Why content marketing is important for your business

Posted on in Small Business Tips, SME Marketing

“Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

What is content marketing?

Content marketing involves the sharing of content, predominantly online nowadays, from mixed mediums, such as videos, blogs and social media posts, but equally PR and white papers – they are not necessarily used to direct-sell a product or service but instead includes content that will be of interest or use to your target audience.

Is it right for you?

If you know your customers really well, content marketing is perfect for you. For instance, if you already have some interaction with them online – perhaps through a booking system, referrals and so on – and if you know where they live and work, how much time they spend on your site and how much they scroll through your blogs and web pages, it puts you in an ideal position to target them with content marketing.

You can put together a really clear profile of your clients /potential clients and really target your marketing to match.

For instance, in the travel sector, companies know a lot about their clients, their aspirations and what they spend time looking for, which can make it easy for them to target with appropriate marketing.

Keywords

If you know the keywords your customers use, focus on this when compiling your content. If you know they ask questions about certain things – whether it’s luxury hotels, great kids’ clothes or sports cars – this is what you should use in your content.

Your clients or customers will also have several different moods when online. They may be in aspirational mode – daydreaming about safari holidays, private schools or leather seats.

Or they might be dong practical research – and want guides to resorts, nursery reviews or a table on fuel economy by car model.

Or perhaps they want something really useful – such as a guide to local activities, great days out for kids or the best places to buy a car.

Remember to engage

However you deal with customer enquiries – online, by email or on the phone, do make the effort to engage. It’s harder online as this is so often a faceless transaction. But there are ways you can try to engage.

If someone comes to your site, spends time there but doesn’t actually finish a transaction, an automated email asking them to come back is worth while. They may have got interrupted and forgotten to come back – or they may have had second thoughts and gone off to do more research. You may be able to answer their questions/allay their fears and bag the sale.

Live chat is a useful part of this – in a recent survey by KissMetrics 90% of customers said live chat was helpful and 63% would be more likely to return to a site that provides the service.

Beware, however, it can be equally infuriating if the live chat is offered but not in operation.

Be the expert

People don’t want faceless sales copy. We live and work in a world of constant feedback and online reviews. Most people would rather read personal experiences from people who’ve been there and done it. It doesn’t matter that it is a copywriter rather than a member of the public. But keep the words informal and reasonably chatty – how much will depend on your market. But actual experience ‘out in the field’ is what they’re after. What was that hotel like for another family with small kids? How did those clothes survive a week at school, with washing and tumble drying? How did the car perform while towing a caravan for two weeks? These ‘experience-led’ features are really important.

Be the go-to place for information

Whatever it is that would-be customers are looking for, make sure they’ll find it on your website or social media. Make sure you have the answers to all their questions and they won’t need to look elsewhere.

Be everywhere

Remember that we are becoming more and more mobile. If you offer your content on as many different devices as possible – tablets, mobile phones etc – you will get your message across to the largest number of people.

You might also be interested in our blog on buyer enablement content.

If you would like to have a chat about your marketing requirements, please call Alison Page on tel: 07963 002065 or email: hello@alisonpagemarketing.co.uk. You can of course browse our website to see what our existing clients have to say about our work .