One of the ways we often talk about reaching out to and engaging consumers and potential customers with your online marketing is through being helpful.  Being helpful vs selling can take you a lot farther with a customer, and help you gain more traction, than simply tossing content marketing messages out there trying to snag a lead.

Unfortunately when we talk about this topic with business owners and marketers we frequently hear comments like “We’re not sure what we can provide that would be helpful.”

That’s understandable given the state of marketing to people online and how businesses view it.  Many business owners have never taken the time to sit down and study their target market so that they fully understand their wants and needs, or even their preferences.  Therefore, ways of being helpful don’t often stand out to individuals and it’s rarely something that’s on the forefront of content marketing.

It’s not difficult to figure out what you can do to offer help, you really just need to step into the shoes of your customer for a little while and take a look at the problem from their perspective.  Figure out their questions, confusions, frustrations, etc through various stages of the buying process.

If you need help identifying the bottle-neck points for a customer, consider some of these tips.

1. Ask the people leading the front line of customer interaction - your customer service team.  They are the most in touch with your customers and hear the greatest number of complains, vents, issues, etc.  Turn to this team and make sure they document every concern and complain that comes in.  You can use this information to find patters and then create content to address the issue and make people feel more comfortable in doing business with you.

2. Ask the customer. You can use a number of channels to get feedback from the people that you service or want to service.  Provide polls, surveys on the web, email surveys, inquiries on Facebook, phone call surveys, etc.  You can find out directly from the consumer the types of issues they’re having with your company, products or services.  It will also speak spades about your overall character because you’re willing to ask.

3. Use your own search engine. Most websites have an internal search query setup to make life easier when navigating a site.  You can use the data stored from the search entries to find out where most of your visitors need help the most.

4. Be your own customer. You can’t learn a whole lot if you’re just working within your business or sitting around in your office.  Take the time to shop your own product.  Try to do it from the perspective of someone who needs it, starting with searching through the engines to find a solution.  Contact your customer service department, dig for information about the company, etc.  Try to discover what you can from an outside perspective and unlock the hurdles.

5. Look around and compare. You can’t just shop yourself, you should also go through your competitor sites.  Use their entire process to discover friction points, discover how issues are handled, find areas that outshine you or points that can serve as inspiration for your own business.  Don’t just go to the people you think are your competitors.  Check out who Google says your competition is.

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