Your Brand Is At A Crossroads. If that sounds dramatic, good. Because it’s very likely that’s where your brand is right now. No matter what your business—whether you’re a new company or an industry leader; whether you’re B2B or B2C—chances are you are at a pivotal turning point. What you do at this crossroads, the path you ultimately take, could mean the difference between being a ho-hum, mediocre brand….or a brand that will realize unprecedented growth and success.
Today, communicating with your customers, and engaging them dynamically at a deeper level, boils down to how well you are telling your story. Your “story”—that unique, value-driven promise you make to your customers and prospects—lives and dies on your ability to push that message out strategically, via multiple social, viral, interactive touch points, in what is now ubiquitously referred to as Content Marketing.
It’s a very big deal. Brands of every shape and size will succeed or fail on their ability to effectively engage their respective audiences across multiple channels. Nothing is more important. It is the very linchpin affecting everything you do, or don’t do, moving forward. And it’s all about customer-facing positioning (emphasis on customers, not on how great you think your brand is). What is it your customers need? What are they asking for? What is their pain point? What is their frustration? What is it they crave? Locating and identifying the answers to these questions in relation to what your brand offers is the golden key. Again, the focus must be on the customer, and providing them with relevant, useful content that they can use.
Google has gone to great lengths recently to make this clear. Those brands that comply will be rewarded. Those that try to “play the system” or conjure up clever tactics to trick search engines, will be punished. It’s your brand’s genuine understanding of the customer, and your ability to effectively “speak to their needs,” that will determine success. If you have the right message but don’t effectively deliver it to customers and prospects—if they don’t “see it, hear it, feel it, taste it” in the right way through the right channels—then you are doomed. Plain and simple.
However, if you get it right, if you absolutely nail your compelling story in relation to customer needs, you have won half the battle. The next part of the battle—the second half, if you will—hinges on an aggressive Content Marketing Strategy to hit your customers between the eyes…to cold-cock them with a clear, pinpointed message that wakes them to this single solitary fact: “Your brand has what I need.” It’s that Eureka moment in the customer’s head, and it’s your story that will persuade them, or not.