitting down and pretending to write to someone you know very well takes the pressure off writing the perfect email/blog post/social media post and the words just flow. .
The best part about a content strategy is that it goes from being responsive with content and throwing out random posts on a whim to intentional content. This will help you carefully take your readers on a journey from brand new to you to reader, first time customer to brand advocate.
Takeaway: Read this post on how to create better content with a reader journey map and use it to develop new content topics, write posts, create sales copy, and come up with new offers (or update old ones).
Asset Vs. Service Based Business Models
What makes your business different from other experts selling similar services? Your unique selling proposition. Having a clear idea of what sets you apart from the crowd will help you articulate it in your content AND help you beat the competition (competition doesn’t exist if you focus on what makes you unique!)
In fact, this is a great exercise to do every three months because it helps you identify opportunities and potential potholes in your current playing field. With this, when I was just starting my business in 2014, I was able to identify a partnership that provided more than half of my income in the first year of business.
Takeaway: Complete the SWOT chart on what is happening in your business right now. Once we have this information, you will be able to make some strategic decisions about your content! If you want, download the toolkit here.
This strategic tool basically just refers to the ratio you should keep in mind for each piece of content – a rule of thumb to help your content achieve its intended goals: Spend at least as much time on each piece of content promoting it.
Krishna’s Explanations: Service Based Company Vs Product Based Company
Without promotion, content is basically a desert island. If you want people to visit you need to arrange some boats.
Takeaway: Do you have blog posts that you know you haven’t promoted enough? Put them back in the forefront and schedule a week to push them to their fullest potential. Not only will they get more eyeballs, but you’ll also get a break from having to create something new!
The next step in creating a service-based business content strategy is to develop your content brand. Once you have a strong brand and style guide for your business, this will be easy. If not, you probably need to go back and start there and transfer it to your website, social media, and other brand touchpoints before starting this step.
Content is an outlet for your brand. It’s incredibly important, but it still stems from your brand, not separately.
The Epic Guide To Content Marketing For Service Based Businesses
Your content plays a big role in building brand awareness as an expert and provider. But to do this successfully, you need to consistently convey your brand’s styling elements across your branded content images.
You want to define a blog style with the following types of guidelines: header formatting, text formatting, font colors, blog image templates, social media image templates, etc.
Visuals are only a small part of your brand. Another piece is the brand’s voice and personality. This is one of the biggest differences between service and product business.
Through the product business, you can develop the brand voice that best resonates with your target customers.
Service Based Business Content Calendar Freelancer Social
Whereas for a service business, your brand voice should be much more of a personal brand as people sign up to work with you and/or your subcontractors/employees. The main deciding factor in deciding whether to hire you over someone else is whether (a) they trust you; and (b) like you.
Use these answers to guide content creation and language across all touchpoints of your business brand (website, social media, blog, newsletter, freebies, service/package descriptions, sales materials, email templates, customer service, etc.)
In the case of a service-based business, the purpose of the content falls into at least one of the previously mentioned content goals:
A great blog post style for service-based businesses is a “how to post”. It instantly puts you in the expert role where you can easily deliver value to your readers.
Bookkeeping Tips For Service Business Owners
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