8 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing

8 Content-Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing

No matter what business you’re in, content marketing is integral to keeping your brand relevant in a fast-paced world. If you’re not quite sure what content marketing is, it’s generally defined as any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to attract, communicate with, and thus acquire customers. The information can be presented in a variety of media, including news, videos, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides—you get the picture. Content marketing has been instrumental in all our endeavors. We’ve personally found it to be an invaluable way to uniquely position a brand into the public zeitgeist. That said, content marketing is only effective if you have a plan and clearly defined goals at the onset. To guide you in the right direction, we put together a list of eight effective content-marketing goals that are worth having.

1. Be Credible

Well-researched content establishes you as an expert in your field. Take your audience’s guesswork out of the equation and demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about. This takes work on your part, but building credibility with accurate information is paramount to building a strong relationship with your readers that will prompt them to turn to you or your brand for answers time and time again.

2. Keep the Pipeline Full

My mentor used to tell me, “Business is good, but new business is better!” You always want to keep your customers happy, but when your content is persuasive and spot-on, new prospects will seek you out, which creates a healthy pipeline of business prospects.

3. Illustrate Benefits

Know the difference between benefits and features. People don’t want to necessarily know what you do; rather, they want to discover how what you do can help them. Offer solutions to problems your readers encounter, and they’ll seek you out. Benefit-based solutions incorporate techniques, steps, tricks, methods, and approaches. Show your audience the value of working with you.

4. Turn Potential Objections Around

Slip into your reader’s mind. Determine what objections they could have about your message. From there, strategically craft your content to address potential doubts and turn a negative into a positive. For example, is your product seemingly too difficult for a senior citizen to use? If you think so, provide an illustrated example of an elderly customer using it with ease.

5. Transport Your Product into a Reader’s Imagination

Use vivid adjectives, create real life details and write about everything that could go through readers’ minds when they think of your product. If they start imaging how your product effortlessly fits into their lives, you’ve created the impetus for buying that product.

6. Attract Strategic Partners

Partnerships are essential to effective content marketing. By building strategic alliances with key brands that have complementary marketing efforts, you instantly expand your reach.

7. Increase Loyalty with Existing Customers

A strong base business is essential, so never lose your connection to your audience. Make your product and services continue to stand out to current customers with fresh, useful content that continues to inspire them with equally fresh ideas on how to use your products.

8. Develop News Ideas — Constantly!

Don’t rest on your past accomplishments. Business evolves rapidly, and so should your content and how you market it. Be proactive and always on the lookout for unique, innovative ways to reach different demographics with creative content that gets noticed.

Matthew Toren
 

Matthew Toren is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor and co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com. He is co-author, with his brother Adam, of Kidpreneurs.org, BizWarriors.com and Small Business, BIG Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right (Wiley).