Building Your Digital Audience with Content Marketing

With today’s fragmented communication and marketing channels, and complete control resting in the hands of the consumer, companies are forced to rethink their go-to-market strategies. Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, says to focus on the relationship of the customer. Many companies treat content like advertising, not taking into consideration what the consumer actually wants and values. He says, “You must create value for your audience BEFORE you extract value.” Pulizzi argues to reverse the common strategy. Instead of pursing and bombarding leads, first build a relationship with your audience, and leads will follow.

Pulizzi outlines how to build a relationship with your audience through valued content in his book, Content Inc. Here are a few of the key take-aways:

1. Find the sweet spot, which is the intersection between passion/customer pain and knowledge/skill. In other words, find what the customers problem is, and use your knowledge or skill to heal that pain.

2. Focus on the content tilt. “Everyone stops at the sweet spot, hardly anyone tilts the content,” Joe says. He suggests creating a content mission statement.

3. Build a base. One misconception many have is that building an audience can happen overnight, however that isn’t true. Building a base audience can up to take 12-18 months.

4. Harvest the audience. Focus on the subscribers by having solid content, an amazing newsletter, or even exchanging of value.

5. Diversification. Divide your engagement into the “rule of three.” This means engage with your audience in various ways: via emails, e-newsletters, webinars, online training, podcasts, Twitter chat, or consulting/advisory services, to name a few.

6. Monetization, which means finding the difference between those who subscribe, and those who don’t. In other words: create value.

Content Marketing will be a topic at the upcoming TMSA Digital Transformation Conference Oct. 15-16 in Chicago, IL. Register by September 28 and receive a FREE copy of Content. Inc. Learn how transportation companies are using content to drive their marketing and sales success! Learn more