"Consulting Column as Your Educating Content"

Today, your audiences or consumers live in an age of information abundance. They're more inundated by marketing messages than ever. ( Marketo, 2014)

As a result, publishing companies or other companies who put content marketing as their strategic marketing approach are challenged by attention scarcity -- the concept that the more messages your audience is forced to filter out, the harder they become to reach. They are challenged to produce and develop good or even great contents that attracts and retain their audiences or consumers.

Great content educates, inspires, and entertains. Great content elevates your brand above those thousands of marketing messages, and becomes the fuel for engagement with your audiences or consumers. (Marketo, 2014)

Great content is the marketing of attraction. It's about being there when consumers need you and seek you out with relevant, educational, helpful, compelling, engaging, and sometimes entertaining information. It's about engaging consumers with the stuff they really want, in a way that serves your brand's purposes and ideals. (Rebecca Lieb, author of Content Marketing "Think Like a Publisher -- How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media")

85% consumers trust solution that use ads and sponsored content to share information or help address a need. Nothing builds trusts and engagement like content that solves problems -- both large and small.  (Marketo, 2014)

There are many ways for companies in order to publish a great contents. One of them is a marketing consulting column or page on your content publication. A marketing consulting column or page will be a nice-to-have and be a great content to serve up to your audiences or consumers.

Why? 

Because they are educating and inspiring through the consultation they give. For example, it will help your audiences or consumers to develop a marketing plan for their businesses; or it helps them to better grow their businesses through marketing tips and tricks; and so forth.

A consulting column or page will give the brands benefits in a variety of ways :

a.  It creates preference for your brand.
If our recipients regularly read the contents which we provide, then in their eyes we are the experts and innovators of the industry. This is often decisive when it comes to a purchasing decision.

Educating and inspiring content creates preference. It makes you a trusted source of information and education and strengthened the relationship whenever your content educates, inspires, or helps your audiences or consumers.

b.  It attracts more readers or consumers
Interest does not mean already a potential purchase, but one person who voluntarily subscribes to the company blog is a more valuable lead than a hundred recipients of emailing. The reach achieved by whisper marketing is an extra gain. People who frequently take part in webinars that we organize, will sooner or later tell their friends about it.

When your audiences or consumers find that the consulting column or page is meaningful to them, they will most likely share and spread it to their networks, and eventually influence others to read and share the content again. One today is worth two tomorrow.

c.  It drives traffic to your content hub.
Good content that is educating, inspiring, and also entertaining attracts more audiences. More audiences means good traffic for your content hub. Good traffic will invite advertisers to put their ads on your hub. It would a good monetization model for brands who relies their revenue from advertising.

d.  It builds engagement.
A customer interested in the given subject is an engaged customer. Logically, any person reached by content marketing must be interested in the subject which the content relates to. Consulting page holds two-way communications between the consultant with the audience. And this will bring engagement between them. And engagement will build deeper relationships between your brand and your audiences or consumers.

Good relationships will build value for your brand by converting new customers into loyal and devoted customers. If brand stewards understand what underpins the attitudes of a brand's most loyal customers --- those who are truly "bonded" to the brand --- they may be able to identify opportunities to convert other consumers to this profitable position.

EDUCATE FIRST, SELL SECOND
Create content that is meant to help your customers, not sell to them. When you freely give your audience something so valuable that they'd be willing to pay for it, you build trust -- which, ultimately, is your most powerful selling tool.

I believe that if you focus your marketing on building relationships with your audience and making their lives easier and better, the rest will follow. After the relationship is built and is strengthened, you earn trust from your audiences, and you might be able to sell and likely they will pay for the trust they already put on your brand.

Strong brand influences customer choice and creates loyalty; attracts, acquires, and retains; motivates, educates and inspires customers. Trust matters. People love to engage with a brand that they trust. A brand that makes their life easier and better. A brand that is unique, distinctive, engaging, and meaningful.

After reading the facts above, I believe that you understand how consulting column would give valuable benefits for your publication and/or brand. A benefit that will give added values for your readers and bring the values back to your business.