By Macdonald Mafandizvo.
Harare. (News Of The South) -For the past few years, Content marketing has evolved to become one of the most powerful forces in marketing. We are currently witnessing how traditional marketing methods continue to fall short of conveying pertinent information knowledge related to common customer problems.
This led to consumers developing an attitude skewed towards consumption of every freely available digital content to enhance their understanding of various concepts and products.
As a result, a great opportunity arose for some content creators to occupy the space and freely deliver important information that enlighten their audience or customers on various issues relating to products they consume.
Well, the 4ps (product, price, place and promotion) are equally important. However, you can get the most out of every marketing mix strategy if you incorporate content. But before I talk much of that, let me explain briefly what content marketing is so that you understand what we shall be discussing about.
What is content marketing?
I have seen this as a developing concept used by digital marketers to address the information knowledge gap between products and consumers. Digital marketers freely share information that solves or show how consumers can get the best out of usinga particular product or service (mostly their products) hence increasing the overall purchase and consumption benefit.
Now, if you decide to get into this space and as the principal owner of your product or service, you must know your audience, choose the right content marketing strategy (blogging, video, podcasting etc.) to use and select the most appropriate media to reach your target audience. You then go on create quality consistent content that supplement your marketing mix strategy.
Here I am going to show you simple yet effective ways of making content an integral part of your marketing mix:
Create and write a blog
In short, a blog is a mini website that you can use to publish articles on certain topics mostly based on your knowledge, opinions and experiences. This is a platform you can embrace to integrate your content with your product or promotion mix strategies. I have seen that a blog works more effectively if used to push your product and promotion mix strategies than other content marketing tools.
However, when you start writing your blog, or if you choose to get someone do it for you, there are two most important questions to answer first:
(a)What is it that consumers of your product do not know?
(b)How do they use your product?
No surprise, you will find yourself writing no random information about your product. If you choose to ignore answering these questions your post will just appear as a brochure anyway.
You can use the BUF (benefits, usage and features) approach but avoid a sales pitch here, remember you are not selling. Simply provide adequate information that addresses common problems most of your customers experience when using your product. Always take a position free of hype and avoid using words like “amazing”, “great”, “profound”, “revolutionary”, “best”, “excellent” etc.
Keep calm, your content will still be credible even if you mention rival brands in your post. For example, if its G-tel blogging about their sophisticated smartphone, they can even mention how a particular specification on a Samsung Galaxy S5 brings an exciting experience in using an Android phone (after all theirs run Android).
Trust me, this alone will harvest the much needed attention and loyalty for your brand. Consumers will start to believe that your products are reliable and capable of meeting theirexpectations, hence they become buying customers not just subscribers to your blog.
A powerful blog post that enhances your product mix strategy imparts valuable information and get buying customers. This requires you to endorse the creativity around your product. Again, don’tsell, instead create a room for your reader to appreciate the creativity, the components and the problem solving aspect of your product. Simply explain why it’s a good idea to know about a product they wish to buy and how wise it is to deal with the most knowledgeable suppliers. Therefore, your knowledge basically creates an important indirect influence in your audience thereby submissively decide to buy from you.
In your post, show how they can get the most value out of using your product (the purpose of content marketing). Most customers have shallow knowledge particularly on tech gadgets. Take a chance to illustrate how they can optimize the performance of your particular product or even just one specific feature in your product.G-tel can show how the Bluetooth feature on its latest smartphone can be used to connect and pairwith most trending hifi’s like the Sony Shake models. The compatibility aspect can be a winning tactic and goes a long way in influencing the consumer’s buying decision.
It’s that simple but you will realise the customer would prefer to get such a phone device from G-tel than anyone else offering a similar smartphone with Bluetooth function. It is because they have appreciated the value of information G-tel shared hence gained trust in the brand.
Telling a story has always proved to bring better results in audience engagement. Tell a success story because it creates interest in your audience as they can relate to it thereby capturing attention. Give a detailed account of how and why your product design or packaging has successfully gained trust by most of your customers and don’t forget to mention prominent figures who use your product. Tell your reader how those customers have been using your product and how much they have improved their lifestyles.
Create video content
Most businesses fail on this, they just keep creating plain or empty videos. You know a video will never get attention and engage the audience until it tells a story, again you can never run away from this.A video that takes your audience or customer into the journey of its evolution or taking your audience into the production room, showing all the processes has a great impact in justifying and endorsing your marketing mix strategy particularly if you are oriented towards product and price mix strategies.
You know we all ask our salesman why a particular product costs so much. We have no clue what it takes or how much value is contained in the production and delivery processes.
Your packaging alone should give considerable benefit to the customer hence should come with a price. So if your packaging contributes much to your costing, you need to bring that packaging process to your audience emphasizing every value it brings to the consumer. Therefore you should create a video that narrates the creativity within your packaging and this will allow your audience to understand and accept your product packaging value propositions.
I have seen most businesses don’t take their customers behind the scenes because some think its exclusive and maybe confidential, howeverthis should give you a competitive edge over your competitor.Coming out with your whole production, packaging and distribution processes will simply gain you trust from your customers which lead to loyalty and repeat business.
This strategy works mostly with complex and highly priced products, for low valued products you may use alternative ways of creating content that address the pricing information gap. (Blogging, infographics etc.)Remember the video you create should address the information gap relating to your marketing mix strategy.
If you sell a service, you can create a video showing the backstage and the front stage,this is your service blueprint to your customers in a video. This ultimately justifies how and why yourwell-coordinated service is a good deal and why they will get it at such a particular price.
Basically there are two things not to miss when creating a video for your marketing mix strategy.
(i) Your video content should tell a story and inspire consumers thereby increase their overall satisfaction in using your product. Show how the product evolved to become the best brand today
(ii) Show how to optimize benefiting out of the product features and specifications. You can even show all the prominent figures who use your product or how much they like just one particular feature on your product which happens to be your selling point.
Use Infographics
You can admit on having no clue what these are. Yes, a lot of people just find these on theirGoogle web pages but have no idea what they are but believe me they find these very enlightening, informative and make them get a deep grasp ofwhatever content they would be browsing.
Now, these are valuable visual representations of data, information or knowledge relevant to a particular topic. These simply engage and give a better understanding of concepts. You can find a lot of available softwares and tools to create your infographics, there is Google Chart Tools, Chartsbin, Infor.am etc.
Believe me you can use these softwares to create infographic designs that show how retail distribution of your product has boosted sales and brand awareness. This can be more effective if you decide to design infographics for the product specifications showing how these can be optimized (remember the knowledge gap).
There are so many types of infographics you can choose from, choose Interactive infographics, animatedinfographics etc. Infographics will help your audience to really know and understand how to use your product effectively. They set a trend that compels the audience to try your product if it’s their first time to come across your content and your product.
A graphical representation that gives much detail relating to how, where and at what price most of your customers buy your product will enhance the effectiveness of the role of your content. For example if most customers buy your product online, brokers, retailersetc. or if they buy on the basis of price or the benefits associated, all these can be best represented in your info graphic.
It’s unfortunate we have not yet such infographic submission sites in Zimbabwe, however you can submit your infographics to sites like Visual.ly, Daily info-graphic, InfoArchive, Flickr etc. Make use of social media platforms to publish your content. UseYouTube to share your videos, Facebook, Twitter and your blog, yes you definitely need a blog. You can learn more on how to create and manage a blog at tirivashemundondo.com or subscribe to inventatribe.com
Anyone can create content but yours can be different. Your content will be valuable only if you make it seen. People should access and consume it, therefore you need to publish and promote it just the way you market your product. If you don’t promote it, then it’s just content. You have to market your marketing to get desired results.
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