Content Marketing – An Introduction
“Content marketing is more than a buzzword. It is the hottest trend in marketing because it is the biggest gap between what buyers want and brands produce.” –Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group
Content marketing is one of the new buzzwords in the marketing industry but what exactly does it mean and how can you use it to support your business and brand?
According to The Content Marketing Institute, an online resource for information on all things content marketing related, it can be defined as follows:
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
The key word to note in this definition is the word ‘valuable’. By serving others, with content that they need and want you are proving your worth, your knowledge and expertise in the sector and delivering real value that will make you the ‘go-to person’ in your industry.
“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis, marketing speaker & bestselling author
Content marketing can also support the buying cycle and move prospects through your funnel as follows:
• Awareness (they are aware of you) to,
• Interest (they are interested to find out more about your products and services) to,
• Desire (they are keen to buy what you are offering) to,
• Action (they make the purchasing decision).
Content marketing specifically integrates with the first two stages of the funnel by generating awareness of solutions and providing clients with education about a product or service they may not have previously considered.
Content marketing can come in a number of forms videos, blogs, articles, white papers, books, podcasts, social media posts, case studies, industry commentary and infographics. This list is not exhaustive but gives you a sense of what can be considered in this form of marketing.
There are two core types of content – ‘evergreen’ content or content that is not time sensitive and be used over and over again and ‘topical’ content that could be relevant to a season, a specific news article or promotion. The great thing about content marketing is that your content can be re-purposed – your white paper can inform your blog posts, which can inform your social media posts etc.
Content marketing’s biggest cost is time but the ROI (return on investment) can be infinite. Return is also not always immediate or quantifiable as it’s key to building relationships, creating and building a community.
Here are our 8 tips for getting started on and / or improving your content marketing:
1. Align your content with your personal brand or organisational goals – You should consider what you are trying to accomplish and how this fits in with your goals so that you can pre-determine your content marketing plan. Your goals should be measurable and have a date by which they should be accomplished i.e. Increase followers on Facebook by 30% by 31 December 2019.
2. Know your audience – Have a clear idea of who you’re talking to and create key customer profiles – this should include age, gender, location, benefits / pain points, what they read, what social channels they use etc. This will ensure that you’re targeting the right people with the right message in the right format.
3. Define and develop your key messages – Consider what your audience want/need to hear? Be clear on what makes you and your product unique in the marketplace, as well as what you need to achieve the goals you have set. In terms of quantity, consider including between one to three headline messages, with sub points for more detail.
4. Know your content marketing strategy and pull together your content – Content marketing strategies fall into three categories: long-form, short-form and conversations. Long form is anything that is longer than a Tweet (2-3 sentences) and could be a whitepaper, blog post etc. Short-form includes social media updates and graphics. Conversations and sharing includes participating in and driving conversations through blog commenting, link sharing and comments on videos. You can use one type or all three is better. The next step is to develop the content you are going to use. It needs to be unique and different. Include your key messages and include them into the content without purely pushing your product.
5. Create a content planner – Developing a plan is key, but it should be flexible to allow for all eventualities. The plan should include strategies, specific tactics, suggested headlines, content deadlines and who’s responsible for what.
6. Establish Relationships – Next, you need to get out there and start building relationships with your potential prospects. You can do this through joining existing communities and commenting and sharing their content initially, whilst you start building your own groups across the social media platforms you plan to utilise. Remember: you are there to serve not just promote yourself and your business – as a rough gauge, we’d suggest you follow Pareto’s principle and have 20% self-curated content and 80% commenting and sharing other peoples in your sector or niche.
7. Spread the Word – Search engine optimisation (SEO) can help if you know your stuff. For example, any tags you’re adding to your blog posts should be used to generate traffic, as this helps you to be found i.e. consider what words your target audience would be searching for is.. Are they location-based or subject based i.e. plumbers in Enfield, mortgage brokers for commercial property in Liverpool?
8. Measure Effectiveness and Review – Measuring the effectiveness of your content, will ensure that you stay on top of your plan and will determine if it needs to be altered, or whether it’s delivering the results you are looking for. Measurement can include:pageviews, retweets, Likes, shares etc. Review what is and isn’t working and adjust your content planner accordingly.
To summarise:
Content marketing is a vital tool in your marketing armoury. It’s a cost-effective way of getting your message out, generating sales and reach. It’s a way of adding real value to your market, building connections and engendering loyalty.
