There are many reasons you might be experiencing low traffic on your website. You might be excessively spending on one form of media and ignoring others. You could be aggressively approaching customers by immediately handing out info regarding your company.
Whatever the case, people ignore your brand, and you miss out on potential earnings.
If you want your marketing strategy to bring people to your door, content marketing can help you.
Content marketing is a holistic approach to promoting your products or services using multiple forms of media. It helps you gain more customers and revenue in the short and long term.
Content marketing connects you to more people, giving you more clout, conversions, and sales!
This article will go through the basics of content marketing. Then, we will discuss why your company needs this strategy and how it can help. We’ll explain how you can start using these strategies.
Need more traffic? Book a free content strategy audit.
What Is Content Marketing?
According to the Content Marketing Institute:
“Content marketing is a strategic 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 warms your consumers up for your brand, giving quality content your potential customers want. Content creation can be ebooks, articles, blog posts, or other media.
This lets your targeted audience find solutions from your pieces of content. But, of course, it’s better if you provide answers they can’t find anywhere else.
As they refer more often to your content, you gain their trust. This helps build relationships with them. Eventually, content marketing lets you get loyal customers.
Unlike traditional marketing ploys like people handing out brochures, content creation doesn’t blatantly inform people about a brand using just one medium. Leaflets immediately insist that consumers should get a product while “supplies last” or “during the special offer.”
This usually turns customers off because they didn’t intend to buy when they received the pamphlet. Worse, they feel inconvenienced and associate a negative feeling with a product.
As a result, your ads end in coat pockets or trash bins.
Let’s say you’re selling an essential oil health supplement using content marketing. You may publish content regarding the benefits of its ingredients first.
You can discuss these in various types of content, such as videos and blogs.
Your content will suggest that your product can impart essential oils’ benefits. In addition, you might attach ads on affiliated websites to reach more audiences.
If you’re savvy, you might use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to ensure your product ranks high on search results.
Related information regarding your product may seem nonsensical since you’re not directly asking your target audience to purchase your product.
However, relevant articles will subtly inform them of your product’s benefits, so they will likely search for it. If you perform SEO, visitors can quickly find your product through search engines, increasing your chances of securing a sale.
Content marketing can help you boost earnings if you do it right. However, you’ll need time and dedication. You’ll have to stick with it consistently until it works.
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Why Is Content Marketing Important?
The importance of content marketing is revealed by Statista’s study for 2021. The study shows a growing trend among businesses in the race to reach a target market and build brand awareness. It might be time to quit traditional marketing tactics and give content a try.
Companies often use it to build a positive brand reputation. They want people to see their brand in a positive light. This encourages prospective customers to find them, while the reputation can encourage repeat sales with repeat customers.
To do this, brands create relevant content that serves specific customer needs. Good content marketing provides valuable knowledge that helps people.
As a result, people are likely to rely on that brand’s high-quality content. This helps new leads become customers. This is why more companies want to use this kind of marketing.
Brands also want to get more customers. That’s why companies spend over 40% of B2C budgets on it. Also, they may pay more than 60% of their B2B budget on content marketing this year.
Your competitors are already using this method. In addition, businesses outside your field now create content. In response, your company should adapt to this new trend.
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If you’re not still convinced, these are the importance of content marketing:
You Want Your Brand To Garner Customer Reputation
People learn what your company’s all about when interacting with your content. If the content on your website helps and entertains them, they’ll associate those positive perceptions with your brand. They’ll view your brand as a leader in the industry if they see your content everywhere.
You Want To Show Your Brand’s Excellence
Your company has a fantastic product or service; content marketing can help you prove this to customers. As you publish content, people learn how much expertise you have. They’ll trust your brand to provide for their needs, so you have a greater chance of bringing them through the sales funnel and closing more sales.
You Want More Online Conversions
If you need more people to click “Add to Cart,” you need content marketing. Every piece of content guides your customers’ purchasing decisions and leads them down your marketing funnel to buy your products. Statistics from various websites show website conversions skyrocket because of content marketing.
You Want To Forge Better Customer Relationships
People have brands they trust, so they consistently purchase products that carry that name. As a result, the company receives a constant stream of revenue. Content marketing can turn your brand into an industry icon, guaranteeing additional sales and potential customers.
You Want To Step Up Your SEO Game
Good companies aim for top search results, but great companies aspire to dominate the first page! If you publish numerous top-ranking articles, you could be your customers’ first, second, AND third choice on search engines. Even better, your articles may cover other topics, helping you build brand awareness.
You Want To Spend Less Acquiring More Leads
Many companies spend an arm and a leg on billboard ads, but almost nobody becomes interested in their brand. Content marketing is a cost-effective digital marketing strategy that could yield three times more leads. You can get more people interested in your brand with quality and consistent content while spending less on content marketing costs.
You Want To Boost Every Aspect of Your Marketing Strategy
You might promote your business through traditional marketing, such as email blasts and banner ads. Content marketing can make those other tactics more effective, so it’s more than an additional method. For example, your emails could apply content marketing techniques to compel readers to your products and services.
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There are many kinds of media, so various forms of content exist. Therefore, your next step in Content Marketing 101 is learning your options:
Types of Content
Text Content
A content marketing company can promote your brand with an engaging and informative blog post for your website visitors. Moreover, they provide other written content like how-to guides, newsletters, and landing pages.
Social Media
Content marketing companies can get your social media marketing viral and trending! Let them handle the full-time task of building your online presence and plotting your content calendar.
Video Content
Do you need to persuade customers with customer testimonials? You can use an online video editor to make captivating videos. How about showcasing your products with entertaining reviews or how-to videos? An agency can create and edit videos that customers will be captivated by at the start and convert a sale by the end!
Sites like YouTube make it easier to watch video content. What’s more, it’s a lot easier to make them too. If they like your videos, people could share them with others. In turn, they help you spread content.
Infographics
These are creative pictures that promote goods and services. They’re effective because people like visuals. They can add animations and effects to informative content to inform and engage your customers. The right content marketers can turn boring slideshows into entertaining, fun shows!
Webpages
Most companies have websites nowadays. Also, they have pages on most social media. This helps companies reach a wide customer pool. Even better, they could post other content on them.
Podcasts
These involve people talking about stuff on audio, just like radio shows. The hosts often read ad breaks in between. Your content can be the podcast or the featured sponsor.
Ebooks
People read books on their mobile devices instead of paperbacks. They could help people so that they may count as content. However, you’ll need more time and effort to make a successful ebook.
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Search Engine Optimization
If you want to be on top of search results, convince the search engines with the right (key)words! Luckily, content marketing services and other SEO requirements. Your brand can reign supreme in all online searches, from pay-per-click advertising to organic traffic boosting!
Analytics
Tracking content marketing metrics between conversion and bounce rates can be challenging. Fortunately, an agency can handle analyzing and monitoring metrics so that you can tend to more pressing business matters.
As you can see, it’s better to outsource your content marketing to experts. More importantly, you should pick the best one for your company.
Ask other business leaders regarding their preferred agencies or read online reviews and testimonials.
Discuss your present and future business goals once you’ve found the right agency. This will enable them to craft the best strategy for your business.
The best content marketing agency can get the leads and conversions your company needs with its expert advisors!
How Do I Start With Content Marketing?
Now that you know why content marketing is essential, it’s time to apply it to your business.
You can start by learning the three steps to create a content marketing strategy that determines your Why, Who, and How.
Why is Content Marketing Important for My Business?
Of course, we know we’ve just convinced you earlier of the merits of content marketing. However, all companies have unique digital marketing needs, and you must determine yours.
Knowing your needs will ensure that content marketing truly addresses your business needs. For example, people could ignore your brand, so you might want to build its credibility or boost its conversion paths.
Remember to weigh the benefits and risks content marketing may impose on your business.
You must work with your company’s limitations, like time and budget constraints. Your content marketing strategy must also appeal to stakeholders if you have them.
However, don’t let these obstacles get in the way of your marketing.
With careful planning, these limitations could help you create the best content marketing campaigns!
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Who Are Your Target Audiences?
Next, you should identify the people you’ll serve with high-quality content. Remember that your products and services are meant to satisfy people’s desires. You must determine what kind of person will benefit most from your product.
For instance, a car company would be hard-pressed to promote its vehicles to toddlers!
You could start understanding who your potential customers are by creating buyer personas. These comprise your target audience’s traits, behaviors, and motivations.
Ask yourself the following questions so that you can paint a clearer picture of your intended customers:
- What makes my customers unique?
- What’s their typical daily routine?
- What are their life goals and aspirations?
- Do they have any idea about your products? If they already know about our brand, why don’t they prefer yours?
- What would convince them to choose our brand?
Let’s say you’re a car manufacturer formulating your buyers’ persona. If you’re targeting people in their late 20s, your buyers often use their cars for work.
You may figure out they’re starting in life, so they have limited spending power. Moreover, this age group may want to preserve the environment.
If you’re selling gas-guzzling pickups, they could be turned off by their high price and carbon emissions.
In response, you might want to create more affordable and environment-friendly vehicles for them.
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How Do You Want Your Content Marketing Story to End?
Do you remember Apple’s signature slogan, “Think Different”?
This encapsulated what Steve Jobs envisioned for his tech company. He wanted his brand and his customers to exude individuality and vitality. That’s why their music players were designed with simplicity, countering their cumbersome competitors.
That motto isn’t merely about making a profit by catering to a specific type of person. Ultimately, this led to the inception of the iPhone, the world’s first smartphone that took the world by storm.
In that same vein, ask yourself what your company is all about.
- What are the guiding principles your company follows?
- What opportunity does your business have in helping your customers?
- What value do you impart to your customers’ lives?
Answering these questions will help you refine your content marketing in the long run. It will focus your marketing efforts on one clear goal, leading you closer to success!
How Content Marketing Companies Can Help You
You always want the best people working for you as a business leader. All companies rely on experts in various fields, from stellar sales teams to amazing content writers, to succeed in their business goals.
However, you might have no content marketing team yet.
You could hire a new marketing team, but that would take significant time. Your company is already handling multiple tasks. You don’t have time for recruitment and selection. More importantly, rookies don’t have time to figure things out.
If you need experts for your content marketing efforts, a content marketing agency can help.
They can provide a skilled workforce to create content your company needs for your target audience. Do you need video content for your social media marketing? How about blog posts that are optimized for your target audiences?
A great content marketing agency can provide all the types of content you need!
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What Is Social Media Marketing?
Out of all the methods, why do we focus on social media? Well, billions worldwide use it daily for their digital marketing campaigns. You may even be checking it out while reading this article!
Social media posts let us reach people from thousands of miles away. We can share our photos, videos, and ideas with someone far away in seconds!
This makes it great for promoting goods and services. Do it right, and your small business could sell to billions. As a result, more companies use social media marketing.
What’s more, it uses content strategy as well. These sites let you share your blog content with the largest customer base. You can use it to boost traffic to your other content.
Let’s say your blog posts don’t have many readers. You can post it on your social media page to reach more people. You can even place a link to your blogs to make them more effective.
Other companies also prefer this method. According to Statista, B2B companies use LinkedIn more often. Facebook and YouTube follow it.
To reach customers, it’s better to use these two marketing strategies. After all, more people use these platforms. Yet, it’s best to be on the other sites your customers often use.
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How to Make a Good Social Media Marketing Plan
Unfortunately, content marketing campaigns are a bit different from social media. We’ll go through it in the last part of this article.
It still involves the same ideas as creating quality content but for social media platforms like Facebook. The first step of a great marketing campaign on social media is choosing your platforms. It’s not enough to be on the biggest one.
Nowadays, we often see new social media apps popping up. Aside from Facebook, there’s Twitter and Instagram. But, unfortunately, you’ll miss out on more customers if you use just one.
The buyer’s persona you used to create content can help. Use it to figure out what platforms your target audience uses. Of course, this will depend on their interests, age, and other factors.
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Make Useful Content
Then, it’s time for another important part of content marketing. As stated before, you should make valuable content for your customers. The buyer’s persona could help with this, too.
Remember that people are drawn to visuals. They prefer content they can see or watch. Using other forms of content like infographics and videos for marketing can be beneficial.
What’s more, you should schedule your content. If you give content at specific time slots, your customers could expect them more easily. As a result, they may rely on your content even more.
Make a content calendar that shows when you’ll release your marketing materials. Of course, this will also depend on your customers. Make sure they can tune in when you publish content.
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Build A Community
Businesses help their customers band together. This helps in bringing more people closer to your products and services. You could do this by giving referral rewards.
Give a price for interacting with your content. For instance, customers could earn money by referring your content to their friends. The goal is to encourage folks to check your content.
Also, A major tool to use is user feedback. Let customers send comments through your website. You can survey them to understand what they think of your brand.
Their insights could help you improve your content marketing strategy. Always look for ways to make better content. There’s always new stuff to learn and apply to your plan.
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Q&As
What are other ways to boost my online presence?
You don’t have to do it every day. You do need to be consistently publishing content. Results don’t come overnight, so this will take some dedication.
What’s the difference between content marketing and social media marketing?
While social media marketing is focused on sales, content marketing generates engagement that leads to sales. As mentioned above, your content can be used on social media, allowing you to focus on selling and the user’s experience.
Blog marketing is content marketing focusing on written content for website visitors. This includes blog posts, newsletters, and other forms considered text content.
Conclusion
Creating a content strategy for your digital marketing is not a weekend project. It requires consistency and subject matter expertise to ensure you’re providing valuable content to your target customers.
With diligence and the perfect strategy, you can increase brand loyalty and earn more traffic to your business.
Do you find that you don’t have the time to create a content marketing strategy that answers your audience’s questions and boosts sales? Why not contact Lead Advisors?
LeadAdvisors is a marketing agency specializing in engaging content that lasts longer than other posts. With our help, you’ll be ahead of your competitors quickly. Interested? Contact us today!
