Content is going online faster than at any other point in history. 76% of businesses say they’re going to publish more content this year than they did last year. They’re going to do it to eliminate their branding mistakes and they’re going to do it for SEO. Yet they’re missing the main point about content.
Great content marketing has zero to do with building great B2B content. What a lot of brands don’t realize is that content marketing is about influencing the audience and altering the way they behave. If you want to give your business a boost content marketing is the key. But you need to look further than producing great content.
This article is going to go into what great content marketing is all about.
It’s All About Consumer Behavior
The fact is content marketing is about the way consumers behave. You’re there to alter consumer behavior and you’re there to gear your content towards the goal of improving customer loyalty, increasing demand, and driving conversions. Too many brands just focus on the content alone. Really it’s just a means to an end.
You can have the best piece of content in the world. It’s never going to be enough to help you reach your goals on its own. Your content has to tie into the rest of your goals and it has to be used in a strategic manner. That’s how you’re going to get your content marketing campaign off the ground.
Changing the behavior of your target audience is going to be the priority of every business in operation today. It’s proven to increase loyalty, so it makes sense that businesses are going to make this the heart of their strategy.
So what are you actually targeting?
The whole point of content marketing is generating demand. Without a focus on generating consumer demand you have little chance of success. Some people are going to say that this is an unlikely strategy to generate B2B leads because you’re putting your business goals above the needs of your audience. But meeting your business goals is all about meeting the needs of your audience anyway.
How Do You Do This?
Influencing consumer behavior isn’t a simple thing. People are not going to buy into whatever you publish like they used to do. You have to create content that meets the needs of your audience. This content has to acknowledge the needs of the audience and position your product or service as the solution.
There are multiple facets to this. You have to build up trust and you have to build that emotional connection. Only when you can get them to trust you implicitly are you going to get to a point where you can start to generate demand. Content is the main vehicle you can use to do this.
Building content for the sake of content isn’t enough.
Marketers can create quality content. None of it matters if they don’t already have that relationship in place with their target audience. The goal of great content isn’t to entertain or to help users pass the time. It’s there to leverage that emotional connection to generate leads.
Modern consumers behave in a very different way than their parents. You can’t sell to them and expect them to respond positively.
Be Helpful in a Genuine Way
If you were selling a video game you might publish a strategy guide on how to beat certain levels. Presenting actionable advice will make readers believe in you. Providing a tidbit of information to help improve the lives of others will get readers to open up to you. They’re going to trust you.
Switching your strategy from creating great content to influencing consumer behavior is all about adopting a holistic marketing strategy.
The holistic marketing strategy brings together every aspect of a consumer’s behavior. These include creating and managing distribution channels, coming up with a publishing strategy, and content targeted towards a consumer’s goals and their behavior.
Every time you publish a piece of content you should be thinking about what the user is going to do after reading that content. Are they reading it to learn something or are they reading it purely because it’s there?
Conclusion – What Content is Really About
Now you know what content marketing is really about you can concentrate on making it work for you. Influencing your target audience so you can send them further down the sales funnel will become easier than ever.
How will you change your content marketing strategy this year?
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