On today’s business world, curating and sharing quality content is crucial in terms of attracting, engaging and retaining an audience. This is done by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts among other media. Why is this important? By creating customer-focused content, businesses are put in front of the ‘right people,’ those who are most likely to be interested in the services or products they sell. Norryn Gloria Busingye, the founder of Kontent Kitchen, a content marketing agency that helps business owners and entrepreneurs to give more visibility to their businesses, says content is king in today’s market. She observes that though some business owners didn’t want to believe this some time back, with the current times, people are tired of salesy information about businesses. I think those times have gone. It’s not enough to describe your product features and expect people to rush and buy from you. People now prefer to buy from businesses that care about their needs and work to solve them. With content development, it becomes easy because you can develop content that exclusively relates with what your customers are going through. It helps each business to stand out with its unique value they intend to provide to their customers. And in turn, customers can willingly make a decision to buy. Her company’s model is based on major concepts such as; educating customers- informing them about the benefits that await them, and engaging them through entertaining content. It highlights the concept that as a business owner, whenever you give value to your customers and audience, you ease their decision-making process to not only make their first-time purchase from you but also become returning customers. You help them see their value for money. So based on that concept, her team takes time to understand customers’ business goals, target audience along with their pain points. “We then create customised content that offers a solution that only addresses the audience’s problems. Our content starts with a goal in mind so that when potential customers see it, they don’t have to wonder what their next step is,” she says. Challenges Many people have not grasped the concept of content marketing and Busingye says one of the biggest challenges is a rigid mindset, for most are still stuck with the traditional marketing. Instead of focusing on putting out their business content in front of the right people, they are still targeting everyone. So, changing their minds to scale their audience down to smaller units that they can actually learn more about is still a challenge, she says. The entrepreneur also perceives that for a business starting out, it’s not easy to build the right team. “Yes, there are people who can do the work, but many choose to do it the easy way and then lose the purpose along the way. Content marketing requires time, effort and resilience. Motivating a team to work with you and walk the talk is sometimes a challenge.” The other issue is setting prices. Everyone thinks they can do the job themselves since it’s a matter of ‘designing something and putting together some words’. But that’s not it. You literally have to step into the business owner’s and customer’s mind and create something that will help both achieve their goals. While we try to make it a familiar concept to all, it’s still tricky to set prices that will not chase prospective customers away, she says. Lessons In her opinion, being passionate about the purpose of the company is crucial. One has to define and redefine their ‘why-’ being the main reason they are doing what they do. Even though making money is the sole reason anyone starts a ‘for-profit’ company, running a content development company takes more than that, she says. There will be challenges like any other business but it’s your purpose that keeps you moving when you hit a rock. You must also know your customers by heart. Who they are, what they do, where to find them, what they are looking for, and how to make your content easy for them to access and absorb, she adds. “It also requires resilience with willingness to learn and relearn. It’s an industry that keeps revolving yet not everyone has mastered how it works. Keeping up with it requires one to keep their head in the game. You must keep testing, analysing, and ready to change what’s not working and replace it with what does. One approach that works with Client X may not necessarily be successful with Client Y.” On the side of the agency, Busingye says it’s important to educate or create awareness about the content marketing concept to business owners on a regular basis. Once they understand what it means, what you need along the way, and what may trigger its failure, then they will support the agency to ensure consistency.
