What Do Consumers Want?
A quality content marketing strategy is a must for brands in 2020. Consumers are more skeptical than ever, and companies need to reach them in new ways that go beyond traditional advertising. Social platforms alone aren’t enough—consumers want to know more about their products and brands than ever before.
The resurgence of blogs, vlogs, and growing popularity of platforms like Reddit demonstrates that consumers are eager to learn about and discuss the brands and products they care about. They want to interact with brands in new ways, and feel part of a larger ecosystem. They want to feel like they have a voice in the development and direction of products and companies they care about.
So how can your business take advantage of these new content marketing strategies to reach and engage with more customers? Let’s dig in.
A Modernized Content Marketing Strategy
Many of Amplify’s clients have benefitted from implementing a modernized content marketing strategy. A modern approach to blogging and content marketing provides a level of depth and richness that goes beyond what many companies can offer on their websites, social media accounts, or digital marketing strategies. Once the customer enters the marketing funnel, we can use rich content to support their journey, keep them engaged, and create a sense of loyalty to the brand.
Some of the audio industry’s more innovative brands have already adopted this approach. Companies like Blue, Propellerhead, as well as upstarts like Walrus, Earthquaker Devices and others have built dedicated followings of customers who are proud to post pictures of their gear online, and share their experiences with other like-minded creators.
Creating Superfans
No, we’re not talking about Bill Swerski (da Bears…). We’re talking about using a content marketing strategy to foster a sense of loyalty and dedication in customers. Extensive research has shown that word of mouth still reigns supreme when it comes to purchasing decisions (and music recommendations). We always want to nurture existing customers and create superfans of the brands. And there’s no better way to achieve this goal than creating high-quality content, delivered regularly, in places they hang out.
Want to witness the power of community? Look no further than Reddit. The Apple sub-reddit has 734k subscribers who post and comment regularly, write articles and reviews, and generally contribute to the ecosystem and community. Many audio industry brands could benefit from creating and managing a similar community. Not only does it offer another platform to post news, articles and content, it puts us in touch with enthusiastic fans of the brand who are actually creating their own content. Need someone to create a video review for a new product? Source it from the Reddit community—there’s probably someone there who’s already doing it!
Medium.com is another exciting platform for longform articles and content. As an added bonus, there are relatively few articles from audio companies on the platform, and those that exist typically have 700-1,000 unique likes.
What Type Of Content To Create
This may seem obvious, but if you’re creating content that your customers aren’t interested in or can’t find—you’ve already lost the battle.
At Amplify, the first step in our approach is to study your target customer. What type of topics are they interested in, and what keywords (SEO) are they searching for? Next, we determine the best delivery method: does your customer spend most of their time on social media, reading blogs, browsing YouTube, or all of the above? Are you in a saturated market where disruptive content help you gain an edge?
Once we have a solid understanding of these key questions, we create a range of rich content—video, blog articles, infographics, testimonials, social posts and more—tailored to your customer’s interests and delivered across key channels and platforms.
Where Content Should Live
Is it better for long-form content to be scattered across multiple platforms, or centralized on a single location? It depends on your goals. More platforms means more chances for discovery. But a centralized hub makes a company’s blog the central destination (Ableton is a great example). Our approach typically involves creating an owned community (like a blog) where brands can post content regularly and engage directly with their followers. And from there, we promote the content across multiple platforms—putting the marketing in content marketing.
Distribution Completes The Puzzle
There’s no magic bullet for content distribution. Every brand is going to have different opportunities for promoting their content—the key is implementing a repeatable, scalable pipeline for creating and delivering that content via social and other channels. As far as delivering to the press, PR Web is a good resource for automating the process—but the old school method of making contact with individual editors and journalists still reigns supreme.
Want To Work With Amplify On Your Content Marketing Strategy?
Here Are Some Services We Provide:
- Content marketing strategy
- Content pipeline management
- Written content
- Blog articles
- Case studies (interviews, drafting)
- Contributed articles
- Press releases
- Awards submissions
- Email newsletters
- Visual media
- Video production
- Photography
- Live social
