What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is one of the most important branches of digital marketing. Business owners use content marketing strategies to attract as many leads as possible and retain existing customers.
Of course, content marketing has been around for a long time, but today it is very popular among online businesses. The simplest way to produce and share textual content, photos, videos, news, etc., to attract customers to web pages is called content marketing.
This article will provide a detailed definition of content marketing by examining it in detail. By analyzing the importance and position of content marketing in the business, so stay tuned to Ded9.
What is Content Marketing?
You must have heard the metaphor of Content is King! We all think only of pages and text posts when it comes to online content.
But the content can be in the form of photos, e-books, videos, audio files, animations, infographics, drawings, short films, and GIF files. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is one of the strategic marketing approaches that produces content to attract specific audiences and make a profit from them; Valuable, relevant, and integrated content.
Online businesses inform potential customers about their brand and products by producing credible, valuable content and audience needs. In addition, indirectly, with the help of content marketing strategies, they lead the audience to buy their products.
In previous decades, business owners paid exorbitant fees to publish their content on advertising sites, television, radio, and email advertising services. With the advent of content marketing, business owners, like a publisher, have begun to create and attract an audience.
Content production prerequisites
To be successful in content marketing, you need to have a detailed and regular plan and produce your content based on a specific model. Here are some key factors in content production planning:
Purpose
What are you trying to achieve? What message do you want to convey to the audience? It would help to answer these questions before starting the content marketing process.
Example: Suppose you own a restaurant on the outskirts of Tehran, and you want to increase the restaurant’s popularity among the residents and travelers of that area. You can show that you get all the food you need from the gardens and ranches of the area organically. So with that in mind, you’re starting to produce visual and textual content.
Business Goal
It is almost similar to the case above, except that the purpose of setting a business goal is to focus more on tangible factors such as site traffic, leads, and clients. It would help determine your content marketing goal and what you expect it to do. Usually, retaining loyal customers and attracting new audiences is always a priority.
Example: Based on content marketing strategies, you will pursue a specific business goal. For example, you can increase site traffic by 20%.
Specify Audiences
To produce quality content, you need to know your customer persona. You need to know who you want to produce content for. You can not be successful in content marketing because you do not know who to produce content for because you can not produce the right content for them. So you need to know who your best customers are. What made them become your customer? How old are they? Do they have children? Where do they live? Asking such questions will help business owners better understand their audience’s dimensions.
Example: Suppose you have a bicycle shop in the northern part of the country. Most of your customers are 25-40 years old who come to this area almost for holidays and visit the city’s sights. In addition, they have a lot of knowledge about different types of bicycles. So you have to produce more specialized content for them to be attractive to them.
Story
The main purpose of your content is to gain the audience’s trust. People prefer to buy from favorite and trusted companies. So your content should be in line with customer trust.
Example: By providing a friendly environment, you can explore the experiences, opinions, and criticisms of customers. You can do this by interviewing in person, recording a video, or producing an audio podcast.
Production and distribution
Once you’ve set a goal, gotten to know your audience, and gained their trust, you’ll be able to identify the right type of content to produce and determine its distribution channels. Of course, over time and changing trends, you must also update this procedure.
Example: Suppose you own a restaurant. After talking to customers, you have noticed that most of them use the social network Instagram, so post photos and videos from behind the scenes of cooking in your restaurant kitchen on this social network. It will increase the audience engagement with your business.
Measurements
Surveys determine how effective your business is. Poll some of the activities you want simultaneously as the goal-setting process. Although you have many tools to do this, you and your employees are the most important factors. In other words, you or your employees can ask the audience where they got to know your business?
Example: Suppose you manage a hotel, so train your staff to ask guests how they got to know the hotel or write down travelers’ hotel experiences.
Content Managing
After hiring writers, designers, editors, SEO experts, and social media admins and creating a good content calendar, finally publish your quality, up-to-date and attractive content in a content management system like WordPress. By doing this, your site’s site and social media pages will improve over time in web browsers, and more audiences will be aware of your brand.
Example: Suppose you work in the field of digital device sales. First, gather up-to-date information about your field of activity through the authors, and after applying the SEO tips, publish them on your website.
Benefits of Content Marketing in Business
As you can see, content marketing is attracting more leads and thus making the business more profitable. Here are 16 benefits of using content marketing and a brief overview of each:
1. Increase word of mouth
One of the most important benefits of content marketing for your business is that more people are talking about your business and recommending it to others. Research has shown that businesses that produce more consistent and quality content are almost six times more likely to compete. In other words, you spend less time, money, and resources to produce content that puts your brand name on the tongues over time.
2. Increase site traffic
Regular publication of attractive posts and content on the website will increase your site traffic. HubSpot studies show a 3.5-fold increase in website traffic with 16 articles per month. To attract more visitors to your site, publish relevant content accurately and regularly using the content calendar tool.
3. Inform your target customers of your brand
Brand Awareness is the most important benefit of content marketing. Many customers are for your products, but they are not aware of your brand and products. By providing useful content to your target customers, you will attract more leads that will help raise brand awareness and strengthen your branding and business.
4. Provide educational content to customers
If your brand can solve the problems of customers and audiences, it is better to provide them with quality educational content so that they can fully engage with your business. In addition, try to address other issues around your customers’ problems. (It is recommended to read the article Content Production Tips)
5. Gain customers’ trust
The more you value your customers and solve their problems, the more trust you gain. An intimate and trusting relationship is formed between the customer and you by producing educational content.
6. Strengthen customer relationship
If you want your customer to become a fan of your brand after their first purchase, you need to strengthen their relationship with your business through engaging and quality content. For example, you can inform them about your new products through Email Marketing.
7. Gain credibility and authority
By producing content tailored to the problems of customers and leads, your brand gains the necessary credibility and authority among the target customers. For example, suppose you have already posted about customer issues related to your products. In that case, visitors will find out as soon as they enter the website that you are a professional in this field.
8. Enlarge your brand
Generating valuable content to gain credibility and authority among customers makes your brand a lot of noise. In other words, customers will even use only the educational content of your website or get advice from your business managers to meet their needs.
9. Turn leads into real customers very quickly
Each customer enters an evolutionary process to purchase the product called the Sales Funnel. Using content marketing will drive a leader to buy a product from your business much faster.
10. Keeps more content on the website
Your company does not have much time to offer organs to Internet users. According to Microsoft, the average search time of an Internet user on web pages is less than 12 seconds, so you need to have enough quality and engaging content to attract the user to keep him on your site. With the help of content marketing and educational content production, you need to show the audience what your brand offers them.
11. Quality content improves website SEO
Internet users usually search for its name in Internet browsers to buy products. You can increase the ranking of your website in web browsers through the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) process. In other words, if you have quality content on the site, you will have better SEO, and eventually, you will always be in front of users’ eyes. In fact, by producing unique content, not only will users be satisfied with you, but also Google and other web browsers will be interested in your site.
12. Unique content captures your specific audience
When it comes to attracting customers through the Internet, it means attracting a certain group of internet users. Not all Internet users are interested in seeing your business services and products. In addition, try to attract only interested users to your products by focusing more on your target customers and producing relevant content.
13. Customers check the content of the website before buying
One of the benefits of content marketing is that it allows for a conversation between you and the customer before purchasing. According to Demand Gen reports in 2016, about 47% of buyers purchase after reading 3 to 5 articles on the site! This statistic shows the importance of producing quality content, which means that if the customer is not attracted to the content and posts of the website, they will most likely stop buying.
14. Engage the customer
If you want to pay less to attract customers, try to get help from content marketing. Producing valuable content that solves customer problems will cost you 60% less than other marketing techniques. Content marketing allows business executives to attract and connect with more audiences and leads at a very low cost.
15. Content sharing capability
To be more visible on the Internet, you need to ask your fans and customers to share your business content with others. The best advantage of content is its ability to share. For example, customers can easily share one of your advertising posts on social networks among their friends.
16. It Can be used in a variety of businesses
You may think that content marketing is great, but it does not benefit your business. But the truth is that content marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing techniques that can be implemented in various businesses. The key to success in this field is that the content is aligned with the brand and the audience.
Conclusion
In recent years, most businesses have devoted a large portion of their marketing budget to content marketing, which shows the great importance of this type of marketing in the present age. So if you have an internet business, it is recommended that you take content marketing or marketing seriously and start thinking about producing quality content from today.
