It’s 2012 and surely you’ve heard about content marketing. But the truth is that even with its popularity, very few businesses understand it or are using it to its full potential, missing out on vital opportunities and customers. We’re going to fix that by empowering you with the information you need to know to make content marketing work for your business.
What Is It?
Content marketing in its simplest form is exactly what it sounds like: marketing through content. But it’s not the content you put in an ad or the information you use to define your company on a website. Instead, the content is that which is most important to your customers…the knowledge that you have, that they want, that you can give them, for FREE.
That’s right: for free. Content marketing has many forms, but the most prominent are YouTube videos, blogs, and informational articles, all geared toward providing a customer with the information they need AND want.
Why Is It Important
“Why on earth would I spend time to give away our information for free?” is a question many managers who are new to content marketing ask. That’s easy. If you don’t, a competitor will. Consumers are searching online for the information they need to make decisions about almost everything. A recent study also shows that 80% of decision makers prefer to get information from an article instead of an ad, while 60% say company content helps them make better product decisions.
The primary reason credited for this trend is due to the trust it builds between the company and prospective customer. Gone are the days when all a company had to do was purchase ad space in a newspaper or magazine and watch the sales roll in. Now, customers desire and need to be empowered with information first. They want to know that the company with which they are considering a business transaction knows what it’s talking about and can “walk the talk.” In fact, a recent study from Nielsen revealed that 58% of consumers say they trust editorial content and brand sites over most other forms of web marketing, which is what is prompting so many businesses to transform their sites into true industry resources.
An Example
How do you make it work for your company? Let’s take a look at how content marketing is used in a few different industry settings:
- The Double Bay Vet of Sydney, Australia created its own YouTube channel where anyone (but particularly its local residents) can view informational videos like “Healthy Dog Food Recipes” and “How to Check for Fleas”
- P28, the original high protein bread from New York Bakery, leverages content marketing by providing menu suggestions with recipes that consumers can create using their product.
- Donnie Brown, known as THE wedding planner in Dallas, TX, utilizes his site to the fullest by providing prospective customers with not only a regularly-updated blog, but also a tip of the week.
Preserve It
Once you’ve mastered the concept of content marketing and you’ve got it working for you, capture it forever in a way that will allow you to use that same content in a different format for years to come. At That’s Great News, we can take an online article or blog and place it in a quality custom article frame that will allow you to perfectly preserve content and take it offline – providing even greater opportunity to reach additional prospects.
See how we do it today. We’ll send you an online preview FREE in 24-48 hours. Just give us a link to your content and get ready to be amazed!