How Content Marketing Builds Brand Loyalty
Creators and founders often feel that customer loyalty should be a straightforward concept: I make a great product. The moment you learn about it, you will perceive its greatness. When you purchase my product, you will understand its greatness and continue to purchase it forever.
That phrasing probably sounds a bit ridiculous. But operating, even unconsciously, with this mindset, is a real obstacle in achieving actual brand loyalty.
Loyalty, like respect, is earned, not given.
The best tool you have to increase brand awareness and build brand loyalty? Content marketing.
How does content marketing develop brand awareness?
The true purpose of content marketing is not to make “stuff” (i.e., blog posts) for the sake of making “stuff.” Content marketing educates, informs, or entertains viewers in ways that are relevant to both their interests and your goals.
Brand awareness at its most basic makes potential customers aware that your brand and product exist in the world. Putting up a website does not mean anyone will find it, and it doesn’t guarantee that those who do are in your target audience.
Because 59% of customers prefer to buy from brands they already know about, brand awareness is a crucial step in building brand loyalty. You can’t have loyalty without having customers first!
How to build brand awareness with content
There are a million brand awareness strategies and campaigns you can undertake, but there are some basics you must sort out first. The good news is, sorting these out will be a great foundation for you to create an impactful content marketing strategy.
1. Understand why you exist
Understanding why your brand exists is more than just “know your audience”; it’s understanding why your brand exists in the market, who needs it, and how you solve their problems.
Your company doesn’t exist because you shorten code testing times. Your company exists because teams are losing productivity waiting hours for tests to run, and you can help them build higher quality code in a shorter amount of time.
Meet your audience where they are, not where you want them to be. Tell them that you understand what they’re going through and why they need what you are offering.
2. Make people care
When you know how you solve your customers’ problems, you can create content that speaks to the value your product provides. “Repository of open-source code” is not a value, it’s a feature. People don’t care about features when they’re just learning you exist. Reorient that feature into a value: “Collaborate seamlessly with your dev team to improve your code.”
This also gives you a much more detailed, helpful jumping off point for content:
Case studies about dev teams who collaborated better and gained efficiencies
Detailed articles that discuss common pitfalls you solve for
Opinion pieces on why your way is a step forward not just for your specific product, but for the industries you serve
Communicating your value opens up a world of content that gets people interested in a far more organic, meaningful way than “brand awareness campaigns” that run on social media ads.
3. Create in a way that gets you found
Your audience still doesn’t know you exist; how are you going to reach them? Content. That means you need a solid SEO strategy first. While social media is important, search engines allow you to target specific organic audiences with just a bit of keyword research and some strategic articles. This is a critical part of any B2B brand awareness tactics.
It is not enough to just write about what you want to talk about. You might want to talk about your opinions on how teams approach software testing, but that might not be what your target audience is actually looking for. You can still write that opinion piece, but you shouldn’t expect it to provide much visibility, promote your brand, or build awareness.
Once you have a few pieces of quality content, you can build social conversations around them, but social media is its own piece that, while tied to content marketing, isn’t content marketing itself.
4. Create the right kind of content
Those just learning about your brand likely are not actively interested in which tiers get them which features. When developing brand awareness content, you want to focus on top-of-funnel (TOFU) content. TOFU content generally addresses the topics you cover or questions you field in the earliest stages of sales.
Remember that TOFU/brand awareness content is not about you; it is about your customer and how you solve their pain. The more interested they get in how you can help them, the more they will want to learn specifics about your product, your company, your values, and your processes.
Referral programs are common brand awareness campaigns, and building out this TOFU content can help engage referred leads who are just starting to learn about you.
Your content should get more specific the further down the funnel you go. Middle of the funnel is great for customer case studies, ebooks, in-depth blog posts, checklists, etc. At the bottom of the funnel you can get down and dirty with product comparisons, feature information, and webinars.
5. Define and measure
Just like everything else in business, you can only measure success if you define what success is. Content marketing is no different.
If your goal is boosting brand awareness, what does that look like? Is it an increase in unaided brand recall? Brand recognition? Let’s define these terms.
Brand recognition is the ability of your audience to discern your brand and all its elements, from name and logo to brand personality and tone of voice.
Brand awareness is brand recognition plus the ability to identify what your product or service is and why they would choose you (aka your value).
Brand recall measures how likely people are to remember your brand. In aided brand recall, they are prompted with a clue; unaided, they recall it themselves, no clues.
The most basic way to look at brand awareness is through direct search traffic and search volume data. Keep a pulse on social mentions, and watch your keyword rankings and time spent on page, all of which are indicators people are talking about you and learning about you.
You manage what you measure. If you can’t quantify your success today, you won’t be able to quantify it tomorrow. The sooner you start managing and measuring, the better off you’ll be.
How does content marketing build brand loyalty?
Once you’ve established brand awareness through TOFU content and nurtured leads through the funnel, you’re in a good position. You’ve built trust, provided information, demonstrated proof, and established a connection. Your audience are now customers. Hooray!
Now, the goal becomes to retain them for the long haul. Brand loyalty means people have a strong preference for your brand over other brands, especially competitors.
Content will once again be a pillar of brand loyalty. Why? Because content marketing does not stop at the sale.
Building brand loyalty will include a lot of work with customer service, social media, and other tactics like rewards and referral programs, all of which content can support. But I want to focus on where content can really take the lead on brand loyalty.
Before you get into content, ensure you’ve established a brand personality and voice. Understanding who you are and why you exist will still be important, as your brand voice and personality will be a key part of demonstrating your brand value.
If you want someone to prefer you, you need to give them more than just a great product. They need a way of knowing who you are. If they can enjoy those interactions, even better.
Think about how different Apple sounds and feels from Microsoft. You need to develop that kind of standout personality from your competitors, and content marketing will help you do that.
1. Continue to create useful content that your customers need
This is especially important if your product or service has a steep learning curve, but it is vital to continue to educate your customers even after the sale. Create content that shows them how to do specific things in your product, and be sure that overall, your content addresses all levels of technical savvy.
Don’t leave new customers to figure things out on their own. Walk them through the journey and build a positive experience. Even though they have your product to solve their problems, they’ll now have an entirely different set of problems to solve, which is a huge opportunity for you.
We recommend building great relationships with your best, most enthusiastic customers so you can feature their use of your product in a case study. They’ll provide the social proof your readers need to feel safe buying your product.
2. Keep in touch
The great thing about having customers is you have a built-in email list to share all that useful content with. Build out newsletters or email sequences that share that content regularly.
This reminds customers that you provide ongoing value, and should serve as a communication channel (in addition to help chats, social media, customer service, and more).
3. Harness your data
A fantastic way to provide ongoing value is to create data-driven reports that target your customers’ industry verticals. Think of the information your product or service gathers on its customers. How can you compile that into trends and statistics that your customers would find insightful and helpful?
And even better, releasing these kinds of studies is fantastic for building more brand awareness with new audiences. People searching for just the kind of data you happen to publish will find you, expanding your audience and growing your brand awareness. It’s a beautiful circle of content life.
4. Build a community
Involve your most loyal customers in your community. You could do this with special customer-only video content or invite-only webinars or events. You can even start a podcast or video series where you invite customers to come talk about topics related to the problems you solve.
B2B companies often fall into the trap of thinking their content marketing options are more limited than B2C brands, which simply isn’t true! With enough creativity, forethought, and the right B2B marketers, content marketing can boost both your brand awareness and brand loyalty with high-quality content that will engage your audience for years to come.
