Content marketing has become an invaluable tool for businesses in the day age. It’s more affordable than outbound or broadcast marketing, and you can target content for the people who are most likely to buy your products and services. Sure, your content might be seen by fewer people, but those people are more likely to be converted into a sale.
Content marketing is the production of content, whether it’s blogs, videos, images, infographics, or any other type of content, that’s relevant and informative to your customers. It’s a great way to not only get sales, but to grow your brand and set yourself up as an authority in your market.
Content Strategy
With content marketing, it’s important to develop a strategy before you truly dip your toes in. Having a plan will ensure that you’re not just posting content haphazardly with no real goal and no cohesion. Everything you post must have a place within your grander scheme, and there should be a reason you’ve posted it. Content for the sake of content isn’t what you want. You want quality content that’s well written and produces, and engages with your customers. With a good content strategy, your posts will be more effective and they will have a purpose.
Know Your Audience
One of the most important facets of good content marketing materials is knowing your audience. That way you can tailor your content to what most appeals and inspire them. To do this, create a customer persona of your core customers. Identify what demographics you’d like to target, and what they might have that’s not related to your industry. Keep going back to this persona when you are writing and producing content. If you don’t think that persona would like what you have created, then you’re on the wrong track.
Provide Value To Your Audience
More than ever before, you have to provide value in the content you produce. Make sure you are focusing on what would help the customer, even if it seems like it might cost you business. For instance, a plumbing company can have tips to avoid problems. While that may mean that they don’t call you right away, some day down the line they will have a problem they couldn’t avoid, and your company will be the first name they think of.
Share your knowledge and your insight, and provide the customer with something they can use. Anticipate questions and answer them. You can do this with blog posts, FAQs, and live streams Doing this will build a relationship with your customers that can lead to brand loyalty. A good rule of thumb is to use an 80/20 rule for your content. 80% of your content should be informative and authentic. 20% of your content can be for trying to get them to buy. The 80% that draws your audience in and builds trust will allow you to post the other 20%.
Be Consistent
Not only should you be consistent, but there should never be a time where you go without adding some new content to your website and social media for long stretches of time. Post regularly, and mix up the type of content that you are providing to your customer. They will come to expect your content on a regular basis, and appreciate that it’s there on schedule. This can be time consuming, so you may want to invest in a service like Compose.ly that provides online writing help. They can produce content per your specifications on a regular basis at an affordable price. Consistency should also come with patience. You will produce a lot of content before it starts paying dividends, so be patient and you will see the payoff.
Multimedia
It’s never been easier to produce multimedia content. Your phone can do most of the heavy lifting for video and image, plus there are apps that can create any effect you want. Customers and consumers engage more with video than any other content, but don’t overdo it. Remember that you want quantity over quality. Edit your videos and add a transcript so that people can watch and understand even if they have it on mute or they are hard of hearing.
Video will also help you with your brand’s personality and authenticity. Inject some personality into your videos, and don’t be afraid to show some things that happen behind the scenes. Try producing a live stream where you answer questions and give advice. Your customers will get a glimpse of the people behind your brand, and this will build trust. They are much more likely to spend their money with you if they feel like they know and trust you.
Metrics
Everything you do should be tracked and measured. There are many tools on the web that you can use to measure engagement, traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, and more. Regularly monitoring your performance will allow you to quickly pivot to try another tactic if something isn’t working. You may find that your audience doesn’t give you a good response to video, so you might produce more blogs. Maybe you’ll find that customers are clicking away from your sales page when they get there, which would indicate that you have to switch something up there to get them to stick. If you aren’t measuring, then you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t, and you’ll be making decisions without all the details.
Content Marketing
You have to do whatever it takes to stand out in the crowd, or just keep up with it. There has never been more competition, with your competing market potentially being businesses around the world. Content marketing is a way for you to build your brand, position your brand as an expert in your field, all while bringing in more sales and revenue. All it takes is a little investment in time and money, and your business could be building itself to be a money-making success.