If we look at the natural progression of marketing through the decades, we will notice an astonishing development. One of the most vital marketing branches, crucial for every business, is content marketing. In a few simple words, it is a strategic approach towards creating and distributing relevant content, that holds certain value and consistency. The main goal of content marketing is to attract and retain a clearly defined profile of customers. It is the fuel that drives your company forward.
So, what makes content marketing so specialwhen compared to traditional marketing?
The secret of content marketing
Before the era of the Internet began to explode, everyone was using the traditional forms of marketing. It was done through magazines, newspapers, via television or radio. Furthermore, people would often get promotional emails or phone calls aimed at offering product samples to potential clients. While that approach had many benefits, it comes second when compared to content marketing.
Behind every marketing campaign lies a strong plan relying on presenting quality content
Content marketing focuses more on the needs of the customer, constantly improving the product. It offers a higher form of communication with your defined audience, providing valuable feedback. Consequently, you are able to run data analytics that provides insight into how your customers think and act.
Three key benefits of content marketing
A testament to the success of content marketing in today’s business is the fact that all major industries apply it on a regular basis. By using content marketing, they are able to:
- increase sales
- reduce production costs
- build a network of loyal customers
That is the final goal of every business, and content marketing provides the means to accomplish it.
Content is the king of all marketing
The keywords of success—relevant and valuable
Think about it, why would a customer spend his hard-earned money to buy a product or a service? The answer is simple, everyone will spend money on something that holds a certain value, and is relevant for their goals or agendas. Everything else is just promotional material thrown in your face, to make you spend money on something you don’t need.
It was much easier for companies to sell their products before. However, with time the customer became more educated about the quality of the service, and spenders started requesting more. In reality, the customer is what drove marketing to develop in this manner.
With that in mind, whatever content you are presenting to the public, always ask yourself, is it something valuable and relevant to the potential buyers? If the answer is no, you should invest your time into improving it or create something new. Otherwise, you are risking many expenses in order to promote a service that will not bring a profit. Furthermore, it will drive the customers away.
Content is the root of marketing
You can start seeing a pattern here. No form of marketing is possible without quality content. Whether you are implementing social marketing, influencer marketing, SEO or inbound marketing, the content is what drives the numbers up.
Content is the most crucial cog in the marketing machinery
How to create quality content?
Finally, here we are. The question that everyone will ask, how to create quality content? The answer to that is not simple. Creating quality content requires different stepsto be taken. It is a product of customer research, and it is done in multiple phases.
Customer research
Customer research is a never-ending process. Customers change with time, and if you are not keeping up with the changes, your content will become obsolete. A great way to research your customers is to do surveys.
By using a few simple and targeted questions, find out what motivates your customers. What are their goals and challenges in life? You have to make it personal in order to become important!
Something like this is easily done with a registration form. Once you set up a sign-in method, add a few questions that your client will have to answer in order to register for your website.
You can segment them further by the type of job they do, and what kind of career are they after. A person who owns a business will have a different mindset from someone who works for an employer.
Another way is to use polls on social media. Some simple advice:
- keep them short and concise
- cover all possible answers to a question
- avoid yes/no questions
- do not try to influence answers by giving leading questions
What to do with the gathered data?
As said above, customer research should be conducted on every few months. However, the big question is what to do with the data you gather from these polls and surveys?
The next step would be working on the content. Now you can form different categories of customers, and each group will have a specific point of interest. Once you have that in place, creating content will be much easier.
You should use gathered data to create targeted relevant content for distribution
Content distribution channels
Once the content is ready for the public, it is time to find the best platform to distribute it to your potential clients. Some of the more common distribution channels are:
- Facebook posts
- Tweets
- online adds
- promoted pins
- Instagram adds
- sponsored LinkedIn content
- social profiles
- influencer channels
- video and e-mail marketing
While these are more commonly used methods, there are a plethora of pro tips to promote content. At this point, it is crucial that you take interest in this and start your own research. You must allocate enough time to investigate on your own and find the distribution channel that suits your business best.
Remarketing
The last essential content marketing strategy that I want to cover in this article is remarketing. Simply speaking, it is the practice of showing relevant ads to your targeted audience who already visited your website. As they browse the internet, it is imperative they see more and more of your ads. A lot of money is being spent on this strategy. The research shows that a customer is more likely to purchase your product if he or she is frequently exposed to your content marketing ads.
With such a thorough analysis of buyers, it becomes crystal clear why content marketing is the present and the future of every business.
