Content marketing is a broad term that encompasses the words and images used to promote a product or service. In today’s online world, excellent content marketing cuts through the noise of unhelpful information to attract the right customers with the businesses and services they want to find.

Bruce Rogers from Forbes says

“Content marketing can be defined as the creation and distribution of meaningful insights, perspectives, and best practices that are valuable to a specific audience. The aim is to retain existing clients including doing more business with them and to attract new high-quality clients.”

While many assume content marketing refers to websites or blogs alone, there is much more that encompasses the totality of this communication medium. The best way to leverage content marketing for your advertising and marketing goals is to incorporate a variety of content into your strategy.

SMA is an Inbound Marketing firm. We understand the value of clear, interesting, and educational content for our clients, but we also take things to the next level by making sure all our content is contextually relevant beyond making a sale.

Inbound marketing is about creating a personal connection with the people who will benefit from your product or service. By developing content that humanizes the sales process you can make a deeper connection with your ideal customer. One way to do this is by producing helpful and informative content for your Buyer Persona at every stage of their Buyer’s Journey. Providing context for your content is the key to answering an important question that takes your customer relationship deeper. Context answers the how.

Answering the How

Have you ever purchased a product or service which sat untouched in your closet? Do you have a subscription to a service you like but feel that you aren’t using all the features as well as you could?

These scenarios happen when a content marketing strategy doesn’t take the time to answer the questions many buyers need answered.

Common “how” questions include:

  • How does this product make me use my time more efficiently?
  • How does this software replace or integrate into my current preferred programs?
  • How do I use this product’s less obvious features?
  • How do I care for my new purchase to maximize its life?

One of the most important reasons to continue to answer the how question for your clients and customers is to remind them of the value of your services and products. This will help you extend your relationship with your persona.

Think about it this way, if you feel that a product or service wasted your time how likely are you to be a repeat customer? Don’t let user error or lack of understanding keep you from serving your clients and customers to the fullest.

Ways to Answer the “How” Question

Web pages, blog articles, infographics, emails, videos, podcasts, and social media interactions are all avenues to present curated content. But, content marketing is about more than scheduling tweets or writing a great blog post.

A great content marketing strategy maximizes each individual piece of content and ensures it focuses on your larger communication goals. By consistently incorporating SEO best practices into every step of content development you can trust that your content is helpful for your Buyer Persona and your information reaches the right people at the right time.

Refining Your Content Marketing Strategy

Now that you have a full picture of all the options to develop personalized content for your marketing efforts, you may be wondering where to start. As with any strategy you are served best when you do things, well, strategically.

Begin with an SEO audit. This process will give you a clear, data backed, understanding of where to start focusing your efforts. The great thing about content marketing is that you can continue to add new layers as your capacity allows.

If you have a website already consider adding a blog. Websites with blogs have 55% more visitors according to Hubspot and produce 67% more leads according to Demand Metric.

Increase your reach by becoming more social on social media. With over 3 billion people on social media, it’s one of the largest opportunities to connect with potential customers as well as continue customer relationships.

Does your research show that customers contact customer service with the same questions? Create a video to answer the top three questions quickly. Read more about how you can refine your content marketing strategy on our blog article 5 Ways to Improve Your Inbound Marketing Strategy this Year.

At SMA we specialize in integrating SEO into every inbound marketing strategy. If you’re ready to implement or improve your content marketing strategy, we’d love to share how we can help you maximize your efforts. Contact us to learn more.

Read more: Content Marketing : Integrity Delivers Competitive Advantage