4. The Power of Content
The Brand Therapist Now In Session Discussing:
The Power of Content
So the past few episodes I've introduced some of my overall core beliefs and concepts around brands. And in this episode, we're going to dive a little bit deeper and get into a little bit more nitty gritty on the marketing side, talking about content. For many small business owners, the idea of having to produce content on top of advertising, lead generation strategies, and actually running their business can be a little overwhelming. But I think it's really important to understand the power of content and figure out how that can work for your business.
We live in a super content hungry world. Think about on a daily basis, how many times you Google something, ask Alexa, watch a video on social media, open up a book or a newspaper. The list goes on about how much content we actually consume on a daily basis. Example for me already, it is not even eight o'clock in the morning and I've actually already spent about 45 minutes consuming content today. So while it may be overwhelming to add content creator, uh, to your many hats as a small business owner, think about the power content can have and the incredible things that can really do for your business. So let's kind of go through some of those things first. And I think one of the biggest things that content can do and benefits it can provide your business is authority. If you are a startup business or, you know, somewhat new to your industry, and for some of us who are more experienced, I personally have at least had those thoughts of, well there's somebody who's better, more experienced, more well-known in my area, whatever that looks like.
What is a way to kind of combat that concern, for both you and the consumer? Well, content is a perfect solution to that problem. In my real estate business, I used this personally, when I started out in a super hot market, a very competitive industry. I think at the time when I started and it's probably similar now, but the stats were something like every person knows twelve real estate agents. Uh, so how do you stand out in that, especially as a new agent where you don't have the track record that some of these people do that have been doing it for 20 years. For me, it was producing content and becoming an authority in that way. I've also done that for some of my startup clients. This strategy works. So think about adding the title of author of a blog or the columnist in the local magazine or whatever it looks like.
Marketing Gold
Think about being able to add that to your credentials and the way the consumer recognizes that. And the respect that that can build and the trust that that can start to build with the consumer, even if you are not already well known in that industry. So that takes us to the next one, which is top of mind awareness. This one is more focused on your current clients, the network that you've already created, and sharing content with them. So if your content, first of all, we need to clarify content needs to be providing value and it needs to be a resource as. It is not in any way a sales pitch. So if you think about providing value, if you're truly providing value to your clients on a weekly basis or monthly basis, whatever that looks like, through a newsletter, a blog post. They will start looking for that and looking forward to it because it's something that they need and want.
So your clients right there are interacting with you through your content. How cool is that next? That taking that top of mind awareness one step further, we have word of mouth and word of mouth is like really getting back to the basics of marketing. And it's what a lot of small businesses especially build their business around is word of mouth. I do that personally in my businesses, relationships are the number one thing, with how I get my business. And those are really important to me. So content is a huge opportunity to increase that word of mouth. So if you think about, you know, you've got your clients already that top of mind awareness with them consuming the content that you are creating and they have their own networks. So if you're creating this content, that is truly helping them or providing them whatever resources they need in your industry, in that space. And then they take that content and they're either sharing it with their networks or talking about it with them, that right there is marketing gold.
Building Your Brand Trust Online
Next we have SEO and searchability. This one gets a little bit more technical and it does definitely take longer to build this. But the quick summary of it is the more content that you are producing, that people are searching for, the more they're going to find you. So this is a strategy that I'm actually implementing right now with one of my current clients who just started a residential remodeling business. And we are creating a DIY style blog where she posts all these DIY projects, that we're all looking for right now. If you think about how many people are spending a lot more time at home and spending a lot more time working on the house. So she's providing that resource and the information for someone to be able to jump in and find whatever project that is and truly do it themselves. But what a lot of us do in this space is we want to do it ourselves.
We look up the information, we do our research, and then we realize that the time, money or expertise that that project is going to take may not be worth tackling on our own and that maybe we need to hire an expert. So in comes my clients, you know, the, the person that you are, the source that you're going to now for this DIY information on this blog, you decide you need an expert. And then all of a sudden the expert is the person producing the blog. And you've already gained the client's trust because you've given them what they're looking for. You're not trying to sell them. You're giving them the resources to do it on their own. And then when they decide they don't want to, they already have that connection with you through the content that you've created. So then we're going to talk about trust.
And this has kind of trickled through some of these other benefits, but in itself needs to be mentioned. First of all, let's talk about, you know, advertising versus content. One of the best things about producing your own content is it's free, or at least relatively affordable. If you are hiring someone else to do it for you and then publishing, it also can be free or still very affordable. It's not like placing these big ads that require big marketing budgets. But the other really cool thing about that is it also in itself brings a different level of trust. We are bombarded daily with advertising and messages from businesses, trying to get our business as a consumer. If you think about the amount of ads that get forced to you daily, whether it be radio, on your social media feed, wherever you are looking, you know, there's messages there, there's the brand messages that people are paying a lot of money to put in front of you.
And a lot of us automatically kind of put up that wall, like this is a sales thing, not interested and kind of put that barrier up to begin with. Well, by creating content, you're not spending the money for these high ticket items and you're not shoving it down people's throats. You are putting information out there. You're putting resources and things that your ideal clients are looking for, that they want, and that they need. So that in itself is going to build a totally different level of trust with the consumer, than spending all this money on ads that are being forced to them. The last benefit of content that we're gonna talk about today is the trackability. And I know I talk about trackability a lot because it's super important to be able to track what you're doing in marketing, because if you don't know if it's working or not, then what's the point of spending time and money doing it.
Measuring Your Efforts
So always have a metric to track your efforts. And a lot of times when we're putting out more branding messages versus something with a clear call to action, it's kind of hard to have that metric and really see the direct connection to the consumer and be able to track it. With content, especially online content, this metric becomes very clear cut. If it's a blog, you can see how many people read that specific blog. How many people are subscribing. If it's a newsletter, you can see how many people actually opened your newsletter online. And, you know, who's actually clicking through to which articles and content that you're posting in the newsletter. So it becomes very clear, not only if it's reaching the consumer, but also which content specifically are they interested in so that you can continue to create content that they are looking for and caters to their needs. So that wraps up the power of content. Again, focusing on authority, top of mind awareness, word of mouth SEO and searchability, trust, and then trackability. We are breaking this one up actually into a two-part session. This first one is the power of content. And then next week, we're going to go into a little bit more content strategy and how to use all of this.
Listen to the audio at https://www.thebrandtherapist.co/podcast-1/episode/ea4b1870/2-how-to-be-your-own-brand
For our services check out The Brand Therapist and contact us at https://www.thebrandtherapist.co/