Online content marketing allows you to attract more of the right clients. Follow these strategies to produce engaging content for your prospects and clients.
Almost all businesses (86%) use online content marketing to attract clients. Are you using this awesome tool to full advantage?
Setting your business apart isn't easy. One way to do it is to know your clients' problems, and providing solutions. How do they hear about it? Content marketing!
When you create and share valuable free online content, you have the opportunity to distinguish yourself as a highly knowledgeable expert in your realm. Someone who has solutions to your client's problem.
When my client Lily and I started to work on her business, I noticed a lot ofopportunities for connection that weren't being used. Her free content was minimal, and it wasn't focused or high value for the people she actually wanted to reach.
Lily and I worked together to develop a strategy that she could begin with and thenbuild on to provide valuable information to her prospects and clients. This strategy was a lot of fun for her, because she got to share what she knew. She got to servepeople in many more ways.
With online content, you're educating people so that they know you better, and like and trust you more. That trust leads to doing business with you.
The content methods we developed for Lily were a great fit: she starting blogging regularly (previously a 'when I have a little time' activity that rarely happened), she researched and wrote a white paper that got passed around by her clients and resulted in new prospects, and she started to give webinars that were well received. And she shared both the content and her results through social media!
If you do a great job with your online content, you'll find that people will subscribe to your content and also share it with others. That builds your connection with them, expands your reach, and begins the trust-building process.
Over time, you'll convert those connections into clients, and those clients into repeat buyers. That's the nurturing path you want to create.
Here are 5 strategies to build that path and up your content marketing mojo:
1. Make it good
No one wants to read or see boring or poor quality content, even if it's free. There's just too much available online. Make your content the best it can be.
Mix it up. Your content doesn't have to be the written word. It can be video, audio, podcasts, interviews, FAQs. Pick the content mode that best suits your goal.
If you chose written, and you're doing the writing, allow yourself at least a few days. Writing off the cuff and then posting rarely results in great work. Write a first draft, let it be for a day or two, and then return and revise. You may do that once or twice for a blog post, and multiple times for a longer document like a report or workbook.
Not everyone is a great writer, and you may not want to spend the time and effort to become one. There are a lot of great writers out there who would love to create something for you. Whether it's a blog post or social media posts, choose the best writer for your budget and for your purpose. A journalist may be great for a factual piece, whereas a marketing copywriter would be a good choice for something more promotional.
Either way, use copywriting skills like developing a magnetic headline and writing persuasive landing pages and emails to draw your people to you.
To create good content, you have to be willing to experiment. What works best? Track what happens, and adjust based on your results.
Part of making your online content good is to be consistent. Be an ongoing presencein your prospects' and clients' awareness. You're providing great value, right? So keep sharing it!
2. Align your content and your brand
Think of your brand as the composite expression of your business to the world.
Is your brand fun? Then make your content fun too. Does your brand have a spiritual thread? Then weave that into your content. Your emails and social media content can all carry your message consistently.
Bring the visual elements of your brand into your content. When you give a webinar, include your logo and a photo of you, if that is part of your brand.
Even if you are guest blogging on someone else's platform, introduce your brand elements by the way you write your bio to introduce yourself.
3. Learn to speak the language
When you speak to the people you want to reach in their language, you make a powerful connection, one that they will want to be part of. Listen for how your best clients are talking about their problem. That language can be used in your content marketing as you position yourself as the solution.
When you build a nurture sequence, a path of content for your prospects and clients, you are bringing them along in a process that you design for that purpose. It's not enough to just throw a lot of content out there - there's too much in cyber-world. What you have to offer is too important.
To have the impact you want to have, connect with people where they are in their connection with you, and offer them opportunities to walk further along this path together.
Speak to people where they are. If they barely know you, then pour on the free content. Give them a chance to get to know you. Later, you can start to add offers for your products or services.
4. Position yourself as the answer
Your online content allows you to show the value you can provide. When you share information that is valuable in the context of a problem your client has, you establish yourself as having an in-depth understanding of the problem. You also become someone who can provide solutions.
By giving lots of free information, you give potential clients you come into contact with a good reason to try your services. They've already seen what you can do. Buying from you then becomes a logical next step.
5. Be strategic
Putting your online content in the larger context of your business' overall strategy is so very important. When you're strategic, you make better, well thought-out decisions. Each element of the strategy supports the other elements, creating aconstantly reinforced message that you know what you're doing.
In your content strategy, consider how each aspect contributes to the path you have created to bring clients closer to you, sharing more information, making offers, and eventually converting prospects into customers.
Like my client Lily, these 5 strategies put you in a great position to influence your prospects and clients.
And there's a bonus: the more new content you add to your website, the better your SEO (search engine optimization) becomes and the easier it is for people to find you.
One last thing: as you rev up your content marketing, be sure to have a method in place to gather names and email addresses using contact management software like MailChimp. This permission marketing approach is fundamental to having your prospects and clients give their okay to reach out to them consistently.
Your online content can make a big difference in your business. Use these strategies to attract more clients, so you can do more of the great work you do.
There Is Such a Thing As Too Much Free Content
When you fundamentally reexamine your marketing strategy, it’s very freeing. You can focus on what’s most important.
Do Your Prospects and Clients Really Know You?
People buy from those they know, like, and trust. How can you help them get to know your business? How can you build their trust?
Postpone Your Impact, and It May Never Happen
Life will always get in the way, if you allow it. We can put ourselves in a holding pattern too. For a long time, I put off starting a podcast. I’m not ready, I said. I don’t know how to do it, I said. I’m scared to do it, I said. I’ve got too much going on, I said.
