One of the most cost-effective marketing strategies these days is what’s called ‘content marketing’.
Content marketing simply providing customers with useful information that will help them with some aspect of their business.
As part of providing this information, you are able to tie in your product or service.
While there’s only one goal of content marketing (to increase business revenue), there are many ways to do that.
Here are three ways that have long, and proven success records.
1. Customer Success Stories
A great example of this is the ‘customer success story’. In this case you would focus on your customer. Talk about his business and why it’s so successful. About two-thirds through the story, you would mention that this company uses your product.
The spotlight is on your customer and their success. By simply mentioning that this successful company uses your product or service, you are seen as part of his business success.
The reader then associates your product with success.
This is a tried and true strategy and we have seen first hand how well it works. This is why it is so popular with marketers.
Whether you are an established business or a start up, content marketing can work equally well for you.
2. The “How To” Article
Everyone is looking for ways to improve – even its just something small.
Your technical staff, service team or R&D department probably is familiar with many of the challenges customers face. They know the common mistakes they make. They understand how to solve many of these problems.
An article (or series of articles) where these colleagues share best practices or useful tips can provide real value to your customers.
At the same time it positions your company as the industry experts – and your products as the solution to problems they are facing.
By helping customers solve a problem or make an improvement your marketing stands out from your competitors who are just ‘pushing products’.
3. Give Them the Facts
People love learning new facts and getting statistics on topics of interest.
If your company has interesting data about any aspect of your business or industry sharing it in an article will get your customers’ attention.
This is the kind of information they are likely to read – and then share with colleagues.
Because your company name is on the article, every time some reads those ‘facts’ or ‘statistics’ they’ll be seeing your name. And you’ll be seen as a source of information.
Maximize Your Marketing
Your main content marketing article can be repurposed across many platforms and channels.
The first step is to distribute it to as wide an audience as possible. Email is best for this. If you don’t have a huge email list, you use a press release distribution service. There are many out there from very general services such as Businesswire and PRNewswire to targeted, industry services like Fashion Newswire, which focus specifically on the fashion and textile industry.
After your initial outreach, you can get extra mileage out your content by repurposing it. For example:
- Your Website: As a blog post
- Twitter: Tweet a fact, statistic or quote
- LinkedIn: Post your article
- Facebook: Post your article on your Facebook page
These are just a few suggestions. There are many others.
Best Practices
Even if they have been enticed to your post by the title and subject matter, readers can still be deterred if an article is badly formatted.
Huge swathes of text with large paragraphs, little formatting, and no images would be enough to make most readers bail out, according to the experts at Econsultancy.
Instead, you need to break up blocks of text with headings and sub-headings, use short paragraphs, highlight key points and stats, and use images and charts, both to illustrate the points you are making, but also to make the article easier to read.
Content marketing articles don’t need to be long to be effective.
There is no ‘standard’ or ‘best’ length.
In general, write only enough to make your point. A short article that’s interesting and provides valuable information will be very effective.
People will be able to read it quickly – and they’ll learn something useful!
