Does Unconscious Awareness Play a Part in B2B Blog Marketing?

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The discovery of unconscious meanings attached to products and services allows advertisers to design appeals to tap those motivations, the authors of Persuasion in Advertising explain. In our last Say It For You blog post, we explored ways in which unconscious awareness plays a role in both the blog marketing of products as compared with using blogs to market professional services…
Is there a difference in the way blog marketing should best be sued to market B2B as compared to B2C marketing? Joshua Nite of TopRank makes a number of observations concerning business-to-business marketing, four of which are very much in keeping with practices we teach at Say It For You:

1.  It’s never been more important for brands to show purpose.
For blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning statements. The “visit” has to conclude with readers understanding exactly what your particular philosophy or mission is. Effective blog posts must go from information-dispensing to offering the business owner’s (or the professional’s, or the organizational executive’s) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic.

2. On a chart ranking traits that B2B buyers value in salespeople, problem solving is near the top, while creativity is at the bottom of the list.
Business executives (or their staff members) are online searching for answers to their questions or solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  Or, they might need a particular kind of service and aren’t sure who offers that.  Or maybe they need a product to fill a need they have.  Don’t think of it as business blogging; think of it as providing solutions to someone’s problem.

3.  Business customers see value in maintaining relationships with influencers.
In blog marketing, therefore, the content writer must “interview” the influencer, asking the right questions so as to elicit thoughtful, detailed responses, positioning the company owner or practitioner as a thought leader, someone who defines purpose in a marketplace craving direction.   In a face-to-face (or Skype) interview with a business owner or executive (or professional practitioner), I am able to capture their ideas and some of their words, then add “framing” with my own questions and introductions, to create a blog post more compelling and “real” than the typical narrative text.

4. With news about the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the internet, B2B marketers must be careful not to sound too opportunistic.
Even though today’s most searched-for topic may not be what is most often talked about tomorrow, I teach at Say It For You, you can benefit readers by tying your blog content to popular topics. While the focus of your business blog will be on the business owners and the services, advice, and products they offer, the content can reflect current happenings and concerns.

On the other hand, “content has to contribute value and fit organically within the cultural context of your target audience. Otherwise, you risk appearing opportunistic and losing their trust,” skyword.com cautions. COVID-19 is a perfect example of a topic that must be incorporated in blog marketing only to the extent it is relevant to the solutions the marketer is offering.
At Say It For You, where we create content to market to both businesses and to consumers, we know that in both cases, our main goal is to raise prospects’ awareness of solutions to the issues that drove their online search. Just as, in marketing to consumers, we are not aiming for an immediate sale, the same is true for B2B marketing. We blog content writers keep on telling our client’s story in its infinite variations over long periods of time, knowing that the readers (whether consumers or businesses) who end up as clients and customers have self-selected rather than having been “sold”.
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Blog Content Appeals to Unconscious and Conscious Awareness

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Decades ago, Sigmund Freud argued that there are meanings, highly significant to humans, but which are obscured from immediate awareness. The discovery of those unconscious meanings attached to products and services allows advertisers to design appeals to tap those motivations, the authors of Persuasion in Advertising explain.

The concept of “selling to the unconscious” as Joel Weinberger writes in Brandingmag.com, is no longer “new news”.  In fact, in purchasing products and services, unconscious processing is as least as important in human decision-making, Weinberger stresses. We blog content writers should find Weinberger’s analysis of the difference between the way consumers choose products compared to the way they choose services to be especially relevant to our work. If a purchase is likely to be a thought-out decision that is not repeated often, he teaches, messaging should focus on conscious values; if a purchase is something that is frequent, or just happens, messaging should focus on unconscious values.

“Conscious thought has but a minority stake in the human decision making process, “ beyondreason.com emphasizes. Traditional marketing tends to neglect the sub-conscious, the authors say, but that is not where many decisions are made. Most marketing practices, they add, “polish the pros, muffle the cons, and sometimes inject some emotions.” In the end, they caution, “science-based marketing evolution cannot be avoided”.

Tangible products are often thought to be easier to market, observes fiftyfiveandfive.com, They can be shown, demonstrated, touched, and displayed.  Services, on the other hand, are intangible, and it can be harder to show value. Besides, unlike products, once services have been consumed, they cannot be resold or reused.

Arke disagrees, pointing out that both service and product-based organizations compete on the quality of both products and services in terms of the customer experience. On the other hand, Arke points out, when people are involved, there is room for error and inconsistency.

At Say It For You, where we create content to market both products and services, we know that our main goal is to raise prospects’ awareness of solutions. Since, in practical terms, we are not aiming for an immediate sale, we blog content writers keep on telling the business’ or the practice’s story in its infinite variations over long periods of time, knowing that, to a certain extent, the readers who end up as clients and customers have self-selected rather than having been “sold”.

In fact, when you’re composing business blog content, I teach at Say It For You, imagine readers asking themselves (perhaps on a subconscious level) – “How will I use the product (or service)?” “How will I feel?”
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Best Blog Content Writers Read Around and Toggle

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“Dreams, I’m convinced, are just one more dimension of our minds,” writes Sylvia Browne in her best-seller, Book of Dreams...

At Say It For You, I teach the principle of “reading around” in order to attain “go-to industry authority”.  In fact, I stress, business bloggers are going to need to spend at least as much time reading as writing. Even after almost a decade and a half creating blog content for business owners and practitioners, I continue to need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my client sells and what it does for its clients. At least half the time that goes into creating a post is reading/research/thinking time, I’ve found. The writing part can flow only after prep time is complete.

Just last month, I quoted Carina Rampell of the Content Marketing Institute, who explains that our reading needn’t be limited to the subject of our blog content.  Poetry, she explains, can teach us clarity and precision, while the classics can teach us compelling storytelling structure. Browsing through the Sylvia Browne book on dream interpretation (hardly my usual choice of reading topic!) made me realize the truth of Rampell’s statement that “reading helps us get away from our subject or product expertise and unlock our creativity”.  

Every dream experience, Browne posits, is one of five kinds:
  • the prophetic dream
  • the release dream
  • the wish dream
  • the information or problem-solving dream
  • astral visits
“Knowing what type of dream I’m trying to interpret, Browne explains, “is always my first step in unlocking its mysteries.”

Business blog posts also come in different varieties.  From the content writers’ point of view, I’s generally a good idea to toggle back and forth among those varieties over time, keeping returning visitors engaged, but also in order to appeal to different types of reader. There are “how-to” tutorial posts, resources and link lists, reviews, opinion pieces, interviews, case studies, breaking news, and personal story posts. But, precisely as Sylvia Browne observes, knowing what type of post you are presenting helps unlock its “success”.

The best blog content writers have learned to read around and then – toggle among the types!
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Guest Post: Security Basic for Bloggers

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Today’s post was contributed by friend Cody Lents, partner and change manager at Covi, a professional services information technology agency in Indianapolis, IN.

SECURITY BASICS FOR BLOGGERS

  1. Start by securing your admin portal. Here are 14 tips for doing this with WordPress.
  2. Make sure your blog is being automatically backed up with alerts for successful and failed backups. Then, occasionally double-check to make sure the alerts are accurate. Here are some plugins to help.
  3. Some of us want others to share our content as much as possible. But, in some cases protecting our authorship is a priority. Try using something like 33 Across’ Site Ctrl to protect from cut & paste plagiarism, and no matter your philosophy on ‘borrowed’ content you should set up your Google Authorship to maximize SEO.
  4. Implement hotlinking protection. I recommend CloudFlare or a WordPress plugin for this.
  5. Only install ‘Trusted Plugins’
  6. Ensure security plugins are installed. Here are 8 recommendations from one of my favorite cybersecurity organizations. – Make sure you choose one with built-in firewall security or get a separate firewall plugin.
  7. If you’re uncomfortable managing your sites security, pay a professional to do it. Typically, a simple blog site can be maintained for $100 – $200 per month.

Bonus:  If you really want to deter content theft you could dabble in this plugin. – Prevent Content Theft

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Horseback Riding Lessons for Blog Content Writers

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“Like any sport or dedicated hobby, there are bigger life lessons to take away than simply the information or skills necessary to participate,” writes horseback riding fan Sarah Faulkner in bizjournals.com. Faulkner lists four lessons leaders can take from equestrians, each of which I believe can be valuable to us blog content writing professionals:
Look where you want to go.
As a leader you must have a well-defined vision and be able to clearly communicate it.
One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that focusing on main themes helps blog posts stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. The posts fit together into an overall business blog marketing strategy through “leitmotifs”, or recurring themes. These themes tie together different product or service descriptions, different statistics, and different opinion pieces., but there should be little doubt of the main direction in which you “want to go”.
Communicate clearly, consistently, and confidently.
Reinforce verbal with physical commands, but do not give mixed messages.
Even while letting readers see your own “humanity”, keep your blog content well-organized and well-written to convey a feeling of being in control. Maintaining a consistent schedule of posting sends a reassuring message to readers.

Sense and respond to cues.
As a leader, you need to sense and respond to market forces such as trends and competition.
As I teach at Say It For You, blog content writers must develop “peripheral vision”, being aware of what competitors are doing and working to stay just one step ahead of them.
Tack up your own mount. 
Be willing to get into the details, keeping informed on the numbers and fundamentals of your business.
Successful blogging for business is all about detail.  Corporate websites provide basic information about a company’s products or a professional’s services, but the business blog content is there to attach a “face” and lend a “voice” to that information by filling in the finer details.  In horse shows, I learned, there are two aspects to winning medals – equitation and pleasure. Equitation refers to the skill and posture of the rider; pleasure refers to the horse’s looks and control.  To succeed in blog marketing, content writers must be willing to get into the details – navigation, search engine optimization, visuals, vocabulary.

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