Your brand deserves better attention; your brand’s story deserves to be heard.

If you are also not taken on by this hula-bulla of content marketing, well, then you are not feeling the market’s pulse my friend. We here, live by Kevin Nichols’ definition of content marketing, ‘getting the right content to the right user at the right time’.

The whole point of doing content marketing as opposed to salesy-marketing is to knock-back all the marketing shenanigans and give the consumer what he really wants to consume. It integrates with your current marketing mix and tells a unified story of your brand because trust us, throwing irrelevant information and just hoping that it gets noticed isn’t a sound strategy anymore.

When you do content marketing, you present a story to them, give them a journey they can embark upon and engage into, they will listen and will respond. And that is how the magic begins.

Contrary to what people think, the concept of content marketing is not new or recent. Right form 1895 when John Deere launched his customer magazine, ‘The Furrow’, brands have been telling their stories. I mean, didn’t you all sing along to the catchy tune of ‘Dumb Ways To Die’, launched by the Australian metro train company who promoted rail safety in an entirely unique way.

The biggest example of success seen in content marketing is perhaps the Google Doodles. We all wait for them to trip us over with their new versions, don’t we? They understand that creating this sort of engagement is very crucial as the moment your consumers feel disengaged, you run the risk of being irrelevant to them.

To effectively chart out a content marketing strategy, it is important to keep a few things in mind, such as-

• The objective– what are you trying to achieve through that content. It can vary from you pushing your sales to gaining potential customers and re-affirming the loyalty of existing customers. A clear objective gives you that much mileage with the customers.

• The content– You cannot produce content that may put your consumers to sleep, that goes against your company’s interest. You need your content to be exciting, to have a personality. It should engage the audience.

• The audience– You cannot work without knowing you target audience, content marketing cannot work if you are just shooting in the dark, a well-defined audience base is the reason you tailor your content.

It has to be clear that content, its message and its purpose needs to be ascertained beforehand so that a feasible content marketing strategy can be devised. Therefore, it is imperative to understand your audience and have defined target segments.

But word for word, how to create content that actually helps you? Perhaps, the answer to this million dollar question can be found, in fact, no one puts it better than ‘Pure Matter’ founder, Brayan Kramer when he says, ’If done correctly, it (content marketing) can turn ordinary consumers to raving brand evangelists.’

So the next time you sit down to ‘market content’, remember-

• Chose the right content, you can’t entertain children with philosophy books. Be smart, know your audience
• Know the best distribution for your content, you can’t be pouring over brilliant video content on just e-mail and expect it to work. Also, know the audience and where on the net you can find them
• Define your goals, or else how will you measure your content strategy success! Or create further strategies for that matter. Crucial insights are very important in evolving your content marketing strategy
• Harness technology to work for you, not against you. Creating experiences that are interactive for the consumers ensures their engagement and gives a lasting mileage

Remember, products and services are not the only consumable items; your content is consumed equally based on which a purchase decision is made.