the content mint newsletter

Relationship buyers are your fans. They love you, they love what you do, they want to support you, and they want other people to know about you.

This type of customer is pretty common among small businesses because the face of the owner is usually pretty closely tied to the name of the business, which means the owner’s friends become a natural network of relationship buyers.

Another example would be local haunts like bars, coffeeshops, bookshops, etc., which are the type of experience offerings that people become regulars of, i.e. they make it their “spot.”

These type of buyers—with at least one caveat¹—are probably going to be your followers online. People who want to keep up with what you’re doing and show off their support via your branding or merch, or even organic UGC.

The easiest way to engage with these buyers through your media is to use your business’ social media content the same way you would use your personal social media. And frankly, it seems like this is what most small businesses default to because it feels the most natural.

But if we really took the time to sit down and think about what kind of content would actually benefit these loyal customers, I think we could be a lot more creative in the way we approach this natural followership than just posting about how adorable the office dog is or which account manager recently had a birthday.

Relationship buyers want to spend their attention on you.

Let’s respect their investment.

1. There is a subset of relationship buyers that I would call “status-quo buyers.” These are people like dental patients. The patient is committed to their dentist and returns because they are satisfied with the relationship they have, but, for the most part, they’re not super interested in what’s happening at the dental office in the six months between their regular appointments.
   If you really want to engage these buyers on a regular basis, you’re going to need to create content that has an outsized amount of intrinsic value for the audience. ↩︎

Convenience buyers need a solution quickly, and they don’t want to have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it.

When it comes to your content for these buyers, there should be a pretty direct line between consuming the content and making a purchase.

Bonus points if your content is able to even half-way solve their problem through its intrinsic value, leaving only the really technical or on-going support solution for you to accomplish with your offering.

Ultimately, if you know you’re creating content for convenience buyers, you should express:

1. an understanding of the situation that the buyer is in
2. how you can help them
3. and how they can take advantage of that help

And if you know exactly what the situation is that will have them looking for your solution in the first place, you’ll also be able to tailor the context of your content to target exactly the right people.

For a real-world example, just consider that this is basically the entire strategy of personal injury lawyers. If your audience is convenience buyers, you can probably take a few notes and adapt a few of those tactics to your situation, but maybe adjust the tone to match how you want to be perceived.

Value buyers don’t care so much about price as they do about what they get for the price.

They need to feel that they’re getting the most bang-for-their-buck, regardless of how many bucks they actually end up spending.

So when you start to create media for value buyers, you’re going to want to showcase as much of your offering as you can in as much detail as you can. They’re going to binge all this content and mentally tally up the intangible value that they expect to receive for their investment.

Value buyers practically live in the guided discovery phase, so you want to make it a good experience with lots to explore. This is also a good opportunity to create a media environment with as little noise as possible so they can focus on just your offering without comparing it to the value they might get from anything else.

Just remember when you’re describing your offering to go beyond the nuts and bolts and tie everything back to the big picture of how your offering can make the customer’s life better.

That’s the real value they’re looking for, and they’re willing to pay accordingly.

Price buyers generally know three things:

1. what they want
2. what they don’t want
3. what they’re willing to pay
   • (even if it’s a vague as “as little as possible” or “the most expensive option must be the best”)

That means, if you’re going to communicate to price buyers through your media, you need to convey the corresponding information:

1. what you offer
2. what you don’t offer
   • (or what you are willing to remove from the offering—with a corresponding price adjustment)
3. what it’s going to cost
   • (even if it’s just “a little” or “a lot”¹)

Conveying timely price information through live content streams like social media can be a great way to drive engagement, and you can have fun with it. Hitting the right price is a game, so you can make cheesy posts about discounts and promos; or, on the flip side, cheeky posts about how expensive and exclusive your luxury offering is. They’ll eat it up.

Just don’t get attached.

Price buyers aren’t here for you and they will jump ship as soon as someone else beats you at their price game. And someone probably will eventually.

1. Remember: leaving something out is still part of communicating. “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” is a tried and true pricing tactic after all. ↩︎

When it comes to purchasing decisions, people have many variables to consider, and they tend prioritize them differently in different circumstances.

If you were having a one-on-one conversation with a customer and you could determine what kind of buying preferences they have, you would probably adapt the way you speak to them to appeal to those preferences.

The same applies to your media, although in a bit more of a general sense.

Here is a summary of four different buyer preference profiles as categorized by pricing and selling expert Blair Enns (who, in turn, adapted this model from others):

price buyers

Just as it sounds, these buyers are shopping for a specific price. Usually the lowest, but sometimes people will always choose the middle option or even default to the highest.

value buyers

These buyers care about ROI. They will pay more if you can prove they are getting more value in return.

convenience buyers

These buyers are not in a position to shop around. They need a solution that can be delivered with as little friction as possible, so the first viable option will probably be the one they go with.

relationship buyers

These are the loyal ones. Once they decide they like you, your organization, your brand, etc, they will buy everything they can from you, and probably return more than once.

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While not an exhaustive list, I think this is a solid starting framework.

Most likely your customer base is a mix of these, but depending on your offering, market, or business structure, you may find that you have a predominance of one or another type of buyer. When that’s the case, it can be very useful for deciding how to speak to them.

In the next few days we’ll break down each of these buyer types a little further and think about how they might shape the form of the media you choose to create.

I think a lot of times “FAQ” pages are, functionally, more like “FYI” pages.

They give info that the organization wants people to know, regardless of whether or not anyone ever actually asks those questions.

So here’s an experiment:

Over the course of a few weeks, write down all of the questions that you get asked about your business, from customers and non-customers.

Then tally them up and see if you can find any common threads.

Then compare those common threads to your current FAQ page that you probably wrote off the top of your head years ago because your web developer said you had to.

If they line up, great!

If not, then you’ll be able to update it accordingly.

Either way, finding those common threads will give you a great place to start creating content that people actually want to know about.

And, setting those answers in stone means that in the future your content can handle those questions so you don’t have to.

“Content marketing” is not a strategy because it doesn’t have an objective.

“We need to create content because everyone else is creating content” is not a sufficient motivational statement to help you make the real tactical decisions that will come when you begin to think about what kind of content you actually want to make.

Before you can create any kind of worthwhile content, you have to figure out why creating content is the best approach for your business in to begin with.

And here’s the key:

The best content strategy doesn’t start with why you should create content.
(Usually that just comes down to: “because I want more customers.”)

Rather, the best content strategy starts with why your customer should want to consume your content in the first place.

If you can figure that out, you’ll be more motivated to make the content, and customers will be more excited to engage with it.

When you consider the context of your media, one thing you’ll have to decide implicitly or explicitly is “how long will this content be relevant?”

For example, if you are simply communicating the details of an event which will be over in a month, then you want it to be top of mind for that month and then it can get lost in the internet ether, no problem.

But if you are communicating the core mission of your business, you probably want that to be presented in a form that will last much longer.

This brings us back to the idea that context informs form.

If the context of your communication is social media, then, by nature of that context, it will have a pretty short shelf life, regardless of what form it takes (video, image, text, etc).

However, you also have the option to combine a circular communication approach with a little-q (high-quantity) output strategy.

On the other hand, if the context will be more static, like the homepage of your website, you can plan a longer shelf-life for a single piece of content, in which case maybe a big-Q (high-quality) and linear communication approach is best.

When you start to get the hang of how context and form impact the effect and application of your media, you can get creative with your communication strategy, and the best part is, you’ll know the why behind those creative decisions.

As we saw yesterday, small businesses have an advantage over large corporations in two areas: unique offerings and personal connection.

But where they have to fight a little harder is for trust.

The simple fact of brand recognition can often be enough to establish trust and credibility for a national organization, but small businesses often don’t get that benefit of the doubt. Instead, the ability to make a personal connection with customers is the small business’ biggest advantage when it comes to trust building.

Here are a handful of ways that small businesses can communicate trust through their media (in order of least to most effective, in my opinion):

personality / vibes

This is the implied strategy in a lot of social media content that I come across. It can be useful for “clicking” with people who are naturally drawn to people like you, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into customers, more likely it translates into consumers of entertainment value.

demonstrate knowledge / technique​

This doesn’t convince the customer that you can solve their problem necessarily, but it does show that you know what you’re doing.

offer something of value to the potential customer

This is my favorite method because it puts you in the position of initiating a mutual value transaction by being the first to offer an open hand. Bonus points if what you’re offering through your content can be put to use right away.

demonstrate vulnerability / start a dialogue

This one is tricky because you don’t want to come across as needy, but a true authenticity that makes the customer feel like they are as influential in your success as you are in theirs can be a powerful emotional connection. If you are able to open an actual two-way communication with the prospective customer, then you have drawn them out of the status of simple content consumer and begun a real relationship.

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If you can effectively implement one or more of these techniques in your content, especially in the early stages of the buying cycle, then you are well on your way to overcoming the biggest disadvantage of the small business.

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P.S. This list is not exhaustive. What other methods can you think of or have you seen to be effective? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

When customers are choosing between a small business and an established brand for similar products or services, the burden of proof often lies on the small business to differentiate themselves meaningfully from the established brand.

As I see it, there are two major factors in favor of the small business:

1. the uniqueness of the offering
   • this can increase value
2. the personal connection to the customer
   • this can increase trust

Not every small business will be able to rely on both factors, but the faster and more strongly a small business can communicate at least one of them in the mind of the customer, the better their chances are.

So . . .

If you look at your website, how long would it take to identify a personal connection to your business or a uniquely beneficial quality of your offering?

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P.S. Notice that price is not included as a differentiating factor. Small businesses often can’t compete for price—nor should they have to. Taking advantage of the uniqueness and/or personality factor can help maintain or even increase your prices in the face of competition.