What is Content Marketing?
If you ever came across the word content marketing and want to know what content marketing is so, you are reading the right blog. First of all content marketing is not new, people are using it for centuries. Content marketing is all about storytelling and as we know storytelling is not something very new.
According to the content marketing institute, “Content marketing is 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.” So in simple terms, content marketing is attracting our targeted audience by creating valuable, relevant, and consistent content to reach our marketing goals.
So, instead of going to the targeted audience as we do in traditional marketing to sell our products or services, we use the content for content marketing to attract our customers by giving them what they are looking for. It is one of the best ways to reach our marketing goals.
Great content marketing examples
L’Oreal Paris
Source: L’Oreal
We all know L’Oreal as a makeup company but it also has revolutionized the marketing industry it comes with a new marketing strategy to target its audience and its virtual makeup filters were one of the best marketing started that they came out with.
Because of the pandemic, people were not being able to leave their homes so L’Oreal came with its virtual makeup filters with the help of artificial intelligence so that its customers can try its products like lipsticks with many shades so that they can directly buy without going out of their home. It was one of the great strategies of content marketing.
Michelin
As we know Michelin is a multinational tire company but they were also one of the companies that uses content marketing successfully at the time where people didn’t have any idea about content marketing. In 1900, Michelin started publishing Michelin Guide for drivers and they were selling it for free.
It was a 400-page guide about every question that drivers usually had in their minds. As the vehicle era started at that time many people had many questions about the vehicles. For example, where to fill the fuel of their cars, how to change the tires, and many more.
As people were confused about where to go for sights and where was the nearest mechanic. So Michelin printed that 400 pages of the book and answered all the questions. Even though there were only 3000 cars at that time but they printed around 35000 books so that they can not only teach current cars owners but also encourage others to buy cars.
The guide became so popular that they added 200 pages extra and after that, they started charging 7 francs in 1922, and now there is no secret that how big the Michelin company is.
Types of Content
Written
Written contents like blogs, landing pages, guides, White papers, eBooks, etc. These can be very useful to attract the audience who are more interested in reading instead of watching or listening.
Video
Video contents like animations, video blogs or vlogs, gifs, or any studio production video. Video is the best way to attract and engage your audience. It works better than any content.
Audio
Audio contents like podcasts and webinars are also very helpful to attract your audience who doesn’t have time to watch videos or read your written content.
Infographics
Infographics are also a great way to engage with your audience because it is to read as compared to written only content also the chances of fully reading the infographic content is 33 times greater than normal written content.
Why use content marketing?
Because content is and will always be the king when it comes to marketing and there is no marketing without content whether it is audio, video, photo, or any written content you will have to use content marketing to grow your brand.
With the help of content marketing, you will get leads and hence resulting in more sales for your company. Content helps to save your marketing cost as you just have to create content and the audience will be attracted to your product. With the help of content marketing, you will also gain customer loyalty.
According to the latest data, business with blogs are getting more leads than those who doesn’t have any blog. The business that uses content marketing gets 30% more growth than those that don’t use it. So if you want to grow your business you will have to engage with your audience because the older ways like cold calling don’t work that well.
Content Marketing channels
SEO
SEO helps website owners to generate free traffic from the search engine like Google. But to optimize your website you will have to optimize your website content very well. Search engines like Google and Bing have already confirmed that they will rank those websites who are having engaging content that means if you want to rank your website you will not be able to rank your website without engaging content.
Paid Search Ads
Even though you bid higher to make your website visible at the top of the search engine but if you don’t have good content you will not rank at the top of the search engine because search engine ads also need good content like engaging title, relevant and engaging landing page to make your website at the top of search engine.
Social Media
When it comes to social media, content is the only thing that works here. If you want to grow your account and engage your audience you need to have content. Whether it is a photo, video, infographic, or any type of content, it must be unique, relevant, and most importantly engaging.
If you want to do social media ads or you want to grow organically without paying, you will need content. It is because your audience will come to social media for fun so make sure that you engage and entertain them with your content. Even though you are paying for social media ads that don’t mean you just share your product with boring information that no one wants to see.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is also one of the best channels to show your content to your audience directly to their inbox without any charges. You just have to make sure that you create an engaging newsletter, updates, or any promotional emails. With the help of content marketing, you can get lots of conversions.
Podcasts
It is also a very good channel to engage with your audience directly through your voice. It is very effective but makes sure that you create good content for that. With the help of apps like Spotify, Apple podcasts you can literally attract lots of relevant audiences.
How to create a content marketing strategy
To create a good content marketing strategy you will have to consider all these points that I am mentioning below:
Set your business goals
Setting up your business goals should be the first step to developing a good content marketing strategy. If you know your goals then it will be very easy for you to find what type of content you will use, what will be your targeted audience, how will you reach them with your content, and what benefit will they get from your content. If you set your business goal clear then it will be very easy to move to another step of content marketing strategy.
Know your audience
To successfully execute your content marketing strategy you will need to be very clear about your audience so you can create content.
First, you need to collect demographic data of your audience like their gender, age, income, etc. and for that, you can use social media analytics tools for social media followers, web analytics tool like website visitors, and email analytics tool for email subscribers.
Moreover, you can collect your audience’s feedback through online forms like WPforms for your website, you can ask your social media through comment and dm section directly in social media.
As you will get your audience’s data and feedback you will have knowledge about what your audience wants, what content do they like, which audience likes which content? So according to the data, you can optimize your marketing strategy.
Create and check your content
To create perfect content you should first research all the queries that your targeted audience has. You can use tools like Answer the public to get an idea about what should you create and it is highly recommended to be up to date about every trend that is trending in your niche.
You can check your blog content with the help of the content audit tool of SEMrush and there are many auditing tools for social media that you can use to check your video and graphic content.
Use best platforms for your content
If you have checked your content and its audit then you must have an idea about what content is working but to check what platform is going good you will have to use a tool like BuzzSumo. With the help of this tool, you will get an idea about your marketing platforms and which one is working for your content.
Measure your success
Lastly, if you’ve done all the steps successfully then it’s time to measure your content strategy with the help of analytics tools like google analytics, BuzzSumo, etc. With the help of these tools, you will be aware of every ups and down of your content marketing.
Summary
Content marketing is not something new it is a concept of story-telling which is present for centuries. It is one of the best ways to attract your audience and engage with them. It helps the audience by solving their problems and companies by engaging with their audience.
Make sure that your content is unique, engaging, and relevant to your niche. If you master this then you will be able to reach your audience without going to them like in traditional marketing where we go to every customer instead we attract the audience and encourage them for conversions.
If you want to master content marketing make sure that you follow all the topics mentioned above. If you are looking for a digital marketing expert for the online presence of your brand then feel free to contact us, we would be happy to help.