An effective marketing technique for your business
Enter the phrase “top marketing trends” into a search engine, and you’ll find that “content marketing” comes up in several of the top results. Marketers have been saying it for years – content is king.
Good content will get you more searches, more followers, more customers. But what exactly is content marketing? It is a form of marketing where you communicate with prospects and customers using relevant, valuable, enticing content to attract and engage them.
Where? On your website, social media pages, emails, newsletters, articles, blogs, videos – anywhere you communicate with your prospects and clients.
Why? Because people don’t want to be sold to. Before they spend their money, they want to like you and your business, trust you, receive credible and useful material to help inform their purchasing decision.
How? By developing a content marketing strategy. Content marketing needs to be continuous and consistent, and it’s easier than you may think.
Think of content you can publish that falls into categories such as:
news, trends, events, who’s who, who’s doing what – anything exciting happening in your industry (but be careful not to publish too many “this is what we’ve been up to” stories; unless it’s relevant to them, people generally don’t have the time to read these)
regulation changes, updates to legislation affecting your industry that customers need to know about (and need simplified or condensed for them)
stories about good sorts – good deeds, good samaritans, good customer service experiences – people love a good story
case studies – let people know of interesting or unique customer experiences that demonstrate real results
how-to guides – make things easier for people and they’ll refer back to you often
FAQs – offer the answers to frequently asked questions before they get asked; again it’s about making things easy to find and you’ll soon be seen as a credible expert in your field.
Here are a few bits of advice when it comes to content marketing.
As well as talking about your own industry or business sector, also publish content about businesses or industries that lie in the periphery to yours. What else are your clients interested in? Don’t be limited to just talking about your business or your specific industry. You’ll probably either run out of ideas or quickly become boring to your readers.
Don’t be too salesy. You want to attract, entice, engage. It’s okay to include promotions or special offers from time to time, but if all you’re doing is overtly selling, people will quickly tune out and unsubscribe.
Don’t fall into the trap of believing that “you shouldn’t give away too much free information”. There is already so much free information out there. Wouldn’t you rather have your prospects coming to you for it?
Not everything you publish has to be your own unique content. Share useful and interesting content you find, but always, always, always give credit to the source of the information. Not only does this reinforce your credibility, but it also shows your clients that you do your research, continue to learn from others, and are willing to share other sources of helpful content.
Make sure you consider your key SEO terms in your content. Content marketing is a powerful way to attract and retain customers without selling. And it is also a way of refreshing your content to improve your search engine rankings.
If you need help putting together a content marketing strategy, or coming up with content ideas, please get in touch with us on info@maplemarketing.co.nz.