It’s one of the conundrums at the heart of marketing – how can you impart genuinely useful and relevant information to your target customers in your content so that your brand begins to build a reputation as a trustworthy industry authority, while also actually selling your products or services?
Quality really does have to come first
First of all, we’ve got some bad (or maybe good) news for you: if you really want to attract and retain high-quality customers, you simply have to put the emphasis on ensuring that the content your business produces is high-quality, too – certainly over short-term sales.
Many in content marketing would even go as far as saying that your company should cultivate its image as a publisher or broadcaster before it places much overt emphasis on the selling of products.
But we realise, of course, that your business might not have that luxury. It has to sell products or services, and it has to do so now. So, what can you do to leverage your content so that it has that effect, without either cheapening your content or producing useful content that nonetheless does little for your brand’s bottom line?
First of all, is there useful content you can share about your product?
Striking the right balance between usefulness and ‘salesiness’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean leaving your products or services unmentioned in your videos or blog posts until a brief call-to-action (CTA) at the end. There may be scope for you to produce interesting, entertaining and useful content that nonetheless still has your products and services at its heart.
Maybe you could produce documentary-type videos showing how your products or services are made or used in ‘real life’ situations? However, it’s vital to get the tone and style right here. You won’t make much impact with this content approach if your business simply comes across as self-interested. Content, on the other hand, that communicates passion and value in a captivating manner for the viewer can be very successful indeed.
Another way is to promote your product in a pretty unsalesy, ‘matter of fact’ way – for example, introducing it midway through a tutorial video that otherwise does not overtly relate to your company, and explaining the product’s usefulness or relevance in simple terms.
Then, there is the option to simply treat your content production almost as if it was a TV show or magazine, aiming to produce genuinely engaging content in its own right before incorporating advertisements for your products or services into it.
There’s a lot that your firm can do to get more out of its content and broader online presence. Get in touch with Piranha Designs today about the search engine optimisation and marketing packages that could help to cultivate the right image for your business heading into 2018.
