Top 5 tips for content marketing

Content marketing is an increasingly used tactic for generating leads and showcasing your expertise in a particular field. Successful content marketers need to do the following five things well:

1. Put the customer first

Your customer’s needs are absolutely central to content marketing, so avoid the temptation to talk about yourself. The watchword of today’s content marketers is WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) and you should focus on answering this question above all else. It also important to empathise with the issues your customers are facing by creating content that they can identify with. Gain insights into what concerns your customers by undertaking a survey, creating listening posts on your stream, setting up Google Alerts, or doing field research with interviews and questionnaires.

2. Use the right tools for the job

Find out which communications channels best fit your customers’ needs. Do they prefer glossy magazines or blogs? html newsletters or pdf documents? Text or infographics? Events or webinars? LinkedIn or Twitter? By gaining a firm understanding of your customer’s communication preferences you will be in a strong position to deliver the solutions they require. If you don’t know what your customers preferences are, you should ask them.

3. Know where you stand

Decide what your key messages are, what you want to achieve, and how you feel about the burning issues in your industry. This will enable you to establish your own distinctive personality and tone of voice that resonates through your content. Developing a meaningful value proposition will help you to create an ethos that is unique to your brand and gives people compelling reasons to turn to you for solutions.

4. Get the basics right

The need for a clear Call to Action (CTA) should be obvious, yet it’s all too often overlooked by people who should know better. An effective CTA makes it easy for readers to share content, measure what generates interest (and what doesn’t), and to ask for feedback. Content marketing should be about starting conversations, so make your business as approachable as possible by integrating a persuasive CTA. In this way, you can guide readers to what you would like them to do next.

5. Keep going

Content marketing is a marathon not a sprint. Building credibility takes time and perseverance. So set aside the necessary resources to generate enough content to give your website the critical mass in needs to draw people in, and keep them coming back. Research consistently suggests that consistency and frequency of creation, distribution and content optimisation will drive traffic, promote conversion and cultivates productive engagement with your audience.

To find out how our specialists can help you to make the most of your content marketing, contact us on 01772 888 400 or visit www.freshfield.com.