In the early days of marketing, salespeople/business owners found that their marketing strategy should be as personal as a handshake. Door-to-door interactions were much more common in those days, offering one-on-one conversations that made the sales pitch of a product more powerful and alluring.

Yesterday’s Marketing Methods, Modernized

In today’s technology-driven world, effective content marketing is less about face-to-face interactions and more about making your company’s voice heard. Content marketing must exude professionalism, yet also be as personal as a knock on the door. Just like sales routes that had to be mapped out in detail to ensure success, content marketing does not simply happen on its own. It requires planning and effort.

If you want to ensure that your customers are aware of the services and products you provide, you will first need to create a marketing strategy that reaches your consumers where they are. Connecting to your customers is the best device you can use to help them in their purchasing decisions.

But don’t just create fluff that leaves your target audience wanting more and turning to your competitors to find what they need. Long-term customer engagement is essential to make your content relatable, readable, and reusable. With these three R’s in place, your marketing strategy can position you for lasting success.

It’s All Relative & Relevant

People aren’t stupid. They know what they want, they know their income, and they know that businesses are out to sell them their products. When you put your content marketing to work, it’s critical that you make the subject relatable to your target audience. Will they find what you have to say relevant to their situation? Can they see themselves making this purchase and using your product in their lives? Can they relate to what you are saying when you offer your digital sales pitch?

Consider these things when creating your content:

• Voice: What you say and how you say it tells a story that your customers will hear loud and clear. Be sure that you articulate the vision of your business in a way that is relevant to the goal you want to accomplish.
• Visuals: Without overdoing it, a well-placed visual in a content marketing piece can often make a point faster than a thousand words. Don’t just say it: show it.
• Value: Remember that there is value in keeping things uncomplicated. Taking a simple point and making it bigger just for the sake of making it bigger can easily turn your customer away and cause you to lose the very thing you were hoping to gain: their interest in what you have to say.

Extra, Extra! Read All About It

It is a waste of time to create content the customer isn’t going to understand, or that isn’t supported by the details you give. Simply throwing words on the screen (or page) isn’t enough if there isn’t substance to back up your point.

• Make sure your content marketing word choice is conscious; if it can be said in an everyday, common terminology, let that be enough.
• Make your title match your content. If this article had been entitled “Lollipops and Dragonflies on Vacation” and that intrigued you to read it, you would have been sorely disappointed to find the subject didn’t match the promise of the headline.
• Make paragraph breaks and short lists to keep the content flowing smoothly.

Being Reusable: It’s Not Just a Green Thing

Versatility is key in today’s economy. The content marketing strategy that you employ should include ways that your blogs, articles, ads, and other content pieces (including their more visual aspects) can be used and reused in varying forms of communication. Being reusable enables you to reach your customers in ever-evolving ways.

• Be strategic: Incorporate evergreen content into your marketing strategy to maximize existing content marketing efforts.
• Be Aware: The benefits of reusing content can include reduction of cost in multiple areas of your company as well as an increase in consistency and quality in the content you share with your target audience.
• Be Informed: There are multiple ways to reuse content, which can include updating existing content, turning old blog posts into slideshows or infographics, or using a how-to guide to create an instructional video. The possibilities are endless and are only limited by your imagination.

In Summary

When considering your content marketing strategy, remember to create content that is relatable, readable and reusable to help improve sales and take your company to new heights. So plan your sales route and make that front door pitch; opportunity is knocking and it’s up to you to close the deal.