If I could demonstrate that Bredemarket benefited a firm via a case study, that could help Bredemarket get business from other firms. I said so myself:
A well-crafted case study can be the first step in convincing a potential customer to become a paying customer.
But once I started writing the document, I decided that one case study wasn’t enough.
So I wrote four mini-case studies in the same document, briefly describing how I helped four Bredemarket clients create different types of content so that they could win more business.
I helped one client to quickly generate consistent proposals. One of the client’s salespeople even provided me with a testimonial. (You may have seen it before.)
I helped another client share persuasive case studies. The client kept on coming back to me for more case studies—a dozen in all—and other work.
I helped a third client position via blogs and a white paper.
Finally, I helped position a sole proprietor.
After the four mini-case studies, I briefly described how Bredemarket works with clients. (Sleep is involved.)
I didn’t get into my six questions, since I already wrote an e-book on that topic, but I did provide an overview of the initial meeting, the content iteration process, and my work for hire policy (which explains why I didn’t name the four clients listed above).
So would you like to read my four mini-case studies?
Here is my latest e-book, “How Bredemarket Can Help You Win Business.”
Which is why I like to quote this testimonial that Bredemarket received from a client.
“I just wanted to truly say thank you for putting these templates together. I worked on this…last week and it was extremely simple to use and I thought really provided a professional advantage and tool to give the customer….TRULY THANK YOU!”
Although the testimonial writer wasn’t from Inland Empire business, Bredemarket can provide the same services for local firms. And I hope you are just as happy with the result.
Case studies build trust for Inland Empire businesses
With credibility comes trust. When potential customers read your case studies and find out what you’ve done for others, they’re more inclined to trust that you can provide similar benefits to them.
Case studies increase awareness for Inland Empire businesses
Traditional sales funnels start with awareness, since people won’t buy a product or service unless they’ve actually heard of it.
Case studies offer a mechanism to tell a good story about how someone faced a problem, chose your solution, and achieved wonderful results. Regardless of the specifics of your case study outline, it probably includes a problem, a solution, and results somewhere in there.
And entertaining stories can be told again and again as you share your case studies on social media…and others share your case studies on social media.
Case studies highlight the expertise of Inland Empire businesses
As potential clients learn about you, they also learn about your expertise, or what you can do. For example, people who need proposal templates and who read the testimonial above learn that Bredemarket can create proposal templates. And when they read a case study about your product or service, they learn about your expertise in your particular area.
Case studies increase the online visibility of Inland Empire businesses
Credibility, trust, awareness, expertise.
So what?
The “so what” here is that in the same way that your friends can refer people to your business, your case studies can refer people also.
As your case studies highlight your credibility and trust, provide awareness, and demonstrate your expertise, your products and services (as documented in the case studies) become known to search engines, especially if you’re resharing via social media. And as the search engines record your case study content, you gain a “secret salesperson.” I wrote about this a couple of years ago, quoting Rhonda Salvestrini:
Content for your business is one of the best ways to drive organic traffic. It’s your secret salesperson because it’s out there working for you 24/7. And it’s evergreen, so not only is it working…day in and day out…it’s available years down the road.
Rhonda Salvestrini
To prove the point that online content provides long-term benefits, I just conducted an incognito Google search for the words rhonda salvestrini secret salesperson.
Salvestrini’s own LinkedIn page was only the second result.
The first result was my 2020 blog post.
The third result wasn’t from Salvestrini either. It was a Facebook page for an old personal blog of mine that happened to reference those four words.
If you were searching for Salvestrini’s website and ended up at my blog post, I should clarify that I didn’t intentionally hijack Salvestrini’s traffic to draw it to my content. By happy accident, I just happened to use the magic words that drew searchers to my post. But if you’re interested in Salvestrini’s services, go to her website RhondaSalvestrini.com.
Now imagine the power if a potential customer is searching for their preferred terms and finds your case study.
And your secret salesperson isn’t secret any more. (Sorry Freddy.)
A well-crafted case study can be the first step in convincing a potential customer to become a paying customer.
So how do you create the case study?
Glad you asked. (Well, you sort of asked. Actually I asked. But you get the point.)
Well, you can just start writing, or get someone to start writing, and call the end result a case study.
But you need to create the right content.
And Bredemarket has a way to work with you to create the right content. To find out how to start a case study writing project or any writing project, click below.
As a business owner or marketer, you are always looking for ways to increase visibility and attract new customers. In today’s digital age, inbound marketing has become an increasingly popular strategy for achieving these goals. Inbound marketing is all about creating content that is tailored to the needs and interests of your target audience, and using that content to attract potential customers to your website.
At its core, inbound marketing is about helping clients make money. By creating content that is specifically designed to appeal to your target audience, you can increase your visibility and attract more potential customers to your business. This is why inbound marketing has become such an important part of the marketing mix for many businesses today.
One of the key components of inbound marketing is blogging. Writing blog posts that are specifically designed to attract potential customers is an incredibly effective way to increase your visibility and attract new business. By writing blog posts that address the needs and interests of your target audience, you can create content that is both informative and engaging, which can help to establish your business as a thought leader in your industry.
The goal of inbound marketing is to increase your visibility and attract more potential customers to your business. By creating content that is tailored to the needs and interests of your target audience, you can increase your chances of being found by potential customers who are actively searching for the products or services that you offer. This can help to increase your website traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately increase your revenue.
One of the key benefits of inbound marketing is that it is customer-focused. By creating content that is specifically designed to address the needs and interests of your target audience, you can establish a strong connection with potential customers, which can help to build trust and establish your business as a trusted partner in their success.
If you are a technology firm in the Inland Empire, inbound marketing can be an incredibly effective way to increase your visibility and attract new business. By working with a team of inbound marketing experts, you can create a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy that is specifically designed to address the unique needs and interests of your target audience. This can help to establish your business as a thought leader in your industry, increase your website traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately increase your revenue.
In conclusion, inbound marketing is a powerful strategy for helping clients make money. By creating content that is specifically designed to appeal to your target audience, you can increase your visibility and attract more potential customers to your business. If you are a technology firm in the Inland Empire, inbound marketing can be an incredibly effective way to increase your visibility and attract new business. By working with a team of inbound marketing experts, you can create a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy that is tailored to the unique needs and interests of your target audience.
But now some alternative, no-cost methods for content creation are available. But are they any good? Let’s test one of them.
Feeding the six questions to ChatGPT as a prompt
If any of you have used generative artificial intelligence, you know that you feed a “prompt” to your generative AI engine of choice, and the engine then returns a result.
Here’s a prompt that I recently fed to OpenAI’s ChatGPT:
Write a blog post based on these six inputs: (1) Why: help clients make money (2) How: offer inbound marketing services to clients (3) What: write client blog post to attract business (4) Goal: increase client visibility (5) Benefits: increase business via customer focus (6) Target audience: Inland Empire technology firms
I’ve reproduced the response verbatim in the following post, including the title that ChatGPT supplied. I could probably play around with the prompt and get a response that is more on target; the prompt that I fed to ChatGPT ended up with a huge emphasis on inbound marketing.
What do you think? Is generative AI “good enough” to put Bredemarket and other content marketers out of business? Or do experienced and talented human writers provide enough added value so that their content stands out from the crowd? Personally, I think I could have written something much better…but I could be wrong.
If nothing else, I wrote my post (and this one) in less than 15 minutes, versus the 2+ hours I spend on my previous post and the underlying web page. So if I’m primarily interested in churning out quantity rather than quality, ChatGPT is my friend. And if my post receives incredible traction, ChatGPT is really my friend.
By the way, I’ve done this before, but this time I’m posting the generative AI post with no modifications.
Let me quote a little bit from the page I just created.
For example, let’s say that an Ontario, California content marketing expert wants to target businesses who need blog post writing services. This expert will then create a web page, and possibly a companion blog post, to attract those businesses.
If I’m going to talk about blogging, I need a blog post to go with it, right?
The other purpose of this blog post is to direct you to the web page. I don’t want to repeat the exact same copy from the web page on the blog post, or the search engines will not like me. And you may not like me either.
If you’re an Ontario, California business who is looking for an effective method to promote your firm, and a description of how to move forward, go to the Bredemarket web page “Blog posts for your Ontario, California business.”
Why should I read the web page?
Needless to say, you only need to read the web page if you’re an Ontario, California business. Well, I guess Fontana businesses can read it also; just ignore the video with Mayor Leon and substitute a video with Mayor Warrent instead.
The web page addresses the following topics, among others:
Why do you want to use content marketing to promote your Ontario business? (The web page also addresses inbound marketing.)
Why do you want to use blog posts to promote your Ontario business?
How can an Ontario business create a blog post?
How can an Ontario business find a blog post writer?
If you are a technology business who is communicating the benefits of your products or services, don’t assume that these benefits have to be quantified. Qualitative benefits can work just as well.
She notes that a company’s clients don’t care if your vacuum cleaner has a washable lifetime filter. That’s just a feature, or what the product does.
Your clients care about eliminating extra costs, which is the benefit that the washable lifetime filter provides, and why the client should care.
How do you discover benefits?
Let’s say your boss tells you to write about the washable lifetime filter. Imagine that you’re conversing with one of your clients, and you tell them that your vacuum cleaner has a washable lifetime filter.
You respond that the client only has to buy one filter, rather than buying a new one every few months.
“So what?”
(Yes, your client may ask the “so what” question several times, like a small child. And you should do the same, to dive down into the true benefits of a particular feature.)
To the client’s last “so what” question, you respond that the client will save money!
Now the client is impressed and knows why they should care about your washable lifetime filter.
Quantitative benefits are great
In certain cases, the client may be even more impressed if the benefits can be expressed in numeric form.
For example, let’s say that a disposable vacuum cleaner filter costs $35 and lasts for 6 months. I have no idea whether these numbers are accurate; my last name isn’t Hoover, after all.
Whoops, not those Hoovers. I couldn’t find a picture of William Henry “Boss” Hoover or son Herbert William Hoover Sr.
Back to my guesses about disposable vacuum cleaner filters. If my numbers are correct, you can tell your client that your washable lifetime filter can save the client $700 over a ten-year period. Depending on your price points, the savings may be more than the cost of the vacuum cleaner itself. (Again, I’m not Hoover, so don’t quote me.)
With a couple of fancy leaps of logic, you could then say to the client:
“Would you like to MAKE money by buying this vacuum cleaner?”
Hey, whatever works. I’m a marketer, not a salesperson.
But qualitative benefits can be just as great
You can’t always quantify benefits, because to quantify benefits you need data, and you may not have the data close at hand. The data may not even exist.
This won’t stop your marketing efforts, though, since qualitative benefits can be just as powerful as quantative ones.
Referring to an underlying report, the article states that “The first section describes Apple’s focus on personal health and fitness features on Apple Watch and iPhone that offer actionable, science-based insights.” So what? It turns out these actionable, science-based insights “help protect users’ health and safety.”
Apple’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, is quoted as saying “We believe passionately that technology can play a role in improving health outcomes.” Nice, but Williams subsequently returns to the power theme: “…they’re no longer passengers on their own health journey. Instead, we want people to be firmly in the driver’s seat.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Apple has referred to empowering the individual. The company has done this for decades. Remember (then) Apple Computer’s slogan, “The Power to Be Your Best”? If you missed that particular slogan, here’s a commercial.
There’s not one statistic in that commercial. It doesn’t say that the Macintosh computer would equip you to jump 5% higher, or sing on key 99.9% of the time. And Apple Computer didn’t claim that the Macintosh would equip you to draw bridge images 35.2% faster.
But the viewer could see that a Macintosh computer, with its graphical user interface, its support of then-new graphic programs, and (not shown in the ad) the ability to distribute the output of these graphic programs via laser printers, gave Macintosh users the power to…well, the power to be their best.
And some potential computer buyers perceived that this power provided infinite value.
As you work out your benefit statements, don’t give up if the benefits cannot be quantified. As long as the benefits resonate with the customer, qualitative benefits are just fine.
What are your benefits?
Before you draft your marketing material, or ask someone to draft it for you, you need to decide what your benefits are.
I’ve written a book about benefits, and five other things that you need to settle before creating marketing content.
Click on the image below, find the e-book at the bottom of the page, and skip to page 11 to read about benefits.
Tech is the fastest-changing industry in the world. New innovations, tools, and capabilities are continuously reshaping the way every company does business….
Companies of all types, then, turn to tech thought leadership to understand emerging trends and potential disruptions.
For CIOs and other tech thought leaders, this presents a huge opportunity. Establishing yourself as a tech thought leader gives you a wide audience and a platform for increasing your brand’s (and your own) visibility.
Benefits for your business and yourself? Sounds like a win-win to me. Be sure to read Brenner’s article for more of his thoughts.
Who should write the thought leadership piece?
Ready to be a thought leader? You need to get someone to write the thought leadership piece.
You could write it yourself.
You could have someone write it for you.
You could work with a writer and collaboratively create the piece.
How you work is up to you. Perhaps you have communication experience and know how to convey technical thoughts to non-technical audiences. Or perhaps you dread writing and would love to pass that task to someone else.
Now what?
Once you’ve decided who will write your thought leadership piece, you don’t want to just start typing. You need to prepare.
Whether you’re writing the first draft, or someone else is writing the first draft, you need to specify your needs for the piece.
And ask some questions before you start writing.
Click on the image below to find out what questions you need to ask.
I know that “when you wear a blindfold you cannot see” is one of those seemingly obvious truths, like “the heat was hot” (the band America) or “water is wet” (a preschool teacher).
You would never intentionally blindfold yourself while driving a car, or while performing any other activity that requires your vision.
Al-Faraq’s client was a “hardcore” American salesperson who was presenting to a Middle Eastern investment firm. His hardcore presentation didn’t go well, especially when he started slamming his hand on the table.
To see how the investment firm reacted, see the original post. (Although I guess you already figured out that the client didn’t get the money. Al-Faraq didn’t bury the lede.)
What the client did BEFORE he slammed his hand on the table
But when I read Al-Faraq’s description of the meeting, I realized that his client lost his audience long before the client pounded the table. Al-Faraq’s post includes this key sentence.
Middle Easterners value cultivating relationships. In fact, this source asserts that “[i]nitial meetings are all about relationship building.” Diving into a presentation during the first meeting before your audience knows about you is understandably upsetting.
But this is not limited to business with Middle Easterners.
Diving into a presentation without understanding your audience is a serious mistake in any culture.
The Work Lady does her homework
Many years ago, before Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility were formed, there was one Motorola. And one year when I was at Motorola, our Biometric User’s Conference engaged Jan McInnis, The Work Lady, as one of our speakers.
When she spoke at our conference, McInnis did not just dive into her morning presentation unprepared. Before her session, she spent some time with the conference organizers and asked questions about her audience, so that she could understand them better and why this “AFIS” thing was so important to these people.
She didn’t just do that for us. It’s a standard part of her process.
Prior to the event, Jan has a conference call with your conference committee to incorporate specific challenges your group is facing into her keynote!
Her homework makes all the difference for her audiences.
Focus on the customer
McInnis, Al-Faraq, and many of you understand that to have success with a customer, you have to understand the customer. As Ali Al-Faraq says: “Knowing your audience is key!”
Don’t intentionally blindfold yourself before approaching your customer.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
Just for fun, I’m going to challenge my assertion that there are six questions that your content creator must ask you before creating content.
I ought to know about these six questions. As a content marketing expert, I wrote the book on the topic.
The idea is that your content creator hosts a kickoff session, asks you the six questions, and only then starts to create the content in question—the blog post, case study, or whatever.
Are the six questions overkill?
But simplicity advocates may argue that those six questions are five questions too many.
Analysis paralysis may prevent you from moving forward at all, much less realizing your content creation goal. Perhaps you should be more efficient and just put pen to paper and, as the shoe people say, just do it.
I found a content marketing expert who agreed with this assertion, and wrote a post entitled “In marketing, move quickly.”
That content marketing expert was…well, it was me.
I ran across a local company (which I will not name) that issued a press release in December 2021. In part, the press release mentioned the local company’s new dedication to the marketing function.
The company had hired an international marketing firm “to develop comprehensive marketing strategies….We expect their work to incorporate a website redesign, brand refresh, new strategic messaging and content, as well as focused video and digital campaigns.”
So, when I wrote the “In marketing, move quickly” post three months later, what had this international marketing firm accomplished in the interim?
The website has a full slew of data sheets on the company’s products, and I found a 2017 brochure that effectively served as a white paper. But that’s it; no other white papers, and no case studies describing happy customers’ experiences.
The company’s YouTube channel has two videos from 2021.
The company’s Facebook page hasn’t posted anything since 2017.
Neither of the company’s LinkedIn pages (yes, the company has two LinkedIn pages) has any posts.
Now I have no visibility into this particular company, but I’ve been around the block to guess that the international marketing firm was probably still in the analysis stage, optimizing synergies according to “out of the box” criteria, to ensure bleeding-edge revenue maximization.
No, the six questions aren’t overkill
After reviewing what I wrote before in that blog post, I realize that my e-book lacks a very important point.
Don’t spend three months answering the six questions.
I shouldn’t HAVE to say this, but perhaps it’s safer to explicitly say it.
Now practices can very from consultation to consultation, but it’s very likely that a content creator and their client can breeze through those six questions in half an hour or less.
Or maybe the client can answer the questions on their own before the meeting.
If your content marketing expert schedules six one-hour meetings (or worse still, workshops) to address the six questions, run away!
(Is the content marketing expert billing by the hour?)
And the six questions create a content strategy
There’s something else that I failed to explicitly say in my e-book.
Not only do the answers to the six questions benefit that one piece of content, but they benefit everything else that your company does.
For example, let’s say that a content marketing expert is working with a gourmet ice cream shoppe (not a shop, but a shoppe), and the proprietor (Jane Cold) answers the “how” question as follows:
At Jane’s Gourmet Ice Cream Shoppe, we keep the internal dining temperature below 50 degrees Fahrenheit to ensure that our guests enjoy ice cream as it was meant to be enjoyed. We inform our guests of our temperature policy beforehand to ensure they bring proper attire.
While the content marketing expert will use the answer to the “how” question to create the content, the ramifications go far beyond the social media post itself.
Perhaps the new flavor could be branded “Frigid Farkleberry” to suggest how the ice cream should best be enjoyed.
Maybe in addition to branding, the “how” answer may even influence pricing. Perhaps prices incorporate the number “32,” as in a single-scoop price of $4.32. (Yes that price is high, but after all this is an ice cream shoppe.)
And what of future social media posts?
Let me clue you in on a little secret: once your content marketing expert has asked the six questions for the first piece of content, the kickoff is much quicker for subsequent pieces of content.
Chances are the basic “why” and “how” won’t change, although some of the later questions such as the target audience could change for each individual piece of content.
So without explicitly trying to do so, the six questions have created a de facto content marketing strategy. After creating five pieces of content, you’ve essentially defined your company’s mission, purpose, and differentiators, and may have defined as many as five separate vertical markets along the way.
Not a bad investment of thirty minutes of time.
(But a terrible investment of three months of time.)
Bredemarket 
