A Solid Content Marketing Strategy You Can Steal

I recently wrote about how to get inside the heads of your customers.

It’s a good exercise for new companies and even established businesses. Once you understand your prospects' mind, you’ll get a good idea of what problem they’re experiencing. Then you’ll know how your business can help them.

After you’ve done this, you may consider a content marketing strategy. But be careful. Most companies I see make the mistake of creating content with a tactical approach.

That means they pretty much create content for the sake of creating content. After all, more content means for food for search engines, and that will bring people to the company website, right?

Maybe.

Let’s take a more strategical approach. It is way more useful for your business if you create content that has some sort of ‘hang around’ value. That way your created content will be called upon over and over again, also ingraining your company into the minds of your ideal prospect.

If this sounds difficult, don’t worry. It’s actually very simple.

Powerful Content Marketing: A Real World Example

This past weekend I took part in Great Ormond Street Hospital’s 5k Race for the Kids.

My son had open heart surgery at this hospital when he was six months old. So each year, a bunch of us friends and family get together. We join thousands of people who all take part in a five-kilometer race held by the Great Ormond Street Hospital charity, as a fundraiser.

This year after the race, my wife was shopping at the charity store tent that they have there. She bought a large water bottle that my two year old son could practice drinking out of.

I thought nothing of it and we went home soon after.

Later that day I noticed a small, bookmark sized pee chart in the bathroom.

The idea behind the pee chart is to see how hydrated you are by looking at the color of your pee. If your pee is too dark, you are likely dehydrated and you need to drink water. The chart will tell you how much to drink too.

Now, my wife is good about drinking enough water during the day but knows that I’m not. Hence the pee chart made its way into our family bathroom so she could use it as a nice little automated reminder (for me to drink more water).

I was looking closely at this chart and I noticed it had a website address on it. Of course, I went straight over to the site in order to investigate what was waiting for me.

I found a whole host of premium insulated water bottles, coffee cups and even food containers being promoted by good looking models posing with the company products. Some of these water bottles sell for almost $29 each.

What did I do next?

I hid that pee chart faster than lightning, before my wife falls victim to the clever marketing strategy and buys their entire stock from them! I’ll stick to a regular water bottle, thanks.

Now let’s break down what just happened here:

1. We bought a premium water bottle. As buyers of the product, the company knows we are ideal prospects to come back and buy similar items.
2. The company provided a 'ride along' item with the bottle, in the form of cleverly create content, a pee chart.
3. That cleverly created content also had a viral aspect (my wife didn’t need it but knew that I did, so left it where I couldn’t miss it).
4. The content marketing was primarily more of a utility than an obvious piece of marketing. Think about that. If it was just an advert that said ‘come to our website and buy buy buy’ (like most company promotions) it would have gone straight in the bin. However, this promo avoided the bin and actually made its way further into our home.
5. I ended up seeing the content and visited the website. If I was like most people, I would have browsed around and as a proven buyer of water bottles already, may have been tempted to make another purchase too. This drives revenue for the company.

How To Create Good Content Marketing

Simply read through the numbered list above once more.

It’s a step by step guideline that you can use to build good content marketing. Your content doesn’t even have to be long or difficult to create, but it should be useful.

It doesn’t even need to be original but can help if it looks new (this pee chart is not new at all, but it was new to me).

If I was going to change anything, perhaps I would have included more than one pee chart in the box. The viral and useful nature of the chart means it could possibly make its way into the hands of multiple people, had that been possible.

So, think about that when you’re creating your next piece of content marketing. It should be useful and if you get it right, it could drive revenue for your company for many years to come.

Remember it’s not hard to learn the best business success secrets like this. They usually take place right in front of your eyes. You just need to keep your eyes open.

Next time, I'll cover more real world examples of solid content marketing that actually built entire businesses.

Update: Here is the link to the next article: 3 Examples Of Clever Content Marketing (That Built Entire Businesses)

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