Here’s an analogy for you...In order to create The One ring, Sauron had to forge it in the hottest fire he could lay his grubby paws on. Thusly, the only thing that could destroy it was the same, super-intense heat - Mount Doom. Let us consider the ramifications of this, Precious. If your marketing strategy is forged in your little sister’s EZ bake oven, it won’t take much to undo it.
How to combat this then? What does the hottest fire around equate to in marketing terms? Answer - Exceptional content. The hotter the 🔥 of your content, the less breakable your overall strategy will be.
The internet - despite its many faults - is where people go for information. 5 billion people, approximately, are active internet users. So, for perspective, we have about 7.7 billion people on earth. Bunches of those people are babies and very old people - people too young and too old to use computers (or care about a digital life). If we consider that about 65% of that total population is between the ages of 15 and 65, then that 5 billion accounts for all but .8 billion (basically, your aunt who lives too far outside of city limits to get the internet x every family / cellular tower density in the corresponding area.) In short, if you’re marketing something, you can’t use the excuse that your audience isn’t on the internet. They’re there.
But what are they doing on the internet? Here you go, truncated from Statista’s data.
Basically, they’re just doing the same stuff you do. But here’s an important one - according to AdWeek...
81% of Shoppers Conduct Online Research Before Buying!
Guess what else? Every one of those internet activities above is a channel for marketing toward those pre-purchase researchers!
Returning to the original question, developing a strong marketing platform consists of three parts...
1. knowing who your audience is, and
2. creating the content they want, and
3. making sure they can access that content.
Parts one and two are two sides of the same coin. How can you give them the content you want if you don’t know who they are? Wait, wait! Let’s try a harder one: A box without hinges, key or a lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.
Seriously, though, we have a ton of information available to help you through the persona work. So for the remainder here, we’ll just focus on making sure that relevant content is accessible to your already-complete-ideal-buyer-persona.
Even if we look at the internet as a place that’s completely free**, there’s still something between your killer content and your audience. It’s the billions of other pieces of available content out there. It’s the method of searching. It’s those cat videos, Vine-remembrance compilations and super-specific fan fiction. You wrote a great song, Petey, but nobody heard it.
(**Also, it’s completely not completely free. There’s all sorts of ranking and weighting mechanisms in every single platform, based on algorithms of perceived value to wide cross-sections of demographic bases.)
Again, if you have your ideal buyer persona developed, you already know what a customer is asking, and how they’re asking it before they even have the question.
So you create! What are you going to create? Blogs! Blog series! Videos! Podcasts! Quizzes! Emails! Social media posts! That’s what you’re going to make. All of those things, and then you’re going to connect them. Check this out------
According to the Content Marketing Institute, the most effective way to gain SEO ranking is to CREATE CONTENT. You want 434% more search engine indexed pages? Yes. Yes, you do. So make some content. And make sure that content goes together. The hivemind interweb understands when you’re writing multiple blogs on the same topic, and it says [in a Borg voice, probably] “Hey, this site has all the good stuff. Seems like an authority, except for all the weird movie references. Let’s bump it higher in the rankings.” We have more about that idea in a different blog.
Here are a couple other things to keep in mind while you’re making that content:
- Make good content, but you don’t have to be an artisté. Content on the internet is like a bowl of potato chips at a party. You can’t expect every guest to savor each chip through the whole party. They’re going to consume them. If the chips are good, and you refill the bowl they’ll probably have more.
- Get specific! Understand that people are going to skim your blog. It’s okay. But don’t use that as an excuse to cut corners. Get some hard facts. Consult some third-parties. Get some statistics. It builds trustworthiness and validity, and the people who skim might just come back later to do more in-depth searching. Check out this Forbes article about the importance of well-researched stats.
- We’re about to make that potato chip metaphor a little weird. The writing of the content is just the beginning of getting engagement. Unless you have people hanging on your website’s blog, waiting for the latests tidbit to drop, you will need to inform the public that the content is available. For that, use the social media channels that your ideal buyer persona uses, and be sure to tell them in a good way. Don’t mumble, “hey.. I made a blog, you guys,” and expect them to knock down your door. You need to convey how the blog is going to help your client in a direct and efficient way, so they want to click through and read it.
- Get help if you need it. The reason why businesses hire marketing agencies is so they can continue focusing on what they do best. We believe in you, and in the value of the content you can be creating - but if you need help, that’s pretty much what we’re here for. Take a look at our process, and give us a shout if you think you’re a good fit for our marketing services.
There you go! In addition to the links above, you can find a vast trove of additional information in our guide, The Future of Marketing to get an even better understanding of these principles. 
Make content so good that your ideal client runs to it and hugs it like it was a long lost friend. Like, um...
or...
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