We all somehow get trapped in the sprint to market our business superior to others and while doing so, we tend to skip the utmost crucial point that none of our clients has ever asked what makes our business superiors than others.
Although the clients must have a tonne of questions on whether our brand is credible or not before approaching us. Actually, most of them look forward to working with someone whom they can trust and build a rapport for a long fruitful business relationship. Now, how do we do that?
That’s where the concepts of Inbound, Outbound and Marketing especially through digital channels come into place in this era. To put forward the terms as simply as possible, Outbound Marketing here refers to the traditional way of initiating conversations through emails, calls, etc. whereas Inbound Marketing is the knack of attracting, instead of chasing the leads and how do we do that?
Simply, through Content Marketing which is the art of problem-solving through quality content to earn the buyer’s trust.
Why do we need a Story in the first place?
7.9 billion people around the world and each one has their own unique stories to tell.
All of us love to hear stories, especially ones to whom we can relate. Business storytelling is similar and provides us with a reason to build an empathetic relationship by aligning our business to respective prospects and customer’s needs. In the long run, our brand’s story is quite what we would put up on the website, blogs, use-cases, media covered stories and entirely on social media platforms.
In the end, it’s how we communicate consistently our vision and core values to the mighty audience.
The primary goal is to form a people’s connection and it’s about how we can resonate and provide solutions to their problems. A story must be able to create a contrast between choices. That’s when our stories stand out inspiring others and help our business in return to survive and thrive in today’s crowded informational marketplace.
So how do we create content?
To start with, proper planning (Content Calendar and many other Content Management System tools, to be precise) can help to create a roadmap for our content. We need to make tactical decisions regarding which topics to talk about, the format of the content and when to publish them. We can stay organized and derive the best results from all our content planning efforts with a content plan.
Then again where do ideas come from? What does your customer need to know? All of this and that and we can solve their problems only by putting ourselves in their shoes, i.e., by creating CONSUMER-CENTRIC content.
Did you think the world revolves around you? Well, in the world of Marketing, it’s the other way round. Customers are the king!
In our day and age, content marketers and creatives need more than just great content. Great content marketers read and consume content from a good sort of place.
They’re endlessly curious and fascinated by a good width and breadth of topics. So, as dynamic Marketers, we must be curious, dedicated and nimble. We should try to develop an appetite for content and consume it regularly, be it good, bad, old, new, popular, niche. We can consume history, politics, geography, poetry, or science magazines on top of being ears to Clubhouse jams, industry blogs and come up with vivid content ideas. More is the key and we would possibly be surprised that what comes out of it later.
Recently, I read a book by Marcus Sheridan called ‘They Ask, You Answer’ describing content ideas as The Big 5 which covers the five major subjects for developing content, namely:
Problems: Well, nothing in this world is perfect. There’s always a probability that our product or service users might face problems so to prevent that, we must try to prepare an inventory of weaknesses of product or service and confess to the audience honestly. Also, work passionately to solve those problems with apt solutions and that’s how we turn our weaknesses into strengths.
Best-in-class: Whether we are able to top the list of best-in-class in our industry or not, if the target audience is interested to know something about our business, we ought to answer them with valuable content, teach them and seek their valuable feedback. It’s a life-long process.
Comparisons: This is one of the foremost popular content subjects for developing assets for spreading the word about our brand. We must prepare a list of prospects for our service or product and attempt to create content answering their frequently asked questions.
Reviews: Client commendations and reviews add fuel to our booming rapport with industry experts and connections in our niche. We must never skip this golden tool
while creating brochures, newsletters or even social media posts. See, isn’t this the same thing we discussed prior? And now our prospects trust us for being honest with these reviews.
Pricing: When we’re delivering our best, why should we feel uneasy about revealing our worth? We must never be hesitant about sharing the correct price rates when people are asking about it. Lastly, let’s review how to share the content we create. Creating informative infographics and images to support our blog is a great way to build quality inbound links to your website and is a significant way of building brand awareness around our content.
We must identify what’s working well for us through the web analytics report to check which content is driving the most traffic, conversions, or engagements and which ones call for more work for improvement.