With an increasing number of consumers turning to the internet for answers, marketers are spending more time and money on content creation to meet demand. But with so much content freely accessible online, generic content is no longer appealing to the average consumer.
People don’t just want answers – they want specific, informative content that speaks directly to them. This is why custom content is now key to successful online marketing. It’s important not only for customer retention, but also for lead nurturing.
What Exactly is Custom Content?
Both custom content and content marketing rely on unique and valuable content to build customer relationships. But there’s a fundamental difference: Custom content is mainly aimed at existing customers, whereas content marketing is aimed at customers at every stage of the sales cycle and is geared toward improving search engine rankings. Custom content is specifically created to inform and engage your current audience, in a unique brand voice, and it appears nowhere else online.
The goal of custom content is to:
- Reinforce a brand’s image.
- Position a business as an industry expert.
- Set a business apart from the competition.
- Communicate the value of business products and services.
- Create a strong following of loyal customers.
Custom content is more focused on retaining customers, as opposed to attracting new ones. It can take the form of blog posts, social media posts, email newsletters, white papers, industry reports, videos, webinars, and more.
However, there is some overlap between custom content and content marketing – when custom content is distributed to the right channels, it still has the power to attract new customers.
[bctt tweet=”However, there is some overlap between custom content and content marketing – when custom content is distributed to the right channels, it still has the power to attract new customers.” username=”constantcontent”]
Many companies still rely on reposting content from other sites or buying generic, industry-related social media updates to post online. While this may seem like a simple solution, it doesn’t help any brand stand out online and won’t win over many new customers in the long run.
Benefits of Custom Content
According to the Custom Content Council, 61 percent of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content. Here are some of the main benefits of adding custom content to your marketing strategy:
It Benefits Search Rankings
Google and other search engines value custom content. It tells them what your business does and what you know. Delivering a regular stream of custom content to your audience shows that you care about giving users the information they want, which is part of Google’s philosophy.
Customers Are Already Looking for Help
When you create content specifically related to your products and services, you can reach existing customers who are searching online for helpful content. By answering popular questions around your niche industry, you’re more likely to drive relevant web traffic and build customer trust, which can have a direct impact on conversion rates.
Tip: Create an FAQ page or an in-depth guide on your website that answers product-specific queries.
It Builds Your Credibility
While sharing other people’s content may be helpful to your customer, it won’t build you own reputation. Every time you publish custom content around a certain topic, you increase your authority within your industry. It takes time and commitment to do this, but customers value original, helpful content, and are more likely to do business with brands they trust.
It Increases Brand Loyalty
Return customers tend to buy more from a company over time, so it’s crucial to cater to this audience. According to Bain and Company, a five percent increase in customer retention can increase profits by more than 25 percent.
[bctt tweet=”a five percent increase in customer retention can increase profits by more than 25 percent.” username=”constantcontent”]
Tip: Give customers content that helps them achieve better results with your products or services.
Brands that regularly publish uniquely interesting, educational, and entertaining content on social media channels are more likely to receive more followers. Followers are more likely to share high-quality content, and this should ultimately lead to more website visits, leads, and customers.
It Shows Your Uniqueness
Custom content gives you the opportunity to show your unique personality, which helps to build emotional connections with customers. What makes you different from the competition? Whether it’s your writing style, font choices, or the images you use, try to show your uniqueness. Your individuality is another selling point and you’re more likely to get noticed online.
How to Create Custom Content for Your Business
Know Your Customer
Before you can create outstanding custom content, you need to understand why your audience chose to engage with your business in the first place, what they like about your brand, and what it is that they like about your offers. Some further questions to answer include:
- Where do they live?
- How old are they?
- Where do they spend time online?
- What are their key challenges going forward?
- What do they already like about your content?
You can find out some of this information from sales information, if they buy from you. You can also get some insights from their social media profile, if you’re connected on social media. Otherwise, talk to your customers or send out brief email surveys. Once you know what makes your customers tick, you’re ready to better define your target audience. From here, you can develop a customer persona to inform future custom content.
Research Customer-Focused Keywords
Catering to your existing customers is important, but potential customers can also be reached when you use the right keywords in your custom content. To attract more new leads and get your content ranking higher in search engine results pages, learn more from our blog post on keyword optimization.
Create Customer-Focused Content
Using the right keywords is important from an SEO perspective, but creating useful, easy-to-read content for your customers should be your main priority. If your content isn’t user-friendly, it won’t score as highly according to the latest search engine algorithms.
Here’s a quick 10-point checklist for making sure your content reaches and engages more customers:
- Are you addressing the needs of your target audience?
- Are you using content formats that your customers prefer?
- Have you addressed your customers’ FAQs?
- Is your content easy to read and does it flow logically?
- Do you link to other internal and external sources to support the topic?
- Does your content use language that customers will easily understand?
- Is your brand’s voice clear and unique?
- Does each piece of content include a clear call-to-action?
- Have you included images and graphics to boost comprehension?
- Is your content optimized for search engines?
Final Words
As online competition continues to grow, the need to differentiate your business from the competition is greater than ever before. This is why custom content has become a key ingredient to most successful content marketing strategies.
Custom content helps to define your brand, ensures you retain your best customers, and will naturally reach new customers. In the process, the same content builds your authority with search engines.
Are you creating custom content?
By now you can see the value of creating your own custom content and hopefully this guide will help you win over more customers. But we know it’s not easy to create a consistent stream of quality content to meet customer demand. If you need an experienced content agency to handle your content marketing needs, we’re here to help.
Many businesses already hire freelance writers at Constant Content because it actually saves time and money in the long run. When you buy custom content, you own it forever and can use it wherever you want – on your website, in email campaigns, or on your social media channels. We can set you up with experienced writers who will create custom content to suit your own specific needs.