You have come up with your business idea, your product or service is ready to be launched, but you are faced with a dilemma, ‘How will I market this to my target group of consumers?’. Marketing should not be viewed as an inconvenience or as a barrier in your entrepreneurial journey. Advances in technology and the adoption of social media usage by consumers has made it easier than ever for brands to engage in marketing strategies that will ensure their brand is noticed and adopted by their target market.
The beginning of any brands journey should have a central focus on building brand awareness. Your target market should have an idea on the functionalities of the product or service being offered. Without this prior knowledge they will be less likely to adapt to your brand which in turn will affect the business financially. This initial stage in the process of bringing your brand to market can allow for relationships to be built with your potential customers. Most opinions of brands are made on first impressions; therefore it is important to adopt a suitable marketing strategy that will lead to customers trusting and choosing your brand.
Content marketing strategies are easily becoming one of the most favoured ways to market by professionals. Content marketing looks to not only providing customers with valuable information about the brand on offer but also appeals to them by generating interest around the brand in a way which directly appeals to customers.
Customer trends are changing with many now inclined to watch a video as opposed to reading text accompanying a marketing campaign. Previous campaigns would have been text heavy and refer to the brand throughout without applying it to its market. Customers do not like to feel as if they are being ‘targeted’ by marketers and prefer more subtle marketing campaigns as they feel they are given more freedom to form their own opinions of a brand. By feeling that they are in control customers are more likely to purchase from a brand and then return as a customer in the future.
The key when it comes to content marketing is not to have the focus of the material being produced focused solely on the brand. It should be apparent from the campaign which brand is being marketed however the story being told should reflect and appeal on how this product meets customers needs as opposed to telling a brand story. This form of marketing has been favoured by the likes of big brands around the Christmas period such as John Lewis, Tesco etc. In this year’s John Lewis advertisement, the marketing is focused on ‘Excitable Edgar’ however throughout the video clip we are given subtle views of food products with the finale featuring Edgar lighting a Christmas pudding. While customers have fallen in love with this Christmas Tale that is being broadcast to them, the premise behind this ad and the subtle focus on food products was to promote the recent partnership between John Lewis and Waitrose. The way in which they utilise content marketing should serve as a great example to start ups. They show that subtle hints towards a brand can have a greater impact when a story plays to a customer’s emotions.
While it is evident that the likes of John Lewis, Tesco etc. have big production budgets for producing content this should not hinder a start-ups decision to use content marketing in their strategies to build brand awareness. Content marketing can be pared back to its simplest form, it is easily accessible no matter how big or small the allocated budget is. Creating content can simply be done with an idea, a camera, a little creativity and access to social media. Once a content marketing strategy is adopted the material produced will provide valuable and informative content to customers. In order to promote your brand effectively all strategies should focus on how your brand is firstly relevant to your target market and secondly how can it bring additional value to them.
The products of the marketing campaign can then be shared across social media accounts owned by the brand. Popular social media sites Instagram, Facebook and Twitter can be used to share content with your potential market. On all these platforms there is the ability to ‘promote’ posts to specific target groups. When initially starting a business utilising this function can ensure that your content gets seen by exactly the people you want to see it. If these customers are then interested, they will want to engage, potentially sharing this post between friends, ‘liking’ or tagging their friends in the comment section. By doing so it further expands your market allowing for your brand to become recognised by multiple users across social media. After brand awareness, building brand recognition this is another step forward for a start-ups journey.
While content marketing brings value to a brand and allows for customer markets to expand here are a few tips to ensure that you do it right.
- The content you produce will reflect on your brand so make sure that you are sharing a message that you would like associated with your business, not something that you will regret in the future.
- Research what others in your market are producing, see how their content is performing with their customers bases. Insights such as these will ensure that you have industry knowledge on the type of content that is accepted/rejected by your potential market.
- Content marketing does not only have to focus on images, text and videos. Try looking at different avenues such as creating your own podcast. By featuring topics that relate to your brand and your customers you are drawing them in. As podcasts tend to extend over multiple episodes you are retaining their attention for longer periods of time than a video would.
- Don’t focus all your content on just one social media site. Depending on your brand your potential customers may extend over different demographics. Check what socials are most used by each demographic in your target market and then produce your content over these platforms in order to capture the attention of not one segment but all potential segments.
