As every business owner realises, making your business a success by building brand awareness is key and today the next step of the digital revolution is all about content marketing. It’s imperative in the 21st Century to build a relationship with your audience and customers, both potential and loyal.
This is content marketing’s main objective; to help brands engage better with target audiences by providing more useful and relevant content as opposed to the generic, self obsessed approach taken deemed acceptable in the past.
Put simply, brands that continue to focus on what they want to tell customers instead of what customers want to hear are quickly being overtaken by content-savvy competition. But what does this mean for your business and what other reasons should companies be investing in content marketing activities?
Content Marketing Basics
Publishing high-quality content will put your website on the map. Consistently producing useful and share-worthy information is the key element of content marketing in order to remain above your competitors – both in search engine rankings and your customers’ mindset.
Businesses used to rely on television and printed advertising to get their brand recognised, until potential customers began fast-forwarding adverts on their TV, skipping pages in the newspaper, and even blocking pop-ups online.
As a business owner now, there is another way. There are a huge amount of online consumers and bloggers within your reach. It's been calculated that there are almost three billion people using the Internet: 40% of the world’s population.
Content Marketing That Really Works
Successful examples we’ve been involved with include well-known brands like:
Christian Dior, Carrefour, Eurosport or L’Oréal who continually update their website’s content, images and products as they recognise the need to stay present and relevant in the eyes of their audience.
Broadcasters like Eurosport produce frequent updates to developing sports stories to keep people returning to their site for the latest news.
Travel companies like Lastminute realise they’re only one bad review away from rapid audience disengagement, and supplying a fresh stream of relevant content is paramount – a harsh reality in an overly competitive market.
What’s more, these businesses ensure content is both delivered in native languages and tailored to be easily digestible on mobile devices. With smartphones and tablets being more widely used to access the web than ever before, it is even more essential to promote your brand before your competitor does. It has recently been estimated that by 2016, smartphone users will make up an incredible 55% of all online consumer traffic.
Why Content, Why Now?
Through the ever-modernising Internet, customers can now make purchases on most websites. On your website. They’ll make a snap decision, which will more than likely be based on your content. The consumer is interested in the benefits of products; how it will help them and enhance their life. They make decisions emotionally, based on their lives at the time. If your content is not consumer-centric, tailored to their needs and meeting their expectations, they’ll find something – or someone – that is.
Put simply, if your content is easily accessible, interesting or relevant, people will want more of it. They’ll share it on social media, discuss it with their friends and colleagues, and return to read more. The question you need to ask yourself is, if you are not providing content like this to your audience, why else should people follow or be interested in what your business offers?
How Can We help?
We’ve helped a wide variety of businesses kickstart their content marketing. The great thing about building audiences is that you decide how quickly things happen, how often you publish and to which languages – all based on the budget you have in mind.
Successful content marketing is based on a long term view that takes into account the ever-changing appetite of audiences far and wide. It’s much simpler than companies realise but to expect it to work without some sort of strategy is planning to fail.
Want to know how ContentNetwork can help kickstart your content marketing?
Simply click "Get A Quote" in the top menu and we'll get back to you with a quotation AND a free sample to demonstrate exactly what we can offer your business.