There was once a time when content was considered as just plain old blog articles. Mate, those days are long gone! In today’s rich and dynamic technological era, businesses have to bring their A-game to the marketing table. Consumers today are over-flooded with information and content. If you want to break through all that noise and clutter, your company has to stand out. Content marketing is one such medium of communication that has arisen with effective results. Hey, it is 2019. We are sure that you are engaging in content marketing in some format – even if you don’t realise it. For instance, do you have a business page present on Facebook or Instagram? If yes, then you’re already practicing content marketing!
It’s important to have a content marketing strategy in place so you can align all your content and communication. Trust us, you do not want to confuse your audience with mixed multiple messages. Services such as NoStop Content are great in ensuring your brand voice is consistent across all your marketing channels. The first thing to do is to understand what exactly constitutes content marketing. Ready to get started?
What Is Content Marketing?
Essentially, content marketing involves any kind of content (digital or otherwise) that you share with your target market in the hopes of achieving your marketing goals. When you strategize for it, you will be operating with a proper plan in mind and will have defined objectives, customer segments, channels of communication and such. When outlining your initial content marketing plan, following are the questions you may want to ask yourself and answer:
- Who is your target market?
- What channels will you utilise?
- What KPIs are critical to you to measure your ROI and success rate?
- What resources do you have available?
- What problems will you be helping your customer resolve through your services?
Now that you are clear with what content marketing is, let us study the kinds of content available out there.
What Kinds of Content Are There?
As stated earlier, the world is a creative place where technology is giving birth to new types of content. Being a strong content marketer also means keeping up with the latest type of content trends. For instance, heard of user-generated social media content? This is relatively new to the marketing scene and is trending with effectual results.
To give you an idea of variant content classes, here is a comprehensive list we put together:
- Company blog posts
- Branded blog articles
- Case studies
- White papers
- Podcasts
- User generated content
- Press releases
- Quizzes
- News updates
- Photos
- Webinars
- Infographics
Okay great, now you have created amazing content! But, how will you get your message across to your audience? Remember, content marketing is all about sharing the right message with the right customer at the right time.
What Kinds of Channels Can You Use for Content Marketing?
Remember, there is no one specific rule that will help you understand which channel is best for what kind of content. Such insights you will only gain through trial and error. Some common channels for content marketing include:
- Social media
- Website
- Search engine ads
You may be surprised to learn that the most popular channel used for content marketing is actually email. Social media is a close second and then blogs or websites are closely followed by customers. How can you utilise this piece of precious knowledge? Simple. It really depends on what stage of the marketing communication pie you are operating at. If you are the beginning stages of your content marketing plan, then we recommend that you commence your journey with one or two channels and then see how it performs.
What Resources Are at Your Disposal?
So, another thing to consider whilst formulating your content strategy is to understand what kind of resources are available at your disposal. Do you have a marketing team or ten people or three people? What are their skill sets? What is your budget? Does it allow you to recruit a full-time or a part-time content creator? Can you get an agency on board instead to do the hard work for you?
If you do not have the capacity to do videos, then don’t go producing those and marketing those if it is not of top quality. Remember, your consumers will remember something that they don’t like. It is just human nature. Mastering a content class is something that takes time and experimentation. Try to be patient as you go through your learning curve.
Finally, the most important part comes into play – who will create your content? It’s not the sole responsibility of your marketing team. Get your sales and support team involved. After all, they know your customer better than anybody.
Now, finally we get into understanding how content marketing is done.
1. Lay out Your Marketing Objectives
It’s pretty normal to have several goals to achieve under your content marketing strategy. For instance, if you want to increase the number of signups to your website, then you would publish customer testimonials that praise your service and could share it via your social media.
2. Audit Your Current Content
You need to see what existing content you already have and measure its success rate. This will provide great learnings to understand what’s worked in the past and could work again moving forward into the future. Are there any special CTAs that resonated with your audience? Did posting at a specific time work in your content’s favour? These are questions that can only be answered once you engage in a content audit.
3. Map Your Consumer Journey
There are specific classes of content that can work best depending on what stage your consumer is at. A person who has already purchased your product would benefit from a troubleshooting video or a manual guide if, in case, he has trouble with your brand. So, have a think and lay out your customer’s journey across the following stages: awareness, interest, consideration and desire.
Once you’ve defined your content plan and calendar, you need to sit down and review it. Remember to leave room for change or adjustments as per the performances of your content pieces. This will only enable you to better your content marketing efforts.
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Community manager at Visual Contenting. Jacqueline loves to talk about social media trends, new technology and how they help businesses accelerate their marketing efforts.
