In content marketing, relevant, helpful content is developed and distributed to current and potential customers, such as blogs, newsletters, white papers, social media posts, emails, videos, and the like. Content like this conveys expertise and makes it obvious when done correctly.
Content marketing involves creating valuable, relevant content for the following purposes:
Attract new customers
Acquire their custom
Engage their interest
Establishing and nurturing relationships with prospective and existing customers can be achieved through consistent content marketing. Your audience is more likely to buy from you if they view your company as a valuable partner interested in their success.
Marketing your content is a proven strategy that works. Moreover, it gives you an advantage over your competitors.
The following data shows what content marketing is all about:
Sixty-seven percent more leads are generated by companies with blogs than by other companies.
Most buyers view 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging with sales representatives.
The growth rates of companies that use content marketing are about 30% higher than those that do not.
The number of leads and engagement generated by content marketing is reported by 72 percent of business-to-business (B2B) marketers.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Content Marketing is an effective method for growing your business, and we have already mentioned some advantages. In the following sections, we will explain each point mentioned in more detail so you can see how they work.
Increases traffic to your website.
Creates value for your audience.
Generates a positive brand perception.
Drives sales to the next level.
Types of Content Marketing
Knowing these basic concepts of Content Marketing will enable you to decide what type of content is most effective for your business.
Those are:
Blog posts
Infographics
Videos
eBooks
Case studies
Checklists
Testimonials and reviews
Influencer marketing
Guides and how-toss
Memes
1. Blogs
To attract potential customers looking for answers to your company's problems, your website should have a blog that corresponds to your product and its market. Organic traffic can also be increased by blogging.
When writing a blog post, you should consider the following:
SEO-friendly content is essential
Create pillars or clusters for your blog topics
You should ensure that your content is focused and relevant to the product you are selling
2. Infographics
Infographics can enhance your marketing strategy. You can present graphs and processes visually compellingly with them. The cost-effectiveness and speed of infographics make them popular with marketing professionals.
3. Videos
Your industry can benefit from using video content to engage your audience and keep them interested. This post discusses how you can use video marketing to your advantage.
4.EBooks
EBooks can also replace the production of content on the internet. One important reason they are superior to blog posts is that they are long-form texts. Customer information, such as a name and email address, is required to download an eBook. It is possible to provide customers with more engaging content if you have this information at your fingertips. Your company's products and services can generate significant interest from eBooks on popular topics, so you should invest in this type of content.
5. Case studies
Use your existing knowledge to attract new customers. Case studies provide that kind of content. You use case studies to demonstrate how your company has successfully helped other businesses, giving your prospects a better understanding of what you do. You can use case studies to showcase your expertise. As a result, they fall into the top category of online content that brands can produce.
6. Checklists
Making a checklist gives your customers free tools, which they love. Your customers can achieve their goals by using this type of content marketing. Having them on your website is a great idea.
7. Testimonials and reviews
Your brand can benefit from giving a voice to your clients as well. The reason testimonials and reviews are so effective for increasing your website's content is that they're inexpensive. To create this content, you simply need to consult with your clients. A stunning visual collection of ideas can be made without hiring a designer or copywriter.
8. Influencer marketing
Brands can also benefit from using influencers. Influencer marketing should be at the top of your list if you want to ensure your money is well spent. You can make sure your leads convert by partnering with influencers on content that has everything to do with your brand. To make your brand shine, you use influencer marketing to borrow the trust of individuals.
9. Guides and how-toss
Your brand's engagement can be increased through guides and how-toss. You share specific knowledge with your customers through these quick posts. Assume you are a conversion expert. Could you create a simple guide that shares some of the things you learned? Your brand's communication with customers will be transformed with this strategy.
10. Memes
A Content Marketing strategy shouldn't be boring. Memes can be a great way to engage your audience if they align with your brand and make sense for your system. Most of the internet is made of memes since they are a quick way to convey your intentions. In addition to being shareable, such an approach to presenting ideas may also be viral. Marketing strategies should incorporate memes if possible.
Content writing Basic steps
Content marketing fits into the customer journey
Mapping your content
Content marketing metrics
Creating effective content consistently
How to monetize and distribute content
Content marketing tools to try out
Content marketing takeaways
1. How content marketing fits into the customer journey
Marketing professionals are familiar with the customer journey, which outlines the steps a person goes through from first contact with your content to becoming a prospect and finally buying from you. An effective content marketing strategy consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.
The Awareness stage's top-of-the-funnel content
The top of the funnel (TOFU) appears if someone becomes aware of your company. Your audience can be educated, defined, contextualized, clarified, and informed effectively by you. A person at the awareness stage isn't ready to be sold to, but naming and framing their problems and problems they are experiencing will significantly increase their likelihood of receptivity to everything that comes their way. To create blog posts, we articulate a problem, explain how it's contextualized, and offer solutions that will resonate with people in the awareness stage. Listed below are some examples of blog post titles that target visitors who are still figuring out what their issue is:
Make sure your marketing collateral doesn't make these 4 responsive design mistakes.
Instead of focusing on conversion rates, optimize engagement instead
What are content operations, and why do you need to start thinking about them
Visitors experiencing frustration but have not yet pinpointed the exact cause or decided what type of solution to investigate can benefit from these three titles. The title of these articles promises more information to help visitors answer their questions.
You should always provide content that helps your visitors understand their problems and prepares them for the next step: seeking a solution.
Middle-of-the-funnel content for the Consideration stage
As a prospect, the person is still exploring your product or service. Most people are interested in trying new things but aren't yet ready to purchase. A monthly webinar series hosted by sales and marketing company Drift aims to remove sales roadblocks during the pandemic. Three sessions are offered, each hosted by a different host. You'll learn how to engage buyers, win over newly engaged employees, and maintain sales team close rates. Drift works well in the middle of the funnel as a sales and marketing company. The content is beneficial and introduces the audience to Drift.
Bottom-of-the-funnel content at the Decision stage
The bottom-of-funnel content targets the target audience at the point when they are about to make a purchase decision. The stakes are high here since you're essentially persuading prospects to buy your product over a competitor's.
Content targeting the decision stage should provide evidence of expected results to persuade prospects that your solution is the best choice among many options. Video tutorials, case studies, and success stories are ideal content for the decision stage.
To showcase the stories and examples of our customers, we have created web pages. This is an excellent approach as it allows customers to see our extensive list of customers and find templates they might find helpful.
It is essential to understand the customer journey to present the correct type of content at the right time to reach potential buyers.
2. Mapping your content
Having trouble deciding what direction to take? Analyzing all your content assets and applying them to the customer journey is the best way to get strategic with your content.
You should determine where each content asset fits into the customer journey and how effectively they move prospects forward.
You can use this to:
Make sure your funnel contains all the content you need
You should optimize content by its purpose
Content audits are intended to give you a clear understanding of your published content, how it is performing, and how you should plan for the future.
The reason this sounds like a lot of work is that it is. When done correctly, content marketing can pay off big time!
Identifying gaps with a content audit
Start by creating a spreadsheet that includes a list of every article your company has written and intends to write in the future. This will help you identify gaps in your content strategy. Among the columns in the spreadsheet should be status (published or planned), type, title, stage of the customer journey targets, persona targets, and URL.
By filling out this sheet, you will be able to identify areas of your content that may need improvement. Most of your content, for example, focuses on the decision stage and has little to do with awareness. If you are prepared well for the awareness stage but lack content for the consideration stage, you are likely to be unprepared for the consideration stage.
Ensure that every customer stage and persona combination is covered with quality content by focusing your content creation efforts on filling these gaps.
Establishing goals for your content
Once you have determined the place of each piece of content within the customer journey, you can check whether or not it is functioning correctly.
Helping people define their problems is one of your awareness stage goals.
Can you demonstrate the merits of your solution through the assets you are considering?
Would prospects buy from you if they thought your offer was better than your competitors'?
Decide on measurable goals before you answer these questions. To optimize each piece of content, you need to determine what goals you should set for it.
Use the following six content goals (yours may differ):
1. Acquisition: The process of attracting new visitors
2. Activation: The process of converting visitors into subscribers
3. Education: Maintain subscriber engagement and loyalty
4. Revenue: Converting visitors into buyers
5. Expansion: Incentives to upgrade customers
6. Referral: Creating evangelists from customers
Goals and journey stages are not always identical, as you can see. Activation falls neatly into the consideration stage, depending on the context, even though acquisition and activation are primarily associated with the awareness stage. A content's effectiveness and optimization can be measured by assigning goals. Once a plan has been identified, the point of an asset can be evaluated and optimized.
3. Content marketing metrics
Keeping track of and measuring your content marketing performance will help you improve it. The key performance indicators (KPIs) for content marketing can tell you what pieces of content are successful and what pieces aren't.
Articles published on the blog
Observations
Video clips
4. Create effective content consistently
As we've described previously, content marketing is about sharing valuable content with customers, tracking and measuring its effectiveness, and coming up with fantastic ideas for content marketing.
Creating consistently compelling content is now the next step.
The following three methods can be used:
Create a content calendar
Content marketing requires brand consistency. Your audience will know when to expect new content if you publish it regularly. Content calendars help you plan when and what content you'll publish. As a result, you'll have a more strategic approach to delivering content (instead of just posting random topics as they come to mind). You can design your content calendar any way you like. Each content piece should include the following details: title, content type, publication date, author, and stage of the customer journey.
Create a style guide
A style guide ensures that all your content is written in the same voice, tone, and style. You can build a style guide that helps multiple writers achieve a consistent brand voice by following a set of guidelines.
The following areas should be covered in your style guide:
Using grammar
Personality, voice, style, and tone
Avoid cliches
Designed by
Industry-specific words
Guidelines for blogs, videos, and podcasts
It is essential to create a style guide that makes your content cohesive, maintains your tone and style, and makes your business seem professional and trustworthy.
Our style guide can be found here.
Repurpose content
By repurposing content, you are extending the reach of existing content. Repurposing content is also called "content recycling." Simple, you do not have to begin from scratch every time you write a post, record a podcast, or shoot a video.
Rather than republishing old content, you can recycle it as follows:
A blog article is adapted to suit a new buyer persona
Making social media posts with soundbites from older content
An infographic that incorporates facts and stats from a piece of content
5. How to monetize and distribute content
It's time to publish your written, researched, and researched content. It is still necessary to work on a lot of things. To create traffic and raise brand awareness, you must promote what you have and develop a marketing strategy.
Content promotion can be done in a variety of ways.
Social Media
Your company and niche can be discussed on social media, allowing you to reach a large audience. You can share your content, whether it's your own or another person's page. Groups that you are a member of can also be communicated with. Consequently, you can share on social media in endless ways. The majority of viral content is also shared on social media. Take a look at memes, videos, hashtags, etc.
Listed below are some tips for promoting yourself on social media:
Messages should be different for each platform but cross-posted
If possible, tag businesses or people that are relevant
On Your Blog
Your blog is the perfect place for your content to live. Blogs serve as content hubs. Here you can publish articles, brochures, reports, etc. Sharing updates about new products or services is another excellent way to use your blog. Regular content audits are essential for keeping your blog relevant. An article published years ago is not what anyone wants to see. It can be enough to keep your content current to get people to share it.
Blog promotion tips:
Information that is outdated or irrelevant should be updated
Guest posting should be promoted
Round up your findings
Email Broadcast
Newsletters and drip campaigns are effective places to share your content. Articles related to the main message are generally interspersed throughout the newsletter. There's a chance that readers will be intrigued by something that catches their eye, even if they don't click on all the links. Some people's email signatures may also include a recent guide or webinar. At the very least, they know that it exists and may be intrigued enough to click on it.
Email sharing ideas:
Featured in newsletters
Campaigns using drips
Sending an email
Guest Posts
Guest posts and roundups can help you earn backlinks. You can write content beneficial to your non-competing company's customers and generate traffic back to your content if you find one. For example, if your author bio includes a link to your blog, you could consist of it. The benefits of guest posting include discussing relevant content and building a new audience. This is done while at the same time promoting your content and gaining exposure.
Guest posting tips:
Keep an eye out for blogs where guest writers are featured
When you can, participate in roundups
You may be able to swap guests with your partners
Paid Ads
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn may charge for promoting specific content. You can use display ads if you want more people to see your content. A landing page can help you engage your audience with your content if you drive paid traffic to it.
The following tips will help you create paid ads to promote your content:
Make sure your keywords are high-ranking
Choose a target audience, and set yourself a budget
Compelling copy should be used in your ads
Start with a landing page
6. Content marketing tools to try out
You are likely wondering how to do all this stuff. I think you're right! As a content creator, you can benefit from some helpful tools that can save you time and help you do the most time-consuming tasks more efficiently.
We recommend the following tools:
Blogging tools
SEMrush. Keyword ideas can be brainstormed using this tool. SEMrush allows you to search for keywords such as "content marketing ."Then, more relevant keywords will appear, such as "content marketing case studies," "content marketing success," etc.
Keywords Everywhere. If you go to Google and type in any keyword, including relevant ones, you can quickly get the search volume. The tool helps you find keywords on a variety of platforms at the same time, saving you time.
Ahrefs. Analyzing a site's link profile, keyword rankings, and SEO health is a primary function of this tool. In addition to Google, YouTube, and Amazon keyword research, Ahrefs can help you find relevant terms for your website. Additionally, Ahrefs is commonly used for finding content that performed well on a given topic.
Google Analytics. You can use this to track things like bounce rates, time on site, average pages visited, and more on your blogs.
Answer the Public. This free service lets you see which questions people have asked about specific topics. In addition to generating more varied, clear, and useful content ideas, it is also a great way to develop your own.
Writing tools
The Google Docs application. This is such a great idea. What's not to love? It's great for collaborating with colleagues, even if they're halfway across the world since all your files are saved online and accessible from anywhere!
A grammar checker. Grammar and spelling mistakes are highlighted by this tool. Content littered with grammatical errors is the last thing you want
errors.
Video tools
Stock video websites. Adding royalty-free footage to your videos is easy with this tool.
I Movie and Windows Movie Maker. You can use both of these (and they're both free!) programs to edit videos on your Mac and PC.
Podcast tools
Buzzsprout. It is easy for beginners to get started with this podcast platform and it has many advanced features for experienced users. Additionally, you can monetize your show on the forum.
Content creation tools
Follow. Creating branded content is easy with Foleon Doc and Drag & Drop Editor.
7. Content marketing takeaways
It's great that you've made it this far. The content marketing process should now be second nature to you! As much information as you may find here, we recommend working through your content market strategy one step at a time.
You should take away the following key points:
Be patient. It takes time to develop content marketing strategies. Especially regarding SEO, it can take time to see results. Make sure you stick to your plan and give it time to succeed.
Educate, and don't procrastinate. Content marketing is one of your business's most significant aspects, but too many companies procrastinate. Dividing and conquering your peers is the most effective way to accomplish this!
Value, value, value. Throughout this guide, value is a central theme. Every step of your content marketing journey should include something to help your visitors.
Successful Content Marketing?
It is generally understood that content marketers use content marketing to accomplish three purposes. In contrast, content entrepreneurs focus on creating an audience, then monetizing it in both direct and indirect ways.
1. Product or service sales: Content marketing aims to generate sales of the products and services it promotes.
2. Savings: This initiative would allow the company to save on a marketing cost otherwise incurred by another marketing activity.
3. Sunshine: Fostering long-term relationships with customers leads to happier customers. A loyal or frequent customer generally buys more and stays longer.
Conclusion
Content marketing has become a crucial component of today's marketing strategy, and it cannot be stressed enough how important it is. By using content marketing, businesses can create a positive brand image, generate sales, and create a more positive atmosphere for their brand. Inbound marketing is a method of attracting customers to a web site by providing them with useful information and products and services.
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