It’s not about baiting customers, it’s about solving their problems.
Understanding what your customers are looking for is the key to a successful content marketing strategy. It’s no longer about interrupting them with advertisements but is instead about attracting them with solutions to their problems. By content marketing to your customers, you can bring them onto the virtual showroom floor having established a relationship with engaging content that helped them solve a problem. But this tends to sound a little abstract so allow me to bring it into the real world.
Let’s find a good place to fish
Big-box retail has created a tremendously difficult economic environment for businesses that were once the anchors of the community. Despite this challenge, many independent local businesses have managed to carve out a niche based on a commitment to customer service and attention to detail. Old Dominion Sports Center in Winchester Va is a prime example of this type of resilient business that has flourished in the face of economic adversity. For over 50 years the independent sports center has provided hunters and fishermen with quality equipment and supplies to make the most out of each and every minute in the wild. However, the popular retailer’s website did not reflect the store’s vigor. To bring the business website up to speed Old Dominion Sports Center hired us to develop a new site.
When we built and launched their new website we wanted to start with a content stream that would draw in qualified leads and remain relevant. In our initial research, we discovered that there was no single source of information on the best public fishing spots in Frederick County. With a little research and some creative writing, we pulled together an article entitled, “Great Fishing Spots in Frederick County.” The inbound traffic from that single article was nothing short of amazing. Within a month it was responsible for 30% of the site’s organic traffic and despite the fact that the business does not engage in ongoing content marketing, it has consistently driven traffic for the past two years.
But the increase in traffic is only one aspect of the power of quality content. The truly magical thing about content like this is that it draws in qualified leads. The article on great fishing spots provides information to fishermen who use fishing equipment. They end up getting valuable free information about places they can fish from a business website that sells fishing tackle, gear, and licenses in the exact area they will be fishing.
Content Marketing doesn’t get much better than that.
