How to Attract Customers Through Content Marketing?

Advertising has stopped bringing customers? Is it expensive? Then it is time to change the promotion strategy! Learn how to take your business to the next level with valuable content

Everybody uses advertising to attract clients. It is simple in nature and clear: placed an ad or launched a video – got (or did not get) the expected result. The problem is that today it is difficult to build a competitive business on a single ad and we have to look for new forms of interaction with users.

Here content marketing comes to the rescue. It allows us to move away from the traditional advertising concept, offers real value to users and motivates them to become not just clients, but supporters (“lawyers”) of the brand in the long run and finally drive traffic to the website.

What is content marketing and how does it work?

At the first approximation, the concept of content marketing is simple: you create and publish content that is useful for the target audience, place it on thematic resources (including your own), get links to the site via backlinks, applications for purchase, registration, and subscriptions (i.e. leads). But, as in any case, in content marketing a lot of details that it is important to learn not to waste time and budget in vain.

Content marketing is based on three “whales”:

Content (users need to solve problems quickly and efficiently, so the content should be interesting, useful and unique in terms of meaningful content);

Interaction (it is important not just to publish content, but to keep in touch with users, answer questions and comments, stimulate discussion, etc.);

Conversion (content is not created for the sake of content, but for the sake of attracting clients, so it is important to think through the content strategy in such a way that readers and viewers take targeted action).

If only one component is removed, it will not be possible to make full use of the possibilities of content marketing.

The “mechanics” of content marketing can be considered by both the seller and the customer.

From the seller’s point of view, the process consists of several stages:

Building a portrait of the target audience, understanding their needs (who your customers are, what they care about, why they are “awake at night” and how to help them);

Content analysis, taking into account the preferences of the target audience (this also includes competitors’ analysis, which allows you to identify what content is in demand, what is already available, and what is not yet available);

Selection of sites where your audience “lives” (these can be thematic sites, forums, groups in social networks, etc.);

Creating useful content and placing it on selected sites;

Encouraging the promotion of content through social networks, newsletters and other channels;

Setting up target chains in analytics systems, tracking transitions to the site and evaluating effectiveness.

A potential client sees content marketing in a slightly different way:

Awareness of the problem that needs to be solved;

Searching for solutions to the problem (here come to the aid of search engines, social networks, forums, and communities);

Consumption of useful content, interaction with the brand and formation of preferences;

The final choice of the product and its purchase (“A lot of good things are written about the brand – I have to take it”, “I’ve been reading a great newsletter for a year now, and here I also got a discount of 10% as a regular reader – I’ll try to communicate with the system”, etc.).

In practice, there are many variations of user behavior. In any case, the result is the transformation of the next visitor into a real client (conversion).

Why shall we invest in content marketing?

Business promotion with the help of content provides a number of advantages:

• Wide coverage of the target audience and increased brand recognition through the use of different channels;
• Forming a loyal community around the brand, which can be quickly mobilized during sales, promotions, product launches and even to counteract competitors’ attacks;
• Attracting targeted traffic to the site, improving the site’s behavioral performance, obtaining natural backlinks from reputable sites, thereby increasing the position in search engine output;
• Optimization of marketing budget through the use of different promotion channels and the possibility of choosing more effective ones;
• Ensuring a long-term competitive advantage and a stable flow of applications.