Marketing Strategies: Content Strategy

Marketing Strategies: The 4 ?P?s? of Content Marketing (Not what you think!)

Content guides your prospects to the purchase button

-We create content to satisfy curiosity, to fulfill needs and to answer questions. There are hundreds of marketing strategies, but Content Strategy is the most difficult to adhere to because it requires the most discipline. It also has the biggest potential payoff.

Content is Fuel for your Conversion Machine

If your website is the engine of your?Conversion Machine, then Content is the fuel for that engine. Each time that content fuels a mini combustion with your website Visitor, you are sparking interest. You?re nudging your Visitor toward the ultimate conversion and the first ?P?; a Purchase.

Marketing Strategies for a Purchase

A person becomes a customer upon the first Purchase. Several mini-conversions must occur for an online User to visit your website and become a customer.? In order for a strategic Conversion to occur, Content must be ever-present and:

1. Timely
2. Relevant
3. Contextual

In other words, your Content (whether written, video, info-graphic or otherwise) Must answer a series of questions. The Purchase is actually the 4^th ?P? and is a result of a 3-D Content model that considers the other three ?P?s?:

1. Place
2. Product
3. Persona

Marketing Strategies: Persona

Who is your target customer? Beyond that, what does the perfect customer look like for your organization? Understanding the psychographics, demographics and geographics of your target consumer, you?ve begun laying the framework for developing a full-blown persona.

Breathe further life into your Persona by delving deeper into their motivations. How? Consider what jobs each of them is trying to get done and then examine what ideal outcomes would be for those jobs. (Read ?What Customers Want? by Tony Ulwick). Address the Visitors who illuminate solutions that ultimately help your Personas achieve desirable outcomes.

Content Strategy is providing relevant answers to prospects at different levels of the funnel

Marketing Strategies: Product

What are the Products/Services that you?re attempting to connect with the consumer? Line all of them up and prioritize by weighting their overall contribution to sales and the difficulty in time, effort & money in achieving the sale of each. Now prioritize your Products.

Each Product will have its own conversion path so each will require its own Content development. Additionally, your Content must address each of the Personas who are likely to purchase that Product.

Marketing Strategies: Place in Sales Funnel

Each Product has its own Conversion path. Multiple Personas exist in any given Product funnel. Some like to scan, skim and convert quickly. Others perform extreme due diligence, moving slowly down the conversion path. A large ticket Purchase conversion may also require more conversion time, since the path is longer. Assuming you?ve attracted consumer awareness to your brand Products, every consumer who Purchases will follow a similar pre-purchase path:

• Research
• Consideration
• Shopping

And so our Content must reflect this reality at all Places in each of the Product funnels and to each Persona. The intent of the Content is to Educate during the research phase, Engage during Consideration phase and Encourage during the shopping phase. Once a Purchase occurs, we begin a ?Re-purchase Funnel? by providing Content that Embraces customers in order to create loyal customers for life.

So?

The 4 P?s are: Persona, Product, Place & Purchase. For more tips on creating great content:

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, call-to-action mapping and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and traditional media allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.