Why Content is King: Q&A with Ian Cleary of the Content Marketing Mastery Summit

Two of the world leading social media and content marketing professionals, Ian Cleary and Mark Schaefer, have joined forces to run the Content Marketing Mastery Summit in Dublin on May 31st. Here, Ian talks to InBUSINESS about why content is king in business.

For those not familiar with the term, what exactly is content marketing?

Content marketing is about using content to effectively market your business. You create content that is relevant at various stages of your sales funnel with the goal of progressing your potential customer along that funnel.

For example, you create a piece of content that compares your product with a competitor’s product. When someone searches on Google they may come across your article. You now have the ability to capture the details of this visitor so you can continue to market to them.

What can a business stand to gain from developing an effective content strategy?

With the right content you will build an audience for your products and services. If you have a relevant audience you can sell your products and services to them.

What would be your top tips on how to convert a piece of content into a sale?

You always need to be thinking about how you advance a visitor to the next part of your sales funnel. For example, if someone reads a blog post you need to convince them to sign up as an email subscriber. You can then build the relationship over email and ultimately sell your product or service.

You also need to provide the opportunity for someone that wants to go on to the ‘fast track’. For example, you might have a series of emails that goes out to potential clients which concludes with a sales email. But what happens if someone is ready to buy now? Make sure there is a faster route to the sale also.

One of the most important things to do is to map out your sales funnel. This is just a series of boxes on a screen that shows the potential path a visitor goes through before buying a product. This will help you understand and cater for the different paths that a person can take.

What would you say to businesses that don’t have the resources to generate regular and meaningful content?

You need to market your business and content is an extremely cost effective way of doing that. If you don’t have a lot of time, focus on delivering one amazing piece of content once a month. It’s quality over quantity.

What can attendees expect from the Content Marketing Mastery Summit taking place in Dublin on May 31st?

A very educational, thought provoking and challenging day. Mark and I will take everyone through a process from building a strategy for content all the way through to generating the sale. I have not seen another one-day event like this anywhere.

Mark will focus more on the strategic side to content marketing and I will focus more on the implementation.

It will be a thoroughly enjoyable and interactive day and any questions you may have on how to generate money from content will be answered on the day.

We have purposely limited tickets to 100 people so that we can have more interaction on the day.

For more details see www.contentmasterysummit.com