Content marketing isn’t just a buzzword coined by digital marketers.
It’s a sophisticated way of building rapport with your target audience, strengthening your brand image, driving more traffic to your site, and increasing your sales numbers.
The leading companies, organizations, and entrepreneurs in most industries have embraced content marketing.
Content marketing is particularly important for independent consultants and service providers since it gives them direct access to their target audience and a level playing field with the bigger and more established brands.
In simple words, you’re not doing your business any favors by not having a content marketing strategy in place.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few pointers to help you get off the mark.
Our Top 5 Content Marketing Consultancy Tips
- Understand Your Audience Deeply: Narrow your focus to address specific needs and problems of a well-defined audience. Utilize tools like Google Trends and AnswerThePublic to gain insights into their questions and pain points.
- Deliver Actionable, Problem-Solving Content: Create content that not only identifies problems but also offers step-by-step solutions, making your site the go-to resource for your niche.
- Use Emotional Copywriting: Connect with your audience on an emotional level through storytelling and empathetic language, especially in sensitive industries like healthcare and legal services.
- Evoke Curiosity for Lead Generation: Utilize lead magnets such as eBooks, checklists, and quizzes to build your email list and keep your audience engaged with regular, relevant content.
- Showcase Social Proof: Build credibility by featuring video testimonials, customer reviews, and professional associations to distinguish yourself from competitors and earn your audience’s trust.
1. Identify the Needs of Your Local Audience
The secret to successful content marketing is a narrow focus and correct identification of your audience’s problems.
For example, if you’re a healthcare consultant, you have a huge industry with a wide range of audiences, problems, and needs.
For a successful content marketing strategy, you need to narrow down your focus to a very specific audience, with closely aligned needs that can be addressed in your content. This will also allow you to establish yourself as a niche expert
To get a better idea about the needs of your audience, use Google Trends or discussion platforms like Quora or other industry specific forums and Facebook Groups where people share their problems and seek advice.
You can also use tools like AnswerThePublic which gives you dozens of content ideas related to the questions your audience is asking.
Source: AnswerThePublic
A quick look at these questions and phrases would give you tons of ideas about your audience and its needs.
This is priceless information that you can use to tailor your message according to your ideal buyer.
2. Create Actionable and Problem Solving Content
Nothing wins you customers and brand advocates like highly actionable content. If your content can help readers understand their problems better and guide them in making measurable progress, you’ll be the first person they’ll contact when they need relevant services.
Actionable and problem-solving content even works in unconventional industries
The formula for creating such posts is simple.
- Choose one very specific problem, for example, “how can people injured in accidents proceed with lawsuit and compensation claims”
- Break down the solution into easily understandable steps.
- Address each step in detail with demonstrations, real-life examples and data evidence from reliable sources.
Try to create comprehensive and evergreen content that can be considered as the go-to resource on your topic. Make it so detailed and valuable that your target audience doesn’t need to look anywhere wlese for answers. This massive roundup post is a brilliant example.
Source: Secrets to Remote Work Success
Doing so takes time and effort, but it results in more readers social shares, traffic and brand recognition.
3. Engage Users With Emotional Copywriting
Many service consultants, especially in the healthcare and legal industries, deal with sensitive problems.
Which is why the tone of your website’s copy and its selection of words can have a huge impact on your website visitors.
Even the slightest of insensitivity towards your clients can result in bad marketing and lost patients.
The right words, on the other hand, can immediately connect you with your audience and persuade them to take action.
Source: Kissmetrics
To hook readers and evoke emotions, use storytelling and real life case studies. Show empathy towards your clients, understand their pain and give them hope.
To make it easier for you, here’s a list of almost 400 high emotion words that can be used to make your content more persuasive.
4. Evoke Curiosity to Build Your List and Generate Leads
Email list building and lead generation is the backbone of any content marketing strategy.
If your blog and website traffic isn’t converting into subscribers, you’ll find it even harder to convert them into paying customers.
This is precisely why you need to use lead magnets on your blog to generate curiosity in your visitors and persuade them to join your email list.
A lead magnet is an ethical bribe, a free resource, like an eBook or a video course, which you can give away in return for the email address of your visitors.
Here’s a good example from a marketing blog
Source: SmartBlogger
Consultants and service industry marketers can also use a variety of lead magnets ranging from checklists and PDF eBooks, to quizzes, and even free templates. For example, this documentation services and consultancy firm uses a declaration of conformity template as a lead magnet for its email list.
You can find many other creative examples of lead magnets in this post.
Once a visitor converts into a subscriber, you need to keep him engaged with regular emails, helpful advice, and relevant service offers.
5. Leverage Social Proof To Build Credibility
There are hundreds of thousands of blogs and websites on the web that offer advice in different industries.
But many of them are owned by niche marketers, not industry professionals.
To stand out from in this crowded space, you need to use different trust factors to build credibility.
Studies show that video testimonials from past customers and association with established professional bodies build trust faster than most other methods.
You can also display customer testimonials from public forums and review sites to strengthen your brand image.
Wrapping Up
Content marketing is all about winning the trust of your target audience and converting them into loyal customers by regularly creating highly actionable content that solves their problems. Healthcare professionals can use this marketing methodology to their advantage and reach their target audience in a much more effective manner.