Introduction
What is Content Marketing?
Several experts have claimed that content marketing began with cave paintings. In contrast, others said the first actual development arose with the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, which infused the creation of several widely circulated marketing materials like pamphlets. However, some still debate that content marketing wasn’t in existence until the content creation on the internet.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing involves planning, building, distributing, and publishing Content to reach a particular audience. As a brand, this strategy can help you improve your brand awareness, increase sales, communicate with your target audience, and engage customers and prospects.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
Today, outbound marketing tactics, or anything that interrupts members of your target audience, aren’t as useful for engaging audience members and converting leads as they once were. Content marketing has become a popular strategy for businesses and brands to combat this problem. Also, to expand your reach, content marketing helps your business in the following ways.
- Build relationships between your business and customers.
- Educate your prospects and leads on the products and services you offer.
- Connect with your audience, and show them how your services and products solve their challenges
- Create s a sense of community around your business.
With this, you can now see why content marketing is an essential strategy for your business and a good investment. Let’s forge ahead by looking at some examples to help you decide which type of Content to create.
Content Marketing Examples
Although content marketing is a useful and applicable tactic for almost every business, brainstorming compelling and creative ways to reach and convert your target audience is no cheap task. So, what do you do to succeed in content marketing?
For us to answer this question, we have to take a look at the various types of content marketing, and some examples of each. By doing this, you can better understand how to incorporate Content in your brand’s marketing plan.
Types of Content Marketing
There are several types of content marketing for your business to leverage. Below are some of the most popular and best options.
- Social Media Content Marketing
With over 3.8 billion global users, it is easy to understand why so many companies and businesses invest in Social Media Content Marketing. There are numerous platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, and LinkedIn to work with and various ways you can create and share social media content on any one of them. You share materials through photos, stories, live, and pre-recorded videos.
- Infographic Content Marketing
Infographics display contents in a straightforward graphic format. With a mix of short statements, simple wording, and clear images, infographics are a great way to communicate your brand content effectively.
They work better if you’re trying to distill a complex or educational topic down so all audience members can comprehend it.
- Blog Content Marketing
Blogs are an efficient type of Content for inbound marketing and sharing information with your target audience and customers, whether customer-related, educational, or product-related. You can use blogs to convert passer-by readers into customers, build relationships with your audience, and boost brand awareness.
Depending on the aim of your unique blog, you may choose to promote other related blog contents by linking to various posts, relating to your partners’ website and products, sharing links to your social media pages, or writing about your product line.
- Podcasting Content Marketing
Are you aware that currently, over six million people listen to podcasts in the U.S. alone? Podcasts have drastically grown in popularity and are enjoyed as a content medium because of their convenience. You enjoy them on-the-go or while relaxing. That’s why several businesses have started making podcasts. It’s a medium that can help you improve your brand awareness, promote your products, services, and partners, and build relationships with audience members.
- Video Content Marketing
Video Marketing can improve ROI, boost conversions, and help you build relationships with audience members. You may decide to share your video marketing content on site pages, social media platforms, or your partners’ websites. Isn’t that just a brilliant way to expand your reach?
By making a name for your brand through online video content, your business can experience brand recognition and impressive growth as enjoyed by various prominent names we hear today.
- Paid Ad Content Marketing
As we pointed out earlier, organic traffic generated by Content and inbound marketing is increasingly becoming popular among all types of businesses. However, it doesn’t imply that paid ads and contents are ineffective for reaching your target audience. Paid content ads can help you reach a broader audience and allow you to gain a presence in all places you want to be seen.
There are several ways you can create and publish your paid ads. You can share paid content ads on social media or post digital ads on websites in the form of sponsored Content or banners.
Content Marketing Strategy
- Set smart goals
- Decide the type of Content to create
- Choose your content channels
- Set a budget
- Create and distribute the Content
- Set SMART goals
For your content marketing strategy, the first part is to set SMART goals. This simply means specifying your business. Clients will likely complement your specific marketing and company goals. Here are some examples of goals to arrange for your content marketing strategy:
- Your Content should improve brand awareness
- It should boost revenue
- Improve brand loyalty
- Increase customer engagement
- Increase conversions
- Build rapport and trust among customers and prospects
- Attract strategic partners
- Decide the type of Content to create
To do this, start by thinking about your buyer personas and target audience. If you can answer the following questions about your audience, you’ll able to narrow down the right type of Content to create:
- What do they need from you?
- Why do they need your product or service?
- What challenges are you looking to overcome?
- How can you help them succeed?
- Choose your content channels.
Once you’ve decided on the type of Content you want to create, it becomes necessary to choose your specific content channels. For some of the content types, the channel you need to use will be obvious. For example, if you’re creating blog content for your brand, your channel is simply the blog itself.
- Set a budget
To set your budget, think about the type of Content you are creating and which channels you prefer to use. Then, the answers to the following questions should determine your budget:
- Do you need to hire content team members, such as writers, artists, editors, or designers?
- Do you need to purchase any technology or software, such as a camera to take high-quality photos and videos, a subscription to Canva, and graphic design software like Adobe Photoshop, to create your Content?
- Do you need to pay for ad space?
- Do you need to access to specific tools or resources to measure or enhance your type of Content?
- Create and distribute the Content
It’s now time to create and distribute your Content for your audience to consume. If done right, it could convert even uninterested parties. A way to achieve this is to ensure that you’re consistently creating Content and sharing it among your customers and prospects. Use can make us of an editorial content calendar or a social media calendar.
Conclusions
The importance of content marketing cannot be overemphasized, and this strategy, your business and brand can gain an active presence in the ever-growing competition in content marketing, increases sales, and finally expand your business.
We invite you as a business owner to contact us to today to get content creation strategy that works for both branding and marketing.