Content marketing is a huge buzz word in the marketing world. Everybody is speaking about content because it’s the present and the future of marketing.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing should be at the core of each marketing department. It is one of the most important tools which should be used in order to acquire new clients and grow our business. The reason why it should be at the core of each business is because it helps people make a decision. Each business is developed because there is a problem, the business is the solution. When we have a problem, we go to google or any other search engine to look for answers, when we want to make a purchase we will do our research via Google, read reviews about the object of service we want to purchase, check out social accounts, and so on.

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Content marketing isn’t something new, neither is it something that came to mind today or even yesterday, content marketing originally started in 1895 when John Deere founded the magazine called The Furrow. After that, in 1930s, P&G started to air radio soap operas featuring brands such as Duz and Oxydol. So it’s not something new. Today, in 2016, we have different types of content, we have Netflix which is dominating in the movie industry, Apple TV, Periscope and many, many more.

There are different types of content, you can create blog articles like this one, there are video blogs, live streaming apps like Periscope & Meerkat, Twitter for micro content, Instagram with pictures, snapchat with daily stories, polls, competitions, quotes, infographics and the list goes on.

Yesterday I did a live periscope on content marketing and somebody asked me if adverts on TV is content marketing, I answered by saying that the cooking show that will be shown after the adverts is content marketing because it brings VALUE. I personally don’t know somebody who is passionate about watching adverts (except marketeers). The majority of people will skips adverts or, if they are watching normal TV and not something on demand like Amazon Prime, Apple TV or Netflix, they will go and do something else until the adverts are over.

Why am I going on and on about content marketing? Because I believe that we as marketeers and businesses need to educate and inspire people. With content marketing we can inspire, influence a purchasing decision or educate people. There are thousands of websites that sell premium packages for exclusive content – but that is a whole other business model. I create all this content on this blog and my YouTube channel completely free because I want to add more value to people’s lives.

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Now, do you think I am doing this because I am a Mother Teresa type who is very innocent and doesn’t care about sales? Of course not, I want to sell and I am selling. Each person has a different strategy, personally for me right now that strategy is to provide as much content as possible for free, so that people can get inspired and educated. I want to add a lot of value to people’s lives.

When my book gets published I will be able to say that after all these years of giving you valuable content, now you can buy my book and get even more value.

I can’t mention this enough, we need brand equity. Now somebody might need help with their content marketing strategy, they will email or call me to go over and help them. There are companies out there who call me to go over and train their marketing team, or who book a speaking engagement.

How do you sell with content marketing? Create VALUE first and then sell. What I like to do is say that 90 per cent of your content marketing strategy is VALUE and  ten per cent is selling. Your conversion rates will be much more better. Trust me.

It’s a proven way to generate leads, to capture database and to EDUCATE people. Why not create value rather then stealing people’s time?

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