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Content Marketing is MPWRSource’s bread and butter strategy when it comes to helping its clients boost their market share. It is how we meet the needs of a client’s target audience. But what, exactly, is it?
We are so glad you asked.
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing this way:
CONTENT MARKETING IS A MARKETING TECHNIQUE OF CREATING AND DISTRIBUTING VALUABLE, RELEVANT, AND CONSISTENT CONTENT TO ATTRACT AND ACQUIRE A CLEARLY DEFINED AUDIENCE – WITH THE OBJECTIVE OF DRIVING PROFITABLE CUSTOMER ACTION.
Traditional marketing, or Outbound Marketing, is not as effective as it once was. It interrupts your audience’s day with “Look at me” messages about products and services. Content Marketing, as part of an Inbound Marketing strategy, attracts and engages your target audience through content pieces that are educational, informational, relatable, and human. Its goal is to promote relationships whereby your business can meet needs, versus just hoping to land the simple sale and move on. Moreover, content marketing has been shown to be 3x more effective than traditional outbound marketing.
Content marketing is important to your business when it comes to helping your target market go through the traditional buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the process buyer’s go through in order to become aware of, consider and evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service.
The four stages of the buyer’s journey are:
- Awareness: Your buyer is keenly aware of a problem they have but is unaware of its solution.
- Research: Your buyer does due diligence to find a solution to its current problem. This can look like googling things and asking peers for recommendations.
- Consideration: At this point, your buyer has found several solutions that may meet its need. Your buyer weighs pros and cons of each solution. Most often, this looks like finding that right balance of quality, service, and price.
- Buy: Finally, the customer makes their decision and moves forward with their purchase.
Traditional advertising and marketing are great when it comes to the second two steps. Content marketing taps into the first two steps of the buyer’s journey by raising awareness of solutions and educating audiences on solutions, services, and products they may have never considered before.
Even prior to many folks now working virtually, according to Sirius Decisions, 70% of the buyer’s is complete before a buyer even reaches out to sales. Content marketing shifts the focus from the business to the buyer.
The content marketer is always seeking to be helpful and human, engaging its target audience through useful and informative content.
The most used weapons in the content marketer’s arsenal are:
- Webpages: By using effective SEO strategies, you can make sure that your ever important digital marketplace is actually drawing your target market in. After all, it is not just what you say that matters, but how you say it.
- Infographics: Infographics are usually long, vertical graphics that can include charts, statistics, and otherwise helpful information. Oftentimes ideas that are difficult to describe can be shown and easily digested in a well-crafted infographic.
- Videos: People like to watch. And with many of us now working from home, human connections is ever more vital. Buyer’s want to be told a story and thanks to the falling cost of professional grade equipment as well as the rising quality of phone capabilities, video is king. We want to see and hear about how something works and can help us. So pull out your ring light and phone and get to talking to yourself on film.
- Blogs: Ahem…you are reading a blog. About the use of blogs. Please allow this to be the example of how blogs are effective at communicating your message. Blogs can be used to convert readers into customers, boost brand awareness, and build relationships with your audience.
- Podcasts: Podcasts give you visibility to an entirely new market. It is a great way to interview subject matter experts or people who have used your goods and services in order to really speak (quite literally) to your target market.
Increasing your market share and amount of leads generated from helpful content is a process that is proven to produce results. On average, it take 9-18 months of solid content marketing strategy to see results, but inbound marketing results dramatically outperform outbound efforts.