Do you know how to keep your customers coming back?
Do you even know WHY they keep coming back?
Whether you are a B2B or a B2C business, you have been told that content marketing is the best way to get your brand known and drive sales.
It’s true….to an extent. However, producing and posting content that nobody’s interested in simply creates a ton of …noise.
A few years ago, content marketing presented a new way for brands to reach out and connect with prospects. At the time, people were fed up with constant in-your-face advertising. But because it was touted as a band-aid to solve ALL problems, marketers went over-the-top, resulting in a tonne of NOISE being generated.
Over time, three problems have developed with using content marketing:
1. Businesses measure it’s value purely based on ROI, like traditional advertising.
In a bid to quickly see returns on their investments, the following ‘formula’ was branded as the only way to do content marketing:
◦ Find suitable prospects.
◦ Research what they may like and assess their preferences.
◦ Create content and link it to your brand;
◦ Sit back and wait for the profits to roll in.
This approach totally ignores the value of engagement, level of awareness or building of any kind of relationship with the prospect.
2. Other marketers attempt to get the sale from the first interaction.
Content marketing should be used to create awareness of who you are and what your product can do. Remember you’re not the only seller available, hence trying to force a sale will simply drive impatient consumers to your competition. Create useful content that can portray you as an expert in your industry and make them gravitate towards your brand.
3. Creating content that isn’t targeted or engaging.
We live in a world where many suffer from information overload, banner blindness and Continuous Partial Attention. Your business should aim to create content that cuts through that and holds a reader’s attention. Seems impossible? Use this checklist to make your content more appealing:
◦ Are your headlines clear and unambiguous?
◦ Is the text in a large enough font and using complementary colours?
◦ Use images and white space on the page to make it appealing to the reader.
Your content should be a tool that elicits customer engagement and responses, whilst building your brand’s awareness. The eventual sale will only be possible if people fondly remember your brand.
To keep at the front of their mind, these four elements are crucial to the achieving and maintaining high engagement levels with your content:
1. Visual – A report by Getty Images claims “Articles that contain images get 94% more views than articles without.” Don’t assault their eyes. No matter how good your content is, if it’s one block of words, people will click away.
Break it using emboldened sub-headings, pictures. Mixing up content types to include more visual formats such as infographic, graphs even videos.
2. Authentic – As much as we seem to believe everything we see on the internet, it is becoming easier to spot a fake; fake testimonials, fake results. People want to feel what other real people feel. Images that look posed simply don’t resonate with anyone anymore.
Authenticity goes beyond the pictures you use. Your posts need to come from the heart, painfully candid even. Use your staff to generate content about the business, about the office; prospects will appreciate your candour. Be personal. Stay conversational. Use your faces. The days of faceless corporations are rapidly disappearing.
One way brands get around this by using user Generated Content. Poll your audience; it gives a double bonus of rekindling engagement and generating content for your platforms.
3. Memorable – If people remember your content, they will return. This is where you start to build engagement, trust and a relationship. Having implanted yourself in their mind, they will return to you when they need your product. To do this, aim for your content to always:
◦ Help them clear any confusion surrounding a topic
◦ Match the headline and article
◦ Flow so that the reader reads through to the end of the article
◦ Gives them a direction and compels an action to be taken
◦ Matches the desired demographic.
4. Potential to go Viral.
These days, it helps if your content has the potential to go viral. For content to be spread organically, it must:
◦ inspire a person, a community
◦ reinforce a belief
◦ start or renew a passionate discussion
◦ is in someone’s financial or personal interest.
Done right, a viral post can deliver the holy Grail of marketing- introduce your company to people who didn’t know you existed.
Ultimately, content marketing done right will make you money. But what content SHOULD you create? The one your audience has signalled that they want. By returning to your platform, by their interaction with your brand, by their spending, they have signified interest in you.
Don’t disappoint them.
At Search and More, we know that one size doesn’t fit all. Hence we examine your market, discover their pain points and create engaging content tailored to your target market. Let us help you know your customers better.
