If you stop and think about how you buy important new things today, you’re likely to think of how you’ve changed over time.
As consumers and B2B buyers, we’ve become:
The change in buying behaviour and the way we use technology to shop has led to a dramatic shift in the way that effective marketing is done. Marketing today has to help people shop better and smarter. At its core is content marketing.
At Poignand Consulting, we like to describe it like this: Content marketing is the process of planning, creating and distributing content that helps your ideal client find and buy from your business.
You could be forgiven for thinking that content marketing is another description for inbound marketing, but that’s not quite it. Inbound is a strategic approach that seeks to attract, engage and delight people through the entire shopper and customer lifecycle. It centres on helpfully solving problems, nurturing and providing the best solutions for the prospect. Content marketing is the fuel that powers inbound.
Because traditional advertising is essentially about interruption, it is not in-tune with the way that today’s buyer consumes media or their needs as a buyer. Traditional advertising is fine for commodity categories or for capturing a sale from someone ready to buy. But it does not deal with the entire buyer journey and is only switched on when you’re spending money.
Content marketing is always switched on and available from all of the channels and platforms where your business chooses to place it.
The acritical benefit of content marketing is its role in SEO – search engine optimisation. Google serves up website suggestions based on the relationship between the searchers’ intent and how Google understands the content of your website. Google forms this understanding by examining the structure and substance of your online content. The headlines, the copy, the images and video all combine to help Google form an opinion on your brand’s authority in the search topic.
Content marketing should start with a clear understanding of the target customer, the critical problems they seek to solve and a strategy for answering this challenge.
It’s best to begin by thinking of this through the lens of the buyer journey. This will help you define what is most important to communicate through your content.
Next is understanding what types of content will best enable your brand and the buyer to connect. What content will best help the shopper? This is the media lens.
In summary, content marketing is necessary for almost all businesses today. Particularly so for businesses whose customers are in high-value categories and who have buyers that carefully consider their purchase.
Content marketing helps the right buyer to buy from you. It’s the best method for buyers and businesses alike.