The effectiveness of content marketing

Graham McGregor says content marketing lets you communicate regularly with your prospects and clients without hard selling. Image: Thinkstock.

I've been a big fan of content marketing for many years now.

l like the way that Lori Nash Byron the founder of Famous in Your Field. explains how to use content marketing.

Here are some of Lori's thoughts on content marketing.

Depending on your business, content could be almost anything: a simple check-list, a series of articles, video, white papers, reports, your company blog, podcasts, webinars.

It's anything created for the purpose of providing valuable information to your client.

Content marketing lets you communicate regularly with your prospects and clients without hard selling.

Instead of buying ads in publications (which are ignored by your prospect) or cold calling to set up appointments (which are avoided by your prospect), you create and publish information that prospects welcome and look forward to.

It is pull marketing, not push marketing.

Prospects are drawn to you, rather than you pushing your firm brochures and sales meetings at them.

One of the best features of content marketing is how it helps you leverage your marketing and sales efforts.

Instead of making sales calls and meeting with prospects one-on-one, your content reaches tens, hundreds or thousands of people.

Here's a great example of the power of content marketing.

When Lori was the marketing director for a professional services firm - engineering/architecture - she created a content marketing campaign around a new highway interchange design that created 12 leads for new projects, the #1 search result on Google, interviews with major newspapers and resulted in $300,000 in new business.

Most remarkably, her firm never designed the interchange that we became well known for through the campaign.

It started when one of the firm's engineers told me about a new type of interchange design that would greatly improve safety, called a "diverging diamond interchange".

At the time, it didn't exist in the US, only in Europe, but one was being planned in Kansas City, Missouri.

Lori wrote a 1200-word educational piece about the diverging diamond interchange in the style of a magazine article, and quoted our firm's traffic engineer in it.

She posted the article on the firm's website, promoted it using social media and within a couple of weeks, her company had the #1 search result on Google for "diverging diamond interchange".

Being the #1 result when people typed "Diverging Diamond Interchange" into Google led to prospective clients from South Africa, Uruguay, and U.S. states Utah, Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee calling her firm to inquire about our traffic engineering services - the first time the firm had ever received inbound inquiries.

A few of these leads turned into other types of projects, resulting in $300,000 in fees.

After the article had been on the firm's website for three weeks, they received a call from a Kansas City Star newspaper reporter, who interviewed and quoted our firm's lead traffic engineer.

Other newspapers also conducted interviews and wrote articles on the diverging diamond interchange.

Content marketing success, summed up in one sentence.

Because Lori's firm wrote the most informative article on the interchange design, they were widely viewed as the experts on that topic.

How you can put content marketing to work in your organization?

Here are three steps to start attracting leads with content marketing:
1: First, think about your business from your client's perspective.
What are the top 20-30 questions that prospects and clients ask?

2: Write those questions down.
Be sure to use the exact words and phrases that prospects and client use - it's key.

3: Next, write answers to those questions.
You can publish the questions and answers as blog posts on your company website, record them as separate short videos or write a series of articles.

Why is this so effective?

Put yourself in the mind of your prospect: most often he or she is using a search engine like Google to search for the answer to a specific question.

The more great information you publish that answers client's burning questions, the more likely a client will find you while searching.

Content positions you as an expert in your industry, someone who can solve their problem.

By consistently sharing valuable information, your web visitors and prospects come to know you, like you and trust you.

And then they buy from you.

Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world you're a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world that you are one.

Content marketing strategist Robert Rose

Action Exercise:

1:

What helpful content can you publish that potential clients for your business would find both valuable and useful?

2: If you are an accountant, business coach or business consultant I have a brand new 'paint by numbers' content marketing system that you may like to check out.
It's designed to attract hundreds of ideal new clients to your website, position you as an expert in your field and increase your revenues at the same time. For a free information pack on this brand new 'paint by numbers' content marketing system just contact me using the email links at the top or bottom of this article.

Graham McGregor is a consultant specialising in memorable marketing. You can download his 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage' Ebook at no charge from www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com