Top goals for content marketing success

There isn’t a tire business owner out there who isn’t looking for a way to gain competitive advantage and drive more business to their stores. Content marketing is one way to achieve that, especially if you use it to demonstrate your authority and expertise. It’s a fantastic way to connect with your local community and foster customer loyalty.

As with most marketing programs, it can be difficult to know whether your investment is working. How can you tell if the money you’re spending on content production is going to good use? Savvy business owners know metrics like website traffic and clicks can be deceiving. But there is a way to improve your chances of moving your marketing investment into a long-term business asset – set the right goals.

If you’re embarking on a content marketing initiative, you need to focus on two things:

1. Unlike other mediums, content marketing lets you develop an audience of people who trust your content and look to you for expertise in a certain area. These are highly targeted groups who either are customers or will one day become customers. Your audience is stored in a mechanism you own and can manage, like an email database, a CRM, a mailing list or even on an Excel spreadsheet.

Too many business owners fall into the trap of building networks on software and tools they can’t control. If you were an early adopter of Facebook marketing, you know exactly what I’m talking about. What worked 2 years ago doesn’t work now and the changes are never in favor of the business owner. The same is true of Google, Bing or Yahoo search marketing. It costs more to get the same results and the bar is continually being raised.

But what if you had a large database of interested customers who were happy to receive news from your business, updates about tire products and education about being safe on the road or how to get the best deal on tires? If you had an audience, you wouldn’t have to rely on the “pay to play” model of marketing.

2. When done with strategic purpose, content marketing allows you to create assets for your business that last much longer than traditional advertising or marketing. These assets take the form of things like a company blog, a podcast, a video series or a print magazine, to name a few. These assets can be reused, recycled or repurposed over time to extend the life of your marketing investment.

Think about it this way. One timely blog post or article on your website can continue to attract readers for weeks, months or even years after you first publish it. If you spent the same amount of money on advertising, your investment evaporates the minute the newspaper is thrown away, the radio ad finishes or the TV media buy runs out. Why not create marketing assets you own and can reuse?

If you want to know more about content marketing and how you can begin to build assets for your tire business, look me up at the SEMA show in Las Vegas. Visit the Traction News booth 42296 in South Hall or email me at sarah@tractionnews.com. I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

Tagged: audience

Top goals for content marketing success