Category Archives: Content Marketing

Dandruff remedy and a good example of account-based content marketing

A good example of account-based content marketing

The context of this blog post is the content writing services for account-based marketing web page that I uploaded yesterday.

Today when I checked my inbox, I immediately came across an email which is a very good example of account-based content marketing.

Now, account-based marketing is mostly for B2B businesses, but on the above-linked page, I say that it can also be used in B2C, targeting audiences looking for specific products and services.

The one thing clients are constantly struggling with is how to be less obsessed about constantly promoting their business and rather, focusing more on providing some value through their content.

For a couple of years I have been ordering my medicines – mostly homeopathic – from 1mg.com, one of the first websites that started selling medicines online in India.

Recently there has been a spurt of such websites promoting themselves heavily on TV and the Internet. I was wondering how 1mg was going to compete with these new websites.

Their email updates have been mostly promotional. “Buy medicines at 50%”, “use this discount coupon” and “buy this new medicine” types. I would quickly scroll through.

A couple of days ago I was looking for a homeopathic medicine for my daughter who is having some dandruff problem.

I searched on Google and some listings from 1mg.com also showed up. I don’t remember if I clicked one of their links and went to their website, but I surely must have.

Today I got an email from them with the subject “Got dandruff? Fight with flakes with tips from experts.”

The email looks like a big image file and clicking on different sections of the email takes you to different sections on the website whether you want to buy some anti dandruff shampoo or want to have a chat with one of the resident health experts.

A good thing about the email is that it is not just selling me stuff, it is also giving me some good information on how to deal with dandruff.

For example, it tells me that 50% people in the world have dandruff at some point of their lives. So, although nagging, it is a common problem. This gives me some relief.

Then it tells me what is dandruff. It also tells me that if I keep my scalp clean by constantly washing it (preferably using one of their shampoos and conditioners) I can keep away dandruff.

For those who like interesting trivia, the email tells that the scalp normally sheds 500,000 cells per square centimeter but when you have dandruff, you shed 800,000 cells per square centimeter.

It’s a complete write-up on what is dandruff, what causes it, how to avoid it and what type of shampoos can be used to cure dandruff and keep it away.

This is exactly the content marketing that builds long-term relationships.

Their system knows that I’m looking for a solution for dandruff problem. The system sends me an email that tells me how to keep away dandruff.

The email doesn’t present to me with a do-or-die situation vis-à-vis buying their shampoo and medicines. It gives me alternative solutions, but if I want to buy their shampoo, I can easily do so.

Why I say it is a good example of content marketing in general and account-based content marketing in particular is because, they’re sending me information that I actually need, and, they have the information that I’m looking for this information and they’re sending me targeted content, which is more effective.

Buying is a combination of emotions and convenience. This type of contextually helpful content engages your audience and establishes an emotional connection. Hence, even if there are many websites from where I can buy medicines online, I will prefer to buy it from 1mg.com because it is making a relevant and emotional connection with me.

Of course, they have got an advantage, being one of the first such websites and since I have purchased from them, they have my email to reach out to me.

Is publishing less content good for your content marketing?

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Is publishing less content better for your content marketing?with the funeral me

This Forbes update says yes. Gary Vaynerchuck, on the other hand, says you should publish as much content as you can possibly publish because ultimately, who decides the quantity?

I am often approached by clients who, although want to benefit from publishing high-quality content on their websites and blogs, don’t have much budget.

Consequently, they want to pay less for my content writing services. I politely refuse their work.

I agree with the Forbes article, and I also agree with Gary.

Mindlessly publishing content isn’t profitable, especially when you have limited budget, but you should publish as much as you can and there is no clear definition of what’s more and what’s less.

If you have a website or a business blog, you may publish 1-3-4 updates every week, or even less. For an average business website or blog, this is a good number.

But if you publish an online news magazine or newspaper, you publish 30-40 updates in a day.

So, how much content you must publish depends on your business and your capacity.

Gary in the above link says that don’t worry about the quality and keep on publishing. His logic is, unless you regularly publish, you are not going to improve your quality. Again, I agree.

But this is applicable when you are not paying. For example, he seems to be creating most of his content on his own and even if he is not creating a big part of content on his own, he must have enough money to pay good content creators.

Even for my own content writing blog, I don’t have to worry about the quality of every post. Sometimes, I just want to publish something random and I do that. This is because I’m not paying anyone. It hardly takes me 10-15 minutes to write a quick blog post, like this one.

If you’re paying for every piece of content, you need to be mindful of its quality.

Therefore, if the client has a smaller budget, I advise him or her not to go for a certain number of updates on the website and the blog. Instead, just focus on very few updates, but very good and very relevant updates.

This is what the Forbes article suggests. Instead of trying to publish every possible content idea and trying to cover every possible publishing platform, pick and choose your battles and then stick to them.

The article rightly says:

Whether you’re a small business owner who is doing the work yourself or a large brand with a dedicated marketing team, this approach on a social network can be overwhelming in resource drain without garnering much of a return.

My suggestion is like this:

Have a target for your blog or website: Maybe 20 webpages for your main website and then 150 posts on your blog every year.
Once your target is met and if you have more budget, then focus on other publishing platforms.

Initial thrust is definitely needed. It’s no use publishing highly remarkable blog posts on which you spend a couple of weeks on research in the very beginning unless you have a good marketing budget.

In the beginning, you can also publish less than remarkable blog posts that give you some organic exposure on search engines and then you can reduce the quantity and start focusing on quality.

Quality content writing must be mixed with quality images and graphics

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Mix quality content writing with quality images and graphics

The Internet after all is a multimedia experience. Although most of the information on the web exists in the form of text (written information), visual information has the proverbial edge – one picture is worth a thousand words.

In terms of SEO and unobtrusive communication, compared to writing, video and images haven’t arrived yet. Even if you want to rank images and videos well, you need to depend on the surrounding text.

You may also like to read The importance of visual content in your content marketing.

But content writing – no matter how awesome it is – on its own, has its limitations these days.

If people come across just text on your web page or blog post, they feel intimidated.

A good image gives a welcome break, and so does a captivating video. There is a mix of people who prefer video over text and text over video (and images and graphics) and since these days any person can turn out to be your customer or client, you don’t want to lose out on various media-opportunities technology gives you these days.

Writing text has never been difficult, provided you know how to write.

Until a few years ago, coming up with business-worthy images and graphics was a taxing exercise but not anymore. With a decent camera you can click great photographs. You can mix your photographs with different other graphics available on free stock websites with the help of Photoshop and other image editing tools.

For a few months I have been using Filmora and Movavi for creating videos. Before that, I was also using PowerPoint to create videos. In PowerPoint there is a feature that allows you to export the slides into a nifty movie. These days, I use all the three tools. For example, recently I created this video using Filmora:

Along with content writing, you can use quality images to improve your SEO

I have observed videos aren’t as good as images for better SEO. Videos are good if you simply want to upload promotional videos on YouTube and other social media websites but other than that, when it comes to featuring on search results, I’m not impressed.

Images, on the other hand, do quite well on search engines. Surprisingly, Bing image search is better than Google image search. Even the quality of images and graphics is better on Bing.

Anyway, most of the SEO tools these days advise you to throw in a good mix of images and text. Preferably, one image or graphic after every 300-500 words.

A good thing about strategically using images along with content writing is that the images give you an opportunity to use your primary and secondary keywords.

You can name your images including your keywords. You can use alt text for keywords. You can also use captions.

Surrounding your images and graphics with keyboard-rich content helps Google and Bing figure out what you’re trying to say through your images and graphics.

Some concepts are better explained with graphics: for example infographics.

You can use words, you can use icons, you can use arrows – there are scores of things you can use to explain concepts that are difficult to explain using plain content writing.

Sometimes I also use images for humour. For example, if I tell you to smile. Instead of showing a human smiling, you are sure to smile if you see a dog smiling or a cat smiling.

Smiling dog

I was writing about anger. Instead of showing an angry person, I showed an angry baby. With little bit of fun and cuteness, I was able to put my point across.

Angry baby face

This post titled 5 ways graphics can post content marketing success says that using images and graphics also increases engagement and shareability. Your readers are more prone to sharing your content if they find captivating images.

Images can also be used to draw people’s attention to your content. When you share your links on social media and social networking websites, you must have observed that the biggest rectangle is assigned to your image. The headline appears over the image. So, the first thing people see about your content is your image.

Images and graphics also give you an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competitor, as rightly suggested by the above link. Visual imagery is very powerful. And the good thing is, you can create highly unique images with little bit of creativity and some good tools.

Don’t stop your content marketing once your customers have bought from you

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Content marketing to existing customers

In its truest essence, content marketing is all about building relationships and when you build relationships, you don’t put a stop to your relationships once some basic job is done.

The purpose of content marketing is to positively engage your prospective customers and clients so that they feel aware enough and consequently, feel motivated enough to prefer you for their next purchase, over your competitor.

According to this study, 50% of small and medium-size businesses have revealed that half of their revenue comes from repeat customers. Other studies have shown that loyal customers are worth 10x as much as first-time customers. A 5% increase in customer retention can increase your profitability by 75% (source).

Hence, this blog post rightly suggests that you shouldn’t stop your content marketing targeting them once your customers have purchased from you.

In fact, since they have purchased from you, they have a positive perception about your business. They are familiar with you or your business name.

Through spending money on your business, they have shown their confidence in your ability to deliver. They trust you. They are more receptive to your messages and communication.

How do you engage your existing customers through content marketing?

Almost all of your customers share their email ids when they buy from you for the first time.

After getting their permission, you can add their email addresses to a mailing list through which you can keep in touch with them regularly.

But they wouldn’t like to hear from you for your chitter chatter. They will appreciate communication from you if you have something valuable to offer.

This is what I would suggest you can do to constantly keep in touch with your existing customers:

Send them a nice thank you email once they have purchased for the first time.
After a couple of days, you can send another email asking them if they have faced any problem using your product or service.
After a week, send an email asking for their feedback. You can use a custom online form to allow them to leave your feedback as easily as possible.
After another week, give them an opportunity to connect with you using a social networking apps or platform.
In between, if you have come across an interesting article or blog post, or if you yourself have published an insightful article or blog post on your own website, you can share the link with them hoping that they find it useful.
Send them an offer if you have got something similar to what they purchased from you.

Outside of email, maintained an updated FAQs section in case they have some questions regarding their purchase.

You can also publish tutorials on how they can benefit the most out of their purchase from you.

You can go on publishing content targeting your existing customers.

Want to know why your content marketing isn’t performing well?

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Why is your content marketing failing?

You are regularly publishing blog posts. You have also tried your hand at publishing guest posts on other websites and blogs. You regularly send out your email campaigns. Then why isn’t your content marketing performing the way you think it should?

You may like to read 12 rules to make your content marketing successful.

Here is a thought-provoking post on why your content marketing might be failing.

The author rightly mentions some of the reasons:

No definition of success: Having no clue what exactly you are trying to achieve through content marketing.
Bad content: Publishing content without paying attention to the quality and relevance of your content.
No commitment: You publish and broadcast content randomly and according to your convenience, without committing yourself to a content publishing calendar.
No promotion: You think that by just publishing content you’re going to generate traffic.

Many people mistakenly think that content marketing is a cheaper and faster way to online success, whereas, this is not the case.

Just like any other venture that needs hard work and focus to succeed, so does content marketing.

Content marketing is not a quick fix.

It is just another form of marketing.

It requires long-term effort and commitment.

It requires you to spend money although, not as much as you spend on conventional marketing and advertising.

If content marketing is hard work, persistence and even expense, then why use it?

It is more effective than other forms of marketing available to you.

It is cheaper, comparatively, and its success is long lasting.

Content marketing is a holistic approach to educating and informing your prospective customers and clients so that they come your website on their own rather than being tricked through an advertisement or a marketing campaign.

You may also like to read What is content marketing? Explained in detail.

Since in content marketing you promote your business through the strength of your content, your content is the backbone of the entire campaign.

If your content is lousy then so is your campaign and then so is the outcome.

You want good outcome?

You need good, high-quality content.

Then comes persistence.

Attention span is low on the Internet.

No matter how great that particular piece of content that you published is, after a couple of days, it is going to fall off the radar.

You have to remain in front of your audience.

But, despite having great content, unless you aggressively promote your content and push it in front of your audience (without annoying or offending them), it is going to be difficult for people to find it.

I suggest the following actions if you want to promote your content without going the conventional advertising route:

Publish regularly so that the Google crawler begins to crawl and index your content with greater speed.
Publish SEO friendly content so that you enjoy higher search engine rankings that in turn makes more people find your content and come to your website.
Build a mailing list to distribute your content.
Remain active on social media.

I would like to stress again, merely publishing content doesn’t make your content marketing successful.

You need to follow a multifaceted approach.