Many mortgage companies and companies that provide various services to the mortgage industry are clearly embracing the value of content marketing. Some are doing a fantastic job while others still struggle with how to do it well in order to obtain the maximum benefit. These benefits are very real. They include:
- Conveying your brand to your target audience
- Generating link popularity and authority for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes
- Expert positioning of your company in the competitive landscape
- Driving new prospects to your website to learn more about you
- Establishing a following of both business referrers and new business prospects that stay connected to your brand
- Much less expensive than paid advertising
Although many companies have content (blogs, videos, podcasts and whitepapers) and distribute that content on various social venues, the results from a lead generation standpoint are lackluster.
Here are 6 keys to ensuring that your content is relevant to your target audience:
“1. What’s the primary brand objective for this content? How will successful discovery and consumption of this information move the reader along in the sales funnel?
2. Who is the audience? What problem does this content help them solve? How does this content help them break free of the status quo?
3. What will be used as the hero? How will readers see themselves in the content and how will it empathize with their situation and goals?
4. What is the unique selling proposition in the content? What’s different or more valuable than others? How is that story being told?
5. What’s the primary offer? Secondary offer? What other actions are available to support all interest levels?
6. After the reader takes action (share, subscribe, register, download, inquiry), what happens next? How will you nurture communications for the reader to become a buyer, a customer and a referral to others?” Lee Odden TopRank Online Marketing
The whole purpose of leveraging a content marketing strategy is to attract prospects and move them through the sales funnel. In order to accomplish that, it must be relevant. Accordingly, it’s important to make sure that your focus is always on the quality of your content, not the quantity. There’s a lot of information out there about the value of content to establish a higher search engine ranking, but that ranking is determined by content value (how many people read it, distribute it, etc.) which is what people are missing if they are just pushing out content without their heart and minds being into it.
