Is there a way to reach customers without interrupting them?
Engage rather than to be avoided.
That is content marketing.
Content marketing is a strategy of informing and educating customers in an interesting way that will boost their interest and aid in their analysis and purchasing of your products and services.
How can you use content marketing to improve your business?
1. Content marketing establishes yourself as a thought leader
You have the potential to present the best brand image for your business. To be a thought leader, impeccable content is paramount. It is important to know your content inside and out but it is even more important to be able to express that content flawlessly.
2. Content marketing is cheaper compared to alternative forms of marketing
From a monetary standpoint it takes little to nothing to write a blog post or a post on social media, compared to running an advertisement in the newspaper, television, online or on a billboard. What content marketing does do is take up a lot of your time. Content creation cannot be rushed. Ads have a beginning and an end, content remains.
3. Content marketing builds valuable relationships with your audience
Content marketing helps to make a personal connection and show that your company isn’t a robot of regurgitated information, it shows people your human side.
4. Content marketing attracts customers for free
How much does it cost to buy a google ad or a sponsored ad on facebook? What is the cost to share content?
5. Content marketing works with any industry
If you have a business you must have information to share. Content marketing is the sharing of information unique to your brand. Nobody can be more helpful about your brand than the person who knows the brand inside out. So don’t think ‘I have nothing to say or share’ instead think ‘what useful tip or trick can I share to improve my product experience’.
6. Content marketing allows you to provide proof of quality service
Through case studies, videos and testimonials customers have the opportunity to see the product and service in use before-hand. They are able to see the quality of the service and aid in the analysis of your product.
7. Content marketing pulls in unexpected customers
Content marketing utilizes many online forms capable of reaching persons that possibly didn’t know that you existed.
8. Content marketing improves customer experience
You now have the opportunity to allow your customers to stop thinking and speaking negatively about your brand on the challenges of your product. Through content marketing all FAQs or concerns would have been answered early in the buying process, and can be easily updated when new queries arise. You are now interested in boosting your customer engagement by reviewing and solving their problems before targeting them for a sale.
9. Content marketing grows a long-term audience
When stellar content is created and shared, your audience comes to you because of their interest. Interested persons make efforts and commitments. Unlike traditional marketing where you have to keep targeting different groups for every new promotion, customers gained through content marketing don’t usually leave. Just keep creating content to keep them informed by utilizing follow-up techniques. Don’t attract them and leave them hanging. By choosing content marketing, you made a decision to embark in a long-term commitment of value with your audience.
10. Content marketing positions you as a helpful resource
You want to help, that is why you chose this strategy. You want to create informed buyers. Who can teach and train a potential customer about your product’s full potential better than the person who will be providing the service?
11. Content marketing encourages virality
The ability of sharing information in real-time is social media, and that is only one form of content creation. Positive or negative, information about your company is spread and shared faster than you can count to 10. It takes one second for someone to retweet a post on twitter, one medium with millions of followers. Giving information with spelling errors like ‘slapt’ will make your company go viral but in a negative way, as the content of the information is lost because of a single error.
12. Content Marketing allows you to experiment
There are over 20 types of content that can be created and shared with your audiences. A combination of contents work best with different industries. The expense of a failed advertisement is more expensive than the cost associated with a failed content technique. A failed content marketing strategy can be tweaked for improvement, easier than a billboard with a misinterpreted message can be fixed.
13. Content marketing reduces your dependence on external sources
You have created your content. It is yours and no one elses, nobody can take that from you. The email listings, your followers, your subscribers – they are all yours. Your 5000 valued long-term customers will generate more leads for you simply because of good service.
14. Content marketing is recyclable
The same content can be recreated in different ways. This blog post is being created now. It is a part of the “Be the MVP” series which means it can become a compiled e-book, or a case study could be presented to show how these benefits have been actualised in companies. Additionally content can be revised once new information is available. Can you recycle an ad or will you to have to pay additional money for that change?
15. Content marketing educates your employees
Your greatest ambassador for your business is your employee or team members. In your bid to educate your customers, ensure that your employees are educated as well. Content created for customers should be content that the employees understand, as they are a customer themselves even if not to your specific service. So ensure they read the blog posts, like these to be informed. At our company, we give quizzes to the team members to ensure that they have read the content that we have created for our potential customers.
Have you been using any of these ways to “Be the MVP” in your industry?
If not, I hope that these 15 ways will help you to make a more informed decision about using content marketing. If you have any others, please comment and share them with us.
It's Pixel Perfect 