The biggest revolution in doing business in this 21st century is the advent of online marketing. But unfortunately, any business owner who has not taken their business online is seriously lagging.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, most large organizations use content marketing, including popular organizations like Microsoft, Cisco, P&G, John Deere, Amazon, and many more. So it is safe to say that content marketing is the king of doing business in today's world.
If you don’t know how to go about your content marketing or struggle with it, you are reading the right article.
Keep reading this ultimate guide as we are about to reveal everything you need to know about content marketing. Here’s a sneak-peek at what we’ll cover:
Let’s dive in!
The first thing we would like to do as we take you through the journey of content marketing is to make its definition as simple as possible, especially if you are not too familiar with it.
The practice of offering relevant, helpful content to your customers without selling or disrupting them is known as content marketing. Content Marketing is a good strategy for building relationships with customers.
Instead of marketing your products or services, you provide knowledge that educates your clients before they buy. Customers will reward you with their business and loyalty if you provide constant, ongoing valuable information to them.
Content marketing works by offering readers helpful information and material that provides insight into the products and services they are looking for online. Through the forms of content listed earlier, readers are engaged with the information they are looking for.
In 2021, 78% of marketers said their brand takes a more strategic approach to managing content, and 53% of companies now use content in their online marketing strategies.
With an effective content marketing strategy, you can never go wrong when driving traffic to your website.
(Source: Techsoup)
How does content marketing work?
Research is the most effective technique to give great content to your audience. Creating excellent content is costly, and there is a lot of competition for attention. It will be a waste of time and resources creating content that brings no value to your readers.
Before you begin creating content, you should answer this question:
What content is valuable and relevant to my target audience?
Researching the answer to this question will assist you in producing the best content more efficiently. It will also help you in defining and measuring your success.
At the very least, you'll have an idea of what content your audience enjoys and finds useful.
The next step to optimizing content is if your audience finds your content valuable. Because of this, when creating content, it should be informative and should be able to answer some of the questions that your audience is asking.
Hence, you should not create content without first researching the needs and questions asked by your audience. Valuable content is based on the researched results.
After creating valuable content, the next thing is to share the content with your audience as a blog post or on social media.
Since your content is based on research, the chances that your readers will likely share it is high, resulting in brand awareness.
Shared content can also:
Because your content is based on research and meets your audience's needs, the search engine refers them to your content as they search for anything related to your content.
When your audience benefits from your valuable content, they will likely share it with other social media users or refer family, friends, or colleagues to your blog. When this happens, you will have more traffic and conversions.
Content marketing is vital to the success of your digital marketing strategy. Here’s why:
Expansion is one of the reasons for content marketing. However, there are limitations to how a business can grow when not using content marketing as part of its marketing strategy.
Different people might be interested in your business for various reasons. They may also have different questions about your product. To answer these questions, you will need to diversify your content.
Content marketing is important to your brand for two reasons; first, it makes it easier for people looking for your products or services to find you; and secondly, it keeps your brand in the mind of people who may not need your product now but will likely need it in the future. So when they eventually want to use any products or services related to your brand, your brand will be the first in their mind.
For example, let's say there is a new product, people are seeing it and talking about it—someone will, out of curiosity, decide to visit your website to see the product's features. Of course, when you have valuable content waiting for such people on your site, they may not buy after reading the article or watching the video of the product. However, be rest assured that when they eventually decide to buy, it will be from you.
When others ask where they can get such a product, they will direct people to your website, creating brand awareness.
Sharing valuable information that answers your audience's questions and meets their needs passes the message that you are an expert to all your brand followers.
Brand authority is one of the most important parts of content writing. It establishes you as a credible authority in your field. People trust your brand more than any related brand because they know you are knowledgeable. As a result, they feel confident patronizing you.
In the same way, they also have the same confidence when recommending your brand to family and friends.
The general reason people do business is to get a return on investment (ROI). Investing in content marketing increases the chances of a better return on investment.
However, it may require a significant amount of content before getting such effects. You can boost the return on investment of your content and get more out of it by taking a strategic approach.
Doing the following can help:
Digital Marketing, among other things, deals with tactics like pay per click (PPC), search engine optimization, social media ads, and content creation. For digital marketing, the goal is to capture conversion.
(Source: Data Flair)
Content marketing is a vital digital marketing strategy. It is focused on stimulating your targeted audience's interest in your products or services. In other words, content marketing makes potential customers aware of your products or services, also known as brand awareness.
Content marketing is important to customer retention and acquisition for people who want to take their business beyond borders. In addition, content can build trust and lasting relationships with customers.
Building relationships can happen if the blog post is high-quality and contains valuable information. Then, when customers visit your website for answers, they are likely to trust you more if you provide them with the information they are looking for.
According to CRITEO, content marketing gives3 times more leads per dollar spent and converts 6 times more often than any other marketing strategy. In addition, it costs 62% less than traditional marketing, and 61% of United States online consumers made purchases after reading recommendations on a blog.
So YES, content marketing is very effective. Here are four valuable things you can do to have a successful content marketing strategy:
A goal that will guide you on what you want to achieve is vital to the success of your content marketing campaign. For example, one important goal should be getting people to visit your blog and turning them into email subscribers.
Using this email, your brand can build relationships with potential customers by asking your audience via email what they want to learn from your brand. Most potential customers will love it when they feel a brand has their needs at heart.
You should also allow subscribers to reach you quickly and avoid using a do-not-reply email address.
In addition, Including the contact person's name in your emails will make subscribers feel at ease speaking with you.
Knowing your audience is an effective strategy for content marketing. On a general note, if you want to reach younger people, use social media and have an editorial calendar where you schedule all of your content. More youthful people prefer regular engagement; two to three blog posts every week is enough.
If you want to reach older generations, you must concentrate on brand authority. Google Analytics will help you know more about your audience.
It is one of the best and most effective tools for tracking and analyzing website traffic. It provides you with a wealth of information on who is visiting your website, what they are searching for, and how they got there.
Using this information, you can write compelling content that your audience will find attractive.
Many online marketers make a common mistake: they create content based on trending issues. If the trending subject is not related to your brand, you have no business with it. You cannot be talking about being an authority in your line of business when you are not known in a particular niche. You will end up being a jack of all trades and master of none.
Being an authority in your niche means sticking to content related to your brand. When people look for information on your product or service, they will go to your website. If they begin to see information on pizza, for instance, you throw them off when they come for information on sneakers.
So, you have done 1 and 2 above, and you have quality content on your blog. However, it doesn't end there. There are limitations to the number of people who will see the quality content if you don't promote it.
An email newsletter is one of the best ways to promote your content. Therefore, you must start building an email list if you just started your blog or repurpose your old blogs if they are not driving traffic. Getting an email service provider will help you solve the problem.
(Source: Buffer)
We've got you covered if you wonder what type of content you can create.
When you create blogs and post regularly, it is an excellent way to drive traffic.
These are visual images that present information and statistics efficiently and comprehensively.
(Source: Informatics Inc.)
Images are vital; one can get all the information about a product at a glance.
Video is more engaging than pictures. Statistics show that video communications will dominate internet traffic by 82% in 2022. Therefore, with quality video content, a marketer is sure of driving traffic.
(Source: Website Planet)
Webinars and podcasts present opportunities to spread knowledge and expertise to the target audience. It is also a suitable medium for establishing authority in your line of business.
Ebooks are usually detailed, like blog posts. They provide your target audience with everything they need to know in a particular subject.
The end goal of every business owner is to make profits. But profits cannot come without certain things, which is where content marketing comes in.
Every online business that will make a profit needs the following to grow:
Thus, content marketing can help a business achieve better ROI.
Below are 3 content marketing examples to encourage you to try this strategy:
Chipotle is an example of a brand using content for social media marketing. Chipotle is very active on TikTok. They use the platform to reach and engage their audience. They also use TikTok to post menus, recipes, people in their restaurant, people enjoying their food, etc. They have over 30 million likes, with followers reaching 2 million.
HubSpot brought innovation into content marketing by creating the phrase "Inbound marketing." Do you know how they were able to do it?
Attracting, converting, closing, and delighting, in that order. HubSpot created a lot of values with those fundamental working principles. Most people run to Hubspot websites for content marketing solutions because their guides are detailed, authoritative, and workable.
Only those living out of this world have not seen or heard of the Coca-Cola “Share a Coke” campaign. The campaign allowed everyone to personalize their bottle of coke.
Coke printed the names of some people on their bottles and shared them on social media. Before you knew it, it went global.
This success was because the Coca-Cola company made people with this name feel special. Family and friends also felt special because the name of the people they love is on the coke bottle.
If you are looking for the best content marketing tools to help your brand, you’ve got it. Here are ten of the best tools to use:
Gartner said 26% is the average percentage of total marketing budget spent on content marketing, while Skilled noted 85% of marketers globally use content marketing to generate more sales.
These are good statistics, but how do you measure your brand’s content marketing success. Here are 4 key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use.
Page visit is one of the most straightforward ways to measure content success. A good KPI is the number of people who visit your page daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
People don't share content that is not relevant to the people they share it with. Therefore, the number of times your content is shared indicates that some people found it valuable for others to see.
Comment gives first-hand feedback on the value of your content. Don't be like other marketers who don't read comments. You can get more valuable information from your audience about your products or services than you can get from other indicators.
The conversion rate tells a lot about how your content is doing. The number of conversions you make periodically will determine if you are succeeding or not.
Content marketing is all you need to take your business to the next level. This article is a guide to help your business get there. However, sometimes it is tiresome to do it all by yourself.
If you need help developing an effective content marketing strategy for your business, let us know.