Inbound Marketing Insights

With 60% of marketers creating at least one piece of content each day, it is clear that content is the key to successful marketing. The problem is, when you create content that is boring, this works against you. A few bad pieces of content and customers will opt-out of your SMS or email campaign fast.

There's a balance between content that is good, stuff that is worth sharing, and the amount of time you wait between sharing your content. Customers want value, they want entertainment, and they don't want to be spammed by useless information. While you may understand the importance of great content, how to create this content is another story.

• Viral Content Takes Some Luck: There. We said it. There is an element of luck to creating viral content, and anyone that tells you otherwise is lying. Sometimes it makes no sense why a piece has gone viral, but there are common elements to viral posts that can be infused into your own content. Once you optimize your content to go viral, share at the right time and in the right places, you have a higher chance of creating a viral piece instead of one that falls flat.
• Challenge Your Readers: To create viral content, challenge your readers. You don't want to give them more of the same old information or statistics. Your content should challenge what your customers believe about a topic. For example, you own a HVAC business. Instead of providing tips on how to prepare your air conditioning system for summer, you can write a more challenging title, "Why women make excellent HVAC technicians." Anything out of the norm (most HVAC technicians are men), will spark interest in your readers and challenge them to read on further.
• Make the Content Easy to Consume: If your content is not optimized for use on mobile devices, you are missing out on a wide demographic of potential customers. Beyond optimizing for mobile use, your content should also be visually appealing and written in small increments. People are reading your content in short spurts, and they want your content to be easy to read. An image and a few sentences is all you need to get your message across. People reading content on their smartphones aren't looking for scholarly articles, they want short, fast and easy to consume content.
• Content Marketing is Effective and Affordable: Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads. This means that more of your marketing dollars should be spent on generating excellent content for your customers to consume. You will spend less money and create more potential for your business with some great content writing, than you ever will using traditional marketing methods. If you don't have strong content writers for your business, find them. With the variety of online resources available to find qualified writers, there is no excuse for content that doesn't strike a chord with your readers.
• Use a Variety of Content: To create content that is truly memorable, you have to go outside the box. Use words, pictures, and videos to keep your content from going stale. This effort takes time, energy, and if you aren't an excellent writer, money to hire a writer to get the content perfect for you. While you don't have to create an hour long video to share with your customers, a short ten second bit to get the attention of your customers can do the trick. With all of the new content created each day, finding your niche and getting attention gets harder.

What's Next?

How do you ensure that your customer is getting the best mobile experience possible when interacting with your brand? Make sure to share them with us in the comments below. I would love to read them.

Guest Blog Contributor: Sophorn Chhay is the marketing guy at  Trumpia, the most complete SMS software with mass text messaging, smart targeting and automation. Follow Sophorn on Twitter(@Trumpia), LinkedIn, Facebook.