What is content marketing?
“Content is king.” Marketing 101, right? But precisely what does that mean? It means content marketing is at the center of any most successful digital marketing campaign. Stated simply, content marketing is essential, and it means getting valuable and relevant content to the right audience at the right time. The goal is to deliver this consistently to attract and engage your target audience, ultimately driving sales. Content marketing is a marketing strategy for creating, publishing, and distributing content to your target audience.
Good content must be based on a strategy and not random posts and information. You should be clear on your goals and how the right content can help you reach those goals.
The most crucial aspect of your content is that it must bring value to your target audience. Before going to market, you should spend time drilling down on your best target audience. Who are they? What are their needs and interests? What kind of questions can you answer for them, and how does your service or product serve them and meet their needs. This will guide you in determining the best content to provide to help, entertain, or educate them and the best manner to deliver your content.
Remember, you are focusing on providing relevant content that is useful and relevant to your prospects and will help them address their specific pain points.
Remember, loyal customers are your business’s lifeblood, and content marketing is your most powerful tool in bringing them value on an ongoing basis.
Why is content marketing important?
Content marketing helps you build your brand online by bringing users content in many forms that will bring value and encourage the viewer to trust and like you and your products. It is a way to help your audience before they are at the purchase point and after they have purchased.
- Content marketing supports your business goals by building brand trust. It will help build your brand reputation and footprint.
- Optimized content helps with organic search (SEO). When you create expert-level content that answers questions, it will help you with your organic search ranking, and with consistency, this will build over time. Remember, this is FREE traffic.
- Good content will help generate backlinks as well as traffic. People share helpful, clever, or interesting content. This can quickly grow your audience and build the authority of your website.
- Content marketing will help your audience through all customer journey stages – awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, and advocacy.
- Content marketing that is produced consistently will give your target audience a reason to return to your site again and again.
- Content marketing is one of the best ways to support all of your digital efforts.
What are some types of content marketing?
There are many ways to deliver your content, and understanding your target audience, their behavior, and where they hang will help you determine the best place to be. In most cases, people will have a primary platform for publishing their content and then syndicate it out in other platforms and formats. Finding the right mix of platform and medium for you and your brand is both art and science.
Anything you create that is not a pure sales message is content. Here are some types of content marketing.
- Blog content marketing: This is where most of the content lives. Blog posts are used by 73% of markets, and businesses that use blogs also get double the links to their website and have 434 percent more indexed pages for the SERPs. So blogging is a cost-effective “must” for most businesses. Blogging about topics that your target wants and needs is much more effective than blogging overtly about your products or services. Once your reader knows you as an industry expert, they will want to come to you for your products.
- Podcast content marketing: A well-produced podcast can be beneficial and does not have to be complicated to produce. A podcast can have a considerable reach and be a great way to reveal some of your personality and brand voice. Planning is essential, and a podcast must still focus on relevance and value. You can use a podcast network to get it out but then also incorporate it into your website. Integrated messaging is the best way to get the most from your content. It is also easy to slice and edit a podcast to create a wealth of evergreen content. Podcasts are used by 57% of marketers.
- Video content marketing: Videos are extremely popular right now, and more and more brands are turning to video to rise above their competition and showcase their brand. Videos are used by 54% of marketers. Video marketing can be expensive but can also be made on a budget. Your video must be well-produced and very clear in its goal and purpose. The tone and style must resonate with your target audience and be consistent with your website and branding on all platforms. A video can be used to showcase your brand personality, demonstrate how to do something, or how something works. It can also provide a “behind the scenes” look at your brand and your company or show your potential customers how your brand suits them. This content can be used on your website, social media platforms, or even email campaigns. People love videos!
- Social media content marketing: Each social media platform has its own set of rules and target users. But what all social media platforms have in common is they demand immediacy and engagement from the audience. We are looking for the likes, the shares, and the comments. It is simple to repurpose the content you are creating elsewhere for social media platforms. The analytics are a great way to learn what your audience prefers, i.e., video, blog, certain content subjects, etc. You will know precisely what kind of traffic you are driving.
There are many other content marketing forms, including infographics, e-books, e-courses, case studies, testimonials, checklists, memes, email marketing, and more. Start with customers and let them tell you what resonates with them.
What are the top tips for creating good content?
- The number one tip for creating great content is to know your audience’s needs and wants inside and out. This knowledge will help you translate that into the right content in the correct format on the best platforms and at the perfect time.
- Publish only polished and relevant content.
- Be consistent in your publishing in terms of frequency and quality.
- Target specific keywords with your content.
- Analyze all content across all platforms and test, test test. This information will ensure your content performs as well as it can.
- Be sure your content marketing is based on a strategy that fits your target audience. Good content can’t be random.
What are some content marketing tools to use?
Some of the tools you will want in your arsenal might be:
- A tool like Buzzsumo or Ahref’s will help you evaluate trending topics relevant to your audience. You’ll find insights into what content is being read, shared, and where.
- ClickFunnels is a great tool to help you create sales funnels. Remember the purpose of your content is to push your target audience along through the funnel. It is a simple drag and drop platform and has lots of great templates to get you started and lots of other features like email integrations and A/B testing.
- Canva is a simple design tool that you can learn to use in a very short time to create fantastic imagery. Using great images or infographics is the quickest way to get those clicks. Canva has lots of prebuilt templates with layouts to suit all the major platforms and social media.
- SEMRush is a top marketing toolkit that will give you the keyword information and competitive insights and identify great keywords that your competition may not use.
- You will want an email platform. There are many email marketing services out there with varying prices and features. Mailchimp is a basic but free service to try out.
- Grammarly is a great tool to correct your spelling and grammar before you push “publish.”
The importance of a good content marketing strategy can’t be stressed enough and is unlikely to be diminished anytime soon. If you don’t have the right resources to execute this professionally and consistently talk to a full-service video and digital agency like C&I Studios.