Why content marketing? Because it helps you define your business

When we founded 5:15 media, we were approached by an old colleague who a few years earlier had started a soap and bath salts business. Her story was not unlike those of many other entrepreneurs. Her business began as a hobby and grew at the moment she recognized that she could turn a profit on it.

She launched a website, invested in more materials, and started selling her product at the local farmers markets. Business was looking good. After all, at launch any new business is more than you had the day before, right?

A couple of years later, this small business owner was hitting a plateau. She decided to revamp her site and expand her product line. That's about the time she dropped us a line.

"So I hear you guys are doing marketing. What can you do for me?"

We offered her the content marketing credo: Share your passion with people and focus on growing an audience — not just a customer list. We suggested she blog about her soaps and the farm from where she purchased the milk she used, and offer beauty tips centered on organic, made-from-scratch products, like the ones she sold!

She wasn't convinced. "And then I'll sit back and watch the orders come flying in, right?"  

“Content marketing helps businesses:
1. Define why they love providing their products or services.
2. Define their ideal customer or client.
3. Define the best way to bring 1 and 2 together.”

It's true, content marketing isn't for everyone. It takes patience and consistency and above all it takes some hardcore soul-searching. Deciding what it is you want to say about your business means deciding first and foremost what your business is all about.

If you can't be bothered producing content about what you're passionate about, then perhaps you're not passionate enough.

That's probably not the case. Odds are, you're probably not focusing on what you should be, or focusing on too much. Perhaps you haven't best defined your ideal customer or client. Or, on an even larger level, perhaps your business is suffering from an unclear mission. 

So try this. 

Imagine writing or producing half a dozen pieces of content right now. Come up with the headlines. What do they say?

Content marketing isn't just about populating a blog page and satisfying some SEO formula. It's about defining your business. It's about taking a good look not at what you do, but why you do it. And then it's about doing it even better tomorrow.