Avoiding Content Marketing? You Must Like How Dust Tastes

Smart marketers around the globe – alongside massive Fortune 500 companies and even small business owners all agree: traditional marketing is dying, if not dead already. Think about your consumer for a moment; take just a second to contemplate all the ways Mr. and Mrs. Anti-Advertising tune YOU out and shut out just about everything you have to say.

Six Ways Your Customers are Shutting You Out

1. Most households have a DVR, a crafty little device that allows them to skip out on commercials, making television advertising next to irrelevant.
2. Consumers (by and large) ignore the advertising in magazines. In fact, the majority are subscribing to digital formats of all their favorite grocery store rags, and know (quite well) how to ignore ads on those platforms.
3. Banners, buttons and links? If it isn’t relevant to the consumer, they know how to skip it and get exactly what they want, when they want it.
4. Most people today will not answer phone calls from someone they don’t know, making cold calling something left to amateurs who really aren’t interested in attracting quality customers, and who are bastardaizing the marketing process.
5. Consumers today are inundated with email (an average of 150 per day in their inbox) and are more apt to hit the delete button than the open button – unless they asked for information first.
6. Direct mail boasts a rate of return on investment of (wait for it) less than one percent. Think about how many of your customers are sitting over their trash cans with their mail, throwing out that postcard or ad that you paid a pretty penny for.

Of course, if you like throwing marketing dollars into the abyss, please stop reading this article now. If, however, you are ready to listen to what works, it’s time to delve into content marketing.

Of course, not just “any” content marketing will do.

It’s your job to create and distribute valuable, relevant, consistent, interesting content that inspires people to share that self-same content via social media channels but to also inspire them to take action. If you successfully create and curate relevant and valuable content that enhances customer behavior, that helps guide them to you as the subject matter expert on whatever you want to be a subject matter expert on – i.e. your business -- you create a culture of loyal customers who want to help you bolster your brand. And no matter how you slice that one, it's a win/win.

 

But make no mistake, content marketing is not selling. In fact, it should be anything but selling. Content marketing is about providing tips, tricks and information that your potential customer can get from you and only you; making it imperative for you to become a story teller and (insert collective gasp here) a writer.

Why?

Because brand loyalty has very little to do with advertising these days and much more to do with how you are making your consumer feel. If you successfully produce interesting, informative, ongoing and valuable information to buyers, they will (in turn) give you their business and their loyalty – making it a win/win.

But don’t just take my word for it. Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the globe, circa Seth Godin, have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present…and it works better than anything else.

According to the Roper Public Affairs, over 80 percent of business decision makers (your customer) prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus tired, vanilla advertising. What’s more is that 70 percent of decision makers say that articles and custom created content make them feel closer to the sponsoring company, building trust (a vital factor for any business) faster than advertising alone -- if at all. Essentially, content marketing is the driving factor behind the majority of consumer selections when it comes to who they do business with, when and why.

But yet you aren't doing it? You must like how dust tastes, because you're eating it...a little more everyday.

(Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse)

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About Unknown

Shauna Zamarripa is a content marketing expert and author of "How to Make Big Money Blogging in 90 Days or Less".