Content Marketing
Content is the lifeblood of all digital marketing.
- Content Strategy
- Delivers Value for Target Audience
- Drives Trust and Confidence
- Grows Visitors, Leads, Sales and Revenue
Great Content Marketing is Vital
It's time to share your lifetime of experiences
Today, content is the lifeblood of all worthwhile digital marketing. It is pivotal to driving awareness of your brand, engaging with the right target audiences and converting people into paying customers. It demonstrates how good you are, drives trust in your business and most importantly adds real value to your target audience before they even talk to you. Great content does great things for your business:
- Adds value to potential customers whilst also demonstrating how good you are
- Builds confidence and trust
- Increases conversion rates and generates more leads/sales
- Mr Google loves it
- Nurtures leads into customers (great for add-ons to your sales process)
- A valuable long term asset to your business
The 6 Points of the Content Marketing Compass
Content Strategy
There’s no point in generating content for the sake of generating content. You must have a clear Content Strategy.
Organisational Requirements
Creating content is not an easy, quick, simple proposition, and you need to be prepared for this challenging process.
Foundational Content
Your #1 priority is to make sure you’ve got a really good website that describes all the foundational things that you do.
Content for SEO
Content for SEO will drive the long-term growth in terms of more organic search visitors finding your business.
Thought Leadership Content
This is all the topical information that really brings you to the fore in terms of being an expert in your field.
Lead Funnels & Magnets
This is a high-level synopsis of the technical and content requirements needed to capture and nurture leads.
Content Strategy
There’s a lot more to content than just writing it. We need to know why we are producing each content piece and how it’s going to engage and add value to your target audience. So, once again, the first step is in nailing your customer strategy (namely target audience and value proposition, because without this, you can’t create a good content strategy… and you can’t create good content without a good strategy.)
Value proposition
Your content is all about adding value to the people you want to serve. Every bit of content you create needs to add value that aligns with your value proposition. This part is really important – define what value you want to add, then create content that helps add a little bit of this value with every piece you develop.
Keyword research
There are some great tools out there that give you a guide as to what your target audience are searching for online. This tells us exactly the topic people want to know more about. So guess what? Let’s answer their questions for them (hint: see value proposition above) as the first step in building some trust with them.
Quality over quantity
Number one rule in content is quality over quantity. Produce great content, not okay or mediocre content. Produce it for your target audience, not because an SEO agency tells you too. Demonstrate how good you are by sharing the amazing knowledge you have built up over your life time of experience, through success and failure.
Take me on a journey
One component that is important to producing these digital assets, is that you need to take me on a cool journey that nurtures me into a lifelong customer. Start by giving me a free blog, then get me to watch a video, then introduce me to a more personalised experience with super impressive eBook or white paper. Finally I’ll be ready to test drive your services with a free/nearly free consult/introductory product that acts as the trojan horse to build the relationship.
Build valuable digital marketing assets
This is all about how we produce long term valuable assets that continually deliver new leads and customers (even while you sleep). Its not quick, its not easy, and its not cheap. But when you get it right, it’s worth its weight in gold, and adds significant $$$ to the valuation of your business.
Rhythm and habits
There is no short cutting your content creation. It’s simply a matter of creating a rhythm of habits that see you regularly create new content each week/each month etc. It’s a matter of dedicating the time, systems and process to consistently and regularly do it. Nike’s catch phrase always comes up – Just do it!
Involve the whole team
This should be a whole of business proposition. Every person has specific skills and knowledge that should be shared, that will add real value to potential customers. Every question that is asked by a prospect should be written down, and turned into a blog post. If one person is asking the question, lots of others will be too.
Different strokes for different folks
Everybody is different and people learn differently so it’s important to provide all levels of content in lots of different formats:
- Provide high level summaries and then provide all the detail
- Do it in a blog, do the next one in a video
- Video is so important in this day and age
- eBooks and white papers etc.
- Interactive online tools are great too
Build a valuable database
A database of potential customers is worth its weight in gold, so le’ts use some of your mind blowing content to capture an email address that you can continually market too. Most people are happy to give away their email address for a nugget or two of gold. And then continually share with them great content.
Our motto is that nobody can create content as well as you can, so don’t outsource it! You owe it to your customers and potential customers for the ideas, information, advice and guidance that come out of your head (the content from others is never good enough). You can use others to type it up, spruce it and get it live, but the core ideas and messages need to come from you.
Most people, by nature, are shy and don’t feel they have great ideas to share. You’re wrong – completely wrong. A life time of experiences makes you unique and very knowledgeable. It’s time to share them and promote your content:
- On social channels where your target audiences are (not where they’re not)
- On email with leads and clients
- On blog sites
- On media sites
Pay for it with boosted posts
And put some money behind it. You want as many people to see your great content as possible, so put money behind each and every post. If you don’t think the post is good enough to share, make it better until it is.
Last lesson: don’t produce crap content, only great content.
Content Marketing FAQs
What is content marketing?
Content Marketing is a type of marketing that involves creating content such as blogs, case studies, landing pages videos, social media posts etc.) and sharing them on your digital platforms (website, social media channels, directories etc.). This content isn’t aimed to explicitly promote your business, but rather add value to current and new customers to fuel interest in your products or services.
How often should I update my website?
Your website is your shop or shop front, so you need to be updating it regularly to keep things fresh, new and engaging to visitors (and Google). Google will reward you for updating your website content regularly by ranking you higher on a google search (which is where you want to be). The more you update your website with quality content that adds value to your visitors, the better you will rank on google.
We would aim to make at least a weekly update to your website, whether this be a blog post, content update or new landing page.
Do I need a blog on my website? If so, why?
Yes, is the simple answer. Having a blog section on your website is the best way to share your knowledge and expertise whilst establishing trust and credibility with your target audience. This leads to better quality traffic and leads, which is the ultimate goal.
The other reason is that it’s a great way to rank better on Google. Having a blog section means you should be adding content to your website regularly, which adds value to visitors and keeps them engaged on your website for longer. This will mean your organic search results (SEO) will improve, so you rank higher on google.
Is content marketing right for my business?
The short answer is “hell yes”. No matter what sort of business you are running, whether it be B2B or B2C, content marketing is important.
Have you heard the saying “content is king”, well this is because it is a way to share your knowledge in your field, which builds trust with your target audience. And people buy from people they trust.
Can’t I just do my own content marketing?
Absolutely you can, but we find this is the first thing that will be put off when you are busy, so it’s good to be able to delegate when you’re time poor.
Having a structure (content calendar) and someone to hold you accountable to draft content regularly is really important for your organic search results but also to build trust and credibility with your target audience.
How can I create a good content marketing strategy?
A great content marketing strategy all comes down to understanding the problems your target audience are facing and giving them the information they need to solve them. If your content can do this, your strategy will succeed.
Even better is when your content makes your audience aware of a problem they didn’t know they had. Then provides them with the perfect solution.
Ultimately there are 3 steps to creating a good content marketing strategy:
– First, determine who your customer is.
– Second, determine what information they need (the problem & solution).
– And third, determine how you tell and share the information (written word, video, images, audio).
Related Articles
It’s official! The world has changed! And the marketing world is very slow to catch up
How to Create Great Content in 10-minutes
5 Tips to Easily Create Great Marketing Content
The Foundational Content All Website Require
Five steps to great content marketing for industrial businesses
Maximise Your Online Presence by Sharing Great Content
The marketing silver bullet that will hit the target every time
The real reason customers aren’t lining up to buy from you.
Crafting a Great Content Strategy that Drives Value and Engagement
Creating an Effective and Efficient Content Production System
Your tribe wants to hear your story!
CD Baby Email – A little example of awesomeness!
LinkedIn Personal Profile Best Practice
Should I pay to boost a social media post?
Does my business need to be on Facebook?
A Humble ‘Thank You’ Email That Produces Big Rewards
CASE STUDY
Tripled leads through the door in 18 months.
Engagement : Sept ’17 – Current
- Content Strategy and Recommendation
- Content Marketing & Social Media
- Search Management (SEM and SEO)
- Web Design and Development
500%
Growth in Visitors
400%
Growth in Leads
It’s time to do great content marketing!
"*" indicates required fields
“The team at Due North are great. They are all great to work with and have helped get our website to perform a lot better. It is a constant job to keep up with all the changes but Due North certainly help make it easier.”
Ben Noble
THE LOTE AGENCY
“Due North gave our website a long overdue and serious overhaul so it now actually ‘works for us’. I love working with Due North, and have recommended them to lots of people.”
Adrienne Meakin
EBOOK: The Definitive Guide to Creating Killer Content.
