Business Article Marketing for the Executive Suite
Posted by Beth Hrusch on Mon, Nov 23, 2009
Business article marketing has a pretty straightforward goal: to market your business. But you'd be surprised how many articles are boring, obviously self-promotional or simply rehash common knowledge. To avoid these pitfalls, put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
Understand What People are Looking For
Effectively executing a business article marketing campaign only works if people find you based on what you say in your articles- 
based on if it's relevant to their searches for information.
Look through the emails that potential clients or customers send you. What kind of key words, descriptions or questions often pop up? These are probably the same questions that someone would type into a search engine when looking for you.
Review competitors' online pay-per-click ads. The language in these ads is there for a reason. They have done some research into how people search for the needs that their company fulfills and have paid to have those search terms associated with their brand. If you can use the same or similar terminology to draw in free search users, so much the better.
Make Relevant Insights
Being insightful sounds a lot like telling someone just to be funnier or to be more interesting. Usually, you can't just flip a switch, but that's not the point.
The point of making relevant insights is less they're ingeniousness than that they're relevant, clear, timely and easy to remember. They exist to reinforce the expertise of your business article marketing and could cover such topics as:
- The market itself
- What's lacking in the market
- Trends in customers' needs and interests
- Customer satisfaction
- Seasonal interests or variations
- Navigating new rules, regulations or legal issues in your industry
These are the types of topics that people might read today and the types of insights that will be useful points of reference to which you can refer others throughout the life cycle of your business article marketing campaign.