Sometimes we wonder why it’s so hard for some people to understand the rightful place, and real impact of content marketing in influencing buyer behavior. Maybe it’s a sort of “cover your ears, shut your eyes and hum loudly to yourself” response to the perceived amount of work involved in developing relevant, valuable content. As rightful experts in this arena, trust us when we say it does indeed take a lot of time and energy. However, each time we see the results it generates for our clients, and time and time again it demonstrates why it’s worth every bit of the effort.
The Case for Content Marketing
As reported in an article entitled “The Compelling Case for Content Marketing” on Inc.com, Rand Media recently released a report that showed consumer sentiment continues to shift toward a preference for information over advertisements. And, luckily, many of the specific reasons the survey respondents gave for disliking ads “are things content marketing ameliorates,” according to the article. The fact is, growing numbers of consumers’ buying decisions are based on information they find on their own, and when they find it on their own, they tend to trust the information more.
“Programmatic push messaging is implicit personalization perceived by consumers as irrelevant and inauthentic,” said Erika Trautman, Rapt Media founder and CEO, said in a press release. “Explicit content personalization through choice and discovery builds trust, increases engagement and delivers a truly valuable experience starting at the point of creation. Millennials, in particular, are embracing the value of content discovery, forcing marketers to rethink the way content is created, distributed and consumed.”
Good News!
As we touched on in our last newsletter, the fact of the matter is that consumers have very little interest in branded advertisements that pop up unprompted on their social newsfeeds or web browsers. So in this digital age of information overload how do you reach your target audience?
For those still hiding in their self-made cocoons hoping yesterday’s methods will impact today’s consumers, we have some advice – and some good news to go with it.
The good news is that you likely already have the resources to become the type of thought leader to which potential customers will gravitate. For instance, you know your industry, its challenges and some of the solutions. You have valuable information your prospects and clients don’t. You also have people who are subject matter experts, who may actually want to share that expertise through blogs, white papers, how-to’s, videos, eBooks, social media and so on.
Advice from Next-Mark
Once important piece of advice is to consider partnering with a communications agency (ahem) fluent in content marketing to put it all together for you and position you as an expert in your field. Reaching your consumers is all about providing value, which isn’t necessarily achieved through shameless self-promotion and relentless advertising. So get the right information out there, be consistent, generate easily discoverable, digestible content, and your customers will find YOU.
At the end of the day, it’s about giving people the information they need to succeed in their jobs or tasks or simply enlightening them – a worthy endeavor and a reason to be believed and trusted.
And you can trust us when we say we stand ready to help!