Done right, content marketing will deliver an ROI measured in terms of the LTV of a customer.
But it’s a marathon -- not a sprint.
What makes content marketing distinct from other forms of marketing is that its primary goal is to engage your target audience’s interest rather than lead immediately to a call-to-action to buy.. The content can take many forms, and part of planning an effective strategy is selecting the medium that is most likely to capture your audience’s attention.
For example, a kitchenware seller may send out recipes or blogs that offer advice on healthy substitutions to make guilt-free desserts. But it can also use video content effectively to demonstrate techniques in cooking or offer a downloadable app that converts cooking measurements from ounces to grams or milliliters.
Even infographics can be tailored for such a seller. For example, it can show the shift in demand and supply chain issues to explain why you may find shortages of certain key ingredients and suggest possible substitutions for recipes.
What all the approaches described above have in common is that they position the brand as a credible source of information within its own defined niche. Over time that leads to a deepened relationship with your audience.
Content marketing goals
Some B2C marketers have trouble defining their content marketing goals, though it generally falls into one of the top six for identified a Content Marketing Institute survey:
Creating brand awareness (84%)
Educating audiences (75%)
Building credibility/trust (65%)
Nurturing subscribers/audiences (49%)
Generating sales/revenue (48%)
Building a subscribed audience (38%)
Seeing you consistently address their interests rather than just promoting yourself makes them feel more connected to your brand. As a result, they will be more inclined to buy from you than from brands that have not invested in earring their trust.
Seeing you consistently address their interests rather than just promoting yourself makes them feel more connected to your brand. As a result, they will be more inclined to buy from you than from brands that have not invested in earring their trust.
Like SEO strategy, content marketing is a long-term strategy that can take six months or even longer to demonstrate significant lifts for your targets. However, truly solid content marketing that your audience really appreciates can sometimes even deliver more immediate ROI.
The right way and wrong way to approach content marketing
So how do you know if you’re doing it right? You look at others who are putting out great content and those who can’t break out of the self-promotion mold even when they claim to want to do content marketing.
The point comes across clearly in my own experience in managing the content and advertising for a bridal magazine in which the hairstylist got it right and the photographer got it wrong. She gave readers tips that they could use, while he wrote about himself and his approach to photography.
The results were clear. The photographer was disappointed that the article didn’t generate sales instantly even though many people told him they saw it. The hairstylist was thrilled that the article brought her more customers than any advertising had ever done.
Granted, women get their hair done more frequently than they hire photographers, but that is all the more reason for the photographer to recognize that he cannot expect immediate sales. His real error was in squandering the opportunity to do content marketing right.
The photographer failed to offer the audience anything of value to them because he was so intent on self-promotion that he refused to put himself in the shoes of his audience and consider what they would want to learn. The hairstylist, on the other hand, instinctively understood what content would appeal to her audience and was rewarded for giving it to them.
In the case of the hairstylists, the business leads came in right away, which is somewhat unusual. Typically, though, such a strong response only develops after a series of articles or videos build up a following.
