Guides

How Your Content Marketing Strategy Guides Your Customers

Published on April 10, 2021

Your content marketing strategy is Virgil and your customer is Dante, but with less torture and fewer demons. Do you ever feel like the kid in Sixth Sense? Except when you pull your covers to bury yourself from reality just enough so that Bruce Willis can communicate his wisdom about how important it is for companies today to have a clear voice on social media – as well as other platforms – they are able to share their message across channels without feeling scattered or unorganized because of all these different ways audiences expect communication.

It is true, you do. But then so does everybody else.

The material is all over the place.

Whilst viewing content promotion as a terrible superpower, it is invaluable for marketers and companies.

But what actually is content marketing? If you are publishing content and pushing ads daily, is that not advertising with content?

So let’s get 1 thing straight; there’s a marked difference between article promotion and content publishing. Many people and companies are content publishing, as in they’re publishing content in a bid to draw an audience with the sheer quantity of articles they create.

Kind of like setting a whole lot of mousetraps haphazardly around a kitchen with some bait, and hoping one of them works.

There is nothing in itself wrong with content publishing. However, in the event you actually want your visitors to become customers, you will need to focus on content advertising.

Content advertising is content publishing dressed up for the ball

It has done the excess work to draw attention and make itself unforgettable. In content marketing that you still must create the… well… content, but behind every post you post, each infographic you publish, and lots of the pictures you promote, your objective is to give value, a link, and make the audience want to behave.

So maybe the better question is…

WHY is content marketing so important?

There’s a whole lot of sound in the world, especially online. Many customers are utilized to the constant din of articles and they will just read something fast and scroll on.

It’s only with powerful content marketing a company can create the reader’s pause, think, behave and possibly even return to life like some sort of consumer zombie (do not judge, zombies have credit cards also ).

The desired action may be registering for a newsletter, purchasing a product, or sharing a report. If you are very good they might even sacrifice a goat. Though that level of promotion died out with the early Greeks.

Speaking of obscure literary references…

You’re the Virgil to your client’s Dante

For those non-nerds on the market, this means that you’re the client’s guide. You have to lead them through every step of the journey they’ll go on during your content advertising.

In the long run, the actions will benefit both the client and the company since great content advertising uses strategies to understand what the client needs and wants. Because of this, their content advertising will be more actionable and valuable than another business that sets out three times the amount of content with no strategy.

As you move deeper in their mind it’ll be up to your content to give them the urge to push further toward what they ultimately want or desire. Luckily there are three major stages you will need to learn about, not nine.

What are these levels?

First is the discovery level. Your client understands they have a problem and they’re trying to find an answer.

The second stage of the customer’s travel is the thought stage. This is where you are going to show them all of the reasons why what you’re offering will assuage their burning desire.

Using what most influenced them from the consideration stage, and the overarching pain point in stage one, you are going to help them reach the conclusion that your products or services is indeed a wise purchase.

How can you make your article’s marketing align with the client’s journey? Let us take a look at those phases again and get more special.

During that first choice phase, you need to make the customer realize they’re missing something. Perhaps they were looking for something and they find your content which reasserts that yes, they want what you offer.

Or perhaps you caused them to discover they had something with a cleverly titled blog article. The moment of discovery can occur at any moment, but it is important that your content is there, ready to direct them to another step.

Now you have brought them into the room of consideration.

Give them a seat, a pop, and then show what you can offer as a solution for their woes. Whether it is a product like a desk, or a service to create their workflow easier, you will need to get what clicks together.

There’s not any one-size-fits-all with this method. You’ve got to take the individual before you, their experiences, age, and other personal factors under the account. If you have done your job properly, you will funnel them to all the correct tools and answer all of their questions.

Obviously, you are not there quite yet. You still need to get them from the last challenge. That’s right, it is the dreaded decision valley.

They have all of the information. And the hurdle of spending cash or doing another action isn’t easy for some. They need a little push, some confirmation they are appropriate to keep going.

By now you should know what’s driving them, which concerns weighed most heavily for them to this point. Inform the customer why they want your service or product. Do not make it complicated. The client is always right, and you are simply pointing out that.

You might be the most knowledgeable person in your field, but if you’re not providing value to customers—helping them realize their wants and desires by connecting them with high-quality content that’s tailored for what they want—you’ll never achieve true success.