Content marketing 101

Lisa East explains how to grow your company’s influence online through a well-structured content marketing strategy.

If you’re a business owner or marketing manager, content marketing presents a great opportunity to get in front of your customers in a meaningful way when they’re online.
And online is where people spend a lot of their time these days. 

International research shows that 81 percent of consumers research online before buying when considering a major purchase. Regardless of whether a purchase is large, relatively small, B2B or B2C, it’s likely that online research will play a part.

That means having a sound online marketing plan is critical and, as part of that, a well thought out content marketing strategy. 

What exactly is content marketing? 
Put simply, content marketing is all about storytelling. Content marketing gives you the opportunity to attract, engage, convert and retain new customers by providing relevant and valuable information that helps solve their problems. 

At a practical level, it includes website content, blogs, email marketing, social media, video and infographics as well as, of course, good old fashioned print.

The widely recognised great-grandparent of content marketing is John Deere’s The Furrow magazine. It was launched in 1895 to educate farmers on new technology and provide business advice, all the while positioning John Deere as a leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery. More than 100 years later, the magazine is available in 40 different countries, in 12 languages, and still provides quality content to farmers around the world. 

Why is content marketing so important? 
Content marketing has recently increased in prominence due to the rapid rise of the Internet and the way people use it to inform their purchasing decisions.

For New Zealand businesses to be competitive in the digital age, they need to make sure they lead in the online space as well as offline. Having a good digital marketing strategy is critical – and consistent, high quality content marketing is part of that. 

Forward planning comes into it too. It isn’t just product and service purchasing decisions that are being researched online; if you’re thinking of selling your business at some point in the future, you need to remember that the first thing prospective buyers will do is Google you, check out your website, search engine rankings, social media pages and reviews. 

Having a sound digital brand presence will position your business as more valuable than if you have a poor website, languishing social media pages and little other presence online.

Sounds easy? 
While, at its core, content marketing is a simple concept – telling stories that provide valuable information – that doesn’t mean it is easy to do well. 

As with any form of marketing you need to develop an overarching strategy, incorporating your key messages, how and where you are going to communicate with customers, what actions you want them to take and how you will measure success. 

You need to have a clear idea of who your target audience is. Start by thinking about your dream client – consider what their interests, questions, needs or problems are in relation to your product or service. You’ll need to find out what digital channels they’re likely to use too. For example, are they constantly checking email, or are you more likely to find them on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?

Once you have the ‘who, what and where’, you need to make sure you put a plan in place. Create a calendar of content to ensure you hit key messages at the right time. This plan needs to have a good mix of content – always keeping the customers’ needs first. 

Regardless of the channel you use to communicate with your customers, remember to keep your messages relevant and interesting to your audience. Provide engaging and compelling content and always include a call to action for the customer. A good rule is that of every six communications, four are content of interest to the client, one is about you and one is a sales offer. 

A great example is Dollar Shave Club (dollarshaveclub.com). They provide low cost, shipped razors to customers in the US. To attract customers online, they launched with a clever YouTube video that quickly went viral and has now been viewed more than 21 million times. 

Today, their online communications include reviews, blogs, social media pages and video. They also have a printed newsletter that goes out with every order. Their content marketing strategy has helped them attract, engage, convert and retain customers, and build a strong brand, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional advertising campaign.

Here in New Zealand, many business owners still have a deeply ingrained DIY attitude. This is a great part of our culture and heritage, but being successful in business means you need to invest in professional advice from qualified experts, and that may mean outsourcing some or all of your content marketing. Whether you need a professional to help you develop your strategy or someone to write your blog posts or create your marketing emails and social media posts, you get what you pay for. It’s worth remembering that having well written, efficiently promoted content is vitally important to the success of your content marketing strategy. 

How do I know if my content marketing efforts are working?
Just like any other form of marketing, you’ll get the best results from your efforts if you plan, test and measure. 

One of the joys of working predominantly in the online space is that it is easy to measure most digital content marketing activities to see what works and which activities are delivering the best return on your marketing investment. 

The trick is to understand what you need to measure, be consistent about tracking it and, if it isn’t working, make changes.