Content marketing may be all the rage, and it’s a relatively new practice – but what does it really mean? And why should content marketing have a place in your marketing plan?

Content marketing is part of the drive to promote your brand or company in a more subtle way.  The days when you sent an email, with a call to action to buy your product or find out more by giving you a call, whilst not gone completely, are certainly now supplemented by other forms of marketing. The promotion of content, that doesn’t specifically involve the direct promotion of your brand, but seeks to drive interest in a product or service, is content marketing in a nutshell. You then share this digitally or via social media, to promote your service.

Content Marketing: why do it?

  • Be seen as a thought leader in your industry
  • Give your contacts something they will be interested in, a ‘helping hand’
  • Encourage your contacts to actively ‘sign-up’ to receive this useful information from you, enabling you to remain GDPR compliant
  • Build trust and rapport with your customers

By giving your contacts free and useful information, you can help position yourself as a trusted company. For instance, offering hints and tips on how to’s, tutorials and DIY-related articles helps to not only offer existing customers better value, but also helps ensure your product is seen and desired by its target market.

It’s important to plan, and not just be reactive though. Basing your content marketing plan around key themes throughout the year can give your strategy a structure and help you see where you can best focus your energies. And it’s important to make sure your evaluation is as robust as your planning. Any new leads you generate should be monitored to see if they have come off the back of your hard work in creating all that content and also what content works best.

Social media is also key – sharing articles, videos and images on the key sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are a great way to improve the reach of your content and try to get people engaged with and talking about you.

In this digital-led age it’s important for your customers and prospects to know that you’re there, helping them solve their problems. And you never know when that help can turn into a sale for your company. So make sure you plan, execute and evaluate when coming up with your content marketing plan and you won’t go far wrong!

Don’t know where to start with content? Don’t worry, here at E&T we deal with content marketing every day and we love it! Sometimes just an initial meeting with us gets you thinking differently about your business and how to talk to your existing and potential customers, this is the first step to content marketing success!