Ever had to cut your budget? I bet marketing initiatives came on your mind. Well guess what, cutting your budget doesn’t mean you should stop making content. Paid channels might be your quickest bet to gain awareness, but if you lack the presence people will bounce off your web or socials in no time. So start putting your resources and energy towards a free type of content that saves you in the long run.
How to categorize content
Let’s jump on the content train to the Contentville and try to categorize the usual content that companies put out, shall we?
First of all, any content can be free. It is up to you what you decide to share and when.
Free content is still something hard to get out for companies, as you cannot see its effect immediately. You don’t wake up with your email box full of hot leads nor purchase recipes all of a sudden. A lot of companies nowadays put the content behind a ‘’gate’’, turning content that could be shared for free into content that will be sent for free when potential customer shares their email/name/company/etc.
It is not a wrong method, however if you are trying to find new prospects who have not heard about you yet, they will most likely not share their information with you. That is when creating free content in the first place can ensure the trust that will unlock the full effectivity of ‘’gated content’’.
There are also a few more reasons for you to consider creating free content:
- Brand visibility — establish your company as a leader in the field and showcase your expertise.
It’s no longer enough to slap 3–5 testimonials on your website and call it a win. Depending on your field, you probably have more than 2 competitors who might be doing more than sending newsletters and having good prices. When people see you understand the industry and its challenges, there is a higher chance they will choose your company instead of a competitor.
- Customer engagement & loyalty — sharing free content can help to engage your current audience, build trust, and create customer loyalty.
Unless one-time purchase is what you’re going for, creating valuable content is going to play in your favor long-term. By sharing free content, you can make sure that your audience will always keep an eye on your channels.
- SEO optimization — when creating accessible content, google will favor you with better visibility.
SEO is something every content creator should be familiar with. By creating content not only will your website rank higher due to its relevancy, but also a chance that people find you while they are early-tapping into the industry not knowing of their buying options.
How to decide which content to use when?
There is a handful of ways how to go on about your strategy.
Most decide according to the stages of their funnel, but I fancy the AARRR framework due to its attention to finding a weak link in your customer growth process. Once you realize the weak point, you can adjust your content strategy as well.
Acquisition
First thing first, know your audience. What are their challenges, motivations to solve them, and their proffered outcomes? The next step is to identify the channels your audience uses.
To determine which channels to use, you can try the 4 steps of Bullseye Framework.
- Through which channels can you reach your target audience?
- Try out these channels and move the ones with thebest traction forward.
- Focus on the best-performing channel.
Keep in mind questions such as ‘’What’s the CPA per channel?’’, ‘’What’s my reach on this channel?’’ and ‘’Are the right customers on this channel?’’.
Obviously, you want to focus on channels with thelowest CPA and the highest return.
Activation
The activation step is all about customer experience. In this step, it’s imperative your customers reach the AHA moment a.k.a. your service value.
The best way to figure out what is the AHA of your service is to ask your current customers. But I know you don’t like to do that, so ask people who are in direct contact with your customers, e.g. Sales people. The faster you get your customers to realize why your product is valuable to them, the lower the chance for their churn.
Retention
Why should customers return to you specifically? There are tons of new hip companies every month, and if you cannot continuously provide value, your customers will eventually leave.
Getting new customers is more expensive than retaining existing ones.
Besides, your existing customers are 50% more likely to try out your new products and willing to spend more than new customers. Therefore, understanding that your current customers also need to be nurtured with content will be a step in the right direction for you and your churn rate.
Referral
After you’ve created a well-oiled business with happy customers that keep coming back, you might want to take a step back and check whether your customers recommend you to their network.
For such occasions, think about the quality of your products or services, user-friendly platform, positive experiences that you can create, transparency, ethical practices, and strong brand reputation — you need to determine how can they be supported with appropriate content and in what form.
Revenue
Last thing is to convert your interested customer to a paying customer. Analyzing where your customer lose interest or drop-off from your website can help you determine which part you can support with a content strategy.
Sharing a case study when your hot lead spent most of their time on your resources and how it works page might not be the best idea. Instead considering a product demo or free trial can be a more effective route to take.
