07 Dec What is Content Marketing?
What is Content Marketing?
Traditional marketing approaches, especially in tech, are considered to be less effective these days. The market is overloaded with all kinds of products and services sharing about how unique and irreplaceable their offering is. And the audience is craving for valuable, thoughtful information to start paying attention and actually “seeing” you. Now the real question is; how to stand out in this era of marketing?
Content marketing is one of the best answers to this question.
In this article we’re going to be covering answers to the most asked questions about Content Marketing;
- What is Content Marketing?
- What are the benefits of Content Marketing?
- What is a Content Marketing Strategy?
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a type of marketing that is focused on creating strategic content and distributing it across the selected platforms to connect with the target audience and raise brand awareness, engage with potential customers, and enable the sales process.
As a process Content Marketing involves the outlining, creation, and distribution of specific types of content like social media posts, articles, blogs, audios, videos, etc. Usually, the content is aimed to increase interest in the offerings for products and services, without directly pushing the information about them. For example, content marketing tactics can be focusing on educating the audience about the general choices or options for the specific product and addressing the missing offerings or features that the product of the content’s creator’s company or brand is covering.
When it comes to Content Marketing, we market the content. Where content stands for all types of material (image, text, audio, video) that is being distributed across the channels to reach the potential audience. It is always intended to inform and attract potential users, clients, or customers.
And as Content Marketing is extremely popular and more companies choose it as their main marketing approach it is essential for the brands to keep their content relevant, to the point, valuable, relevant, and what is crucial, consistent.
What are the benefits of Content Marketing and is it worth the effort?
There are a lot of success stories and great best practices about the benefits of content marketing. It is considered a very effective approach because it has the potential to support all phases in your funnel from the first touch and raise awareness to close deals and retain customers.
Raising awareness with the increased traffic
The more relevant and valuable and consistent the content is the more attention it’s going to gain from the target audience which will lead to increased traffic and more opportunities for the brand to raise awareness.
Content syndication is considered one of the most effective tactics to increase traffic thus boosting awareness.
Building authority across the channels
As already discussed, the market is saturated with plenty of shiny offerings in all types of industries today, and building authority is one of the most challenging parts of content marketing today. However, it is possible. Becoming the “to-go” option can be achieved by sharing the expertise and authentic real-life experiences with the audience.
Educating your potential users and clients
The previous point is leading us to the educational part of Content Marketing. Educational content is at it’s rage these days, because more and more people turn to the internet to discover and learn about the first hand experiences whether it is a retail product, travel destination or software. Sharing objective not biased opinions on the market and competitors can be the key to building trust via educational content.
Building connection with the audience
Increased traffic is great, but connecting to your potential users and customers is priceless. Personalized, authentic, and consistent content builds trust with the audience, which enables the whole steps discussed as benefits to work in a cycle, creating a snowball effect and making your audience become your promoters, which enables lead generation, sales, and customer retention.
Generating leads and boosting sales
As already covered in the point above, consistently engaging with the audience and providing valuable information will lead to more inbound sales opportunities, hence gaining more users or clients.
Is it worth the effort?
When it comes to measuring success and whether or not Content Marketing is worth the effort, positive ROI is what businesses are focusing on.
In the long run, the answer to the question if it’s worth it, is yes. But as great as it is, Content Marketing is not considered one of the fastest approaches in marketing in terms of providing results. So if you are planning to enable Content Marketing, be ready to be patient and not rush for immediate results.
The results will definitely depend on the type and size of the company, as well as the content marketing strategy itself.
What is a Content Marketing Strategy?
Creating and distributing a top notch content is the heart of the Content Marketing strategy. And although It is a very widespread approach to focus on rankings and SEO these days, content marketing is becoming more about building trust and connection as a source and brand.
When it comes to building a great Content Marketing strategy, there are a few points that are essential;
Defining the Content Marketing goals
Make sure to clearly define what you want to achieve by creating and distributing the content. The more specific the goal, the easier it will be to build the actions and achieve them step-by-step, as well as to measure the results later.
Researching your “content market”
There is a tough competition for attention, so researching the content your competitors are sharing as well as identifying the gaps you can fill in or areas you can add value, will not only give you up-to-date information on the current state of the market (remember, you’re going to be marketing your content) it will also give you the ground to compare how you stand later, will give you the confidence and help you keep your eye on the channels and types of content that is more relevant to your brand.
Determining the KPIs and metrics
Knowing what and how to measure is important when it comes to Content Marketing, as the ROI is not immediate, finding other metrics on tracking the effort vs. result will help you plan the actions and fine-tune them along the way in a more efficient way.
Selecting the channels
It is considered that platforms are supporting each other when growing the audience, especially from scratch, so finding channels and platforms that work together best for your type of business will save a lot of effort and budget. It is important to also mention that when it comes to the platforms, selecting the ones that work best with your audience is the key. Trying to cover all possible channels and be present everywhere is usually a recipe for spreading too thin (depends, of course, on the size of the team and the budget) and not being effective.
Planning and conceptualizing the Content
Planning the content is the key to the quality and consistency. The more organized the content topic and subtopics are the more targeted the process is going to be. The best way to generate content ideas that convert is the focus on the audience, their pain points, the things they want to know more about. It is very efficient to pre-plan the content for every stage of the funnel or buyer’s journey (depending on your processes). Having content for the stages of raising awareness, supporting the consideration, and enabling the decision, will be very beneficial to the results.
Setting the timeline, milestones, and budget
Starting with Content Marketing is exciting, especially when you know the direction you’re moving towards. Setting the timeline and milestones is important to know when to measure results, improve the strategy, turn to plan B, or celebrate achievements.
Setting the budget is essential to keep the financial efforts under control.
Creating and distributing the Content
Consistency is the key when it comes to content marketing. If your audience is relying on you to provide content about specific topics and you don’t meet the expectations, chances are high they are going to turn to another source to get answers to their questions and stay up-to-date. Setting the timeframes and deadlines is great as it will help you stay consistent with all the aspects and stages of content preparation and distribution.
Analyzing and evaluating the results
This phase is the key to a great strategy and eventually outstanding results to your Content Marketing efforts. The more consistent you are with analyzing the results and implementing the necessary changes to your processes and general approach the more efficient Content Marketing is going to be for your brand.
If you are ready to start but it still feels like you need support in the initial stages, use our 1-on-1 coaching services to help you start!