All You Need To Know About Content Marketing

Content marketing is the revolutionised form of traditional advertising, offering much better advantages and outcomes. It is the most efficient method for the marketers to reach a stable, genuine and growing mass of customers. This marketing strategy works by providing free content to the consumers, thus connecting them with the seller. The people are allowed to skim through high-quality valuable content and insightful videos about the products which compels them to try those services.

A brief history of content marketing

The practice of content marketing was born almost three hundred years ago. A person named Benjamin Franklin first advertised his printing business by publishing a magazine about it. Following the trend, many businesses took a step forward and switched to content marketing to popularise their brand. Fast forward a century, electronic and print media became accessible to common people. It was the era when companies promoted their products on TV, radio, billboards and magazine covers. But people had no serious reason to watch these ads as they interrupted the audience while they were engrossed in their favourite TV show or busy in steering through traffic. The companies squeezed their creativity to come up with quirky captions to hold people’s attention for a few seconds. The benefits of such endeavours were scanty. With the rise of the worldwide web, arose the concept of content marketing which made clever use of blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, white papers and many more.

Strategy for content

The foundation of content marketing lies in powerful storytelling. A content marketer digs down to the pain point of consumers and relates the product’s efficacy to solve their problems. The final step is to deliver the content to the buying cycle of a targeted audience. The important stuff is to thoroughly understand the taste and needs of the audience through researching from web sources and prepare the content accordingly. This will definitely attract paying customers and will help to accelerate the business. So, the aim of content marketing is to fetch the valuable attention of a mass. Then only you will be able to sell them something.

How successful is content marketing?

The statistics reveal that sixty percent B2B companies toil hard to optimise and assess their content strategies whereas seventy percent are consistently adding more informative content to their sites. This fact highlights the fierce competition among companies to top the search engines.

Understand the Customer Journey

It is obvious that people will not purchase a product online after gazing at the ad for the first time. They generally pass through three stages before spending a buck which is awareness, consideration and decision. Your content should be relevant at each stage so that the customers build faith and trust for your brand.

Awareness Stage Content

This is the prime stage where the audience is introduced to the services you offer. The contents grabbing attention are mostly how-to guides that are free of cost and provide flattering benefits to the user. The content at this stage is responsible to reach a good number of audience. So, it is crucial to crafting engaging, informative content along with SEO to get a top SERP position. You can use the high-level metric, Google analytics, A/B tests to evaluate engagement rates, page views and viewed articles. The use of social media to propagate brand message can’t be ignored because nowadays a majority of people are busy in it and can share links that multiply the audience.

Consideration Stage Content

After sufficient brand awareness, at this stage, people need to be guided step by step to interact with the company. Newsletter signups, ebook subscriptions, email marketing, resource downloads are great means to build trust in the audience who have shown interest. Email marketing helps to sustain contact with potential buyers. Use of long-tail keywords works better in this phase as the competition is somewhat reduced.

Conversion Stage Content

This is the phase where the customer is fully aware of and familiar with the products you offer. The content involved targets a more specific audience so very long tail & buying intent keywords are mostly used. The articles and blogs highlight a call for action. The chief goal is to push the buyer to purchase the services. Some companies make the content more effective by offering free trials, discounts, special offers.

Other platforms

Many companies are switching to social media like Facebook, Instagram and driving organic traffic and ROI. They are making this possible by appealing to people through entertaining videos and commercial ads.

Live videos on social media are efficient tools to gain faith of consumers. Weekly live shows garner attention because the honesty and transparency of the salesperson are visible to the people.

A paid advertisement on AdWords or social media boosts the traffic for the beginning enterprises.

Conclusion

Content marketing is always possible through online, offline and hybrid ventures. The offline methods to reap profits include writing creative, engaging comics or anime series which target a specific age group. Combined with storytelling about superhero characters, businesses have been run by selling loads of merchandise. Soap Opera, Netflix, viral commercials are some of the commendable feats of offline content marketing.

There are tons of methods to market content online. They range from YouTube videos, infographics, blogposts, podcasts, e books, social media campaigns, sponsorships to video billboards and text message marketing.

The take-home message is that investment in content marketing is essential if you want to achieve success in your business venture. It is convenient to start on any platform as no heavy budget is required. Just to remind, a powerful and captivating storytelling tactic can give you an edge over others. So, buckle up your shoes, brush up your creative skills to emerge successful in the world of content marketing.

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