Marketing is the fuel that keeps a business running and eventually leads to sales. But did you know that you could weaponize your website as an effective tool to garner leads?
Yes, you heard me. Now the big question is, how to go about weaponizing your website so that it attracts leads that you can convert. Not just that, but also get you sufficient traffic to stay on top of Google.
In this simple guide, we have the answers to your questions. Read on to find out how you can learn content marketing effectively and develop a strategy.
Source: entrepreneur.com
We’ll take you through:
- What is content marketing?
- Some statistics that highlight content marketing’s value
- Types of content marketing
- Elements of content marketing
- How to create a foolproof content strategy?
- Content marketing mistakes beginners should avoid
- Conclusion
What is content marketing?
The meaning is in the name: Marketing your business via content is called content marketing. Majorly, the term ‘content marketing” is used for virtual businesses but the term transcends boundaries. A good content strategy can also be used in traditional methods to cater to and build a loyal audience.
Now, let’s decipher the content bit of the term. It refers to blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, etc. Basically, content is just information put together in a presentable way to make it easy for consumers/audience to consume.
Marketing content just makes it easy for businesses to target their audience in an organic way and drive leads without advertising outright.
Not only does content marketing help a business drive sales but also:
- Target an informed audience
- Educate people about the business
- Build a loyal following
- Turn their loyal audience into brand evangelists
Source: digipims.com
Some statistics that highlight content marketing’s value
According to Demand Metric, you can generate thrice the number of leads as outbound marketing with your budget being 62% lesser!
80% of people prefer discovering a business via custom content.
91% B2B and 86% B2C marketers make use of content marketing.
90% organizations are using content to market their products/services so you really can’t afford to miss out on this tactic!
Source: demandmetric.com
Types of content marketing
Let’s check the different types of content marketing that you must absolutely know about:
- Online Content Marketing: The pages on your website can be used for effective content marketing to cater to the right audience and develop a following. Your home page could offer solutions to your audience and grab leads for you through strategic design and content.
- Blog Content Marketing: Blogs are immensely helpful in building a loyal audience while offering information about your business and product/services. With a blog, you can also resolve the pain points of your audience and address their queries in a much more informative way while building inbound traffic and gaining leads.Would you believe me if I told you that 61% of online users in the US ended up buying a product after they read a blog.
- Social Media Content Marketing: A total of 4.59 billion people use social media worldwide! That’s more than half the global population there!Much like other types of content marketing, social media content marketing also requires nuanced storytelling with a focus on visuals. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc help connect people. However, content remains to be the common factor in discovery of brands and businesses.
- Podcast Content Marketing: As of 2022, globally, there are 383.7 million people who listen to podcasts. The number will rise to 424 million by the end of 2022 as per expert predictions.A number of outlets are creating podcasts of their own to advertise their products/services without outright selling. Podcasts allow for creative dissemination of information without compromising the idea of storytelling.
- Graphics and Video Content Marketing: Infographics, posters, videos are all methods of graphics and video content marketing. Fun fact is that YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. So needless to say, if you aren’t making content for YouTube, you are missing out. Infographics, posters or other visual content can also be distributed to a much larger audience via Instagram, Pinterest which are mainly photo and video sharing platforms.
Elements of content marketing
Check out the elements that form content marketing:
- Establish branding guidelines: Establishing branding guidelines before you start churning out content is crucial. The content you develop should be in tune with the visual and other identity of your brand. You need to build an emotional, intellectual and visual connection with your audience and this will happen only if you consistently follow branding identity guidelines.
- Audience personas and journey: You need to decode your audience or your targeted customer before you start marketing your content to them. Understand the mindset of the potential customer, find out what they are looking for and give them a valuable offer.Demographic and lifestyle parameters can help you build audience personas. You also need to understand the audience journey, how they come across your brand, interact with it, engage with your offer, compare and review it.
Source: setup.us
- Set up your goals Establish actionable goals that are measurable, relevant and practical for your team. Once you have the goals and objectives, you would be better able to measure your content marketing strategy’s performance against the trends and other factors.
- Build a planner You need to build a content calendar or a planner to streamline the channels of production and distribution. Build a weekly and monthly planner in advance so you know what content you have to create and how you push out in the world so it reaches maximum people.Focus on consistency along with tools/platforms insights to develop best times to push your content.
- Collecting data and analyzing it Data is absolutely important to developing a content strategy. You need to focus on what your audience is demanding, how and when and based on the research, you need to serve exactly what the audience is asking for in a way that is engaging and educating simultaneously.
How to create a foolproof content strategy?
So, we’ve got you excited for content marketing…Time for you to take the next step towards learning Content Marketing 101.
But before you build a strategy, you need to ask yourself some questions regarding your brand.
Who is your audience? What problem is your content solving? What content formats are you focussing on? How will you distribute your content? What deems your content unique enough that the audience will consume it?
Source:imarkguru.com
Once you have the answer to these questions, move forth with your strategy planning:
- Step 1: Define your objectives so you can measure your strategy on a regular basis.
- Step 2: Run an audience persona research to develop an idea of what your audience looks like and what content they want to consume.
- Step 3: Audit your existing content to understand what you are missing out on.
- Step 4: Do a competition research to understand what your competitors are upto in the content marketing game and understand what you need to do to set yourself apart.
- Step 5: Start ideating your channels of distribution and work on what sort or format of content you can consistently put out.
- Step 6: Start Brainstorming and pushing content.
Content marketing mistakes beginners should avoid
Here are some mistakes you should steer clear of when building a content marketing plan and strategy:
- Not planning in advance is among the biggest mistakes any content marketer can make. Ensure you always plan ahead for major events and even if there are no events, just develop a planner and publish content in whatever format you prefer for your audience.
- Ignoring your audience persona is another mistake a content marketer should never make as it hurts your strategy immensely. Unless you know who you are marketing to, how would you market your content to them?
- Understand what your audience needs, and answer their questions. Ignoring their needs would put your strategy back by years!
- Don’t try to sell, instead try to build a relationship with your audience. Try to connect with the help of content that resonates with your audience and a single-minded focus on selling.
- Introduce variety in content formats, try experimenting with everything from podcasts to videos to blogs! Focus on engaging your audience with variety as it is indeed the spice of life.
- Develop a brand voice, identity and maintain it consistently throughout your content. Not having a brand voice can really hurt your branding objectives.
Conclusion
Getting right on making a content marketing strategy is the need of the hour and if you can focus on developing a strategy that resonates with the needs of your audience, you will grow.
Build a clear voice, identity that is consistently reproduced in each content that your team develops, build audience personas to understand who you are catering to and map their journeys to decipher their discovery of your content.
Have tools that help you measure your insights and goals that you can measure the insights against so you know whether you are on the right track or not .With this guide, we throw the opportunity back to you to do something spectacular with your brand and content marketing strategy.