Content marketing has exploded in the past two years. It’s become the staple way businesses are to market their brand online. What is content marketing? Simply put, the new strategy involves putting out content- whether in written, video, audio or even tangible format- that offers value to people, which will in turn draw them in and turn into a conversion.
Providing value is not secret sauce anymore. Ask any master business owner or expert marketer and that’s the first advice you’ll get on digital marketing. Sadly, I see so many businesses try to do that online but fail. Brands are pumping out content that are valueless or not valuable enough.
We put resources to waste when we put out content that fails to deliver value. Not only that. We also leave money on the table as what was intended to convert doesn’t offer anything to an audience.
So how do we make sure our content offers value to people? Here are four ways to give value to any audience without fail.
Listen more
Too many businesses today are too much about selling, promoting and talking. They talk about their product, their service, their freebie, their email optin or their video series practically 99 percent of the time. If we want to offer value to people, we need to learn how to listen to them before we echo anything they want to hear from us. Acknowledging comments, putting out surveys and asking people questions through a Facebook status are just some of the simpler ways to do this.
Speak their language
If you’re a clothing line trying to sell customized apparel to millennials, you can’t sound too formal. And if you’re a B2B business that’s closing big clients, you can’t email people with informal slang. Language is not just the way we say things, it’s an extension of our identity. When we speak our audience’s language, we affirm who they are and that gives them value.
Care about them
Now this may sound obvious, but a lot of businesses obviously don’t care about their clientele. They care more about the sale, ROI, conversion or number of likes and shares than their clients problems and needs. An empathetic business is unmistakable, but so is one that simply doesn’t care. Do you care about your audience and their needs?
Stay relevant
More than just content, people are looking for content within their context. Is your content relevant? Does it match the trends, latest news or big events happening locally and globally? Is it on a relevant platform? These are just some questions that will guide us and help us evaluate whether our message is relevant to our audience or not.
