It’s human nature. When you get something good, you come back for more. And it works with more than dessert.
Providing your loyal and prospective customers with something of value is a great way to keep them looking for more. Provide it for free, and you’ll build loyalty and trust. Build loyalty and trust, and you’ll create a pool of followers primed to become paying customers.
So what’s a calorie-free (and generally cost-free!) way to provide that value? Content marketing.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a marketing technique of 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.
The first hurdle of content marketing is figuring out what to write about. To do this well, you need to know your customer. What keeps her up at night? What motivates him? More specifically, what questions might they have about your products or services? Answer them in a webinar. What reasons do they give for not purchasing from you? Combat those reasons in a blog post. Be entertaining.
Contenting marketing that is both entertaining and solves a problem many of your customers face scores bonus points. If your goal is to solve a problem with your content, don’t forget to give enough information to make it valuable. Giving just enough away for free that you are a little uncomfortable putting it out there means you’re doing it right—providing enough value to hook that pool of potential customers and build their loyalty to your brand.
Reassess your content when it is complete. Does it sound like an ad? Then you need to revisit it. Make your advertising fun to unwrap. Valuable, helpful information is the bow on your content present. If you write your content like you’re talking to a friend, it will take on the right tone and be a comfortable, interesting read for your audience.
After you have created valuable content, you still need to put copywriting skills to work. Copywriting goes hand-in-hand with traditional forms of marketing like print ads and direct mail. It more directly seeks to sell something and asks readers to take and action. Within your informational copy, look for opportunities to insert calls to action. Without a call to action, you are less likely to convert loyal followers to buying customers.
Once written, this valuable content can be used in dozens of places. Originally wrote it as a blog post? Repurpose it as a series of Facebook posts. Created a series of educational blog posts? Package them into an e-book. Start an e-newsletter, or record a webinar.
So, in the essence of practicing what we preach, we’ll conclude with a very obvious call to action. If you see the value in content marketing but are not a writer, are short on time, or just don’t think you have anything worth writing about, give us a call at the Write Place. Our writers will take the time to get to know your company and industry so we can create relevant, valuable content to distribute to your audience. And we can help with that distribution part, too!
