Content Marketing

Content Marketing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Become an Expert on The Subject

Content Marketing is an effective method to achieve this goal. This process is capable of Attracting and Engaging your target audience with a low-cost investment.

Content marketing makes it possible to create an immersive environment for potential customers to discover how your product or service will solve their problems or realize their desires. By applying this strategy you can drive clients to buy decisions.

What is Content Marketing?

Useful content should be at the core of your marketing.

Traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective by the minute; as a forward-thinking marketer, you know there has to be a better way.

” Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.

Content Marketing is used by leading brands:

Our annual research shows the vast majority of marketers are using content marketing. In fact, it is used by many prominent organizations in the world, including P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and John Deere. It’s also developed and executed by small businesses and one-person shops around the globe.

Content marketing is good for your bottom line – and your customers

Specifically, there are four key reasons – and benefits- for enterprises to use content marketing:

• Increased sales
• Cost savings
• Better customers who have more loyalty
• Content as a profit center

Content is the present – and future – of marketing

Go back and read the content marketing definition one more time, but this time remove the relevant and valuable. That’s the difference between content marketing and the other informational garbage you get from companies trying to sell you “stuff”. Companies send us information all the time – it’s just that most of the time it’s not very relevant or valuable (can you say spam?). that’s what makes content marketing so intriguing in today’s environment of thousands of marketing messages per person per day.

Marketing is impossible without great content

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:

• Social media marketing: Content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy.
• SEO: Search engines reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content.
• PR: Successful PR strategies should address issues readers care about, not their business.
• PPC: For PPC to work, you need great content behind it.
• Inbound marketing: Content is key to driving inbound traffic and leads.
• Content strategy: Content strategy is part of most content marketing strategies.

Why Content Marketing?

There are other ways to be online beyond Content Marketing. It is true. So, why should you pick this option for your business?

Because Content Marketing is a foundation and complement to other Digital Marketing strategies.

If you choose to work with social media marketing, you will need relevant content. The same happens when you pick email marketing or corporate blogs: you will always need the content.

The biggest specialists in the world agree that content is king. By using it, you may achieve a few different objectives types in many ways, like teach to people how to use your product or service to solve their problems.

First we need to understand the four steps of the buying cycle:

1. Awareness: Prior to awareness a customer may have a need, but they are not aware there is a solution.
2. Research: Once a customer is aware there is a solution, they will perform research to educate themselves. For example, a car buyer will try to find our what different types of cars exist, and which one will fit their needs.
3. Consideration: At this point the customer starts comparing different products from different vendors to make sure they’re getting a high-quality product at a fair price.
4. Buy: Finally, the customer makes their decisions and moves forward with the transaction.

Traditional advertising and marketing is great when it comes to the second two steps. Content marketing taps into the first two stages of the buying process by raising awareness of solutions and educating consumers about a product they may have never considered before.

Why is content marketing important?

Content marketing is a go-to tactic that’s proven to work. Also, it provides a competitive advantage. Take a look at what the data says about content marketing:

• Businesses with blogs get 67% more leads than other companies.
• 72% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers say content marketing increases engagement and the number of leads they generate.
• 88% of people credit branded videos for convincing them to purchase a product or service.

Content marketing benefits businesses in many ways. When done right, an effective content marketing strategy can:

• Increase online visibility: A content strategy can help you attract more customers and website visitors, especially when people are constantly looking for solutions to their pain points. Offering educational and informative content about a topic they’re interested in can help you increase visibility online through your website or social media accounts.
• Generate more leads: You can increase leads when content marketing is used to drive traffic. Since educating customers builds trust and helps them feel more comfortable purchasing from your business, you can generate more leads and start to develop relationships with potential shoppers.
• Boost loyalty: Loyalty is essential in marketing and business because the more loyal your customers are. the more repeat purchases they’ll make. Offering content that informs consumers can help them begin to build trust with your brand and see you as a thought leader.
• Improve authority: Developing content is ideal for improving authority and becoming a thought leader in your industry. Not only does content help you build trust, but it can position your brand as the most authoritative on a particular topic.

Types of Content Marketing

Nowadays, digital marketers’ options are wide open regarding their ongoing content marketing strategies. Here’s a look at a few of the most common types of content marketing you can choose from to help you reach your goals.

• Online Content Marketing : The term “online marketing” is often used as an umbrella term to describe any content you might publish online to boost your brand identity, attract customers, and raise your SERP rankings. But in a specific content, it refers to the content you publish to your website in an effort to reach these goals. The content in question may be standalone information pages, articles posted to your bag, and more.
• Blog Content Marketing: There are lots of tools a dedicated content marketers can use to their advantage these days. But a robust, frequently updated business blog filled with helpful, search engine-friendly content remains a marketing staple for a reason.  Blogs are more than a powerful form of inbound marketing that can work wonders for your web traffic and SERP rankings. There are also near-endless ways you can use a blog to express your brand identity, connect with your customers, build your site’s internal and external link structure, and more.
• Social Media Content Marketing: In 2021, an estimated 4.2 billion people around the world utilized social media for one purpose or another, if they weren’t networking on LinkedIn, they were staying in touch with family on Facebook, sharing their lives on Instagram, building vision boards on Pinterest, and more.  That said, social media is more than just a fun way for people to kill time or keep up with the news. It’s part of how they lives. And they want and expect to see their favorite brands there, so social media content marketing is a must for connecting with an audience.
• Video Content Marketing:  According to Wyzowl’s annual video marketing study, 73 percent of today’s consumers say they prefer video as a means of researching brands and future purchase decisions. That’s why 92 percent of marketers also say video content marketing is a vital part of their ongoing strategy. That said, every digital marketer would do well to include this approach in their own content production routine. Video makes a great addition to your blogs and website. But it’s also a perfect fit for social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

B2B Content Marketing Statistics

Although B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (business to Customer) marketing have a lot in common, there are specific differences a marketing professional should understand.

For example, a customer is often an individual consumer (or perhaps one person making a purchase decision on behalf of a small group of other individuals). On the other hand, marketing to another business often means meeting the needs of an entire team, not to mention catering to the company’s goals at large.

It’s also essential to understand the lay of the land regarding current B2B content marketing practices.

Here are some statistics to know.

• Roughly 50 percent of B2B marketers outsource at least one task related to marketing. About 84 percent of those say that the task is content marketing for them. 
• B2B customers are still human beings. That’s why 50 percent of B2B content marketing is about raising awareness and interest in a brand.
• Long-form content that digs deeply into meaty topics ranks better on Google, with 1,447 words being the average length of a page-one content.
• Although all positions within a sales funnel are important, B2B content marketing teams create top-of-funnel content the most often, with it constituting 67 percent of their output.
• How many Google searches does the average B2B customer conduct before making a purchase? According to Google, it’s about twelve on average.

How content marketing works

Your business can use content marketing to attract leads, make a case for your product or service when someone is researching what to buy, and close sales.

To use it effectively, you’ll need to deliver the right content at each stage of the sales cycle—from awareness through consideration to purchase. If this sounds complicated, don’t worry: Approaching content this way actually simplifies the process.

Here’s how companies use content marketing in each stage of the sales cycle to engage and sell.

Awareness stage

At the first stage of the sales process, your content should focus on the top concerns of your audience. Writing about their pain points, challenges, and questions gives you the best chance of engaging with them. Content at the awareness stage should be educational, how-to advice. Save your selling for the consideration and closing phases.

The best content for this stage includes articles, blog posts, e-books, videos, and newsletters.

Examples:

• A restaurant writes a blog post about how to plan a menu for a graduation party in the spring.
• A bike touring company creates a short video on the topic “3 Ways to Choose the Right Bike Trip.”
• An architecture firm creates an e-book called “Questions to Ask Before Hiring an Architect.”

Consideration stage

In the consideration stage, content should offer a hybrid of helpful information and marketing. It should educate the reader about what features or functions to look for and how various features address their needs. Of course, your content should lean toward what your business offers.

The best content for this stage includes case studies, how-to articles, how-to videos, and checklists or worksheets.

Examples:

• A cloud-based phone system company creates a checklist entitled “8 Ways to Improve Your Phone Customer Service” that details the features and functions that make great customer service possible.
• A landscaping company creates case studies about “The Biggest Mistakes Most People Make When They Hire a Landscaper.”
• A catering company features case studies of successful events with a focus on the benefits they offer, such as “How to Accommodate Food Allergies at Your Next Event,” or “How to Ensure Your Caterer Uses Sustainable Practices.

Closing stage

Content marketing plays an important role when a prospect is close to buying. At this stage, you can focus on sales, as long as you continue to drive home why you’re the best choice rather than just how great your services or products are.

Your central message here should be your expertise, knowledge, and the differentiating benefits of what you sell.

The best content for this stage: case studies, user-generated content, buyer’s guide, product video, the research report

Examples:

• A consulting firm creates a research report proving that businesses that engage in strategic planning, assessments by outsiders, and other services—shaped by what services it offers—experience higher growth.
• A design agency creates short videos showcasing the variety in its work across different industries to demonstrate its diverse expertise.
• An orthodontist practice encourages patients to contribute testimonials about its state-of-the-art equipment and top-notch service.

Social media and content marketing

Once you have content, it’s time to get the word out about it. Social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, medium, Instagram, and others, is a proven and easy way to promote your content. You write a post and link to your content, and then voila People are engaged.

You can do this through 3 steps:

1. Focus on high-potential channels: The best social media outlets for you are the ones frequented by your audience. Consider the big, popular channels, as well as smaller, industry-focused ones that are likely to connect you with good prospects. Ask your audience what channels they favor and build a manageable list based on their preferences.
2. Craft your copy to fit the channel: Each social media channel has a level of professionalism versus fun, an accepted voice, and other details all its own. Before you write posts for a channel, spend some time reviewing posts to familiarize yourself with these details. Then, give your posts some of your own company spirit.
3. Test and modify your approach: A winning social media promotion effort involves trail and error. Track responses from the various channels for quantity and quality. Fewer high-potential engagements may mean a channel is a good fit, as opposed to a slew of clicks that never turn into an audience.

SEO and content marketing

Content marketing makes it easy for good prospects to for good prospects to find your business. However, you can boost your efforts with search engine optimization (SEO).

Here are a few important best practices:

Keywords are the foundation of your SEO effort. These all-important words and phrases are the terms a prospect types into a search engine when they’re looking for a company, product, or service.

When you include the right keywords in your content, you’ll attract more traffic. The best keywords are:

• plain-language: language your audience uses to describe their pain points and needs
• Relevant: Keywords that match the expertise, products, and services you provide
• Specific: A combination of your focus, industry expertise, prospect pain points, and other relevant details

SEO has involved so that search success depends in part on how well your content does what it says it’ll do. Search engines review content copy, assess its relevance, and determine whether it delivers on what the headline promises.

Because of the importance search engines place on copy, using keywords throughout your content is important.

Use the following guidelines:

• Focus on 1 to 2 keywords: Avoid “keyword stuffing” by writing about what matters to your prospects with a focus on just a few keyword phrases.
• Use keywords in the title: Make what the article is about clear and explicit.
• Use keywords throughout: Find a way of naturally incorporating your keywords into your content.
• Stay on topic: Good-quality content that provides advice related to a headline will perform best.

6 Best Content Marketing Tools

Naturally, even the best tools out there today aren’t going to make up for a subpar content marketing strategy, but they sure can simplify the process of getting the job done right.

Here are a few examples to take a closer look at yourself.

1. Google Docs: No content marketing project is a one-person show. Google Docs takes the hassle out of collaborating with your team across multiple projects, no matter where they might be located. And it’s free, so it’s guaranteed to fit right into even the slimmest shoestring budget.
2. Grammarly: Even the most detail-oriented content creators can use a second set of eyes to look over their work and point out some weak areas to improve. Grammarly is a must for spotting spelling, grammar, and scansion errors that can ruin an otherwise effective blog post or piece of copy.
3. Canva: Beautiful, professional, original graphics are a must if you’re serious about creating standout marketing content. Canva is a user-friendly tool that takes the confusion out of the process, whether you’re looking to generate unique images to accompany a blog post or visual assets to jazz up your website.
4. Airtable: All the data your content marketing campaign will require you to collect and analyze needs to be stored somewhere, and Airtable is definitely an option to consider. it’s ideal for storing lots of data and keeping it organized from the start of your project to the finish. In addition, enjoy access to editorial calendars, campaign tracking tools, influencer management interfaces, and more.
5. BuzzSumo: Although you’ll almost certainly come up with plenty of great content ideas on your own, it doesn’t hurt to have a user-friendly tool to fall back on when you need more. BuzzSumo can help you pinpoint hot topics to focus on and consider across multiple platforms, as well as zero in on top thought leaders to check out. It’s excellent for tracking various performance metrics, as well.
6. Ahrefs: And, of course, SEO is a must for any marketing content you plan on creating. Ahrefs takes the guesswork out of basic keyword research to give you a solid jumping-off point for any campaign. It’s also traffic for everyday tracking proposes regarding current keyword rankings, keywords your competitors are using, current traffic rates, and more.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Above all, the key benefit is guiding people towards buying from you with confidence. When there are hundreds or thousands of other businesses like yours that people could buy from, content is how you differentiate your brand and show them why they should be doing business with you.

This will always be your goal, although there are other benefits worth mentioning too:

Meaningful relationships: A successful content marketing strategy builds meaningful, lasting relationships with people likely to buy from you.

Trust: These relationships earn the trust of your target audience, which is crucial when it comes to choosing who they’ll buy from.

Engagement: Keep your target audience engaged over a long period of time so your brand becomes a valuable part of their lives and the first one they think of when they need what you’re selling.

Awareness: Grow your audience to increase brand awareness and earn more customers.

Branding: Allows you to craft your brand story, differentiate yourself from the competition and demonstrate what you can do for people that your rival brands can’t.

Repeat purchases: Keep your audience engaged and excited about your brand after the initial purchase to turn them into repeat buyers and brand loyalists.

ROI: Over time, content marketing should be your most cost-effective lead generation and nurturing strategy – another key finding from the Kapost and Eloqua study we linked to above.

What are Content Marketing principles?

Every aspects of running a successful business, attracting a customer base, and building a brand comes attached to best practices professionals should know to stay ahead of the game.

Content marketing is no different, and that’s where key content marketing principles come in. In short, they’re directives and tried-and-true rules that consistently help marketers reach goals and succeed.

Here are some examples:

consider the customer’s emotional needs

Good content does much more than showcase a product and tell people why they should consider buying it. It also seeks to be genuinely helpful to the consumer on a deeper level, meaning it informs, inspires, or entertains.

Consistency is key

Your audience needs to know when they can expect to see new content from you. So regardless of how frequently or rarely you publish content, it’s important to maintain a consistent publishing schedule.

Show your humanity

Brands are a lot like people in that they’re unique. They have one-of-a-kind brand voices, values, stances, and principles, as well. A good content marketing strategy aims to show the human side of a brand or company.

Avoid sales jargon

Although some sales speak is inevitable when you’re marketing a product or service, you generally want your audience to forget that’s the core purpose of your content marketing efforts. Content that resonates the best and attracts the most shares is content that connects with the reader on a personal level.

Deliver value

The more value and uniqueness you can deliver with your content, the more successful it will ultimately be. So aim to be the best at what you do. Show people why they should care what you have to say, and they’ll surely listen.

What’s the role of ROI in Content Marketing?

Return on Investment is a metric that should be analyzed in all marketing strategies.

It is not different in Content Marketing: it is one of the most important metrics and probably the most loved metric by marketing managers and directors.

It is a very simple measure that gives a general idea of the performance of an investment. To calculate ROI, just take what you earned mins how much you spent, and divide by how much you spent. It is extremely useful, especially to help with the definition and monitoring of concrete objectives.

If you take some time to apply this method in your business you will certainly see good results, especially because all the content you create becomes a company asset.