It is a well-proven fact that content marketing is a successful way of driving traffic and sales to your website and brick and mortar store. If you are ready to dive into the content marketing pool, then there are several steps to take to develop your content marketing strategy.

 

Know Your Target Market

Before you can create content, you need to know who the content is for. Content is created with a specific audience in mind for best results. Therefore, you need to dig deep into your research to figure out who is your ideal customer demographic (i.e. Pensacola, 18-35 yrs old, business owner). Look back at your order history and survey the repeat buyers, the large purchase buyers and correlate the data to see where they live, what their income level is and more.

The more you can research who your target audience is, the more effective your content will be in reaching out to the audience.

Develop a Customer Persona

Take the time to draw up a customer persona of your target ideal customer. If you can figure out what motivates your customer, then you can market to that motivation. For instance, if your product appeals to new parents with infants, then you can dig deep into their personas to figure out what motivates them to buy your product.

Is it a safety issue or a convenience factor? Is the product a necessity or a luxury? Are they trying to impress someone or just get more sleep? Ask yourself why? Once you can picture your customer in your mind and their motivation to buy, then you can overcome obstacles and answer the questions that they would have in your content.

Build a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

If you can position your company and product as unique, you will be able to carve a niche in your industry that you can fill. By focusing on a narrow niche and really developing it well, your company will stand out as an authority in the niche and draw customers. If you can associate your product or brand as a natural fit for that niche, you will be able to show in your content how and why you are a good match for that need. Examples of narrow niches are eco-friendly baby bottles for newborns, fragrances to help heal post-partum depression and infant massage.

Create the Content

Since you have determined who your target customer is, developed a specific persona and your selling niche, now it is time to create content. The purpose of the content is to grab the customer’s attention and draw them in. Content can led to a conversion, provide information or sell a product or service.

A good practice is to provide content in a variety of formats including video, image, written and podcasts. Written content can also be presented in a range of formats such as blogging, articles social media marketing and white-papers in order to adapt it to the preferred learning styles of your customers.