“Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time. Worry less about sounding professional and worry more about creating remarkable content that other humans can relate to.” – Ann Handley
What is the magic of content expected to achieve? It puts a company in the middle of the action – where customers are drawn to the company without too much effort and wasted resources. Customers are kept engaged and prospective ones are enticed to the company’s ‘face’ – the website that is easy to locate, navigate and take action on. This is the magic of content – facilitating inbound marketing and leveraging the strengths of your company and its brand with customers and also converting ‘visitors’ to long term customers. It has already been a while that using only traditional methods to get across to a customer base does not quite cut it. Companies are actively looking at luring customers in through the smart use of content over all the channels of communication currently available.
To allow the magic of content to work for you, companies must continually introduce fresh and well-articulated content over the various channels of communication that customers use to engage with them. Using content right, companies would not only attract customers to their website and social media sites, but have a better chance of moving visitors to becoming customers. Smartly written content will take into account SEO and the kind of customers a company is eager to attract and retain. For the magic of content to work – it must be inspired, influential and creative and reflect the forward thinking approach of the company. In the current market and looking forward, inbound marketing will happen through continually updated content, smart blogs, use of widely used keywords, great content on website landing pages and crisp and engaging content on the social media sites.
Companies that invest time and resources on publishing blogs, writing engaging social media content, creating interactive videos and providing content that would be relevant to customers irrespective of the business that the company is in – are the ones that will achieve a higher conversion rate from visitors to leads to customers. The key to utilizing the magic of content is leveraging it to gain the right and most suitable customers for your company – whichever industry and related industries the customers are interested in – ‘feed’ them content that will satiate their ‘hunger’ and will ensure that your company and website become the ‘go to’ places for our customers for any topic that interests them. The magic of content will only work when the content is designed around and for the customers – you become the beacon in the realm of effective content.
Make a thorough assessment of your customers and other target audience, and analyse their data from social media sites and your company’s interactions with them, to ascertain the kind of content that they would be interested in. All content does not necessarily have to be relevant to the customer’s industry but should also be content that would be relevant for any and every industry – topics of common interest. When your company publishes content on such widely relevant topics, it soon comes to be known as a subject matter expert and is a sure shot way to keeping your customers engaged and also drawing in more potential business without spending too much on promotions and marketing.
- When one visits a website, more often than not one is drawn to the section of ‘blogs’. These meticulous pieces of content should be creative, informative, gripping and constantly updated. For the magic of content of these blogs to work, they must be able to arrest the attention of the readers and keep them on the website for longer. It is actually possible to create leads and further opportunities for your company through regular and interesting blogs. Hire a professional if you deem appropriate – someone with the requisite skills, insight and an understanding of what will capture the mood of the customers, best.
- Ensure that the content you publish also nudges them to take action. The content should excite them enough to want to know more and do more with your company – to become from visitors to the site to actual customers and also to let others know about your company and the kind of support and information you provide. Impactful content would reflect the prowess of your company – not just in their field of operation but in areas that don’t typically seem like the forte of the company. Surprise them – keep them engaged – that is the magic of content.
- To attract potential customers or to reactivate dormant customers, use the magic of content via email. Using email marketing is a great way to reintroduce your offerings to lapsed customers and also to people that could become customers. Reaching out to these potential customers with great content would draw them towards visiting or re-visiting your website, check out what is new and even understand how your products, offerings and market intelligence would be of use to furthering their business. You could have the best and most relevant brands and products – but unless you can convey it, you may not be able to reap the benefits of them.
There are myriad reasons why people would visit your website and then either decide whether to convert to a customer or not. However, by using the magic of content you could put in place more a path that would drive more visitors to your website and who could potentially become customers and also could draw their friends and associates to becoming customers.
So what kind of content are we talking about and what is the kind of content that your company serves to its customers via any channel? The fact is that first your company must see the value of the content and then be able to display the importance of the content to the customers. Hence, ‘safeguarding’ some of the content would be in order. This kind of content is gated content i.e. the kind that requires customers to ‘log in’ to their accounts on your website before accessing. Of course, this content must be valuable enough to the customer to want to create an account with personal details. For visitors too, this gated content must have high appeal visible through the ‘teaser’ content on the website or other channels. For the visitor to want to read what you have on your website they would need to fill out a form with some personal details and hence the content must be worth their time and worth giving away this personal information.
The blogs on your website and the ‘face’ of the website should have the kind of content that will attract visitors and want them to reach for the content hiding behind some kind of ‘protecting wall’. Through this high quality gated content, companies are also able to monetize some of the content and customers seem comfortable paying for it too.
Ensure that your website allows your customers to spread the magic of content to others. They should be able to easily email, share and print non-gated content. This will spread the content to more people without any effort on your part and would thus increase the reach and potency of the content. Make sure that the landing page of your website is insightful, attractive and has content that will intrigue the ‘visitors’ to want to know more. They should want to know what the next ‘page’ or section is about, what you have to offer and what more they can get by being in business / association with your company.
Whatever you decide to do, what is important to remember that customers have access to information on their own. So for the magic of content to work for you, the content you provide must reduce their effort, give them vital and interesting information, useable content and content that reflects your company’s commitment to customer focus and engagement. The magic of content is that when use suitably, it can lend a whole new perspective to your business and portray your brand in a way that is not possible in any other way.
