Growing your business with Content Marketing
I did not get my first client, nor any of my clients, from sales. All of my clients were attracted from my content. I grew my business from $0 revenue to HKD $600,000 within a year. All I did was practice content marketing to its finest.
In this article, I like to share my personal insights in growing a business with content marketing. Find strategic implementations below that you can adopt so you can start your very own content marketing journey today.
1. Increasing awareness
By focusing on a niche with highly-relevant content
All businesses need to start somewhere. Unlike fund-backed startups, entrepreneurs like me operates on loans or personal savings. That means it is essential for us to keep our costs low while ensuring maximal effect.
According to DemandMetric, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing and generates more than three times as many leads. And as told by Content Marketing Institute:
"While many inexperienced marketers assume that content marketing is expensive, the fact is that it’s often cheaper than traditional marketing methods. Because content marketing is effective, easy to begin, and popular with consumers, it can drastically reduce the money marketers spend on advertising their brands."
But what many have mistaken is that content marketing equals content creation. Purely creating content will not achieve awareness. Worse yet, the inconsistency in non-strategized content will lead to the wrong target audiences, penalizing organic reach, and ending the company account at a dead end where ads seems to be the only way out.
"Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action." - Content Marketing Institute.
The premise of doing content marketing, therefore, requires the brand to have already carved out its niche before creating any content. And any content created is laser-focused for this group. It might sound illogical, but the ability of content marketing to help a brand grow its awareness is because it guides the brand to not make content for everybody. If you think about it, it is much easier to raise awareness for your business if you're zooming into a pool of relevant audiences instead of trying to tackle the world and being drowned out by competition.
2. Increasing number of leads
By making audiences attached to your value
How can content marketing help a business drive 3x leads? Well, the reason is simple. Content Marketing grounds itself in offering value. The value offered via content is free. It strives to answer audience questions, and that's it. There is no trickery at the end where it starts blasting you sales messages. At most, it only leaves a bread crumb trail for you to choose if you want to follow.
Instead of disrupting the audience, content marketing gives audiences the power to choose and positions the brand as a giver. And givers are better at attracting leads. But why should you invest in giving out free content? While many may say it's the right thing to do and makes the customer experience much more pleasant, I must mention another important gain, which is that it prevents your business from ever being trapped in competitive pricing.
Leads are highly unlikely to compare your business offerings with a competitor based on price. That is because you have already invested in them with free value. They understand your expertise and appreciates your generosity. In my experience, those who find my prices high never asked for a discount. They rather reach out again when they have the funds ready. That not only builds a unique relationship between my leads and I, where they respect and value my work for what it is, it also makes them anticipate the experience of working with me, because they are eager to know what I can offer on top of my free content.
3. Increasing number of closes
By raising their intent with content
Some business owners may feel reluctant to use content marketing to grow their business and rather take the shorter route of advertisement to capture leads. To them, I suggest they adopt the following mindset instead. View each piece of content as a barrier instead of a free giveaway. They are like speed bumps on a road that forces the audience to slow down and assess their needs for your service or product. As a result, those who arrive at the destination have high intent. They would have already gathered the necessary research ahead of time and are pretty much ready for purchase by the time they speak to you.
"When content marketing adopters and non-adopters are compared, the adopters have conversion rates that are nearly six times higher than their competitors."
- Julia McCoy
Without a large following, any word of mouth, and ads for services, I accumulated over a dozen clients within the first year on my own, just by using content marketing. I took the bold move of eliminating low-quality leads with my content. Those who ended up at the door were closed deals within 14 days.
4. Increasing recognition
By treating content as timeless opportunities
Staying top of mind is one of the fundamental goals of marketing. It is particularly important for content marketing as content can appear throughout the customer journey and occupy all stages in the content funnel. So being remembered is very important.
Unlike traditional or outbound marketing, content marketing can grow your brand's recognition through consistency. As an entrepreneur who does not have a lot of funding, it would be outrageous to try and remain consistent with ads. The budget would go out the roof. But consistency can be achieved with content marketing, and the process is very much like farming. Every piece of content is a seed. And each piece of content can sprout into opportunities 24/7. As long as they offer value and are distributed strategically, they will attract the right audiences who will naturally match you to their needs.
Content marketing allows the brand to be more transparent and authentic, steering them away from corporate and PR-style language to storytelling and behind-the-scenes reveal. As long as the content offers value, education or entertainment, it fuels the content marketing engine and helps differentiate your brand from others.
To attain the benefits that content marketing can bring, the first step is to create a content strategy. Start by recognizing the common ground between what your brand can offer versus what your target audiences desire. Then, it becomes self-explanatory as to what content you should produce. It is until then should a business starts to puzzle its distribution channels and KPI in a content marketing strategy.
If you want to learn more about the difference between a content strategy, content marketing, and a content marketing strategy:
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