Digital content is a type of marketing that involves the creation of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that is designed to promote and generate interest and sales of products or services.

Digital Content fits into six necessary qualifications:

1. It engages individuals on their own terms – i.e. talks to individual interests
2. It’s based on interactions buyers have with your brand and is typically mapped to their buying stages/habits
3. It tells an ongoing story, with a consistent narrative that evolves throughout a customer’s journey
4. It’s the right fit for your channel – whether it’s being used on your website, in an email or social
5. It has a clear purpose and clear calls-to-action for your audience to follow
6. It has pre-defined metrics and is designed to be measurable

Key benefits of creating your own digital content

You build brand awareness

Your audience can’t buy from you if they can’t find you – up to 93% of buying cycles start with a search online. Digital Content marketing allows you to build organic awareness. When your content ranks highly on Google or is shared on social networks, that’s free brand awareness.

You create brand preference

Once you’ve established awareness, you then need to develop preference. Engaging content creates preference, and it makes you a trusted source of information. You create preference when your content entertains or helps your buyers.

Hot Tip: People are more likely to buy from companies who they have trusting relationships with. This requires you to create content that people like – even love.

For example, I love the editorial content Net-a-Porter deliver via their Edit online magazine for its thought leadership on style and current trends. I continually browse & share their content & have a strong brand preference to shop their products online over their competitors.

Hot Tip: Take a moment to think about your own brand preferences and what makes you continually shop, follow and engage with them…write them down and list why you have preference for them.

You reach more buyers by being relevant to them

You know how you get random emails from brands you never subscribed to, and you never read them? Well creating your own content and building your own email database will not only be far more cost effective than paying someone else for their email list and hoping that one person you spam opens your email, but it also ensures relevance for your audience.

Customers distrust and dislike marketing that interrupts or intercepts them. Creating your own content facilitates you having a natural conversation with current and potential customers, it is relevant to their interests and behaviours and builds a continuous story over time.

Hot Tip: Creating content that has a natural conversation, is interesting and personalised will enable you to connect with your customers and increase conversion.