Why Bother with Content Marketing?

Content marketing is simply any marketing that involves creating and publishing educational content in a way that will create more customers for your company.

You may be wondering why you should spend the time and energy to create content like articles or white papers. First, you have to embrace the idea that your potential customers have questions. They want to know about your company, products, services, and why they should choose you over a competitor.  When you are able to create and propagate smart and effective content that answers those questions, you’ve created the most direct line to sales and loyalty. No business can afford to not create effective content marketing.

Businesses Are Struggling to Make Every Dollar Count

Most large brands use content marketing, and yet many profess not to be very good at it. However, effective content marketing is critical for small business in particular. Small businesses rarely have the luxury of bloated marketing budgets therefore every dollar must count. One of the main goals of content marketing is to build trust because when consumers have trust in your brand, they are more likely to purchase your products and services, and recommend them to friends and family.

Identify Key Components

When creating a postcard marketing campaign, for example, a business must identify business goals, target audience, the value they wish to create for the consumer, and the value they wish to create for their business. It can be invaluable to take the consumer’s perspective and ask what problems does the consumer have and what can I do to help solve them? Pull together a team of associates you can trust and who know your business from the ground up to help you really understand and develop your goals and potential strategies. Write down strategic possibilities and tie your business goals and objectives to your content marketing strategy.

Breaking Through

Consumers are often bombarded with advertising and brand messaging and finding a way to break through the clutter is a must. Your content marketing must address volume, value and variety. Your message needs to be always present. Postcard marketing is one piece, but you must also develop a strong web presence and build good will through word of mouth.

Businesses must identify what they want to communicate, specifically, what are the topics of conversation surrounding their brand. The goal then is to create valuable content around those topics. A business must be prepared to deliver their message in a variety of ways. Postcard marketing, a web presence, print advertising, blogs – these are all different ways to get your message out.

Four Musts for Good Content

Good content must be “findable”, “readable”, “understandable” and “actionable.”

Content must be easily accessible by your target audience. This can be achieved through using effective search engine optimization online, and using compelling imagery, packaging, and easy flowing text that makes your content messaging stand out in direct mail pieces.

Making your content readable means presenting it in a way that is reader-friendly. Bullet points, numbered lists and chunking are ways that can make your message more readable. These styles work well on postcards, websites and print ads.

Creating understandable content means content must be appropriate for your audience. For the audience at large, the less complex the better. If you’re marketing to highly skilled professionals, speak their language and stay on their level. Try to articulate your message in a new way.

Lastly, a call to action is critical. In a direct mail piece, such as a postcard, offer a web address for more information or for comments, offer a link to relevant content, give the consumer a summary of what to do, and where appropriate, ask for their business.

At ProspectsPLUS.com, we have tons of experience with content marketing.  Topics, formatting, location, accessibility and more.  If you want to try this strategy or want to improve on your current strategy, give us a jingle.  We just love chatting about this stuff!  877-222-6010