The time to be genuine and human as a business is now. Business is personal, make it personal. Educative content is one of the best opportunities you can ever have as a business to attract and retain customers who can confidently trust you. There are just too many marketing messages without value. Prospective customers know the difference between messages that add value to their lives and infomercials that pretend to be useful but are actually sales pitches. The time to show the human side of your business is now more important than ever. You have a real opportunity to show your audience that you care about their education.
Start thinking about how you can help your customers. People are tired of the constant intrusive messages about products and services they receive in their inboxes. Those banners about your products won’t make the real difference you expect. People will continue to ignore them. Consumers have made their messages clear: they don’t want to be sold, they want to be educated.
Take advantage of that. The social ads on Facebook that keep showing up our personal feeds are obvious. Businesses could get a few clicks but they won’t get loads of customers like they expect. The time to be authentic is now. How can you actually help your customers? That should be your most important question if you really want to promote your business.
Stop selling, start educating!
There are lots of evidence about companies that are benefiting from creating and sharing great content that are geared towards educating their audience. Neil Patel of Quicksprout has consistently invested thousands of dollars into timeless, great and useful content that are still relevant to his audience today. And he continues to reap the benefits of his investments. He has earned trust as an authority on search and content marketing.
There are great companies out there that investing similar resources into content marketing and it’s paying off. If you don’t have the money to hire content marketing experts, share your expert knowledge about your industry with your audience. With time, you will earn their trust. And when the time comes for them to sign on to a relevant and related product in your industry, you will be the first they will think of.
“For instance, Neil mentions the success that Moz has had with its free Open Site Explorer tool, which allows users to compare their websites with others as well as receive a copy of their link profile. The referral traffic that Moz receives from the Open Site Explorer website to pages on its main site, Moz.com, are large and steady. While many of their competitors charge for similar tools (and users pay for them), making this tool free has helped Moz maintain one of the best reputations online for search engine marketing. It also serves as a good introduction to Moz’s paid suite of tools, which charge users a monthly cost.” says Jordan Kasteler
Timeless epic content pays!
Your content should be the first point of contact for consumers who don’t even know you exist. Users are more likely to trust companies that have useful content rather than one that has a website that just explains a service or product. Buffer is doing a great job at educating prospective users who want to know how to productively use social tools. They even organise #Bufferchats on Twitter for free on regular basis to help users understand social tools better and how to be productive. Users won’t hesitate to sign on to the buffer app if they need any tool to help with social promotion. Buffer is winning, you should learn from them.
Don’t just write a short posts about the importance of a particular topic on your industry. Long content tend to do better. They can pay off in more leads and recurring revenue when done properly. Or better still, ebooks or white papers. Don’t tell people to sign up to your blog updates without providing something of great value. You should provide convincing reasons why prospective users should share their emails with you. Awesome free resources can significantly improve your sign up rate.
Other resources like webinars and exclusive studies about your industry can also be offered to customers as an incentive for email list sign-ups and to increase your credibility as a great source for content. Focus on what works best and converts in your industry.
To be successful at content marketing, consistently deliver high quality content and promote to a relevant audience. Write for yourself & be true to that as well. Always focus on how you can help people. Research both your audience’s interests and what has already been written about around a topic. Find your unique perspective. Back up your blog posts with data & facts. Your best bet at marketing is epic content.
SOURCE: www.alltopstartup.com
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