Content marketing is one of the most sort after marketing strategies in the 21st Century. Many businesses are now looking that way in order to increase their market share.
Content marketing is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain an audience and ultimately, to provide relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.
Successful marketing strategies are those that address the issues that the target audience care about. Different businesses use content marketing to satisfy different needs. Before embarking on this journey you need to identify who your customers are that is exactly who you are targeting to reach, where they hangout and the kind of information they care about.
However before you decide to start content marketing you need to find out the ways in which you will make the project sustainable. This will be aided with having a written document that outlines the strategy you intend to take so that it acts as a constant reminder and point of reference.
Research is the best way to go about this, in order to save on costs you can carry it out online as compared to going out to the field. Use Google analytics so as to get insights on your major audience on your website and social media posts. The analytics will help you figure out where your customers consume your content from whether it is their mobiles or desktops and their physical locations. In this article we discuss ways content marketing can work for your business together with its benefits.
Here are the four key things that you need to consider for content marketing to work for you:
a)Strategy
This is a plan of action designed to achieve a long term goal. As we have stated earlier, the main goal of content marketing is to add value to your customers besides the products or services you sell. This means that before you get started you need to plan how it will all play out and come up with a calendar that will advise on when to post what.
An easy way to go about it is to schedule various posts for different days an example would be creating different tagline that can be used in the social platforms for various days of the week like feel good friday. For example come up with No more Monday blues for Monday which could be some content that puts a smile on your customers.
b)Resources
As the old adage goes, to make money you will need to use money. Well some instances it may not really be liquid cash, however you will need to invest in some equipment such as a camera for video content, great laptops or desktops etc. On the other hand at times you will be required to spend money on paying for advertisements so as to reach a wider audience with your content. One of the ways you can do this is using Google ads which are the most widely used.
c)Skilled Workforce
Content creation like any other job requires certain skills in order to execute. When you are looking for people to take over this role, you should consider creativity, attention to detail and innovation. Creativity will promote thinking outside the box and problem solving. Attention to detail will ensure that you produce quality content that catches the attention of the audience. Finally innovation because you will need people who will keep coming up with interesting content that will keep your audience hooked.
d)Time
It is important to be intentional with creation of content. You should research about the times that people are most active on the internet so as to harness that to get the maximum reach. Usually most content tends to perform well if it is posted at the timings that people are online.
Now that we have discussed how to go about the process of content creation below are some of the benefits of heading towards that direction.
The main purpose of content marketing is to create value for the reader. Whenever you create and share great content, you create value for your audience and in doing so; you create awareness for your brand as top of mind for your product.
Great content attracts potential customers to your brand without appearing as though you are trying too hard. Content marketing shortens the distance between you and the target audience, making it more likely that they will purchase your products later on.
When you provide great content with information that is relevant and useful, you will see an increase to your site’s traffic. This then helps you convert these readers or viewers into your paying customers. For businesses that struggle to create and share their own content, using established influencers is a great way to go about it. Influencers who have a solid following among your target audience can help you drive traffic to your site and increase your conversions.
Great content attracts editorial links, which inform Google that you are important and authoritative. Whenever people search anything on Google that is related to your brand, the name of your company will always pop up. An example of a company that has succeeded as a result of content marketing is TED, anytime someone is looking for inspirational information they will always appear due to their TED talks section that is producing great content.
Content marketing not only attracts new potential clients but also creates brand loyalty with the existing ones. Some of the ways in which this can be done include: tutorials that speak about how to use certain products, FAQ’s which are answering the frequently asked questions and community updates.
Every brand craves brand visibility. If you are looking to grow your market share, you should definitely try out the content marketing strategy.
