Content marketing is one of the best ways to help let people know about your company and raise awareness about your brand, product or services. It differs from regular advertising and marketing where the company is actively trying to promote or sell a product or service. Content marketing is less direct.
It is more of a long-term strategy that is based on building up a relationship with potential customers by giving them high quality and relevant content consistently.
In this post, I will teach you content marketing and the marketing strategy your business is missing.
But What is Content Marketing?
The name “content marketing” has become widespread within the last decade, but what is content marketing? Content marketing is a new marketing strategy that involved creating various online content that is relevant to a company’s field without directly promoting their brand or service.
For example:
A company that creates surfboards and gear might develop content such as a blog post on various surfing locations complete with high-quality related images.
This content is relevant to their field and will spark the interests of people that surf and will be interested in surfboards and gear. It stimulates interests and indirectly develops brand recognition and trust.
There are many different types of content marketing, a few popular methods of content marketing are:
Infographics:
An infographic is a long, vertical graph or document that is packed full of visual information such as statistics, graphs, charts, images and other information.
Blog Posts:
Blog posts are a passage of writing that includes personal opinions and showcases knowledge around different topics that are related and specific to the business.
Email:
Email is a strategy that sends information out to people that are interested. A way to maximize this strategy is to send out unique content that meets the needs of the target audience.
Adding in elements such as humor, personal touches and tips are all things that will make people open the email rather than letting it sit in their inbox unread.
To discover more methods of content marketing, check out the following infographic courtesy of my company, Skilled.
The Simplicity Behind Content Marketing
The idea behind content marketing is that when the target audience decides that they want to make a purchase, they will have already decided that they want to use your company.
Their loyalty already lies with you. They feel like they know the company well and will not even question going anywhere else. Content marketing helps to show your customers you care about them, and you are not just trying to get their money.
You are providing them with something of value for free, and in return, you will also get something of value back at some point.
Another way to describe the concept of content marketing would be to describe its process:
- Step 1: Is to create valuable content.
- Step 2: Is to share the content with people that might be interested in it.
- Step 3: Is Brand recognition and trust that is associated with the created content.
- Step 4: This can convert content readers into customers and eventually into repeat buyers.
Of course, it cannot just be any random content, the content needs to be relevant to your product or service you are offering. The idea being that the customer will want to read, watch or listen to the content.
The customer will choose this path rather than being forced to — which is often the case with everyday advertising. You are trying to get people to trust you enough to do business with you by educating them about your business.
Content Marketing Today
Today, content marketing is used by an incredible 86% of all businesses, sometimes without them even realizing it. It is important to note that not all content marketing is successful, some content marketing comes across as just needless content or too sleazy.
To be successful the content has to be of the highest quality, but more importantly, it has to be relevant and about something that the target audience wants to know about.
When you have achieved this, you will know about it, as the audience will want to get more of your content by subscribing to your content or sharing it with others. Soon you will grow a loyal following for your business, and it doesn’t have to cost the company much at all.
Sure, there are businesses that will add quality content for you at a high rate, but there is nothing stopping you from creating content yourself for your own business.
The key is to keep the content going out to those who want it — consistently. A good example of this is blogging. If a company blogs sporadically then the audience will not know when the next set of content is being released and may lose interest.
If they know when the next set of content is being released, they may even wait for it. 82% of marketers that blog every day have claimed that they gain at least one customer through their blog, compared to 57% who only blog about once a month.
Research has shown that visual content is more successful compared to content that does not have any visual elements.
Around 90% of the information that comes to the brain is visual, so it makes sense for this method to work best.
This is why infographics are currently a popular form of content media. Readers can get a lot of information from it in just one glance, plus it is easy to pass around to others that may find the content interesting.
How to Distribute the Created Content?
One of the best ways to distribute content marketing is through social media. Facebook and Twitter are good as it is where people go to pass the time, yet the most popular platform is LinkedIn.
89% of B2B marketers use the LinkedIn platform as a way to distribute their content, which makes it the most effective and used social media platform.
However, over the past 2 years, content on Facebook has increased by a huge 57%, most notably in the form of video content. YouTube is also a good way to distribute content as potential customers can subscribe to your YouTube channel and be notified when there is more content.
There are so many ways that companies can utilize content marketing, they just need to find the best method that works for them and gets them results.
Content Marketing can be very individual and some types of marketing work best for a certain number of one type of business while other types of content marketing will deliver better results for other types of businesses.
It can often be a trial and error process until you find the perfect content marketing combination for your business. To find out more about content marketing and how it can work for your brand or business, take a look at the adjoining infographic created by the team at Skilled.co.
