Do you have the right mindset?
When people ask me how they should start content marketing my first question is whether they have the right (marketing) mindset? You can check this with a few simple questions: how important are authenticity, expertise, authority and reliability as values in your marketing approach, how well do you know your customer, how central is your customer really and do you want to score in the short or long term?
Depending on the answer (or meaningful discussion) to these questions, you will soon know whether a company is ready for content marketing or content marketing is even a path to take.
To me, content marketing is producing and distributing relevant & quality content that provides solutions to customer needs or problems. And content here certainly doesn’t have to be just a blog post, definitely think about a white paper, giving seminars or webinars, publishing infographics, video, audio or even games. For example, consider a gardener who publishes a blog post on his website about lawn maintenance with concrete tips, examples and some relevant links to other websites. Lawn maintenance is not a core activity of the gardener and many potential customers maintain their lawn themselves, but are interested in the tips of a professional. Thus, through the piece of content, the gardener generates added value for his potential customers and thus increases the chances that when someone really needs a gardener, he will be approached. Chances are very high that the target audience will not perceive this communication as advertising, simply because it is found useful and relevant. As a result, the impact will be greater and the effect sustainable … which then surely is the big difference from classic “shout” advertising.
The greater the added value your target audience (h)recognizes in your content, the stronger the psychological and emotional connection will become with your brand or company … and that’s what marketing is actually all about. More so, the more authentic the content, the more personalized and the more relevant, the greater the impact will be! It helps, of course, that as a content ‘broadcaster’ you have the necessary expertise, authority and are trustworthy … and exude this effectively!
The empty café syndrome
There it is … the beautifully crafted and designed blog post on the company blog! Super relevant, very thorough and qualitative and multiple concrete solutions to various problems … but no cat has read it … It’s a bit like a pub with the best beers, a top Dj and a handsome barmaid or bartender, but no one who knows the pub, knows where to find it and thus visits it.
The importance of content distribution is often underestimated: you also need to distribute your piece of content in places where you know your target audience will notice it. A good SEO approach, publication on social media, possibly targeted campaigns and a newsletter can already do wonders here. Start already by promoting the blog post to employees and existing customer database, that will go a long way. Also make sure your content is always easily “shareable” by readers. A bit technical, but if your content is tagged with the right OpenGraph tags you are sure of a correct, complete and beautiful presentation on social media.
Do the test!
If you don’t quite know what content marketing can do yet, you can follow the following simple roadmap as a test:
- Provide at least one content item (article, blog post, white paper, video, etc.) that you are 200% behind in terms of design, content, style and match with the company culture & style. Make sure this content responds to one or more needs of your target audience in a relevant way. Consider the example of the gardener.
- Publish this item on your website
- Promote content through a newsletter, social media or other channels available to your business.
- Promote the content on your own, personal social media as well. If you as a business owner, in your personal name, do not dare to spread this content on your own social media channels, then the content may not be of sufficient quality = litmus test! Unless you really want to keep your personal social media separate from the professional.
- Under the guise of a test, also ask colleagues, friends and family to spread this one piece of content via social media. If necessary, dare to throw in a little media budget (10€ will go a long way in this regard).
See what happens and, above all, learn from this: did you find it easy to find good content? What was the response to the content? Could you easily convince many people to share the content? Was the content shared on social media? Did you get feedback from customers? What impact did you see in Google Analytics on the number of visitors to your website? How many new users did this mini-campaign generate on your website? Etc.
Forget the tools
Many business owners start the content marketing issue by looking for a marketing automation tool like Hubspot, when they cannot, dare or do not want the above. Good marketing automation tools like Hubspot are an indispensable element in the implementation of a content marketing strategy from a certain point, but they are never the starting point.
To start with content marketing you should have a website on which you can post content yourself, preferably a CRM platform to analyze customer data, an email software program such as Mailchimp, a good Google Analytics setup and some active social media channels. If you let these tools talk to each other and use them correctly, you will already get very far and be able to do a lot of what Hubspot automates for you, but at 20 times the price.
Above all, start by defining clear objectives, target groups & personae, matching needs and solution and producing quality content. The digital freelancers or agencies you already work with today will know perfectly how to get that interesting content to the right audience. If this works well and gives results, you can consider automating and taking things to the next level with a pricey but effective marketing automation suite like Hubspot.
One blow, an elephant and several mosquitoes!
The great thing about content marketing above all is that, as with SEO, you do a lot of things that will also have a positive impact on other marketing elements in the mix.
The more quality content you generate on your website, the higher the chances that your website will rank in Google.
A website that contains good and relevant content will increase the performance of Google Adwords campaigns, for example.
If you do content marketing properly, in the same exercise you also enrich your social media.
Content marketing ensures that you have something really relevant to say to your customers at regular intervals, and so it also feeds your newsletter, as well as any brochures and press releases.
You could also get your team involved in producing content which in turn improves engagement.
Above all, content marketing is also a sustainable form of marketing: a blog post basically stays on your blog forever and will generate some form of impact for a much longer period of time.
Examples
Our content strategies are always customized and quite unique to each client, so it’s difficult to just break them down. For example, The Baby’s Corner from Eke-Nazareth is an SME that does content marketing in a very successful way: they regularly produce relevant content for future moms that they then distribute on their blog, social media, through newsletters, their own magazine but also through external bloggers and portals. Because the content is relevant it attracts many visitors to The Baby’s Corner’s website, which in turn leads to better eCommerce results, but also validation of The Baby’s Corner as a reference and authority for baby products.
Sonia, business manager, recently launched her first book (= content) and thus, both as author of the book, the book itself and as business manager of The Baby’s Corner, becomes an essential part of her own content marketing strategy.
For a client from the investment sector, we took a fairly “classic” approach and, in collaboration with a specialized copywriter, produced a white paper on alternative investment products. Prospects can download this white paper after leaving their personal data. Based on the profile of the generated prospects, we use smart campaigns to search for similar profiles to whom we promote the white paper. After download, the prospect continues to receive regular qualitative content by email so that the “bond” with the company remains “warm. In the long run, this significantly increases the chance that when an opportunity arises the prospect will contact the company or… recommend the company to his or her network.
Want to learn more about lead generation through content marketing? Then be sure to read this article.
The companies in both examples are growing and ambitious SMEs, proving that content marketing is not just for the big corporations.
In conclusion.
… some more concrete tips to come up with a good strategy:
- Always start from a framework: strategy & objectives
- Measurability is key: if you are not measuring anything today in e.g. Google Analytics start there first!
- Quality over quantity: rather less but better content, than content on an assembly line
- Kill your darlings! What you think is good is not always what others think is good. Ask for and listen to feedback.
- Start small and modest within a limited circle … then the damage of lesser content at first will not be so bad
- Choose a content form that suits you best
- Dare to seek help from experts
- Produce content from your own expertise & authority
- Always try to produce unique content, provide an opinion or create a unique frame
- Be authentic!
This article was written for Alexander Schmitt, business manager of Authority.
Alexander already has 20 years of experience in digitizing businesses and optimizing various eCommerce platforms.
