Consumers are bombarded with advertising and sales pitches in most aspects of their life, resulting in immunity to traditional marketing methods. They own DVRs to skip TV advertising, developed mental filtering to find their relevant content when visiting websites (ignoring online banners and buttons), and even the standard response to telemarketing is now either hanging up or a couple of expletives. That's why it's important to provide prospects with something valuable, useful, or at the very least, entertaining.
That's where content marketing comes in.
What is content marketing?
You can trawl the internet for hours, read hundreds of articles and blogs and still come out the other end confused. However, having done the leg work a very long time ago and now having a working knowledge on the subject, it's pretty simple. The best, most concise definition I've found so far is this by the website Digital Intelligence Today...
"Content marketing is the process of delivering brand value to an audience by publishing branded content designed to help or entertain in order to earn attention and trust rather than pay for it."
Building your business and your brand doesn't necessarily mean making direct membership sales via a particular campaign (although as a bi-product it's always nice!), it means building brand equity and consumer trust which eventually results in sales. And how do you build brand equity? Well, with interesting, trustworthy content marketing of course.
How to make your marketing interesting...
Being in the health and fitness industry, there are many ways you can grab the attention of your prospective members with content. This could be fitness hints, weight loss tips, healthy recipes or just general information on wellbeing. The good thing is, your contact base is a list of people already interested in fitness, so you've already got a target audience with the potential to be truly engaged with what you have to say. Content marketing basically means steering away from the typical hard sell, and getting your audience hooked on information and expertise.
Content marketing takes time. It needs to be well thought out and engaging, however, after much research I promise you - it is the future. And by starting to build the trust of your prospects now, you will be one step ahead when they are approached by a competitor. Click here to see a really insightful infographic by UberFlip, explaining B2C (Business to Consumer) marketing priorities for 2014 and the ways in which content marketing is most definitely not limited to an informative email or two.
A helping hand...
It's not easy getting started on something new, especially if you don't have a designated marketing person. Here are a couple of links to some websites with great guides on content writing to help get you started:
http://hub.uberflip.com/h/c/1002-uberflip-blog
https://library.hubspot.com/content-creation
The final thought...
Something is ALWAYS better than nothing. Well, in most cases. You don't have to go all out on the content marketing, just dip a toe with one or two medias and see what the reaction is. Maybe start with a few informative emails and then move on to a blog, perhaps get stuck in with social media and then focus on your website articles. But whatever you do stick at it. If you start it, continue. A high equity brand or a well trusted business doesn't happen overnight, sit tight and the rewards will come.
For information on how the ClubWise solution can help you to share your content with your members and prospects just get in touch with our friendly team