In today’s digital economy, marketing needs more than a big budget to get consumers to remember you. Mass marketing, considered to be a solid marketing strategy back in the day, is not enough anymore. Today, even using a targeted approach through fragmenting audiences will get you temporary results. Considering every aspect of your online marketing is digitally tracked, your rivals will quickly notice and retarget your audience with even better offers. As a way to combat these issues, marketers have turned to creating engaging and helpful content for their consumers.
Understanding The Importance of Content
The first step to creating a sustainable marketing strategy is to understand the importance of content and what it means for your customers. Looking back at traditional marketing, this practice worked for marketers because it allowed them to reach masses in a short period of time and at a low cost. In contrast, content does the opposite of that. Even in the digital environment, content reaches fewer people, takes more time, and costs a pretty penny.
Given this conclusion, it wouldn’t make sense to focus on content; however, content in a digital environment does have an upside. Content marketing has the ability to open doors to greater engagement including clicks, views, shares, comments, likes, and more. The downside of traditional marketing is that over time, the practice becomes less effective. Traditional marketing is an interruption whereas content is an exchange of value.
Figure Out What Value You Are Offering
Content offers expertise and resources that results in building a relationship in a way where your brand becomes a reputable source for customers. Content should be able to give customers the ability to leverage relationships, offer advice and offer exclusive access to expert-knowledge. What makes successful content differ from traditional marketing is that marketers are mission-focused rather than consumer-focused.
Solidify Your Concept With An Anchor
Unlike traditional marketing, successful content marketing is open ended and as such, content marketers must be able to adapt to changes in the marketplace. In order to do this effectively, it is important to solidify an anchor to your concept.
For example, Cosmopolitan’s high concept schema is “fun, fearless and female,” which implies a consumer target for inspiring confidence. By anchoring this kind of concept, this will pave way for a consistent voice and experience that your audience can relate to. That way you can get their attention and hold it.
Finding The Experience You Want to Deliver
Once you understand the importance of finding an anchor for your concept, searching for the anchor or experience is the next step. When it comes to publishing and producing, creating material that people want to read will shift marketers from pushing irrelevant content to producing content that creates an experience.
The first step in finding the right anchor or experience is creating a consistent format, structure, and voice. Establishing these set of rules for your anchor will set an expectation for your audience, letting them take in content easily. For marketers, this structured format will allow for the production of creative content.
Marketing isn’t supposed to manipulate, rather, it is supposed to create an experience. The experience that you are creating for your customer is something you hope that they will remember and determine if they want to come back again.