Enriching Others.

Today's Marketing Cookie is a valuable principle, worthy of a life-long investment. As marketers, we work really hard to create awareness for a company, staying up nights to think of new ways to promote the products and services we offer. The smartest marketers learn how to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message. When everything aligns perfectly, these efforts can trigger an emotional response that causes the prospect to make a purchase. When your marketing plan works, it is a beautiful and mind-blowingly incredible feeling—truly incredible!

What if there was another way?

When a prospect has a need and they are searching for the products and services you offer, they want you to sell it to them. Did you hear that? They need your product and they want to buy it from you. In fact, every time you satisfy the needs of a customer, you enrich them. When the toilet won't flush and the plumber shows up—you're enriched. When your throat is dry and a Coke machine dispenses a cold drink into your hand—you're enriched. When you want to hear a classic Beatles song and buy it on iTunes—you're enriched. When room service delivers coffee, two eggs, and raisin toast to your hotel room for $84 (plus tip), you're upset at first—and then you're enriched. Yes, enriched. When you deliver it right and enrich enough prospects, you could even become rich. It's all pretty simple, right?

What if there was another way?

Well, we've been doing a lot of content marketing work for the past five years. For one hospital in particular, we started out focused on writing blogs that explained how fantastic the hospital is, celebrating the talented doctors and nurses. Then we journeyed through a series of patient testimonials in an effort to build credibility and humanize the hospital. While all of it was very well done and produced some website visits, it did not enrich others.

Then, one day during the holidays, we noticed some interesting searches for diabetes recipes. So, we began publishing recipes in the blog. WHAMMO! The traffic started pouring in. Next, we noticed that people were searching for information about diabetes symptoms. So, we started generating content about symptoms in the blog. BLAMMO! More traffic started pouring in. The truth is, we stopped trying to "become rich" by bragging about the hospital all the time, and turned our attention to enriching others.

Every time we wrote in the blog, we tried to give prospects what they wanted. We constantly studied Google data to discover what prospects were looking for, and we gave it to them. The more we enriched them, the more they came to our blog. The site traffic grew from 40,000 visits per month to well over 150,000 visits per month in less than ninety days. We were helping people learn, enriching them, and it was very satisfying work. By the way, when you increase your website traffic by 275% by educating your target audience, you will get more business. I know, because we tracked that too.

I encourage you to try giving your prospects what they want. Stop bragging and teach them something. I've learned that enriching others is a really satisfying way to get rich!