For content marketing to work, you need to be different from your competitors. You should be able to remove your branding from a piece of content but still know it’s yours. And if you can’t, then there’s a good chance you need to rethink the way you’re doing things.
To help you strengthen your bran, you need to do make sure every piece of content you produce reinforces your brand messaging. You need to have a strong brand voice, but you also need to make sure you’re communicating your vision and offering people value. And when you do this, you’ll start to see far better results from your content marketing efforts.
Here’s a little more about how to plot out your content marketing strategy so that it helps you build a brand.
Define Your Vision
For branded content marketing to work, the content you create needs to clearly reflect your brand’s identity.
Since your organisation likely already has a mission or vision statement, spend some time thinking about how you can create content that reflects this aspect of your company. Then make sure this is aligned with customer needs.
In short, every piece of content you create should show people your unique expertise in helping them solve the problems they face.
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Define Your Brand’s Voice
A strong, clear brand voice is a must if your content marketing is going to be successful. And while you may know what this voice, it’s important you check to make sure the rest of the people at the company do too. You need to prioritise certain aspects of your company over others, so make sure messaging is consistent and is reflective of the image you’re trying to present.
Brand guidelines are a useful tool for helping make sure everyone in your organisation is aware of what’s expected of them in terms of brand voice.
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Define Your Value
For you to remain successful, you need to constantly remind people why you are valuable to them. This not only keeps them focused on you as a brand, but it also helps you define their buying vision, making it more likely they’ll think of you when it comes time to make a purchase.
Find out how you can be most useful to your target audience. Maybe this means performing case studies, or perhaps it means releasing white papers. The point is that you want to move away from your relationship being customer-centric, meaning it’s based entirely around the transaction of buying and selling, and towards a relationship people see as necessary in their lives.
Try and Try Again
Content marketing is necessary for you to be successful in today’s market. But this doesn’t mean it’s easy. You can focus on the three things discussed here, but you might still struggle. And that’s okay. The important thing is to stay focused on creating messages that stand out and that help people identify you as a brand. Do this and you’ll eventually be able to break through and build real relationships with people.