Your clients, leads, and audience members want you to provide them with useful material. Content should be delivered in a way that feels natural and organic rather than intrusive to the viewers. This is where social and content marketing comes in to attract, engage, and delight your target market.
What exactly is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique that focuses on producing and delivering valuable, relevant, and consistent content in order to attract and maintain a specific audience and, eventually, drive profitable consumer action.
It consists of delivering relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to solve their doubts and teach them new things, rather than promoting your products or services.
The term valuable is crucial here. It’s what distinguishes this definition from others that might apply to nearly any type of marketing or advertising. You can tell if a piece of material is suitable for a content marketing campaign if consumers actively seek it out and want to consume it rather than avoid it.
The same can be said for any piece of content marketing you develop, depending on whether or not the recipient found it useful. Of course, the goal is to deliver as much value as possible to your target audience through your content marketing.
Why is content marketing important?
Understanding why content marketing is crucial to your business is perhaps more important than understanding what content marketing is. First, it’s important to understand the four stages of the purchasing process:
- Awareness. A customer may have a need but they may be unaware that there is a solution out there.
- Research. When a customer learns that there is a solution, they conduct research to learn more. A car buyer, for example, will try to figure out what different sorts of cars are available, and which one will best suit his needs.
- Consideration. At this point, the consumer begins evaluating products from other sellers to ensure that he is receiving a high-quality product at a reasonable price.
- Buy. Finally, the customer decides to complete the transaction.
When it comes to the second and third steps, traditional advertising and marketing is fantastic. By generating awareness of solutions and educating consumers about a product they may not have considered before, content marketing gets into the first two stages of the purchase process.
Content marketing can help your firm grow by more than 1,000 % in just one year. Potential clients will discover your material organically and you won’t have to use any high-pressure sales tactics.
H2: What are the benefits of content marketing?
Your audience will stick around longer
Excellent material is a valuable asset. It has the ability to give your potential customers a good experience and entice them to return for more. It’s your ticket to attracting the attention of your target audience and reinforcing a strong brand image over time.
You’ll have better traction on social media
Increasing your social media following is one thing but creating trending content is another. If your company isn’t getting much engagement despite having a large number of followers, it’s time to start using content marketing to your advantage. Quality content can help you grow your company’s social media presence.
Your audience will trust you
Content creation helps develop and nurture the relationship between your company and its target audience. You can engage with customers and answer their inquiries. Your audience will be more inclined to trust your advice and information if you regularly provide value without expecting anything in return. When your material appears in the right location at the right time for the right audience, your brand’s reputation will increase.
You’ll generate more and better leads
Leads can be generated through content marketing. Your audience is more inclined to buy from you in the future if they see your material. Additionally, calls-to-action (CTAs) embedded in your content can help your sales team generate new leads. So, how can content help you get more leads?
Typically, you develop content to deliver free, helpful information to visitors. CTAs can be placed anywhere in your content, including inline, at the bottom of the page, in the hero, and even on the side panel. The more content a visitor enjoys, the more likely he/she will click on your call-to-action and go to your landing page.
Content Marketing in Digital Marketing
Content marketing has the added benefit of supporting other forms of digital marketing. It contributes to SEO efforts by generating natural inbound links and building up good content on your website that gets found in search engines, as well as providing more content for social media marketing. In fact, for many businesses, content marketing should be the primary emphasis of their SEO efforts.
How do marketers succeed with content marketing?
CMI has issued their 2020 B2B Content Marketing Report, which includes key data on how content marketers have evolved and progressed over time, as well as what it takes to succeed in this ever-changing digital world.
69 percent of companies that use content marketing say their strategy is more successful now than it was a year ago. But how did they achieve this?
Clarity
Know what effective and successful content means for your company, set goals and track progress, understand your buyer personas, and define your content marketing strategy.
Many of us have refined our approaches and put in place complex systems at this point. It’s much more critical for individuals who are just starting out to document their approach and track their progress. Many parts of the business will be affected by clarity, from management to operations to staffing to budgeting to real execution. You’re traveling blind without directions to an unknown destination if you don’t have clarity in your strategy.
Commitment
One of the most significant differences between effective content marketers and those who aren’t is the amount of dedication. Top performers prioritize delivering relevant information 93% of the time, whereas bottom performers focus on it 37% of the time.
Consistency
To be successful in their endeavor, 69 percent of top performers have a written content plan. In hindsight, consistency comes effortlessly when you’re devoted to your content strategy and have a clear understanding of your final goals. It doesn’t matter if you publish material once a week, twice a week, or three times a week; the key is to stay consistent.
Types of Content Marketing
Infographics
Infographics are useful because, if done well, they can be shared on social media and posted on websites for years. A great infographic will normally set you back at least $1,000, but if you hire a contractor or an agency to handle strategy and planning, research, copywriting, and design, it may set you back several thousand dollars.
Webpages
What’s the difference between a regular website and a content marketing website? Consider Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, a collection of SEO tools and information. This free resource has been seen millions of times, bringing in numerous clients who would not have found Moz and the services they provide otherwise.
Podcasts
Michael Hyatt, the best-selling author of Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, is a living example of what he preaches. His monthly podcast, “This Is Your Life,” is downloaded 250,000 times. The podcast leads to additional book sales, sponsorship, merchandise, course registrations, etc.
YouTube
Take a peek at Gary Vaynerchuk’s YouTube channel to see how he uses internet video for content marketing. He began by making movies to advertise his family’s wine shop, which he later developed to a $45 million empire through those films and other Internet marketing.
Because people believe it is expensive and difficult, videos and podcasts are a mostly unexplored type of content marketing. However, with the decreasing cost of professional-grade equipment, producing high-quality video and audio content has never been easier. Blenders, innovative dental products, and Hong Kong visa consultancy services have all benefited from amateur video content marketing.
How do I get started?
The simplest approach to get started with your own content marketing is to start blogging. It will most likely be difficult at first, but the more you practice, the better you will get. You’ll rapidly discover how to create content for your website or blog that will interest readers and convert them into customers or clients. While good writing and headlines can help, they aren’t the key to developing amazing content!
H3: Great Content
When thinking about content marketing, remember that content is good if the audience wants to read it. If they are prepared to pay to read it, then the content is amazing. Consider what you have paid to read, watch, or listen to recently if you want to see exceptional instances of content. If you saw The Lego Movie this year, you saw one of the best examples of content marketing.
Oh, you thought they made that movie to get people to buy tickets to see it? Reconsider your position. That was a 100-minute toy commercial! Is it any surprise that Lego recently overtook Mattel, the company behind Barbie, to become the world’s largest toy manufacturer? You may not have the funds to produce a full film to market your business, but you may still provide essential information to potential clients.
Add Value
Adding value is the key to content marketing. When you look at some of the marketing tactics used by firms, you have to ask whether they’re ignoring the obvious on purpose. When advertising is of little or no value to us, we avoid it.
Find a skateboarder and watch him browse through a skateboard magazine if you want to learn about advertising that doesn’t get overlooked. You’ll notice that he spends just as much time looking at the advertisements as he does the articles and photographs. Hiring someone who genuinely enjoys what you provide as a part of your marketing team is a great way to provide value to your content.
Hire a company that specializes in content marketing
If you’re too busy to do it yourself and aren’t ready to handle it in-house, hiring a firm is the best alternative. Leadsier is your partner of choice when it comes to digital marketing. We help organizations boost their value by providing a range of services:
- Scientific SEO
- Linkedin outreach
- Sales as a service
- B2B lead generation
- Content marketing
- Sales closing
- PPC advertising
Ready to boost your growth?
