Content Marketing: Why The Best Content Doesn'T Market

In today's business world, a business cannot survive without a clear digital marketing strategy. One important part of that strategy should be content marketing, but that's such an ambiguous term, many companies aren't sure what it is or how to include it in their marketing efforts. Here's what you need to know about this important piece of your marketing plan and how you need to leverage it for your company's business.

What Is Content Marketing?

Over the past decade, content marketing has evolved to become an umbrella term for all the many methods of bringing your company's message to your audience and potential customers. It can mean everything from email newsletters to podcasts to blogs. But the underlying message of all content marketing should not be marketing or talking about your latest and greatest product. It should be to serve your customers' needs – which is usually the need to solve a specific problem.

Whether you're creating a blog, LinkedIn article, podcast, or social media post, it's important to keep your audience's needs as its foundation. Your customers and potential customers don't care about your product – yet.  They likely arrived at your website because they did a Google search, looking for an answer to a problem or pain point their company is looking to solve.

How Can You Market a Product Without Talking About the Product?

Yes, promoting your company's product or message without actually talking about that product sounds counter-intuitive. But your audience is being continually bombarded with marketing messages in their email, social media, and web searches. It's easy to send these messages away with the click of a mouse, and that's become a familiar result for more and more promotional communications.

One way you can rise above this influx of marketing messages is to provide valuable, relevant information that companies and individuals need to answer a question or solve a problem. Your content, whether in an article on your website, a blog on another relevant website, or a Twitter post should address those needs. Your content needs to be relevant and authoritative. It should impart valuable information for readers. If you provide the answers to their problems, you build trust, loyalty, and a likelihood that they will come to you when they need your specific product.

Connect, Don't Market

It's ironic that content can be one of your best marketing tools, yet one of the biggest mistakes is using it to market. But that doesn't mean you ditch your content marketing efforts. Here are some tips for using your content effectively:

• Do your research. What are your customers' pain points? Google Analytics can tell you what terms people are searching for content about.
• Ask customers and website visitors what their needs are. Use surveys, focus groups, and forums to discover how you can address their content needs.
• Follow relevant groups and posts on social media. Connect with social media influencers and interact with followers.

Once you build trust with an audience via the above methods, you can be the go-to-source for problem-solving content. That trust will translate into relevant purchases when they are ready to buy. Meet with a digital marketing agency in your area to get started.

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