The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

Client Relationships

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Pitch Perfect: How to Throw Content Marketing Home Runs

Right this very minute, a potential client is waiting for you to present them with your plan. Your pitch will be a home run (mixed metaphor most certainly intended). You’ve got this.

Regardless of how far along in the sales process your prospect is, good content marketing can make a difference.

Generating Awareness with good Content Marketing

The first step to hook a prospect comes with generating awareness of you. Creating good content about the problem your clients have is the first step — they’re already searching the internet for answers, we just need to create content that shows how you are providing them with the ideal solution.

Getting Your Prospect to Consider You With Good Content Marketing

Once you have them paying attention to you, the next step is, well, getting them to take the next step. Good Content Marketing is just as key a part of your pitch to a prospect as generating awareness.

  1. Tell the story. All humans operate 99% subconsciously and 1% consciously, so be sure to deliver an irresistible narrative. Pro Tip: If you find yourself answering what rather than why and how well, you’re telling the story wrong.
  2. Encourage disruption. Challenge conventional wisdom. It’s hard for your client to change course, but you both know it’s for the brand’s best. Xavier Niel, the French Bill Gates, said it well: “Start small and disrupt to create something big.”
  3. Don’t oversell. You’re going to want to communicate everything you know. Avoid this urge, as well as the one that pushes you to brag and make outrageous claims. Think big, but stay humble.
  4. Five ideas are better than one. Think of it like this: You and your partner have one child. Chances are, you’re both intensely invested in his or her perfection. Faults? Zero. This child is the best one ever invented. But imagine having five kids. The stress for perfection is dispersed, right? It’s easier to see their flaws and deal with them as they appear. Same goes for your pitch.
  5. Solve a problem, and focus on the future. Yes, we’re encouraging you to accomplish both simultaneously. It’s now and later, today and someday. Your pitch should resemble Jack’s magic bean; it could be food today, but it’s going to take your client to the skies tomorrow.
  6. Get rejected. They might say no, and that’s understandable. This is their company, after all, and they’ve invested a lot of hopes, dreams, and money into it. Perhaps they’re not ready to edit their brand’s story, or perhaps you just need to edit your proposal.

You’ve put a lot of work into this pitch. Good job. Now, all you have to do is sit back and wait for the client to recognize your pure genius, right? Wrong. The pitch begins and continues with your relationship-construct. Create a strong one.

Above all other techniques, building a relationship with your potential client remains paramount. Trust and commitment, both in branding and real life, win on the daily over pretty much anything else.

If you’d like some help adding good content marketing to your pitches, give us a call. Ask for Giancarlo Stanton. (That’s a home run joke, guys. Because we only hit ‘em out of the park over here.)

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Are You Hearing What Your Client is Telling You?

It’s so much easier to tell your client what you’re thinking than listen to their thoughts. After all, you’re the expert, right?

Maybe. But probably not.

No matter your level of knowledge, it’s crucial to become a master listener – especially during client meetings. And don’t forget about client phone calls, strategy meetings, and idea generating sessions. Basically, if your client is speaking, or you’re speaking on behalf of your client, it’s time to listen up.

  • Have conversations. Real ones that make room for back-and-forth exchanges of ideas and reactions, savoring all the information gleaned. This is the good stuff.
  • Absorb what your client is telling you. Don’t interrupt. When they’ve finished making their points, ask more questions. They know their business better than anyone, but they need you to tell their story so everyone else can know their business better than any competitor’s. Impatience, especially when simultaneously considering billable hours, is a real information-blocker.
  • Ask questions. Better yet, ask questions that begin with “If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re telling me…”
  • Don’t tell them you’re listening – show them. Do the work and employ the ideas you both took the time to discuss.
  • Feedback is your friend. Even negative feedback is instructional, guiding, and vital for growth, so make sure to listen even more intently when it appears. (Because it will appear.) And remember: In any client relationship, it takes twelve positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience – the key word being unresolved.
  • Stay far ahead of your client in social listening. Pay attention to conversations that aren’t even about your client, and extract insights about brand new influences and leads. The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
  • It’s not about you. But it is totally about what you and your client can create together.

Did you know that an overwhelming majority of clients leave because of a perceived attitude of indifference? So communicate clearly, be responsive, and listen hard. You may have heard what they’re telling you a thousand times before, but it’s fresh to them.

It’s been said that listening is being able to be changed by the other person, and we agree. At The Found Gen, our clients’ stories constantly reconfigure how we view the world. We love traveling alongside them.

If you ever need someone to listen to your brand’s story, we’re all ears.