How content marketing forges deeper customer relationships

With the state of play in business today, consumers and buyers are more empowered and enabled than they ever have been. They are well and truly in the driver's seat, with a firm grip on the steering wheel. And whether yours is a B2B or a B2C business, you’re likely facing an uphill battle to get their attention, let alone convince them to do business with you.

Often your target audience will more or less make their decision to buy from or to bypass your business before they ever contact you directly. So, if you’re looking to charm them with your beguiling phone manner or with a flashy in-person sales pitch, well, that chance may never come. And this is where a carefully considered content marketing strategy can make all the difference for your business.

What you get with a content marketing strategy

Content marketing is the key to building an engaged audience for your business. In fact, Seth Godin noted more than a decade ago in 2008 that “content marketing is all the marketing that’s left”.

A well-considered and well executed content marketing strategy that adds true value to your target audience enables your business to intercept the attention of its buyers in ways that are favourable to those buyers.

“Favourable” is the key word here. Content marketing is not about thrusting a steady stream of overzealous “buy now” messaging at your target audience. Such blunt tactics are tone-deaf and will likely cause more harm than good, and are, ironically, the opposite content marketing.

Rather, content marketing is about adding meaningful value to the lives of your ideal customers via content that educates, informs, and, ultimately, helps them in some tangible way and makes their lives easier.

Content versus content marketing

It’s important to differentiate between content, and content marketing, as they are not one and the same. In fact, they serve very different purposes, even if from a distance they may appear to be the same thing.

Content is ubiquitous in your business – it’s your sales content, event content, customer service content, product content, and campaign content, to name a few common examples.

These types of content support your brand and your products, but they are not created for your customers. Rather, they are invariably created for your boss (i.e., the business owner, or business manager). This means that content (as outlined above) is doing very little in terms of reaching, engaging, and converting your target audience.

This is where content marketing comes in to do the heavy lifting, and why it’s important to not confuse your content activities with content marketing activities in your business.

Read more about our content marketing services or contact us today for a confidential discussion about your business.