Digital / Data / Results
Digital / Data / Results
You’ve probably heard a good deal of talk about publishing content online. It helps attract readers who may be potential customer. But unless you make a commitment to write and publish fresh informative text and videos, it’s just another gambit that doesn’t create any long term value for your business. The content has to inform and educate, not promote and sell. Serious buyers want information to help them make a decision, not sales fluff that only turns them away.
Content marketing is the strategic marketing program of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract a specific, defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content marketing is crucial to developing and sustaining your firm’s marketplace position. it establishes your authority as a thought leader, and product and service expert. The written expression of your expertise is not intended to be a “selling” tool; it’s a method of building strong relationships with your customers and a community of loyal advocates over the long run critical to sustained business success.
Once you understand what content is and why you want to invest your time, you need to create your strategy. Your strategy helps you create unique content that establishes your brand versus your competitors. It’s a key differentiator between effective marketers and their less effective peers.
Before you do start your content marketing plan, you need to understand why you are creating content in the first place. The best and simplest way to solidify your purpose is to create your content marketing mission statement. It defines your core audience, what is delivered in terms of useful information and advice, and the intended outcome for the consumer of that content.
It may seem apparent who you need to influence, but remember who are the people who use what you provide, instead of focusing exclusively on the decision-maker. Users are the constituents who experience the product or service. They see what problems it solves or how it provides a solution. Impress them and they’ll serve as your advocate from inside the customer’s organization.
Tell a story that educates and entertains. Help people solve a problem or determine how it improve their lives. Define how it benefits them in the context they care about. Your brand matters when people conclude it impacts them, not when sell them.
Create a custom distribution to drive to prospective customers to your story. News sites, portals, vertical business sites, social media – all serve to enable you to configure a custom delivery network to promote your content via native ads. You define who you want to target, based on demographics, interest, and behavior. Native ads have superior click through rates, often 10x over other digital ad formats.
Today, reporting of the effectiveness of content distribution is highly evolved. Beyond click-through rates, you can see how long an reader stays on your content, how much of the article they read and what actions they take as a result.
You’ll be able readily ascertain what subjects hold interest, best amplifying your brand, and produce the largest impact on your firm’s perception as an authoritative thought leader.
Research of content marketers reveals these traits are common among the most successful organizations:
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