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Con­tent mar­ket­ing, one of the most com­monly used busi­ness “buzz­words” of the 21st cen­tury, can be highly effec­tive, if a) you know what it is, and b) you know how to use it. By the end of this post, not only will you know what con­tent mar­ket­ing is but will dis­cover three sim­ple ways to use it in posi­tion­ing your brand.

Any­time I hear some­one ref­er­ence or sug­gest con­tent mar­ket­ing, I often pay close atten­tion to con­text clues to under­stand what exactly they mean. Let me explain. When peo­ple refer to con­tent mar­ket­ing, gen­er­ally they are under­stand­ing it one of three ways:

1) They think it is tak­ing qual­ity infor­ma­tion and using it to lit­er­ally mar­ket the prod­uct; replac­ing the tra­di­tional, exhausted sales pitch

2) They think of it as a means by which they attract cus­tomers and build a rep­u­ta­tion; or

3) They think of it as a nec­es­sary com­po­nent to build­ing their brand that requires spend­ing money

Now, you’re prob­a­bly think­ing that all of those sound cor­rect. And, I would be happy to inform you that you’re right. Con­tent mar­ket­ing is not one of the three choices, but all of the above men­tioned. It’s about tak­ing what you know and putting it to use to sup­port your busi­ness and your goals. So, how can you use con­tent mar­ket­ing to build your brand? Let’s take a look!

The first way you can apply con­tent mar­ket­ing to sup­port your busi­ness and build your brand is by estab­lish­ing a rep­u­ta­tion. The num­ber one obsta­cle all busi­nesses face when sell­ing a prod­uct is gain­ing trust from con­sumers. Unfor­tu­nately, we oper­ate in a mar­ket where peo­ple are con­stantly scammed and cheated out of their money. Pro­duc­ing fac­tual and help­ful con­tent that not only tells your cus­tomers you are trust­wor­thy, but demon­strates it is highly powerful.

The sec­ond way con­tent mar­ket­ing can effec­tively lever­age your busi­ness and brand is using it in the form of a care­fully crafted sales let­ter. While attention-spans tend to be short, there is still hope for the long-lived method, but it does require some restruc­tur­ing. Where sales let­ters dur­ing my grandfather’s day were long and highly-detailed, today’s let­ter has taken new form. Use strong and inter­est­ing lan­guage that entices and engages your reader. Use a short story to demon­strate your objec­tive and end with a sim­ple call to action. With the tech­nol­ogy avail­able in today’s mar­ket­place, it can be as easy as vis­it­ing your com­pany web­site, or mobile app.

Finally, once your com­pany has estab­lished a well-recognized and trust­wor­thy rep­u­ta­tion and you’ve set your­self apart from your com­peti­tors as a thought-leader in the indus­try, paid con­tent is a great way to take your brand to the next step. With the pop­u­lar­ity of iPads, Kindle’s and Nook’s among cus­tomers alike, pro­duc­ing instruc­tional, infor­ma­tional, or even devel­op­men­tal con­tent for your cus­tomers to sub­scribe to is a great way to share your exper­tise and con­tinue build­ing your brand. Pre­sen­ta­tion is every­thing, so pack­age your mate­r­ial in the form of a “course” with tran­scripts, a work­book, and work­sheets. While this may require more money, it also demands greater respect and posi­tions you with a greater rep­u­ta­tion (which we all know is key to suc­cess­ful business).

Con­tent mar­ket­ing is a large topic, that unfor­tu­nately can’t be cov­ered in one blog post. How­ever, hope­fully you have a gen­eral idea of what it is and three use­ful ways you can use con­tent to estab­lish, posi­tion, and lever­age your brand.

How does your com­pany use con­tent mar­ket­ing, and what forms do you find to be most effective?