By Chris Haycock | 24 July 2021

Content is King, they say. And yes, it's largely true - but only if you have the right strategy. But let's start at the beginning. What is content marketing, and how can it help you attract new customers?

If you're struggling to sell your products, it might just be that you're not standing out from the crowd, because all your marketing activities are just focused on sales.

You're pitching your products everywhere you can think of with one sole purpose - getting as many people to buy your products as possible.

If this is your strategy, then you're not alone. Far too many business owners think that their sole marketing activity should be about getting the message out there as wide as possible.

If you don't believe me, go and join a local Facebook group for a geographic area. You'll see local businesses - electricians, plumbers, carpet cleaning companies, accountants, dog walkers, double glazing firms, second hand car dealerships, hairdressers and gardeners all touting their business through the group.

Nothing particularly wrong with that. After all, you have to take every opportunity to promote your business. But you can't just see every platform in the same way as a classified advert. If you examine these Facebook groups a little closer, you'll notice that businesses who exist to just promote their services get very, very little engagement. No likes, no replies, no questions - and no potential customers.

What an absolute waste of time and effort! Surely there must be another way?

Well, there is. And the best part about it is there's no selling whatsoever. We're talking about a different approach to advertising - an approach that can drive more enquiries, leads, and customers than any type of classified advertising will ever bring in.

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Enter "Content Marketing". This might be difficult to get your head around at first, but you need to stop trying to sell your products, and begin helping people instead.

Successful Content Marketing requires a slightly different approach to promoting your business than you may have been doing in the past. The chances are that you've been focusing too much on the act of selling, rather than helping people. Or, you might have fallen into the trap of creating valuable content with the sole purpose of persuading people to buy.

Let's face it, advertising your business like a classified ad is going to do you no favours. It's a tough strategy that very rarely works. Content marketing requires a completely different mindset, because it requires you to give rather than take. And you have to mean it too. If your audience senses a whiff of sales, then you risk losing their attention - and their business.

But make no mistake - content marketing works. It can bring more customers to your business than almost every other activity. And the beauty about it is that you don't even need to worry about selling because customers come to you, rather than you hunting down customers. All you need is a content marketing strategy.

So exactly what is content marketing? Well, it's about providing relevant, valuable information to your target market that helps them solve their problems. Simple as that.

When you're giving people the information they need to understand their pain points, the sales will naturally follow.

But don't take my word for it. The Content Marketing Institute found that the majority of the bigger brands are already engaged in content marketing for their markets. There's a reason for this. It works.

Imagine for one moment that you're a consumer. That shouldn't be too difficult because unless you're living in a cave, you're already a consumer of many different products. Think of all the marketing "junk" you're bombarded with every hour of every day of every week of every year. It's everywhere. Businesses are constantly pushing ads in our faces, in the hope that something will get noticed.

Have you also noticed that the vast majority of it is irrelevant to us - and not in the slightest bit valuable either.

If you’re putting out content designed to help people in your industry - with the eventual goal of winning their custom, you’ll need to go extra lengths to ensure that content is good, is quality, and is timely.

As top digital marketer Neil Patel said,

A lot of marketers are under the assumption that simply creating more content than the competition will get them the results they want. I beg to differ. If Google algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin have shown us anything, it’s that quality trumps everything else.

No matter what your marketing strategy contains, you've got to make content marketing a part of it, because otherwise you'll be seen as just another spammy business that goes around trying to sell their products without actually helping anyone in the process. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a nightmare scenario, and I can assure you that if that's your only strategy then you're in for a tough time.

You really don't want to be one of those businesses either. Changing your strategy to one that's more about helping people buy is incredibly satisfying - and profitable. Oh, and it's also very easy too. Rather than thinking, "how can I sell more?", think "how can I help more?"

So, what have I got in store waiting for you in the content marketing section of The Rainmakers? Well, we’ll be looking at the essentials of content marketing, of course. But we will also be going deeper - much deeper into content marketing to explore how you can produce content that attracts customers like a powerful magnet. We’ll be discovering the types of content that work the best, and how to get your information to the right people at the right time, in the right place. And lots more.

Make no mistake with this - content marketing is here to stay. Today’s savvy consumers give their business to people that appear to be helping them most - and this digital world they expect that information to be freely available. The business that provides the most valuable content almost always wins the day.

Welcome to Content Marketing.

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