From the term content marketing, you can identify the subject matter of the article. In this article, we will be talking about what is content marketing? Why content marketing is important and various strategies involved in it. Top influencer and content creator says that having a quality and valuable content always helps a content marketer in getting more traffic.

To deliver valuable and productive content, the first and foremost thing is to know about your audience’s interests and demographics. If you are unaware of your audience then it is difficult for your content to get maximum reader. However, there are various methods and strategies for content creation. Read our previous article on 7 basic steps of content creation and tips required to create SEO-Friendly content. These strategies will help you in understanding different types of content available and how you can deliver amazing content that can attract visitors to your content.

Getting maximum visitors is a dream come true for every content creator. To achieve that your content must have maximum reach. By using various Inbound marketing channels like PPC, Social Media, SEO and Email a quality content will surely get Maximum Reach. These types of practices are done to tell the audience that you have published new content. There are times when content marketer tries to create buzz for upcoming content through email and social media.

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is all about sharing valuable and quality content using the various inbound methodology that can attract the maximum number of audiences. Content Marketing is considered to be one of the most effective ways of retaining potential and profitable customers. Top brands like Microsoft, Taco Bell, American Express, Virgin Mobile, Mail-chimp and Walmart, etc consider content marketing to more effective than any other form of marketing.

Now you might be thinking why these top brands like to focus on content marketing? Well, most of the content is published to Drive more sells. And Content sharing helps in educating the audience about the brand and gaining audience trust.

According to wearesocials.com, internet users are increasing every year i.e. from 4.021 Billion in 2018 to 4.39 Billion in 2019. After looking over numbers you can analyze, how content marketing is more productive.

Watch the above video to see how Reebok published video content, that tells about life. The title of the video 25,915 days tells about the average span of human life. In B2C a brand needs to get connected with the audience and content marketing helps big brands/businesses to share their emotions to create bonding with the audience. Even when we think of buying something we go with the brand that we trust most.

For Example:- You have gone out for a trip and want to have food. You found two restaurants one can be a local restaurant and the second is McDonald’s. Where would you think of having your food? Well, as per our assumption you would probably go to McDonald’s. Because you know and trust that brand for their hygienic kitchen and food quality. There are various content marketing strategies that a content marketer should know. Before that let me explain to you the benefits of content marketing.

Benefits of Content Marketing

Helps in driving conversion
Increases Brand visibility
Content Marketing Drive More sell
High quality and informative content helps in getting more traffic
Helps in increasing Website visibility in search engine
Quality Content increases trust and Domain Authority of a website
Content Marketing can help in educating the audience about the brand
Sharing content on social media help in gaining social traffic and followers
Helps in building brand reputation
More Brand visibility
Cost-effective than many traditional outbound marketing

Content marketing strategies

Prepare content according to buyer persona

Understanding your buyer persona is important as it focuses on your target customer based on market research. In content marketing, buyer persona helps you to understand your ideal customer needs, challenges, and requirements. Content has always helped a marketer in driving more sell and helps in boosting an ongoing or upcoming marketing campaign.

To better understand let me give you an example, there are group customers around who like to get a suggestion from their friends or family to buy any product. And a group of customers who like to read reviews of the product on the various review-based websites. If you read the above sentence carefully you may find that there are two different types of buyer persona. To deal with that, you have to create a content marketing strategy that can fulfill and solve the problem of both buyer personas.

Create more targeted landing page

A high-quality informative landing page always helps in getting customer information. You can find these landing pages while reading an article or a blog. The main goal of the landing page is to convert your reader into a customer. Companies offer resources like pdf, ebooks, webinar signup in exchange for contact information like an email address — name, phone number, etc.

Suppose you are searching for a blog on boosting an online business. While surfing the internet you come across a website on the same topic. Once you click on the website you may find a pop up stating, double your business with our experts by providing your details.

By looking at the example below you can identify the landing page and how the website owner asks for your content info.

Select the type of Content

The content delivery format is always misunderstood by most of the users. People surfing the internet and thinking of starting a career in content creation field think that there is only one type of content i.e. text content. But in reality, there are various ways of creating content.

Video Content is one of the most popular types of content used by top brands and small businesses. Tv commercial ads, Vlogs, and youtube videos can be the best example of video content marketing. Another form of content is audio content which can be heard in the form of a podcast. Live Webinar, Email Newsletter and Presentation are all different formats of content. If you are looking to get into content marketing then you should be clear about your niche and the type of content you want to create.

There are various types of content

Blogging
Long-form Content
Video Content
Podcast
Animated Gifs
Case Studies
White Paper
Live Webinar
Ebooks
Infographics

Conduct Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis is important in both online marketing and traditional marketing. In content marketing competitor analysis will help you in getting an idea about where your competitor is sharing their links. There are tools available like SEMrush that can give you an idea about your competitor’s backlinks. You can analyze your competitor’s article to understand the

Content format
Heading and content hierarchy
Content title
Number of inbounds and outbounds links
Total number of images
User-Friendly/LSI keywords
Social Media

Once you analyze all the mentioned details of a competitor then you can figure out an effective marketing strategy for your content. To identify your competitor type keywords (like top marketing strategies ore any keyword) in google search bar to get the list of a competitor. You can figure out in the image – red highlighted area will be your competitor if you are writing an article/blog for top marketing strategies.

Content Calendar

A content calendar is an important part of content marketing. It will help in making your content marketing strategy more effective and rewarding. Other than making a converting marketing strategies content marketers should spend time on making a content calendar for content creation and marketing.

You can use google calendar to mark your date of posting or you can make out a monthly or weekly calendar if you have lots of content to post. But having an editorial calendar will surely help you in enhancing your content marketing strategy.

Analyze effective content marketing channel

Deciding a content marketing channel is very essential. It will help you in saving your time and money. Market research is said to be a good practice in analyzing content marketing channel. Before executing your content marketing strategy you should be aware of where your audience is hanging out on which platform or channel you can get more engaging traffic.

If you already have a blogging website then check your analytical report of other blogs by selecting Acquisition->Social->Overview. By doing this you will get an idea about the social network used to share your content. And if you are a newbie then you can use tools like Buzzsumo to analyze the social media platform.

As you can see in the picture for the keyword Inbound marketing facebook has more sharing and engaging audiences for almost every website. You can upgrade to pro for getting in-depth infographic analysis.

Research Target Keyword

Keyword research is important in both content creation and marketing. You should be aware of the keywords that your user will type in the Google search box.

Now you might be wondering how can you know about the keyword? There are many keyword research tools available like Ubersuggest, keyword.io, etc. You can also go for competitor analysis to know about the keywords your competitors are using. Apart from that, there is one more technique you can use by imagining yourself as a user or visitor.

Focus on both competitive and non-competitive keywords. Use more long-tail keyword to get more targeted traffic. For example, if you are running an ice-cream shop specialized in providing the best chocolate ice cream then keywords like best chocolate ice-cream can narrow down your audience. Which is a good thing when it comes to attracting and converting qualified leads.

Convey Right Story

At the beginning of the article, we have mentioned content are made to make an emotional connection with the audience. In the beginning, If you saw the REEBOK video concept then you could have realized how brands try to make unbreakable emotional contact with the audience.

That’s why it is always important to deliver the right story that can justify your brand. Sometimes, brands tend to deliver an ambiguous message that confuses the audience. And it is not good for a brand or company to have a confusing audience.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Content is written to educate your audience and get qualified leads. To achieve that content should have some metrics that can measure its goal. KPI is one of the important terms in measuring the success of your content marketing. Every business i.e. B2C and B2B have metrics to measure the success of content marketing campaigns. A B2C company mostly focuses on selling their product and service. So for them, the main KPI metric will be measuring sales and revenue whereas for B2B lead generation is the key KPI metric as they focus on companies meeting, product demonstration, etc.

Measuring content success is not easy. Unless you know what you want to achieve from that content. A content can be prepared to get

A certain number of new email subscribers
Get more signup forms
Improve search ranking
Get a certain number of likes, share, comment
Hit certain revenue target
Get more traffic

Above are the content marketing strategies that one should know to get good revenue and sales out of content. Always focus on educating the audience through your content it will help in gaining audience trust on your website and brand.

Frequently Asked Question and Answers

1. What is content marketing?

Content Marketing is all about marketing and sharing quality content that can be more valuable and attract the maximum number of audiences. Content Marketing is considered to be one of the most effective ways of retaining potential and profitable customers.

2. How important is content marketing?

Content Marketing can help in

driving conversion
Increases Brand visibility
Content Marketing Drive More sell
High quality and informative content helps in getting more traffic
Helps in increasing Website visibility in search engine

3. What is content in content marketing?

In content marketing, content creation is all about identifying the topic and producing educational, helpful and entertaining material that can fulfill and help the audience.

4. Is content marketing effective?

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways of highlighting a brand and product.

Content Marketing can help in educating the audience about the brand
Sharing content on social media help in gaining social traffic and followers
Helps in building brand reputation
More Brand visibility
Cost-effective than many traditional outbound marketing

5. What is the difference between content writing and content marketing?

Content Marketing is all about marketing and sharing quality content using inbound methodology to gain a maximum audience. On the other hand, content writing is all about identifying the topic and producing educational, helpful and entertaining material that can fulfill and help the audience.

6. Is Copywriting a marketing technique?

Copywriting is all about writing valuable content and marketing it to a clearly defined audience to attract and persuade them to take a particular action.

7. What is content advertising?

Content advertising is the process of producing informative and entertaining content that can be promoted through paid channels like PPC campaign, paid social campaign, Sponsored placement.

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