Marketing Monday 4: Content Marketing

Now you have chosen the right channels for your digital marketing strategy, it is important to create a content strategy and schedule for each channel being used.

Use content to tell your brand’s story

Instead of telling your customers the features and benefits of your product or service, get to the bottom of solving their problems and help them make better decisions. Then, show this off in an entertaining and creative way.

A story about milkshakes

You may want to think of it this way. According to Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, we hire products to do jobs for us. So, we need to understand what jobs we would need companies to do in our lives to figure out what people will pay money for.

For example, what job causes you to hire a milkshake? Christensen waited outside a milkshake store to see why customers were buying milkshakes. He saw that nearly half of them bought one before 8am, came by themselves, and drove off immediately after purchase. After interviewing these people, he discovered they all bought it for a similar job. They had a long commute to work and needed something in their hand for the drive. Other foods like bagels or coffee were uncomfortable to hold, however a milkshake is easy to drink and because it is thick in texture it lasts the entire drive.

Hence, depicting an entertaining story through a quick video of an employee picking up a smoothie before going to work in a humorous and comedic way demonstrates the user’s desire for an easy breakfast food and the brand’s goals of providing a smoothie as the solution.

The content marketing matrix

Further, remember to choose the right content form according to the purpose of the message. Are you trying to entertain, inspire, educate or convince? See the matrix below.

Now you've got your content marketing strategy sorted, it's time to check out the fifth instalment of Marketing Monday. We've rounded up the top 5 free digital marketing tools for you entrepreneurs so you can gather analysis to understand your customers better.

How are you using content in your marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments below and in our Discussion Forum for other EntrepreNERD's perspectives on digital marketing strategies.