Are you scaring away your best prospects?
When you’re new to content marketing, you might inadvertently send a frightening message to your potential customers and clients.
Your heart is probably in the right place. You’re trying to provide value and put your best offers in front of people — but your approach might miss the mark.
And that wrong approach might cause terrible conversion rates for your opt-in forms and low sales of your products and services.
Want to know how to stop scaring off your prospects, build trust, and start attracting tons of subscribers and sales?
The key is learning how to get birds to eat out of your hands.
Why content marketing is like ornithology
Let’s say you have a cute little group of finches in your backyard, and your dream is to get the little fellas to eat birdseed out of your hand.
The trick to earning the trust of the birds is to move slowly and quietly, so you don’t scare them off. Stand next to the tree or bird feeder where they gather, and let them get used to you. Demonstrate your trustworthiness and let them know you’re not going to hurt them.
Then continue to take tiny steps toward your goal, all the while being careful not to scare them. Let the birds discover you’re a source of yummy food by sprinkling birdseed on the ground and hanging out nearby while they nibble.
If you are infinitely patient, take baby steps, and don’t frighten them, eventually you can train the birds to eat directly out of your hands.
Here’s what you don’t want to do:
- Scream “I HAVE BIRDSEED!� at the trees where the birds hang out
- Shove your hands in their little faces to show them what you’re offering
- Wave your arms around to get their attention
- Anything else that makes you look scary, aggressive, risky, or alarming
How this bird story affects your content marketing
If you never plan on trying to get finches to eat from your hands — who cares?
But this story has an important lesson for all content marketers: Your prospects are just like birds.
They are highly risk-averse and hypervigilant, constantly searching for a reason to take flight and leave your website.
If you offer too much too soon or shove your paid products in their faces, they’ll fly away.
And you’ll be left alone, holding a handful of birdseed, wondering what happened.
Building relationships the bird whisperer way
How can you frame your offers to avoid scaring away your prospects?
- Start slow. Patience is essential when you’re building relationships with your audience. Be sure to establish trust before you ask for anything. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
- Provide value first. When your website is new, it’s critical that you establish yourself as an expert (and build trust with your audience members) by giving away free value before you present your audience with an offer for your paid products and services. Start with a free report, educational video, or content library, and gather feedback from your audience on that content before you make your next move.
- Don’t ask for multiple actions. Whether you have an email list opt-in form or free registration page for your site, one major mistake new content marketers make is trying to do too much with a single page. If you present paid offers on the same page or form as your free content, you might confuse your prospects and they won’t take any action at all.
- Send emails with useful content to build relationships and increase trust. Once a prospect has signed up for your email list, you still need to proceed with caution. To build relationships, send consistent content notifications or email newsletters to prove your authority in your niche and provide value to your community members.
Win your prospects’ trust with a steady, consistent approach
When you approach your prospects carefully and consistently over time (and prove you’re a safe person), they’ll eventually feel comfortable buying from you.
So take small and steady steps, and don’t overdo it with aggressive sales messages. Your prospects will learn to trust you, and they’ll be far more likely to buy your products and services.
A little birdie told me you (and your prospects) are going to be a lot happier with this approach.
Reader Comments (12)
Hi Beth,
Great analogy and tips. I am reminded of the story about “The Tortoise and the Hare.� The moral of the story: Slow and steady wins the race. We can learn so much about life and marketing from animals, can’t we?
Blake
Exactly, Blake! I think stories like this help us understand lessons on a deeper level. Thanks for stopping by and saying hi!
I love your message here, Beth. Gentility and restraint. As I focus on building the email list for my e-commerce site, I have been paying a lot of attention to welcome gates on other sites and how they make me feel. I already sell products on mine (beautiful shoes), so that’s why my customers search and find me. No free content here except my blog posts! It’s a delicate thing to ask them to sign up before they have a chance to browse and see whether we’re ‘worth it’, but not doing it before they leave the landing page is risky. Timing is everything – and so is the message in the welcome gate. I really like the sites that delay the sign-up form until you’ve had a chance to see and assess what a site offers (10 seconds maybe?). It looks like a sign of respect and not a hustle or act of desperation. As for consistency in communication, amen. I have been guilty of erratic behavior when it comes to sharing my posts (trust-building vehicles) and am committing to doing better. Bi-weekly is my near-term goal. Thanks again for the very insightful post.
You’re welcome, Annie! Thanks for stopping by! And I agree with you about the pop-up forms….if you *must* use them, I recommend having them on a delay timer. I like the pop-ups that only show up when the reader has reached the end of a blog post.
Great analogy, I think sometimes, we are so eager to get the ball rolling for ourselves that we forget others aren’t rolling at the same speed, so we do need to slow it down, ensure they are well hooked and the trust has been established for them to jump aboard .
Great article, thank you for taking the time to write it. 😉
This is great advice! Thank you for sharing it. Nerves can be overwhelming when you are approaching clients. The trick is to breathe first then hit send.
So true! We should always add “take a deep breath” to our email checklists!
Content Marketing is so far the best tool for me to build trust in the eyes of my prospects.
The tips you shared are very helpful. You always keep your fingers cross when you approach a new client.
You speak so much of the truth here Beth. The goal of all this content isn’t to make an immediate sale and if that is the goal, it’s going to fail. That’s how it works on social media too. I see a lot of people saying this is an awesome product, this is what it can do, buy it! Get to know people first and add some value before forcing a sales pitch 🙂
Yes, exactly, Nick! The most important thing to remember is that in most cases, it’s not about us. We need to listen more than we talk (on social media and in real life!)
Amazing illustration. Your analogy hold true even in personal relationships. You start slowly and consistently in order to to win the trust of your partner.
Nice article you have here!
Trust is a must have on a web site!
Thx!
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