DIGITAL CONTENT MAY BE YOUR BRAND’S MOST UNDERUTILIZED OPPORTUNITY

By the time someone is actively comparing products it’s usually too late to develop a brand preference. So the objective is to start to influence perceptions earlier in the process, before someone is ready to buy. This is where content comes in. Content helps your brand become a valuable knowledge source in your category, and translates to a positive pre-disposition to your brand. Seeding content across the digital universe builds preference by keeping brands connected to customers and prospects, and is usually much less expensive than buying advertising.

Here are four important content considerations:

1. IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU

We are all very good at talking about ourselves, and so are brands. But customers are more concerned with their interests than your agenda. Until a customer is deeper in the consideration funnel, your product story is less relevant than their interest in the category. So give them content designed to fuel their personal interests and accelerate them towards purchase. join the flow by creating content just outside your existing consideration content. don’t interrupt what customers are interested in, be what they’re interested in.

2. DO YOUR HOMEWORK

The more personally relevant content is, the more compelling it is. Delivering the right content for the right person, at the right moment, is your objective; a content strategy is how you do it. It reveals what your different prospects are interested in at each stage of the sales cycle. This allows you to create content for your primary personas at each critical juncture in their journey from awareness to advocacy.

3. EARN TRUST

Consumers understand that advertising is less reliable than content, and they search out objective truth through social interactions, found content and 3rd parties. Brands cannot fight this. Instead they have to embrace it, by not only feeding content into the digital knowledge market, but also by resisting the urge to manipulate the truth. In order to become a trusted knowledge source, brands must carefully police the content they produce to ensure its integrity. If they don’t, the knowledge market will.

4. MORE IS MORE

Any piece of content you make is only consumed at a moment in time and since we don’t know when tire kickers will become tire buyers, you need a constant flow of content to stay connected to prospects until the magic moment arrives. So making more small inexpensive pieces of content is frequently better than just a few big budget busters. Your content strategy should call for many forms of content, many of which are not expensive to produce, from articles (delivered via web or rss) to share-able infographics to educational videos to helpful web or mobile tools. In most complex product categories, where there’s a lot to learn, education is an important driver. In all categories there may be opportunities for functional connections with prospects through tools, widgets and apps. The important thing is to keep the flow going.

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