What is Content Marketing? – The full guide
Content Marketing has become very popular nowadays. But why has the importance of “content” become so widespread in recent years?
In an age where direct advertising seems to be struggling to achieve its goals, Content Marketing is the answer to how we can attract our potential customers effectively.
But what exactly is Content Marketing and how can it be implemented? Why does everyone swear by its value and what exactly makes it so important?
Read below what you need to know about content marketing, and start taking advantage of its huge potential.
Content Marketing is a strategic approach to marketing, which focuses on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to attract and retain a well-defined audience, with the ultimate goal of pushing customers to take profitable action.
This practically means that instead of advertising directly presenting your products and emphasizing their advantages, you are next to your audience, revealing part of your knowledge and experiences.
Blog articles, e-books, slide shows, videos and infographics are just some of the content that you can promote.
What exactly is the content you are trying to convey to your audience?
Guides on how to do a process (how-to guides), tips and advice on a topic that concerns your hypothetical customers, funny and fun content, news and trends from the field in which you move, inside company stories and personal reviews How your customers use your products are some of the most basic ideas on how to turn your brand’s content into content that the user wants to get in touch with.
Thus, with Content Marketing, the dominant role of advertising is performed, i.e the provision of solutions to possible problems. After all, the user rarely looks for a specific product or a specific brand.
Instead, he is looking for a solution to something that concerns him and you can prove to him that you have that solution by offering him your valuable knowledge.
But why Content Marketing is so important?
The specific reasons why Content Marketing is now considered the most successful and effective marketing strategy are related both to its effectiveness in attracting customers and to its ability to adapt to different areas of marketing.
Let’s see in detail below all the reasons why you should include Content Marketing in any promotional strategy and if you follow:
Content Marketing helps you turn visitors into customers
The cases where a user searches for something specific, click on the page and buys immediately, are extremely rare. Instead, most users make a “trip”.
First, they learn that your brand exists. Then they learn how you can help solve their problems and why you are the best solution for it. Finally, if the previous steps are successful, they become customers.
It is therefore understandable that content is useful at all stages of the marketing funnel. Depending on how we use it, it can turn an ordinary user into a valuable customer.
Precisely because it works differently from ads, content marketing attracts people to the page who are actively looking to find information, solve a problem, or buy something.
In other words, we are talking about users who are quite low in the funnel (bottom of the funnel users) and therefore closer to the conversion.
Content Marketing contributes to brand awareness
The average online user is flooded with ads, a large percentage of which do not even notice. On the other hand, when a brand is really helpful through useful and relevant content, it is much more likely that the user will notice it, remember it in the long run and ultimately prefer it for their purchases.
Content Marketing contributes to the education of potential customers
In short, it teaches them everything that the brand’s products and services can achieve and thus makes them more loyal customers. With the content that a company produces for its products, it explains how they are used, how users can solve their problems using them.
Content Marketing is used in all forms of marketing
Regardless of the marketing strategy you use, Content Marketing is part of the process and not a separate goal. This means that quality content is a tool and can be used in all forms of marketing, online and offline.
For example, a good article on a topic that users are looking for can be uploaded to the blog and with the addition of appropriate keywords can rise high in the rankings and help in SEO, since after all Google rewards companies that consistently publish quality content. Read more about SEO techniques here
Content Marketing has no cost or low cost compared to other actions
The ROI (Return On Investment), ie the amount earned by our advertising campaigns, is several times low because direct advertising does not pay off.
In contrast, Content Marketing is much more efficient because it meets what the user is looking for. Instead of looking for your potential customer and offering them something you do not know if they want, as in direct advertising, by creating content you are essentially letting them look for you and you are responding to what they are looking for.
Thus, investing in the money “takes place”.
In addition, just because useful content is a tool for different types of marketing strategies, it ensures that you can use it in a variety of ways and make the most of it.
Finally, do not forget that advertising requires constant investment in budget, while Content Marketing does not have to cost money to produce, and certainly pays off in the longer term.
It can even continue to perform for years, without having to do or spend anything extra!
Tips for content that stands out!
Of course, in order for Content Marketing to bring results, it must be done correctly, that is, specific steps and practices must be followed. In short, it is good to keep in mind the following:
Find what users are looking for
To get long-term results from Content Marketing, your content needs to rank high in search engines such as Google and YouTube.
To do this, it must respond to user searches. What users are looking for is something that you can find out in various ways, such as watching your audience on social media and related forums, asking questions to your customers, etc.
But the most reliable way is to see which searches are based on a keyword, as well as the questions that users ask.
You can find this out in a variety of ways, such as Google autocomplete, search suggestions at the bottom of the first page of organic results, and of course related keyword search engines such as Ahrefs Keyword Explorer or related searches. Google displays.
Brainstorming is another way to gather various ideas, which you will then test, to see if your potential customers are interested.
Create useful content
Once you find what users are looking for, the next step is to create useful content that offers solutions, knowledge and experiences related to these topics. For example, suppose you have a site that sells bathroom and kitchen furniture.
With the above tools, you will find that some relevant questions that users ask are “how much does a bathroom/kitchen renovation cost”, “how long does a bathroom/kitchen renovation take”, “suggestions for a bathroom/kitchen renovation” etc.
So, what you can do is publish well-written articles on the site blog that answer these questions and say something more than what has already been written on the web about the subject. I
Target a specific audience
It is very important to know who is your ideal buyer, what are the characteristics of your buyer persona.
In the previous example with bathroom and kitchen furniture, if you are selling expensive bathroom furniture from well-known brands, then it does not make sense to create content on how one can keep one’s budget low in a bathroom renovation.
You need to find what you are looking for when selecting yours, such as “modern kitchen decor ideas”. In addition, knowing the characteristics of your audience will help you determine the style and language choices in your articles.
Define your plan
Answer questions such as what budget I will invest, how often I will publish articles, what hours of the day, what size the articles will be, etc.
It is important at the beginning of the plan to define a theme on which you will rely to create the content you want.
Promote content
It is not enough to create your content, you must then promote it, to help it stand out among the millions of articles on the web.
For example, if you upload an article to the site blog, you need to optimize it for SEO, so that it appears high in search engines, promote it on social media, etc.
Of course, you have to be careful as there are many myths around SEO, about which it is good to be informed.
Write long-form content
The so-called epic content means articles that are longer than 1,500 words. Searching the web for a topic, you will find that many things have been written about it. So adding another article that writes the same will not help you.
However, if you compose an article that includes everything that users are looking for (eg “Kitchen renovation tips: everything you need to know”), it will result in high rankings, increased traffic and more engagement on social media.
In addition, an article of this kind can also serve as evergreen content, ie as content that does not lose its value over time and is always relevant and relevant. To achieve this, you may need to renew it regularly, but it is worth it.
Divide the text into paragraphs with headings, bullets, etc.
No one is going to read a text download, especially in our time, where most searches are done from mobile devices! Give a proper structure that will make your text legible, will make it easier for the user to understand the text better, will highlight the main elements with formatting, etc.
Don’t forget Call to Action!
At the end of the text (or in other parts of the text if deemed useful), there should be a Call to Action, ie ask the user to do something.
For example, if you are writing an article about economical bathroom renovation, then at the end there should be a button or a suggestion with a link that will invite the user to browse your collection of bathroom furniture or more specifically to see the offers with a 50% discount.
The goal of Content Marketing is for the reader to become a customer, so the logic is that you guide him on how he can actually become a customer.
Other actions you can invite him to do are to write in the newsletter or in the email list, to share the article, to leave the critique of coke.