The Essence of Content Marketing: 3 Basic Principles

| September 23, 2015

The Essence of Content Marketing: 3 Basic Principles

Content marketing is a constantly evolving field, each day a new concept or an idea emerges. Marketers all over the world are struggling to keep up, trying to find the best way to present content, attract audience and increase traffic. If you’re a small business owner, the content marketing sphere can be intimidating.

As an entrepreneur, you don’t really have the time or the energy to master all the intricacies of content marketing. However, if you manage to grasp the essence of the field, you’ll be able to understand it better.

1. Explore Industry Practices

As an entrepreneur; you already have a keen and creative mind. You know how to draw inspiration from your surroundings. You’ve probably invested a lot of time and effort studying business tactics of industry legends. Why not study the marketing strategies? The big brands have immensely successful content marketing strategies. It doesn’t hurt to draw inspiration from them.

If you haven’t even started to sketch out a strategy, you can take a look at industry leaders and even your competitors. See what they’re doing and what marketing strategies they regularly employ. Doing your research would help you immensely down the line.  Compare your competitor’s strategies to those of notable industry leaders. You might find interesting clues on how to shape your own campaign.

Of course, if you stumble upon an interesting idea on your own, don’t hesitate to use it. Sometimes, when you’re studying the strategies of others, you discover a vacuum that’s not being addressed. For example, if your competitor isn’t exploring what you believe is an untapped market, don’t hesitate to do it. The worse that can happen is that you’re wrong that your time was wasted. On the flip-side, that might propel you to success.

2. Focus on Customers

One of the more common mistakes in content marketing is the tendency to focus on your brand, your business and your story. This is actually the result of a misinterpretation. The general advice experienced business owners and marketers give to newcomers is to add a personal note to advertising campaigns. You’re essentially asked to focus on your business journey.

The intention behind this advice is to get your potential client to see the human aspect of the business, to add a warm, friendly tone to your communication with them. The intention is not to make your marketing campaign a platform of self promotion. All your content marketing should be focused on the customer. You should answer the following questions

  • How would your product or service help your customer?
  • Why would your customer be better-off choosing you?
  • How do you ensure customer satisfaction?

Note that even the questions are more focused on the customer.

3. Creativity, Imagination and Innovation

It is an idea that inspired your small business, it is your resourcefulness and innovation that brought it to life. You’re probably aware that it doesn’t pay to always follow the rules. Rules can be excellent guidelines but you grow and learn, you shouldn’t hesitate to employ your own ideas and experiment. Creativity is the backbone of the content marketing industry after all.