Companies or organizations always have something to sell—whether it’s a product, service or message. But faced with the enormous amount of information coming their way daily, a modern, online audience knows exactly when they’re fed a pushy marketing message. Which in turn is easily ignored. How can you reach your target audience despite this?
The short answer is: by making use of content marketing. This approach differs from more traditional marketing in aiming to offer your audience content that is valuable and interesting, rather than trying to sell them something right away. It seduces, rather than pushes!
Excuse me, “content”?
Famous movie director Martin Scorsese recently observed that to his grief, his beloved medium increasingly produced “content”, rather than what he sees as “real films”. The movie as a marketing vehicle, meant to be cut up into little pieces, shared online by enthusiastic fans. Where that might be a sad state of affairs in the world of cinema, this phenomenon does show why content is so interesting from a marketing perspective. We absolutely want people to share our messages and videos, to like and discuss them!
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Examples of successful content marketing
“Content” is a somewhat meaningless and quite broad term: you can just about call anything content. Every online picture of physical newsletter you send falls into the category. And yet, when we talk about a content strategy, we mean something far more specific and powerful. To illustrate this, let us show you some examples of what we managed to do for our clients.
Several years ago, we went to work to increase the brand recognition of cocoa company Cocoa From Ghana. By going all-in on sports marketing (sponsoring among others the Dutch women’s handball team and Olympic skeleton athlete Akwasi Frimpong) in the span of single year we went from zero to one hundred thousand online followers. We achieved this by publishing quizzes, fitness challenges for a young audience and more. Another great example is our work for ship insurer EOC, who asked us to create the content platform“Varende Vrienden”. This site is updated weekly with blogs featuring sailing tips and maintenance warnings. That boosted the brand immensely among the target audience: more interaction, engagement and with that also more insurances sold.
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The benefits of content marketing
- Building trust – by providing useful and informative content that suits the needs of your target audience, you build trust. When people see you as an authority in your field, they’ll be more likely to make use of your products or services.
- Direct contact with customers – content marketing primarily takes place on social media, offering direct contact with your customers. Here you can build a firmer, lasting relationship with them, earning customer loyalty (and repeat purchases).
- Cheaper than traditional marketing – content marketing’s main outlets are social media, e-mail marketing and other digital channels. What they have in common is that they’re by and large much cheaper than advertisements on television, radio or magazines.
- Website traffic – by making content aimed at search engine optimization (SEO), you can lead traffic to your website and bolster your online presence.
Content is key, but how to pull it off?
Thinking of a great piece of content marketing and then pulling it off is of course the great challenge. This requires both creativity, analytical thinking and market insight. You might possess all those skills yourself, but if you don’t—we can help you out with a content subscription! Hiring an external marketing firm like Vuurwerk is a good idea: we have the right expertise, provide a fresh perspective on your company, thoroughly analyze the results and can think along on a strategic level.
Because, you guessed it, this very article is a piece of content marketing too! We’ve shared some useful nuggets of information in the hope that you’ll think of us when you’d like to get more out of your social media channels. Ready to take the first step in content marketing? Send us a message here and we’ll get in touch right away.