Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a marketing strategy where you create and share valuable and relevant online assets with your target audience. They can be videos, blogs, e-books or social media posts. The goal is not to promote your brand but rather, to generate interest in your products or services. Content marketing is educational in nature. If you offer good information then your visitors will become loyal to your brand. Therefore, content marketing isn’t about the brand, your products, or your services. It’s about your audience. What do they care about?

In addition, when you create content and people visit your website to read it, you can pixelate your traffic (a little piece of code provided to you by platforms such as Facebook and Google). By capturing this traffic, you will be able to retarget them at a later date via paid ads — and, ultimately drive profitable customer action. Just remember, content marketing takes a lot of work, persistence, and patience – it’s not for everyone.

Content Marketing Strategies

Here are a few reasons you would use Content Marketing:

Have the right people find you
Build trust first
Engage your audience
Acquire new customers
Upsell existing customers
Reduce marketing costs

Have the right people find you

The reason most people visit search engines such as Bing or Google is to find answers to their questions. That is the goal of SEO. It is to get your content optimized so it shows up at the top of the search engines and answers these questions. So, if you are selling physical products, for example, try to turn those physical products into some source of information people are looking for. So if you sell pool stuff, why not write about the types of pools or the types of equipment for each type of pool. You can even share pictures of clients playing in the pool with your pool toys. You can provide a coupon for those that share their pictures with you. The content you can provide is endless. Just put yourself in the shoes of the customer, or visit Google to see the questions they are asking, and provide content that provides a solution to their problems.

Build trust first

Your content has the potential to build massive trust. Do you want potential customers to immediately think of you when they are in the market for your product or service? Do you wish it took you less time to sell your products or services? There is a part of the selling process that is often overlooked by marketers and business owners alike. Those who implement it have a high sales volume, an easier time getting a prospect to say “yes” and enjoy a business of repeat and referral clients. It’s called trust. So when you write your content, make sure it is of high quality, it provides value and that it truly represents your brand. If done correctly, it will do most of the heavy lifting for you.

Engage your audience with content marketing

Your content marketing is only as valuable as its ability to engage with your audience and get them to keep coming back. If your audience is not becoming a subscriber, it is not purchasing from you or becoming loyal customers, then maybe you are not targeting the right audience, your content is not providing value, or what is worse, you are not reaching your audience. The best way to figure this out is to have analytics in place. Take the time to understand Google analytics or any other tool that will provide you with an insight into your visitor’s path and what is stopping them from taking action.

Acquire new customers

If you successfully implemented the two prior steps, then you should have built an audience that likes what you have, it engages with your content and trusts the information you provide then they are more likely to purchase your products or services. Content Marketing if done well, can be a powerful sales driver and a phenomenal way to increase revenue.

Upsell existing customers

Subscribers and readers of your content will most likely keep buying from you for a long time versus those that just responded to an ad without having built that trust with you first. Content marketing is a powerful way to create more loyal customers who have the potential to increase sales through cross-selling or up-selling. Case in point, 8 out of 10 readers of Sainsbury’s Magazine bought a product from them after reading about it in their magazine.

Reduce marketing costs

Reduce marketing costs by generating great content. It is cost-effective and reaches large audiences. People love to access websites as they look for products and services; they engage with their communities on social media and ask for recommendations; they seek out reviews on brands they are considering. And marketers must go where their target customers are. Therefore, content marketing done right can increase sales, reduce marketing cost and therefore increase ROI. [thrive_leads id=’4998′]