Content Marketing: An easier, softer way to snag clients

Six months ago I hadn't heard the term 'content marketing,' but I liked it immediately. So much so, I put it in the tag line of this blog when I redesigned it: How to Use Content Marketing to Attract, Sell and Profit Online.

Most people I talk to guess that content marketing means writing, publishing, and distributing content that ultimately sells your services or products.

Joe Pulizzi, of Junta42 blog, defines it like this:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Understandably, you may not be clear what that really means or how important it is for your business yet. Quite frankly, I'm not sure anybody can really tell you what that specifically means for you. You might have to do some serious thinking...like, for example:

• What is relevant and valuable to your customers?
• What will engage them?
• How do you attract them and get them to stay long enough to read your messages?
• What is your message?
• Once you have attracted them, how do you get them to take action?
• How do you get them to actually buy something?
• What's the best way to deliver your message?

In the next few weeks we'll explore the answers to some of these questions. How can you use content to gain readers' and potential clients' attention?

We used to say "That's the $64,000 question." I guess it would be in the millions today...