#22: LEAD GENERATION with content marketing expert Marcus Sheridan, author of"They ask, you answer" - a podcast by Carlo Pignataro

Welcome to the age of transparency sounds like the title of a scifi movie, doesn’t it?

But if you think about it, the internet, and its mainstream, mobile, use has created an unprecedented opportunity for people to source information, and to a certain degree of accuracy, to fact check.

And so, trying to hide something, or avoiding uncomfortable questions may be just the wrong thing to do for a business, or a public figure.

Yet, nothing is harder to tell than the truth.

For reasons that made sense during the industrial age, when people had few, if any, tools to conduct their own research before buying anything, many companies are still reluctant to show their behind the scenes, their backstage.

They pretend people are still interested in their posed photoshoots, in the “about us” section of their website, and that buyers are still willing to engage in a conversation with a company in the early stage of their buying process, when they are still making up their mind.

Well, things have changed, people have changed, and when they chose to talk to a company, they are informed, much more informed than before, and probably more informed that most businesses would like them to be.

In the age of transparency, we need to embrace truth and to say it with my guest of today, Marcus Sheridan, when THEY ASK YOU ANSWER.

That’s right. Business today is all about communicating honestly with our customers and potential ones, It is about helping them make an informed decision, whether they decide to buy from us or not. It’s about choosing to educate an audience, before hoping to seduce a clientele.

Marcus Sheridan, an entrepreneur, speaker and trainer to Fortune 500 companies, is the author of the best selling book “THEY ASK YOU ANSWER”, a book which has given me two precious gifts: The first is an understanding of the simple, yet powerful philosophy behind the strategy of creating content that anticipates customers’ questions, even the most uncomfortable ones, and the second gift  is a series of practical steps that any business can take to communicate with the right audience and generate a remarkable amount of qualified leads online and offline

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