“In my team at LinkedIn, 73% of all our marketing qualified leads are driven by content” – Jason Miller, Senior Content Marketing Officer at LinkedIn.
Totally impressive, right?
And yet, thousands of entrepreneurs in Nigeria and the world at large have no clue what content marketing is about, and the benefits it can provide in pursuit of their annual profit making goals. The lucky, informed bunch who do are sharing good content that not only attracts, but engages with the hearts and minds of potential customers. They understand that a good content marketing strategy produces the newsletters you read that keeps you hooked, or the blog post/podcast you view on repeat. Gradually, said strategy pushes you and others down the marketing funnel till purchases are made and brand evangelists are subconsciously recruited.
There is a science, or an art if you will, to effective content marketing. Read on to learn more about it:
Good content helps people find you: We know your product is the best thing since sliced bread, but so are the other one million and one competitors fighting for your prospective customers online. That’s why the keyword here is well, keyword. With a thorough keyword research exercise, you can better optimize your company’s website for search engines with relevant content. Alternatively, you can push out content to popular platforms with links that direct customers back to your online space.
Good content creates followership: Good content gives readers significant self-help value or entertainment for their daily amusement . From useful how-to tips to hilarious Zikoko styled posts, your target market is consistently fed doses of desired goodness over time. What then happens is the subconscious association of your brand with value as they are “trained” to open links from you including that eventual product sales pitch.
Good content creates “supporting evidence”: It’s one thing to pitch a direct product sale and another to pitch a sale with an arsenal of existing content that explains indirectly the product’s why. Not only are you more likely to lock down the prospect, you should be able to lock down many more through said prospect’s brand evangelism. All thanks to the powerful and sadly neglected tool that is content marketing.
Good content is founded on great strategy: Behind every good piece of content is a solid strategy built on researched consumer insights. The good people at Anakle, for instance, make sure that all content marketing efforts are tailored to a carefully designed Buyer Persona. This ultimately helps us tap into your desired customer’s interests. ambitions and the questions that keep him (or her) up at night. If you shoot at anything, you will hit nothing every time, and good content strategists work hard to avoid this for the benefit of your brand.
Written by
Ify Halim
Content Lead at Anakle