MILLENNIAL MARKETING: 3 Essential Content Marketing Tips

Before we dive into content marketing tips, let’s look at what content marketing is and what it isn’t.

Content marketing IS a process of creating and distributing NON-COMMERCIAL INFORMATION that is valuable to your customers. Content marketing might promote the idea, but it doesn’t promote products or services directly.

Content marketing ISN’T advertorial and should never be self-serving.

The essence of content marketing is the belief that if your business delivers consistent and valuable information to buyers, they will ultimately reward you with their business and loyalty.

Smart content marketers know that they need to earn respect and trust before they can sell anything. They are loyal servants to their customers before they expect anything in return.

A content marketing agecy Content Puppu has the most up-to-date guide to how to create a marketing plan step-by-step.

#1 Start with the ‘Why’

Before you do anything. Ask yourself:

“Why are you doing this in the first place?”

If you don’t start by asking “Why?”, it will be difficult to deliver relevant content to the right audience.

The most obvious answer to “Why” is sales. You use content marketing to drive sales.

Sales is definitely a long-term goal, but in order to get started and measure your success from day 1, you need to establish your short-term goals.

Here are some questions you could ask yourself:

• Do you need to raise awareness for your brand?
• Do you need to build your email list?
• Do you need to retain customers and/or increase their purchases (up-sell/ cross-sell)?
• Do you need to convert customers to advocates?

If you aren’t there to answer your customer wider questions, or if your content is easily found elsewhere, your results and viewer-ship will suffer.

#2 Content needs to be sincere

Whatever you do, don’t sound like a marketer.

Marketing-talk is like a broken record, nobody pays attention to it.

If your content feels like it is created by someone who has never used the product or service, it comes off as insincere.

No matter who you’re marketing to, it’s crucial to always remind yourself that you are simply human marketing to another human. And the most effective way to do this is to market an authentic experience—not your brand.

Tell your audience what you really think (in a customer not marketing language), and don’t be afraid to have an opinion or show personality.

Brand guidelines and tone of voice are what your management want your brand to be, not what your customers want your brand to be.

Customers don’t spend days trying to figure out how to ‘engage’ with brands.

Quite frankly, they don’t think about brands at all. They have real problems that need solving. They have genuine stories they want to share. They are real people.

What really sets your content apart is your sincere passion for what you do. You can’t fake passion, it shines through.

More than any tactic, passion sets your content apart.

Make sure your print material matches your online content. Printers and designers can help you produce promotional material that truly reflects who you are. 

#3 Collaborate with influencers

The idea of influencer marketing is to focus on marketing directly to key people (journalists, bloggers, experts, authors, celebrities), instead of your buyers.

These authoritative individuals have influence over your target audience, which allows you to reach a much wider audience way quicker.

The idea is that if you take the time to identify and build relationships with those influencers, you can not only boost your visibility but also add a good pinch of credibility to your brand.

I’m a big fan of collaborative content. I believe that great content can’t be produced in silos. The more people are involved in content production, the more promotion touchpoints it will have, and the further the message will travel.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 77 % of B2C marketers claim to use content marketing, but only 37 % of these marketers find it effective. The missing piece to ensuring success with content marketing is the use of influencers.

There are currently hundred of millions of content pieces uploaded on the web every minute, your content can easily be buried. It’s really difficult to stand out without third party help.

Another reason I really like working with influencers is the insights they already have about our audience content preferences. So we can skip the “rabbit hole” stage of deciding what our audience wants to hear.

At the end of the day: your brand is a product of what others say—not what your brand says about itself.

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