In the world where every business claims to be at the top position, it is difficult to make yourself stand and create your own identity. If the report from Forbes is to be believed, there are few businesses that survive the five-year mark.
However, effective marketing techniques can bring the odds in your favour. Dive in the article to know more.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a kind of marketing technique that lets you create and distribute a valuable, relevant and consistent piece of content to attract the audience, that too with an objective of generating profitable actions from customers.
Content rules various industries and social media in all forms – textual, or visual. It’s more like a strategic approach to creating and sharing valuable pieces to attract more audience.
In fact, many leading brands, like Microsoft, Cisco Systems, etc. have realized the importance of SEO content strategy as a tool to generate leads. With that, content becomes an indispensable part of marketing.
Generally, digital content marketing relates to promoting SEO articles, blog posts, white paper, and other forms of content that other people find informative. And, since the world’s renowned organizations realize the benefits of web content marketing, they have already invested more in it.
The same thing goes for things like product descriptions, website content, landing pages, and social media content. And, there’s a huge possibility that they will spend more to earn profits from an engaging piece of content, making it a viable career choice for many.
Content Writing Is Wordplay:
In a nutshell, content marketing is a broader term that involves the use of words to share things to the audience about your business, idea, project, or anything.
It can be both digital, as well as offline, including stories, ads, blogs, presentations, research papers, technical papers, projects, e-books, and much more.
Content Is The Heart Of Marketing!
Regardless of the type of marketing tactics, content marketing is a crucial part of the entire process. As traditional marketing has become less effective, start-ups and prominent organizations alike are using content marketing to educate the customers or prospects rather than pitching the products and services.
Besides, it also involves developing useful content for promotional marketing materials, such as billboards, leaflets, brochures, print ads, etc.
What Is Content Marketing In Digital Marketing:
Knowing that the content plays a huge role in all marketing techniques and tricks, there are no goals that can be imagined without it. From a digital marketer perspective, content marketing can:
- Increase brand awareness help in lead generation
- Build engagement and sales
- Customer retention and loyalty
- Up-selling and cross-selling
- Customer evangelism and more
The Future Of Content And Content Marketing:
The competition for quality content is so fierce that a marketer has to look for a way to stand out.
But how? Well, this is possible by pushing your customers to perceive your business in a different way. You need to adhere to their marketing expectations and provide a great experience.
What better way to spread your brand than making the right use of words? Engaging, consistent, and keyword-rich content influences the audience way more than any other method of marketing.
Content writing allows you to create pieces of information about your brand and helps determine the success or growth of your business. Not only it helps to keep your audience engaged with the brand, but it also covers every aspect of your marketing efforts.
Besides blog posts, and website content, video content is nowadays the go-to content for every brand to create.
The reason is, it goes hand-in-hand. Modern customers expect to receive video content along with engaging text from the brands they love.
Content Is The Least Impacted Among The Other Marketing Services:
According to a survey, content marketing faced the least negative impact amongst all the other marketing services. In the early stages of the growing global pandemic, smart brands and clients recognized the value of marketing the content.
Also, publishing high-quality content is the best way to stay in touch with customers. Even if the readers are not looking to buy anything now, the piece of information or entertainment you offer will compliment your brand.
Thus, whenever the reader would look to buy down the road, your brand would be a trusted resource for them. Or, you would already be in their good books.
Flawless Content Is A Currency For The Marketers:
Marketing in today’s digital world is a consistent stream of social actions and content. The reason why marketers perceive the engaging content as a currency is that they trade content to capture the audience’s attention.
If done correctly, this attention can generate huge sales. This is why blogging, content creation, and influencer marketing are so important in the online business world.
Therefore, marketers recognize the importance of useful posts or articles. Sometimes the content is validated, sometimes disagreed, or may cause a debate.
Either way, it’s upto to the content marketer to trigger a conversation via a piece of writing. Publishing quality content is also critical as it helps the businesses-
- Educate customers about products and services.
- Increase website conversion rates.
- Increase social reach.
- Elevate the business’s profile.
- Boost brand awareness.
- Grow business.
- Stay in touch with clients, customers, and prospects.
- Increase the audience’s attention.
- Build a customer’s trust and loyalty, etc.
Marketing Is Impossible Without Good Content:
No matter how many efforts you put into marketing, without quality content, it’s not going to deliver any productive results. Content is an important part of all forms of online marketing practices such as-
- Social Media marketing.
- SEO content that rewards businesses for publishing the content consistently.
- Inbound Marketing, where content is the key to generating leads.
- Content Strategy.
- PPC, for which great content is required.
With content writing, a marketer can build that resonates with the audience and elevates the brand. Review the content, analyze the metrics, and look for the ways how you can make the content more compelling.
Quality Content Has A Positive Impact On The Bottom Line:
Written words are the medium companies choose for inbound marketing.
As a marketer, if you want to increase the profitability of the business, you can’t just post funny memes on Facebook or leave a newsletter via email. You need to engage the audience in your content with the goal of delivering the right message to the right people.
Publishing meaningful content that converts helps in making sales and acquiring new leads. Specifically, the main benefits of content marketing for marketers are cost savings, increased sales, and loyal customers.
Leverage Your Marketing Efforts With Good Content:
Do you know what all the successful content marketing strategies have in common?
They are created by creative thinkers who know the value of providing relevant, fresh, informative, and engaging content to the audience. They know how to work across online platforms and deliver what people want.
Content writing isn’t about throwing some random words on a paper and wait for the increased traffic. It’s easy to write an article or blog, but writing it in a way that triggers the readers to make profitable actions requires diligence.
Let’s have a look at the best strategies to follow to make your content strong.
Best Content Marketing Strategies To Follow:
Follow these content marketing trends in 2020 to get the best out of your efforts-
1) Create Unique, Personalized Content
Personalization adds a personal touch to the content while offering you an edge against the competition. The goal of embracing personalized content as a marketing strategy is to provide consumers with what they are looking for.
2) Publish Topic-Focused Content
The idea is to cover an array of topics that fall under one umbrella. It shows that your brand is an expert in that field, which helps build brand awareness and improve your credibility.
3) Post Diversified Content
If you put only one type of content, users are likely to get bored. They expect your site to make use of different types of content, including infographics, podcasts, videos, etc.
4) User-Generated Content Continues To Rock
User-generated content or UGC is the content created by your unpaid contributors. They are fans who promote a brand. By creating a potential for your users to create their content to share on your website, you draw your audience deeper into your site.
5) Focus On Quality Over Quantity
Quality and consistency are the pillars of a successful piece of content. If you post too many times a day, it’s pretty easy for your audience to get overwhelmed. Though it is essential to be consistent, publishing a well-written content is even more important.
6) Create Interactive Content
With a lot of content and a little time, it’s becoming harder to reach or engage all the customers. Thus, the brands must turn to interactive content to leave a lasting impression on the audience and drive engagement.
7) Use Video As A Part Of Content Marketing
Video content encourages your audience to spend more time with your brand than any other type of content. From behind the scenes to culture videos, you can create video content in many ways and post in on your website.
Content Marketing Mistakes To Avoid:
1) Not Providing What Your Audience Want
This is one of the most important yet most neglected things! If you want your marketing efforts to give good results, know who your audience is and provide them with what they want.
Just keep in mind that for whom you are creating and what your aim is. Ask yourself if that content can bring any value to viewers. Don’t publish anything for the sake of increasing the number of posts.
2) Expecting Results In Terms Of Money
Another most common mistake marketers make their content marketing campaign a success is they just spend a lot of money and expect quick results.
However, your conversation rates don’t depend on money; instead, they will start when you follow the right techniques and platforms. So, if you are moving slowly, don’t worry, you will achieve your goals.
3) Not Following The Master Plan
Effective content marketing is the amalgamation of a good strategy and an impressive execution. The strategy should be your master plan; let’s say, by just listening to your audience through forums, chats, and communities, you will be able to know your audience’s needs.
So, make a plan and contribute some time to group communications. Follow strategy; do not simply depend on actions and thoughts. For instance, you have created great content; your audience is liking it, but there’s hardly any conversions; it means your ROI is low.
4) How Will You Increase The ROI?
With millions of online content posted every minute, you can’t expect your content to get attention. Identify your SMART goal, i.e. specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time-based. Once you are up with this plan, start working on these tactics.
5) Content Publishing Is Not Content Marketing
If you are ready to publish your content and you think you will start getting high engagement now, perhaps you are wrong!
Yes, having high-quality content is important, but posting it to the right audience through the right platforms is also very important. Content distribution plays a huge role and can make a great impact on your marketing.
Spent most of your time promoting the content to different platforms. Ask influencers for feedback, contact people who have shared the same piece, be active on all platforms.
6) Trying To Do Everything
Your blog, a Medium profile, Profile on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Vlogs, Podcasts, Blab, Webinars, and what’s not, there’s a plethora of different platforms to publish content. But you can’t use all at once.
And, if you want to cover each one of them, you are soon going to end with fuss. So, instead of making to every channel, start with a few of them and be consistent with them.
If writing is what you love, start from a blog and later move to guest posting and social media sharing.
7) Not Taking SEO Seriously
A search engine can drive 10x more traffic to your website than any other marketing platform. So, invest in SEO and grow your business. The most basic things included are
- Targeting the right keywords
- Optimizing the account for semantic searches
- Link optimization
- Tags optimization (H1, H2, H3) and more
Also, keep in mind that SEO is not for search engines only; it’s for users. So, find genuine ways to attract an audience, and you will be able to increase your reach.
7) Playing Safe Should Not Be A Norm
There’s always the best time to share a post, emails should be sent at the mid of the week, keep your CTA button in red, and what’s not, marketers always end up doing these practices.
Why? Because the marketers feel doing this is safe. However, if you are playing safe, there’s no way you would be able to think extra. To get good results, you need to step out of the box and take some risks.
If you want to make your brand stand out, you need to do something extra that everyone is not doing.
8) Not Gauging Marketing Performance
The biggest mistake that most of the marketers make is not looking upon the performance. It is very important to review your content marketing performance as it will help you decide what other metrics you can try. For instance, if some of your posts are performing well, you can double your efforts and reap more benefits.
On the contrary, if something is not working right, you can cut your efforts and can focus on other important things. Once in 3 months, review your marketing performance and reset your goal.
9) Not Doing Link Building
One of the main reasons for the website ranking factor is external links. Think of this way; if you have more authentic websites linked to your sites than of your competitors, your site will rank good in Google.
So, how are you going to start link building?
The most common approach is to build a strong relationship with other websites. You can ask them to link back to your popular or recent post. You can also ask your team to use link building through authentic sites.
Linkedin Content Marketing- The Biggest Social Platform:
LinkedIn is one of the biggest and most lucrative platforms for content marketers. Why? Because it’s full of highly educated decision-makers, senior-level businesses, and other high-class professionals who work hard to build a strong network.
Using LinkedIn, you can also make your content reach out to an influential society and can generate more leads. Just make sure you put readable, actionable and in-depth content.
Don’t go for regular 300-500 content; it won’t give you enough breathable space to expand on a subject. You can start by choosing topics that are trending or can choose by looking upon the industry insights.
Conclusion:
Content marketing is one of the best investments that can take your business to new next level. However, it’s a long-term game; just know your audience and follow the right strategies. Lastly, don’t take shortcuts!