Department store entrepreneur John Wanamaker once famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” For many businesses, content marketing can feel like that – a nebulous exercise with results that can be hard to quantify. Because content marketing is equal parts art and science, with timing and a pinch of luck stirred into the pot, there is no sure-fire recipe that will work for all businesses and industries. To maximise your chances of success, developing a thorough understanding of your audience, what you have to offer them, and why they should care is key. Then it becomes about how to communicate that information and put it where people can find it.

First of all, what is content marketing? Simply put, it’s a strategic approach that relies on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted online audience.

While the exact definition may vary, content marketing’s goal is the same as other forms of marketing: to generate sales and expand your business’s customer base. The difference between content marketing and traditional marketing is that, instead of overt sales messages, it aims to provide useful content to prospects and customers. Why? Because people are ever more wary of being directly marketed to and prefer to decide for themselves whether your business has anything they need or are interested in. It’s a mix of demand (“I want…”) and discovery (“How about…?”).

Ideally, your content should answer questions they may have related to your area of expertise or offer solutions to a problem they are experiencing. Note that you should stick to topics your brand is in a position to know about; that’s the “targeted audience” part. It’s a mistake to go after everyone, especially if your products or services are specialised or relatively high cost. You want to be talking primarily to decision makers. The immediate goal here isn’t to get a sale, however – though it’s certainly wonderful when that happens.

So, what is the point of content marketing?

Content marketing is a long game that builds brand authority over time. How long does it take to build brand authority? Well, how long is a piece of string? Because it must be genuine in order to be successful, brand authority takes time to establish. You can’t create it from just one article in one month – expect it to take at least a year before you experience a significant lift. Also, content marketing is just one part of a marketing mix that may include paid search, SEO strategy, and traditional marketing, depending on the nature of the business, its products, and its customers.

Different pieces of content should be aimed at different parts of the sales funnel while some of it will be evergreen, serving as a general resource now and in the future. Content pieces can also be modified and repurposed, for example, as support materials for the sales team, as a newsletter item to existing customers, or as an ad promoted to potential clients. This effectively turns one piece into several, targeting different segments and giving you more bang for your buck. Content topics should be valuable as soon as they’re created and grow in value over time, improving your SEO ranking to bring in new business organically.

Good content marketing should do all of the following:

• Generate leads
• Increase online sales
• Expand customer base
• Increase brand awareness and authority
• Engage an online community of users

These first three will probably look familiar; they are what all marketing aims to do. These last two, however, are things that effective content marketing does that other forms cannot.

The key benefit of content marketing is that it unlocks the value already within your business, using it as an asset to impart knowledge about your business. This typically includes your company’s story and the narrative of how your team solves problems for people. This narrative should speak to the core of what makes you different and why people love you and your products or services. 

What content marketing does differently

Usually transmitted one-to-one in person or on the phone, your one-to-many message has almost limitless potential online.

When successfully executed, content marketing takes your expertise and uniqueness (why people love you and your services) and describes it in a way that customers can digest, staging it for where and when they might need that info. With a bit of thought and effort, you can establish an incredibly rich, authentic story of how you serve your clients, which is ultimately about something far bigger than promoting today’s offer: It’s an evergreen resource that assists the business and, if created strategically and timed correctly, compounds in value over time.

Content marketing should encompass the entire customer journey, from consideration mode to conducting research to evaluating who to choose. To retain existing customers, content could be repositioned to discuss how to get the best out of your products or services. Always aim to offer value and earn goodwill by giving them something without the expectation of reciprocity, the way you might do in your interpersonal relationships.

Pro tip: You can create resources and continually update them to answer questions and serve customers in a way that benefits them, which in turn builds brand authority, trust, and your ranking on Google.

Where traditional marketing falters

As you’re probably aware, traditional marketing takes place online too. It might be a simple site launching something: “We have this service, pick us!” followed by basic info. Even if the site has a blog, when businesses don’t know what to write about, they tend to talk about what they’ve been doing – “We’ve launched this product, we’re developing a new line, here’s our office Christmas party” – which is all well and good from an internal perspective to build team morale but is unstructured and pointless to the rest of the world. Without a plan, content like this doesn’t convert or do anything. With logic applied, however, content can solve problems, inspire people, and rank on Google to reach new audiences and get your business found.

Businesses that don’t do content marketing often rely on paid ads and word-of-mouth, both of which have their place, but paid ads may not be suitable for influencing people in certain industries, for example, accounting – where a high level of trust must be reached before the customer can consider converting. Another instance where content marketing is a more effective approach is when the offer is complex, with a lot of steps that need to be understood by your prospect first. “Free advice” and explainer information given via content marketing demonstrates your expertise and credibility piece by piece while establishing your business as a player in your realm.

When businesses don’t understand content marketing, their content misses the mark because it’s not written in a way that people would search for it – in part, because it’s not something they were interested in reading in the first place. So, first, change your tack: Look through lens of, what’s in it for your client? What do they want to know? How do they make a decision? Who else or what else can they choose? How can we help them choose you? What content would they search for that’s relevant to your service? What have you got to say about what they want to know about?

It may seem obvious, but don’t lead with, “We’re amazing – look at our amazing stuff.” Customers who can’t find you won’t see you – and even if they did, why would they believe you? Who are you? Build that credibility first.

Content + Game Plan = Success

As you develop your authority-building content, make sure you have a plan for how you’re going to promote it, which may include pushing it out with paid ads on Facebook or AdWords. The last thing you want to do is spend all this time and effort to create great content then have no way to share it, except with your current client base.

Then turn your attention to where your content is directing people: your site. Make sure your website copy is optimised, with clear base information, strategic SEO, and a call to action, where appropriate. Effective SEO begins with identifying business opportunities and understanding the client and their buyer journey, with keywords falling out of that understanding. Also make sure your site structure aligns with your strategy, for example, that you have content pillar pages to help you rank for relevant topics and search terms. Find and fix any orphan content, which means it has no links to other pages or services.

Definition: A content pillar is a substantial information piece on a specific topic or theme that can be broken into smaller sections, pieces, and materials. Examples of content pillars include eBooks, reports, and guides.

Depending on your focus, your plan could include monthly blogging, content promotion through social media and paid ads, and content remarketing. Take your best content and repurpose it for different platforms: Turn it into a podcast, YouTube video, or slide presentation with appealing graphics.

Then identify any content gaps by looking at the market and create resources to build brand influence. To get your brand seen by relevant audiences, explore the “watering holes” of your target customer and determine the best platforms for your content, whether that’s LinkedIn, the media, or a company newsletter. Once you have your ideas and promotion plan in place, think about what success look like, aka metrics. What exactly are you trying to do? Make sure your content marketing programme is structured to align with suitable goals and metrics and set up analytics and reporting to measure your results.

Pro tip: Focus on the right topics, the right keywords, and the right balance of content. If the sales process necessitates different pieces at each stage of the journey, prioritise content creation by its usefulness to the business as well as how difficult it is to do. Start with the easy wins then go from there.

Remember: education, information, then inspiration. When content is helpful and appealing, people spend more time engaging with it, which innately builds trust. Then it’s just a matter of time before your prospect needs your products or services and you’re first in line to deliver them, thanks to the top-of-mind awareness that effective content marketing creates.

If you are looking for help and advice about your content strategy then we can help! Contact our team to discover how we can help your business to grow its profile and engage with new customers.

Marketing in 2019 is impossible without great content.

As a marketer, I see my clients struggling to identify where they should spend their energy (and budget) to get digital leads, especially if they have a B2B service.

Marketing is becoming increasingly complex, with a range of platforms to choose from to speak to your audience.

Is your business still supposed to be posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram? What type of content should you share? How does creating social content actually generate leads?

As a forward-thinking entrepreneur, you know there has to be a better way.

Enter content marketing.

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach. It focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing aligns with the new ways people engage with brands and content and develop brand loyalty. It’s integrated, intelligent, and customer-centric.

With content marketing you’re not simply pitching your products or services in traditional marketing copy. You’re providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects to help them solve their issues.

In some ways it is similar to what we see with the rise of the “freemium” product model. Now that people can access high-quality free advice and content online, it won’t cut the mustard to simply promote how great your product or service is. Your content needs to put your customer’s concerns first. This is especially important in light of the way Google serves any search query with the most relevant answers; your content needs to be accurately centring your customer’s questions if you want to appear on their Google search results.

Content marketing works to build the respect and admiration of your audience, but this will take time. First you need to earn their trust. You need to prove you have the relevant knowledge and (even more importantly) that you have integrity. Then you can become a guiding light that people turn to for authority in the noise of too much available information.

The authority you gain then transfers to your products or services, making customers that much more likely to choose you over the competition.

Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Because of the complexities of the communication strategy required, it’s also something that I would recommend that you engage a content marketing agency to do for your business, rather than attempting it  on your own.  Quality content is now part of all forms of marketing.

So, what are the other benefits to your overall marketing strategy?

The Tangibles:

Site traffic: Traffic may be the obvious benefit, but it’s also one of the most important. Great content will bring people to your site, where they’ll also find information about your company and your products/services.

Improved SEO: The benefits of content for SEO are far too numerous to get into here. Great content attracts editorial links, which tells Google you’re important and authoritative. Google can also crawl your content, getting a better idea of what your company is about, which allows it to return your site for more relevant queries (including a great many long-tail queries). The list goes on, but it can be boiled down to this: without content, what is there for search engines to optimise?

Social media marketing: content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy. An ideal mix of content for social media is always a mixture of unique and curated content based on the themes that relate to your audience interests. So high quality content based on informing your potential customers is ideal content to share on social media. It can also become great “lead magnets” if you are creating a Facebook ad funnel for inbound inquires.

PPC: for Pay Per Click to work, you need great content behind it. Content marketing is not direct sales copy- that is what landing page copy is designed for, but your content marketing is supposed to warm up your audience handling all of their objections and answering all of their questions before you make the direct offer in an adwords campaign. It is also useful in your Adwords remarketing campaigns, if someone doesn’t call or email from your initial ad then you can remarket to them to take them to more information where your content page may address common objections and give the information required to inform the potential customer of the process.

PR And Brand awareness: content marketing is all about championing the customer and solving their problems. It involves storytelling and providing useful and relevant customer-centred information. A flow-on effect from creating high-value content is that you can now position your brand as an authority on solving your customer problems. So, you can begin commenting on the “state of your industry” and sharing this as an opinion piece to your local media or business networks as an opinion piece to increase your brand authority.

If you’re looking for help to market your business, get in touch with our Content marketing team. We can help you to create a content strategy that will transform your sales and marketing activities.  Contact us now.

In the modern marketing world, content is king. And with so many online resources, you may feel you’ve got a pretty good grasp on how to create it and use it well.

But as this marketing method’s relevance and popularity increases, so too does the number of myths and false expectations around it. Before these content creation traps trip you up, let us dispel some of the most common falsities.

Myth #1: Creative content should be highly produced

The reality: You don’t need to create a fantastic content marketing strategy with a high production value. Instead you should be focused on how to provide value to your audience.

Try to solve a problem that is relevant to your audience, answer a common question, or share an interesting new finding. You can do this easily in a 20-second video, a 400-word blog post, or even a simple post on social media. The point of difference in content marketing is how timely and “human” it is – over-production and big budgets won’t necessarily achieve that.

Myth #2: Produce content every day, because more content means more social reach

The reality: You should focus on providing better-quality content that helps your audience. If you’re focusing only on quantity, the quality is going to suffer.

Bombarding your audience with information every single day will make them ignore you. And the quality of your content and its social impact will diminish. Only better content delivers better reach.

Myth #3: No one is doing creative content marketing like we are, so we’re doing it right

The reality: Don’t assume just because you’re taking a different approach to creative content marketing it will be effective.

There’s a good chance someone in your industry is already making content to grab the attention of your audience. It might be video, podcasts, email, blogs, or some other type of creative content.

Just because you’re doing it differently, doesn’t mean you’re killing it!

It’s essential you understand how your audience wants to receive and digest information. This is just as important as knowing what kind of information they’re looking for.

Myth #4: Our creative content marketing is going to drive serious cashflow

The reality: The right kind of marketing can undoubtedly make you stand out. In a perfect world, you would see new customers roll in every time you publish new content.

However, that is rare even for major brands. Most of the content you create won’t directly increase your sales. And, if it does, it certainly won’t happen immediately.

Creative content marketing is a slow burner. It’s great way to nurture relationships and build a loyal audience who may eventually tumble to the bottom of your sales funnel and make a purchase. But first you have to win them over with your charming brand personality and your titillating creative content. So, don’t expect instant results.

Myth #5: We’ll only post long content because that drives the best results

The reality: It’s entirely possible to tell a story and make an emotional connection in content that is fast to consume. We can see this in the initial smashing success of platforms like Vine and Snapchat. You don’t necessarily need a lengthy blog post or a 10-minute video every day to succeed.

Of course, if you’re writing for a business-to-business audience you may want to put focus into longer posts to help build trust. But this is not essential, especially if your brand is focused on consumers. People don’t want to read anymore – they prefer videos and images. So, why not give them that?

Creating successful content can require a bit of trial-and-error. But from our experience, once you understand these basics it becomes a lot easier – and a lot more beneficial. Find a mix that works best for your audience and strive to deliver the value they’re looking for. And if you need more help developing a winning creative content marketing strategy adapted to your audience and your brand personality, contact us!

The goal of copywriting is to persuade, and the goal of a content strategy is to create purpose. So, does a content strategist have the same role as a copywriter? The answer is no! 

Over 170 million blogs are active online today, but it’s estimated only around 20% of blog content is actually linked to and read. You want content that is found easily in a search, is read by users, and has a positive impact for your business. It’s critical to the success of your marketing messages that you have a strategy for what you write about.

What does a content strategist do?

A content strategist gives your content a purpose and vision that is directly linked to your marketing and communications strategy. They ensure any copy written will be useful, usable, and relevant to achieving your marketing goals.

A content strategist blends their editorial skills with their understanding of the user experience to create content that is a communication pathway with purpose. Their focus is to generate copy that provides real value to your clients while showcasing your unique value proposition.

This requires an understanding of your business niche and your clients as well as thorough knowledge of the “decision-making  journey” to map a content pathway to attract, onboard, and convert the  audience.

Content strategists ultimately create an overall purpose to the copy, called the core strategy.

They put themselves in the shoes of each business owner and their audience to consider a website or marketing campaign. With these different perspectives they look at:

What are the business goals and how can the website copy or marketing campaign accomplish that?

Is the content pertinent to the audience?

What is the desired call to action for people to do after consuming this content?

How can we provide the best user experience?

What does a copywriter do?

Copywriters focus on crafting compelling copy that tells a story. They combine wit, writing skills, and empathy to create a call to action that will compel someone to purchase a product, sign up for a service, or fill out an inquiry form on a website.

A good copywriter understands sales funnels and will ask plenty of questions about their target audience before they start writing. Copywriters now handle most of the writing on a given website or within an integrated marketing campaign including: 

Website copy

Blog posts

News articles

Press releases

eBooks

White papers

Billboard advertising

Posters

Flyers

Radio and TV scripts

Interactive social media posts

How can content strategists and copywriters work together?

A content strategist determines where the content needs to go, and then works with a copywriter to write the copy. After the content is published, the strategist will evaluate performance and make sure the strategy is delivering value to the business in line with its goals. 

To put it simply, the content strategist defines how the site or campaign will be structured and what information will be included. The copywriter is responsible for crafting the actual words to engage users and drive them to those goals, getting them further into the conversion funnel.

When content strategy and copywriting have synergy, the result is a high-performance website or marketing campaign that helps you drive your business forward and stay relevant.

Are you trying to sell things over email but aren’t seeing results? Hire a copywriter. Don’t even know where to start your business content strategy? Hire a content strategist. Do you need both? Invest in a team like ours at Creative Content!

Apps can be amazing tools to help you streamline processes. And with the right set of tools, you can spend less time managing campaigns and more time developing effective messages. They can also create a more enjoyable experience for your clients so that people are more likely to recommend you to others.

Check out our list of the top ten apps that we use every day in our agency that will help you with marketing your business.

1. Loom

Loom lets you create quick videos that display a desktop view of your screen. You can create a simple walkthrough video in a couple of minutes and easily share it by email or via an embedded link on your website. This is particularly good if you want to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face. You can also use Loom to create social media content to share.

Get it now: https://www.useloom.com

Cost: Free!

2. Canva

Canva is an incredibly simple platform to create professional-looking graphic design elements in minutes. If you need a quick graphic for a social media post or to jazz up a presentation or report for a client, you can create it in Canva in no time.

Canva has hundreds of pre-made templates for all kinds of professional uses. It also comes with handy images and font suggestions so that even the most design-challenged among us can create something classy and professional.

Get it now: https://www.canva.com

Cost: Free to use, with some premium fonts, templates, and images having a nominal cost.

3. ContentStudio

ContentStudio allows you to organise all your social media marketing from a single place. You can curate engaging content, share it through multiple channels, and strengthen your content marketing.

A popular feature of ContentStudio is its ability to fetch fresh content from over a thousand sources, meaning you can delve in and compile trending content from any niche or market. You also have the ability to compose unique posts and schedule them to be published through your social accounts, helping you create better-looking posts at a faster pace.

Get it now: https://contentstudio.io/

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

4. Asana

Asana is a simple project management tool designed to help teams organise their workload and get more done. In Asana you can map out steps, assign work, see what’s currently in progress or what still needs to be done, track due dates, and see visually how work is tracking. It’s a great tool to help your team manage their workload and to give you visibility over how client work is tracking.

Get it now: https://asana.com

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

5. Biteable

Biteable is an awesome site where you can create unique video ads, explainer videos, animations, infographics, and much more. You’re essentially able to create pro-quality video in the time it takes to drink your coffee. You have the ability to choose from hundreds of styles, insert your own digital content, choose high-quality soundtracks, and easily share it through multiple channels.

With a lot of social networking sites becoming more video-centric, this is the app you should be using if you want to set your business apart in the digital world.

Get it now: https://biteable.com/features/

Cost: Free package available with a limit of 5 projects per month or a premium package offering unlimited use.

6. Yesware

There’s no doubt that you send and receive a lot of emails. This clever app allows you to use simple email templates, and then see who actually opens your emails and clicks on any links. It also offers other useful email tools and shortcuts. It integrates with Gmail and Outlook, so you don’t have to learn a new tool.

Get it now: https://www.yesware.com

Cost: $12 per user per month, with a free trial period.

7. Trello

Trello is a project management tool much like Asana, but it’s probably even simpler. It’s great for small teams that don’t need a ton of tools or features, but just want to get more organised and have visibility around their workload.

Trello works with a system of cards – like virtual index cards on a big virtual pinboard. You can move and arrange the cards any way you like and add due dates, files, and collaborators.

Get it now: http://www.trello.com

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

8.Pixel Me

Pixel Me is a great way to track and measure the links you’re posting and who is clicking on them. This means you can track the audience of the content you’re posting and target them again through remarketing. It gives you the opportunity to speak through different ad platforms to your custom audience and increase your brand awareness.

Get it now: https://pixelme.me/

Cost: Basic to comprehensive paid packages available

9. Missinglettr

Missinglettr increases traffic to your website’s blog by creating strategic, automated social media campaigns. It automatically pulls snippets from your blog posts to create promotional content – your only job is to review the content and choose how long you’d like to promote it.

Missinglettr markets the unique content you’ve created by connecting your social channels and running your campaigns for you. This provides regular social updates to your clients and encourages clicks to your content year-round.

Get it now: https://missinglettr.com/

Cost: Free, with personal and business accounts available.

10. Full Story

Ever wanted to know what your website visitors do once they land on your homepage? Want to find ways to convert more leads with your site design or copy? Then you need to try Full Story.

Once installed, Full Story tracks website visitors and shows you what those visitors actually do in a recorded video you can replay. It also shows you where your site traffic comes from and highlights areas of your site that cause visitor frustration. It’s great if you want to improve your online marketing and understand the effectiveness of recent online marketing campaigns.

Get it now: https://www.fullstory.com/

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

These are the ten online marketing apps we love the most in our agency. With new apps appearing almost daily, there countless possible solutions to boost your online marketing and communication efforts. What are some of the apps that you use that we haven’t mentioned? Send us an email if you have a tool that you think we have missed! Contact us

Facebook:

Cover Photo 851 x 315 px
Profile Photo 180 x 180 px (displays at 160 x 160)
TAB Image 111 x 74 px
Shared Image 1200 x 1200
Link Image 1200 x 627

Twitter:

Header 1500 x 500 px
Profile Photo 400 x 400 px
Image Display 880 x 440 px

Pinterest:

Profile Image 165 x 165
Pins 736 x INFINATE px
Board Display 222 x 150 px

Instagram:

Profile Pic 110 x 110 px
Image Feed 510 x 510 px

Google +:

Profile photo: 250 x 250 px
Cover Photo 1080 x 608 px
Shared Image 497 px (minimum width)

By developing this high-level content, we were able engage the potential audience and clients for the company’s service. The Asbestos Removal NZ website that we built continually ranks as number one on Google.

Our goal was to position NZIL as an immigration law firm that’s rooted in ethics, integrity, and professionalism. We focused the new website on information-rich, up-to-date content on immigration to promote Aaron and his firm as the local experts in immigration law.