What comes to your mind when you hear the word content marketing? Do you think of what is trending on Twitter, videos that have gone viral on Youtube or Instagram? Is it a blog post that has been shared widely or a Facebook post that has garnered millions of social shares?
If that’s what comes to your mind, then you need to know that content marketing has been with us long before the internet arrived.
It has been around for ages, and mammoth brands globally used it successfully in their formative years. It aided them in breaking through the noise and obtaining their first customers. Also, it enabled them to metamorphose into billion-dollar industries.
A good example is Nike with its well-known tagline- just do it.
It was created more than twenty-five years ago, but it still appears on almost every advert the company runs.
It became famous by spending 300,000,000 on advertisement in ten years.
As a result, their market share increased from $877 million to more than $9.2 billion.
That’s a sizable rate of return on investment. Today the company still uses the symbolic phrase every chance it gets.
Here’s one of their recent images.
Content marketing has been around for a long because it’s about telling stories. And people have told stories ever since they started speaking. People will always pay attention to those who tell great stories.
But what was influential in the 70s and 80s might not work today because so many things have changed since then.
Nonetheless, with many new social media platforms cropping up almost every day, opportunities are endless.
So, let’s see what content marketing means in simple words.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a tactical marketing procedure that focuses on generating and dispensing relevant, consistent content to attract and retain a specific audience- and eventually, steer fruitful customer action.
Why is content marketing important?
Helps Create Brand Awareness
One of the many reasons some businesses have halted relocating any money to content marketing is that it may be challenging to recognize the benefits of content marketing.
It sounds fantastic to get people to think and talk more highly of your business. Still, you must put your acts together and allocate many hours of your valued time.
However, the results can be phenomenal. Let’s see just how many benefits content marketing can bring to your table.
Creating valuable content gives your target audience something to discuss with you and your brand. When they gladly talk about you, they educate each other about your business, giving your links and recommendations in the process.
They’re marketing your brand unknowingly, and it’s a blessing in disguise on your end. The awareness of your brand they’re creating is marketing gold.
You Get Loads of Admiration and Respect
It’ll take a lot of time to build admiration and respect for your target audience, as you’ll have to earn their trust. And you cannot make anyone’s trust overnight. You have to prove that you are worth your salt.
After proving your integrity and knowledge, you’ll be the guiding light that numerous people will turn to you when it seems as if everybody else is adding to the confusion.
You have to create tons of helpful content and steer clear of those sites that do not care about their readers.
Suppose you create helpful organic content consistently and optimize it well for the search engines. In that case, Google will recognize your site as an authority on a particular topic and reward you by making your site appear high on the SERPs results. So, you get a lot of traffic and improved SEO.
According to this study, content marketing can help your lead generation, enhance your conversion rates and help retain your customers.
Types of Content Marketing
Content marketing definition can be a little bit tricky. But the idea is simple. It’s creating information in different formats that offer value to your target audience and make them buy your service or product.
Consider it like fishing. You don’t jump into the sea or river waters and swim out to start chasing the fish down! No, ordinarily, you use a baiting strategy to draw the fish to you.
In a nutshell, content marketing is an inbound marketing strategy that does a lot of digging to draw customers to you.
It’s more productive than outbound marketing strategies and gives higher rewards in regards to sales and conversions. That said, here are types of content marketing in use today.
Podcast Content Marketing
According to a recent survey ( 2020), 48 percent of 14-to-32-year-olds in the Us had listened to a podcast the month before, with an average of five listening hours per week.
As a result, many businesses and media outlets have begun to create and distribute their podcasts.
Podcasts enable a lot of creativity because they can be about anything. You also decide on other aspects of the podcast, such as the rhythm of episodes and who will appear.
Podcast content Marketing example
Video Content Marketing
Content marketing allows you to showcase your personality and inject some fun into the business world. Videos are an excellent medium for doing so.
You get likable and charismatic people to feature in your video content. Videos are one of the most widely shared and popular on social networks.
Video is also the most popular and widely shared format of content on social media.
Based on Wyzowl research, 69% of customers like learning about a company’s service or product through a short video.
Besides, video marketing increases conversion, boosts ROI assists in building long-term relationships with your followers.
Example of Video Content Marketing
Infographic content Marketing
Infographics present content, data, and information in a visually appealing format. Infographics are a perfect way to easily express the content because they combine easy wording, short sentences, and transparent images. They’re great for simplifying a complicated or educational subject so that everybody in the audience can understand it.
Example of Infographic Content Marketing
Paid Ads Content Marketing
Some clothing and accessories companies utilize sponsored and paid ads to get to their target audience as they scroll through their news feed.
These content ads showcase some of their products or services and details about their return policy and shipping to draw traffic to them and somehow turn them into paying consumers.
Example of a Paid ad on Facebook
Now it’s time to talk about your content marketing strategy. For your content marketing campaigns to be effective, you need to have the right plan in place.
Consider Content marketing strategy as a boy trying to win over a gorgeous girl he has been eyeing for years. He needs to approach her the right way and work his way to her heart.
The best way to win her heart is to start by getting to know her. He should take her out a couple of times and know what she loves, what her values are, what her favorite pet is, and what she likes to eat. He should spend a lot of time with her and there for the girl in every time of need.
The boy needs to behave in a manner acceptable to the woman. That way, he will make himself the one person the girl could lean on, and she’ll win her heart and soul for the rest of her life.
But if he looks at other girls suggestively, entertains other women or causes pointless fights in a club in the girl’s company, his hunt will be over before it begins.
By implementing the right strategy, all your content marketing efforts will successfully convert leads into sales. You’ll also reach your desired audience.
This is the best marketing content marketing advice you’ll ever get. It’s helpful to you regardless of whether you are an experienced blogger with plenty of traffic or a brand-new blogger with a tiny (but lovely) profile. Here are the best marketing strategies you can use right away to succeed in your content marketing efforts.
Best Content Marketing Strategies
Set intelligent, Realistic goals
Setting SMART targets is a critical step in your content marketing plan. These should be tailored to your organization and should support your overall marketing and business objectives.
Your strategy should help you to
- Increase customer experience and brand loyalty by building rapport and trust with prospects and consumers.
- Find a strategic partner
- Boost brand recognition
- Increase conversions and eventually increase sales
Decide on What Kind of Content You want to make
The type of content you create largely depends on the people you are trying to reach.
For example, if your target audience’s age is between 14-21 years, you can’t sell them expensive things because they do not have a lot of money to buy.
However, suppose your target audiences are working class and business people. In that case, you can sell expensive products to them as they have money.
Answer the following questions to help you decide who your target audience will be and what type of content would be appropriate for them.
- What is the reason they require your product or service?
- What can you do to help them succeed?
- What do they do with their free time?
- What do they need from you?
- What obstacles do they hope to overcome?
Select your content channels
After deciding what type of content you want to create, it’s time to choose your unique content marketing channel. Where will your content appear? Or is it on social media platforms, or is it on TVs or magazines? Where to make your content go live depends on your target audience.
For example, if you are in a real estate business targeting pensioners, the best place to place your ads will be in the newspaper, as most pensioners spend a sizable chunk of their time reading newspapers.
But suppose you are a designer targeting teens. In that case, the best place to market your content is on social media platforms such Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, as these people hang out on the sites mentioned earlier.
Make your content and distribute it.
Make and distribute your content so that your target audience can consume it and hopefully convert. Always Use a social media calendar to make sure that you are consistently creating content and sharing it with your customers and prospects. It’ll help your team stay on track and also enables you to schedule content creation so that you’ll always have content ready for publishing.
Conclusion
Content marketing is a superb way of drawing traffic to your website. And if you have enough following, you can convert them into paying customers. Remember to get exact value from every content you make. But be careful not to sound to sales.
Now that you understand what content marketing is and the benefits of content marketing, plus some of the content marketing strategies you can use, it’s time you give it a try.
