sdfsdWhat Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing, in essence, is a strategic approach to creating and distributing content which is both valuable and relevant to your target audience. The purpose of content marketing it to consistently attract and retain a specific audience to ultimately drive customers into making a purchase or performing a profitable action for your business.

Successful content has value for your audience. It is able to change or enhance your customer’s behaviour over time, all to the benefit of your business. Valuable content is curated from various sources, and repurposed to form something educational and relevant to your audience without directly selling to them.

The premise of content marketing is not to openly sell products or services, and instead to deliver information that makes your customer more intelligent over time about your area of interest and expertise to enhance their work and personal lives. By educating your audience, you will highlight a ‘need’ for your business or services, and in turn when looking to fulfil that ‘need’, they will reward you with their business and loyalty.

By educating and not selling to your customer, you are treating them with respect. Providing credible knowledge and information instead of selling directly to them, or rather at them. It is viewed as a much softer approach to sales and more favourable approach from the customer perspective. In an era where people frequently research businesses and their services before purchase either online, through referrals or reviews, the more educational content available, the better informed your customers will be, and will choose to select your product, not your competitors.

As an educated customer, able to make better informed product decisions, they will see that the sensible and logical option when seeking to purchase, is to buy from you. It’s then just down to your businesses ability to meet and exceed your customers demand.

So, you know you need to be producing timely, valuable and credible content for your audience, but what do you write about? Choosing a topic which directly resonates with your audience is key to attracting attention initially. Your topic should be based on content your audience wants to hear, it should be relevant to them, and come from a credible source in that field i.e. your business.

Content should come from credible sources or be supported by credible research, it should be relevant to your audience interests, industry or business and add value to the reader having read it. Content will be deemed as a valuable and worthwhile reading if the topic is relevant to your audience, and the audience you are trying to attract. As interesting as the content may be, the value to your business hangs on the ability of your content to create a value connection to yourself or your business’s expertise. This will help to pique the interest of your audience, maintain it, and ensure your content achieves your objective – more sales.

Still sceptical? Think of content marketing as an opportunity for your customers to not just spend a few seconds looking at a traditional advert, but rather an opportunity to spend minutes reading, rereading and digesting information about your area of specialism and how it relates to your business. Eventually, having spent time with your brand, your business will become the natural, familiar, and most well-informed choice for your customers.

Michael Carter

Marketing Manager

MoJo People Ltd