Marketing
Content Marketing: The Value of a Good Story
By: Dan Hoff @ ChannelReady
If you market and sell to other businesses, you are probably already well aware of the value and increasing importance of content to your success.
What is the secrete to successful content marketing?
As a marketing tactic, content marketing should be able to attract potential buyers to you, your company, your products and services. In some circles this is referred to as inbound marketing, attraction marketing and even magnetic marketing.
But the simple fact is, the secrete to a successful content marketing program is to provide information, knowledge and narratives that your ideal customers want to see. To bring them content they want to read and willingly engage.
But that’s not as easy to do as it is to say.
The answer is to create the content that your reader is trying to find in the first place. For them, good content has an intrinsic value. And that’s what makes it work well.
But how do you make content that the consumer, customer, or prospect actually wants to read? The answer is simple and may have been around for generations before the notion of content marketing ever existed.
Nobody knows how to produce quality content that readers actually want to read more than professional writers and journalists. For generations, they have been crafting stories. Whether for newspapers, magazines, television, movies and, yes, even the internet. And for the most part, these are stories that readers actually want to see and engage.
So, what can we learn from them? According to Frank Chenn President and CEO at ChannelReady, Inc., “It's easy. We can learn how to tell a good story. One that people want to read”
This approach is called Brand Storytelling
For a story to truly engage your audience, it first must interest and then resonate. If we look at successful storytelling as our examples then we quickly realize that there are some clear, and common characteristics of truly audience engaging content. And the types of stories that find success all share these principles.
But, why is it necessary to tell a Good Story?
There is a significant value to being known in your market as a thought leader. Once you can establish yourself as the 'go-to' source of knowledge on a topic, awareness, business and sales tend to come a bit easier. But to get there, you need to be at a point of being a trusted source of information for your industry or marketing segment.
The key to becoming a trusted source and thought leader is to be as impartial as possible. Now, that idea may seem counterintuitive. It may even seem to run counter to your entire marketing goals. However, if you can establish yourself as a credible and realistic storyteller, you can ensure that your target audience will trust you as a source of reliable content. They won’t see you as someone simply trying to push an agenda or sell a product. You will be a trusted source, and be seen as a thought leader.