It’s common for companies to aim their content marketing campaigns at attracting new customers. After all, marketing is a key tool for driving sales and growth, and neglecting it is a surefire way to be overtaken by competitors.

What many do not realize, however, is that just as content marketing campaigns can be used to draw in new clients, they can be just as effective at retaining current ones.

In a previous article we discussed how to use content to retain your customers. This article will expand on that premise to help you better tailor your content marketing campaigns for the same goal.

Five Tips for Using Content Marketing for Customer Retention

1. Know your audience and address their pain points.

A good content marketing campaign focuses more on the customers’ needs than glorifying the brand. To do this, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is your business’ core audience?
• What do they need?
• What do they want?
• What problems do they face?
• How does your business help to address these pain points?

Keep your content campaign focused on these questions.

Answer your customers’ pain points by empathizing with them and letting them know you understand what they’re going through and what they need.

Follow up by providing them with useful information to help address said pain points.

Then, and only then, do you present your product or services as an additional means to resolve the issue.

By backloading any overt mention of your product or service and putting more effort into empathizing with your audience, you’ll build better rapport with them and make them more likely to be interested in what you’re offering.

2. Be consistent.

Whether it’s weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, make sure that you decide on a schedule for your content campaign and then stick to it as much as possible. Consistency on your end helps to show your audience that you’re reliable. It also helps to give your content campaigns staying power.

A marketing calendar is a great tool to help you maintain that consistency, as this article from Wrike goes over in detail.

How frequently you should publish your content depends on your industry and your audience, so there’s no fast or hard rule. That said, ideally, the frequency of your content will be quick enough to retain your audience’s attention, but not so frequent that it feels like it’s pestering them. An annoyed customer is a customer who’s less likely to come back in the future.

3. Engage with customers through direct email marketing.

Publishing regular newsletters is a great way to engage with your existing customer base, and a tactic already employed by many brands. Where some go wrong, however, is treating it like a traditional marketing medium rather than a part of their content marketing campaign.

An email newsletter should contain just that: news.

This is not to say you can’t, or even shouldn’t, mention upcoming or ongoing sales or promotions. Rather, the key focus should always be providing your audience information that is relevant and interesting to them.

Remember: Address pain points first; promote the brand second.

In addition to engagement, newsletters can also be a great way to reward customer loyalty.

Just be sure that the sales and promotions you do strategically place in them consist of early bird offers and exclusive discounts for readers.

Offering free e-books or how-to guides that appeal to your audience’s interests and complement the content of your newsletters is also a great idea.

4. Encourage customer reviews and testimonials.

Encouraging customers to leave their honest thoughts on their experience with your product shows not only transparency, but confidence.

Yes, this also applies to negative feedback. Contrary to what may be gut instinct, when it may be tempting to delete negative reviews and reach out privately to the customer, this does more to hurt your transparency than help. It’s often better to leave it up and do your best to publicly address and resolve the issue, as the visible effort to do right by your customers will help show your integrity as a business.

On the other end of feedback, customers who’ve had especially positive outcomes make great choices to highlight as testimonials to help advertise your business. This can be especially useful because, rather than you espousing the virtues of your product or service, it’s being done by someone who has used it and benefited.

5. Keep in touch with your customers through social media.

Social media is an extremely powerful communication tool used by millions every day. This is also what makes it one of your best tools for reaching your core audiences.

Regular social media posts may not feel like they have much importance, thanks to their relatively small word count, but this is one medium where quality matters exponentially more than quantity. If you put in the resources to form a dedicated social media team and guidelines for your brand, you can not only keep your customers engaged, but also build a sense of community and trust across multiple platforms.

Aside from active engagement, you can also use social media as a means to disseminate brand news. By pumping out a quick post to update your audience whenever you publish new content, you’ll help drive traffic to those pieces and in turn strengthen the performance of multiple content campaigns for relatively little effort.