An Instructive Content Marketing Example

TweetContent marketing can be a difficult concept to grasp — this post will give you a real Content Marketing example to analyze and apply to your own business.

For those needing a quick definition, Content marketing is the creation of relevant, valuable and usually free information for your existing customers and prospects with the intent of increasing sales of your products and services.

Read this example of a content marketing strategy in action carefully –

Content Marketing Example – Personal Trainer

Shelly has a website, a pair of tennis shoes and a ton of experience in the fitness and nutrition field.    Today, that is all Shelly needs to have a successful business.

Oh, I forgot one key ingredient — Shelly is passionate about diet and exercise.

Shelly reads my free report — Tiny Business, Mighty Profits and gets busy marketing her business.  The story is below:

Shelly puts a website and blog on www.ShellyIsTheBestPersonalTrainerInTheWholeWideWorld.com — and she puts the website on the free WordPress.org software platform.  This way she can add articles, video, audio and images to her website without having to hire a professional programmer.

Shelly has just had her second baby and knows that “New Mothers” are a good target market for personal training.  And she is very familiar with the needs of this market, being a new mother herself.

Shelly loves being a mommy too.

Shelly begins to write 3 articles per week on her blog such as:

• “6 Proven Exercises That Will Lose That New Mommy Tummy”
• “Recipe: An Easy, Delicious and Power Packed Smoothie For Mom”
• “5 Saint Louis Parks To Get An Exhilarating Stroller Walk”

Shelly also creates a downloadable PDF file called “A Mommies Guide To Saint Louis Eateries” — this is a 12 page document full of Saint Louis restaurants that serve healthy food and are child friendly.  She offers this downloadable PDF to anyone that gives her their email address and signs up for her monthly newsletter.

Shelly puts out a Top 10 list each month as her monthly newsletter and emails it to her list.  She comes up with Top 10 lists like:

• “Top 10 Ways to Get Your Heart Pumping While Doing Chores at Home”
• “Top 10 Ingredients to Avoid at the Salad Bar”
• “Top 10 Ways to Blast Those Abs”
  
• “Top 10 Breast Milk Fortifying Foods”

New moms love Shelly.  She is very helpful.

Shelly starts using sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to communicate with her existing contacts and generate more interest in the AWESOME content that she is creating.

Shelly is starting to attract a Tribe –  a group of people that think of her as an expert in diet and fitness for new mothers.

She knows her stuff.

Some of these members of Shelly’s “Tribe” hire her to put together custom diet plans, work-out plans or in-home fitness coaching.  Others refer business to Shelly through their own networks — remember that there are only 6 degrees of separation between anyone and Kevin Bacon.

Other members of Shelly’s Tribe never give her any money or refer her any business but they add comments to her interactive website (built on WordPress remember), communicate with her on Twitter/Facebook and they enrich the experience for everyone else.

Shelly continues this Content Marketing strategy for one year at the end of which she cannot believe the amount of “buzz” that has been created around her tiny business.  She has created a small community of loyal followers that spread her message and bring her business.

And it is all possible because Shelly loves what she does, is knowledgeable about it and is willing to help others by creating valuable content on a consistent basis.

Your turn — apply this to your life — how could you create a group of loyal fans that are bringing you business and allowing you to spend your time doing what you are most passionate about?

photo by drjimiglide