Content marketing tip #1: Content is a business asset

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Updated 6 years ago

According to Content Marketing Institute 92% (!) of marketers said their organization views content as a business asset. I will say it again: CONTENT IS A BUSINESS ASSET! And I’ll go even further: your content is your most important business asset!

Content marketing – just like any other marketing concept – covers a whole set of different methods and strategies and serves one ultimate goal: to attract, to engage and to retain as many customers as possible in order to fulfill certain well-defined business objectives. Yet, is very different from any other form of marketing. Why? Because content marketing has nothing to do with the traditional selling techniques.

The traditional marketing concepts have taught you to close immediate deals being direct, pushy and persuasive. Do yourself a huge favor and forget all that “sales pitch” rubbish right now!

Content marketing is a completely different approach. It’s a long-term strategy focusing on relationships, authority, trust and value.

With a simple Google search you are going to find dozens of different definitions for content marketing. I’ve seen even full, stand-alone articles that have been written in an attempt to provide a complete and detailed definition of content marketing. Well, I won’t waste your time with multiple examples or hairsplitting semantic variants … The purest essence of content marketing has been already defined by Bill Gates and I am pretty sure, that you are already familiar with these three words: content is king. If you understand the real meaning of these three words, you already know what content marketing is.

In content marketing you have one and only one goal, to create useful enlightening informational content for your target audience. If you can do that, you’ll create an unbreakable bond based on trust. A trust that eventually will help you to convert your audience into paying customers! Believe me, all comes down to one thing: you need a strategy to create targeted, useful content that is going to stand out. Social media is great way to distribute your content and is a powerful method to amplify your voice, but social media can’t – and won’t – save you if you haven’t created your voice and your message first!

And I won’t lie to you … There is a long and rough road between the very first touch-point and an actual profit visible in your bank account. If you want to create disruption, you need to educate your target audience and you must give them a damn good reason to keep coming back to you. Sometimes it can be insanely hard to build that trust and authority. You’ll have to work yourself to the bone, but if you do it well you will be rewarded tenfold.