With the rise of digitization and the ever-advancing business avenues, more and more companies are moving online. But with many of them operating online, it is important for your business to stand out from the crowd. Traditional forms of marketing are now less effective as before towards reaching prospects and conversion of leads into customers. Hence, Content Marketing is becoming a desirable method for these businesses to reach and engage with their desired target audience.
In this post, we’ll try to understand the world of content marketing, why is it important and what your business needs to do in order to plan best content marketing strategies.
Content marketing is a means of strategic marketing approach aimed at creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a well-defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
– Content Marketing Institute
THE SHIFT TOWARDS CONTENT MARKETING
Before the emergence of online advertising, two-way interaction wasn’t possible between customers and brands- the ads were not shown only to target audience. Now, your audience has the option to choose when to interact and engage, resulting in brands to connect with their audience in a better way.
Content Marketing allows your brand to provide the audience with content only about the products and services relevant to them. This can help in increasing conversions, improving brand awareness, revenue boosts, and more. By directing more traffic to your website your business can observe greater sales and gain the trust and recognition within your target audience.
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.
– DemandMetric
Other than your online territory’s expansion, Content Marketing enables your business to:
1. Educate your prospects and leads about your offerings
2. Boost the number of conversions
3. Build relationships between your business and the customers you serve
4. Connect to your audience – showing them how you provide a solution to the challenges they face
5. Create a community centered around your brand
Now, we will discuss what all popular content formats are available for you to choose from. What you need to bear in our minds is that, whichever format you select, the purpose of content should always be to connect well with your audience. The audience will respond by engaging, sharing, learning and would lead to conversion into customers.
TYPES OF CONTENT FORMATS
1. Written – Blogs, Product Descriptions, Press Releases, eBooks, Case Studies
2. Graphics – Info-graphics, Illustrations, Calls-to-Action
3. Audio – Podcasts, Webinars
4. Video– Video Blogs, Video Interviews or testimonials, Product Demos
5. Social – Social Posts, User Generated Content, Contests/Quizzes
CHANNELS IN CONTENT MARKETING
Organic Traffic (Search Engine Optimization)
Achieved via Search Engine Optimization – become a more observed search result found in organic SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), for your audience.
More exposure, More clicks, More visitors.
Paid Ads (Search Engine Marketing)
Steal the traffic from your organic SERP competitors with a form of pay-per-click advertising.
Larger Brand exposure and better ROI through click-worthy titles.
E-Mail Marketing
Get to the inboxes of your email list directly without caring about the web traffic and deliver customized messages in the form of newsletters or branded content.
Highest ROI as compared to other channels
Social Media Marketing
Give your marketing efforts more personality or relate it to a cause, to show targeted content on social media platforms allowing a high reach in distribution.
Respond to your followers and measure real time engagement while promoting your offerings.
The most common content marketing delivery mechanism is social media, used by 87% of marketers.
– Content Marketing Institute
Link Building
Increase the reach of your brand by quality and valid backlinks from trustworthy sites.
Have content worthy of those links by deep and relevant research.
Podcasting
Deep dive into niche subject matters and conduct interviews with people popular in your industry , for your target audience to hear.
Deliver relevant messages audibly for an on-the-go consumer.
Display Advertising
Visual imagery influencing calls-to-actions is a good way to capture your audience’s mind share (“top of the mind”) and stay ahead of your competition.
Paid display ads on specific websites, social media and apps can influence new or existing customers.
97% of consumers and online marketers report that video helps customers understand their product.
– Wyzowl
Mobile Marketing
A mobile-responsive website design with the aim towards optimizing the decision-making process for your customers with calls-to-actions through visuals and buttons; gives an integrated experience to your prospects.
With users spending large amount of time engaging with their mobile devices, the need for personalized, location and time sensitive information is essential.
People have twice as many interactions with brands on mobile than anywhere else. Three in four phone users turn to mobile search for an immediate need.
– Think With Google
CONCLUSION
With these channel options to select from, your content should typically aim at achieving these four objectives:
Convince, Inspire, Entertain and Educate
Now to conclude the section, I would like to highlight that content marketing is a vast space. You should take actions carefully when making your own strategy. You should remember to focus on providing solutions for your target audience’s problems and give them valuable and engaging content. This will result in frequent future visits by them. In the upcoming post, we will discuss about a step-by-step guide on how you can construct the best content marketing campaign suitable for your brand and your target audience. Stay hooked!
Always keep in mind that, for a successful content marketing campaign, making a customer complete a specific goal or action, is a higher priority than reaching out to millions of people and making it viral.
Quality over Quantity is the key to success in content marketing.
