Everything To Know About Content Marketing
The marketing industry has been multiplying thanks to advancements in technology. The reason for this remarkable growth is pretty straightforward — businesses have realized that the marketing team has a crucial role to play in bringing in new customers into their business.
The marketing team sells your products/services in the best way possible and tries to draw the best possible customers for long-term growth. The result — today’s businesses don’t hesitate to put thousands of dollars into the development of their marketing team.
The concept of modern marketing goes back several years in the timeline. A couple of decades ago, marketing was about distributing pamphlets and buying space in daily newspapers & magazines. Then came television advertising. But now, we are in the era of digital advertising, which has made marketing more efficient and targeted.
As more and more leads started getting generated in the digital space, organizations started having separate digital marketing. But today, the digital marketing team in itself has spread into multiple teams. Out of them, the most prominent one being the content marketing team. But precisely what is content marketing, and how did it become so popular in such a short period. Let’s find out one by one.
What is Content Marketing?
Earlier, content marketing was all about storytelling. We humans always tend to build an emotional bond with a story, so content marketing became a raging success. However, content marketing has more to it than just storytelling — it is a well-thought-out process.
Content marketing is the art (or process) of creating and publishing quality content that is valuable, informational, and relevant to the product/service you sell. More importantly, the process is consistent and continuous. The content you post should aim to attract more and more visitors from a targeted user base. It should focus on creating awareness and engaging customers in the long run.
The content can be in any format, such as blogs, infographics, ebooks, and videos, as long as it provides excellent value to visitors. There are also a plethora of platforms to choose from where you can post your content. However, your choice should reflect your content marketing strategy and the type of content you post.
Did you know that 86% of B2C respondents agreed that they use content marketing for their business in a survey? However, before you start building your content marketing strategy, you should make sure that you have identified the right audience to target, their needs, frustrations, and preference. Only after this, you should sketch a robust content marketing strategy that offers a straightforward solution to their frustration and fulfils their needs.
Now that we have seen what is content marketing, let’s understand its history.
History of Content Marketing
As we pointed out earlier, content marketing has been with us for ages. Let’s have a look at a few iconic examples that have become an inspiration to the modern content marketers -
In 1732, Benjamin Franklin started content marketing in his first published version of Poor Richard’s almanac. He wanted to create awareness among people about his printing business and encourage his readers to avail his printing services.
Soon, in 1895, John Deere, the tractor company, came up with a similar idea. In their publication on “The Furrow” lifestyle magazine, they shared a lot of insightful information to their customers on agricultural tips for farmers, strengthening the brand-customer relationship.
Then came the popular 400-page book, the “Michelin guide,” designed by French motor vehicle tire company Michelin. Their idea of marketing was simple — to enable uninterrupted travel, strong tires are a must-have. The guide was filled with valuable information like travel trips, auto-maintenance stores, restaurants, and hotels. The guide was motivating people to travel and explore more.
The actual audience targeting content was started in the early 20th century by the Jell-O Recipe book. The publication was primarily targeted at the brand’s audience, and it gave them many suggestions on things that can be done with Jell-O. Eventually, in the early 1900s, every household in America had that product.
We saved the best for last — in 1982, Marvel Comics and Hasbro came together to create a comic book series on “G.I. Joe the American Hero”. Their marketing strategy was to build a solid story for the G.I Joe toy. After a few weeks of publication, 20% of their target audience had two or more G.I joe toys. Seven years later, the series became one of marvel’s best-selling titles, and every 2 in 3 boys had at least one G.I joe action figure.
Here are some more historical events in the world of content writing -
- The word “content writing” was officially created in 1996 by the Journalists of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
- The first business commercial website was started in 1993 by O-Reilly and associates.
- The first blog was created in 1994 by Justin Hall of Swarthmore College.
5 Content Marketing Tips To Boost Your Content Reach
Here are some tips that will help bolster your content marketing efforts
1) Create a user persona
The first thing a content marketer should do is to understand the audience. You can do this by designing a user persona. And the best way to understand the audience is by getting into their shoes.
Once you understand the product, you need to find out what features would attract your users the most. You can include user demographics, age, interests, frustrations, influencers, and much more in a user persona. Crafting at least 6–8 user personas will help you understand your entire audience base.
2) Simplicity is the key
The users want to read content that is simple and easy to understand. The content writer should understand the concept, and no matter how complicated the topic is, they should convey all the essential points in simple language, devoid of jargon. When the content is straightforward, it will automatically generate more engagement among visitors. Also, keep the content informative.
3) Be Transparent
The social media posts you create as a brand have a significant significance in how people perceive your brand. A wrong move can turn catastrophic for your business. So, apart from keeping your campaign authentic and meaningful, you should also be transparent. Honest and transparent communication with the customers will boost customer retention. If you make a mistake, don’t hesitate to apologize. As per a survey, 94% of customers are likely to be loyal to transparent brands.
4) Consistency is important
If you are new to content marketing, you should understand that consistency is the key, and you should post content frequently. If you or your team cannot post frequent content, you could also seek the help of subject-matter experts from partners like Scalenut to master the recipe of consistency.
Remember, the content marketing arena is very competitive, so you need to have a good combination of quality and consistency to stay ahead in the curve. Having the correct content format and a good content distribution strategy is also a key factor.
5) Check statistics regularly
Your content marketing efforts shouldn’t end with one strategy. As the trends in the industry keep changing, so should your content marketing strategy. To achieve that, you must continually measure the latest trends and your campaign performance based on pre-set metrics. Your strategy should be improvised by using the analytics report you generate. This will also help you find the dead weight in your content that you need to stop immediately.
Conclusion
Content marketing is all about encouraging your target audience to be informed about the new trends in your market and soft sell your product/service to the customer. Content marketing should focus more on sharing information than hard selling.
There is no one way to succeed in content marketing. It is a slow and experimental process. The content you post will directly define the success of your brand. The key to becoming the best at content marketing is to put in constant efforts and evolve daily.
