How can you best connect with your customers and prospects?

Consumers today often won’t tolerate a long sales pitch. They want to be informed and entertained. They might be interested in what you’re selling, but they’re much more likely to pay attention if they can get an immediate and free benefit.

One of the most effective ways to connect with today’s consumer is to get them to come to you. Known as Content Marketing or Inbound Marketing, the strategy involves being of service to consumers and creating a product or service they seek out. Don’t sell. Inform. Think first about what’s in it for your viewers.

The goal is to get traffic to your site. Effective Content Marketing helps with lead generation and customer retention. It’s much more expensive to attract new customers than to keep your existing customers happy.

Last week, we discussed why Content Marketing is important. This week, we’ll dig in and discuss some of the best practices to building an effective Content Marketing strategy.

1. Know your audience. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. The Internet’s a big place. Become an expert in your specialty. Know what your audience wants, and appeal to their interests.
2. Provide value. If consumers don’t find your site valuable, they won’t visit. Give them what they want.
3. Pay attention to presentation. The information is important, but so is the presentation. Make the site readable and navigable. Make the text appealing to read by designing it with white space, varying text sizes, color, images, and anything else to break up the copy blocks.
4. Don’t overdo it. Split long posts into multiple posts if necessary. Don’t try to cram too much into a single entry.
5. Use content that is “evergreen” and has a long shelf life. The site should be appealing to readers if they want to search through your archives or if a search takes them to an older post.
6. Publish content regularly and often. Train your viewers to look for your content. One effective way to do this is to release new information or articles at the same time every week, like this blog!
7. Ask questions. Ask your viewers what they want to see. Interact with them about the content you provide and be ready to make changes based on their feedback.
8. Don’t forget your other SEO tactics. Include keywords in your copy organically without being too obvious for either the reader or search engine algorithms.
9. Be strategic in how and when you share and promote your content. Know what social media channel works best for your audience and your information. Different language and tones might be more effective on different social media channels.
10. Make your content worth sharing …and encourage readers to share it!
11. Check your analytics to see which posts and topics are best received. Analytics and testing also can help you see what headlines and social media channels are most successful in sharing your content and reaching your viewers.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use content marketing to enhance your brand, naturally attract customers and build loyalty with your existing customers, we’d love to help. Feel free to drop us a line at 203-682-4585, shoot us an email at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us and let us know what your biggest marketing challenge is for this fall.