Content Crooner

photo credit: Renato C Cunha

Can you afford to employ a sales force around the clock? If you could, you’d probably be retired. However, sales are what fuel your business, so how can you afford to support a sales presence around the clock? You may be thinking that your website is available all day and night.

Of course, your website is available to illustrate benefits and sell your products at all times, but it’s not actively getting out there and soliciting new business. Consider your website as the inside salesperson. Article marketing will act as your outside sales force.

This presents a fantastic solution for any size budget. Article marketing involves a one-time effort for each article that talks about your business every day. This creates an immense advantage over paying a sales force every day to say the same basic message.

Build your 24/7 online sales machine

While automated articles serve as the tireless sales force feeding live leads to your website, they maintain a special etiquette which traditional sales approaches and cold calls often fail to do. The most effective articles stay away from hard-selling language. There’s no need for a hard sale when you provide a sufficient amount of useful information and value within your content. Article readers are looking for relevant content that can solve their problems, answer their questions and provide clarity on confusing issues.

Increase your sales conversions by replacing cold calls with warm and informative articles. Don’t worry—opting for a softer sales approach through articles still achieves a strong message. The softness simply applies to the tactful presentation of your product or service. You will maintain strength in your message by assertively providing information, tips and resources that the readers can apply to their lives. Strength comes from proving that you can provide your readers with enough self-evident value that you don’t even need to ask for their business. They’ll have no choice but to see that you are the best resource and will ask you for your help.

Plus, articles have the advantage of being sought out by the reader. A cold call always runs the risk of interrupting people at an inconvenient time. Instead, people actively seek out articles. When someone clicks on the link to your article they are ready to read and learn. You now have their full attention and the best opportunity possible to provide your readers with useful information that will eventually lead them to your website or move them to contact you directly. All of this promotes a more receptive audience.

A receptive audience still requires relevant information! It was just a few years ago that we were even blessed with the gift of the Web, yet we have already become impatient, quadruple clicking our mouse when a page doesn’t load fast enough and cursing our computer when we can’t find what we need in less than a nanosecond.

Among the Internet’s top annoyances? Literally seeing millions of results posted for our specific search and still not being able to find an article or website that actually addresses the specific topics we’re interested in. Few things are a bigger turnoff to Web users than clicking through to a site or article and not being able to find what they expected. Call it impatience or insatiable hunger for quality resources, your articles must be well-written and highly relevant to the keywords you’ve targeted.

Whether you’re a bootstrapped business or a gargantuan conglomerate, smart business practices necessitate high efficiency and a simultaneous respect for one’s budget. Article marketing maintains a friendly relationship with your budget while introducing a soft sell that is actually considered useful to your readers.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!