Some years back, people studied marketing in school and get employed by companies and businesses to advertise, market, and pitch their goods to prospects — that’s traditional marketing. However, with the advent of technology, traditional marketing is phasing out.
Marketing is no longer done one-on-one, rather digital marketers create content to attract, retain, and turn prospects into loyal customers– that’s content marketing.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing and business process focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately to drive profitable customer action.
The essence of content marketing is to attract prospects and transform those prospects into customers by creating and distributing valuable content to inform, educate, and compel the customers to carry out a profitable action.
The good thing about content marketing is that it can be employed by companies and brands at different levels — whether you are just starting out or already a household name.
Content marketing helps companies build trust and rapport with their target audience so as to create sustainable brand loyalty.
Uses of Content Marketing
· It is used to attract the attention of prospects and generate leads
· It is used to educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
· It is used to create brand awareness and visibility
· It is used to build relationships between your customers and business
· It is used to connect with your audience to show them how your products and services solve their challenges
· It is used to convert your prospects into loyal customers
· It is used to create and engage your brand online community of users
Factors to Consider When Creating Content
1. Your Business Goals
When creating your content, it is important to align your content with your business goals. Let your content revolve around what you want to accomplish. Else, you might finish writing great content, but realize that you couldn’t convert your prospects into customers.
2. Your Buyer Persona
Your content should not be for everyone. Your content should be for specific people, to solve specific problems. Before creating content, it is important to know who you are creating the content for.
3. Your Resources
It is important to check the available resources you have for a particular kind of content. For example, you cannot create video content when you don’t own a camera or smartphone.
4. The size of your team
The next thing is to check the size of your team. Some contents need more expertise and manpower than others. Always ascertain that your team can handle the bulk of the work before you get started.
5. What your competitor does right
A good way to stay on top of your business is to always check what your competitors are doing and the content strategies they are employing to reach their business goals. You can always improve on their strategies and use them to your advantage.
Now that you understand the factors to consider when creating content, let’s go over different types of content marketing.
Types of Content Marketing
There are many types of content marketing, but let’s consider some of the popular options.
1. Social Media Content Marketing
This is the use of social media to advertise, market, and promote a product or service. Social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. Statistically, there are over 3.7 billion people on social media — that’s a huge market to leverage on.
2. Infographics Content Marketing
This is the use of infographics to display content in an easy-to-understand, graphic format to educate and inform your audience, thereby establishing your brand authority.
3. Blog Content Marketing
This is the use of blogs to create engaging content for the purpose of generating leads, boosting brand awareness, and retaining your customers. The content could be educational, customer-related, or product-related.
4. Podcast Content Marketing
This is the creation of audio files, known as podcasts, that are released episodically and often downloaded through internet syndication and in MP3 format. Podcasting offers businesses and brands the opportunity to communicate their value proposition to a captive audience.
5. Video Content Marketing
This is the use of videos to promote and market your product or service, increase engagement on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and reach your audience. A research conducted by HubSpot indicates that over 50% of consumers say they want to see videos from the brands they interact with.
Now that you know the different forms of content marketing that you can leverage on, let’s take a look at the tools for creating content.
Tools for Content Creation
There abound thousands of tools to create content with. Some are paid and some you can get for free. Below are some of the tools for creating content.
· Tools for Graphics Content
- Canva
- Crello
- Designer
- Phonto
- Pablo by buffer
· Tools for Video Content
- Inshot
- Kinemaster
- FilmoraGo
- ActionDirector
- VivaVideo
· Tools for Audio Content
- Headliner
- Phone Recorder
- Wavve.co
- Anchor
· Tools for Text Content
- Google Docs
- Grammarly
- Hemingway App
Let me stop here for now.
I know you got value.
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