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I’ve taken a few days off over the Christmas and New Year period so this is a guest post from Jessica Davis, a Content Strategy Specialist with Godot Media. I’ll be back in the New Year. Until then, enjoy and best wishes to you and yours for the coming year.
Content Marketing: One of the most customer-centric forms of marketing
Of all the forms of marketing out there, content marketing is one of the most customer centric forms of marketing. Traditional forms of marketing take it for granted that the customer knows nothing and needs to be told what to do. On the other hand, content marketers and companies investing heavily in their content marketing campaigns are smart enough to know that modern customers are intelligent and tech-savvy and have a desire to be well informed.
Content marketing informs customers
The purchasing actions of modern day customers are the end result of a lot of thought and debate and as they have all the information literally at their fingertips, they cannot be easily fooled or manipulated. The aim of content marketing is to inform the customer and to help him/her make an informed decision. Nowadays, customers cannot be dazzled with flashy and dynamic displays and less than honest claims. They know when something sounds too good to be true and they appreciate it when the benefits and potential disadvantages of a product are being advertised.
Content and customer are kings
The success of any content marketing campaign depends heavily on the interest and engagement that it has with the target audience or customers. If the content is not relevant or interesting, customers will not read it or engage with it resulting in the failure of the campaign. Content marketers are in a constant struggle to create relevant and compelling content that customers will be drawn to. There is no other way to make content appealing to customers other than by making it useful for customers.
Content marketing relies heavily on customer recommendations
The only way content becomes well-known and attracts a lot of attraction and engagement is through the modern version of word-of-mouth marketing – social media. Most of the time, when customers find interesting, useful and engaging content, they automatically share the link to the article on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter so that their friends and family can read and enjoy the article. This is why content marketers and companies are constantly trying to make their content more shareworthy. They closely follow trends and are always thinking of the customer when creating content.
Customer-centric content marketing strategies
As with all types of marketing, content marketing begins with the creation of the content marketing strategy. The customer plays such an important role and as content marketers want to cater to their target group effectively, they create customer profiles to represent their ideal customer and the type of people they would like to attract with their content. The customer profile is thoroughly researched and all content creation and marketing activities always take into considerations what the ideal customer would like. Tone, personality and style of all the content depends on the ideal customer and the customer profiles.
SEO is also an important part of content marketing. This is why keyword research is also based on the kind of customer that the content marketers want to cater to. Keyword research is often based on customer demographics and segments so that they content is targeted properly to these segments. Purchasing behavior, problems and buying cycles of the customer segments are also studied to create the kind of content that would help them along the purchasing funnel. A content marketer has to basically think like a customer while creating content and often times test groups are used to see how the members react to the content and what needs to be changed to improve the content.
All this goes to show that content marketing is very customer centric. The main aim of content marketing is to increase web traffic, engagement and finally revenues and sales by first creating content that appeals to the end-user or customer.
I’ve taken a few days off over the Christmas and New Year period so this is a guest post from Jessica Davis, a Content Strategy Specialist with Godot Media. I’ll be back in the New Year. Until then, enjoy and best wishes to you and yours for the coming year.
About the Author
Jessica Davis is a Content Strategy Specialist with Godot Media – a leading Content Management company. She works closely with Godot’s ebook writers, copywriters,blog writers to ensure that marketing objectives are attained through optimal use of content. Her other interests, besides online content strategy, ebook writing and search engine optimization, are technology, sports and even fashion.
Photo Credit: Search Engine People Blog via Compfight cc
5 Comments
Jessica,
I agree totally that the trick to content marketing is to make it share worthy.
But how do you do that? What are the 2 or 3 things a content marketeer should focus on?
James
James,
I’ve asked Jessica to reply too but thought I’d through in my two-penneth.
One thing that I think firms can do to make their content useful, valuable and shareable is to produce content that answers customers questions about how they can get the most of the product or service that they have bought and make their life easier and use of the product/service better. By looking at historic queries, firms can compile a list of issues and produce content that answers those queries directly. This would also have the added benefit of aiding the customer to self-serve and save customer service costs in the process.
That’s only one idea and not the 2 or 3 things that you asked for but it is my two-penneth.
Adrian
thank you
The basic purpose of business is to earn profit which is possible only if you have more customers. Internet marketing is the best approach of introducing your business locally and worldwide to get more people to visit your website and check out your products which will lead to sales. If the contents of your website or your content marketing strategy is poor then visitors will ran away. I like your title which is about considering the content marketing as central point of internet marketing.
The basic purpose of business is to earn profit which is possible only if you have more customers. Internet marketing is the best approach of introducing your business locally and worldwide to get more people to visit your website and check out your products which will lead to sales. If the contents of your website or your content marketing strategy is poor then visitors will ran away. I like your title which is about considering the content marketing as central point of internet marketing.