Content Marketing: The Smart Solution to Consumer Attention Deficit Disorder

Message fatigue represents one of the main challenges facing today’s marketing minds. What strategies can you take to avoid being “tuned out” by your audience? It’s an important question since technology now divides people’s attention spans like never before.  Aim to start a discussion which will engage your audience long enough to want to participate and come back for more!

6 billion hours of video are watched monthly on Youtube.  According to Facebook, the company’s 1.23 billion users log into their site for 17 minutes each day — that’s more than 39,757 years of time collectively spent on just one site– in a single day! And there are dozens of other new media options for the average person to lose themselves in daily.

So who has time to pay attention to advertising?

Consider that Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and John Deere– some of the world’s greatest organizations– consistently use content marketing as a tool for sustaining brand dominance. So whether you’re an industry leader or a small business owner, successful content marketing will keep your business relevant and consumers engaged in a conversation with your brand. “Content Marketing” is the hot new concept for initiating the kind of conversation you need to have with your audience.

Bank on it.

Let’s explore what Content Marketing is and isn’t.

• “Just Google it.” The phrase is ubiquitous! People are constantly Googling you, your business, and keywords or phrases related to your business or industry. If you have not made the content which supports your brand engaging and easy to find online, you’re doing you and your business a disservice. And you’re a few steps from becoming irrelevant. Successful content marketing aims to avoid this unnecessary misstep. Luckily, content marketers have tools like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) at their disposal to ensure that you and your business are easily found online.
• Content Marketing is not advertising. Say that again and let it sink in. So if it’s not advertising, what is it?! “Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is a non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.”
• Here are some more examples of content marketing: “Brew Guides” which promote the coffee industry, how-to videos of beauty tricks aimed at getting women excited about purchasing makeup products, educational infographics on topics consumers actually have interest in learning more about such as “Top 25 U.S. Business Schools”,” a popular band encourages fans to take photos of their shows and then posts that content to their official website to help promote their tour, and Virgin Atlantic’s blog  filled with great travel content, from must-see sights in various cities to visually interesting galleries designed to feed the individual’s “travel bug.” What do all of these tactics have in common? They help to create a culture in which consumers want to engage in!
• While content marketing can be divided into many different sub-categories, here are just a few: how-to content, shareable visuals, crowdsourcing, and behind-the-scenes type access.

So get excited about creating out-of-the-box content which promotes your brand! You have nothing to lose except an outdated marketing approach.