Of all the words you could use to describe content marketing, “underutilized” is not one of them. At The Content Council, Anna Qu reports that on average, content marketing comprises 39% of a company’s overall budget for advertising, marketing, and communications.
Because of the popularity of this form of marketing, a typical consumer will be exposed to a huge amount of content: about 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared online each day, according to a frequently cited study by AOL & Nielsen. To differentiate your client's company from the millions of other marketing messages that your prospects see on a daily basis, it is important to consider ways that you can present innovative content that will grab the attention of people who receive it.
1. Create A Compelling Story
Not everyone wants to read blocks of text about how great your product or service is. Tie the company's offering to a great story, however, and your content marketing becomes much more compelling. Consider Pepsi’s “Uncle Drew” series of commercials, which include NBA phenom Kyrie Irving posing as an old man who joins different pickup games and proceeds to dominate the competition. The focus of the content is not Pepsi itself, but the narrative of “Uncle Drew” and his escapades, broken into several chapters. How has this campaign worked for Pepsi? The first part of the “Uncle Drew” saga has over 34 million views on YouTube.
2. Let Customers Create Your Content Marketing
Testimonials are a powerful form of content marketing when presented the right way. Consider letting a customer write a guest post on your blog or record a video of themselves or their family using or benefiting from your product or services. Showing your clients' prospects how your company helps people is always more powerful than telling them.
3. Involve A Real Event, Or Stage One
Content marketing is more effective when people can relate it to something that has happened or will happen soon in the real world. If there are no local events going on that you can incorporate in your content marketing, create your own event. Toyota successfully executed this strategy in 2012, when they arranged for their Toyota Tundra to haul the Space Shuttle Endeavour across I-405 in Los Angeles to the California Science Center, where the Endeavour was retired after 19 years of space missions for NASA.
4. Use A Different Channel
Think about how many delivery methods you are really using for your content marketing. Also consider what kind of audience you are reaching using the current channels that you are delivering content over. For example, did you know that over 68% of Pinterest users are female? If you are looking to innovate, providing content in a different way can be a great tactic and a springboard from which you can come up with other innovative ideas.
5. Provide Less Content
This idea may seem counter-intuitive with so many other organizations involved in content marketing, how could reducing the amount of content that you put out help you succeed? The answer lies in how effective your marketing is at grabbing attention from prospects. When you produce content that is interesting, people will want more of it: by making them wait, you increase their desire for more content from your organization. Of course, there is a fine line here: wait too long to put out content and you run the risk of losing the attention of the audience you are trying to reach.
Be sure to experiment with these five strategies and other methods to find out what works and what doesn’t work for your client's company. With consistent effort and a willingness to try new things, you can distinguish their organization from competitors by making their marketing content fresh and innovative.
