The point of content marketing is to deliver high quality information to your customers, that educates them and ultimately brings their business and loyalty to you. So why is it some content that looks awesome, doesn’t actually do much to build your business? As great as the content may be, without business goals, it’s just content. You need to understand your marketing and business goals to create content that will serve them, not just pass on something for your customers to read.
Without a strategic framework, you won’t get the most out of your content. Your blogs, podcasts, articles, email marketing or eBooks need to form part of the bigger plan, or you’re wasting valuable time.
So here are six goals worth looking at and seeing if they fall into your bigger picture. Implementing just one or two could make a tangible difference.
- Build trust with your audience
A very obvious use of content marketing, but an important one. With interesting, valuable and useful content, your audience learns to trust you, seeing you as expert in your field. Your potential customers get a sense of who you are, which makes a conversion easier.
- Attract new visitors
Your content needs to be attention-grabbing, compelling and remarkable enough to attract links, social media shares and conversations. This is how your reach will expand and the only way your business will grow is with a steady stream of new prospects.
- Explore the pain points
Understanding your audience’s problems is the key to solving them. Knowing what they fear, their irritations, annoyances and grievances will give you plenty of material for problem solving content. A good content marketing programme invites comment or questions – use these as a guide for future content.
- Illustrate the benefits
Using your content to solve problems and provide solutions shows customers what they could get from working with you. It’s not about telling customers you have a solution; it’s about showing them.
- Create an experience
Storytelling is a very effective strategy with content marketing. Providing an experience through your writing allows your audience to ‘try out’ the product or service before committing to a sale. Case studies work well here – people love a real life story.
- Build your reputation with search engines
Search engines want content that provides value to their users. You need write content that readers find valuable enough to share.
For more on content marketing and how it can grow your business, contact us. We can help create a strategy that meets all of these business goals and more.