Imagine you’re a fisherman on a dock. You’ve got a single hook and sinker and you’re waiting for a bite. Along comes another fisherman who walks up to a rope tied to the dock. He hauls up massive net with a boatload of fish, and then packs up and leaves. You look down at your rod and wonder what you’ve been doing wrong. This is the advantage of content marketing.

Let’s begin with a definition from the Content Marketing Institute:

Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

This is more than advertisements, its helpful advice. Content marketing is about being an expert that people want to listen to and in turn, trust to handle their landscaping, food choice, home repair, and decorating. Now, if it’s so powerful, why do most businesses neglect to do it? Because it requires that you give away your best ideas for free.

For free? If you’re like most people, you’re thinking, “but I should charge for my best ideas!” But I’ll ask you, does the fisherman worry over giving up the sardine on a hook to catch a yellow-fin tuna? Of course not! He sees that he’s investing in a much larger prize. This is how you should think of it as well.

Your great ideas become a wide net that keep you top of mind. As a trusted thought-leader, people will think to come to you when they need your service. And when their friends share that they’re having tree and yard issues, your customers will recommend you. What makes it so successful is that customers will take your great ideas and think, “wow, I’d love my house to look like theirs” and it will lead them directly back to your services. It’s a cycle.

You can look and see great content marketers are all around you. The local farm-to-table restaurant that posts Instagram pictures of their most mouth-watering dishes keeps diners coming back hungry. The painting service that sends postcards with home-improvement tips that inspires people to repaint their exterior. Examples abound, and it’s easy to get into because nobody is more of an expert about your business than you. Share that expertise and reap the revenue rewards!

For you, your outreach channels can be newspaper articles, blog posts, product spec sheets, social media posts, emails, radio spots, event booths, podcasts, and more. There are unlimited venues for you to share your ideas with an audience who will eventually be led to buy.

So now that you’re convinced that you want to get into content marketing and “fish with a net,” how do you get started? Here are 5 simple steps. 

1. Know where to cast your net. Begin with defining your audience. What are you an expert in? And who wants to hear about it? If you’re a general repairman, new home owners would love to hear about maintenance tips. If you’re an interior designer, people would love get inspired by photos of your great work. If you’re an insurance agent, people would love to hear financial advice and tips on the sort of long-term planning that we all love to put off. Whatever your business, there’s a niche market of customers that would deeply value your expertise and this is the audience you should create content for.
2. Cast a wide net. No fisherman would drop their net straight down and hope that the right fish were under the boat, would they? Good fisherman recognize that there’s some uncertainty around where the right “fish” are, so they cast a wide net. For you, this means not limiting yourself to a blog but sending direct mail campaigns, posting on social media, “flyering” the neighborhood, and encouraging word-of-mouth. Different people have different preferences for consuming content. Your young professionals probably commute in the car and thus listen to podcasts. Your homeowners can best be reached where they live. Be in lots of places at once, and be consistent in your message across them.
3. Weave a strong net. If you cast a poorly made net that’s loose, it doesn’t matter how many fish it reaches, they’ll all pass right on through. You need to craft a strong net and in content marketing, this means writing truly useful content. If it’s uninteresting, people will ignore it. Invest some time in learning to craft good headlines and having a hook. Beta-test your content on friends and family and be completely open to feedback. Strong, truly valuable content will keep people coming back for more.
4. Remember to draw the net in. Now that you’ve cast your net around an audience and they’re interested, remember to pull it up! In marketing, this means having clear calls to action that direct your prospects to buy. It can be a phone number, landing page, an address, or an e-commerce site. Let them know how to move forward if they’re interested.
5. Repair the net frequently. One of the great things about the net is its reusable! That excellent article that you wrote for your blog can be chopped up into several great tweets and maybe a postcard or two. But it can only be reused up until a point and when it starts to feel stale, it starts to work against you. People need fresh content and so you should be doing something new at least every week, whatever that means for your business.

Are you feeling the call of the sea yet? We’ve covered how to identify your audience, reach out across many channels, write truly useful content, include a call-to-action, and to repeat the process weekly. The fish are out there in great schools and it takes content-marketing strategy to go out there and catch more than you hoped for.

If you’re ready to cast your first net, hop aboard and dial us at 877-222-6010 or jump straight into postcard marketing using our simple campaign builder!