What You Need To Know About Content Marketing

“ You need to create ridiculously good content – content that is useful, enjoyable and inspired.”
~ Ann Handley

What Is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is an indirect way to sell/promote your products/services. It is an approach where valuable/inspiring/useful/relevant/educational content is created after researching & analysing a particular target audience/set of audiences; and is then distributed using social media platforms and/or blogging platforms.

In short, it is a marketing strategy used to connect & engage with cold/warm audiences, in order to build trust thus, enticing them to purchase a particular product/service.

Why Is Content Marketing Needed?

Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Quality content is part of all forms of marketing.

Here are 15 reasons why your company/brand needs content marketing:

To build trust with your visitors/followers
To build brand awareness
To educate your audience/target customers
Improve lead generation for your business
Reach out to your ideal target audience
To build relationships & trust with your target audience
To build brand authority & credibility in the industry
Your competitors are probably already using content marketing
You get to learn more about who you are marketing to (ideal customer persona)
To boost your website’s organic visibility & SEO (search engine optimization)
To rise above the noise
It acts as a strong PR strategy
It enhances your social media marketing strategy
It helps with lead nurturing – helps support through all stages of the buyer’s journey
Gives people a reason to come back to your website/social media pages

4 Elements Of A Successful Content Marketing Strategy:

Image Source

7 Steps To Creating An Effective Content Marketing Strategy (SEMrush):

Step 1: Audit your existing content

Step 2: Set your goals

Step 3: Determine your audience

Step 4: Develop an editorial plan

Step 5: Plan your content creation

Step 6: Plan content distribution

Step 7: Analyze your content performance

For the fully detailed out steps, check out SEMrush’s Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing Strategy in 2020 here

Content Marketing Best Practices

Research & analyze your target audience to understand them well; interests, age groups, likes/dislikes, behaviours, etc
Creating valuable & useful content is very important
Using good fonts, vibrant colors (understand which color should be used to communicate what), high quality images, good copy, etc.
Be interactive with your target audience, have a CTA (call-to-action) for most of your content
Keep testing… understand what works & what doesn’t & improve more on what works.
For social media posts- Know when to post (Day/Time), undrstand target audience behavioural insights on social platforms.

Types Of Content For Effective Content Marketing

Whitepapers
Email marketing
How to guides
Infographics
Case studies
Checklists
Webinars
Short Videos
Memes
Social media posts
Podcasts
Q&As
Customer reviews
Addressing/responding to customer challenges

If you are new to content marketing, check out Content Marketing Institute’s getting started guide here, where you’ll learn the exactly what content marketing is and some basic steps for putting a good content marketing plan in place.