You’ve built a strategic approach to your content marketing strategy, creating a consistent content calendar, a variety of text and video formats and a balanced distribution plan.
It’s possible to build a strategy like this and still not see the results you were looking for.
That could be because you are focused on what you are trying to accomplish, rather than what your target market needs. Your content is designed to trumpet your brand in the hopes of growing sales.
The problem is, your customer doesn’t care about your sales. When you flip your approach and build trust with your audience by adding value, you’ll see better and lasting growth.
First, let’s agree that trust is crucial. Here are a couple of intriguing stats:
- The 2022 Consumer Intelligence Series Survey on Trust by PwC found that 50% of participants identified building trust as what they thought should be the top priority for brands.
- The Gartner 2019 Brand Trust Survey’s results were even more drastic. 81% of consumers say they won’t do business with a brand they don’t trust.
You might be wondering how you get started with prioritizing trust. There are some questions you can ask your team to contemplate as you plan your content marketing strategy:
- What problems or challenges are common among your target audience?
- When your potential customers consume content, what is the purpose? Why are they choosing to do this instead of addressing other priorities with their limited time?
- What value can you, as a brand, add to the lives of your target audience?
These questions help your team step back and take some time to empathize with your potential customers. Now you’re ready to begin creating your content.
Make it Relevant and Valuable: Your content should solve a problem, address an issue or discuss a concern that is relevant to your audience. You should avoid talking about how great your product or service is; it’s about your customer’s needs, not about yours.
Share Stories: Enlist some of your most loyal customers to provide testimonials and reviews in text or video format. These make great content that helps build trust. Your audience will hear how your product or service solved a challenge for one of your customers.
Shoot Straight: It’s always a challenge getting noticed in all the online noise, but don’t resort to trickery to get the attention of your audience. Clickbait or hints about false or misleading promotions will diminish your trustworthiness.
Ready to rethink your content marketing strategy? We’re here to help. Contact us at SJC Marketing to get started.