The traditional method of marketing through campaigns and product promotion are becoming less influential to consumers buying behaviour. Michael Brenner on B2B Marketing Insider blog suggests content marketing will be crucial for effective marketing strategies at lower costs.
Content marketing is the collection of speakers from both consumers and employees of the company. These individuals could create blogs to represent the company by telling stories to engage the audience. The article content could speak directly to a targeted audience by sharing, informing and educating them on useful information. Marketing should become more customer-centric which focuses on analyzing customer’s behavior, rather than product-centric that focuses on the features of the product. Customer-centric methods provides greater opportunities to have a clear and concise targeted consumer that contains the possibilities to build loyalty programs, trust and develop offers tailored to each customer, which ultimately influences the sales of the company.
Canadian consumers are changing the way their purchase decisions are made. Andres Markwart on Vancitybuzz states that almost 50% of consumers would conduct an online search before purchasing, and 75% would be influenced by online ratings and reviews. The ease of accessibility to online content has made consumers to turn towards other consumers prior to making a purchase than towards a sales associate/expert of the product. The internet and the mobile devices are great tools for companies to develop user-friendly mobile applications, websites and write short daily articles that shares useful information, which will all lead to value-added experiences for the potential consumers.
To illustrate, Yyoga has differentiated themselves from many other yoga studios with their user-friendly, simple yet has many practical functions on their mobile website. Users could easily check schedules for locations, make reservations, purchase memberships and read their weekly blogs posts. All of these functions allow customers to be fully informed of the products and services offered and there are no hidden surprises that customers would face. The blog posts does not directly sell you their products, but they provide ideas and guidance to building confidence in your yoga practice, as well as how you can make your daily life a bit more balanced. The presence of Yyoga creates through their websites and mobile platforms, has created a large value to customers and the business itself; not only in terms of sales and profits, but also the community that motivates individuals through yoga challenges (30-day Challenge) and guides them on how to feel and think positively about themselves.