Owners of family-focused businesses tend to fall into the trap of thinking that parents will not want to learn anything from them and, instead, just want to buy their products or services. The exact opposite is true. Content for family-focused business growth is where the money is, my friends.
Parents are on a never-ending quest to learn everything they can about raising children, balancing their careers, and holding themselves together in the process. No matter how perfect a parent thinks they are, there’s always a bit of doubt circling inside their brains.
The thing is, many parents don’t think they need help until you give it to them. Most parents want to believe they have everything handled, from shuttling the kids to practice every day to knowing whether their little one needs a visit to the pediatrician or to head straight to the hospital.
In reality, we’re all bundles of nerves waiting for someone to extend a helping hand.
Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash
As a family-focused business owner, you have an opportunity to be that helping hand parents so desperately need. You can connect with families in a much more profound way than just offering them a product.
A Customer Thermometer survey found that 65 percent of respondents felt emotional connections with specific brands and businesses. The most popular reason for those emotional connections? Consumers felt as though those brands and businesses cared about them, their needs, and their wants.
Your family organization app could be one of the handiest things a mom ever comes across, but she probably won’t know that until she tries it. Guess what’s going to persuade her to try it? The fact that she’s built trust in your company and sees you as someone who knows how to help her.
Much of your business’ success boils down to the connections you make with your audience. One of the best ways to build connections is by engaging with your audience. Then, keep them interested in you and your business through helpful content.
There are virtually endless types of content for family-focused business growth that you can include in your content marketing strategy. Infographics and live video are two options. But there’s something about the written word that has a lot of power to engage audiences. Here are three written content forms that you’ll want to focus on to reach parents and families:
#1: Blogging
Why It Works: Regular blogging can build relationships by solving problems and offering helpful advice. Your blog can also act as a conversion tool by bringing awareness to your products and services.
Blogging continues to be the #1 most-used content marketing strategy. That’s because it works. Business owners in just about any industry can benefit from having a thought-leading, helpful, conversational, and updated blog.
A whopping 81 percent of women in the United States trust what they read on blogs. Fewer women trust the information they get from Facebook and Twitter. That gives you an opportunity to cater to the parents who might be considering a product or service like yours via your blog.
A regularly updated blog (i.e., blogging at least once per week) can:
- Increase your SEO power, allowing your website to climb up the search engine rankings
- Make your site more likely to rank for your desired keywords
- Increase readership
- Increase the likelihood that your audience will share your posts
- Give you more social media content to post
- Help you position yourself as a thought leader
#2: Long-Form Content
Why It Works: Long-form content for family-focused business can help you establish yourself as an expert in your industry. This makes your audience more trusting of you and your business. This content can also drive traffic to other areas of your site, your social media channels, or even your product pages.
Long-form content consists of several forms of written content that are much longer and more in-depth than a regular blog post. You can take a blog post topic and expand it into an ultimate guide on that topic to give parents a deeper knowledge of the subject instead of an overview.
Blog topic: 6 Ideas for Helping Your Preschooler Develop a Love for Reading
Long-form topic: The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Your Child the Alphabet, Phonics, and Beginning Sentence Structure
Blog topic: 8 Tips for Fostering a Love for Budgeting In Your Children
Long-form topic: A Parent’s Guide to Teaching Finances and Raising Financially-Savvy Kids
Blog topic: Helping Your Child Through Your Divorce: Helpful Dos and Don’ts
Long-form topic: Navigating Divorce with Your Child: A Resource to Help You and Your Child Overcome Divorce Together
As you can see, you can go into a lot more detail with long-form content than you can with blogs. Long-form content usually is based on an outline that digs deep into anything someone would want to know about that topic. Or, you can use it to create an ultimate, go-to resource that garners more readers and shares than a blog post.
Think of a blog post as a quick-fix for your audience and a way to spark conversation. Long-form content is a way to offer more value to your audience. It’s is your way of saying, “I know what you need; here’s what to do about it.”
Pillar articles and white papers are two incredibly helpful pieces of content for your business.
A pillar article is one that acts like an in-depth guide and links to other shorter blog posts on your website. This content can keep your audience on your website, soaking up the valuable resources you provide. The longer someone browses your website, the more time he or she has to consider purchasing from you instead of clicking away from your page.
A white paper is a downloadable asset, usually in PDF form, that is packed with helpful information for your audience. As a family-focused business, you can relay some incredible information for parents, caregivers, and educators in a white paper, culminating in a brief description of your company and the services or products you offer to help.
Photo by Alexander Dummer on Unsplash
#3: Ebooks
Why It Works: Ebooks are the perfect resource for passively generating leads. One incredible, evergreen Ebook that speaks to your audience can bring you leads and sales for years to come.
While blogging and long-form content are excellent tools for keeping your audience engaged, an Ebook is what targets your audience in the first place and converts them to paying customers.
When you visit your favorite websites, you probably see pop-ups that ask you for your email address in exchange for a free Ebook. Website owners know that more people will be willing to hand over their email in exchange for something valuable. By offering a free Ebook on your website, you’re not only giving potential customers a taste of your company for free. You’re also building a subscriber list full of warm sale leads.
Your Ebook should be about 95 percent helpful content covering a topic your audience wants to know about, and no more than 5 percent promotional, offering ways your business can help.
If you sell baby gear, for example, a helpful Ebook can be something like, “100 Ways to Save Money on Baby Gear Before Your Bundle of Joy Arrives.” Your book can mention a few ways that your company can help save your customers money, like with your rewards program for frequent shoppers or through your mobile app, which provides exclusive discounts for users.
Now you know the what the best types of content for family-focused business are. Do you need some help creating content for your business? Outsourcing your content to a professional content creator is one of the best ways to free up your time as a business owner while still investing in your company. If you think a winning content creation strategy might be the next step for your business, feel free to reach out to me.
I originally wrote this post about content for family-focused business growth for LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me there!
Amy is a mom of two, freelance writer, and blog manager who works with family-focused businesses to improve their content strategies. You can find her published work on Reader’s Digest Online, MSN, Niche, Frugal For Less, and other lifestyle publications.