Content Marketing can have some incredible benefits for your business

But a lot of people still underestimate the value of Content Marketing, or indeed don’t fully understand what it is or why they should invest in bespoke content.

So let’s start by working out exactly what it is!

CONTENT MARKETING – a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.

But I prefer Content Marketing Institute’s 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.

Especially the line following that definition which says “Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”

So Content Marketing is a way to talk about your products or services in a way that’s audience first and user driven. It’s less about you, and more about them – a good place to start.

What can be content?

Anything your audience can consume can be content.

Blog posts
Video & Slideshows
Graphics & Animations
Podcasts
Quizzes
Ebooks & Whitepapers
Resources & Workbooks
Playlists
Q&A or AMAs
Facebook/Instagram Live
Branded Filters & Camera Frames

And the list goes on!

The type of content you create for your Content Marketing efforts will depend completely on your audience and objectives.

Great Content Marketing can have a multitude of benefits to your business, let’s look at some of them.

Traffic & Search Results

Everyone wants more traffic to their website, or at least more qualified traffic. When you publish or host quality content on your site, people hit your site to consume it. And you know they’re more than likely interested in your product or services because that’s what your content (even if loosely) relates to.

When you offer something of value to your audience, they’ll come to you. This is the complete opposite of traditional marketing where you go to where they are and interrupt them. If you content is strong enough and valuable enough you might not even have to pay to promote it. You can publish it, and let people come to you in their own way and their own time.

Here’s a great example – Jon Loomer’s Facebook Image Dimension Guide. In case you don’t know who Jon Loomer is he’s a Facebook Ads heavy hitter who runs online training and a couple of membership clubs for exclusive content. In fact, everything Jon does is an example of excellent Content Marketing.

I read in one of his emails a while back that this page on his site is the most visited. It comes up if you Google “Facebook Image Specs” and in creating it, he knew that anyone who visited that page was looking for information on how to optimise their creative to best display on Facebook.

Whether they were marketers, or business owners, or entrepreneurs – they all had that in common. And they were coming to him. For free!

Imagine you’re in a competitive niche; all clamoring to get to the top position in a Google search, but your content – perhaps a simple “how to” video is what people are visiting? That’s YOUR brand getting ahead. Standing out without pushing people away with a hard sell.

We’ll talk more about what you can do with this traffic in a sec.

Brand Awareness & Recall

Word of mouth is still an incredibly powerful way to get your business noticed, and you’ve probably heard the phrase “word of mouse” said too. It’s so important to be known and remembered.

How can people use your services if they don’t know who you are?

How can they recommend you to their friends if they can’t remember your business name?

Create content that resonates with your audience and they’re more likely to remember you. And if they hadn’t heard of you before it’s an even better way to make them aware of your brand!

The idea is that it’s not only valuable enough for them, but sharable as well. Any time you can get people to share your content as a brand you’ve allowed them to represent you and vice versa. They’ve thought whatever you created was good enough for them to put their name to and pass along to their friends and colleagues.

And with Content Marketing you can do this without the rude interruption of more traditional types of advertising.

Brand Affinity & Loyalty

Something else you can achieve with Content Marketing is affinity from your audience, and loyalty from your current customers.

This isn’t just touchy-feely (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but in a crowded market you want people can choose your brand, over others and their affinity for what your brand stands for could be the deciding factor. But they can’t do this unless they know what your brand MEANS.

You content can explain your brand positioning, and win your audience over into fans and purchasers.

Tell your brand’s story and let your audience fall in love with you.

Then once you’ve earned their support you want to retain them!

Great content can remind people why they choose you and not your competitors. It can help deepen the relationship they have with your brand and make them less likely to stray.

Audience Segmentation

Content Marketing can help you segment your audience and only show them what they want to see more of.

You can track and tag pages of your website and/or individual pieces of content, to build audience pools from your different content themes into remarketing segments.

That way when you pay to promote a new piece of content you can target the people who’ve consumed similar content. Facebook targeting allows us to differentiate traffic that’s visited certain pages of our website and not others, and also people who’ve spend a certain amount of time on a particular page so we can serve ads to people who interacted with particular content this way.

It’s the same concept ecommerce stores use when they offer you similar items to the ones in your cart. They know you like xyz product with certain attributes, it follows you’ll like other products with similar attributes.

This segmentation keeps your audience seeing the content that resonates with them, and prevents them seeing content themes that may not.

Funnel Content

If you have a sales funnel you need to fill that funnel with content.

This content needs to be relevant to the audience AND their buyer journey.

Content Marketing can attract people to your brand and fill the top of the funnel.

And it’s especially important during the consideration phase (middle of the funnel) to make sure people choose your brand over your competition.

Thought Leadership

Content Marketing can position you (as a personal brand) or your company as the thought leader in your niche.

Great content will ensure your fans know you’re the “go to” source for information on your product or industry and give you an edge over your competitors, just like in the Jon Loomer example.

Business Opportunities

Checking the data from your Content Marketing efforts can point you in the direction of new business opportunities.

If you’re looking at expanding or even narrowing your offerings, the data on which content your audience consumed can help you refine your business to offer what has most resonated with your target market.

Content Marketing & Social Media – BFFs

Why am I telling you about Content Marketing?

Because Content Marketing and Social Media are BFFs. Your content can be distributed on Social Media, and content themes can be established based on your social posting.

Think about your most popular Social Media posts – what were they about? What can you learn from this to inform your content offering?

Social Media gives us the power of community for our brands, and it also allows us to target with a high level of accuracy people we want to reach beyond that community where we know our content will resonate.

So put some thought into your Content Marketing efforts and invest in some quality creators if it’s not your thing. The work of an excellent copywriter, graphic designer or videographer will elevate your content and you’ll reap the benefits.

But make sure to leave some money in the budget to ensure this content sees the light of day with the people you made it for.

Do you invest in Content Marketing?

What questions do you have about content?

As a business, do you have an advertising strategy? If you do – when did you last review its success in generating you business? If the answer is ‘a while ago’ or even, ‘I don’t know’ then it probably needs your attention.

Does your strategy use the latest data, technology and metrics to make sure it reaches your target demographic? Here are some tips to help you assess your current efforts.

Use Current Technology

Recently I saw a renowned law firm’s advert on tv and it surprised and perplexed my marketing brain that it is still exactly the same advert it has always been. True, in reality this may not be forever but if you think in terms of advertising – it may as well be a lifetime.

If you don’t know which advert I’m talking about, here’s a quick word picture: A man has an accident at work or a woman gets rear-ended at some traffic lights and then the advert cuts to the injured person sitting in bed, covered in bandages, plaster casts and neck braces. For whatever reason they have a copy of the Yellow Pages handy, just within arm’s reach and the tag line of the advert is “Insert Lawyer Name Here- see us on the back of the Yellow Pages- we’ve been there for years”.

Glossing over the convenient narrative of having the Yellow Pages in bed with you when you’re injured I’m just going to ask the obvious – why are they STILL using the Yellow Pages? The only reason I would have the Yellow Pages in bed with me when injured would be to prop up my injured leg!

With the ability to google anything these days from your electronic gadget of choice, why would you use an actual directory made of paper? I believe that using the Yellow Pages dates this company’s advertising campaign and to me, signifies that the advert was created when this way of searching for a business was still current.

“No-one Googles ‘Yellow Pages’

Gone are the days when your paper directory was your bible and you could look up any business – from an architect to a piano tuner.

Metrics

So why do they still use this advert? The simple answer is money. The company would have paid considerable money creating the ad and are now still spending money paying for slots on television.

The extended answer is: it’s worked for them in the past – so why change. But how do you know your customers are coming from the Yellow Pages? Digital marketing has the advantage over traditional in that every click, every page view is measurable!

Consult The Data

Who are your trying to reach with your messages? Where do they like to spend their time? Use research to determine where your target market is most likely to see and absorb your latest product, offer or sale. If your market is Baby Boomers or older, maybe the Yellow Pages isn’t the worst choice, but for anyone else it seems like a throwback to a long-gone era.

If having an ad in any form of print media worked for you 10-15 years ago – great but as times change so should your approach. Your clients more than likely have moved to different methods of sourcing information, especially with the never-ending development of apps, search engines and websites. If you are wondering why your advertising return on investment is not as great as you had hoped – maybe it is time to have a closer look at how your potential market would try to find you.

But I’m not saying all directories are bad.

Here are two examples of online directories that are current and seem to be very successful in what they do:

Bean Hunter (where you can search for decent coffee shops near you) is simple, categorised, local and interactive. Not only can you add pictures of the shop, you can also add images of menu items, show off your latte art and write reviews – it is consumer assessed and feedback is instant.

Hotels Combined They have a modern, simple, successful advert on tv that has a simple message – use us for cheap accommodation. They compare prices from different accommodation providers for you in mere moments and save you trawling the internet for deals. They even have a strangely masculine polar bear as their mascot which makes it oddly memorable.

Why do these two examples fare better in my opinion? Because they live solely online and this is the way most people look up information these days.

Also, Hotels Combined and Bean Hunter (and many others) succeed as “online directories” because they offer MORE than just a list of businesses. They have incentives. It’s like joining a community. The online directories also have the ability for community members to write reviews, add pictures and give so much more information than you could get before!

Peer evaluations, though one person’s opinion and always should be taken with a grain of salt, are what makes them better and more informative. Bean hunter/Zomato/etc. are the same – they all rely on user input. This is the next step up. Helping people choose from the list, not just providing one.

With the Yellow Pages – a business had to pay to have a small written ad published and you had no further information.

Essentially what I’m saying is that it is important to regularly review your advertising strategy. Connecting efficiently with your clients through the most appropriate medium is going to be the key factor in ensuring you are getting maximum ROI. In some cases this could be through an online directory, in others it is ensuring your business is visible on google or social media.

The way your potential clients search for your business will have drastically changed in the last 5, 10, 15 years and your advertising strategy should reflect this progression. Either that or stay the same and risk becoming invisible or obsolete!

Handy Hint – If you want to stop receiving these pointless books of yellow paper, go to Directory Select to unsubscribe your address and also return old directories.

Sounds like a win-win!