In its simplest terms, content marketing refers to sharing informative content that is interesting, relevant, and useful for the target audience. There are four primary content forms.
- Text
- Image
- Audio
- Video
Usually, when we talk about the types of content marketing, we are referring to the text and videos. Text is typically in blog articles, blog comments, social media posts, and marketing emails. Videos can be inserted into articles but primarily articulate in YouTube videos.
The most important thing to remember about content marketing strategies is that your content must be relevant and valuable to the audience. There is no point in producing content that does not provide any value to those viewing it.
In this post, we will be talking about the importance of content marketing. But before we begin, let’s define content marketing in the context of a business.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a strategy to promote your products, services, or brand by creating valuable content such as blog posts, social media content, YouTube videos, or other forms to publish on the internet. It is increasingly used by businesses as more and more organizations realize its potential to build brand awareness.
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Content marketing is a form of organic marketing. A business does not need to pay money to any giant platform, such as Google or Facebook, to promote its products or brand via content creation. Posting and publishing content on the internet does not cost you anything. If only you want to boost your posts, you may run paid advertisements on the platforms where you post your content.
Content marketing is one of the best ways to help your audience improve the quality of their lives. You do that by providing them with the information in one place that they would otherwise need to skim or browse through hundreds of web pages of books to sort out. This is why businesses that implement effective content marketing strategies can establish themselves as experts and thought leaders in their respective fields. Individuals who create valuable content are seen as someone who can be trusted to take guidance from. Everyone is faced with challenges in life, and we are looking for people who can guide us through these challenges and help us overcome them. Those who produce quality content are perceived as a guidance system for such situations.
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This article is like a content marketing guide for you. Let’s move on to discussing the benefits and importance of content marketing.
Importance of Content Marketing
If content marketing is done well, it can help you build excellent brand equity. This means it will increase the value of your brand in the eyes of the consumers. As you continue to produce valuable content for your audience, they will rely on the information you regularly feed them with. Over time, they will start seeing you as an expert authority in the sector you write about.
People tend to buy products from brands that they can trust. If they establish that you are the expert in your field, they will prefer buying from your brand than from any other. The more you help your audience by continuously creating relevant content, the more they will keep coming back to you for more. You might end up creating a flywheel effect; that is, you will build more and more momentum in providing value to your audience until you start dominating the field.
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The most fundamental benefit of content marketing is the generation of organic traffic to your website, your social media pages, and any other landing page that you build to market your products and services. When you publish a lot of content across the internet, people can discover you through the search feature of giant platforms like Google, YouTube, and Facebook, amongst others.
Content marketing can be fundamentally distinguished from other types of traffic. The reason is that your content will drive those people to your web pages who are looking for you. They voluntarily come to your website because they need something you have to offer. These people actively search for your business and discover you through your content.
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In the other forms of marketing, you have to literally interrupt the audience in whatever they are doing to show them your ad. Thus the audience of your other forms of marketing is merely passive. But the people who find you through your content are your active searchers. Hence, these people are more likely to convert into your customers.
In short, you have to reach out to your audience in the other forms of advertising. But through content marketing strategies, people discover your brand and approach you. This makes it easier for you to sell your product or service to them. These folks not just have a problem but are also consciously aware of the problem. They approach you in the hope of getting the problem solved. If you convince them through your content that you can solve their problem, you’ll be able to make online sales.
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Creating a Content Marketing Strategy
Now that you know the importance of content marketing, you need to develop effective content marketing strategies. Content marketing strategies are action plans to build an audience through the acts of creating, publishing, maintaining, and spreading content that entertains, inspires, and educates the viewers. They turn strangers into followers and fans and ultimately into customers.
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Content marketing is supposed to solve people’s problems. It does that by creating value and equipping the readers with the information they require to solve their issues. If you can do that, your content will be successful and gain much traction. If you fail at this, no matter how fancy your headlines and writings are, they won’t impact your sales or business. The best is to first make your audience aware of a problem that they don’t even know they have and then provide a perfect solution for it. This is the recipe to acquire lifelong customers.
Here are a few steps to create compelling content marketing strategies.
1. Determine Who Your Ideal Customer Is
Building a buyer persona is critical before creating content. This will ensure that your content is relevant and relatable to your target audience. If you can put yourself in your customers’ shoes and see the world from their eyes, you’ll be able to capture their mindset and offer the exact information they need in your content.
2. Figure Out What Information is Required by Them
Once you get into the minds of your customers, figure out the gaps in information that they have. Your job is to create content that fills in the blanks in the information that they process. Curate the tons of data that they view on the internet every day. Organize and present it in the form of a valuable blog article, social media post, ebook, newsletter, or YouTube video. Build content that addresses the different phases of your ideal customer’s buying journey.
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3. Choose How to Say It
When it comes to content marketing, it is not just about what you say but also about how you say it. Your tone can make a great difference in how your content is received and perceived. Avoid using harsh or mocking tones in your writings. Always use friendly and candid statements in your blog posts and YouTube videos. You can only pursue your audience to get a step closer to buying from you if you make them comfortable with what you have to convey.
4. Develop a Professional Website
However many channels you use for your content marketing, you need to have a one-stop platform where all of it comes together and integrates. The best platform for this is a professional website built so that it’s easy for you to edit, revise, or update it regularly. This means you need to create a website on your own with the help of a website builder.
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If you use Strikingly to build your website, you will get access to so many tools and features that allow you to create appealing web pages, update them any time you like, and take action to enforce your content marketing strategies. For example, through the Strikingly editor, you can add a blog section to your site and publish as many articles on it as you like.
The best thing about using Strikingly is that our editor does not require you to code or program anything. We have already programmed the platform so that our users can simply use the drag and drop interface to easily add any content they like without writing a single line of code.
You can become a part of our platform and our community by signing up for a free account on Strikingly!
