Content marketing or how to sell without selling
TV Ads. Facebook Ads. Printed Ads. Billboards. Radio Ads. Youtube Ads. Ads ADS ADS everywhere. People are fed up. They simply can’t stand seeing, reading or hearing another ad. So, what can marketers do in order to sell their products or services in a way that doesn’t scream “Run while you still can! It’s an Ad!”? They can turn to content marketing, a way of selling without actually selling.
Sounds paradoxical? Well, it makes more sense than you might think. Content marketing is defined by the Content Marketing Institute as 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 benefits
Basically, you provide your target audience with something they really need, want and can use in their lives, free of charge, establishing a closer and more personal relationship with them, a relationship that will turn prospective customers into loyal clients. The emphasis is put on bringing useful content that informs, educates and helps the public, building its trust in your brand, so that the clients will feel it’s their choice to buy your products or services. That’s what we do! Take this blog post as example, if you want ☺ The main idea is that you still sell, but in a subtle, non-aggressive way, a way that makes the potential clients believe they have the last word in their buying decision.
By using content marketing you’re bringing your target audience closer to your brand instead of pushing it away from it. Also, by providing accurate and consistent content the audience will start to actively seek it and devote part of its time to read, hear or watch it, something that almost never happens when we’re talking about traditional types of marketing.
The benefits of this approach were quickly noticed by marketers, who jumped to embrace content marketing as a sound and highly effective strategy. A survey conducted by the Smart Insights team in February revealed that content marketing is the digital marketing activity that is expected to have the greatest commercial impact in 2016.
Types of content marketing
Content marketing is, at the same time, an almost inexhaustible resource; there are plenty of content types you can choose from, covering each and every need you may have. You want to showcase your expertise in design? No problem! You can develop a series of design tutorials! You want to emphasize your proficiency in a certain field? You can create a e-book with useful advice about that domain. You want to sell more kitchen utensils? Create a recipe book! And these are just a few examples!
In the following lines you can find a list of 20 content types to inspire yourself from:
- Tutorials
- How-to Posts
- Kits
- E-books
- Live Streaming Videos
- Podcasts
- Guides
- Infographics
- Templates
- Audio Books
- Surveys
- Courses
- Interviews
- Magazines
- Webinars
- Case Studies
- Comics
- Challenges
- Blog posts
- Testimonials
If you’re interested to check out what we did, contentwise, you can take a look at:
- The event organizer’s survival kit campaign – marketing campaign
- Meet the Team – team description
- New Loopaa Project – Automotive Aftermarket News – news platform
- The key to a successful marketing campaign: 80% research, 20% hard work – blog post
- 10 Reasons to work in a Marketing Agency – hiring announcement
- MK 4 IT 2015 – marketing conference
- The Ultimate Marketing Checklist – ebook
All that’s left is to create your own content marketing strategy. In order to do it you need to understand how it works and which are the steps you must take in that direction. Don’t fret, we’ve got that covered for you. All you need to do is to click on this LINK in order to find out How Content Marketing Really Works.
Yours dedicated,
Teodora Demian
Copywriter
