Importance Of Relevant And Consistent Content
Content marketing is helping businesses create better customer experiences online. The social consumer is engaging and spending more and more time online, creating opportunities for companies to reach them through multiple touchpoints. To effectively reach your customers you must engage on multiple channels, then integrate them together so that no matter how the customer first interacts with you, the path leads to a desired action. Consider the customer journey and the potential channels a customer can interact with at every stage of the process:
At every stage of interaction the customer makes the decision to either move forward or to abandon their engagement with you completely. Your content has to build a story across all possible touchpoints and move the customer along to the stage where they can take action. Start focusing on developing consistent and relevant content across all of your touchpoints. Keep the following in mind to help ensure the customer sticks with you throughout the journey:
1. Determine the end goal.
First thing you should do is set a goal for your customers – whether it is to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter or share information with their friends. A goal will help you define the type of content to be created. If you want to build awareness, a quirky video or an article with some funny memes is more likely to go viral than an instructional video. Want to sell your product? Content that speaks to where it originated or how best to use is appropriate to pique interest and result in a purchase.
2. Pick a story and stick to it!
As a company, you should create a narrative that is relevant to your product and culture. It may be tempting to vary your content to appeal to a wider audience, but be careful not to dilute yourself. As your audience grows, introduce a few different topics to add variety, but make sure they stay relevant to your product. Reach out to an expert to help you introduce a new topic and immediately add credibility to your brand.
3. Stay relevant at each touchpoint.
Deliver the information that the customer wants and needs to know at each stage. In the early stages, an overview of your company and what you provide is good enough to generate interest in exploring further. As they click through, the information should get more and more detailed. Once the customer has landed on the product page, they not only want detailed information about that specific product, but to also see similar products and any necessary information should they chose to purchase (special shipping info, availability dates, etc.)
4. Create actionable content.
No matter where the customer is, there should always be a clear path laid out to help move them forward. A Facebook post without a link or a clear call to action leaves any engagement up to chance – your fans want to know what you want from them. Similarly if you’ve successfully managed to get the customer beyond your homepage, make it very clear to them what you are trying to achieve from them. Give them something to do or they’ll leave after a few page views.
5. Make it interesting!
It’s not enough to just have a great narrative, you have to entice your potential customers to read it and share it. Show them some behind-the-scenes action, introduce some of your employees to showcase the dynamic culture you’ve developed. Go out of your way to shoot some footage that would showcase your product in a new light. This is where content marketing really becomes an art form and presents limitless opportunities for creativity.
6. Keep it fresh!
It is not enough to just create the content, you have to keep it updated and relevant. Consider how you can refresh it or what new information you can present in the future. This could be one of the most challenging aspects of content marketing – always finding something new to say even when you don’t have anything new to introduce.The current social customer has forced us to take a closer look at content marketing. Their short attention span and high expectations places higher importance on not only the information you offer them, but also how it is presented.
