How Are You Putting Relevant Content in Front of Your Customers?

As marketers, we have two challenges: one to create great content and two to deliver it. Recent studies have indicated that email still ranked among the top outreach channels to reach buyers no matter what stage they are in the buying cycle. Studies also show that emails should be integrated into other marketing tactics as well.

So knowing the emails are a viable way to deliver the message, we should probably spend some time on the other deliverable – relevant content!

Relevant content addresses the needs of a potential customer. It gives them options to solve a problem or gives them resources for them to investigate. Relevant content draws in potential customers.

According to an article in eMarketer, content creation was still the #1 challenge for them.

So our challenge is to give the reader WOW info every time, which is no small task. You should enlist the help of others within your company that have specific expertise to help develop relevant content.

Sales, engineering and customer service are certainly three places to start. They all are talking to either existing or potential customers and can readily identify issues that need to be addressed. By addressing them, you’re becoming that thought leader which should be one of your objectives.

The key to successful engagement comes in a variety of types of content.

A golden rule is, don’t put content out for the sake of having something out there. You should be looking for relevant stuff, not quantity.

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How Do You Write Good Content to Reach the Professional Tradesmen?

We all face the challenge not only writing good content but getting it consumed. Most of us old-time B-to-B marketers get right to the point, just like Joe Friday, a detective in Dragnet, the TV series (way back before most of you were born).

Joe didn’t have time and was always getting to the point. One of his lines was “Just the facts, ma’am.” I wonder how he’d do in today’s environment of social media? I’m sure he wasn’t the life of the party.

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So it’s a given that we’re good at giving them the facts, but is that enough? Great content needs to be useful and interesting.

So we got the useful part down, but some of us have a hard time inserting the interesting in it. A recent article by Andy Cresodina in the Content Marketing Institute, Great Content Meets 2 Criteria: Does Yours? outlines some hints that would help us in both areas.

Here are some highlights on keeping your readers happy:

  • Give them a unique perspective.
  • Use strong options or emotions .
  • Use a little humor (we all need to lighten up a little).
  • Tell them a story instead of spewing out the facts. Show them you’re human.

Here are some highlights on how to meet your readers expectations:

  • Make content relevant. What’s in it for the reader?
  • Make sure your facts are correct.
  • Quote other reliable sources/stats to support your point of view.

These are some good tips for all of us to follow. Thanks CMI.

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Corporate Blog: Make the Most of Them

I can’t tell you how many corporate blogs I’ve been on that are treated as just another venue to sell product or try to pump up stock prices. They just don’t get it and wonder why blogs aren’t working.

Companies need to learn it’s not about them anymore, it’s about your customers. They call it social media for a reason – because it’s about people.

If companies want to have a successful blog they need to deliver relevant content that talks about ways to solve your customers’ problems. They need to deliver it in a conversational (human) way using terms that their customers are familiar with.

It’s all about people and that’s why it’s called social media, not marketing media.

A recent post by Chris Baggott, How to make the most out of your corporate blog, highlights ways for companies to be successful:

  • Research the key words that drive your business.
  • Create titled, individual blogs for different market segment and target those key words.
  • Encourage employees to create content.
  • Solicit feedback from your customers.

In other words, do your homework and think strategically. Business blogging is a way to make your customers/searchers happy they found you because you have answered a need.

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