Creating foundational content should be your number one priority when building a digital marketing strategy. Before you delve into the long-term growth of content, you first need to focus on what we call ‘foundational content’. This means making sure you have a strong website that covers all of the foundational things that you do.
1. Include everything about you
You need to describe everything about who you are, what you do, how you do it, and why you do it.
This is broken down into three simple formats:
The Why
Why did you start your business? What are you trying to achieve? What are the dreams and goals that your target audience would want to know about? That’s really important.
People buy why you do what you do, not what you do. Simon Sinek really ran this home, so if you haven’t seen his YouTube videos, it’s highly recommended that you watch them.Â
You need to clearly demonstrate your why – your passion, that greater cause that is driving you to keep going. That’s what people are ultimately going to buy. The enthusiasm, excitement, commitment and striving for excellence.
The What
Once you’ve explained the why, then you need to explain the what. What do you do as a business? What is the problem that you solve? What can you do for your customers?
The How
Finally, the how. How do you do it? How do you go about fulfilling the wants, needs and dreams of your target audience?
Answering these questions will help your customers to be crystal clear on why they want to do business with you.
2. Include your story
Your story is one of the most overlooked areas of content on your website. This is your business origin story:
- How did you start out?Â
- What has the journey looked like?Â
- How long have you been in business?Â
- What were the ups?Â
- What were the downs?Â
So, your story really adds character to who you are and where you come from, and people love that. By humanising your story, you become relatable.
People want to know more about you, because ultimately when you choose a provider, product or service, you choose the people that are behind it. The product and service are important, but the people who are providing it are more important because good people produce good products and services. You need to make sure that you’re seen as a really good person, so your story is really important.
- Your history: Take people through your history. Where you’ve been and where you come from.Â
- Today: Give people a good overview of who you are today. What’s changed fro day 1 to now?
- The team: The most important part is describing your team:Â
- Share how good they are,Â
- Where they’ve come from,Â
- What their qualifications are.Â
- What’s their story?Â
One of the most important bio titbits is to share each team member’s favourite food, people love hearing about this. Add some real character in communicating who your team really is.
3. Your products and services
Your products and services need to be communicated really well. They need to have an immense amount of detail in them. The more detail, the better. You can never have enough detail.
High level
What’s the summary of your products and services, the features, the benefits, and how they operate?
More detail
What’s the next level of detail? So, for each of those points you’ve raised on the above summary page, you need to break them into more and more detail. You might have four pages of the next level of information. And then, you know what?
Then you take it to the next level:
- What’s the material you use?
- What are the safety ratings?
You can never produce enough detail. Some people just want the summary, which is great, but other people will really drill down. And the more information you can provide them, the more people will like and trust you.
4. Process and journey
Your process and the journey you are going to take your customers on:
- What’s the experience your customers are going to get?
- What are the seven core steps they’re going to go through?
- What should they expect at every step?
- What’s required from them, from you?
- How are they going to see it?
- When is it going to be delivered?
- What’s the follow-up process?
- What’s the customer service support, if required?
You want to detail exactly the experience your customers are going to have by buying your products and services.
5. Bringing together your content calendar
So, once you’ve defined what the foundational content you need to create is, you can create a content calendar and start creating this content on a regular schedule. This foundational work is priority number one. Once you get the foundations right, then you can move on to the details.
Boost your digital marketing with strong foundational content
By using these tips you will be able to build strong foundational content to boost your digital marketing strategy and set your brand and business up for long-term success. Just like a house, a business needs a strong digital marketing strategy and foundational content to build upon. If you have that, your business will be well-positioned for consistent growth and success.
