I had the absolute pleasure of attending an event this week where Marcus Sheridan was speaking and I’m still buzzing about it!
You might not have heard of Marcus but he’s a legendary marketer and all round nice guy.
He’s most famous for his bestselling book on how to get more customers called You Ask They Answer.
On stage, he told the story of how his business was on the verge of bankruptcy. Almost out of desperation he came across a simple, yet revolutionary way of getting new clients. What was this “secret” that he stumbled across???
Answer your customer’s questions.
That’s it.
By obsessing over all the questions that his customers kept asking, and writing detailed answers on his website, he created a treasure trove of articles that catapulted his company to the top of Google and helped them become an authority in their industry. One blog post even led to $25,000,000 worth of sales!
They Ask Your Answer is such an awesome philosophy that I wanted to share it with you, so you can start to use it in your photography business.
Why should photographers care about writing articles?
At this point you might be thinking “But I’m a photographer, how does any of this apply to me?”
I’ve gone on about the importance of words on your photography website loads of times. I even wrote a whole section about it in my book.
The fact is, most photographers are pretty damn good at taking photos, but many are pretty lousy when it comes to writing.
That’s if they’ve written anything much on their site at all.
This provides you with a great opportunity to stand out amongst the crowd.
If you can write informative and compelling articles for your prospective clients, you’ve got a much better chance they’ll choose you over a competitor.
The Big 5 Topics
But what should you write about?
Marcus found that in his research, there are 5 key topics that your customers are desperate to know more about:
- Pricing and Costs
- Problems
- Versus and Comparisons
- Reviews
- Best of
Pricing and costs
When someone is looking for a product or service, what’s one of the first questions they are likely to ask?
“How much is it going to cost?”
Although businesses often avoid speaking about pricing on their website for fear of scaring customers away, by answering this question well, you’re actually more likely to attract customers.
It’s worth thinking beyond just listing your prices on your website. Go into more detail explaining what factors go into the final cost. This could be both explaining the difference between your packages and also, why your prices are different to your competitors.
Problems
Possibly even scarier than talking about pricing is talking about problems. As a business owner, your tendency is to not mention anything that could put negative thoughts into your customer’s mind.
But again, these are the exact questions that your customers will want to know.
By taking possible problems and then explaining how these can be avoided, you can write some very powerful content for your website.
Versus and comparisons
We love comparing one thing to another. Think about it. When you last bought something, did you look at a range of options? Of course you did. We love to see what’s out there and to find out how each choice is different.
Think about what your customers might currently be looking for in your industry. Can you write an article informing them of the different choices so they can make a better decision? They will love you for it.
Reviews
Reviews are vitally important and in our current online world, are very easy to find. So it’s your job to use reviews to your advantage.
This comes in two forms. You’ll want to make sure that your customers can find positive reviews for your company online. This means that it’s your job to be proactive and ask happy customers to provide one.
The next type of reviews are the ones you write yourself. Are there things in your industry that your customers are looking for that you can write a review on?
Best Of
Everyone loves a good list. And, everyone likes knowing who’s the best out there. Think about what products and services that your customers are currently looking for that you can write a “best of” article about, providing them with all the options they need.
Marcus even went one step further and created a “best of” list for his own industry, even listing all the competitors in his area. This article went on to be one of the most popular articles on his website and generated a lot of business for his company.
Some blog post examples for photographers
Let’s look at some practical examples of the Big 5 topics above. Using wedding photography as an example, here are some possible articles you could write.
- Pricing
- How much does a wedding photographer cost?
- What’s the average cost of a wedding photographer in the UK?
- Problems
- 7 wedding photography issues you need to avoid
- How to avoid boring, posed wedding photos
- Verses and comparisons
- Film vs digital – which is better?
- Reviews
- Testimonials page
- Best Of
- Top 10 wedding venues in [city]
- The most delicious wedding cakes in [area]
How to use tools to generate endless content ideas
Hopefully, you’ve already got some great content ideas in mind. You can take this one step further by using tools to tell you what questions people are already asking in your industry.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is an excellent tool that will tell you exactly which questions and terms people are typing into Google. It’s a Google Chrome plugin that will give you a list of the most popular Google searches right on the Google results page.
Simply search for a topic in Google and you will see a ton of great ideas on the right-hand side. The powerful thing about this tool is you can see for yourself which questions people are actually asking, rather than simply guessing.
If you want to get additional data like how many people searched for a term per month, it will cost you $10. It’s a small price to pay for some very useful information.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public is another great topic research tool. Type your topic or question into the search bar and it will provide a map of related questions. One single question can produce tens, or even hundreds of ideas.
Here’s a search for “wedding photography issues”
You can see how this spawns off into numerous different topics, all providing fantastic ideas for articles you can write for your website.
Summary
By now, you know the Big 5 topics that your ideal customers are desperate to know more about.
We’ve also gone through some practical examples you can use and the tools that tell you exactly what questions people are currently asking.
If you can spend some time answering your customer’s most pressing questions, you have a great chance of standing out in your industry.
All of which should make more people aware of your services and help you build more trust, making it more likely for you to secure the booking.