The Secret Of Effective Content Marketing - Local Advertising Journal

“Content is the king!” Bill Gates once said. Let me paraphrase the great computer genius: effective content marketing can make you the king of the Internet audience.

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What do you have in mind?

“We are a serious company, we are engaged in the supply of goods, we provide services, and we have no time to take care of the content.”

Quite just reasoning. But your company has a website, right? You have taken care of the creation of the site, because you understand how many opportunities for business gives you the Internet. But you do not use half of these features, if you are not at all involved in creating high-quality content.

Traditional methods of search promotion are a thing of the past. The algorithms of Google and Bing, forming search results, increasingly focus on behavioral factors: the time spent by the visitor on the site, the number of pages viewed, the size of the permanent audience of the site. Users are becoming more selective, even capricious – they ignore advertising appeals and do not read useless articles. For those who want to settle in the leaders, the only way out is to attract and retain people, creating high quality, popular content.

WHAT IS “CONTENT”?

Contrary to the prevailing opinion, “content” is not equal to “text on the site.” The term “content” refers to the entire body of information in the text, visual, video and audio format that you broadcast to your audience using the site, e-mail, corporate accounts in social networks and other Internet channels.

Text content is an indispensable basis, but do not limit yourself to articles on the site. Look at companies that successfully distribute their viral videos, draw infographics, create presentations and record audio-lectures-podcast. Regardless of the field of activity, they are “overgrown” by potential buyers on the Internet, using all possible formats for presenting information. And this is quite possible for you too!

WHAT IS “GOOD CONTENT”?

The surrounding media world daily throws tons of commercial offers on our heads. Advertising of all kinds and sorts at times hinders to find necessary, to choose the necessary, and even simply to have a rest and have fun. Against this background, unobtrusive, but high quality and useful content looks the most profitable way.

The task of a good article or an interesting presentation is to find and entice someone who seeks answers to questions or problems, but not the seller of a product or service. Help persons do what they needs, do it for free – and they will remember you, do it again – and they will stay with you forever.

HOW TO CREATE GOOD CONTENT?

There are several signs of effective content marketing that can lead to you a huge number of real and potential customers …

High relevance
Learning Aspect
Ease of learning
Visual appeal
Invitation to dialogue
Lack of advertising!

The most important property of good content is its usefulness. Explore your customer; find out what he cares about, what information will be valuable and relevant to him. Then write about this article, conduct an interview with a specialist, shoot a video or a series of photos, make a review or organize your own research. What’s next? Repeat first, and do it regularly.

Do not forget about the form of information. Easiness of mastering is achieved by simple and understandable formulations. To read long, complex, abounding with participial turns, enumerations and commas, which involve several sentences at once, is painful, is not it? Whether it’s short sentences! They are easy to read and remember.

WHAT IS “effective CONTENT MARKETING”?

The whole set of methods for achieving business goals through the creation and dissemination of quality content was called “content marketing.” This is a fundamentally new approach to the promotion of goods and services on the Internet, which places the satisfaction of the client’s information needs first.

Effective content marketing involves an in-depth analysis of the target audience and regular publications at various venues, both internal (company website, corporate blog, groups in social networks), and external (media, partner sites, etc.). In addition, it is expected that readers will actively engage in a dialogue with the authors of the content, collecting opinions, conducting surveys and competitions. Thus, you establish strong trust relationships with a large number of potential consumers of your products or services.

HOW effective CONTENT MARKETING WORKS?

Regardless of which of the levels of the sales funnel is your potential buyer, the effecrive content marketing can gently push it to the desired action. Usually the process of involvement occurs in 3 steps …

Step 1 – Engage the audience: The site, which is regularly replenished with high-quality text materials, is doomed to high positions in search engines Google and Bing. In addition, I want to share useful and interesting content: send a link to a friend, “like” or “tweet” in social networks. So the news spreads about you among a wide range of users. By the way, studies have shown that 70% of people prefer to learn about the company from articles of non-advertising nature.

Step 2 – Increase the popularity and trust in the brand: At the moment when the visitor receives from you really valuable information (instead of the usual advertising promises), you are transformed from an impersonal service provider into an ally. Good content is a measure of sincere customer care, which prevails over taking care of your own financial result. Would you yourself be indifferent?

Step 3 – Increase the level of sales: After you inspire confidence, it’s time to move on to conversion actions. Publish information that reveals your values and real benefits. Place customer testimonials and convincing evidence that your proposal is better than others. Your loyal audience will receive the signal and will probably contact you as soon as there is a need – and possibly without it.

PS

“Many thinks that nobody reads the texts on the Internet. Will not all our efforts go to waste?”

The myth of lazy readers is born and supported by lazy copywriters. Each of us, being really interested in something, carefully studies all sources of useful information about the subject of interest. If your resource does not have enough reader attention, this means only one thing: it’s time to work on the content.