Content Marketing and its importance to business

Content marketing can be said to be a strategic marketing approach focused on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a defined audience which in turn drives profitable customer action.

You probably have heard the saying “Content Is King”. Yes, it is true.

Businesses need to invest and take advantage of content marketing strategies to help them increase sales.

Why content marketing?

Content marketing has been proven to deliver resounding success. By creating content about topics that interest your target audience, businesses are able to attract new leads via blog posts, social media posts, and publications.

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As one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing your brand presence, and driving sales, content marketing is a mission-critical growth method for most businesses.

We will look at content marketing — the benefits of producing consistent, high-quality content, and how to measure success.

What is content marketing?

There are different views to what content marketing is and we will share some of these with you for more understanding of the topic.

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. Wikipedia

Neil Patel blog defined content marketing as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Forbes

Steps to create Content Marketing Strategy

Basically, we have a few helpful steps.

Set your Goals
Map the content to the pain point.
Use the right type of content to resolve the problem.
Direct the content to the buying cycle of the people who have that problem (Target Audience)

Your strategy should outline your key business and customer needs, and how your content efforts will address them.

Why Content Marketing Strategy is important?

Content Marketing Institute in a post stated that year after year with their Annual Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report. In 2021, 57% of content marketers still say they do not have a documented content strategy, yet those who do have a content marketing strategy consistently rate their efforts as far more successful than those who don’t.

Another notable point why a content marketing strategy is important is the secret to understanding your customers. From data along the customer journey – you can see engagement rates on social media posts, which videos people watch, which eBooks people download, the blog posts they read all the way through and then share with their networks – these are powerful information for marketers.

With the insights gained from the analytics, it’s possible to:

Create better buyer personas
Develop more accurate buyer segments
Improve personalization – A foundation for a better customer experience

Note that consistent, high-quality, and engaging content affects the audience decision-making more than any other technique.

Content consistency establishes your credibility, builds trust, and strengthens your reputation.

Benefits of Content Marketing

1. Boost traffic & SEO

With Content marketing, you can create keywords related to your brand via your blog, helping to strengthen results for your long-tail keywords. These keywords increase with time. This in turn attracts a diverse array of hungry, targeted traffic. As a result, your SEO strategy will yield long-term and compounding ROI.

A developed content strategy should help you rank higher in search engines.

2. Establish Expertise, Authority, Trust

Consistent and quality content can help your business build a relationship with your audience. When you offer value through your content, your audience tend to trust your advice and recommendations. You can answer their questions and interact with customers.

Besides, if your content is seen at the right place and at the right time to the right audience, it’ll improve your brand’s reputation. The more engaging your content customers see the more likely they are to have a positive association with your brand.

Creating quality content will also help build your authority online. If your business is established as a credible place to get information, you’re more likely to rank higher in search engines.

3. Build Loyal Audience

Great content has the ability to create positive experiences for your potential customers and attract them to come back for more. It’s your gateway to capturing your audience’s attention and continually reinforcing a positive brand impression.

4. Better traction on social media.

Social media is a place where you can find your audience. It is the go-to area online for online communities and the market is huge. If you have a huge follower base, it can mean more leads, engagement, and possibly increased sales. Quality content can help your business gain traction on social media.

Employ a good content marketing strategy to help improve your leads and sales.

4. Better leads generated

Content marketing can also generate leads. When your audience views your content, they’re more likely to purchase from you in the future. Additionally, calls-to-action (CTA) placed directly in your content can generate new leads for your sales team.

So, how can content generate leads?

According to Lindsay Kolowich, the team manager of the HubSpot Academy Acquisition Content Team, “content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel. The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.”

5. Original and engaging content can improve conversions

The type of content you post influences conversions. It aids your audience to connect with you and provide them with the needed information to make educated purchases.

Even more, if you’re using blog content to bring in traffic, consider using unique images rather than stock photos for a potential 35% increase in conversions.

Also, involve the use of CTA in your content to provide a sense of direction to the audience.

6. Connect with your audience through multiple digital channels

There is no particular way to reach out to your audience. You can get to them via different digital channels and engage them thereby taking advantage of digital tools to share your content. One of the benefits of content marketing can be seen with the tools available for dissemination. Maintain a voice and value consistent throughout the different channels you use to meet many different customer needs.

These digital channels may include:

Blog posts
Infographics
White papers
Photo essays
Lookbooks
Videos
Podcasts
Webinars & classes
Emails
Tools and templates
Interviews
Live Q&As

The channels can change base on what’s most appropriate or useful to the audience, and there’s plenty of room to experiment with how you deliver information.

7. Cheaper than Traditional Marketing

Digital marketing, content marketing specifically, is much cheaper than traditional marketing and generates significantly more leads. Also, you can track results and tweak them for better performance subsequently.

How To Get Started With Content Marketing

1. Write For Your Audience

The best way to get your audience’s attention and engagement is to write for them. When your target is to make your audience’s life easier, you will find success. Pay attention to the types of questions people are asking, the things you had to learn to get to where you are today.

2. Repurpose Content

You can repurpose content for relevance’s sake. For instance, if you create a blog about ‘7 Content Marketing strategy,’ you can convert it into a short video, an infographic, etc. With the research already done, creating these additional pieces of content takes a fraction of the time.

3. Experiment With Different Formats

It is a good practice to try out different types of content to identify which resonates most with your audience. It is good to try sharing several different types of content (blog, video, images, etc.), and identify which format has the most success, and focus on producing 70% of your content in that format.

4. Outsource Some Content Creation

You can outsource your content strategy if you do not have an in-house content creator. Outsourcing also results in more diverse content. With services like Zerys, InboundWriter or Blog Mutt you can easily find affordable content creators.

5. Write Authoritatively

Ensure your content provide relevant value to the audience’s needs. Be the boss in the contents you disseminate to your audience. Be the source of information that matches the online search for such keywords and queries online. only then will Google offer your content to searchers online on page one.

6. Get leads via exit Content

This is a way to get leads (acquire email address) by asking your online audience for their email upon exit. You make use of popups when they intend to exit or when they spend a certain amount of time on the site/blog.

Try to create an in-depth piece of content that you think your audience will be extremely interested in. Then ask for information like their email or answers to a survey in exchange for access to it. Use this information to improve your product or service, as well as to market to these same people more effectively.

7. Encourage Your Followers To Become Content Creators

It has been known that user-generated content tends to make the users feel like [part of the brand. Happy customers are the best marketers. You can encourage your users to share their experiences with your brand. The best part about user-generated content (USG) is that it is unbiased and trustable. When potential customers see real people that are happily using your product or service, they will be more likely to become customers themselves.

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