Content Marketing is a strategy where valuable material is regularly created and distributed to build and retain long-term relationships with clients.
It gives your customers a narrative to build a connection with, outside of your product or service. In the age of all things digital, it’s important to demonstrate your business’ personality and credibility. Content Marketing demonstrates your brand’s persona, which your customer can then engage with.
What Content?
The content you use may be in the form of a newsletter, email subscription or regular blog posts. By providing interesting, relevant and valuable updates to your customers, you encourage them to become emotionally invested in your product or company. As a result, you can promote your business with something of substance as opposed to relying on discounts or paid advertising.
It’s similar to how bands post backstage videos and photos on Social Media to keep their fans updated, entertained and feeling valuable.
Imagine you want to buy a particular item or service. You find a business selling what you want but you’ve never heard of them before. Odds are that you’ll head over to the ‘About Us’ section of their website to make a judgement on whether the company is reputable. It’s sensible to learn more about the company before making a purchase.
Using this ‘new business’ as an example, there’s a whole array of content they could use to build up their Content Marketing portfolio.
- Photos, descriptions and videos on how the product is made
- Inspiration and history behind the company
- Information about the founder
- Regular articles about relevant topics that their customers would enjoy
To help gauge if an article or blog post will be popular, consider using social media to post a snippet, like a quote or a single sentence, then evaluate the response it gets. This will help you decide whether creating the full article is worth your time.
What you choose to publish doesn’t necessarily have to focus entirely on your product. You can post industry relevant bulletins and articles, like an update on stocks and shares for a finance company, or anything that you think your target market will find engaging. Using this method, you can retain customer loyalty by demonstrating the professionalism and personality of your business.
What’s the Benefit of Content Marketing?
Especially with start-ups, the focus tends to be on attracting new customers. Whereas, in reality it’s just as important to invest your time in making sure your existing customers feel valued.
Not only does maintaining interesting and frequently updated online profiles help new customers find you by boosting your exposure, it also keeps your company in the minds of your past clients. Posting content that is relevant to your customers keeps them engaged. Therefore, it’s vital to know your audience and consider what they want to read and learn about.
“Real content marketing isn’t repurposed advertising, it is making something worth talking about.” – Seth Godin
Marketing trends and high frequency SEO keywords are constantly changing. Regularly posting engaging content keeps your business up to date with search trends and increases the likelihood of potential customers choosing your business over your competitors.
Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
To avoid flooding your customers with an overwhelming quantity of irrelevant information, develop a game plan to help yourself succeed with Content Marketing.
Having a strategy which pin-points different posts to specific stages of your company life-cycle will increase the relevancy of your content.
It’s important to plan which content is better suited to each delivery channel. You may have the same customers following your business across multiple social media accounts and they could get bored of seeing the same information repeated.
Varying your content across different platforms can also help you to target different demographics. Some age groups are more suited to a particular style of content or are only interested in a certain type of information. Similarly, those subscribed to a newsletter will typically be wanting in-depth passages of information, whereas customers following a Twitter account want fast and mobile-friendly updates.
A very simple step by step guide to starting your own Content Marketing Strategy
- Research what your customers are looking at and what your competitors are doing
- Stay up to date with trends in your field and on social media
- Consider the benefits of outsourcing your Content Marketing
- Set a schedule and keep on top of your plan
- Evaluate your successes and failures to continually adapt your strategy
For a more detailed overview into Content Marketing check out the Content Marketing Institute’s website.
Additional Resources for Content Marketing Strategies:
Should You Outsource Content Marketing? 11 Questions to Consider
Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
11 Steps to Create a Content Marketing Strategy to Grow Your Business
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Ref – https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/content-marketing-quotes