„Content is king”
declared Bill Gates – and, of course, he was right.
And do you know when he said it?
23 years ago!
Yes, Bill Gates, being who he is, was once again ahead of his time. After the era of pop-up (annoying) windows and banner ads (praise be to AdBlock!), the time for content to reign has finally arrived.
Much of the credit for this goes, of course, to the internet, which took the sales process to a new level by allowing us to deliver a great deal of information about a product to the potential customer, along with additional knowledge – for example, on how to use that product, in what situations, and so on.
Slogans alone will no longer sell anything today. The customer expects specifics, but first and foremost expects good, valuable content – content that:
- provides information about the benefits they will gain from buying a given product/service;
- in itself provides at least part of the valuable information they are looking for.
That is why the content appearing online to encourage the purchase of particular products/services carries so much, and such varied, information today.
Yet, contrary to appearances, not all of it actually helps to sell. Some of it may even scare potential customers off! It all depends on which DISC style that customer is!
The golden and platinum rule of communicating with the customer
If you work in sales – or, more broadly, work with people at all – you surely know this golden rule of building relationships:
„Treat others the way you would like to be treated yourself.”
But did you know that this rule, in fact… in most cases… does not work?
Why doesn’t it work? It’s simple – because each of us is different. Because each of us is a different DISC style, or rather a blend of these styles, and each of us likes to be treated differently. It is exactly the same when creating content. By analogy, one might write: „write in a way that you yourself would want to read.”
But that simply isn’t true! In writing – at least writing aimed at a specific result – we write so that OTHERS will want to read it.
It is the same with the way we treat people. The platinum rule of building interpersonal relationships and communication says:
„Treat others the way THEY themselves want to be treated!”
That is a very significant difference, isn’t it?
So why do we so often ignore it? Why do we create content that we ourselves want to read (and not even always that!), ignoring the needs of the very people we are creating that content for? Why do we do this? Because that’s how everyone writes? Because that’s how the copywriting gurus teach us to write? Because „it works”?
Well, the truth is it doesn’t work at all!
Or rather: it works, but on one, at most two specific DISC styles. And those happen to be precisely the styles that make buying decisions the least often and that are the most difficult customers. Think about what would happen if you created content tailored to the DISC styles that make buying decisions the fastest!
As I mentioned, with this article we are launching a series of texts offering practical advice for copywriters and everyone who creates sales copy and content in the broad sense.