What is Content Marketing? Do you know, content marketing started way back in the year 1732 itself. It was Benjamin Franklin who created Poor Richard’s Almanac to promote his business. Since then, many other people have used the concept of content to promote their work and business.

So, what we know as content marketing is not a new term. It has got its roots almost three decades back.

Indeed, there must have been some reasons why content marketing is famous even today. Today, as many as 53% of the total business entrepreneurs use content marketing in different forms, as per a survey of The Manifest.

So, when so much is the demand for content marketing, let us dig in to excavate some crucial details about it.

What is Content?

To understand content marketing terms, you have to understand that content is not just the written word there. Content is just about anything that displays on the web page. Content is the stuff that packs the internet and what the entire social media world is built on.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a form of selling that involves curating authentic content in texts, images, or videos and sharing it on different platforms. The marketing strategy’s target is the same as others, which is to attract more audiences towards a particular brand.

Why is Content Marketing So Important?

Content marketing is an easy and effective way to market your brand or promote it among potential customers. The content strategy you are creating helps educate the customers about your brand, product, and different elements that you are portraying. Creating a good content marketing strategy involves proper planning such as making the right content, publishing and sharing it on the right platform, and others.

Also, to understand the importance of content marketing, understanding content marketing’s benefits will be a great thought.

Benefits of Content Marketing

There are several benefits of content marketing. Here are some of the most imperative ones.

More extended Stay on the website:

Many brands believe in showing their website with various exciting and informative content. Why do you think they do so along with promoting their products?

One of the primary reasons is that this exciting content with catchy topics helps in attracting audiences. When the audience is there already on the website, they stay glued to the content. As a result, they remain on the website for a much longer time. There are high chances that these viewers may see your website after reading your content in such a situation.

Good for SEO:

One of the primary reasons why more brand owners prefer more pages on their website is for SEO. With each quality content page’s addition, there are chances that the website will go one step ahead on the search engine. The website page should have quality content in terms of information and readability to increase the website’s SEO ranking.

Also, when there are many links with your content pages, your site’s domain authority increases.  This can be done with the help of more referral traffic, such as guest posting. An increased domain also is a great option to increase your search engine ranking.

Higher Traffic on Social Platform:

One of the best uses of content marketing is social platforms, too, along with websites. When you post appealing content on social media platforms, it circulates much faster to reach different people. This way, the chances of getting more traffic on your post increase. The traffic also may reach out to your social media official page or visit your website to know more about your brand if you have such an exciting content post.

Have high interaction when the viewers comment on the post as this helps spread out the post even more. This also helps in increasing the trust of the audience over your brand.

Enhanced Branding & Conversion:

When you publish and share useful content on a social platform, it reaches out to various people. The content thus helps in improving your brand recognition over a wide range.

It also enhances your relationship with the audience when you have a proper interaction with them in the comment section. With brand recognition and a healthy relationship, there are fair chances that the audience conversion with an increase to the right amount.

Great Return in Lesser Cost:

Why do you think brand owners are looking forward to content marketing, even when other marketing modes are available? Content marketing requires lesser investment while it offers higher conversion. If you are forming great content and are posting it at the right places, it helps in enhanced brand recognition and more increased traffic with the potential conversion.

Who does not like the fact of getting more significant results with smaller investments? Content marketing has come up with such an option that can offer such results to the audience with much lesser investments than the other marketing mode.

So, if you are looking onward to having a cost-effective marketing strategy and can also offer you possible results, content marketing is one of the best options in hand.

Examples of Content Marketing

After knowing the potential benefits of content marketing, you will surely think to look for some examples of it. Here are some of the common examples of content marketing that you can go for.

Website Contents and Blog Posts:

One of the most common examples of content marketing is website content. Just posting your products and your brand logo on your website does not help. It would help if you also let the audience know why your brand and the products are so special.

Hence, you should have quality content on your website boasting about the product and services you are offering logically. Also, having a small section on your website as a blog post is another example of content marketing. Here, you can use industry-related informative topics to attract an audience to your website.

Explainer Videos:

Explainer videos can be of anything and anywhere. It can be on your website showing how a product works. You can also use platforms such as social media or Youtube to show tutorials or DIYs that are helpful for the audience.

Testimonials:

Testimonials are again a great way of attracting the audience to your site or page. These are customers’ feedback that you post on your website or social media to motivate other viewers to try your products. These testimonials can come with plain texts or with images and videos.

User-Generated Content:

It is not necessary that each time only you have to create content to post and share. Sometimes, you can even get great content from your customers. This works great on social media platforms. The hashtags make this even convenient. When a customer uses a hashtag for a particular brand such as Starbucks, the brand page gets an alert. If the brand finds this content useful, they can use it for their brand promotion and ads.

There are many more such examples through which you can have great brand recognition and can attract traffic. Get your answers in the next section here.

Types of Content for Marketing

Here is the type of content that you can use for content marketing strategies. You can either use any one of them or a combination of a few.

Text Content:

Text content comprises several options such as articles, blogs, product descriptions, press releases, FAQs, guides, emails, case studies, e-books, etc.

Graphical Content:

Graphical content that you can use our infographics, product image, industry-related images, site mockups, custom illustrations, and others.

Audio Content:

Several audio contents that you can use are recorded interviews, webinars, podcasts, and so on.

Video Content:

You can use various video content options such as demos, animations, DIYs, promos, and many others.

Social Content:

Apart from the basic content options, there is also social content that you can use. These can be hashtag campaigns, quizzes, user-generated content, polls, and others.

So, you have got examples of content marketing and the types of content you should use for marketing purposes. Now, what are the channels through which you can conduct a great content marketing strategy?

Channels for Content Marketing

There can be several channels for content marketing to interact with the audience and enhance brand recognition. Here are some of them.

SEO and SEM:

Organic Search Engine Optimization is the superlative way to drive in the organic audience and have increased customer conversion. So, one of the top notions is to make the content on your site user-friendly.

But sometimes, just having SEO-friendly content on your site is not enough. Hence, you may require options such as SEM or search engine marketing through options such as paid searches and ads.

Email Marketing:

You are mistaken if you do not consider email marketing to be helpful. Creating great content with an attractive subject line for the right audience can always help in email marketing.

Social Media Marketing:

Social media platforms are a huge space with millions of users. Also, each day, the number of users is continuously increasing. Social media marketing offers a better way of reaching out to customers and promoting your products and brands. It offers to engage with the audience in a much better way and helps in faster brand awareness.

Link Building:

Link building helps in a huge way to get traffic on your website in an organic way. If you are doing activities such as guest blogging and others in the right way, it can augment your domain authority and improve your SEO ranking.

Display Advertising:

Most brand owners believe that display advertising works in a great way. Whenever someone visits your website, even by mistake, your cookie them, so, now, whenever they do any other online activities such as playing online games or browsing social media, they can see your ad, especially.

Mobile Marketing:

Today, most people prefer to use mobile for online services in comparison to a website. So, mobile marketing is one of the best options that you can have for a better reach.

With all that information, now is the time to start creating a content marketing strategy.

Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

Here are the phases that can help you in creating a perfect content marketing strategy for your business.

The Goal:

The first step is to identify the goal of your business and your content marketing. It is not just the long-term goal, but you should also create a strategy based on the short-term goals. It can be anything such as brand awareness, customer conversion, and so on.

Targeting Audience:

After you have decided upon your business goals, it is time to select the target audience. You should categories your audience well so that you can offer the right kind of marketing for them. The target audience can be mostly divided into the top engager, the leading influencer, and the supreme decision-maker. You have to create content individually for these categories.

Deciding the Content-Type:

Depending upon the goal and the content type, you have to create the right content type. For example, if your goal is awareness, some of the content types that you can use our blogs, social media, posts, and others. Now again here, you need to consider the kind of audience you are targeting. If you are targeting an engager, a social media post will be a perfect option. Also, you should take other crucial points, such as the quality of the content and user experience.

Selecting Channels:

You should select the right channel based on the product you are advertising, the content ideas you have, and the customers you are targeting.

Call to Action:

The CTA or the Call to Action is the most essential part of any content marketing strategy. The CTA should be such that you can track properly. Some of the traceable CTA options that you can use our newsletter subscriptions, quote requests, and others.

Creating the Workflow:

It is quite crucial to create a proper workflow for the content marketing campaign. You should have an appropriate team to handle the strategies and have appropriate tools to organize the contents. Make sure to track the results and act accordingly to get a better result.

Conclusion

If you are starting up a content marketing campaign now, you may question how long it should take to notice positive results. If you follow the right guidelines and are going by the time flow, it should not take much time.

Ideally, a full-fledged content marketing strategy should take about six months to show potential traffic results on your sire and customer conversion.

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