The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as a “marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
The reason we do content marketing is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating relevant and valuable content that is interesting to our customers and intends to changes their behaviour.
The key difference between content marketing and other traditional marketing techniques is that it focuses on communicating with customers, though not selling to them. The art of good content marketing educates customers about specific problems and challenges, while positioning the company or product as a trusted expert in the topic.
Content marketing doesn’t try and sell you on the first encounter. Instead, it is a process of giving customers interesting information they want to receive.
Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you. – Brian Clark, CopyBlogger
Why is content marketing important?
There are a number of factors driving the rise in content marketing in Australia. In a recent study by CMI, they found 69% of marketers planned to increase their budget for content marketing in 2014. Here are some reasons why they are doing that.
Changing buyer behaviours
The Internet and social media revolution means that buyer behaviour has changed forever. Globally, we conduct 88 billion searches every month on Google. Customers don’t need to rely on sales people anymore; they can search for information themselves using Google.
Hubspot found that customers are now spending 70% of the sales process educating themselves about products and services that can help them. As a result, they don’t want sales calls too early in the buyer’s journey. Instead, they want information to help them make a better purchase decision.
Customers have access to Google to find answers to their questions. They are also living in a world of social media where they can rely on trusted influencers and friends for information. Customers trust the stories from people they consider experts on topics and prefer to make a decision based on that information, rather than information provided by a sales person.
Related: Learn how to master the buyers journey
Transition from push to pull strategy
In the past, it was possible for big media companies to outspend their competitors with big TV and radio campaigns to capture the attention of customers. Now, with the power of social media and the internet, small companies with smaller budgets can create captivating stories that spread virally across the internet.
These stories can reach millions of customers all for as little as $1,000 production fee. This is a game changer, and shows that content, when done correctly, levels the playing field for all companies.
Positions you as a trusted source for information
Content marketing is informative and adds value for customers. It helps them solve problems and helps them do their jobs better.
When done consistently, you can use your content to help position yourself as the trusted go-to source for information about a topic. This gives you a competitive advantage, as you can be seen as a trusted company for the area you specialise in.
Think about it.
When you start searching online to solve a problem, and you come across three good blog posts about how you can solve it – if the information is spot on – you trust that author and whatever company or site he is with. So down the track, if you are looking for a product or service to help you, you will look back to that trusted source.
Same thing goes for if anyone asks you for a recommendation. Since you’ve already valued the company’s information and consider them a trustworthy source, you will go ahead and recommend their content, product or services.
It helps you get found by customers on search engines
Sixty-one percent of global internet users research products online (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012). Where do they go to research? Google.
Gone are the days of hiring SEO agencies to “optimise” your way to the top of the rankings. With Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithm updates, content is now the best way to get found. Producing high-quality content that helps searchers find the information they want is the key to getting to the top of the search rankings.
Content marketing is about producing relevant content for customers that educates them about a topic. If done right, with some basic onsite optimisation, you will see your blog posts and content assets ranking well on Google. This opens up the opportunity to reach and attract new potential customers via organic search.
Related: 4-step guide to getting content ranked on Google
Everything is measurable
One of the best things about content marketing is that it’s measurable. You can track every piece of your content marketing program.
That’s valuable.
Picture tracking a specific customer from the first search keyword they used in Google, right through to which of your 20 blog posts they read before submitting a form to download an eBook. Now imagine tracking their opens and clicks via a four-part email campaign, and finally seeing them convert into a sales-ready lead by requesting a free consultation.
All this can be tracked and measured. Pull reporting on what sources your leads are coming from, and how effective those sources are at converting leads into paying customers. This intelligence helps you make better decisions about where to spend your marketing budget.
Increases customer satisfaction and retention
A study of one million businesses by Gallup found “giving customers advice” was the most important factor in creating high customer satisfaction.
Content marketing focuses on educating customers and giving them information that can help them.
So, not only can content marketing attract new customers, but it’s also a great way to improve customer satisfaction and retain customers.
Sustainable customer acquisition
“Push advertising” strategies, like pay-per-click ads, TV ads and direct marketing, all have limited lifespans. You run the campaign, and customers see it and decide whether to make a purchase or take the action you ask them to.
“Pull advertising” through content marketing is an evergreen marketing channel. Your content is an asset. It doesn’t just last for a single campaign and turn into dust – it stays valid and useful on the internet for years to come (until it becomes outdated).
As you build out your content assets, you will notice that your campaigns improve. As more and more content is available to searchers on Google and shared via LinkedIn or Twitter, your content marketing starts working harder and will attract more visitors.
Remember, content quality is key – spend that little bit extra to ensure you are adding value with your content and helping customers by giving them information and advice they can’t find anywhere else.
Content marketing challenges
- Getting more engagement from content. You might be good at creating content, but are you struggling to create content that breeds engagement? Shares, likes, tweets and comments are signs of a highly engaged audience. To overcome problems with engagement, you must remember to write to your audience, use empathy and leverage storytelling techniques.
- Struggling to produce enough content. Lots of high-quality content is desirable, but hard to achieve. Proper planning, systems and a solid team can help you streamline content creation and hit your production goals.
- Measuring the success of content. With content marketing being a new field, we are all still refining the best ways to measure success. Is success measured by new customers, retained customers or brand awareness? Proper tracking using marketing tools can help you measure the most important information.
- Wanting to promote content and extend reach. You want more ideal customers engaging with your content, but how do you extend your reach? Leveraging content promotion strategies can help put your content in front of more eyeballs. Use both free and paid channels to promote content.
Marketing has changed – can you adapt?
Marketing has changed forever.
No longer do the companies with the big budgets buy their way in front of customers.
The internet and social media, combined with changes in buying behaviours, have impacted the way marketing is done.
We need to be able to shift with these trends and adapt to the changing environment.
You need to move from push marketing to pull marketing. You can do this by using content marketing.
Can you leverage content marketing to position your company as a trusted source for educational material and interesting information?
Can you give customers the information they want, when they want it?
These are the questions you need to be asking yourself.
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