What is Content Marketing?
What is the first thing you do when you need, well, anything? I’d guess that 99% of the time, you turn to Google.
If you have a business, having an online presence is a necessity. If you want to have a successful business, you need a content marketing strategy in place.
Why? Because content marketing creates a path for prospects to find your business. How? By creating informative, engaging content, like blog posts, articles, videos, and more, that helps prospects discover how to solve a problem and fulfill their needs and wants with your service or product.
Content marketing is such an essential part of any business’s marketing strategy that it even outweighs the importance of traditional marketing in many cases.
What is the definition of content marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute gives the following definition:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Did you have to read that twice? Same. Let’s unpack that.
Content Marketing is Strategic Marketing
In order for content marketing to be successful, a strategy needs to be in place so that you know what kind of content to create, who it’s for, and how to share it. You need a method, you need a plan, you need a goal.
As much as we all love the Field of Dreams mantra, “If you build it, they will come,” this does not apply to content marketing. Content marketing involves more than just writing a blog post, firing off an email newsletter, or making a YouTube video and then waiting for prospects to pour in. Earning your prospects’ attention (i.e. eyes on your website) involves strategy.
A content marketing strategy in its simplest form: create excellent content for a specific audience and pair it with a distribution plan that will reach and attract high quality prospects.
Creating Valuable and Consistent Content
All this talk of content but what kind of content are we talking about? The word “content” is extremely vague but in the context of strategic content marketing it typically falls into the following categories:
Blog posts and articles
Email newsletters
Long-form content, like ebooks, case studies, and white papers
Videos
Podcasts
That’s a lot of options!
Which brings us to “valuable, relevant, and consistent content.”
Your business exists because it solves a problem. Use this lens as the basis for all of your content. Help your prospects solve a problem by showing that you a) understand their pain points, and b) know how to fix it.
It’s tempting to highlight the many awesome features of your product or the finer points of your service but flip the script and think about all this from your prospect’s perspective. They are not jumping on your website because they want a list of service features. Potential customers want to know if you can solve their problem and meet their needs. For example, you’re not just selling a fence. You’re selling peace of mind that Fido’s not going to run away into the street.
Consistency is critical to a successful content marketing strategy. In order for your content to do its job of attracting quality prospects, it needs to be published regularly and fit into your business’s overall brand. With that in mind, choose a type of content that you can produce regularly, either by hiring a professional to do it for you or choosing something that you already know how to create.
Choosing a Clearly Defined Audience
Get specific about who your ideal customers are and create content for them. Otherwise, it will feel like you’re shouting into the abyss and gaining nothing in return for your hard creative work!
Ask yourself:
Who are your ideal customers?
What types of clients do you want to book?
Where are they in the buying journey?
Then create a few ideal customer profiles and create content for each profile. For example, someone putting in a pool has different fence requirements than someone who just desperately wants to keep the deer out of her garden. The same piece of content won’t work for both!
Further, someone who is just casually looking for a solution has different content needs than someone who is familiar with your service and has their credit card in hand, ready to hit “Checkout.”
Drive Profitable Customer Action
Creating great content for a specific audience is two-thirds of the strategy. Now you need to decide what you want the customer to do next. How can you create profit/revenue from your content?
This is where the Call to Action (CTA) comes in. The Call to Action is the portion of your content where you tell your audience what it is you would like them to do next. Depending on your business and the type of content, this could be to schedule a discovery call, sign up for your newsletter, order a sample, make an appointment, or purchase the product.
The ultimate goal for content marketing is to convert prospects into customers. But before you decide “BUY NOW” is your go-to CTA, take a step back and think about what your audience is ready for at this point.
It’s critical to match the Call to Action with the content.
Someone early in the buying journey probably isn’t ready to open their wallet, but they might be ready to join your email list. Here you need to play the long game. Meanwhile, that guy putting in the pool is being mandated to install a fence so he is farther along in the buying journey and is ready to make a purchase. Make it easy for him with a “Schedule a Free Estimate” CTA.
Pull It All Together
No matter what kind of business you run, content marketing has a place in your marketing plan. By creating engaging blog posts and articles, high-conversion email newsletters and even long-form case studies and reports, you can raise your business’s profile, attract higher quality prospects, and help them feel prepared and confident in becoming your customer or client.
Do you need help with your content marketing strategy? Book a call with me today! I want to hear about your work, your business goals, and how content marketing can help boost your business.
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