With today’s highly informed consumers, marketers are looking to build long-term relationships with their customers – directly impacting recurring and repeat business. Long term relationship are important to consider when developing a lifecycle marketing for your brand.
This means providing prospects with relevant information based on the stage of the relationship they’ve developed with a company. Getting the right information to the target audience at the right time, allows potential customers to make a more informed purchasing decision.
For example, at the initial lead generation phase, conventional marketers may pitch a smart phone as “the best smart phone money can buy.” Content marketers strive to provide customers with blogs, videos, white papers or case studies that explain the superior features of the smart phone compared others on the market.
The next phase of the lifecycle begins after the purchase. Now the user is looking for content relating to getting the best out of the phone – tips, suggestions, other customer recommendations, a list of must have apps, etc.
The premise behind content marketing is an expectation that customers will reward the brand that provides them with valuable information when they need it. This in turn builds customer loyalty. In fact, marketers now consider content marketing one of the best ways to engage with customers.
A recent survey of 400 B2B marketers reveals that conventional marketing tactics like search marketing are quickly being abandoned in favor of content marketing. For every B2B marketer that engages in conventional print, TV or radio advertising, there are two marketers focused on content marketing instead.
The survey found that content marketing tops the list of strategies adopted by B2B marketers to generate leads and improve brand visibility. In fact, 82 percent of marketers employ content marketing for such purposes. The second most popular method is search engine marketing, which 70 percent of surveyed marketers adopt. Live or real time events take the third place, with 68 percent of marketers employing this method. Just 32 percent of the marketers surveyed say they still rely on conventional print, TV or radio advertising.
