Content Marketing Doesn't Exist in a Vacuum
There are plenty of misconceptions about content, content writers, and freelance creatives. Here on Substack, we're going to dispel those myths.
“Content is king.”
It’s an adage that’s been in the global lexicon for over a decade. When I have client discovery calls, it’s not uncommon for the discussion to begin with varying sentiments akin to the following statements:
“We need to create more content.”
“Content is how customers will find us.”
“We want content to build our brand.”
As an independent contractor who specializes in creating content for clients, it’s encouraging to hear these statements. However, none of those requests are strategically aligned to a business goal. This way of thinking reduces content and content marketing to living in a vacuum that’s separate from the larger business.
Content does not exist in a vacuum
Treating content as if it exists in a vacuum is a strategic mistake. Simply creating content for the sake of doing so betrays the business rationale behind investing the time, resources, and budget required to produce those assets.
Instead, approach content creation through the prism of a content marketing strategy. Recognize that content is an asset, a tool that promotes your business as a provider of useful information and helpful products or services.
Content marketing is a flourishing business strategy
Content marketing is a business strategy that fuels the growth of your brand. An effective content marketing strategy organically engages your target audience, generates qualified leads, and converts those leads into paying customers.
Building that community of would-be buyers requires a massive investment of time and patience. You could spend your entire marketing budget on paid ad campaigns that simply promote your brand, distribute your products, and drive viewers to click a button for a sales call.
It’s not impossible for that approach to work, but it’s extremely unlikely. Why do I say that?
Think about all the steps you take when you decide to buy a new product. Do you automatically buy the first thing you see with no other considerations? Again, it’s entirely possible, but it’s not how most people choose to buy.
The typical buyer does their homework on a product, a service, or a business before they’ll spend any amount of money. They’ll spend time:
Conducting Google searches on comparative products or services
Search social media feeds for any mentions of relevant businesses
Consult with their friends and networks for useful recommendations
Read through customer testimonials on affiliate review sites
Consume a website’s content to learn more about specific areas of expertise
And so forth
An effective content marketing strategy ensures your business appears at each one of those touchpoints. When businesses refer to the customer buying journey, strategically deployed content keeps your brand top-of-mind throughout that journey.
Content marketing turns your brand into a desired destination
Remember that content is an asset—a tool which, when properly leveraged, has the power to move people closer to a buying decision. However, don’t expect that viewers of your content will automatically convert into loyal buyers.
It takes time for prospects to move through the buying journey. They have to get there in their way and on their timeframe. As a businessperson, you can’t control when a B2B or B2C customer mentally decides, ‘now I’m ready to make a purchase.’
What is in your control is how you use content and content marketing. Instead of focusing on the final goal of the buyer’s journey—the point of conversion where you get the sale—channel your efforts into building a desired destination for qualified people to get useful information.
Great content that earns engagement is topical, thought-provoking, and persuasive. Aristotle’s rhetorical analysis of persuasion is a great teaching for aspiring marketing strategists.
Use those historical studies of human behaviour to inform how you create content that organically builds a community. Concentrate on creating content that opens people’s minds, evokes powerful emotions, or that creates an open, constructive platform where people choose to visit because they trust the power of your message.
Successful content marketing: multimillion dollar growth in revenue
Allow me to share a little success story to validate everything outlined in this article.
In the very beginning of my career, I worked for a business that offered personal financial quotes for mortgages, car insurance, and credit cards to people who needed the best possible rates.
When we began that business, it was literally nothing more than a registered domain name. My job was to produce topical, relevant, and educational content that built the website and the larger brand into a reliable provider of useful information.
For months, we saw barely a whiff of traffic for all those efforts. We implemented SEO and social media strategies to complement the content, but we didn’t see much in the way of a healthy return…until about nine months later.
Suddenly, most of the content we’d created began appearing for relevant search terms. Our inbound organic traffic blasted into the stratosphere, and we were generating on-page conversions that finally started earning revenue.
Two years after having no presence beyond a registered domain name, we had built a business that was earning millions of dollars in top-line revenue. By the end of year three, we were on track to double year two.
Let me preface that by saying that content marketing wasn’t the sole reason for that success. Many factors coalesced and created a winning concoction—the product worked, development was stable, social media was thriving, PR was picking up, SEO links and rankings drove traffic inbound.
And, yet, at the heart of all those achievements working in tandem was the content that organically drove people searching for solutions like ours to find the business. Best of all was that the paid marketing budget was virtually non-existent in those early days. All that growth was generated by being consistent, being hyperfocused, and by delivering useful information that taught readers to trust our brand.
Content doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it’s the lifeblood of your entire business
The lesson of this entire article is to avoid the trap of treating content as some frivolous activity that’s unrelated to the larger business objectives. An effective content marketing plan—strategically built and tactically put into practice—will slowly convince qualified people to trust your reputation, remember your website, and wilfully return to discover more about your offers.
Never treat content like it exists in a vacuum. Follow the teachings of Aristotle, and let your content be your power of persuasion. Let the stories you choose to tell develop a resonance among a loyal community, and I promise that the payoff will come in due time.