With customer marketing, we have the unique opportunity to further engage people who are already loyal fans of our product or service. And yet, more often than not, customer-marketing efforts get pushed to the sidelines in the never-ending quest for new prospects. Your customers deserve to be treated to content marketing designed expressly for them. Here's how to accomplish this:

In theory, the idea of collaborating with social influencers to scale the creation and distribution of content sounds great. Online influencers are people who create and share interesting or valuable content with the niche audiences that follow them. Using content from influencers can be a powerful way to win the war on content, or it can be littered with landmines that leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth, including the consumer.

The act of content creation is still one that plagues marketers. According to the 2013 Content Marketing Institute/Marketing Profs survey, 69% of marketers say they don't have enough time to create content; 55% say they can't produce enough content; and 47%say they can't produce content that the audience actually cares about. So, hiring professional writers to do the work and deliver high quality seems like a perfect solution to the content creation conundrum. You need high quality writing, and freelancers are available, often at a good price. But here's the rub: Freelance writers complete assignments, but that's all they do.

If I ran an ad agency today, I'd be putting quite a bit of weight behind content marketing for a few years. It's a pretty surefire way to make some nice money. Decent content these days is remarkably cheap to make. It's easy to put your B team on a content marketing strategy and clients seem to be buying this stuff like there is no tomorrow. But it's a totally doomed area.

Whether you're creating your next eBook, infographic, or customer testimonial video, your content marketing should always be an expression of who your company is at its core. Here are four ways to establish your company's voice, and ensure that it gets a chance to shine in every way you communicate: