Marketing and advertising have changed. 75% of people no longer believe in ads or traditional advertising. 80% of people run a research on the internet and social networks before making their buying decision. What people are looking for, is content, and they run away from advertising.
This new behavior of buyers took place thanks to the access to information that they now have. Before buying, instead of making the decision based on the brand that they are familiar with, thanks to years of traditional publicity, clients now investigate all the options that they have and, afterwards, choose the one that is best for them.
They look for ways to solve the problem that they have, or to find the product that they need, online. This is the reason why your company must create content about the problems that it helps to solve with its products and services.
Content marketing is a technique in which written or audiovisual content is created based on the solutions that companies, brands or products offer to their clients. This content is distributed digitally on websites, blogs, videos and social networks.
Content is the best way to help a client move forward in his buying decision, since traditional advertising is not enough, as it was before.
With these contents, the buyer learns about how to buy and evaluate the options that he has, so that the decision he takes is the one that suits him better.
The results of using these strategies are:
A good content strategy must keep in mind the following aspects:
1.- The content that your clients are looking for
The basis of creating this strategy in order to attract people who are looking for the solutions that we have, is to put ourselves in their shoes. Know well how their search begins, fully understand how they write their questions on their computer or cell phone. This is what keywords are in SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Start with your sales team. They know all the questions that potential clients make over and over again.
2.- Interesting/relevant content
It's not enough to understand their questions. We must give them an answer in the best possible way, as impartial and honest as we can. Consumers are looking for content that helps them understand if the company, brand or product, can solve their problem. So we must not only talk about our value proposal, but also about how it can be compared with the competition's. One of the most powerful content to help make a decision, is the one that offers reviews and comparisons.
3.- Customized content
There are several ways to do this. The first and more general one is by creating specific content for your buyer persona. What is a buyer persona? It is a fictional profile that you'll create in order to segment your clients based on their uses, customs and lifestyle. It'll help you understand the different ways in which you can serve your customers and understand the difference between customers as well. This is how you'll make content that specifically solves what customers have on their minds.
The second way is by using Inbound Marketing techniques in order to send a more personalized content to each of your customers, content that will be truly useful for them.
4.- Content format
Depending on the resources of your company, the content can be offered in different formats: written, audio or video. If the budget and time allow it, in all three.
Each format has its own specific characteristics and people choose the one they like best. So we recommend you always offer one same content:
So people choose the one they like best, regarding the topic they are interested in.
5.- Editorial Calendar
Publish, publish, publish.
An editorial calendar based on the list of questions that must be given an answer to, has to be created in order to produce all the contents. This is where 80% of companies fail in their strategy, since planning good/relevant content is not an easy task to achieve, it takes up time and resources.
You have to offer constant publications for the strategy to work since the search engine algorithms take into account the periodicity with which you publish content. Those who publish little and without periodicity are less recommended in the results.
Another problem that may arise is looking for perfection in our contents. This always stops publication. You have to balance quality content with being able to publish on time. An editorial team helps you decide when a content is good enough for publishing.
6.- Advertising your content
Once all this effort was done, you must advertise this content in your social networks and your mailing lists. This content must be segmented based on your customer's interests, so as not to send irrelevant information to everyone.
This is how you'll delight your customers with interesting and helpful content. Your followers community will be really interested in interacting with you.
You can learn more about his strategy and its planing on our "Game Plan", which you can download for free:
Content marketing is the best way to attract prospects to your marketing and sales funnel. Yet, within the Inbound Methodology, this is only the beginning. There are still other stages of nurturing and closing that need to be carried out so that the investment works on its fullest.
If you are interested in learning more about Inbound Marketing, take a look at our contents, with which we explain how everything works. And if you want advice on how to make a successful strategy call us.