How Content Marketing Works

Posted on April 26, 2013 Updated on April 26, 2013

Photo’s courtesy of business2community.com

You may or may not be familiar with the phrase “Content Marketing”, yet you visit content marketing sites every time you access the Internet.  When you visit news sites, entertainment sites of blogs like this, which offer business advice, you are visiting a site that uses content to market itself. Content marketing is a marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. Content marketing’s basic premise is to “provide some valuable information or entertainment – “content” – that stops short of a direct sales pitch or call to action, but which seeks to positively influence customers in some way. Instead of selling, you’re helping your target.

Content Marketing can successfully be used to market any type of business and it is unbeatable when it comes to attracting new clients, sales leads, inquiries and subscribers.

Here’s how Content Marketing works:

You build and market a website and fill it with FREE information that has real value to your prospective clients, whilst offering them the opportunity to purchase goods, services (or both), which are closely linked to the information you give away.

For instance, on this blog I provide valuable marketing ideas and free marketing advice. People read the information, use the ideas and share what they find here with their friends.  Then, some of those people see the quality of my information and decide to hire me, when they need expert marketing help.  Others buy my book program.

People often ask me – If I freely give all this valuable “Content Marketing” information away, people will simply do the job themselves?”

The answer to is like this: There are 3 groups of people, who will read your Content Marketing; blog posts, newsletters and social networking updates etc. and these are:

1. This first group is small. They are what I call serial freebie seekers. These people never ever pay for professional help.  They were never prospective clients, so you lose nothing.

2. The second group is the largest.  These people will try and do something themselves, but will hire professional help if they are not getting the results they need.  They value genuine expertise.

3. The third group is the smallest. These are the rare people, who value their time and also ‘gets it’ that by hiring an expert to do something correctly for them, it works out a lot less expensive, the results are better and things happen faster.

In short: No one in the first group was going to spend a dime with you anyway. You lost nothing by giving them free information.  Some of the people in the second group will use your information and take the “DIY” approach, whilst others in the group will see that they need expert help, and some of those people will hire you. With the third group, if you demonstrate through your Content Marketing that you truly are an expert in your field, you become massively more likely to get a call from them when they need help.  They already know all about you and your work. They trust you.

I will be covering more about Content Marketing on the blog regularly.  If you want to make sure you never miss a post, follow us here and get future posts delivered direct to your inbox, for FREE.