Thinking about how to attract more inbound enquiries to your business via digital channels?
As part of our series of blogs covering hot marketing trends for 2019, we’re covering some of the best tactics you can employ throughout the year to achieve just that.
Our last one ‘Why brand building will give you the best marketing ROI’ covered how investing in your brand was one of the best ways to grow your online presence.
This month, we’re looking at another sure-fire tactic, content marketing, and why getting it right can mean so much to your business.
What is content marketing and why does it matter?
It’s one of the biggest marketing phenomena of the last few years; as a way of promoting brands, nothing bar paid-online-advertising has witnessed such explosive growth.
It’s easy to see why; create and release some amazing content to your industry then sit back and watch all these prospects come to you.
Yet there is an awful lot of it out there, much of which fails to hit the mark. So, let’s take a look at what works and what to avoid.
1: Depth and originality
With so much content out there being produced by brands and SME’s, one of the challenges is maintaining a regular rhythm of in-depth and original content that your target market wants to read.
It isn’t easy, which is why we always recommend using marketing experts with a journalism background to do this for you.
You might know a lot more about your industry than anyone else in your field, but this doesn’t make you an expert at telling stories, which is what this process is all about.
2: Problem solving provides the ultimate value
Part of the benefit of working with experienced storytellers is that they understand what makes an audience take note.
We often see a lot of effort being put into content production that falls into two very dangerous categories:
1. I’m really interesting
2. Why won’t anyone buy my product?
Although you may have spent a lot of time building up your business and be an expert in your field, few people are ever important enough to warrant sharing their thoughts on events in the news, even ones relevant to their industry.
The other big mistake are blogs that masquerade as a 1000-word moan about why prospects haven’t seen the value in your products. Avoid this at all costs.
Successful content provides tons of value and solves problems for your prospects. So, focus on using your expertise to help your readers. And, unless your name’s up there with Barack Obama and Richard Branson, leave the Op-ed pieces to the professionals.
3: Planning and execution are king
Great content marketers work to a steady rhythm, making sure they have their titles and topics worked out months in advance.
This is an in-depth and detailed comms process that takes meticulous planning.
Who are your target audience? What are there hopes and fears? What’s stopping them from buying from or partnering with you? What big (RELEVANT) events are coming up over the next 12 months that you want to include in your plan?
All of these questions, and more, have to be worked out in advance before article ideas are put forward.
Experienced content marketers know how to create templates that users want to read; they understand core journalism principals such as the ‘inverted pyramid’ and the different way people read online.
It’s also vital that you have some knowledge of SEO, so you make sure your articles are correctly optimised before being published.
Plan and execute your content as well as a professional publishing business and you’ll soon see your content cutting through.
In summary
Content Marketing is a brilliant marketing tactic that can yield incredible results, but you must approach it soberly and with clear intent.
Take the time to learn or hire in some experts who can show you how to get it right from the start.
While over a million pieces of content are published in the UK, every day, just a fraction generate the inbound enquiries that justify the time, effort and expense. That’s quite an opportunity for those who choose to do things properly from the start. Wouldn’t you agree?
For more information please contact us on;
Nigel Mummery – nigel@blazemail.co.uk | 07971 674 414
