And why you better hop on the train or miss the ride
Hey! Look at me! Look at ME! I’ve got something you neeeeed!”
Cue the pop-up, tacky Instagram ad or creepy targeted banner ad showing you something you were just looking at on Amazon on a different website.
How are those marketing tactics working out for your business? How are they working on you as a consumer?
While we will probably never escape these invasive and just plain gross forms of targeted advertising, consumers are getting fed up and learning how to ignore it. Humans are sick of the sales drivel and getting better at sorting through the muck to find the brands that they value – which are usually the brands that value them. How do you show your customers that you value them? Give them what they want: relevant, informative, authoritative content.
Content is the art of communicating directly with your audience without getting all salesperson schmoozy with them. Rather than saying “Hey, buy my stuff!” you focus on topics and information that will be of use to your customers. If you’re doing it right, you get people to read and view your content, derive some kind of benefit from it, then eventually give you their business.
That’s the idea anyway. In reality, too many businesses treat content marketing as sales and do away with delivering valuable information, focusing instead on some kind of backhanded sales pitch.
We’re here to tell you that the old ways of telling people that 9 out of 10 doctors recommend smoking while pregnant are done. Tacky banner ads are done. Overselling your product or service is done. Telling, instead of asking, is done. Treating your audience like numbers instead of humans is SO DONE!
Content marketing is the only kind of marketing that is going to work with the savvy consumers of our times.
So, what can content do that other forms of marketing can’t? Here’s a list (read it and weep, email spam!)
- Build your reputation. Build trust
- Increase conversions
- A cost-effective way to bring in new leads
- Demonstrate your expertise and build authority
- Set yourself apart from competitors
- Enhance your social media strategy and builds traction
- Improve your SEO ranking
- Boost your PR strategy
- Drive more inbound traffic and leads
And just for your edification, here’s a list of all the different types of content
- Blogs
- Videos and micro-videos
- Social media posts
- Info graphics
- Podcasts
- Case studies
- eBooks
- Webinars
- Photos
- Checklists
- Memes
- Whitepapers
- How-to-guides
One last note before we let you go get to work on your content. As you are creating content remember that if your voice, your message, your branding is all over the place, people won’t be able to trust you as easily and your credibility goes out the window. Be CONSISTENT!
Be consistent in
- Quality
- Voice
- Design
- Publishing schedule
- Your values
- Your message
All right, we’re going to call it good for today, folks. We think you get the picture. Content is king. Consistency is the queen who actually calls all the shots. You need them both to succeed, especially in the post-pandemic marketing world.
Need help with content, guess who’s got you covered … See how we did that? Lots of useful, valuable information. Hopefully we built some trust by conveying how much we actually care about content and then a small nudge at the end.
We didn’t invent the content marketing game, we just make it look so good! All right, we’re getting carried away now. Signing off. Until our next scheduled content…