Over the last few years, the idea of marketing your business online has evolved from a possibility to a responsibility. Simply put, it’s unavoidable that any serious business needs a strong online presence and powerful digital marketing to thrive. You need to generate leads if you want to have have a successful digital property!

Knowing this, you’ve probably heard about social media marketing, rich media, PPC ads, and dozens of other terms that fit within the digital marketing landscape. You’ve also undoubtedly heard of content marketing, but this remains one of the most vexing aspects of digital marketing for many business owners.

What is Content Marketing?

The concept is fairly straightforward. As a marketer, you create and share content that has value to your target customer base. The point is to attract new business through this content, supported by the notion that if you create meaningful content that people want to share with their friends, it will spread exponentially through social media.

Of course, your best bet is to create and share content that’s relevant to your product or service. (For instance, if you own a pest control company, then blogging about steps homeowners can take to avoid silverfish infestations would be a good idea.) Sticking to your niche helps with consistency, and it also helps you to establish yourself as in expert in your field. There’s limitless benefit to appearing as an authority to your potential customers.

Content Marketing Works

There’s a good reason why content marketing has been an unshakable part of digital marketing (unlike some ideas that come and go.) It works, and when executed correctly, it works very well.

It’s a fundamental value proposition that keeps content marketing going strong. Even when new marketing techniques, ad venues, and social media trends show up, well-crafted content holds its appeal with potential customers.

And appeal is really the key to content marketing writ large. It’s not advertising in the strictest sense. It’s not a video commercial or a banner ad – the sorts of things that people are accustomed to tuning out and ignoring. Content marketing is useful, desirable information. It’s something that your audience actually wants, needs, or enjoys. By giving this content away, it serves essentially as a loss-leader product by building a relationship with the customer without a commitment on their part. In other words, it’s a great way to get them in the digital door.

Best of all, content marketing is a multifaceted approach to promoting your brand. As I mentioned before, serving up quality information (often in the form of educational videos or articles) helps to give your brand credibility. You’re no longer just another business who is selling things; you’re a company that cares about informing their customers, helping them out, and sharing your wisdom.

Ideas for Content Marketing

When you’re looking to create your own marketing content, a smart first step is to identify a way to combine your product with educational content. You’re already familiar with your own industry, so think about the questions outsiders often have or problems they encounter.

One of the most prolific (and easiest to execute) forms of content marketing involves reviewing the products that you sell. Consumers love to know about what they’re going to buy long before they pull the trigger, and if you can provide detailed information on the various items in your store, then you’re giving them a much-needed service while also steering them toward a buying decision.

Don’t deny the power of entertainment, either. You’ll see far greater results from reviewing or revealing your products in a fun and engaging way than you will by simply giving a clinical report. Some of the best content marketing I’ve seen involves YouTube product reviews delivered by comical on-screen personalities. In many cases, the reviews aren’t even that in-depth, but the videos are so fun to watch that I don’t care. As a consumer who wants to see more of these entertaining videos, I’ll often purchase from the shop who produced them just so I can help pad their filming budget.

The medium that you use to deliver this content can be nearly anything. You can use your biz blog to post informative articles, create videos for YouTube, or share quick tips on social media. (Ideally, you can do all of the above.) The wider your reach, the more leads you’ll generate.

Turning Content Marketing into Leads

The notion that I’m willing to buy from a certain online store just because I want to support their YouTube endeavors isn’t all that novel. When I was a young salesman decades ago, I was taught that a customer’s desire to purchase from you will increase in proportion to how much you help them, inform them, and make them happy. It’s almost a quid pro quo situation – you’ve given them your time and knowledge, and now they feel indebted to you. It’s an entirely subconscious reaction to good service, but it’s very much real.

So my loyalty to certain stores is based on a simple feeling: “You’ve gone through all of that effort to entertain me with your videos, so I’m going to give you my business.”

Interestingly enough, I feel this way about companies that I wouldn’t even know existed if not for their informative and amusing YouTube shows. That’s content marketing in action.

This is an almost passive selling technique on behalf of the businesses, but there are ways to actively pursue leads with your content. It’s often just a matter of including a specific call to action.

Example:

Let’s say you run a business that trains international travelers to avoid kidnapping in high-risk regions. You could publish an article with “15 Most Dangerous Countries for American Travelers.” The information in the article would be correct and informative, of course, but you would end the article with a call to action such as:

Traveling in certain countries can be very dangerous. At <COMPANY>, we train people just like you in situational awareness, hand-to-hand defense, and evasion. Nothing can protect your life as well as real-world training from experienced professionals, so reserve a spot in our next class today.

Without the call to action at the end, I wouldn’t have realized that there was an actual company – one who offered solutions to my problem – behind the article. In many situations, you can’t go wrong by asking your readers or viewers to explore your product offering.

Tips for Content Marketing

• Remember that the key to successful content marketing is the content itself. You won’t see great results by providing commonly available knowledge.
• Using content marketing to establish your authority will backfire if you offer up incorrect information. Do your research!
• Don’t create content that looks like an ad or an infomercial. Keep the sales pitches to a minimum and let your audience come to their own conclusions.
• Content marketing is also a fantastic way to improve your website’s SEO. Try to include popular search terms in your informative articles and follow the general rules for good SEO content writing.