Let’ discuss what exactly is content marketing and why every business needs to utilize it. We’ll also talk about how to create engaging content for your brand, as well as setting goals for a successful campaign. Lastly, we’ll go over the benefits of using this strategy in your overall digital marketing roadmap.
Table of Contents
What Exactly is Content Marketing?
The definition of content marketing is “the marketing and the strategic business process for creating, publishing, distributing, promoting & monetizing content in order to acquire customers”.
Basically, this means that brands are using their own original material or curated material from other sources (like articles) to attract potential leads.
Since the information offered by these businesses is valuable, it builds trust with customers leading them to eventually buy their products or services.
Content Marketing is not just creating and distributing content. It is an entire strategic approach that allows you to attract and engage a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, generate profitable customer action.
Why Use Content Marketing?
There are many benefits of using content marketing as a business strategy, which is why more and more companies have adopted this approach.
SEO
Most importantly, it helps build brand awareness through search engine optimization (SEO). This means that if you are putting out helpful, educational material on a regular basis your brand will be mentioned in search engine results.
Build Trust
Since this content is highly valuable to the reader, they are more likely to click on your page and become a lead. Another benefit of using content marketing is that it helps build credibility for new customers or leads who may not know much about your brand.
If you’re consistently publishing quality material with lots of industry insights, potential customers will see that you’re a trusted brand and will be more inclined to work with you.
Cost-effective
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates three times as many leads. It is also cost-effective since this marketing strategy does not seek short-term results, but rather long-term relationships with customers based on trust.
This means that as your company grows so do the opportunities for revenue generation by an increased sales volume due to increased customer loyalty. .
Drive Sales
Content Marketing is a great way to boost inbound traffic, which means that more people will be coming to your site instead of you having to find them.
This ultimately leads to increased sales because there are more potential customers for the business.
Increase Visibility
Lastly, content marketing allows businesses build their brand’s reputation and increase their overall visibility.
How to use Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a strategic approach and not just creating content.
To get you started:
- Create your brand’s voice – What do you want to say? How will it be said (i.e., tone)? Make sure that all of the messaging aligns with your company’s goals and brand identity.
- Know your audience – Once you know what message you want to send, it’s important that the content resonates with a specific target market or customer persona. For instance, if most of your leads are women 25-50 searching for household tips on Pinterest rather than Facebook where younger males dominate.
- Know your competition – know what other businesses in your industry are doing as far as content marketing goes.This will allow you to see if there is anything they’re doing that could benefit you and how you can differentiate yourself from them.
- Set goals for success – Before diving into creating content, think about what your end goal is. Is it to drive traffic? Gain subscribers? Build brand awareness? Whatever you are trying to accomplish, make sure that all of the content you publish aligns with this ultimate objective.
- Test – Sometimes there may be a strategy or topic that works well but another doesn’t so test out different approaches.
How to Create Good, Engaging Content for Your Brand
There are several factors that go into creating good content marketing campaigns. First of all, brands need to determine their target audience and what kind of material they would like to publish.
One of the main things you’ll want to focus on is providing valuable information that can educate or entertain potential customers.
You’ll also want to add some personality and depth into your posts so that they don’t feel like an advertisement or sales pitch, which drives your viewers away rather than towards your content.
Content Marketing Tips for Creating Successful Campaigns
There are many tips you can follow when it comes to creating successful content that will help you attract leads to your brand.
- Create the best content that provides real value for potential customers.
- Make the content unique so that they stand out from others online.
- Include a call-to-action at the end of the content to encourage readers to take action.
- Post consistently so that you can gain search engine visibility and your brand stays relevant.
- Be open, honest, and transparent about who you are as a company on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. This allows customers to get to know your brand on a more personal level.
The Benefits of Using Content Marketing in Your Business Strategy
There are many benefits to using content marketing as a business strategy. Some of the main ways this approach can help your company are by attracting more leads, building customer trust, and increasing sales.
Companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month than those without.
If you put out good quality material on a regular basis you will be able to attract potential customers through search engine optimization (SEO) results. This means that people who are searching for information on a given topic will come across your posts and be more likely to buy from you.
Content Marketing Types
There are many types of content marketing strategies you can utilize. Some examples include:
- Blogging
- Social Media
- Video
- YouTube
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Podcasting
- Case Studies
- eBooks
- Checklists
- Whitepapers
How to Measure Content Marketing Campaigns
The key to success with content marketing is being able to measure the impact of your efforts so that you can determine if your strategies are working or not.
The top three content marketing KPIs marketers report using are organic traffic (76%), leads generated (62%), and sessions (60%).
You’ll want to keep track of how many people visit and engage with your website, blog posts, newsletters, etc. on a daily basis by using tools like Google Analytics which provides detailed reports on the number of new leads, traffic sources, and pages that are visited by readers.
The biggest measure of success is how many sales are made through your content marketing efforts. Keep track of the number of leads that are coming from content marketing campaigns, the conversion rates, and the revenue generated.
The more information you gather from these different sources will enable you to make intelligent decisions about what works and doesn’t work with your customers so you can refine your content marketing strategies for success.
Get Started On Your Content Marketing
Content marketing is a powerful way to increase visibility and drive sales.
Whether you are looking for a way to attract new leads or increase sales revenue, this type of marketing has proven effective time and again because companies can generate qualified prospects via their owned channels.
We hope these tips help you get started or give you some new ideas about how you can use content marketing in your own business strategy.
If you need assistance with keyword research strategy, blog writing, or more, check out our Content Marketing service or feel free to contact us.
