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Authenticity: The Most Effective Approach to Content Marketing in 2020

Feb 24th, 2020 by Issuu

Content marketing is a strategic approach to promotion in which one leverages valuable and relevant content to build an audience and elicit customer action. Previously, brands relied on cold and upfront promotion of their products and services. Now, brands are crafting their marketing strategy to include content that goes beyond just selling and instead introduces elements of interest and intrigue for their audience.

Why use it?

Content marketing has become the driving force within marketing strategies because it allows for companies to tell their story. While also explaining their product and best selling them without truly “selling”.

The traditional marketing game has become saturated. With that, customers are receiving marketing messages from all fronts and no longer pay attention to the clutter. To break through, leverage content marketing. Content marketing allows brands to best reach their audience by providing value through their marketing efforts. And at the same time, inserting those key messages and CTA’s that often drive sales and brand awareness.

What should I know? 

While content marketing is no secret in the marketing world anymore, there is one aspect not all brands are grasping — authenticity. While content marketing is being leveraged by brands big and small, the most effective approach to continue to break through is to be authentic. To best tell your brand story, build a loyal audience, and drive sales, ensure your content marketing is authentic.

Example: Purely Elizabeth is an organic food company that turned to Issuu to expand their content marketing strategy. Through lifestyle content, Q&A’s with industry innovators, and recipes (that integrate their products) Purely Elizabeth strategically promotes their products in an authentic and valuable manner without pushing for sales to excess.

Keep reading: Why Authenticity is So Important for Social Media Marketing

Keep readingDevelop a Content Marketing Strategy

How to create authentic content: 

Now that you know it’s crucial to leverage content marketing authentically, here are a few tips to best do so:

Be timely: First, to ensure your content is authentic, be timely and relevant. Be sure to follow social and cultural trends to produce content that best aligns with current topics of value and interest.

Understand your audience: To ensure you’re crafting content that is of merit for your audience, you must put in some work. Be sure to gather an in-depth understanding of your target audience’s interests. Whether you ask your followers via social what they want to see, or perhaps just produce similar content to what your audience already likes, you can best craft strategic and authentic content.

Are you selling a cooking ingredient? Odds are your audience would best value recipes, tips and tricks within the cooking world. Be sure to follow those buzzy foodie trends and insert them within your own content strategy.

Are you a travel agent? Instead of just highlighting your travel itineraries, give your audience a history of the location, interviews with locals, and native secrets they can leverage while traveling with you! This will show your audience you’ll go above and beyond when crafting their next big trip.

Don’t be pushy: Lastly, to ensure your content continues to be authentic, be sure that it isn’t pushy. Content marketing is all about producing content that provides value beyond your actual product. So be sure to keep those traditional sales pitches and marketing tactics at bay while you work to best weave your products into a larger story.

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