The era of Donald Draper-style marketing is well and truly over. No longer can we blast consumers with persuasive billboards or magazine ads and expect to persuade them into making a purchase. Today, the internet has massively changed the way that a consumer (or potential consumer) interacts with a brand, and before a consumer makes a buying decision, the first thing they are going to do is head to the internet for reviews, blog articles and further information.
In the modern world of marketing, the alternative to the traditional, persuasive advertising approach is content marketing.
Content marketing comes in many forms, including email marketing, blogging, social media marketing and a compelling web design. It is by no means persuasive, but instead non-promotional, and designed to attract, engage and educate its target market in a way that builds trust and drives sales.
But there is a huge difference between fantastic content marketing and terrible content marketing. Read on for our top 5 rules for creating fantastic content:
1. Stop Selling
As is probably obvious by now, there’s no use in using content marketing as a sales technique. Resist the urge to use your next blog post to promote your latest product or service. Instead, offer value and don’t ask for anything from your readers.
2. Be useful
Use your content marketing to be of use to your readers. For instance, if you run a bakery, create How To Guides, recipes and more. By being useful as a brand, you can pretty much guarantee that those readers will come back to your blog on a regular basis, as you are providing them with something that they can actually use and benefit from.
3. Make it shareable
Make your content as shareable as possible. Use trigger words that have a powerful impact on readers, such as ‘discover’ and ‘proven.’ Also, spark an emotional response in your readers as this has been proven to make people more likely to pass something on. Finally, offer practical value to your readers. By being useful with your content marketing, people have a reason to pass on your content to others.
4. Be consistent
Once you get your followers used to receiving content from your brand on a regular basis, keep up the momentum by being consistent with the type of content you create and how often you post it. Also, if you are a small business, do not overwhelm yourself by trying to have a presence on every channel out there. Instead, choose 1 – 3 channels such as your blog, Facebook and Instagram and leave out the rest. Finally, it’s essential to get organised by creating and following a content marketing calendar.
5. Be local
The internet is overflowing with information so cut through all of the noise by creating niche content that will be of particular interest to people in the city, borough, block or street that you work on. Personalising your content marketing on a deeper level is a sure-fire way to enable regular contact with your followers, spread the word about your brand and drive repeat business.
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