Most digital marketers know a few things about content marketing. However, executing an effective content marketing strategy isn’t exactly easy. This may come as a surprise, but only 57% of digital marketers have a documented content marketing strategy, and only 36% claim that their strategy is fairly developed. Have you ever wondered, “what is content marketing?” Are you ready to outshine your competition? If you answered yes to both questions, then you’re in the right place! This post will cover just about everything you need to know about content marketing and then some. Ready? Let’s go!
How Does Content Marketing Work?
Content marketing is all about providing your audience with information that adds value by addressing pain points and answering their questions. When you create this type of content, you’re giving them a reason to continue through your sales funnel.
With that in mind, here are four key reasons and benefits for using content marketing:
- Increased customer engagement
- Improved brand awareness
- Better lead generation
- Strong sales enablement
Content such as blogs can help boost organic traffic from searches, social media, and other similar sources. Creating different types of content and sharing it via various platforms can help you attract an audience and drive more user engagement.
Provides Readers with What They Want
It’s critical that you create content that your audience is already interested in. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Do some keyword research to get an idea of what your ideal audience is looking for online
- Produce helpful and authentic content
- Publish on a regular schedule
- Establish your authority as an expert in your industry
- Write reader-friendly content – keep it skimmable and avoid large chunks of text
- Identify your top-performing content and update it
Content Marketing Helps You Reach a Wider Audience
When you create content on the right topics, your customers will find you with greater ease and will learn more about what you and your business have to offer. This typically results in visitors spending more time on your website while they get to know your brand. This, in turn, increases dwell time and improves your click-through rate.
Here are a few ways to get your content in front of more people:
- Ask your audience to share your content (it really is that simple sometimes!)
- Make your content easy to share
- Employ basic SEO best practices
- Include lots of videos and images
- Draft catchy headlines
- Create long-form content on your blog
- Share your content via social media
Effective Content Marketing Helps Boost Brand Awareness
Here are a handful of effective ways to boost your brand awareness:
- Make the most of guest blogging opportunities
- Establish a regular presence on social media
- Develop a memorable “voice” for your brand
- Start a podcast or miniseries
- Form a brand partnership
- Offer incentives
- Advertise and/or promote your content
Earns You More Conversions
When your audience finds answers to their questions in your content, encourage them to take the next step via CTAs to connect with your business to learn more about what you have to offer. If you decide to employ content marketing, you have to keep your business in front of your customers. When done correctly, you will earn more sales and conversions.
Here are a few ways you can increase your conversion rate:
- Add a pop-up CTA to your homepage
- Add reviews and/or testimonies to our website
- Make your website “fool-proof”
- Add a live chat tool to your website
The 5 Steps to Content Marketing
1.) Define Your Goals
The first step is to figure out what you want to accomplish with your content marketing. If you fail to complete this step, you will likely create a tone of content that doesn’t produce any tangible results. That being said, it’s critical that you clearly define your goals.
Here are three of the most common content marketing goals:
- Improve overall customer experience
- Generate more leads
- Support your business goals
Here are a handful of other goals to consider:
- Promote a new product or service
- Attract a new segment of customers
- Address pain points that are preventing sales
- Gain more trust with proof
- Develop more backlinks to your site
- Rank for large volume keywords
2.) Identify Your Ideal Audience
Next, you want to invest some time in creating a buyer persona that aligns with your ideal customer. Make sure to include any unique details that will make it easier to connect with your target audience. You’ll want to consider the age range, financial status, interests, and any other details that will help you market your product or services to your ideal customer.
3.) Identify Their Pain Points and Interests
Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, you need to explore their pain points and understand their interests.
You should think about the type of questions they’ll have throughout their buyer’s journey. What kinds of doubts might they have? What sort of common misunderstandings could you remedy?
After you identify these pain points and questions, you can then move on to creating your content.
4.) Develop a Content Creation Plan
Now is when you decide how often you’ll create content, what type of content you’ll produce, and how you’ll generate content ideas on a regular basis.
Two common ways to maintain a steady stream of content include:
- Conduct keyword research to identify keyword phrases that your audience is searching for and develop content around those keywords
- Keep tabs on your competition and create content on what works for them
5.) Create a Content Promotion Plan
Whether you pursue guest blogging opportunities, engage in influencer collaborations, share via social media, or pay the big bucks to promote your content, you need to figure out a way to get lots of eyes on your content and develop a strong backlink profile.
Organizations that are consistent with their content marketing efforts will see a steady increase in organic inbound traffic, a growth in sales, and improved brand awareness. Remember, this is a long-term strategy and you need to fully commit to it in order to reap the rewards.
Does Content Marketing Actually Work?
According to the data – YES!
According to the Marketing Insider Group, content marketing generates roughly three times as many leads as traditional marketing and costs as much as 62% less.
Furthermore, content marketing also generates more website traffic and attracts inbound links. These links help your content rank and they also boost domain authority, which can help your website rank for keywords that appeal to paying customers.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
In the past, the brands with the largest advertising budgets would win by placing ads on television or in newspapers. However, with the rise of the internet, smaller businesses can attract their own audience and grow their business by creating valuable content.
Content can be a great way to reach and engage with potential customers throughout the buyer’s journey. By providing useful information, you can help your business establish credibility and trust with your future customers. In doing so, they will likely remember you when it comes time to buy.
What are the Benefits of Content Marketing?
According to OptinMonster, marketers who focus their efforts on blogging are 13 times more likely to see a boost in their marketing ROI. On that note, content marketing not only boosts your SEO presence.
When you publish more content, you can increase your organic traffic. Informative articles and other interactive digital marketing assets can attract links and help you rank for keywords that your target audience might search for.
In addition to ranking for content, publishing articles and blogging can also improve how your website ranks for its core high-volume keywords.
Effective content marketing can also generate more traffic, sales conversions, and leads for your brand. Content marketing creates long-term results that will prove fruitful for your brand and website for years to come if executed correctly.
Here are a handful of reasons why you should invest in content marketing:
- Improved organic search traffic due to SEO
- Higher website authority and trust
- Potential to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry
- Define your brand personality
- Improve your conversion rates due to a larger audience
Your marketing team should know that you can’t win the SEO battle without an awesome content strategy and other marketing tactics.
Furthermore, effective content is essentially the foundation of organic search, which, in turn, makes it one of the best ways to drive organic traffic to your website.
Content Marketing Examples
The digital marketing community is constantly trying to come up with new content marketing plans, such as creating editorial calendars to match the buyer’s journey or buyer personas.
You can use consumer behavior and human psychology to shape your brand’s content strategies and influence how your audience perceives you.
At the end of the day, you can get an idea of how to develop better inbound content marketing campaigns by looking at what has worked for other marketers.
Visuals
Visuals are the new black. They’re not just for decoration anymore, they can be an engaging way to share your content on social media and get millions of eyes looking at it!
If you’re on the fence about visuals, Hubspot confirmed that video was the main form of media used in marketing strategies. Furthermore, original graphics such as illustrations are the most commonly used images in digital content marketing.
Before you dive in head first, it’s important that you consider the following three questions:
- Why do you want to include visual content in your strategy?
- How will visual content benefit your business?
- What are you hoping to achieve by using this form of content marketing?
Your answers may include the desire to educate your audience, increase engagement, promote your brand, or potentially bring in more leads.
Here are a few ways you can implement visual content into your strategy:
- Keep your goals and audience in mind
- Highlight statistics and case studies
- Share high-quality images and videos
- Focus on social trends
Ebooks
Your brand is everything.
With that said, one of the best ways to show your audience that you know what you’re talking about is to write an ebook.
Creating an ebook built around your marketing campaign lets you showcase your authority on the subject.
Here are a few reasons why it’s a great idea to write an ebook:
- Build trust and authority
- Doubles as advertising
- Drives traffic to your website
- Generates more leads
- Gain an edge on niche competition
- Develop a stream of passive income
Here are a few ways you can use ebooks in your content strategy:
- Push your ebook to boost your brand
- Build a marketing strategy around your ebook
- Use your ebook as a free opt-in offer
Closing Thoughts
There are countless studies and current examples that support the value of content marketing.
If you want to improve your odds, make sure you’re ready to invest the necessary resources since positive results typically accelerate when your efforts are consistent.
Now that you have a well-rounded idea of what content marketing is and how it works, you’re now one step closer to creating an effective strategy for your business.
