Gone are the days for traditional marketing now is time to change and adapt to new marketing techniques. Don’t you agree? Sometimes it feels like the people in this world are on a hamster wheel, running fast towards their goals, dreams. And their ideas and preferences are changing with each passing day making it hard for businesses to understand them. So businesses need to change themselves to their products better and serve their loyal customers better. And if you’re also one such business owner trying to understand your audience better and attract more audience to your brand? Then here is the trick Content Marketing.
Now you must be wondering…….
“What is content marketing?”
Content Marketing is a marketing approach crafted strategically to create, distribute related and consistent content to attract and retain customers and sequentially drive them to take a profitable action. Simply promoting your products may not bring your audience. So you must provide them with content that would solve their issues. Content marketing is part and parcel of storytelling. It is just that humans use storytelling to express themselves and brands are using content marketing to get closer to their targeted audience and improve its brand awareness too.
Why Content Marketing?
You see brands are using advertisements as a means to attract their audience. But there is a slight problem with it too. People earlier had all the time in the world so they spent time indoors and watched TV or heard Radio. But now they spend most of their time on mobile, so the brands have also changed their ways and are targeting ads on social media platforms, search engines, youtube etc. But while talking facts, how many times have you seen a complete ad on youtube without clicking skip ad, rare right? You see people have even started using ad blockers too. By 2021 around 27% of US internet users are estimated to use ad blockers.
See ad blocker penetration rate has substantially increased over these past years and if people have increased using ad blockers. It is given that your business will be losing a lot of ad revenue as it will not reach your targeted audience and you must come up with new ways to connect with your audience and guard your business against losses.
Content Marketing and business
Content marketing is the future and smart marketers prefer it over traditional marketing techniques. With traditional marketing techniques, there is no guarantee that you will reach your targeted audience and the costs are high. Content marketing not only ensures that your content reaches the audience it also helps you in building a better relationship with your customers, improves conversion rate, improves interaction and helps you in getting feedback from your audience.
It attracts prospects and transforms them into customers by creating and sharing relevant content. This form of marketing doesn’t involve direct sales but it helps in building rapport and trust with the audience. You are creating brand loyalty and provide them with all the information relating to your product and create a willingness to do business with your company in future.
Types of Content
The main idea behind content marketing is that the brand is creating and distributing valuable content to give something valuable in return. Content marketing also requires delivering a large amount of content daily. So it becomes a must for an organisation to have a content marketing strategy to reach their goals. First, you must identify the needs of your customer, once you understand the needs then you can present information relating to those needs and cater it in various forms for your audience. Here are a few formats in which you can deliver your content.
- News
- White papers
- E-books
- Email newsletters
- Podcasts
- Case studies
- Infographics
- How-to-guides
- Blogs
- Q&A articles
- Photos, etc
Advantages of Content Marketing
Brand awareness & visibility
Businesses focused on reaching more audience should also concentrate on the quality of their interactions too. Content marketing can improve brand awareness and visibility of your brand. Since you are creating content that is relevant to your targeted audience, they will surely interact with your brand and it will surely convert them into your customers and also make them you’re loyal customers. This can even be metrics to measure the success of your content marketing strategy. When people read your content they will automatically create an impression on your brand, so your brand reputation is directly proportional to your quality. If you appear constantly on other external sources such as their social media feeds then you would constantly stay in their minds and next they are willing to make a purchase or require a service in your industry then they would come to you.
Improves relationship with customers
Your content can work wonders for your business if executed correctly. Once you cater to the needs of your customers then they will automatically take an interest in your brand. Did you know? Great content can increase loyalty and improve your relationships with your customers. You see many major brands believe in understanding their customers and creating long term relationships with them to improve their business. Create a personal relationship with your customers, that is possible by making your content more personal to your audience. Once you form a trustworthy bond with them and they trust your organisation it is a given that your conversion rate will also increase.
Followers & traffic
If you’re sharing relevant content in all formats then traffic will also increase. For example, sharing or syndicating your content on social media platforms can increase the exposure of your brand. As people are constantly on social media it becomes easy to attract your targeted audience and once more people started showing interest in your content and sharing it with their friends and family. You will slowly penetrate your audience and gradually increase your followers and people will also visit your website increasing web traffic too.
Conversion Rate
The primary goal of creating content is to engage, inform and interact with your customers. If your customers feel that your brand is providing them with solutions to their queries they would surely choose your brand over your competitors. Simply put, great content will give you a competitive advantage over your competitors. Once you have provided addressed their queries you can use the residual space to promote your products and brand. If done tactfully you can improve conversions and ultimately your business. But remember to do it in moderation if not it may end up turning your content into an advertisement. Why is not what you want your audience to feel. Provide them value and slowly but steadily turn them into your customers.
Cost-effective
Content marketing only asks for your time. It is a more cost-effective approach compared to traditional approaches. If your content is streamlined well, it will even yield you a good return on your investment. The first few months of implementing your content marketing strategy may not yield you much, but gradually you will see the growth and as the years pass by your growth will multiple or even quadruple too. Content marketing is inexpensive and safe. So it is time you include it in your business strategy as it increases traffic, conversion rates and improves relationships with your clients and customers.
Works well with any industry
Content marketing doesn’t discriminate any industry. As you can see any industry can use content marketing in their marketing strategy. It simples makes them more approachable and relatable to their audience. Be it digitalized companies or industries still following traditional marketing techniques to improve their business anybody can use this strategy to become close to their audience and get valuable insights to improve their business.
Search engine friendly
If you take blogging as an example, you see the more quality content you put on your website, the higher it ranks in the search engine. This is a win-win situation to you as you are providing quality content to your audience and attracting the new audience to your website too. If you rank better on search engine then you can get more organic traffic to your website. And it will also increase the relevance, authority and trust of your website. If you want to increase your visibility to your audience then keep producing high-quality content. Your domain authority correlates with search ranking. The higher your domain authority the better for your business.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing study provides that increases the quantity of content you produce may lead you to excellent customer acquisition. Many marketers even prioritize blogging over other marketing techniques as it shows 13x more positive ROI. If you are also one of the marketers looking for organic traffic then you must shift to content marketing as it yields you 3x times more traffic compared to other paid advertising techniques. This cost-effective method only leads your business towards profit and improves relationships with the customers and helps you in performing better and increasing conversion rate. What are you waiting for? Gather your team and discuss and prepare a content marketing strategy that will lead your business towards success.
