In past blogs, we have walked you through successfully building a digital marketing strategy into your overall business plan. Determining the critical factors of who your clients are, why they need your service or product, and where to find them online are all crucial to your success in digital marketing. Gathering this information will allow you to plan how your business will compete in the market. You must understand that you cannot sell to those who do not know your services or products exist. Considering these past lessons, we think email marketing is probably the most popular and influential content marketing material for your digital marketing strategy. While you are not limited to only these listed forms of content marketing, they can be used with other formats that work best for your business.
In its essence, the definition of content marketing can be best explained as using any platform to publish content to attract your ideal client. Simple. Right? Take a minute to think about the different online platforms you have visited within the last day or two. Did you happen to see images displaying statistics? Maybe you watched a video on how to bake a cake? Whatever you may have searched, think about how each of these businesses has strategically placed this information in such a way as to draw you in.
Content marketing uses a particular marketing approach. It focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, consistent content to attract and retain a specific audience and establish profitable customer action. Content marketing materials are easily shareable across many platforms, from emailing a friend to sharing them on your social media platforms. Content marketing is not to be used as a pitching technique for your services and products; instead, consider it a way to deliver information that makes your buyer more interested in what you offer them. Ultimately, to succeed in content marketing, you must first understand why you must utilize it for your business.
Top 3 Reasons to Use Content Marketing
- The first is that content marketing increases your brand awareness
- The second is that content marketing has a low entry cost
- The third is that content marketing will allow you to nurture brand loyalists
Marketing as a whole is impossible without great content. This we already knew, right? Regardless of your marketing type, content marketing should be a part of your brand’s process and not something off on its own. With the ever-expanding list of new tactics, trends, data, and content tools, many of these strategies complement each other well when used very calculatedly.
Types of Content Marketing
We mentioned that many of these types of content marketing could and should be used together. If you focus on only certain content for your business, you limit yourself tremendously. This is precisely why you must exhaust your content by creating various formats to reach your ideal audience in multiple ways. Let’s take a look!
1 | Infographic
Infographics are a great example of how you can use images, graphs, and texts to interpret data in a more visually appealing way. They can be used as practical guides that tell people how to do or operate something of value. These guides are very user-friendly and quickly catch your target audience’s attention. Content Marketing materials with visual elements can generate 94% more views than simple text. You will also come across as an expert in your field.
2 | Whitepapers & eBooks
Ebooks have become very popular over the years because of their ease of use on the go, and many hard-copied books are now available in this format. Whitepapers, on the other hand, are considered to be less visual and heavier in context. They are created to outline a problem/solution to any given topic. For example, a social media marketing company might release a white page on the return on investment in social media marketing products for small businesses. The white page would first outline the problem – the difficulty of accurately measuring the returns of social media marketing – and then outline how the company is a solution to that problem with a particular product or service.
While these are both different in many ways, what their end product achieves is very much similar. Whitepapers and eBooks target a particular audience looking to learn a specific subject. They contain lengthier, more in-depth documentation to enhance your credibility and attract highly qualified leads to your website. This type of content is most prevalent on platforms like LinkedIn.
3 | Videos
Videos are the perfect way to deliver your message. They are a more entertaining and attractive way of communicating other than text. Videos include YouTube, Social Media, Testimonials, Digital Ads, and more! Your target audience can relate to your personality and your business structure within a matter of minutes. Videos are great for showing off products, services, or procedures where the ending result is what your client is most interested in. When was the last time you watched how-to videos? Though webinars are not videos per se, organizing a live video session allows you to interact with your audience. They are also a great way to gather a group of like-minded individuals for a seminar or talk over the internet. You can achieve so much with a video. Be creative and do some research on how your competition is utilizing videos.
4 | Blog Posts
Blogging has become another trendy avenue for growing your network. It is fascinating to tell a story or talk about your life’s events or product reviews you’ve made. Creating new and exciting content your followers would enjoy reading can be time-consuming and tiresome. On the other hand, Blogging offers many benefits to those focused on its success. Creating blog posts allows writers to dive deeper and add longer content with quality information. Think of your blog as your digital magazine. You can add photos and videos to understand your topic of choice better. Great examples are how-to guides, product reviews, interviews, and tips, to name a few. Blogging offers you the ability to increase your website traffic. They are also a great way to optimize your website with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which Google appreciates! Search engines also reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content.
5 | Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads
Many marketers believe that you either use Content Marketing or Pay Per Click Ads to grow your business, but rarely both. Both approaches are valid, so why not combine your content marketing with your click advertising efforts? By implementing this tactic, you must review what has already worked for your business marketing-wise. You want to promote the best-performing piece of your current content marketing campaign and improve it by looking at your competitors and constantly split testing. Pay Per Click Ads (PPC ads) can generate leads and boost your conversion rate when done correctly and consulting an expert in this field. You can collect and convert leads quickly by utilizing their superior targeting tactics.
Start Creating Content Today
Ultimately, getting the right customers to contact you requires delivering your message on the perfect platform. Content Marketing is a long-term strategy for building your brand, enriching your audience’s lives, and earning their trust. It is more than creating, distributing, and sharing content to engage your audience, generate leads and improve your branding. Content Marketing needs to have a strategic approach and is not used to promote your brand explicitly but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. Naturally, your content marketing tactic must fit with the brand or product you wish to sell. Take some time and research the many other types of content marketing options and focus on how your brand can benefit from using them.
Whichever form you choose, brand your content and make your logo visible in multiple areas. All of these methods, if done correctly, will boost your brand’s recognition, and the award will be precious whether your efforts are successful on your first go around.