In today’s age, customers, leads, and audience members expect high-quality content from their favorite brands. Unlike traditional advertising methods that bombard customers with information to get their attention, content marketing provides content that aligns with the values of the customer.
Here’s a complete guide on how to get started with content marketing. This includes what content marketing is, examples, and strategies you can include. Let’s start with the basics!
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing content to attract, engage with, and retain an audience. This can include blog posts, checklists, ebooks, infographics, videos, and more. A well-executed content marketing strategy helps businesses establish expertise, promote brand awareness, and nurture leads.
More and more marketers acknowledge the power of content marketing as 82% of them are actively investing in content marketing. However, content marketing is not just publishing a thin piece of content and hoping people will find it. The most common reason why content marketing strategies fail is when it’s not important or relevant to the target audience. Therefore, knowing the interest of your audience and the type of content to promote are the keys to your success.
Types of content marketing?
Content marketing comes in various shapes and sizes. Here is an overview of some of the most common types:
Blog content
Having a blog on your website that resonates with your market is considered one of the most effective types of content marketing. In fact, companies that produce blogs attract an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog.
This is because well-written blogs drive more organic traffic to your site from search engines. When writing blog posts, make sure your posts are optimized for SEO and make sure the copy is engaging for your readers.
Website content
Did you know Google receives more than 8.5 billion searches a day? So if you want your website to be found, including website content in your content marketing strategy is a must.
Website content marketing refers to any material you publish online and ensures the right people will find your website at the right time. This includes all the pages on a website and downloads, like the homepage, landing pages, case studies, checklists, Ebooks, etc.
In addition to having valuable content, it pays to build, design, and optimize your website for search engines. When you combine SEO content with SEO web design, your website is more likely to increase organic traffic and maximize the potential of your marketing budget.
Social media content
Social media accounts for over 4.2 billion global social media users, making it one of the best ways to drive traffic with content marketing. By including engaging social media content, businesses can enhance brand awareness, boost sales, and attract a wider audience. You can use a variety of platforms to distribute your content, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat & Pinterest.
While social media has evolved into communicative and content-sharing platforms and tools that allow users all over the world to connect, it also provides immense potential for businesses to engage with customers across their customer journey. Businesses are increasingly incorporating user-generated content (UGC) into their social media marketing strategy to increase their brand exposure and value proposition.
Infographic content
Infographics are a valuable tool for visual communication. The information and data are presented in an easy-to-understand graphic format in order to catch the viewer’s attention and hold it. With a combination of simple wording, concise statements, and captivating illustration, infographics help content marketers educate their audiences and provide useful information. This can add value for leads and customers while it can make complex topics easy to understand for everyone.
Video content
Over the last few years, video marketing has become incredibly popular as 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, compared to 63% over the last 3 years. Customers are in line with this trend as 73% of them say they prefer to learn about a brand’s product or service through video.
Video marketing refers to the use of videos to market your product, increase engagement, and on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and reach your audience with a new medium. By utilizing video marketing in your content strategy, you can boost conversions, improve ROI, and help you build relationships with audience members.
Podcast content
With over 383.7 million podcast listeners worldwide, publishing a podcast on Apple iTunes or Spotify is a great way to provide value for your audience. From the listener’s perspective, podcasts make an effective way to learn about a brand as they are extremely accessible and great for multitasking.
Business-wise, podcasts allow for a lot of creativity because they can be about any topics, including those that are related to the product and service they want to promote. That’s why many businesses and media outlets have begun creating and sharing their own podcasts.
Content marketing examples
In order to understand how you can incorporate content into your marketing strategy, use the following examples while creating your own strategy:
Example of TedTalks Daily podcast content marketing
TEDTalks is already world-famous for its videos. These are relatively short presentations (under 18 min) and are a great way for scientists, researchers, technologists, business leaders, artists, designers, and other industry-leading experts to take the TED stage to present their “Ideas Worth Spreading”.
The only problem was that not everyone was able to watch a video lecture in comfort while retaining a sense of their surroundings. To include this wider audience, TEDTalk introduced TedTalks daily so that everyone could get their TEDTalks Daily served up.
Example of Chewy’s website content marketing
Chewy is an online retailer of pet products that combines both social media and website content to promote its different products. Chewy’s YouTube channel is full of advice regarding pets, training, and animal health. In the description of the video, there is a link to a post on the company’s blog that provides more information.
The posts include tips and tricks from potty training a new puppy to baking homemade treats to planning a pet-friendly vacation. They also provide links to where pet owners can buy the materials they need from the official Chewy website. This encourages viewers to visit its website and make purchases.
Example of Spotify’s social media content marketing
Social media’s most successful content marketing campaign, Spotify Wrapped, is one of the internet’s favorite end-of-year traditions. Spotify users get a fun roundup of all the music they’ve listened to that year. The roundup is broken down into genres, years, artists, and more, and is displayed with brightly colored graphics. Users have the option to share their Spotify Wrapped playlists on social media.
The key to their successful content marketing is personalization. Customers feel more special and understood when they receive personalized assets. Therefore, they are more inclined to engage and share your content with their followers.
Example of Notions video marketing content marketing
Webinars are a great tool for businesses to establish trust and create a connection with their audience. That is one of the reasons why 95% of businesses believe webinars are an important part of their marketing strategy.
One of the brands that make the most of its content marketing strategy is Notion. Notion’s webinars are a hit because they offer unique online business advice. While Notion’s webinars revolve around business advice, they also feature exclusive productivity tips, employee highlights, a typical workday at Notion’s headquarters, and more.
Content marketing strategies
There is no one-size fits all content marketing strategies. The following content marketing strategies are the most common and easiest to include in your next campaign.
Thought leadership strategy
The first of three content marketing strategies is improving thought leadership. If you wish to be recognized as an expert in your field, then you should produce thought leadership content. The main focus is to produce new, edgy, in-depth, and attention-grabbing content.
The second most important characteristic of a thought leadership marketing strategy is a strong publicity and distribution plan. Integrating a strategic content plan into your content marketing strategy is a must if you want to make sure people actually read it.
Lead generation strategy
Lead-generating content focuses on creating and distributing interesting, engaging, and relevant content to attract and create leads for your business. Lead magnets or a high value promise are extremely important as this content has the power to make or break a deal for your business. Because the better your content marketing strategy, the more leads you will capture.
SEO strategy
The third content strategy uses search engine optimization (SEO) to attract leads instead of pursuing them (as with advertising). In short, SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. SEO optimization is most helpful to local businesses, SAAS companies, and products-based businesses, but almost every business can benefit.
How to develop a content marketing strategy?
Now it’s time to use everything you’ve learned today to create your own content marketing strategy. This simple X step process helps you create an effective strategy:
- Develop specific (SMART) goals that help you understand why you are creating the content. A few of the top goals of creating content are to boost sales, build relationships with customers, and increase brand awareness
- Identify and define your target audience. The most effective way to do this is by creating a buyer persona.
- Conduct competitor research. Do not only include traditional competitors in your research because with content marketing you’ll be competing for people’s attention and time.
NOTE: Describe which content marketing strategies work and which don’t for your competitors and try to discover why. This will help you with creating your own strategy. - Conduct keyword research to ensure your content will be found when people are searching for it on Google and other search engines.
- Create and plan your content schedule: Your goal is to create a content schedule that will help you keep accountable for publishing content regularly, which is a must in content marketing. This schedule should include a calendar of publication dates as well as the individuals responsible for creating the content.
- Create and publish high-value content. Prepare your content according to your schedule and ensure you include every (tiny) bit of information in order to produce high-quality content. Don’t rush creating content merely to meet the deadline on your content publishing calendar. After you’ve prepared the content, make sure to post and promote the content on all your social media accounts.
- Analyze and improve regularly. The final step in your content marketing strategy is to analyze and measure your results so you can make any necessary changes to enhance your content marketing efforts and reach more audience members. Don’t forget to keep updating your content over time.
Key takeaways
Do you already have an effective content marketing strategy that helps your business increase conversions and build meaningful relationships with customers? If not, use the tips, examples, strategies given in this article to do so!
Determine which type of content works best for your business and audience, and develop a content marketing strategy to begin boosting your bottom line today.
If you want to guarantee that your next content marketing strategy is fail-proof, get in touch with our team of marketing experts that are armed with the latest content marketing strategies to ensure your next campaign will be a success!
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