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What is content marketing, and why do you need it?

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Content marketing is defined thus:

"Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action."

The Content Marketing Institute



Content marketing continues to grow rapidly in influence

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What problem does it fix?

We live in an age of information abundance.  We're inundated by marketing messages – more than 2,900 a day, by current estimations.

Buyers are typically half way through the purchase cycle before they choose to make contact with a vendor/supplier. Prospects, not vendors, are now in control of the buying cycle.

As a result, marketers are challenged by attention scarcity – the concept that the more messages your audience is forced to filter out, the harder they become to reach.  

Quality content marketing elevates your brand above those thousands of marketing messages, and becomes the fuel for engagement with your customers.  Use it to help, support, entertain and impress your prospects before they are even thinking of buying.

It delivers trust.  The key to online sales

In order for you to influence the purchase decision, it’s imperative that your brand is identified as an authority in your market sector and a solution to your prospective customer’s needs.

If the right content is present at the right time and with the right message, you can build trust earlier in the buying cycle and top the short list of companies they plan to choose from.

"You sell more when you stop selling."

 David Meerman Scott


 

Done well, content marketing is a highly cost effective method of generating sales.

  1. It uses search marketing to generate inbound traffic to your website from your key target audiences.
  2. Traffic is increased further by other companies wanting to link to your site.
  3. Brand awareness increases as a result.
  4. Your content acts to engage with this audience and build a relationship, positioning you as an expert, a thought-leader and a credible supplier/vendor within your market sector.
  5. This leads to an increase in sales and customer loyalty as your audience grows comfortable with your brand and trusts you as a vendor/supplier.


"Good content marketing gets your potential customer to stop, read, think and behave differently"