Chuck Sink, Chuck Sink Link

You have choices for how you connect with your target market. Even individual salespeople who must adhere to corporate marketing campaign standards can personalize and better authenticate branded corporate messages. More than toeing the company line, great communicators create and validate superior value!

Whether for social media or email marketing, content subscription services based on your specific industry (commercial real estate, home building & remodeling, architecture, accounting, engineering, legal, financial services, etc.) are commonly available. For a monthly fee, they’ll automate and post or eblast trending articles to your email contacts on a scheduled basis. You simply provide your target audience demographics and product/service category info. They conjure up relevant content for your audience, then blast out third party-produced messages to your email list. It lets you set and forget your content marketing so you can focus on other things.

How well does it work? Ask yourself this. To which are you more likely to respond, a colorful and graphically perfect Hallmark style message with a link or a simple piece of critical advice from a local professional you’ve met or heard of?

On the same day of the month at the same time of day, I now receive 3 identical emails from the same large financial services company. The only difference? The individual sender is a different agent for that company. This may be considered sales support but it’s generically canned support. And how supportive can that be?

One of my clients subscribes to a well-established provider of content for the financial planning industry. What we found after experimenting with email campaigns is that it’s a good service for supplementing our original custom content but could never replace it. The proprietary and personalized articles in our emails proved to be more engaging than the third party-produced materials. Additionally, people found our own email design to be more graphically pleasing than the structured layout offered by the other service. We’ve come full circle with email – full customized messaging with supplemental content from the service provider.

Here’s the best thing about content marketing: When you deliver personal value in your social posts and emails, direct replies include requests to do business with you.

Bottom line: Support your own sales efforts with personalized, valuable advice for your prospects and customers! They’ll appreciate you for it and more easily remember whom to call when they need your services.

Chuck Sink is president of Chuck Sink Link, Hopkinton, N.H.