Attracting, engaging, and retaining an audience is never possible without an intelligent content marketing strategy. Most businesses don’t realize the importance of content marketing and exceed their marketing budgets for their marketing distribution strategy; articles, videos, podcasts, or other media to express their brand. However, experts have made it evident that if a brand wants to convey its customers, it must do so with content. Therefore, consistent content marketing is crucial for promoting brand awareness, establishing and nurturing relationships with prospective and existing customers, and ensuring that the business stays on top of the consumer’s mind.
According to the formal definition of content marketing, there are several ways a marketer can create content strategies. However, the five fundamental ways a business can market assets using content.
- Written Content
- Graphic Designs
- Video Animations
- Social Platforms
- Audio Content
After choosing the type of content marketing, the second most important thing a business needs to understand is the content marketing channel. The channel is an avenue through which created content is shared with a business’s target market. Figuring out which channel to utilize for distributing messages is a critical part of the content marketing plan. Most businesses rely on the following five channels to share their content with their audience.
1. Link Building
Link building links a business’ content to other platforms to cross drive traffic. A lot of analysis goes into deciding which backlinks to apply to increase the site’s ranking the most. It explains why many brands prefer hiring backlinking and search engine experts like LinkBuildingHQ to attract more excellent potential leads and a higher domain authority rank.
2. Organic Search
Search engine results that are not influenced by paid advertising. Search engines index the content published on a brand’s website to ensure that a business’s site comes up as a relevant link when the prospective customer is surfing the internet.
3. Paid Search
Some businesses also invest money in search results to ensure their content has the front and center seat when introduced to potential customers. The money buys premium ad spaces throughout the websites to market content.
4. Social Sharing Platforms
Several businesses highly rely on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more to market their content to the target market. These platforms are so great because customers willingly access these apps and sites to digest the content available on them.
5. Emails
Emailing content to audiences falls under the in-bound digital marketing initiative. Many brands currently rely on email marketing to capture their target market’s attention and direct traffic to products and services they offer. Often the content shared on email revolves around promotional codes, discounts, and other initiatives, urging the ideal customer to subscribe to the business.
Indeed, content marketing is a long-term investment that requires extensive time and resources from a business. So why even bother? A business needs to pay attention to it because a 2016 Pew Research Center study shows that people switch away from the TV and look towards the internet for news and information. Therefore, if a business wants to be the center of attention, it must be online. Content marketing is the best and most preferred way to bring a brand online. To emphasize its importance further, here are four things content marketing brings to the table for a business:
Table of Contents
Attractive Return On Investment
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional advertising methods and costs 62% less. Therefore, content marketing precedes all other tactics by a massive margin and promises more significant returns regarding website visitors and leads. When a business consistently produces content, its website traffic increases, impacting conversions. It happens because website visitors actively engage with a brand’s content regardless of its displayed form. This interaction eventually converts visitors to leads, leads to new clients, and new clients to cash inflow, maintaining a constant smooth flow of quality prospects at every step.
Profound Understanding Of The Ideal Customer
Content marketing introduces a business to analytics and conversion data that can help a brand better understand its ideal customers. Data is a great way to understand how a potential customer moves through the buyer’s journey. This data refers to social media posts, website activity, click rate, download and share behavior, and more. Most businesses use this manner to alter and improve their content to execute the destination’s journey better. Over time, the insights help improve the understanding of the target market, which improves the content’s performance further.
Stronger Business-Customer Relationships
A good content marketing strategy strengthens a business’ relationship with its customers. Since loyal customers are critical to the success of a brand, an effective content marketing strategy is crucial to strengthen these relationships. Businesses must focus on developing content that serves multiple purposes like attracting new leads, engaging current customers, and encouraging post-purchase consumption. If the goal is brand loyalty, the online content must continually provide value to a brand’s potential customer. All of these come together to bring a business repeat sales with several cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. Brands that pay attention to their content develop their customers into powerful advocates for their business.
An Artful Competitive Advantage
The ever-shifting competitive landscape poses an ongoing challenge to a business. Businesses often rely on content marketing to survive and differentiate their brand from the rest. A business looking to set itself apart must apply a carefully curated content marketing strategy. With great content, brands can express their culture, values, what makes them special and unique, and everything else that a customer desires to know. Therefore, a lot of thought goes into deciding what content must be used to market a business, as it truly defines how a potential customer sees a brand.
In A Nutshell
If you’re running a business, consider investing in content marketing activities as it helps in lead generation, developing trust, thus, building customer loyalty. That said, this type of marketing has become a new normal – at least on the consumer side. Effective content marketing gives customers a way to interact with the brand. Therefore, neglecting its advantages can have a life-changing adverse effect on the business. It may require long-term investment; however, considering the benefits it entails, a brand must try its luck with content marketing instead of avoiding it. One thing is crucial to remember: success is not achieved in a day; the longer a business invests in content marketing, the more fortune it will witness in the coming years.
