Content Marketing - 10 ways to get it right

Businesses seem to be getting in an awful muddle about Content Marketing.  They may now understand that it’s a good thing to put helpful resources on their website but they're still using a  hit and miss approach.

So let’s go back to marketing basics.

1. Who is your target market?
2. What would they like to know in terms of your solution to their challenge? Remember the old saying – if you want to sell what Bill Smith buys you must look at the world through Bill Smith’s eyes.
3. We are a cynical bunch so use data and cite sources.
4. We are a time-pressed bunch so use bullet points and visuals and straightforward language so we don’t have to concentrate to get what you're saying.
5. The quality of your resources is a direct reflection of the quality of your brand so take time to create resources of which you can be rightly proud. And please – check your spelling.
6. Content Marketing is an ongoing process so try to find subjects that can be approached from many different angles.  Try to take a new view – the same old same old is unlikely to be shared.
7. Have you delivered your content in a medium that works for your target market? Don’t automatically create a lengthy white paper when you might have created a more palatable video.
8. How does your target market find new content? Where and how are you going to promote your resources?
9. What do you want your customers to do once they have read your content?  What have you put in place to give them a reason to act in order to move them along in the purchasing process?
10. Measure and Monitor your output and any results otherwise you are wasting time and – if outsourcing the function – money.

By the way there’s no coincidence that most of the above applies to all things marketing.  A new shiny marketing label doesn’t negate the usual pragmatic marketing approach 

If you would like to read more on the subject these two posts might also be useful to you:

What is Content Marketing?

How to do Content Marketing which works