You’ve heard people talk about the value of content marketing. It’s one of the most important ways that people find you. If you are delivering content via digital channels, prospects can immediately click through to learn more. If your content is being provided in print, this is often what drives them to check you out online in the first place.

Content marketing is not just for increasing visibility, though. It’s for establishing trust and credibility with your target audience, too. A company with relevant, informative content is quickly identified as a thought leader. If buyers trust your content, they will trust your products.

How do you get it right? Here are five best practices from the CMO Council, an online resource for chief marketing officers:

1. Get Help Where You Need It

You need to partner with credible and trusted sources. Unless you are an ad agency, writing direct mail, email, and other content likely isn’t your specialty. Stick to what you do best — your products and services — and work with specialists to create the content that will put you in the best light. 

If you partner with the right company, such as PMI, you’ll get content specialists who can shine a light on what you give to customers and who can refresh the content you already have. This can also be your time to add on services, such as running a blog or redoing the content on your website to more closely align with your current offerings. 

2. Create Content People Care About

Present authoritative, newsworthy, and enriched content. When it comes to creating thought leadership, “any old” content won’t do. 

It has to be accurate, relevant, and current. The best way to do this is to link to outside sources or authorities on your content to show you also do your research. You also want to add real-world examples of how your product or service was used and benefited someone. 

3. Refresh Your Information

There’s nothing that people hate more than hearing the same stuff over and over again. So just simply don’t do it. 

Instead, produce compelling strategic insights. Don’t rehash information your audience can get elsewhere. Create fresh content that reflects your expertise and makes them really want your product or service. The more you refresh their minds on why they still need you, the more they’ll want to keep connecting. 

4. Use Your Reviews

Think about all the times you went to read the reviews of a business before choosing to work with them. You should be doing the same thing for your customers by adding customer-contributed views and validation. 

Social proof is key to credibility, and the more you have, the better. Add customer reviews, testimonials, and UGC (user-generated content) whenever possible, especially on your website and social media platforms. 

5. Connect with Your Niche

Engage qualified, verified, and predisposed audiences. The key to conversion is targeting the right content to the audience most likely to be in a buying mood. If you are selling home furnishings, for example, not everyone will need a new living room or dining set. Find the right targets — say, new movers or recently marrieds — and then put the right information in front of them. Your conversion rate will go way up.

Be sure to tailor your content to the right channel as well. The type of content you use in a direct mail piece will be different from the content you use in an email. Know your channels and how best to use them.

Work with PMI

Are you using content to draw potential buyers into your sales funnel and convert them to happy customers? If not, we can help you get started.

Reach out to the professionals at PMI today so we can jumpstart your content creation and get you engaging with clients in a meaningful way. 

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