What You Should Know About Content Marketing
July 18, 2017
Your content is one of the most powerful tools in your tool belt for sales in your online business. It allows you to take a step back from promoting yourself through traditional advertising. All because you are showing up online with great valuable content in a way that connects with your audience on a deeper level.
Content marketing according to the dictionary is “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.” These pieces of content help propel your business forward organically.
Let me put it this way. Content marketing is creating content with a particular goal or outcome in mind. You can create content till the cows come home but it doesn’t really take on that marketing component until you are creating it with a goal that is trackable in mind. I feel like I need to say this here, creating something just to create it like a blog just for fun is a goal but how do you track that fun factor. This is more like creating a blog post to drive new visitors to your website and convert them to your email list.
But exactly how does creating a video, writing a post or putting up a social media update really help you market your business?
Improves experience and builds relationships
Using your content as a marketing tool provides value to the people viewing your website, social media posts, your videos, newsletters, etc. helps you build a relationship with people you meet online. When you’ve built your marketing strategy around your content you are giving people a peek into what it is like to work with you. You are also showcasing your expertise around the particular topic. And building trust even before you ever get into a conversation with them.
People like to get to know you before they make a commitment to working with you. And by having content in place that markets you and provides value for them you really begin to stand out online.
Establish your credibility
Anyone online can say whatever they want.
They can get away with saying they can guarantee crazy results without actually being able to. Using your content as a pillar of your marketing strategy separates you from those that try and pull the wool over their customer’s or client’s eyes by making outlandish statements. As you show off your expertise through your content marketing you establish credibility with viewers online that you do in fact know about the stuff you put out there.
They can see that you have more than a surface knowledge of the concepts and that boosts your credibility.
People buy from people that they know, like and trust. It’s a fact. And when your content helps establish your credibility selling your products and services becomes way easier.
Content marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing
Traditional marketing which I’m referring to here as purchasing advertisements is way more expensive than content marketing. This isn’t to say that traditional marketing isn’t a valid growth strategy because it totally is, I’m just saying that if you don’t have the budget to do traditional marketing then content marketing is a great way to start.
Plus it gives you a LOT of content to have in place when your traditional marketing effort starts bringing in leads. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen an ad and thought oh cool I wonder what else they have to say or just that I want more information about their approach to their business. Only to find out that they don’t have meat behind their ad. They have the hook but they don’t have the content in place that markets their skills and knowledge and I end up feeling let down.
You can make an impact even if your small
One if the most beautiful parts of having a content marketing plan for your business is that you can make an impact even if you are a one woman shop and you have a small following.
How? You might ask… by creating content that connects your skills/knowledge/talents with their problems.
You can yell at the top of a mountain till you a blue in the face that you are a health coach but unless you’re connecting what you do as a health coach to what they see as their problem you won’t build any traction.
However, even with a small following your content marketing will attract the people with the problems you solve and connect your products or services with the solution to those problems.
You can create less content with higher quality
Another favorite part of my content marketing strategy is that I create less content overall but it is a much higher quality that keeps people coming back, engaging and sharing my content online without me having to create even more content.
With your goal in mind, you can create content that then is perfect for repurposing and still supporting your marketing goals. This content that is rich in value will go a lot further in the online world than fluff content which people can easily overlook or view as spam.
Now it’s your turn
Do you have questions about content marketing for your business? Ask me in the comments and I’ll see how I can help!
