What is it?
You may be like me; you heard someone mention content marketing and you believe you know what it means but you’re “too embarrassed” to ask anyone…
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience, with the objective of driving profitable customer action. (Content Marketing Institute).
Taken from “What Is Content Marketing?” by Josh Steimie on the Entrepreneurs website…
The key word is Valuable…
It changes the definition from one that could describe any form of advertising or marketing…
Rather than avoiding it, people want to consume it, even seek it out…
Therefore, our goal is to provide as much value from your content marketing to your target audience as you are able…
You may still be unsure exactly what content marketing is…
Consider these examples:
Webpages
Podcasts
Videos
Books
White Papers
Ebooks
Apps
Presentations/Public Speaking
Blogs
So why is content marketing important to your business?
The 4 steps of the buying cycle…
1. Awareness
Prior to awareness a customer may have a need, but they are not aware there is a solution...
2. Research
Once a customer is aware there is a solution, they will perform research to educated themselves...
3. Consideration
At this point the customer starts comparing different products from different vendors to make sure they are getting a high-quality product at a fair price...
4. Buy
Finally, the customer makes their decision and moves forward with the transaction
Traditional marketing and advertising focus on the last two steps…
Content marketing taps into the first two steps of the process…
Raising awareness of solutions…
Educating consumers about a product they may not have considered before…
The return on the investment for content marketing can be HUGE if it’s done properly…
What is the #1 secret of Content Marketing?
ADD VALUE!
Plain and simple…
Hope you received value from this content…
And have a great weekend!
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