Content… content… content.
It’s all we hear nowadays; “You should be creating content for your website and social media” – great, but where the hell do you start?
What type of content should you be making? More importantly, how does content marketing help me reach my customers and convince them to buy my products / services?
Stepping back a little, let’s actually define what content marketing is. To do so, who better than the Content Marketing Institute, who state;
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Simply put, instead of promoting your products or services with a sales pitch you give your audience relevant and valuable information that helps them solve their issues – and let’s be honest, who wants to listen to a sales pitch?
For example; a hair salon can use how-to or quick tip videos on caring for your hair, maintaining the vibrancy of colour, etc. This is incredibly valuable to their customers because it solves problems and is helpful, it brings value and at no additional cost to their audience. This helps establish that business and brand as experts, while gaining mindshare within their target audience.
Another great example would be a video production company, who could be offering tips and tricks for making great videos. But why would a video production company tell its potential clients how to shoot a high-quality video – isn’t that telling them how to do your job? Yes it is, now here’s why that’s a great content marketing strategy:
Of the people who see this content, the audience will be split into two camps – those who think they can do it themselves, and those who know they’ll need your help.
Let’s focus on the later first of all. By going through all the steps involved in high-quality, professional video production – lighting, set dressing, camera settings (ISO, shutter speed, frame rate, etc.), editing, colour correction, graphical overlays and more – you are showing your client your expertise and what their money is paying for. By showing the complexity of your job they will get a greater understanding of the work you do and thus increasing the value of that work in their mind. They may not be ready to pull the trigger and commission that new project right away, but if you maintain that engagement through content marketing, when they are ready you will more than likely be the person they call.
Secondly, let’s look at those who think they can create high-quality videos based on your content. One important thing to understand here is that this audience is undoubtedly smaller than the previous and were unlikely to ever want to pay for your services. However, this will ultimately go one of a two different ways:
- They get good enough results to satisfy their needs and perhaps inadvertently promote your videos as great tutorials to their network – which amplifies your viewership (=more potential customers) and supports your expertise in the field
- It does not go well, they realise they need help and ask you to do it for them – now fully understanding the expertise involved and increasing the value they place upon your skillset
Either way, it’s a win / win situation, and that’s the point I’ve been trying to get to here.
Content marketing allows you to focus on value – something EVERY customer and client is looking for. If you can offer value to your audience they will value you more, and when done right this will ultimately lead to more engagement and more sales.
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