The Bottom Line Of Content Marketing If you're marketing on a budget, content marketing is a great way to reach your audience, add real value and gain brand traction – without breaking the bank.

Content marketing is a relatively new type of marketing that most businesses are still trying to get their heads around. Unlike traditional media advertising, which interrupts customers to get noticed, content marketing provides content that customers want in exchange for permission to market a product or service.

Disrupted media

There's a saying, fish where the fish are. Marketing is the same. You need your message to appear where your audience's attention lies. I don't believe billboards or even TV adverts hold consumer attention anymore. People aren't looking at billboards as they drive past; most aren't even looking at the road, they're so busy staring at their mobile device or listening to a podcast.

The traditional advertising model creates ad content that interrupts consumers. Billboards, TV commercials and radio advertisements momentarily disrupt what you actually want to be doing — watching your favourite TV show or listening to a song or chat show.

These ads don't provide any real value to the customer and they don't offer an immediate reason to even be viewed or engaged with. Instead, they rely on good placement, clever wording and brilliant creativity to capture your attention for a brief period of time.

The rise of content marketing

In response to these problems and restrictions, content marketing is on the rise. As a marketing alternative, it's not only more cost effective, but it doesn't aim to interrupt your customer. Instead, it aims to add real value to their lives and businesses by plugging directly into their interests, problems and challenges.

So how does content marketing work? Companies and marketers create content in the form of blog posts, podcast recordings, downloadable guides and infographics, video content and articles that don't push products, but offer interesting advice, tips and opinions.

The value to consumers is provided in two ways: As educational content and as entertainment content. In both cases, access to this content is free, heightening its value.

Get the most out of content marketing

Here are three ways to get the most out of your content marketing efforts:

1. Provide content that your customers want

Don't make the mistake of writing your blog posts about your business. Lesson number one is that people don't care about your business. Provide valuable content that customers want and need in exchange for their attention. This content can be educational or entertaining. It can be a "How to Guide', an in-depth stats-driven article or an entertaining video. Just make sure it's about them, and not you.

2. Focus on content for the customer's benefit and only occasionally promote or push your product

This is the rule most brands and companies struggle to understand. If you're going to provide value to your customers, you need to mostly write content for the customer's benefit and only occasionally promote your products within the content. People are interested in articles and posts that benefit them, not ad posts touting how awesome your products are. Give your customers content that they want, and nine times out of ten you'll be rewarded with engaged and targeted audiences.

3. Write cornerstone content

Cornerstone content is content that can be easily found by your ideal customers. It's content that provides incredible value to customers over a long period of time. How-To Guides, resources, 101 content and instructional videos all fall into this category. It should be content that customers can refer back to, and which has a long lifespan. This also immediately increases the ROI of your content production, as you only need to create the content once, but it will continue to bring returns.

Bringing it all together

As you make your final marketing push for the year and gear up for next year, make sure content marketing forms a vital part of your strategy. Learn to write engaging blog posts, invest in a podcast setup and push video content. No one is expecting your content to be perfect — you are the expert in your area, and have great advice to share. That's what will keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.

Just remember that this is a long play. Success won't happen overnight. It takes time to build momentum — but over time, you will notice increased traffic, more leads and more sales.

Getting Started

• Do you know what your clients are interested in, concerned with or challenged by?
• Are you offering advice, tips or opinions that tap into these areas?
• Does your content mostly focus on your clients and not you?