With over 3.7 billion internet users today and at a 50% penetration rate, the word wide web’s rapid growth has marketers on their tiptoes looking for new and innovative ways to catch the attention of their target consumers.

E-commerce trends in 2017 show that 51% of American prefer to shop online with Millennials and Gen Xers spending up to six hours per week in this activity, thereby providing a great potential businesses to convert their customers online. However, conversion rate optimization is easier said than done. With the ubiquitous ads peppering the internet, it is very difficult to capture your consumers’ attention.

This is where content marketing comes into play. It is no longer enough to provide traditional content, even if it’s written by professional writing service, where marketers keep on pushing products and services to their audience with hard sell ads that interrupt their user experience. It is the age of inbound marketing and creating value for your customers.

Content marketing doesn’t only create brand loyalty, but also a builds a wider community for customers who would like to speak up about their experiences or thoughts. Through content marketing, companies are able to increase their online sales, gain possible insights to improve themselves, and even create an urge for customers to consider buying their products.

Here are five radical ways to use content marketing today:

 

Speak the language of your target audience and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Be informal from time to time to appeal to the customer’s taste. Informality can come in any form of media—webcomics, memes, or plain twitter statuses.

Content marketing is not always formal, there are times that companies make witty remarks and humorous jokes despite their online presence to help improve their image and warm-up to their consumers.

Wendy’s is a brand that understands this so well. Their Twitter account is a gold mine of witty tweets and banter. With their bio, “We like our tweets the same way we like to make hamburgers: better than anyone expects from a fast food joint,” you know you are in for something special. In fact, Wendy’s witty repartee with its followers has generated a viral life of its own.

As a caution though, despite the humor, one must always remember that the jokes must be clean and connected to the product they offer.

Add Value to your customers by providing solutions to their needs.

One of the most mistakes that brands do is that they keep on talking about themselves and products or services that they offer. The sheer amount of information that a person gets exposed to on a daily basis is enough to give your target audience cognitive overload. Hence, the challenge is to create content that will cut through all of that clutter.

The best way to do this is to anticipate the concerns and needs of your customers and provide solutions for them. This way, you position yourself as both a thought leader and a solutions provider. Further, it adds value to target audience so that they look forward to getting content from your brand.

American Express does this so well. Instead of pushing their products to their customers, they instead created an engaging and value-laden community that provides meaningful insights and inspirations for their customers to help grow their business.

Leverage multimedia content.

Content marketing shouldn’t only be a web page or a blogpost. Not a lot of companies practice the art of podcasting and because of this, they do not realize the opportunities they are missing.

In fact, 9 out 10 marketers would agree that podcast advertising is an untapped territory.  Statistics shows that consumers ages 18-34 are most likely to listen to podcasts. Further, monthly podcast listeners belong to the affluent group where 16% have an annual household income of $150K or more.

General Mills wanted to provide its customers with an in-depth look and understanding of their brand. To achieve this, they launched “A Taste of General Mills” podcast series. It’s in an interview-style modeled after NPR’s This American Life.

Tell a great story.

Marketing is a story well told. The human brain loves good storytelling and we cannot underestimate the how powerful a well-constructed narrative can be in motivating, persuading, and changing our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

General Electric understands this well and ensures that they remain true to their promise: Imagination at work. In 2016, the brand produces a series of “Unimpossible Missions.” In their own words, “Every day at GE, we do things that supposedly can’t be done. By taking the smartest minds and giving them access to the most cutting-edge technology available, we’re solving the world’s toughest problems. In other words, we take the impossible and make it unimpossible.”

In the episode A Snowball’s Chance in Hell, the mission is to send a snowball to Hell and bring it back safely. The video garnered over 900 thousand views in YouTube to date. The brand even took this campaign to the next level by engaging their audience and leveraging user-generated content through their Unimpossible Missions: The University Edition Contest.

 

Create opportunities for interaction with your audience.

Content marketing does not need to be a one way street. Create interactive ads and surveys to engage your audience and keep them coming back for more.

Brandeis International Business School’s quiz helps students get into the right career for them. Renowned for their academic excellence, the school successfully used this content marketing strategy to guide their students and glean valuable insights and analytics from their target audience as well.

The Takeaway: Creativity is Key

Content marketing should not be a buzzword that brands and marketers should just drop as a form of lip service. At the end of the day, it will all boil down to how creative your team can be in grabbing the attention of your target audience. It might not be easy, but it will be definitely be worth the rewards if you are successful.