Content marketing seems to be the method of marketing for 21st Century businesses. Most of the business organization spends quite a lot of money on marketing without the immediate realization that it had eaten deep into the revenue of the business. It has been noticed that traditional marketing is becoming less effective in today’s business world. Forward-thinking marketers have realized content marketing is one of the most effective ways to take their business to the next level. There’s an old saying, “content is king”. This statement is so true when it comes to marketing.
What does “content marketing” mean to you?
Content marketing is a strategic method of sharing and distributing valuable contents with a consistent approach to attract and market a particular product to a targeted audience who becomes potential customers. It also means creating and sharing valuable content to attract and convert the audience into customers then consistent buyers. Content is the future of marketing due to its effectiveness in today’s market.
Achieving effective content marketing will require employing some content marketing strategies and having the right approach when creating your contents.
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Why Content Marketing?
Do you know marketing is impossible without great content? Content marketing also builds trust and rapport with customers. Unlike other forms of marketing, content marketing builds on the information provided by a new and existing customer while creating demand for a new need. Content marketing increases sales of a product, boost customers loyalty and encourages saving.
If you’re interested in digital marketing, being a digital marketer or promoting your business online, you would need to boost your knowledge of content marketing because marketing is impossible without great content.
Types Of Content Marketing
Every entrepreneur or business owner intends to grow their business and expand their brand. As it has been mentioned earlier, content marketing is the key to that growth you desire. Before launching into content marketing, you need to educate yourself on the types of content marketing available and how you can utilize them for your product/business/brand.
1. Blog Posts
This is the most common type of content marketing which can also serve as a content marketing strategy, but that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. This is by far, one of the best tools you can have in your marketing tool-belt. For many brands, blog posts make up the central part of their content marketing strategy. To have an amazing blog post, you’ll focus on finding keywords with a reasonable search volume. This would help it’s ranking on Google, which brings more potential customers to your page.
Blog posts are ideal for building relationships with your readers (potential customers), which can eventually help with lead nurturing and conversions. Some of the benefits of blogging for content marketing includes communicating with your audience, providing value with your content which can be shared on other platforms, huge SEO (Search Engine Optimization) opportunity, excellent place to collect leads, great way to build exposure, to increase your websites rank on the internet, to provide an opportunity for others to share your brand.
Note that if you’re able to choose your keywords well, you can be sure that a large number of your audience will need what you’re selling.
2. Social Media Posts
Most people say social media is where everything happens and we can’t help but agree with that. This is just a way to show you that social media is one of the places you can attract the largest number of customers all over the world with little effort. For you to have a profitable content marketing, you need to be active on social media, from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to Instagram and many others.
If you really want this to work for you, you have to commit to posting daily. If you don’t, the exposure and audience who can be potential customers would be lost. Content marketing for social media is the way to go.
3. Ebooks
Ebooks are books of few pages, unlike blogging. It’s like a regular book you read but it’s digital. You can offer your audience free ebook or make them subscribe to get copies of your publications. The ebook is one of the most effective content marketing strategies. It can be between five to thirty pages but make sure you present your product as a solution to the problems highlighted in the content.
4. Video
It has been noticed lately that a good video is an amazing content marketing strategy because people relate more with visual displays. Videos are dynamic, engaging and easily understood. Video contents can be used across all social media platforms. It suits people who want to watch and not read.
5. E-Mail Marketing
E-mail marketing has played a huge role in content marketing over the years. It allows you to reach the customers and audience anytime and everywhere without spending a huge amount of money. It also allows you to collect more relevant information from potential customers. With e-mail marketing, delivery is guaranteed and you can send broadcast whenever you want to reach your audience.
Email marketing is an effective way to build a relationship with your audience, provide them with value, offer them insights they can’t get anywhere else, and make them offers while interacting with them.
6. Infographics
This is another type of content marketing that appeals to people who likes graphical representation. For Infographics, you can put tons of information into an image in a way that is visually interesting to the audience. Creating infographics helps your audience pick up all the informations you want to disseminate without having to write a long “epistle”. Infographics have been proven to be an effective content marketing strategy.
Infographics help you get more shares and since backlinks are embedded in the images. The advantage of this backlink is that anyone who shares it will give you the valuable backlink you need for content marketing.
To create infographic contents, you can use tools like Canva, Infogram, Piktochart and several others. Try to keep the design simple so your audience can easily figure out the information you’re trying to pass.
7. Reviews
Do you intend to spread the word about your brand or business, reviews are one the best ways to achieve that. Reviews should be your utmost content marketing strategy. It helps create the credibility of your services or product to your audience which are also your potential customer. All you need to do get some of your customers to commend your product and make sure you put them on your page and across all your social media platforms.
Reviews sell products and services faster than you can ever imagine. Facebook & Google reviews are one of the best tools you need to drive that awareness your business/brand needs.
8. Case Studies
This content marketing strategy should be on every business owner’s mind. Case studies involve providing a scenario that describes a service required by a client or customers. This content also includes knowledgeable information and actions that can be taken. This content marketing type allows you to show your competence and the uniqueness that comes with your brand.
Case studies have been known to be effective when you write the hypothesis and the solution. Make sure your case study is like a blog post and use storytelling elements, focusing on the “why” and “how” as part of your content.
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Tips That Would Help You To Be Effective At Content Marketing
The details of content marketing might be overwhelming but if you need eyeballs on your website then you need to make it your best friend. There is a vast number of contents online, how do you get yours to stand out amongst the multitude? This post will show you the tips you need to follow to have a content marketing that produces results.
1. Identify Your Targeted Audience
Your targeted audience is determined by the product or the service your brand offers. For you have effective content marketing, you need to identify your targeted audience. If you can identify them, you can move a step further to understand them. When creating content, make sure it is relevant to the industry you’re in. Also, focus on how your company’s products or services can help solve a customer’s problem.
Analytics tools like Google, Analytics, Facebook can help you figure out the demographics of your audience. It would also help you determine the style of your content and the most effective content marketing strategy. Your mission/vision, core values, and business-related goals would determine your audience
2. Have A Content Plan
This is a no-brainer, every content marketer, brand, business organization, and digital marketing company must have a plan before putting out contents. Having a plan also helps find out the company’s objective and budget for every content. This tip also determines the frequency of posting content with different content marketing strategy.
3. Good Distribution Of Contents
This is the most effective way to increase the potentials of your content marketing. You must have a plan in place to connect your contents to your target audience where they can find them. The more effective your distribution channel is the more your engagements.
4. Proper Engagement Analysis
For content marketing to be effective, your engagement analysis must be consistent. It’s a major part of digital marketing. Track every activity on your page from time-on-page rates via Google Analytics to the shares your content receives on social media. This analysis will help you uncover what your audience is more interested in. You’ll also find more subtopics and keywords you might have overlooked.
You need a high rate of consistency to have effective content marketing.
Do you know what your audience needs when it comes to content? Find out here- Content Marketing: Write what Interests your Readers
At DigitalMatrix, we offer this service and other digital marketing services without hassle. All you need to do is contact us here