What is content marketing? Remember those folks passing brochures at your favorite mall? They hand you a pamphlet about a newly opened store or the latest smartphone model.
If you’re like most people, you probably just politely accepted it then shoved it immediately into your pocket.
Worse, you often forget about it, so you never visited the store. The person handing those little pamphlets mostly fails in selling that new product or service.
Without content marketing, your brand might be as ineffective as those leaflets.
You might be excessively spending on one form of media and ignoring others. You could be approaching customers by immediately handing out info regarding their company. As a result, people ignore your brand, and you miss out on potential earnings.
If you want your marketing strategy to get people at your door, content marketing can help you.
This is a holistic approach to promoting your products or services using multiple forms of media. More importantly, it helps you gain more customers and revenue in the short and long term. Content marketing connects you to more people, so you get more clout, conversions, and most importantly, sales!
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.”
In a way, content marketing warms your customers up for your brand. Unlike people handing out brochures, it 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 a customer off because they didn’t intend on buying when they received the pamphlet. Worse, they feel inconvenienced, so they 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.
These will be discussed in various types of content, such as videos and blogs.
More importantly, these will suggest your product could impart the benefits of essential oils. In addition, you might attach ads on affiliated websites to reach more audiences.
If you’re savvy, you might even use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make sure your product ranks top on search results.
Related information regarding your product may seem nonsensical since you’re not directly asking them to purchase your product.
However, relevant articles will subtly inform them of your product’s benefits, so they’re likely to search for it. If you performed SEO, they’d quickly find your product, increasing the chances that you’ll secure a sale from them.
Do you want to earn for a few months, then that’s it? Do you want your product to be that one-hit-wonder fluke that people will forget about quickly?
Or do you want your company to yield earnings consistently? Do you want customers to keep coming back to your brand as their #1 go-to?
If you do, you’ll engage in optimized content marketing for the following reasons:
People learn what your company’s all about when they interact with your content. If your staff helps and entertains them, they’ll associate those positive perceptions with your brand. More importantly, they’ll view your brand as a leader in the industry if they see your content everywhere.
Your company has a fantastic product or service, and 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 closing more sales.
If you need more people clicking “Add to Cart,” then you need content marketing. Every piece of content guides your customers’ purchasing decisions and leads them to buy your products. There are statistics from various websites that show website conversions skyrocketing because of content marketing.
People have brands they trust, so they consistently purchase products carrying that name. As a result, the company receives a constant stream of revenue. Content marketing can turn your brand into an icon of your industry, guaranteeing additional sales and potential customers.
Good companies aim for top search results, but great companies aspire to dominate the whole first page! If you publish numerous top-ranking articles, you could be the first, second, AND third choice of your customers. Even better, your articles may cover other topics, helping your brand expand further.
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 marketing method that could yield three times more leads. With quality and consistency, you can get more people interested in your brand while spending less than traditional means.
Currently, you might be promoting your business using other means such as email blasts and banner ads. Content marketing can make those other tactics more effective, so it’s more than just an additional method. For example, your emails could apply content marketing techniques to compel readers to your products and services.
Now that you know why content marketing is essential, it’s time to apply them to your business.
You can start by learning the three steps to create a content marketing strategy that involves determining your Why, Who, and How.
Of course, we know we’ve just convinced you earlier of the merits of content marketing. However, all companies have unique needs, and you must determine yours.
This will ensure that content marketing truly addresses your business needs. For example, people could be ignoring 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 have to work with your company’s limitations like time and budget constraints. If you have stakeholders, your content marketing strategy must appeal to them too.
Don’t let these obstacles get in the way of your marketing, though.
With careful planning, these limitations could help you create the best content marketing strategy!
Next, you should identify the people you’ll serve with content marketing. 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 are made up of the traits, behaviors, and motivations of your target audience.
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, then 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 20’s, 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.
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. This was 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?
On what opportunity does your business have in helping your customers?
What value do you impart to your customer’s lives?
Your answers to 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 even closer to success!
As a business leader, you always want the best people working for you. All companies rely on experts in various fields so that they can 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 a significant amount of time. Your company is already handling multiple tasks. You don’t have time for recruitment and selection. More importantly, you don’t have time for rookies 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 that will deliver great content your company needs. 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!
A content marketing company can promote your brand with engaging and informative blogs. What’s more, they provide other written content like how-to guides, newsletters, and landing pages.
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.
Do you need to persuade customers with customer testimonials? How about showcasing your products with comprehensive and entertaining reviews? An agency can create and edit videos that customers will captivate at the start and convert a sale by the end!
The right content marketers can turn your boring slideshows into entertaining, fun shows! They can add animations and effects to informative content so your customers are informed and engaged.
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. From pay-per-click advertising and organic traffic boosting, your brand can reign supreme in all online searches!
Between conversion rates and bounce rates, it can be challenging to track content marketing metrics yourself. 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.
Once you’ve found the right agency, discuss exactly your present and future business goals. This will enable them to craft the best marketing strategy for your business.
With their expert advisors, the best content marketing agency can get the leads and conversions your company needs!
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