Content marketing is the targeted creation and strategic distribution of advertising materials online, such as blog posts, social media posts, and email newsletters. When deftly employed, it works very well, as it allows your target audience to learn from you, engage with you, and build loyalty to you. Additionally, it allows you to increase sales and return on advertising dollars invested.
Valuable & Relevant
The primary objective of content marketing is to provide value to your target audience. What’s value? Well, it depends on your audience. You can show how your product or service solves a problem or gives a benefit that your audience wants. Essentially, it’s taking information that you possess and repackaging it to teach your customers. Teaching them makes them think you’re the expert, which gives you authority. Becoming an authority means that the next time they have a curiosity or question about that thing, they’ll come back to you for answers and recommendations.
Creating value for your customers means that your content must be high quality. You can’t throw things together and expect everyone to instantly fall in love with you. It’s imperative that you carefully think through who your audience is, what they need and want, and how to present your information in a way that makes sense and cultivates their sense of loyalty.
Value is what makes your content relevant. If your customers start seeing information from you that is irrelevant, they’ll get confused and eventually stop following you (or worse: hurt your email stats by deleting them without reading them—ouch). Relevance means that your information is timely, targeted, and engaging. In some cases, your content can be re-used from season to season, increasing its usefulness to you without spending more.
Shareable
We’ve all heard the Jim Rohn saying that we’re each the average of the five people we spend the most time with. What does that mean in the context of content marketing? It means that if your content is attractive, fun, and easily understood, it’s more likely that your customers will share it with their friends or followers. This act of sharing increases your reach to others also likely in or near your target demographic. While there’s no exact formula for what makes content shareable, it should touch on two or more of these standards:
- Attractive
- Easily Understood
- Entertaining
- Fun
- Inspiring
- Useful
Sharing increases your campaign’s strength and reach, which increases your return on investment. It also shows that you’re in tune with your target market.
When planning out your next content marketing campaign, remember to keep it relevant, valuable, shareable. We’re here to help!
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