Like other organizations, your business is likely wrestling with a convergence of changes that are upending the familiar tactics you’ve always used to communicate with prospects and customers.

Growing demographic diversity, the adoption of interactive technologies, and evolving media consumption habits have altered how consumers get information and how they perceive branded communication messages.

As you grapple with how to speak effectively with today’s consumers, you’ve likely heard about something called “content marketing.” Maybe you’ve read about it in an article, or perhaps a colleague or consultant has suggested it to you.

So first and foremost, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach – not just haphazardly posting items to your social media feeds. You need a clear sense of what you need to accomplish and how your content is supposed to move you closer to your objectives and digital marketing strategy.

Second, your content must benefit a clearly defined audience. Go beyond demographics here. What are the wants, needs, interests, questions, concerns, and pain points of your prospects? How does your product or service fit into their lives? What expertise do you have that is of use to them? What kind of content could you distribute that would inform, entertain, and engage them in a meaningful way?

Why Content Marketing Matters to Consumers?

Today’s prospects have a strong appetite for good information but more powerful resistance to the so-called “hard sell.” Most of us research products and services online before making a purchase. We study different cars, comparing prices and features, before ever setting foot in a dealership. Even grocery shoppers use mobile phones to compare prices and deals.

People want good content that helps them make good decisions, but they don’t like being sold. Consumers are less responsive to traditional advertising and old-school sales tactics, and this is true for both B2C and B2B customers. According to one study, 70% of consumers prefer to learn about companies through articles instead of advertising.

A Roper Survey of business decision makers found that 80% prefer to get information about a prospective purchase from articles instead of advertising. The same survey found that 70% say content makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company and 60% say content helps them make better buying decisions.

Why Content Marketing Matters to Your Business?

As you can see, effective content can help you build customer relationships while avoiding less effective “hard sell” tactics. It showcases your subject-matter expertise, and gains trust by highlighting important topics that affect your prospects. Well-crafted content can draw traffic to your website and social media accounts, boost your performance on search results pages, and give audiences the opportunity to share your content with their friends.

A recent survey asked 600 marketing professionals what they thought were the most important digital marketing trends for 2015. Content marketing was the number one answer with 29.6% – ahead of other hot topics like big data (14.6%), marketing automation (12.8%), mobile marketing (11.0%), and social media marketing (8.9%).3 Other research found that 63% of companies say posting on social media increased their marketing effectiveness. Companies with blogs attract more inbound links, and blogs on company websites tend to attract more visitors.

How can Sentrita help your business in content marketing?

At Sentrita Labs, we have a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, honest and meaningful content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience —ultimately taking the direction to fulfil the revenue requirements of our clients. We have a very unique take on this area. We believe and naturally endorse more, the whims and fancies of the target market of our clients and not try to lead them into liking our clients. In other words, seemingly enormously challenging, as it may seem, but more interesting and likeable, it is for us to fit our clients’ business in the demands of the target market. We believe that businesses need to change not consumers.