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2014 will be the year of “Content Marketing” maturation. Its influence in attracting, engaging, educating and empowering customers has been steadily growing. Businesses cutting across industry lines, sectors and segments are concentrating their efforts to form their Content Marketing Strategy enabling them to communicate one-to-one with their customers, buyers and end-consumers. This has all become possible by increasing convergence of digital media and easy accessibility for viewers using traditional computers, laptops or the new age tablets and smartphones.

The growing importance and significance of Content Marketing in targeting a larger pool of prospects, higher conversion and customer loyalty is evident from the efforts and resources employed by many companies operating in the B2B and (or) B2C segment.

The Coca-Cola Content 2020 Initiative is one such example that is being much talked about in the Content Marketing circle.

Coca-Cola Content 2020 Part One

Coca-Cola Content 2020 Part Two

What REALLY is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is a positive alternative to advertisement as it works on the concept of pull rather than push. The customer purchases your product/ service based on his/ her independent analysis of information (available as content).

The lynchpin is the content which talks about the features and benefits of a product without overtly persuading the reader to buy. The focus is on making the content entertaining and interactive.

This content is made available to viewers, prospects and customers in the form of articles, blogs, whitepapers, case studies, videos, photos, Infographics, games, surveys etc with a facility to share on social media sites to gain a larger audience.

Example – 1: An advertisement of a digital camera or a kitchen cleaning solution is usually of 30 – 45 seconds. How do you pack in all the essential information and persuade the viewer to buy your product? A layman might not know the importance of Megapixel or Zoom factor in choosing a camera suitable to his/ her needs.

Quite often a viewer might just switch channels and wait for the advertisement to get over.

Content Marketing becomes effective.

It can be a video of the kitchen cleaning solution in action in a genuine layout. It can show the entire process from start to end (how long it takes, how it works and how effective it is). It holds more credibility than a model promoting the product in a short advertisement. A similar concept would work for the digital camera too. It provides good quality entertainment and valuable information to the viewer.

It can be a video of the kitchen cleaning solution in action in a genuine layout. It can show the entire process from start to end (how long it takes, how it works and how effective it is). It holds more credibility than a model promoting the product in a short advertisement. A similar concept would work for the digital camera too. It provides good quality entertainment and valuable information to the viewer.

The content is developed and presented to the customer through multiple channels with the purpose of providing information and engaging them. The type of information is to enable the reader to make good conscious choice and empower them to buy.

Example – 2: You can tell your customers to buy your Watch because of lower price, better product quality and superior performance in a 30 seconds advertisement on TV or Radio.

Alternately, you can interact with them by telling how your prices are lower than your competitors without compromising on quality by showing how watches are manufactured in your company detailing importance of each process and the diligent quality check at each stage.
You can also provide an industry study on how fast it is growing and how you are growing comparatively faster which sends the message that MORE people are buying your watches.

The idea is the customer should be able to justify to his/ her own self why the choice is RIGHT and how it is truly value for money.

As Zig Ziglar says – People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.

Content Marketing is communicating about the brand. It speaks to customers about how the product is capable of solving problems and addressing their specific requirements. In this entire premise, the customer remains at the heart of all efforts.

Information is giving out; communication is getting through. ~ John C. Maxwell

Content Marketing is designed to draw people to communicate with the company and amongst themselves, to share experience, insight and collaborate.

It provides the business entity an opportunity to learn about

• what customers and readers are talking about,
• what are their issues, aspirations from owning a product,
• what motivates them to buy,
• what turns them off about a product,
• why they like a competitor’s product better
• what would the customers like in their “ideal” product

There is variety of options to spearhead content marketing strategy and businesses are using multiple methods to do so.

Here is an interesting graph on what businesses are doing as part of their Content Marketing campaigns

Image Source: Content Marketing Institute

The essence of Content Marketing can be explained through a simple quote of Zig Ziglar – Stop Selling! Start Helping.

Content Marketing efforts show that companies care about their customers and are transparent about their business and products/ services. It is indeed a huge opportunity and a risk to open yourself in front of your customers. But if you are honest and your product is good, the effort is really worth many times more than you invest.

Have you employed content marketing strategy in your customer acquisition campaigns? Are you exploiting the potential of content marketing to boost your revenues?

Read: 20 Basic and Practical Tips on Content Marketing.

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