What you must know about Content Marketing? Here are 10 things that you should really stuck into your brain.

1. You’re in the content marketing business whether you like it or not.

The moment you create a website, you are in the content marketing business. Gone were the days where the website served as only a sales page or brochure. Now, the main objective of your website is nothing but educating the strangers coming to your site with the sole objective of converting them to qualified prospects. What does a qualified prospect means? It’s nothing but a prospect that knows what to ask for and knows what to expect when you deliver your service. It takes great content and the appropriate execution methods to improve the quality and progression of leads. Done properly, your sales process will nothing but a breeze.

2. Create and own your own marketing media.

Rethink the way traditional media works. It is not enough to deliver your educational/infomercial/marketing content through a third party platform like mass media. To truly be considered an authority figure in the field that you specialize in, you must absolutely own the platform that you are delivering the content. When it comes to web marketing, this is easy breezy. How? When you create a blog on your website, you own the content and the platform. Same is true for a video that you created and uploaded to YouTube. You own that YouTube channel. No one can take it away from you. It shall remain your marketing capital for as long as you decide to keep.

3. Can your free content push your prospect one more step closer to the promised land?

There is a terminology in the marketing circle known as “Results In Advance” (RIA). What it means is, your free content or educational piece should always have one objective and only one. Give the audience an immediate result (a part of the total result) of what he/she will receive should they decide to have a financial transaction with you.

Let’s say your product or service is designed to deliver your customers to the promised land. It could be being an expert at networking or learn how to date well or to Teach how to make your cat bark. How much effective can your marketing/educational content can bring them closer to the promised land, that much effective will be your sales effort. This is Results In Advance. Giving value and helping the community well in advance of asking for a financial reward in return. It may sound daunting to some of you guys, but trust me it’s not. I will explain everything in detail and you’ll learn that it’s the easiest thing to do.

4. Always be collecting leads and telling them what to do next.

The internet is a great tool for distraction. Your prospect can land on your page and be gone in seconds. While some marketing gurus may advise free no obligations distribution but seriously you should be well known in your niche to be able to pull that off. And you will need a ton, (don’t take that lightly) of content. Most often you will be better off with collecting leads and following up with the people who have shown interest AND most importantly start solving the problems that your prospect are having. Give away the farm. And guess what, they will come back for more. You can always sell them another farm later. Develop loyalty first.

And don’t leave them guessing what to do next. Always be leading them towards your funnel, sales funnel that is. And continuously over-deliver.

5. Pursue all channels, reuse contents and keep more of them coming.

Content curation is often a difficult task, sometimes you may not know what to create. The answer to this is stalking. As in wherever you think your prospects might be, peek in. See other blogs, videos and other products. Get an idea of what problems they are solving. And you’ll get an idea of what content to develop. Once a particular content is created, reuse them. If you have created a blog post, have it converted to a video and post it in YouTube. And if you can, create a mini online course around that topic for free. It does not have to comprehensive.

And never stop. Always keep new fresh content coming. It is easier than you think it is. If you are in the information marketing business, it’s all the more easier. You just have to see what information others in your industry is charging money for and create similar content and give it away for free. You’ll know you are successful once your competitors start hating you.

6. Conversion is not the immediate goal of content marketing.

Think of your content initiatives as the path way leading to the place where you sales funnel ultimately sits. The main objective of each piece of content will be to move the prospect closer to the sales funnel, but remember they are still outside the funnel. If you keep showing up with good content that solves the basic problems of the target market, then these prospect will start thinking that you/your company is the person they will go to should any need arise.

But be sure that need will arise, unexpectedly at that and the first person/company they will look for will be you/your firm. Once that happens, you will demand that they do business with you. That’s the power of ultra targeted content marketing.

7. You can’t ignore the search engines.

Never ever. No doubt, the goal of a content marketing program is to connect with buyers and influence them at every stage of the cycle so they’ll keep your company top of mind. The interface between your target customers and your content is the search engine. And you do need to present your content specially wrapped up for search engines. This means having researched the proper keywords and phrases that your target market frequently use. You have to get to know how your target market describe their pain points and use the same language to propose a solution for that.

This means that you not only have to find the appropriate keywords before you create the content, but you would also want to use smart cross linking to connect all your contents. This immediately tells a search engine that you/your website is an authority figure in your niche. Forge relationships with peers in related niches and ask them to link to your content too. That’s the ultimate link building strategy for getting a steady flow of quality prospects.

8. Automate your content delivery so that you maintain a fixed frequency.

Getting great content is just one part of the process. Consistently doing it is the other half. Marketing automation helps you establish a fixed pattern in your content schedule and search engines love it. For example, you would write a large ebook and distribute each chapters as individual blog posts or video and have it queued up for drip release over the course of a month. That’s great.

And automate the response too. All content that you put out there, should have a feedback loop / engagement opportunity so that the prospects could directly contact you if they need more information. We never suggest one-way content push. In fact, content marketing should always be a constant exchange of ideas and views.

9. Always remember the golden rule of marketing.

The golden rule for any form of marketing is the outcome. The outcome is nothing but engagement. If any of your marketing activity including content marketing, if it does involve positive or negative interaction from your target audience, then you have failed. Remember that and you will win this game easily.

Always be measuring your engagement metrics using automated communications tracking process like analytics tools. It helps you re-envision engagement and turn that data into actionable insight, so you can improve upon what works and discard techniques that are not efficient. Keep doing this and you will be perfecting your entire sales funnel. And by that I mean the long tail sales funnel that includes the actual funnel and the informational content that precedes it.

10. Be everywhere your target market is without being obnoxious.

Hang out where your prospects are, offer valuable content and ask them to share if they like it. Become known in your market as someone who understands their industries and challenges and let them know how your services and solutions can help them get to the promised land.

As important as it is to be everywhere, do not forget to be interesting and engaging and helpful all the times. Nobody likes an obnoxious marketer not adding value to the community. Respect from the community is the holy grail of any form of marketing. The more respected you and your business are in the market, that much more your net worth will rise.

To Chapter 8: Must Do: Set Up Analytic For Your Site