Every relationship starts by building rapport. Cutting through the noise of everyday life is key. It allows you to begin building real and lasting relationships, whether you are dating or “dating your ideal client”.
In the dating world you take the time to get to know each other via texting, Instant Messaging or talking on the phone. You may start with asking each other questions and sharing information basic information about yourself. At some point you move on toward deeper communication. THIS is what develops your relationship.
In digital marketing, building a content marketing strategy is how you create meaningful connections with your ideal client. By connecting with your ideal client on the issues that matter to them you have the ability to create a bond that will only grow.
I personally love Content Institutes definition of content marketing: “Content marketing is 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”
There are many ways to connect with your ideal client email marketing, social media posts/groups, blogging, video marketing, just to name a few. However just publishing content with no purpose is not productive. Instead create and distribute your content in a way that will add value for your ideal client.
A couple of things to keep in mind when you are building your content marketing strategy
- Make sure your content has a clear strategy
- Know your metrics
- Understand your ideal client
- Be consistent in both timing and message
- Repurpose your content whenever possible
- Ensure your brand voice remains consistent
Make sure your content has a clear strategy
Strategy is the name of the game when it comes to your content marketing marketing. Don’t just create content to create it. Before creating your next piece of content, think of the objectives that you want to achieve from it.
Let’s say you decide you want to focus heavily on YouTube videos. Simply crafting and publishing videos isn’t enough, it’s vital that you identify your ideal clients and decide how your content can best serve them.
Setting clear measurable goals for your content marketing strategy will help ensure that your content is reaching and connecting with the right audience.
Know your Metrics
How will you know if your marketing strategy succeeds? Knowing your metrics allows you to take a look at your marketing strategy from a purely numbers related perspective. By setting and achieving metric goals you can know if you’re marketing is working.
Often business owners look at success based on the revenue of their business. And while that is very important, marketing metrics give you the ability to look beyond dollars and cents and really look at how your message is landing with your ideal clients. By carefully monitoring, tracking, watching, and reporting on the numbers, you’ll be able to gauge what’s working, what isn’t, and what could be working better.
Understand your ideal client
This, arguably, is THE MOST important part of your content marketing strategy. Knowing who you are speaking to, what problems they have, how you can help them is essential to connecting with your ideal client.
By providing your ideal client with content that will be meaningful to them; your content can be used to attract new prospects, as well as convince hesitant prospects to purchase, and encourage customer retention and long-term brand loyalty.
Be consistent in both timing and message
Posting consistently not only helps with your SEO and social media reach, it also provides your ideal client audience with continual communication from you. Communicating consistently with your ideal clients helps establish trust in your audience.
Whether through email marketing, social media posts/groups or blogging, you should be connecting with your ideal clients daily. An editorial calendar can help you remain consistent in both your message and your timing.
Repurpose your content whenever possible
Crafting high quality content takes time and talent, find ways to recycle, reuse and repurpose existing content.
For example, you do a Facebook live that is amazing and really connects with your audience. Why not transcribe that video into a blog post or a newsletter. If you’re a writer and published an amazing ebook, why not turn that book into a video series on Youtube or even use a free online course to reach an audience that prefers video over text.
Recycling, Reusing & Repurposing your content will also ensure that your audience has more than one chance to see it.
Ensure your brand voice remains consistent
Whether you’re on social media, your website, podcast or email marketing you want to produce similar messaging that aligns with your brand’s voice and values across channels. Your ideal client should be able to watch one of your YouTube videos and then click a link to a blog post and think, “This is definitely the same person/company”
By opening the lines of communication with your ideal client you are able to lead them to the next step of your relationship. Catch me next time when we discuss the candlelight dinner.
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