Content Marketing
as a Key to Your Success
In 2021, if you haven’t digitized your business by now, you’re missing out on a lot of potential from clients and other businesses in the world. The way businesses are being found today is within the online space, either through Google Search, social media, referral sites, etc. You need to have an online presence to be relevant today.
Because it’s so imperative that every business has an online presence, imagine that it’s similar to being at a big open-air concert with almost half a million people screaming and yelling at the stage; the analogy here is that your customers are the singers on the stage. For you to be able to get their attention from the crowd of half a million people screaming at the same time, you would need to do something out of the ordinary to stand out – this is where your content comes in.
Getting your Business Noticed
Marketing is an attention game. You need to get the attention of your ideal buyer. In order to do that, you first need to understand your audience. You should have a good understanding of who your buyers are, what they are looking for, what motivates them, where they spend their time, etc.
Once you have some form of understanding about your ideal customer profile, you can help them make decisions. When I say a form of understanding, what that means is that you can never have a perfect understanding because things evolve. Just like in all areas of life, nothing stays the same. Therefore, this means that your ideal customer profile will change slightly from time-to-time.
When you’ve mapped out an understanding of your ideal customer profile, then it’s time for you to help them make decisions. Your content should assist your potential leads in their decisions regarding the challenges they want to overcome. You will be providing them with solutions and answers to their problems with your content.
You should consider; are they reading blogs, are they on social media, watching videos on YouTube, listening to podcasts, or are they interacting with others on LinkedIn? This will help you evaluate what type of content you need.
The Buyer Journey
I know it can sound overwhelming, but if you start by identifying your ideal customer profile and mapping out their buyer journey, you’ll be able to determine what type of content you should create and the relevant time and place to offer the content dependent on where they are in their journey; whether it be the awareness stage, consideration stage, or the decision stage.
1. Awareness Stage: this is where your potential client realizes that they have a problem. They’ll usually start researching different ways to solve that problem. Here is where you might consider blogging; but blogging to help, not to sell. At this stage, you’re helping them figure out what’s the best way to solve their problem.
2. Consideration Stage: This is when the buyer considers several options and evaluates your product and possibly several other products. Once they are in this stage, you want to do something that will make them remember so that you’ll stand out as a potential solution for their issue above your competitors. You might create demo content that will demonstrate directly how you will solve their problem.
3. Decision Stage: Last but not least. Here potential customers have evaluated a couple providers and are making the final decision as to which one is best suited for them. The biggest takeaway – when addressing clients in the decision stage, the idea is NOT to sell them, the idea is to support them in making their decision. You want to be remembered as a helper, as a resource.
What I’ve seen in many instances is that often if a potential customer decides to go with a competitor, that doesn’t mean that down the road they will not come back to you if things don’t work out. If the customer remembers you, remembers the real help and information you provided them, they will round back to you in their decision process.
The Future is Now
Content marketing is extremely important in 2021. To recap, your main takeaways should be to have an understanding of your ideal customer profile, and to map their buyer’s journey, start small, and create a content plan around that.
Another one of the biggest tips I can give to anybody is consistency in your content. If you decide to post a blog a month, maintain consistency with that schedule.
Additionally, in the current times, one of my favorite pieces of advice to offer is that if you do have limited resources to build your content, perhaps consider starting a podcast. A podcast is really beneficial because you’ll come out of it with an audio format that can then be transcribed, that you can add videos to, or make blogs around. It’s also a great way to connect with people in your industry that you would like to interview, which helps create more visibility to you.
Whichever method ends up working best for you, content plays a huge role in today’s digital environment. As we’ve seen from 2020 when everyone stopped traveling and moved online, content became even more relevant than before. Ensuring you have a strong online presence is a key to your success in the digital world.
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Constantin Buda
Vidalico Digital
E-Mail Marketing, Content Marketing
Constantin Buda is a Growth Strategist helping companies translate complex, high-tech information into marketing stories that drive sales.