The web is constantly evolving, and audiences are evolving right along with it. That is why, businesses and CMOs need to evolve, too if they hope to stay ahead of the game. Around 78% of CMOs believe that custom content is the future of marketing.
Tailor content to your customers/audiences
Spend time learning about your audience. Check out other blogs, forums and any other place where your prospects might be spending time and sharing content with each other. What issues are they discussing? This is the inspiration for custom content. Challenge yourself to tailor content to specific groups of your customers.
According to polls, around 60% of consumers enjoy reading custom content and 82% of people feel more positive about a company after reading custom content. Custom content builds trust over time and keeps prospects close to you. And trust comes before the sale – without trust, consumers won’t buy from you.
Content is superior to direct mail and PR
Direct response marketers value the power of a good old direct mail campaign and the importance of PR. However, more and more marketers today claim they are achieving better results creating useful content and targeting the ideal customers versus sending promotional materials or direct mail.
Not more is more but better is better
Consumers aren’t interested in more content – they just want better content. With so much content out there, businesses need to find ways to stand out. With millions of blog and social media posts published every day, it’s easy for your content to get buried.
The most common content marketing delivery mechanism is social media, used by 87% of marketers (source: CMI).
Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have changed the way companies communicate with consumers. These popular services are generally free to use so the only thing it costs to promote content on social media is your time (or money to run a paid ad campaign, if you chose to).
Social media is where great content really shines. Many businesses make the tactical mistake to send dull product or sale information through their social media channels. Instead, it pays off to focus on the actual “social” aspect and build a relationship with followers by providing them with useful content, before referring them to your website and nurture the friendship from there.
