Content Marketing is one of the most effective ways to build an online brand that drives business. Where a lot of people struggle is the type of content to do. They aren’t sure. Luckily, you are in one of the best industries for content.  There is so much available for you to write or record about. Whether written, audio, or video, it doesn’t matter. Do the one that you are most comfortable. An ideal strategy will have a combination of at least write and video but ultimately any content is better than no content. You can see that I almost entirely use the written word and its worked well for me. For others, that means video.

If you’re struggling with where to get started then take a look at your target market. What’s most important to them? If you’re in the suburbs then one of the big drivers is schools. So start writing in depth profiles of every school in your town. Start with one and then go from there. If you’re in the city it might still be schools, it might be profiles of different condo buildings. Look at your target market, find something of relevance to them.

The school route is a gold mine when done correctly. You can find information on schools but not a ton of in depth information. When people look to move to a new area one of the things they are most interested in is the schools. Call your local school, schedule an interview with the principal. Ask them everything about the school. From teaching philosophies, extra curricular activities, sports, etc… Every possible question that someone might have about a school, answer it.

Over time you can build one of these up for every single school in your area. Then every year you can spend a couple of hours updating the information to make sure it remains accurate. Each year more parents will be interested in the information so keep it fresh and accurate.

Once you have the content you have to promote it. This is where Facebook is amazing. You can run an ad to people in your area with children broken down by age of the children. So look up what age they start going to the different schools you’ve profiled, and run ads to the parents with children a year or two before. Then when they read the article, they can either opt-in for your newsletter or at the very least your pixel should pick them up.

When they go back to Facebook they can start seeing ads for your services to help them. You already know they are interested in schools and have children. Now you can serve them a more targeted ad that’s relevant to their interests.

Then go on Google and do google ads. Buy the terms around schools in your area. I bet not many people are paying to rank high for names of schools. Those terms will be a lot cheaper than your standard real estate ones. In fact, in my town at least, when I did searches of the different schools, not a single ad. Nobody was bidding those terms. That means its going to cheap!

If you’re stuck with ideas for content, or not stuck, start blogging or vlogging about the schools in your area. It’s great content that gets a lot of interest. With Facebook and Google you can distribute that content easily and very often for very little in ad spend.

So what are you waiting for?