3 Keys to Content Marketing for Consumer Goods

As a consumer goods company, you have lots of useful information about your industry that your customers would love to know.

Engaging blog posts, e-books and white pages, and social media updates about high-interest consumer topics allow you to share your expertise and earn consumers’ gratitude and loyalty, even before they make a purchase.

Here are three tips on how you really connect with consumers through high-quality content:

Use blogs to inform and engage

Blog posts are 400- to 650-word articles that provide tips, comment on trends, or cover hot-button consumer topics. To draw customers to your website and keep them coming back, you must consistently produce high-quality blog posts that address high-interest topics. 

Brands take different approaches to blogs. For example, the outdoor clothing company Patagonia hosts a blog that enables its employees and customers to publish posts about their adventures and concerns, while S.C. Johnson & Son produces a blog aimed at families. 

For blog posts, it’s important to identify your target audience and find topics that will appeal to it. 

Show off your expertise

Once you’ve attracted a consumer to your website, you want to stay in touch. That’s where long-form content like white papers and e-books come in. White papers and e-books are two of the best ways to generate new leads. Because readers perceive these publications as high-value products, they usually willing to provide their contact information in exchange for downloading the PDF.

White papers and e-books allow you to inform your customer about topics that are too complex to cover in shorter formats like blog posts. For example, Kraft offers an e-book (PDF) to share information and recipes with diabetics. And General Electric produced a white paper explaining how lighting affects sleep (PDF). 

Materials like these allow you to position your brand as an authority on important consumer topics by providing detailed, valuable information that establishes your expertise, builds your credibility, and fosters trust between your brand and your customers.

Connect with your customers

By consistently sharing high-quality content specifically crafted for your audience on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, you can keep your brand at the top of your customers’ minds. 

If you don’t have the resources to be everywhere at once, one strategy is to choose just one social channel to promote your products. Once you’ve found the best social network to target your audience, focus your energy and investment on that site. You’re more likely to see a strong ROI with a concentrated strategy than with half-hearted efforts across multiple networks.

What’s the key to social media success? Creative content that positions your product in ways that appeal to your demographic and that fit the social media channel you’re focused on. Ziploc’s resealable bags, for instance, are a basic commodity, but by photographing clever uses for everyday baggies, the brand is killing it (in a good way) on Pinterest. 

Another household staple, Lysol, chose Facebook as the best platform to reach moms with an ad campaign launching a new cleaner. The result? Three months of posting on Facebook was three times more effective than TV advertising and gave Lysol’s new product an 7-point increase in purchase consideration.

As Ziploc and Lysol have demonstrated, social media engagement isn’t always about spreading yourself thin and wide. It can be about finding the right platform and diving in deep.

Sustaining an effective content marketing effort presents two major challenges. You must produce a steady stream of fresh and relevant written content, and you must also produce high-quality content that keeps them engaged. Good writing makes the difference between connecting with your audiences and having them ignore you.

If these challenges seem overwhelming, don’t worry — we can help. Our team of professional writers can create high-quality custom content that will help you connect with your target audiences. From blog posts to social media and beyond, Prose Media is the answer. Sign up now to access our free, no-obligation platform. We would love to see what’s on your mind.