Content is king!

If you want to stand out from your competitors – especially in the recycling and waste management, cleaning or FM sectors – you need to ensure that content marketing is a major component of your communications strategy. So what is this technique, and how can you use it to make your mark in these emerging and evolving industries?

In layman’s terms it means providing authoritative, well-researched information to feed potential clients that are hungry for it! New legislation, regulations and technologies are all helping to shape the development of these sectors – and if your company can take the lead by being the ‘go to’ source for knowledge, advice and data, it will help you attract more customers. The official definition, from The Content Marketing Institute, is: ‘A marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.’

Content marketing is a way of promoting your company without being ‘overt’. Instead of pitching your products and services, the emphasis is on providing information and content that will educate and inform the target market you are trying to reach. This is something that CBI has been doing for several years as part of its PR work for clients. We have become known as the experts in providing ‘thought leadership’ content tailored to each individual customer and target market. This can be adapted for use in many different ways – from feature-length articles in leading trade magazines, to blogs, white papers, tweets, video content, and more.

When it comes to devising and managing a successful content marketing campaign, the following steps need to be included:

• Background research – establishing objectives, target audiences, communications channels, sectors /countries, budgets, available resources, and how content marketing can enhance and work with your current marketing activity
• Create a content marketing plan – including monthly schedule of content to be produced and how it will be used
• Produce the content – this would need to be on an on-going basis, and could take the form of written, spoken or visual content, presented in different ways across different media
• Distribute the content – ensure regular uploading/posting is completed in a timely manner
• Monitoring and evaluation – using measurement tools to assess the success of messages and methods, and directly responding to enquiries if necessary; with regular campaign reports to ensure goals are being achieved

CBI PR can support you with your content marketing campaign every step of the way – from planning and drafting the content itself, through to fully managing the distribution and evaluation. To find out more call us on 01825 714329 or email info@cbipr.com