Whether you work in the solar industry, are retailing luxury goods, or in charge of the customer engagement strategy for a government department to generate more leads, your brand needs content marketing.
Engaging customers with content marketing
It’s no secret that the days of going straight for the direct sell are long gone. To engage your customers you need to take them through a journey of awareness and consideration before selling your product.
What is content marketing and how does it help?
Enter content marketing – which allows you to connect with your customers through brand storytelling more powerfully than ever before.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action, as defined by the Content Marketing Institute.
Content marketing means always-on content for communication channels owned by your brand.
Content marketing contributes to each step of the customer experience
Brands can use content marketing at every step of a customers’ journey, including:
- Brand awareness
- Lead nurturing
- Customer conversion
- Customer service
- Retention and loyalty
- Opportunities to upsell
- Customers becoming passionate subscribers
Examples of content marketing opportunities
Say for instance you are in the solar industry. Are you simply talking about the benefits of switching to solar products in your communications, or are you sharing the experiences of your existing customers through your communications channels? You can see why the latter would be more effective.
Now, this is not to be confused with testimonials or case studies (though these can be part of your content strategy as well). Normally you would have a mix of a more storytelling-based approach where you elaborate on a broad issue that people needing solar solutions have (i.e. rising electricity bills), the journey and steps a handful of your customers may have gone through with you, and now, how they continue to benefit from switching to solar. The more authentic the story, and true to the voice of the subject in it, the more relatable it is for your prospective customers, and therefore more memorable and valuable.
The same goes for luxury goods, an industry that tends to have a loyal base of followers. Why not utilise the voice of an existing loyal customer and use their story to share why your luxury shoe brand tickles their fancy?
Why large companies need to start content marketing
Readers of this type of material are more likely to relate to these stories than they would to just ads. There is a time and a place for hard-selling, but content marketing is now a necessary step in engaging your customers before they convert. Sure they may not be ready to buy from you just by reading an article or blog post here and there. It’s called a content strategy for a reason and you need a holistic approach to your marketing activities, but if you have their attention and can build exposure of your brand through multiple touchpoint and channels (traditional as well as digital), and by sharing the story of your brand, then those customers are likely to consider you as the one to purchase from in the future.
“Good content is omnipresent. Being noticed is hard.”
How to start content marketing if you are behind in the game
Not all large brands have embraced content marketing, and those who have effectively done so, have succeeded by approaching the process with strategic intent. They called the agency, staffed up and start playing the content game.
A smart content strategy will allow you to build meaningful connections with your customers and as businesspeople and marketers, that is what you want to achieve.
For those unsure where to start, we help you build your brands through creating and serving engaging content that consumers want to follow, like, share, and respond to. Give Me Marketing and it’s content marketing team provide publishing strategies, and targeted content for brands’ owned channels to engage customers, increase loyalty and drive sales.
