10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing

10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing

Reader Comments (62)

  1. I think one of the best reasons for creating content is building your own expertise. Educating others is maybe the best way to learn your craft better. Writing a blog post, preferable a relatively long one, will force you to think about questions your readers/prospects may have, and then answer them clearly.

    My blog (http://AffectSelling.com) is an educational tool, for my readers and myself as well…

      • Hi Sonia,

        Glad I could add something 🙂

        The sixth goal, about showing life with your product, was my favorite in your list. I think that’s used mostly in advertising, and often forgotten in content marketing.

        I guess you could also add, as a goal, customer service/support. As you did with the recent “Genesis for Beginners” PDF. It qualifies as content marketing, but also helps existing customers. FAQ’s are similar in nature, but less content-marketing-like.

        • Don’t forget SAQs – Should Ask Questions: questions a potential buyer should ask you about
          your product or service – if only they knew what you know. These are the important things that
          differentiate you from your competitors.

          • Hi Eric,

            You’re right; an FAQ should include the SAQs.

            It would make a great blog post too: “7 Questions You Don’t Know You Should Ask When Buying *blank*” 😉 You’re customers would be better educated, which leads to better buying decisions, which leads to happier customers. And you’d gain credibility, because you helped them make a better choice.

    • It’s funny you said that, because I often sit down to write blog posts on issues I’m currently tackling. It helps me flesh out and resolve my own problems, or even just jogs my memory and helps me complete whatever task I’m working on.

      • Hi Liz,

        I do that too 🙂 Writing a blog post helps me organize the ideas I have about a topic, whether or not it’s a problem for me. When I think how to explain the solution, it becomes clearer to me too 😉

  2. I’ll add:

    11. To test new ideas, quicker. Before going full steam ahead with new positioning or a new offer, content gives you the opportunity to see if it resonates with your audience. And because all it may take is one article to perform the test, you can optimize how quickly you learn.

    12. To build a community. It’s great having people pay attention to you, but content can also be the social grease that allows your prospects and customers to talk to each other. That’s a community, a tribe, and content can make it happen.

    13. To increase referrals. It’s much easier for a client (or even just a prospect) to refer people to your content than it is to refer your service.

    14. To increase ad conversions. An ad landing page that offers content can perform better than ads that goes straight for the sale.

    15. To build automation. Content can be delivered through an autoresponder, giving new prospects the same experience as old prospects, even if you’re on vacation.

    16. To turn a service into a product. Content can help you reach a goal of transforming parts of your service offer into a product. For instance, a wedding planner can sell a checklist that helps brides organize a wedding.

  3. I agree that having content alone will not get you anywhere!
    If content is king, there are too many queens trying to influence the king 😉

    All in all, content marketing plans need to rely on the people that read your material; it is easy to forget this. People producing content are highly knowledgeable about a particular subject and think they know enough to produce the necessary content.

    However, a strong content marketing plan involves reaching out to your readership: survey your readers to discover what they want to know, what questions they need answered and what kind of content they enjoy the most.

    • Content is just a way to engage prospects and customers. People get into the habit of thinking it stands all by itself, but without the market there, it’s just something to read. 🙂

      • You know how you have probably heard something before, but suddenly it makes so much sense? Sonia, you have a wonderfully clear way of breaking down concepts into easy-to-follow steps. I usually operate under the false assumption, “if I write it, they will come.” Thanks for helping shift my perspective to the bigger picture.

  4. The bullets/canonballs metaphor is definitely gold, it really doesn’t take much to test the waters with new ideas.

    Better than weeks/months of thinking about what MIGHT happen with no action.

    • The Collins chapter (it’s in Choose to be Great) on bullets and cannonballs is really good. His version of “bullets” is small test products (similar to The Lean Startup), but content lets you fly a trial balloon even before you get to the small product stage.

  5. Using content to speak your mind and paint a picture of life is a very valuable goal. Awesome content really can achieve this and it is awesome to see in practice. Thanks for sharing!

  6. Content and marketing are both equally important in my experience, I like the goals you went through Sonia, if you take one of them and think about it as you’re writing a post in can help you in the way you’ll write it and chances are that post will reach out to the intended reader.

  7. Excellent post which I enjoyed. So much talk about content out there but sometimes without direction @ why to dot it and what you are trying to achieve. This post links these two together:)

  8. These are essential points that we all must cover. Perhaps adding some ideas for being able to collect the information better in terms of solving the problems and potential solutions that they can use shown to these individuals.

  9. I think the idea of ‘exploring prospect pain’ is a terrific one – it’s something that I see done well in some people’s sales literature. Others completely shy away from discussing pain, it’s all about the product-as-magic-bullet.
    I’m also laughing at the ‘experience of life with your product’ remembering my ad testing days. Both of these things can be a huge struggle for business owners, because we fail to get into our customers’ minds.

  10. I find your writing to be very useful & engaging. It resonates with me in many ways. Ok…It Rocks ! Let me add- I think in our new customer driven marketplace that the customer is King- not content. In a truly customer centric organization the first goal should always be provide meaningful and relevant content to customer. best g

    • I like that a lot. It cuts away a lot of the ego-driven content that gets created out of an attempt at cleverness or to get attention from the echo chamber.

  11. Producing quality content every time will build trust with your visitors. If you do that, eventually the search engines will view your site favorably. Hopefully, the search engines will continue to get better at finding ways of identifying high-quality content. Thanks for the tips!

  12. Once again some great insights to inspire me to greater things. I recently got involved in a partnership venture as a result of my writing and it has given me a whole new direction so the point about attracting business partners is def. right on.
    Cheers

  13. I was just talking to my execs about this very thing: we are selling an idea. So what do we want visitors to do? At each stage of the sales cycle, you need to think about what your prospect is thinking, proactively answer questions and direct their next step.

  14. Just an edit note on Brian’s bio that I clicked on from this article – there is only one N in the Dun of Dun & Bradstreet.

    In regards to content, exploring new ideas as suggested by Hashim above is one that I use – and that has led to some nice discoveries!

  15. That’s a really insightful piece of content. Thanks Sonia!

    The fourth Goal, “To illustrate benefits” is my favorite on the list. I always sense something missing in our posts. Now that I read your advice. I realized that we often write about prospect problems but leave it open ended. Solutions are what readers are looking for, not reminders about those annoying problems.

  16. Just what I needed to get myself on the right track! I always read and learn from your posts. I especially like the order you’ve put these in – I think I’ve been working backwards!

  17. Wow, Sonia, I am so glad that you went into all 10 of your goals, because that is an exhaustive, authoritative and impressive list of what you are doing there, and why it moves you so passionately. You have said the last word, I believe, in attacking on all fronts, guerilla-marketing style!

  18. I’ve worked with a lot of business owners that understand the power of fresh, relevant, well-written content. They read Copyblogger. They join sites. They build blogs. They spend a lot of time “knowing” but then they don’t have the time for the “doing.” Part of it is not having a good plan for the content that they need. A much bigger part comes from lacking the time or the confidence to actually begin writing. We’ve been experimenting over the past 6 months with using batch-recorded podcasts, having them transcribed and then rewritten into posts. It’s a labor intensive process for everyone but the business owner. 😉 But, we’re getting the content out and it’s in the words of the business owner (podcast). The editors listen and do their best to do the rewrite in the “voice” of the business owner. Little need for the owner’s involvement after the recording.

  19. These are all good reasons to create content and start developing out a content marketing plan. But it also assumes you know what the heck you’re doing. Which of course is a good thing, but so many have no clue where to start or what to do. They just know they need to proactively start to make their plan B their plan A – and the sooner the better.

    For those people, I recommend this:

    Identify YOUR biggest challenge at the moment. (i.e. Not enough people know about my WordPress set up and design business)

    Turn that biggest challenge into a SPECIFIC question. (i.e. How can I generate 5-10 leads per day about my for this business?)

    Then Do This …

    Write it on a note card. Keep it somewhere where you see it a lot. Get to work to answer the question. Focus on that ONE thing and nothing else.

    Work on that problem and document the process.

    Begin to write and/or record your observations, thoughts, opinions, reviews and next action steps as it pertains to answering the question at your blog.

  20. Hi Sonia
    You touch upon some valid points, when it comes to running a small business or any business. Setting goals and know your purpose is critical to running successful businesses as well as become a successful entrepreneurs.

    It reminded me of the various tips touch upon by seth godin in his purple cow book as well as what Tony ribbons talks about knowing your purpose.

    Once we can identify what our purpose is, we can begin to make the right choices and provide content that helps us grow our business and provide contact to attract, keep, educate our readers to take action.

    Thanks

  21. Thanks for sharing these goals. Over the next few months I’ll be focusing on content marketing activities, so the timing for this post is perfect.

    I personally view great content can be used to demonstrate thought leadership.

    This is a great post. Thanks again.

  22. Once again some great insights to inspire me to greater things. I recently got involved in a partnership venture as a result of my writing and it has given me a whole new direction so the point about attracting business partners is def. right on.
    Cheers

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