Content Marketing Is Crucial To Your Business. Learn Why!
With technology expanding and how customers think, Content Marketing has become a big game-changer for businesses. Many big players in the business world have focused on creating quality content. Moreover, they are concentrating on new ways of relating to the customer and feeding them information about their product.
Customers have wised up to the typical salesmen push. With the internet, they have never had an easier time researching different products. They are about to look at products from other companies with the click of a button. They can make side-by-side comparisons and find the best deals.
Companies that want to stand out need to display their expertise in the field. They need to build relationships with the people who invest in their brand. Content marketing can help with that.
What is Content Marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute describes it as
“a strategic marketing approach 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.”
Content marketing is a marketing strategy. Businesses will put out content that focuses on giving as much value to their target audience as possible.
Content should engage the customer. It should be something they want to seek out and consume rather than avoid. The recipient of this content receives value from it. It may be knowledge, reliability, or just entertainment. This attracts new clients and retains current clients. However, the goal at the end of the day is to receive profitable customer action.
Define Content
A Common quote that you will hear in the marketing world is “Content is King.” This quote is from an essay tech giant Bill Gates wrote in 1996. He goes on to say how he believes that content will be the real moneymaker of the internet in the future. This has become very apparent in current times.
Most people have developed a blind eye to traditional advertising banners and ad blocks on websites. If a business succeeds, they need to put out content that will boost their products and raise awareness of their brand.
According to Merriam-Webster, the word content has several different meanings. It can refer to topics or matters treated in written work. It can be the events, physical detail, and information in a work of art. It could also specify the value dealt with in a field of study.
In terms of content marketing, content is created to grab the audience’s interest and increase awareness. Companies create content to provide helpful information about in-demand subjects. This helps paint them as helpful and trustworthy figures in the field of their product.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
You may ask, “How could content marketing help my business?”. As a Seattle writer, let me give you a few reasons to consider. First, let’s think about marketing in general. Traditional advertising and marketing can be good for research and consideration, but it tends to fall short. As the digital age evolves, people have begun to ignore typical advertising. They see the same ad forms every day and know when to avoid them.
Through content marketing, organizations can publish valuable information rather than products. Content marketing concentrates on raising awareness of solutions that the customer may not know they need. It also helps educates the consumer of products they may not know of. Here are some other examples of why content marketing is essential:
Keeping customers engaged
Content marketing will keep consumers engaged. This means the content is easily available to new customers and will reel them in with useful answers to their questions. Basically, by the time the consumer contacts the company, they will have already decided to work with them.
Having valuable content can help build the relationship between customer and company. With quality content, clients will find value in the business. Older customers will want to return to a company if they trust the product and enjoy learning through their content.
How the customer views your company
Showcasing the company’s personality and expertise is important through a variety of excellent content. If the customer sees that you’re an expert in the field, they will trust you with your product. This trust is a key fundamental to having a loyal customer. Being able to educate them on the subject they need will help build a relationship.
Boosting SEO & online presence.
Content marketing is essential because it can help boost your overall search engine optimization or SEO. This means customers find you through google or yahoo easier. Having a web presence is significant. It can help boost your brand awareness and bring in a whole new crowd of people. Nearly everyone these days has the internet in their hand through their cellphone. This can get your product in front of more people much faster.
Getting started with content marketing.
Getting your foot in the door with content marketing may be a little overwhelming. There are so many big names out there that have a solid foothold in the marketing game. The best option for you may be to select a marketing firm to help you with the process. Most firms often pair their content marketing area along with a PR or SEO specialization.
If you are looking to jump right in yourself, you may want to start with blogging. Blogging can be hard at first but gets easier the more you practice. It virtually costs nothing to write articles based on questions for your field. Blogs can engage the reader and potentially turn them into clients or customers. Focus on quality writing and the right headlines to accompany your blogs. Creating great content is creating something the customer will genuinely want to read.
A few tips on creating content.
Make sure to include relevant and valuable information that will stick and sit well with the client. The content should answer a question they might have or fill an unmet need. Avoid speaking like a salesperson. Try to write in your voice. Add a little humor and personality to your writing to help the reader understand who you are. Aim to create the best content related to your niche.
Develop a Content Marketing Strategy
Having a strategy is important to your success with content marketing. It will help significantly to outline your essential needs and how your content will address them. Write down the questions you want your strategy to talk about. Who are you helping? How will you help them in a different way than everyone else? Why are you creating the content?
Document your plan and discuss what your vision of success looks like. It is important to have a content strategy before creating a content plan.
Here are some tips:
· Understand what your business wants to communicate through its message.
· Understand the unique value your content will give.
· Understand who your target audience is.
· Decide what platforms you will use. What criteria and objectives will each one have?
· Outline the obstacles and opportunities you may encounter.
Think about the Customer
Lush Content gets the point across well:
“Creating valuable, relevant, and consistent content is a building block in building trust with your clients and prospective customers. Providing your information and expertise willingly to build trust goes a long way towards future commercial return. “
Content marketing is targeted. It provides value to the client and is designed to build trust and a bond with the audience. Using thoughtful communication and reliable information, you want to pull consumers towards your products or services. Show them information that will help them educate themselves. This will help show that you are an expert in the field and know what you are talking about.
Interact with the customer. The goal should be to build a long-lasting relationship with that person. Having a good relationship can improve the overall customer experience leading to a more loyal customer.
Content & SEO
Search engine optimization and content marketing may be different concepts but are very much interlinked. These two tools are probably the most valuable when it comes to marketing. Content marketing focuses on what the consumer wants, while SEO focuses on what search engines want.
It would be challenging to have SEO without content. You need to have quality content with keywords, backlinks, and superb information that will help drive forward the optimization. It is good to remember that content should be optimized for search engines. Although, keep it simple, overly optimizing could be unappealing to readers. It would help if you didn’t have to stuff your content full of keywords.
Here are a couple of tips:
-Know your audience. It is essential to know who your keywords are directed at.
-Your keywords should define the content.
-Do not forget readability. Avoid longer paragraphs and longer sentences.
-Include backlinks. These will help signal search engines on how relevant the content is.
-Create multimedia content. Sites rank better with two or more media types present. Videos and images could boost your optimization.
Content Marketing Examples
The Furrow
The Furrow is said to be one of the oldest examples of content marketing. It started as a print magazine by John Deere in 1895. It focused on helping customers resolve their problems while highlighting their expertise in the industry.
Showcasing stories about agriculture and farming with engaging narratives, people began to pick it up quickly. The articles connected with people. They began to see John Deere as an authority in the field, and John Deere began to gain more customers. Currently, it can be found online, drawing more people in with its stories and incredibly stunning photography.
BlendTec
Now, you may think that coming up with content for a blender may be a little tricky. BlendTec pulls it off with their creativity. They engage the customer with unique and unexpected content. Their website is full of recipes from smoothies to soaps and so much more. This is an excellent way for them to showcase their product’s capabilities.
Where they shine is their YouTube series “Will It Blend?”.
With about 866 thousand subscribers, they have been blending everything they can since the channel started in 2006. Their iPad blend video has 20 million views alone. They show the company as a likable and funny business. They are certainly memorable!
Rolex
Having been around since the early 1900s, Rolex has cemented its name into the watch industry. They have kept up with their marketing strategies throughout the years.
Currently, their Instagram has well over 11 million followers and several hundred thousand likes per photo. They hired professional photographers to create images of their products that help show the personality of their brand. These high-quality images capture your eye and inspire you to live a life of luxury with their watches.
Imperfect Foods
Imperfect Foods is a business that sells products that are deemed too “ugly” to be sold in supermarkets. This small company is a great example of how to use content marketing. They know their product looks a little funny, and they steer their content into that.
Their blog is full of informative and engaging articles. From topics about reducing food waste and donating to food banks, they show who they are as a company. They also have a great footing on social media. Their Facebook account has many great articles and fun content to have customers coming back for more.
Disadvantages of Content Marketing
Content marketing can be highly beneficial for a business, but it can come with its own set of problems. It is important to see the complete picture when it comes to the subject. Although there are several positives for using content marketing, we should take a second to analyze some of the negatives.
It can take some time to see results.
It is going to take a lot of patience and hard work to get your content going. The benefits are not going to instant. You may already have your content created, but it will take time to surpass competitors and retain your customer base. It will be hard to determine how your content will impact your awareness and reputation.
It can be challenging to tackle alone.
Creating content is going to be a full-time job. It is going to take a lot of drive to keep up with more prominent companies. They have dedicated teams focused on updating their content. If you are already working on every other business aspect alone, you may find it impossible to keep up.
It will always need updating.
Content marketing is constantly evolving. Many people find that older ways may not cut it anymore. If you are beginning, you will need to learn a lot of information and make sure it is current. Most of your time will be dedicated to learning. It will be tough to keep up with companies that already have the higher ground.
What Could Content Marketing Mean for You?
Content marking can be a big game-changer for a business. It is a great way for a business to showcase its expertise in a field. It will help show who you are as a brand and help customers relate to your message.
It is important to find the right way and forge your path with content marketing. Use your voice. Give valuable and relevant information to educate. This will increase your profitability and have them coming back for more!
