dollie_mixtures (Photo Credits)Whenever we target our audience, we start singing our praises showcasing how we offer the best products and services. We completely miss what our customers care about. They are not really interested in knowing how great we are. Rather they are interested in finding out how we can make a difference in their lives. How can we eliminate the difficulties, discomfort and inconvenience from their lives? As long as we talk about our goodness, our achievements, we fail to connect with them and ultimately end up losing them to our competitors.
Marketing Is Not Always About Pitching
Marketing is not always about showing how and why you are the best. In fact, the latest approach is to grow business without pitching about your greatness and goodness of your products. The idea is to dig deeper and try to establish relationships with customers conveying the feeling of responsibility, relevance and care; and showing your commitment towards quality.
Over the last few years, companies have increased their focus on creating content to connect and engage with the customers. However, this has not been easy at all. There are thousands things to consider while creating a compelling copy of content that would produce desired impact on readers. Keeping the message intact and entertaining the readers at the same time is extremely challenging.
So, in order to create branded content, there are some significant prerequisites.
- First, it should be entertaining;
- Second, it shouldn’t have a sales pitch;
- Third, it should lead to social conversation;
- Fourth, it should be ready for multi-platform consumption.
How to Create Branded Content?
Branded content is designed keeping in mind the perspective of customers – what they like to read; how they like to communicated; what type of info or content they look forward to, etc. Any perspective customer watching or reading your branded content should be more inclined to buy from you. You also need to create content on regular basis, making it a company-wide culture. This is a valuable process otherwise your customers will forget you.
Let us now begin with the process of how to create branded content.
1. Research, Research, Research
Conduct a thorough research to know what your customers like about you or your people. What they really appreciate – your company culture, the concern of your sales people towards their needs, the way you connect with them on social media or your problem solving nature. Every piece of data you find is bread for your head, which can lead you to come up with creative and innovative ideas.
Include your employees in the process because they are the ones who directly deal with the customers. They know what they like and don’t like about the company. The senior management should also brainstorm to uncover what can fascinate their audience.
2. Brainstorm
Now you know what’s popular about you and what customers still don’t like about you, pull together your content marketing team to brainstorm and come up with creative content ideas for your website or social pages. The ideas can be in any form but they should help your customers know about your company culture and positive aspects without involving a direct sales pitch. The goal is create content that feels authentic and genuine and doesn’t intend to sell anything. Find out what can be shared with outsiders that enhance your company rapport.
3. Determine the Best Publishing Platform
Next step is to determine the best platform for publishing the content that you think will generate maximum result in minimum time period. It can be your company website, your personal or company blog or your social media page. Besides this, remember for optimal benefit, you will have to publish content on regular basis. Regardless of the destination where you publish it, you need to support it with content pieces on regular basis
4. Set Benchmarks
Before you publish your content, set benchmarks and goals to measure your success. Keep a check on likes, comments, tweets, shares, site visits and page views to find out if it is generating results as it is intended to achieve. Make use of your analytics tools to have a complete picture of how it is working and how people are reacting.
5. Keep Looking for New Ways
Generating ideas is not a one-time process; rather it’s a continuous procedure. Look to continuously refresh the way in which you tell your story. The key is to remain regular in publishing and coming up with new ways to maintain momentum.
The way people consume information and perceive about you keeps changing rapidly. You no longer can rely on superficial messaging, instead need to give them something that’s authentic and is a part of your company culture. Let them know what drives you; what values you believe in; and how much effort you make to connect with your customers through branded content.