People who just started smoking cigars or want to try it out, don’t have much information or experience. Maybe they went to a party and enjoyed their first premium cigar paired with the perfect whiskey or saw their favorite actor smoking one on television and thought they’d try it out.
They don’t know anything about you, so how can your cigar business target these new and interested cigar smokers? Inbound marketing is designed to create content around specific audiences. They seek out information about cigar smoking and there’s your content ready for them to digest.
Since you provided the information, you’re the one they’ll choose for their first cigar purchase.
Inbound Marketing Is About Knowing Your Audience
Who are these new and interested cigar smokers? Create audience personas of the types of beginners you want to attract. Perhaps they’re young professionals that enjoy the status cigar smoking gives them or an older man that has never tried a cigar, but always wanted to.
Your audience is what directs the content. You don’t want just anyone seeing this content. Also, you want a specific audience so they can learn and then move to the next section of the customer journey.
You can make the customer persona general so that it encompasses a larger group of people or laser targeted, so you can create specific types of content just for them. New cigar smokers and those interested in it want information and they look to you to have it.
Gathering Leads Through Inbound Marketing
You know who you’re looking to attract, but how do you get them to your website? The best way is to go directly to the source. If you’re a cigar bar or lounge, then you likely have new cigar smokers come in all the time.
They come in and enjoy the atmosphere, but you can tell they know little about cigar smoking. Cigar shop owners can do the same thing, you see people window shop and look confused.
Walk up to them and tell them you can see they’re new to the experience and ask them if they have any questions. Odds are they have lots of questions and these are the questions every other new and interested cigar smoker has as well.
Take notes, and now you have an idea on how to create content that appeals to them. You probably thought of some of these already, but the interview drives it home and provides angles you never thought about.
If you’re a strictly online shop, then this can be more difficult. Instead, you can reach out to some of your cigar-smoking friends and ask them what question they had when they first started.
People are excited about the chance to get their questions answered and you can sweeten the pot by giving them a discount the next time they visit.
Use Content to Answer Their Questions
New cigar smokers and those interested in trying have lots of questions, so use blog posts and frequently asked questions pages to answer them.
Generally, blog posts that answer questions rank well on Google and end up in the rich snippets you see at the top of the page such as the knowledge graph. This is valuable real estate because they’re above the search results.
Before you create the content, you need to do keyword research. When people type something into a search engine, it’s called a query. For people seeking information about a subject such as cigar smoking, it’s usually a question such as “how do I smoke a cigar, how to light a cigar, where to buy cigars in name of town.”
If you want to attract these people, then you need to have content on your site that matches the search queries. You can do keyword research on your own by querying it yourself or there are third-party applications that can help you.
Keyword research is a tedious job but finding that perfect keyword that your competitors didn’t could mean the difference between a massive increase in traffic and nothing.
Keep Content Conversational and Basic
You’ve smoked cigars for many years. You loved it so much you started your own business around it. You know all the technical jargon and can write amazing in-depth blogs on everything from where they’re grown to how they’re made.
When writing your content, keep your audience in mind. They’re new to the experience and don’t understand all the technicalities. When writing your content, remember you’re speaking to someone that knows little about the experience.
Answer their questions and show them what the cigar smoking experience is like.
Send Them Down the Cigar Rabbit Hole
The goal of cigar shop marketing is ultimately conversions. The journey from interested in cigar smoking to visiting your shop or buying online can be a long one. Use internal links to send them to other blog posts, so they can increase their knowledge.
Spread a few product links in too in case they’re interested in taking the next step. By including links to other content, you send them down Alice’s rabbit hole and soon they’re reading article after article.
A Picture Says a Thousand Words
Words are great at informing people, but all content needs a visual element. It could be professionally taken photos of people smoking cigars in your bar or lounge. It could be illustrations that help make the content look amazing.
Marketing for cigar shops isn’t easy, but if you can rank well on Google with great written content and amazing visuals, then your target audience flocks to you.
Bring New and Interested Cigar Smokers to You
There is nothing more powerful in the world than information. It’s why Google makes it a high priority on their search algorithm.
If you can answer questions and use optimized content, then Google ranks you higher than the competition. Inbound marketing is about casting a smaller net to grab your specific audience.
If you want to learn more about cigar shop marketing or don’t have time for great content writing, then please contact us today.