What is a Content Marketing?
In this digital era, we keep hearing people talking about “Content Marketing”. We often wonder, what is content marketing strategy? Is it content that we put in the market to attract an audience? Can we do content marketing? Well, you don’t have to think that hard because we’re here to answer all your queries. In this beginner’s guide, you’ll get to know what content marketing is all about.
Content marketing refers to the process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to acquire and retain a clearly defined audience – thereby driving profitable customer action.
To solve customers’ problems, you provide them with truly relevant and useful content, instead of pitching your products or services. There is one defining word in this definition: “valuable.” This is what sets it apart from the kind of statement that could be made about almost any form of advertising or marketing. Even with this explanation and definition, you may still be unclear about what exactly content marketing is. We can get more clarity by considering a few examples like Books, webpages, podcasts, videos, blogs, etc. What do we do with all these? Share our content among people. Promote our business or brand, right?
What is Strategy?
Now you know what content marketing is but what about strategies? Always remember, without great content, you can’t win at marketing. Your audience knows very well what quality content is. It is essential to have a documented content marketing strategy if you want to be effective at content marketing. The right content marketing strategy will give your brand real exposure, drive traffic, and increase conversions.
Below are a few elements of Content Marketing Strategy that we need to focus on:
1. Know your Target Audience. A clear understanding of your target audience is vital before planning your content marketing strategy.
2. Set a Target. Your targets enable you to assess how effective your actions are at generating leads, nurturing leads, and engaging users. Set measurable, attainable, and realistic goals.
3. Clear Value Proposition. It explains how your product solves problems or improves a customer’s situation, what you offer, and why your product will be a better choice than your competitors.
4. To achieve your content marketing goals, you should establish a strong brand identity. It is important to consider visuals, taglines, logos, web design, and an individual voice when creating an online identity.
5. You can use metrics to determine if your efforts are working and where they need improvement. Measuring metrics may seem like a chore, but it shows you in what areas you can improve.
Content marketing examples
To help inspire your content marketing strategy, here are some examples you shouldn’t miss:
1. Hubspot– Attracting Converting Closing Delighting: this is what Hubspot follows. Their strategy includes sales blogs, reports, e-books, lead magnets, etc. The content at HubSpot is high-quality, relevant, and engaging, which allows it to rank well in search engines.
2. Buffers– Buffer is an app that tracks social media growth, allowing you to schedule posts and see your growth. They work on three strategies: Understanding their audience
Planning and publishing consistently
Promoting their content
3. McDonald’s Question Time campaign. By responding to approximately 10,000 questions from its customers, the company was able to build trust and an improved reputation. People praised McDonald’s for being transparent and not hiding behind the brand.
4. “Share a Coke” campaign by Coke. Coca-Cola’s “Share A Coke” campaign gave everyone the opportunity to personalize their favorite beverage. They put the 150 most popular Australian names on the side of the bottles and, well… people loved it.
These were some examples to help you understand content marketing strategies. Now that you’ve reached the end, I hope this article helped you in understanding what content marketing is. And what strategies you can use to build your brand. As you’re all set to enter the world of content marketing, we have a few tips that we want you to remember.
Content should have a purpose
Keep content consistent and up-to-date.
Optimize Your Content
Be true to yourself. Be you because that’s your uniqueness
Add Humor. Humor grabs attention!