Content Marketing

Marketing is vital for business success. It is how a business creates and builds awareness of who they are and sell products and services. Utilizing a variety of marketing channels, creating strong content messages that tell you story is a simple and engaging way to attract and retain customers.

What is the difference between traditional advertising versus content marketing? Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. The key is creating value and having a call to action.

When consumers purchase a product or service, they are seeking a solution for a problem or need they have.  The question you need to answer is how will your product or service solve the problem for the customer? By offering solutions it creates value and trust for the customers.

Build a Content Strategy:

  • What challenges are we trying to solve?
  • What is the need? What do we hope to accomplish with our content marketing?
  • Who is our customer?
    • The customer is more than the target audience (age, gender, race). See your customers as people.
  • What sets us apart from the competition?
  • What is our story?

Content marketing is about providing honest, unbiased, expertise on a topic.

Benefits of Content Marketing:

Content marketing is not only connecting customers with your brand, but it is also creating trust by offering quality content and building brand authority and credibility. When there’s communication through shares or comments, the bond between customer and company is strengthened.

Content marketing helps:

  • Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
  • Boost conversions
  • Build relationships between your customers and business
  • Connect with your audience to show them how your products and services solve their challenges
  • Create a sense of community around your brand

The #1 Secret to content marketing is to add value. How do you add value, ask your current customers what would be helpful to them? They will tell you. It could be including blogs or social media posts about a helpful tip.

Types of Content Marketing:

For example, the month of April 2020 the Chamber reached 10,872 people with our posts, and generated 2,547 engagements with 20 new page followers on Facebook alone.

Reach 7400+ Facebook
500+ LinkedIn
Engagement 1400+ Facebook In this post we highlighted all businesses, members, and non-members which has attracted value to the nonmembers for future chamber membership.

 

Reach 500+ on Facebook |300+ on LinkedIn

Content doesn’t have to always be selling something. For the chamber we have informed the community and created value for the members we have tagged in the posts. That is where the value comes in. Businesses can see the value the Chamber can provide them and help heighten awareness within the community. Non-members are able to see the benefits of Chamber Membership and this value attracts new members.

Steps:

  1. Have a plan.
  2. Know your audience.
  3. Know when and where to post.
  4. Quality over quantity.
  5. Mix up your content.
    • Text
    • Images
    • Video

6. Experiment

    • What type of content is generating the most engagement?

7. Focus on people, not search engines.

8. Optimize your content.

    • Using one or two keywords in your piece

9.Test, analyze, and improve.

Successful marketing builds awareness, creates value, solves a problem, and attracts and retains customers. Utilize all the marketing tools available. If this is not your area of expertise then seek outside help. The Jerome Chamber can provide resources to assist you. We want to see our community grow and thrive.

Cheryl Viola, MBA, Executive Director

References