Content Marketing, Importance, And Strategy

‘Content Marketing’ has been around for a significant time now. However, if you aren’t proximately related to the Digital Marketing industry, chances are that you may struggle to understand its meaning. In view thereof, our Content Marketing experts have created this guide to explain Content Marketing, Its Importance, And Strategy to our readers. 

This is how our experts define ‘Content Marketing’ at Inclusivity. Take a look:  

‘Content Marketing is the process of regularly creating and disseminating quality content by businesses to their readers in order to attract, educate, and convert a specific segment of targeted audience with the motive to drive in profitable returns.’ 

If you have read the above definition then you must note that Content Marketing efforts are centered around the readers or the audience. It involves sharing high-quality content over frequent interims so that your customers become loyal to your brand. It is done in the pursuit of developing a very strong bond with your prospects by offering them content which can not only be consumed but also resonates with their demands consistently.  

So, by the time a potential customer makes a decision to buy products or services, you have already created a grasp around him by serving quality content. And, that is how you will have an edge over your competitor. 

A leader in Content Marketing, the ‘Content Marketing Institute’ shares that Content Marketing is educational. When compared to one-off marketing initiatives, businesses can show customers how much they value them through Content Marketing. 

Here’s a video on the History of Content Marketing by the Content Marketing Institute, you must watch: 

History of Content Marketing 

Content Marketing is unlike any other conventional product marketing initiatives such as sales collaterals, etc. It includes articles, blogs, infographics, e-books, podcasts, webinars that are targeted at offering better answers to specific queries of the audience than they can find anywhere else. Content Marketing makes it possible for marketers to distinguish their products and services from competitors. 

Content Marketing allows businesses to establish authority and credibility by writing on topics that touch a string with their prospects. Consequently, more people come to know about these brands through recommendations and referrals increasing the revenue and enhancing the subscriber base. 

Now that we have had an in-depth understanding of Content Marketing, let us read about its various types. 

Types of Content Marketing: 

Given the fact that Content Marketing is so broad, it assumes various types to approach the audience and separate buyer personas. The possibilities of structuring a particular piece of content are endless.  

Discussed below are the various types of Content Marketing that marketers use while developing their campaigns: 

1. BlogPosts 

Blog posts are an effective way to build thought leadership as well as laying the foundation for all content marketing efforts. It lets you broadly target the trending topics in the industry, talk about how your products and services can solve problems and contribute to the masses thus bringing traction to your website or pages. 

A blogpost is a versatile asset that can be repurposed in many different ways. For instance, you can create a social media post out of it by picking up small snippets or converting it into a video or even a podcast. 

2. Case Studies 

Case studies are focused on discussing real issues at hand and how your products and services were able to solve the challenge. Case studies are effective for the consideration stage of the buyer’s funnel and bring in huge conversions. They are so impactful because by consuming the content prospects feel a sense of reliability. 

Here are a few great content examples after which you can model your case own case studies: 

Great Examples for Modelling Your Case Studies. 

3. Infographics 

Infographics are the most engaging variants of Content Marketing. They are a mix of visuals and texts which are not only interesting to look at but very informative and easy to comprehend. Infographics also give a lot of creative liberty to marketers in terms of design. Since people interact with infographics on such a high scale, marketers deem it pragmatic to include them in their content marketing efforts.  

4. Videos 

Video Marketing  helps in introducing new products or services along with discussing their benefits and how they can address a specific challenge. They can also be used for discussing product updates, customer feedback and a lot more.  

Video content also helps in creating brand awareness which consequently resulting into demand for services. 

5. Testimonials 

Testimonials are another way of establishing credibility for businesses. Customers get a sneak peek into how the product performance from other verified consumers. They also get an idea about how it is like to collaborate or work with a particular organization.  

Testimonials also play a great role in learning product feedback from customers for making improvements in the same. 

6. Podcasts 

Podcasts are audio content which can be consumed by the audience online or after downloading the audio files. They are often hosted in the form of mini-series that throw light upon the several topics contained under an umbrella. 

Many marketers have begun including podcasts largely in their content marketing efforts as they are easier to produce and can be repurposed extensively. 

Although the list is endless, these were all the fundamental variants of Content Marketing. Let us proceed to understand the importance of Content Marketing for a business: 

The Importance of Content Marketing: 

You might have heard the phrase “Content is King.” It is not said in vain. Content does much more besides occupying your webpages. As discussed above, it helps in establishing authority, credibility, and also in establishing thought leadership. 

However, some of the benefits might not be as evident as the others. So, let us look at how content does a lot more than just driving traction to your website: 

1. Establishing Brand Awareness

If you are aiming at acquainting a targeted audience with your business or brand, there is no better way to do it than Content Marketing. Building brand awareness through conventional advertising or PR initiatives is known to incur hefty expenses. Content Marketing a low cost alternative for establishing brand awareness.  

It not only helps you to create awareness amongst your prospects but also lets you distinguish your products and services from your competitors. You can establish how your business is unique from others and best in your industry. 

2. Enabling Link Building 

If you are hosting great content on your website, other sites will automatically want to link their content with yours. Link building helps in multiplying the traffic that visits your website. So, the higher the authority of any website that is linking to yours, the higher the rate of traffic you can expect for yourself. 

Besides increasing the rate of traffic, link building also helps in optimizing the ranking of webpages on search engines. It also helps in increasing the domain and page authority of your website if a highly credible site links to you. 

3. Generating Business Leads

Lead Generation is the most imperative outcome of Content Marketing. It comes second to driving traffic onto a website. Generating leads is significant for the sustenance of any business. Content Marketing enables new people to discover your business and also attracts your existing customers to repeat business with you.  

Before making any purchase decision, people always refer to the content on a webpage. Hence,  gauging the requirement of your customers and serving them content accordingly enhances the website traffic thus exponentially enhancing the opportunities of sales conversion.   

4. Strengthening Customer Relations 

Content Marketing also helps in strengthening customer ties. We saw above in this article that testimonials can help businesses learn about the feedback of products and services from their customers. They can work on tweaking them accordingly for meeting the expectations of the customers. 

Besides just generating new business leads, Content Marketing allows businesses to establish loyalty and retain their existing customers as well. 

Hopefully you have understood the significance of Content Marketing with the conclusion of this section. However, when has any marketing effort worked without a successful strategy. Let us quickly move on to the basics of building a Content Marketing Strategy that will guarantee you the best outcomes.  

Building A Successful Content Marketing Strategy: 

The internet is flooded with endless content on devising a successful  Content Marketing Strategy. However, our experts have curated a very easy to follow and fundamental guide that can help you get started with your Content Marketing efforts. 

1. Business Goals

First and foremost, you must set all the desirable goals that you are expecting a piece of content to deliver.  Once you have charted out these objectives, you can map where do these outcomes stand when compared to your organizational goals. You can tweak the outcomes to sync them with the organizational objectives. 

Once this process is completed, you can start building the piece of content with respect to the finalized goals. 

Different businesses may prefer serving distinctive content depending on the needs of their customers. However, their objective mostly remains the same which is to establish presence, create awareness, generate leads, and earn views and shares.  

2. Buyer’s Funnel

A buyer’s funnel is the flow as per which a customer engages with a business. The three stages of a buyer’s funnel is are:

• Awareness – In this stage the customer discovers about your business for the first time. 
• Consideration – In this stage you distinguish your products and services to influence the customers decision to consider you over your competitors. 
• Conversion – In this stage the prospect finally makes a purchase decision and transforms into your customer. 

Hence, you must keep these three stages in mind while serving content to your subscriber base.  

The primary stages of content creating must focus on educating and acquainting readers about your business. It should be followed by establishing the uniqueness of your products and services and how they can solve the challenge of your customer better than others. Finally, in the conversion stage, you can share content such as testimonials, video feedback, etc. so that the individual transacts with you.  

3. Promotional Methods

Remember to repurpose your content. For doing so you can identify which content type works best for which kind of platforms.  In case if you are publishing a blog on your website, you can share its link and a short snippet from the blog on your social media channel. Likewise, the blog can be conscised and uploaded in the form of video content on platforms such as YouTube. This will ensure that your content is being consumed in more than one way and people are getting to know you and your offerings without fail. 

We hope that you have a clear understanding of Content Marketing by now. In case you wish to seek further clarity on this topic or understand how to start content marketing for your business, you can get in touch with our experts.  We will be glad to assist you. 

Content Marketing has grown so popular because it has existed for a longer time than we realize. We are just learning to use it more effectively for our benefit. It has enabled entrepreneurs to serve the masses with their offerings for the longest time. In the coming years, the importance of content marketing is forecasted to keep growing. 

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