The legendary business guru Peter Drucker once defined the purpose of a business. It wasn’t to turn a profit. Nor was it to provide services or goods. The purpose of a business, he said, was to create a customer.
This is a tremendous insight, and one that many people tend to ignore. These days, managers’ priorities are finance, sales, production, management, legal, and personnel… absent too often from that list: marketing.
Marketing is important; too important, in David Hewlett’s words, to be left to the Marketing Department. Because marketing is what creates customers.
And in creating customers, one of the main weapons in the marketing armory is Content.
Telling the story
The words ‘content marketing’ have only been used in recent times—in 1996 at a roundtable for journalists was the first time they were used in our current sense.
But story-telling is an ancient art, perhaps the oldest of arts. And that’s what content does. It tells the stories of your brand. And like all stories, each story your brand tells has a beginning, a middle and an end.
In the beginning the person you’re looking for is unaware of your brand. They are aware, maybe, of a need they have, or a want—a desire. But even that many not be there. Sometimes content can make them aware that they need or want something. At this point, what content does is talk all about the need your product or service fills. The story at this stage is informative, educational; if it can be so in a narrative style, so much the better, because people love to listen to stories. The purpose here is awaken the person to the need that he or she has and to make them aware that there are ways and means to fill that need.
What forms can your content take at this early stage in your prospect’s journey to customer? A blog post, a report, an e-book, a video, a webinar… these and many other types of content can make interesting and engaging material for the prospect at the beginning of his journey.
They arouse the interest of the person, and he or she will start actively looking for more. More reports, more stories, more blog posts, and soon enough, for likely solutions to his problem. At this point, the content marketer can change tack and start talking about his brand. The content can get a little more focused on your brand. Testimonials from people in similar situations can make great content. They can take the form of stories, heightening the persons interest, until it becomes a desire. Useful forms of content at this stage are product webinars, case studies, product FAQs, comparisons. He or she now keenly wants the product or service, and more stories can hone that desire into a need for your specific brand.
This is the time for the call to action. If your content has done its job, this is an easy task. The person has been transformed from a stranger to a prospect and then to a ‘hot’ prospect; if the job is effective, selling is unnecessary. The prospect is now a customer
But that’s not the end of the story.
Living happily ever after
It’s after the prospect has become a customer that arguably the most important task of the content writer comes up. Your pool of existing customers is a potential gold mine in two ways.
In the first place, it’s far easier and cheaper to retain a customer than to create a new customer. The statistics say 5 times cheaper. An existing customer is far more likely to buy than a new one. Most of the work of conversion is done, and a slight nudge at the right time is often enough for the customer to buy again. This is an important task for your content—to keep your customer engaged and delighted with your brand, and to carefully administer the requisite nudge from time to time.
Secondly, nothing creates customers like customers themselves. It’s well known that the most effective form of advertising is word-of-mouth. I believe something my good friend says a lot more easily that I would believe even the best advertisement in the world. Your customers can spread the word for your brand; if they begin to do that, they are the most effective form of advertising that it could ever have.
Nurtured in the right way, your existing customer is the most potent means you have to create new customers.
Email, mobile messaging, social media, memberships, can all be great ways to keep in contact with your customer base. They enable you to keep and grow your loyal band of fans and ambassadors, to keep them delighted and to spread that delight to an ever-growing company of devoted users of your brand.