Content marketing is a must for online marketers. It is rapidly becoming the most valuable marketing strategy to build brand awareness and nurture leads. Content marketing allows your business to create and share valuable free content to attract prospects and convert them into customers. Let’s take a look at some important tips to help you implement a content marketing strategy to engage the right prospects:
Generates Word-Of-Mouth Exposure
Your customers will more than likely tell their friends about your business, either good or bad. It is true that negative information travels mush faster than positive, but it is the positive referral that must be your main focus. Your content must be easy to share, because the more people that share your information over social networks, the greater chance you have in attracting new-targeted customers. If you intend to implement social media marketing, don’t make the mistake of using Facebook as a billboard for your products. People don’t join social media sites looking to buy anything, they want to socialize. This is where you slowly build your brand and credibility for your business through social interactions with potential buyers.
People Don’t Want Advertising – They Want Information
The focus of your web content must be to educate people so they will get to know you and trust you enough to buy from you. E-mail and direct mail campaigns should be focused on providing a steady stream of information to convince prospects that your products or services offer the best solution for their situation. Drip e-mail campaigns can even be put on autopilot with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Just remember, an overzealous sales pitch will turn visitors off and direct them toward your competition.
The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell. You must develop useful content that will help your target audience solve a problem or answer an important question. Your informative content should achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve. If you could watch TV at night and fast-forward through the hemorrhoid cream commercials, would you? Your website visitors feel the same way.
Great Content Is What Search Engines Want
The shift towards content marketing can largely be credited to Google. When this major search engine launched its Panda update, it penalized websites with low quality content. If this wasn’t bad enough, Penguin followed to devalue websites for low quality links and over-optimization. Both of these updates actually revolutionized the SEO industry. The days of using techniques to automate content and links to get a higher PR are over. Today, links must be quality links that are relevant to your business. The only way that content will be shared on the Internet is if it is of high quality. Google wants original content that is fresh from trusted websites to place at the top of its search results.
Unlike an advertising campaign that disappears when you stop paying for it. Great online content lives as long as you want it to. Advertising is an interruption, while good content is sought after and shared. If you want your prospects to take action, your marketing strategy must be honest, transparent and designed to deliver relevant information.