5 Examples To Spark Your Content Marketing Strategy

Everybody is talking about content marketing strategies and content marketing examples nowadays. More and more money are getting invested in different content marketing strategies. More and more companies are getting involved in content marketing.

But the real thing is that content marketing is getting to be a really noisy place. Enterprises are getting their hands on this marketing strategy. Fortune 500 companies are building in-house content departments and advertising agencies have recently realized that content is something they can sell over and over again.

What about the small business owners? What about the small business owner who is struggling to sell more of his/her product on their small market?

Well, as I found out in many different situations, content marketing is always a good idea for small business owners.

If you are a small business owner and you want to sell more of your product, but you don’t have the amount of money to invest in advertising or paid channels, let’s focus a little bit on content marketing.

Let’s see what  content marketing actually is:

From a simple search on Google about “What is content marketing?” I found this result that is very simple to understand:

Content Marketing is a type of marketing that involves the research, creation and sharing of relevant materials that does not explicitly promote a product or service but it’s have the purpose to stimulate interest in the brand.

Now let’s try and see what it actually wants to say!

“…involves the research, creation and sharing”

That means that you need to create something. Many SMB (small business owners) think that content marketing represents a blog on which you occasionally publish articles and then wait. But here is the problem that many SMB and marketing specialists have. Content Marketing is not only about creating content and sharing it on social media.

Yes, it involves this part of creation and sharing but without researching, without understanding the audience, without analyzing the content it’s a big fat zero. That means that content marketing should have a really good and deep understanding of the strategic part, a good creation tactic and a really powerful promotion.

“…relevant material”

What is a relevant material for you? For example, a really valuable material is the one that answers questions. This is why I use Google a lot when I want to find out the answers for my problems. Because it is giving me valuable information. A valuable material can be a video, a photo, an infographic or an article.

It can be anything from which I can learn something and have a better life. The best relevant material for your content marketing is the one that brings value into your customer’s or potential customer’s life.

“…not explicitly promote a product or service but it’s have the purpose to stimulate interest in the brand”

Even if content marketing has the final purpose of attracting and retaining an audience, it doesn’t mean that it should act just like an ad. Content marketing is not advertising. You don’t invest money to make money. You invest in content marketing to create a community, an audience, a fan base.

You invest in content marketing because it’s the only marketing strategy that adblockers don’t have a plugin for.

 

Now, I hope you understand a little bit what content marketing is.

Even professional marketers and top leaders in your industry are struggling with content marketing. Why? Because it’s a very powerful tool and if you don’t know how to use it you will fail. But don’t worry, content marketing is not an overnight success.

Content Marketing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

And just like athletes train everyday for marathons, that’s also how you need to handle your content marketing too.

So, here are 4 simple lessons you need to know before we will dive into the examples I want to show you:

1. Research

many marketers believe that they can start right away with their content marketing campaign. They just create a blog, install wordpress, create ton of articles and then wait the customer to fall on their website. If you do this, you will fail right away. Before you start your content marketing campaign you need to do 2 things:

• Understand your audience – Who is your audience? What are their needs? What can you do for them? How can you get closer to your audience? What kind of content do they consume the most? Thinking about your audience first is one of the best tactics you can do in your content marketing strategy. Because when you talk on your audience’s language, you won’t start from zero. They will understand you, they will follow you and eventually they will become the evangelists who will promote your content.

• Understand the market – Who is your competition? What is your industry all about? Who are the influencers in your industry? Where is your market ahead to? How can  you impact this market with your content marketing? What are your industry’s needs?

2. Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

What makes you different than the others? Are you an energetic entrepreneur? Are you a more analytical one? Does your store have the best location? Do you have an 500 years old family business? Did you adopt an alien – maybe not, but I’m sure that you understand where I’m heading with this. When you find out what your UVP is, it will be much more easier for you to start your content marketing strategy.

Talk about your UVP with your family, friends, wife/husband, customers, employees and neighbors. Ask them about your UVP.

Why do they believe that you’re special?

3. Consistency and Patience

As I already told you before, content marketing is a marathon. You can’t run 30 km in sprint, right? This is why I recommend you to get real about content marketing and think about the time and energy you want to invest every day, every week and every month. When you will start, you won’t see a lot of results. But as the time will pass by and people will trust you and consume your content you will start to see the results.

And sometimes these results will be in comments like “Thank you for sharing this great article with us. Now I know what to do…” or you will read testimonials of people saying that your YouTube video has helped them a lot. Some of these results are the water you need in your marathon.

So be patient and consistent with your work.

4. Test, Experiment and Improve

I’m a big believer of  testing, experimenting and improving. I always like to test, even if I won’t see results. But this is why I’m different than the others in my industry. I like to experiment. When you test and experiment you understand what works and what doesn’t. I recommend you to experiment even if you get bad results.

Why? Because in that case you will be sure that it won’t work for you and you won’t live with the feeling that “What if…?” And the really interesting thing in content marketing is that with every piece of content you create, you can test, experiment and improve.

And sometimes it’s really funny.

I did not want to get very deep with these 4 lessons because my main focus with this article is showing you the 5 examples of great content marketing strategy.

But you don’t have to think about them as the big main examples you need to do right now.

It’s just a simple guideline that can give you a sense of what you can do.

Or maybe you will get some new ideas on from where you should start.