As every business we work with has realised traditional marketing has left the building. ‘Cold’ targeting potential customers whether its via costly advertising, telemarketing or direct mail now falls on deaf ears and even your website can fail to generate the leads you are looking for. Face to face networking is still a great way to form and nurture new relationships but what happens when your network runs out and you have no one left to network with?

Content Marketing

As branding expert Seth Godin says “Content Marketing is the only marketing left”. Whilst most businesses can see that previous marketing efforts are not quite hitting the mark, many still don’t realise that their most powerful and compelling marketing asset has been there all along, it just needs converting into high quality, compelling content that’s tells a story to potential customers.

How to develop a ‘killer’ content marketing strategy?

So where do you start with developing a content marketing strategy that works for your business?

Here’s 3 top tips to get you started:

1. Firstly don’t see your content strategy as something you agree, along with your annual business plan and stick to religiously. Your content strategy should be ever evolving and should reflect the current aims and objectives of the business. Reviewing and evaluating your suite of marketing collateral should happen frequently and the magic question with any content you produce should always be – ‘Is it useful?’, if not, change it.

 
2. Think of your website as the ‘hub’ of your content marketing efforts and the benchmark for all other content that you produce. Your website content should be reviewed every few months. Are your services clear? Have you tweaked your offer to clients recently and does your website reflect this? Do you have content on there that positions you as an expert? Your website is just one channel but it’s an important one, and if all content signposts back to it, which it should, then onsite content has to be working as hard as it can be for your business so that visitors want to stick around and find out more.

 
3. Always develop your content strategy BEFORE your social strategy. We often get asked by businesses for help with ‘doing social media’ but the content needs to come first. Social media is just the vehicle for getting your message out there, the real value is in the content that you are actually sharing.

An effective content marketing strategy can help your business to reach a wider audience, raise brand awareness and position you as an industry expert.

If you think content marketing will benefit your business but are not sure where to start then get in touch, we’d love to be involved.