We’ve all heard the phrase ‘content is king’. On the flipside, you might have heard that Chat GPT and other AI tools will devalue content, or that there’s so much information available that it’s impossible to stand out from the pack.
But there are keys to winning when it comes to content, and they are surprisingly simple.
What is content?
Content is a catch-all word for any media that you put in front of your target audience. Content could be:
- Written: articles, blog, e-books
- Visual: social media posts, infographics, images
- Audio visual: videos, podcasts and webinars
Often, the most powerful content combines elements to appeal to multiple senses and the various ways that people digest information.
It’s all in the quality
The reality is that anyone (or any AI) can slap together some generic content to fill the void on a website. But if you want to actually reach your target audience, you need to be delivering quality content. Quality content is:
- relevant, engaging, and specifically aimed at your audience
- honest, easy to understand, and provides real value to your audience
Quality content focusses on your audience first.
Provide real value
To provide real value readers, listeners or watchers, the first thing you need to do is find out:
- what they actually want and,
- what problems they have.
How do you find that out? A simple survey of your clients will help you establish and then narrow down your content strategy. Then you can then start providing content that helps your clients (and prospective clients) solve a small problem, makes their life a little bit easier or helps them think about something in a slightly different light.
Connect with your audience
To really hit a home run, you want to create quality content that provides real value and creates a connection with your audience.
It sounds complicated but connecting with your audience is simply about them getting to know, like and trust you. How do you do that? By using your content to tell real stories about you, your services and business, as well as educate.
The reality is when it comes to growth strategies “marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell” -Seth Godin.
Great content grows businesses
When you produce content that consistently provides quality information that your audience connects with, and finds both valuable and useful, you move into growth territory. Once that happens businesses begin to experience:
- Better conversion rates: quality content can help ‘educate’ your audience and even be embedded as part of your sales process
- Higher-quality lead generation: content is a great way to introduce customers to your services, educate them and guide them to becoming clients
- More engaged users: when users feel like they’re getting real value and know, like and trust your product or service, they will keep coming back
- Brand strengthening: good quality content improves brand reputation, SEO rankings and can generate relationships and conversations.
In truth, any financial services business can produce good quality content – you know your business, and you know your stuff. It’s often just a matter of finding the time to map out a plan, and then deliver quality content that adds real value to your audience on a consistent basis.
Want help getting started? The Sail Agency can help, contact us today.
Footnote from Risk Hub
We’re thankful to have Sacha engage with us at Risk Hub. With a background in Risk Insurance – she understands client engagement from an Adviser’s perspective.
There’s also more on Sacha and her business – The Sail Agency, in the Directory here —> 