Your company executives may be telling you to push product through your marketing efforts, but the most effective approach to content marketing is not talking about your product or your company. It’s not even just about your customers. It’s about your audience.
Lead with Content: Your marketing instincts may tell you to lead with your product or service and how much better it is than your competitors’. It’s great that you’re completely sold on your company; it makes your job more fun. But you’ve got to get past that instinct and focus on value-added content marketing. This means high-quality content that serves the needs of your audience through blog posts that solve common problems, how-to videos that provide insight into the industry or an infographic that informs.
Build a Community: Cultivate a conversation that’s not just between you and your customers, but between audience members. Think about the types of content marketing posts that contribute to a conversation and invite people to share their experiences and thoughts.
Liven it Up: Whether it’s an inspirational message or hilariously funny outtakes of your how-to video, your audience will love being entertained. You’ll connect with audience members emotionally and they’ll have something with a little more depth to attach to the brand perception. It has to be done within the brand messaging you’ve established, but don’t be afraid to do more than just inform your audience.
Be Present: Be prompt in your responses to conversations happening around your content marketing. A commenter whose comment goes unanswered for 36 hours may not bother trying to be part of a conversation next time.
A good content marketing strategy will show clear evidence that it’s adding value to the audience. Take PI Consulting Group. When they partnered with SJC Marketing for their content strategy, it soon became clear that the content was effective. Visitors linger on the site and they click between content pages, consuming the valuable information they find there. There’s more to it than just a casual visit; over time, they’re building a relationship with the brand.
Content marketing isn’t just throwing a blog post on your site now and then or casually hanging out on social media. It’s not about making a resolution to post once a month. A strategic approach adds value to your audience and naturally builds growth. Our team at SJC Marketing to turn your content marketing into a growth strategy.