When you are about to meet potential clients, you won’t probably show up in ragged jeans and unkempt hair. You’d show up in the best appropriate attire, so your future buyers and see excellence at your first meet-up and trust you at first sight. You won’t hard sell on that first meeting either, because every business person longs for repeat customers and not just one-time bonanzas. What drives customers to support your business repeatedly is the trust you establish with them early on in the relationship. Yes, relationship. Building relationships with your clients should not be relegated as relics of the past. Even in this digital day and age, relationship-building is a time-tested marketing principle that should still be prioritised and is the backbone of every content marketing strategy.

That is what good web design and content marketing do for you and your business. Your web design is your digital visitor’s first interaction with your brand and what you are about. It is that first handshake that gives visitors the feel of your sincerity and authenticity, two things that even the millennial, digital generation value greatly.

Your content marketing strategy, on the other hand, are like those conversations over coffee you have with a client,so they get to know you much better. It’s those follow-up calls or messages you make not so you could hard sell butto wish them well. And although these traditional marketing strategies may have evolved with the changing times, the heart of those strategies remain, build a relationship by connecting with the market, communicating in a way that is relevant and useful for them, and converting them eventually to loyal customers.

The Heart of Content Marketing
Content marketing does not do hard-selling but builds that relationship organically. “People know when they are being marketed to,” says the people behind John Deere Furrow, a publication by John Deere, makers of heavy equipment vehicles. In more than a hundred years thatThe Furrow is in publication, it was hardly about the web development company behind it, but always about the customers and the community that support it. Content Marketing Institute features this incredible example of successful content marketing in this video.

Decades of advertising interruptions and hard-selling strategies have made the general public wary of marketing that aims to squeeze sales out of them. Consumers now ignore advertising and marketing at will with options like ads-free services because people have become advertising-intolerant.

“To break through the clutter, brands nowadays need to tell remarkable stories worth listening to and become the media in the process.” Instead of focusing on sales, it’s time to locate where the customer is, who the customer is and what the customer is about. We need to get the pulse of our niche and know the questions they are asking, and hopefully provide relevant answers to add meaning to their lives.

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Through effective content marketing strategies, whatever content that is published do not blatantly advertise the company’s products or services, but naturally gains traction with the target market by providing relevant, high-quality content.

How can Web Design Impact Content Marketing?

Seth Godin, the “godfather of modern marketing,” declared that “content marketing is the only marketing left.”Marketing will fail without great content. And a good web design curates good content—whether it’s a video, photo, or blog post—to make it appealing and relatable for the audience. Here are ways to create a web design that improves content marketing:

Accessibility is Top Priority
Make sure your content is shareable, easy-to-navigate, and has a fast load time. Information content on your site needs to be easy to find and read, sparing the user from clicking through pages of irrelevant content.

Make a Good First Impression
Give the best impression for your user at first click by making your web design appealing and the content on your webpages compelling. The way your website looks give your visitors a glimpse of whether you are a valuable resource, or whether they should leave. Make sure you can make them stay by understanding the roles of web design in your business’s profitability.

Readability
Keep your designs clear, simple, and direct-to-the-point. Webpage designs with too many frills and slow load time turn off a first-time visitor upfront and cause them to leave your site and never come back. The best thing to remember is that simple is the way forward; large enough to read, a plain font, and a right contrasting colour to your background.

Understanding
Make your content dynamic. Aside from the material users can read on your page, provide pictures and videos to engage your audience even more. Your goal is not to ram them with content, but to make your content understandable for them. Photos and videos can help your potential customers get a better idea of how they can use your products or services. Your site’s layout should work well with visual content, and make it easy for readers to scroll through photos and watch videos.

Conclusion

Content is the Present and the Future of Marketing
Content marketing is great for your bottom line and your customers because of increased sales, cost savings, and more loyal customers.

Companies send us information all the time that are not very relevant or valuable to us. Content marketing is different because it does not just stuff you with words and useless information; it aims to give value to you by responding to what you need at this time. It’s relevant today and will remain relevant in the years to come, because it moves with you, shares life with you, and continues to build a relationship with you. Yes, relationship—the key behind any successful content marketing strategy, and good web design, its best foot forward.