Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. The key word here is “valuable.”
Why Content Marketing?
Perhaps more important than understand what content marketing is, is understanding why content marketing is important to your business. First we need to understand the four steps of the buying cycle:
- Awareness. Prior to awareness a customer may have a need, but they are not aware there is a solution.
- Research. Once a customer is aware there is a solution, they will perform research to educate themselves. For example, a car buyer will try to find out what different types of cars exist, and which one will fit their needs.
- Consideration. At this point the customer starts comparing different products from different vendors to make sure they’re getting a high quality product at a fair price.
- Buy. Finally, the customer makes their decision and moves forward with the transaction.