Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
Good morning and welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're talking about content marketing. What exactly is it? Okay, now, so I usually throw this question to Melanie, but we have decided that today I'm going to take a difficult question and answer, what is content marketing? Okay, so I could take you down through the boring dictionary definition. It is a strategic marketing approach, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to do that, ok. So, it is basically a way for you to get your products and services strategically in front of your customers.
Melanie
What does that mean? Use the definition.
Esther
You can't use the word in the definition.
Melanie
For goodness' sake.
Esther
Okay, so you can't say marketing is marketing, right? Content is content.
Melanie
So what is strategic about content marketing?
Esther
Okay, so you have to give valuable, relevant, consistent content. See, I don't like using the word in the definition. To attract and retain your clearly defined audience. There's that word again that we keep using in every single episode. Your audience is important. And you need to do that. You need to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, which will lead to profitable customer action, as in, money. Right?
Melanie
Are you done?
Esther
That's what we want. That's what we all need. You all need people to buy from you, whether it's a product or a service, you need people to reach out, lift the phone, if people still do that, send the email, answer the messages in DM's and whatever, to be able to purchase from you. That's what you want.
Melanie
So now you've finally explained it. Why should we use content marketing as part of our strategy? Well, simply put, marketing today is virtually impossible without creating good or even great content. It's a visual, it's an audio, it's repurposable. It's something that's completely integrated and part of your marketing. And it's not just online either. It's not just for social media. It's across everything. From your email marketing, your website, obviously, your search engine optimisation. And content marketing slots into your content strategy, which is part of your overall overarching, overall, bit of both, marketing strategy. So content strategy explains what you're doing with the content that you've created as part of your marketing.
Esther
Right. This is getting far too complicated because people are going to go, but isn't content video or image or text? Exactly. So it's a bit of everything. So what makes that different to what they're already doing?
Melanie
It's purpose to it.
Esther
Exactly. It has to be purposeful. You can't just throw out, oh, happy Monday on a Thursday. That's not going to work.
Melanie
You say happy Thursday.
Esther
You could, but what is the point? There has to be something else behind it. There has to be some relevance to why you're posting, what you're posting on the day you're posting it. Not just for the sake of posting. You can't just go, well, I was told that I have to post three times a day, seven days a week, so I'm going to find something and just post it. No. Okay, so I'm going to mention something that might make people turn off the podcast, but Christmas.
Melanie
Oh, for goodness' sake.
Esther
Okay. Whatever time of year you're listening to this at, you need to be thinking about your Christmas marketing. I'm sorry, it could be Easter time, but you need to be thinking about your Christmas marketing. The same thing once you get Christmas marketing over you, you should already have been thinking about your Valentine and Easter and summer marketing and all your seasonal marketing plans, whether you are B2B or B2C, you sell to businesses, you sell to customers, you need to have your plan in place months in advance.
Melanie
And this to do with content marketing is?
Esther
You need to know what you're posting, when you're posting, what date you're posting. If you are making products, what is your final cut off date for receiving...
Melanie
Great.
Esther
What are they called? Receiving orders. That's the word. Receiving orders. What is your absolute final? How long will it take you to make the product, post the product, and have the product arrive on their doorstep.
Melanie
And make sure you use bubble wrap for the candles that she's inevitably going to be talking about at any moment.
Esther
Absolutely. You brought it up this time. Not me. Just for the record, Melanie brought up the candles today. But you need to have all of that thought out and know, is it going to cost you extra to have to send it express delivery? Is it going to cost you more in time or effort to stay up overnight if you take in too many orders? If you are B2B, you're selling to a business, are you taking time off and will you have to cram all their work in to a shorter period of time in order to have that time off over whatever holiday you want to be celebrating. All of that needs to be in your content marketing process thought.
Melanie
See, a lot of what you've just described is stuff we already know that's going to happen. We know when Christmas, Valentine's, Easter, we know when our offers have to finish by. We know a lot of this stuff. And so a lot of your content marketing can actually be done in advance because it's stuff you can create and you can quite willingly and quite easily give yourself time, repurpose it in different ways as well. So you can create your blog that turns into a video. That video then takes the audio away and becomes a podcast. And then that video can then become shortened into reels or stories or whatever. So your content marketing isn't just let's sit down and do content. It's purposeful content that ideally needs to be repurposed and planned way a way ahead.
Esther
Yes. Because if you're... Oh, sorry. We've never done that before. How do we talk over each other? If you are going to be recording a video about the thing, you need to have something made in advance. You need to have the better sunlight, whether that is during a sunny day or lots of good light. You need to have all these things thought off in advance. You need to have good quality photos the number of times that I've gone to try and purchase something and went, I don't actually know what I'm looking at. The image was blurred. Or if I'm watching a video and it's wobbly, I get that people get nervous, but put it on something. Have something that will make you feel more comfortable. Will you need to re-record it? Will you need to have time to write the script, to record it, to then post it? Can you turn that into an ad? Can you have that, as Melanie says, going to lots of different places in lots of different formats instead of having it a one and done? So think of all the things that you can do When you're writing your plan for, okay, well, on Mondays I want to send out a video, what video? And how are you going to repurpose that video to then be a blog and to be everything else that you need it to be?
Melanie
And if you are going to be uniform like that, you can actually help your audience look forward to your content. If Mondays is going to be the podcast, Wednesdays is going to be the video, and Friday is going to be the blog, let's say, then the people who have a preference will know when new fresh content will be going up. And again, as I mentioned earlier, it all goes into everything. So that can go into your email marketing as well. And if you've segmented your audience properly, you can get the people who prefer videos on one day and people who prefer emails on another day and so on and so forth. And that skillset takes planning and forethought and goals and objectives.
Esther
Yes, all of that. And I mean, there are people that I follow online that I know they're going to be live on a certain day at a certain time. So you make the time to set aside to watch that. Whether you watch it live, you watch it after, you're anticipating it, you're looking forward to it. You might even want to share it with other people because you're like, oh, have you seen such and such talking about this? You really need to go and join their mailing list. The more people that you can get to do that for your content, the better, because when businesses create excellent content, you can expect one of these four benefits or all four benefits. So you can have increased sales, you can have cost savings, better customers who have more loyalty, and content-driven revenue, for example, content as a profit centre. So you can have one or more of these benefits by having excellent content. Now, excellent content can mean different things to different people.
Melanie
Quite objective, isn't it?
Esther
It is very. So whether that's the quality of the script, whether it's the quality of the video, not being wobbly or not having the correct audio. The number of times I see videos online and the music is louder than the person speaking.
Melanie
Oh, I know.
Esther
That just... I don't care what you're selling. I'm sorry. Don't care if even if I follow you, I'm not putting myself through that. You need to have these things thought about for each and every part of your plan, because at the end of the day, it's the audience that has to consume it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to like your own marketing.
Melanie
Yeah, that's why she's on video now.
Esther
I know. Hear it. But you need not just good and not just great content, possibly excellent content to break through the noise because there's so many people marketing out there at the minute, and they're all out for the same customers and clients that you are, whether you're selling candles or jewellery, you have the same end goal for people to buy from you.
Melanie
So hopefully you've now understood how vital content marketing is. It holds a very important place in your strategy, but it is only a small part of your strategy. You could have all the correct content. Well, beautiful, actually, not even correct, but beautiful and thorough and clear content. But if it's not focused on any goals or objectives for you and the brand, it's not going to work. So they do have to tie in. And just because we know when Christmas and New Year and everything else is, it's not going to make you stand out or special. So think of how you can create your content, repurpose your content, and keep it within your goals and objectives. Make it purposeful.
Esther
Yes. Because content is the present and the future of marketing. That's it for today, guys. That's it for today, guys. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Until then, have a good one. Bye-bye.
Melanie
Have a great week.
Do you think we should mention-.
Esther
You're back to waving.
Melanie
No, I'm waving to you. See, you never wave back until I mention it.
Esther
Because I'll see you more often than they will.
Melanie
Is that a problem?
Esther
No.
Melanie
Good.
