Your content is what keeps people coming to your site even when they aren’t buying anything. It brings in ad revenue, but it also keeps customers loyal and reminds them that your products and services still exist. If you can keep those people coming to your site and attract new customers there as well, then your business is bound to maintain momentum and grow. But just churning out content isn’t going to be enough to make you successful and keep people coming to your site. You have to have a plan for your content, and you have to make sure that it appeals to your customers. Here are a few tips to ensure that your content marketing strategy is a success.
Get Inspired
Everyone is doing content marketing now. Businesses that traditionally just focused on selling goods are realizing that content is the best way to get people to come back to their site on a regular basis. So big brands and small businesses are both cranking out content on a regular basis. Your direct competitors are doing it as well, but you may be lagging behind if you aren’t focused on content. If your potential customers see that you are not trying to engage them, they are going to go somewhere else. They may like your products more, but if they go to a competitor’s site for content regularly, then they are going to be more inclined to try out that company’s products than yours because a relationship is being established there simply through content.
Use Your Content to Build Trust
As your customers consume more and more of your content, they will be developing a relationship with you. What kind of relationship will that be? Well, you can determine that to some extent. If you create content that is relevant to them and feels valuable, then you are going to earn their trust. Your content needs to be more than just filler and fluff. You should not be making content for the sake of making content. If you do, you will definitely drive people away from your site. Only have content written when there is something worthwhile to say. Look for ways to interest your customers while staying relevant to your site and your business. Its’s more important to produce quality content than to simply keep making content. That means you need to have a content strategy in place. You don’t want to end up with a bunch of pages of stuffed keywords that aren’t helping anybody. These kinds of pages may bring more eyes to your site, but it’s very likely that those visitors won’t be sticking around long enough to buy anything once they see that your content is all filler and no substance.
Develop Relationships
I like to use the example of Swissotel here. This is a Swiss hotel company that was trying to bring in more business travelers to their hotels. So they created a brochure that identified international etiquette customs and distributed it for free among their patrons. They didn’t make any money off the brochure directly, but they did build trust among their clients and attracted customers they would not have normally had to their hotels. Not everything you do has to be about making money right away. Building relationships over time and developing goodwill is a great way to ensure that your customers stick with you and tell others about you. Your content can be used to do that, even more so than advertising or other conventional marketing methods. Look for ways to give your customers what they want. You can learn more about their desires by listening to feedback, reading comments on your messages boards and Facebook pages and posting questionnaires to simply ask them what you can do better.
Stay Relevant
In your content marketing strategy, you ought to find ways to engage your customers through a variety of means. Don’t just produce articles; branch out into videos, press releases, emails and more. Give your customers a number of ways to consume content, since not all of them want the same content delivered in the same way. You also want to be sure that you are keeping up with the times. How many businesses have fallen behind in recent times by not updating their websites to be compatible with mobile devices? A growing number of consumers are using their mobile devices to browse the internet and consume content. If you are not keeping up with your customers’ needs, then they will go somewhere else for their content.