The best way to think about content marketing is to think about your own shopping habits. Never forget you’re a customer too, and your expectations as a consumer should help provide you with important insights.
Great content starts with the basics
Your content needs to be honest
How many times have you looked for a product or a service on the web and been frustrated or disappointed? A website doesn’t give you enough information to help you decide whether you’ve found what you’re looking for, there are no prices, it’s painful.
Causing your customers pain drives them away. Unless your product or service is in a very small niche market, you’ve got competition. So, if your customers find you on the web, and then realise they can’t buy or book online, or there are ‘hidden charges’, it’s going to hurt.
But, if there are good reasons for not being able to buy online and your marketing makes that clear – there’s no pain.
You need to be honest about your offer to potential customers. Think about it? Isn’t that what you want too when you’re shopping online?
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. Content Marketing Institute
Great content is about timing
Have you ever signed up for a newsletter from a favourite website so you get the latest offers and deals? If you’re lucky, the tile company you used will think about what you’ve bought and won’t keep trying to sell you tiles you don’t need every two weeks.
But that monthly email with those articles on keeping those tiles clean, best paint for kitchen, matching accessories for tiles, how to tile properly – they were really useful.
And, that email that let you know your tiles were about to be discontinued, was came just at the right time. You picked up a couple of extra boxes to cover any chipped or broken tiles in the clearance sale.
How much time do you waste clearing out your mailbox, deleting a succession of messages from companies you have no memory of, and certainly didn’t sign-up to. A simple content plan will help you get the timing right for your customers.
Content marketing is about the stuff you say to your ‘audience’ – the people ‘out there’. We can help you talk directly to potential customers, producing engaging, relevant and original content.