Brainflash: Customers Don’t Want to Buy Your Content Marketing!

They want to buy products/services that solve their problems or make them feel good enough to forget their problems for a while.

Content Marketing is freaking awesome! At it’s best it is providing content (writing, photos, video, infographics, tips, quotes etc) that deliver REAL VALUE to your customers. At it’s worst it fills the socialsphere with blathering talking heads.

Content Marketing Strategy is a fantastic way to frame your thought process towards delivering something of value to your customers. It is not the end result but a delivery vehicle. It is a tool not the objective.

There are not that many people outside of Social Media Marketing folk who wake up each morning and say “I really need some good content marketing today! I’m going to go out and consume the heck out of some right now!”

An amazing person who consistently delivers engaging content that doesn’t feel like marketing but actually delivers value is Sarah Evans of Sevens Strategy she defines Great content as:

Something that makes you SHARE, CARE or SWEAR!

If you ask your customers what they want to buy, read, talk about or share most it will likely have one of those qualities. And the essence of those qualities above is that they provide value to the consumer in some fashion. They may mainly provide them with social credit (not to be confused with bitcoin) but we all want a little credit these days. And if you do your job well you can BOTH get social credit AND solve your customers problems.

Win-win FTW.

Developing and executing a well integrated content marketing strategy will absolutely improve your social media marketing ROI and deliver compelling benefits but it is not a panacea. For that you gotta take the red pill. If you want some straight to the heart advice on creating compelling content that engages and inspires listen to the master Adrian Parker and check out this deck on content marketing strategy.

So what do you think? Is a killer Content Marketing Strategy your #1 tool in your arsenal or a second thought in your strategy?