Definition of Content Marketing: Providing educational material to interested people, i.e., prospects.
What type of content depends on your relationship and the platform you’re using. Facebook is a different opportunity from a White Paper.
Here’s How It Can Work
Here’s a sample possibility from a content rich website.
Blog posts, White Papers, Special Reports, etc. each offer opportunities for you to educate your prospect and draw her a little closer to your solution.
Let’s See it in Action
You’ve tweeted a link to a blog post about how widgets improve your work life on Tuesdays. A follower clicked through and read your post.
While there, she browsed around and signed up for your newsletter. Nice work!
Your email system sends her a thank you email you wrote months earlier. In this email is a link to a video to learn more about the Happy Tuesday widget system. She clicks.
A few weeks later, she likes your Facebook Page. She leaves a couple of comments.
A few days later, you send her an email offering her a special report about your special Tuesday widget process. She clicks through to it.
When a sales person calls her a few days later, she’s already spent time getting to know about your company and your widget process. She has an understanding of how they can help her. She’s open and receptive to your sales person.
This is grossly oversimplified but you get the idea. This is content marketing. And, it WORKS.
Make contact, offer information, make another contact, offer more information. Information is the key. At some point you ask for the sale of course, but not the first time you make contact.
Sales people call this process the funnel.
Prospects within the funnel are leads. Well nurtured leads are more likely to become customers. That’s because statistics show 80% of prospects aren’t ready to buy when they first learn about you.
However, within 6 months, they will be ready to buy and they’ll buy from you or a competitor. Don’t give away your hard earned leads.
Effective content marketing brings together social media, SEO and all the great content on your website. How do you use it it in your business? Please share in the comments below.
