Are you writing articles and publishing them in trade journals, magazines, or on your website? Are you publishing helpful blog posts consistently?
If you answered “no”, to either of those questions then you’re not connecting with your audience as well as you could be.
A well-written article or blog post can position your company as an authority and also attract the right prospects and customers to you.
That’s what makes these content formats so terrific when it comes to marketing. You’re not pushing your brochures and sales messages onto people. Instead, prospects are drawn to you through attraction marketing.
In other words, articles and blog posts help you leverage your marketing and sales efforts, since they reach tens, hundreds, or thousands of people (instead of doing one-to-one sales calls).
Here’s an example:
I did some work for a company who manufactures high-performance scientific imaging cameras, as well as microscopy and spectroscopy systems.
I was asked to write a series of articles aimed at neuroscientists working in the field of optogenetics. This involves the use of light to study neurons and neural networks in the brain in order to investigate animal and human behaviour.
One of the articles highlighted 7 key questions to ask when choosing imaging equipment for this type of research (almost like a mini special report or white paper).
The article itself opens up with a quick introduction to the field of optogentics:
“Progress in technology, new scientific discoveries and even the birth of new fields are made possible, not only by the inquisitive minds of scientists, but also by the tools and technology at their disposal.
But at the same time, research is often limited by this same technology.”
Note that the article does not start off by giving tons of boring technical information. Instead, it engages readers by introducing the bigger picture, and also by stating a problem.
This motivates the prospect to read on by giving real-world implications of the technology in question. This sets up the rest of article, and effortlessly leads into the 7 questions.
A final point:
The article was advertised on www. photonics.com.
You can read the introduction paragraph, but because the article is gated, any potential customers need to submit their contact information before they can read the full piece.
You should do this whenever possible, because collecting contact information in exchange for an article, report, white paper etc. allows you to keep in touch regularly and build your audience of scientific prospects.
Your next step:
If you would like to discuss working together to create an article or blog post, your next step is to schedule a Project Roadmap. Email me at colm@sciencecopywriting.com