What is content marketing?

What to know about content marketing? Content marketing is the process of consistently publishing relevant content that audiences want to consume in order to reach, engage, and convert. new customers.

This implies that brands act more like publishers. They create content on channels that attract visitors (your website). Content marketing is not the same as marketing with content. It is customer-focused, responding to their important questions, needs and challenges. Content marketing creates a financial asset. It allows businesses to reach, engage and convert customers they never would have seen before by using the keywords customers use and creating the content they consume on your own website to answer those questions.

This type of marketing represents the gap between what we produce as brands and what our audience is looking for. This leads to quantifiable business value. In this article, I will give you the definition, the reason why many large companies use it to generate more ROI from their marketing. And why you should start using it right away!

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating content valuable and relevant to attract, acquire, and engage your audience. Today’s buyers and customers are inundated with more marketing messages than ever before. This creates an environment of attention scarcity, challenging marketers to produce engaging content that doesn’t get lost in the static.

A well-designed content marketing strategy positions your business as a thought leader. It creates brand preference while informing and educating buyers. Providing useful and entertaining content can strengthen the connection between your brand and your customers. Traditionally, marketers have had to "to praise attention" to other people's media by displaying advertisements on websites, booths at trade shows, or emails sent to third-party lists.

For example, When a brand pays millions of dollars for a Super Bowl ad, it is renting the attention that television networks have built. Content marketing allows marketers to become publishers.

By creating and distributing content that buyers find useful, marketers increase awareness and preference by building trust with consumers throughout their journey through the sales funnel. Additionally, this type of marketing is considered a less expensive strategy than others. It may have a bit of a slower start as your content library grows and reaches a wider audience.

The Benefit of a Content Marketing Strategy

Unlike other approaches, there is something special that makes content marketing the best of modern marketing methods: it's sustainable. When done well, it offers the benefit of exponential growth, building brand awareness and trust, gaining leads and converting prospects, and engaging your customers, helping to build a loyal base of brand advocates.

Once you have launched your content marketing strategy, this snowball effect positive is in action. Your brand presence becomes more prominent and impactful. It becomes easier to achieve your marketing goals with future content. This is in contrast to traditional marketing. Advertising, even with today's sophisticated digital ads, can create overexposure. Audiences become saturated with brand promotions that offer no real value to the people you are trying to build customer relationships with.

✔️ Content resonates, advertising saturates

A critical factor in your content marketing is relevance. What are your customers’ challenges, problems, and needs? That’s what you should be writing about, not producing an advertisement for your brand. Well-written, insightful content engages your audience and positions you as a thought leader.

On the contrary, advertising, even digital, leads to overexposure and saturation. You haven’t tried to build a relationship with your audience. Instead, you’ve only captured a story about your brand as the star with no room for the real hero, your customer. To sum up, good content is “a vehicle that can take us out of the pangs of disease of the " death by SPAM » which still persists in many marketing organizations.

Common Problems Content Marketing Can Solve

Content marketing is a very unique approach to engage with potential customers in the digital space. Here are some of the problems this type of marketing solves:

✔️ I need to increase my organic search volume

Your audience can’t buy from you if they can’t find you. Today, buying cycles start from a search engine. Plus, according to Kuno Creative, 51% of content consumption comes from organic search, so content marketing is a great way to build organic awareness.

When your valuable content ranks well on search engines or is widely shared on social media, you build brand awareness at no cost. And since your content will only be shared if it’s relevant, your audience will be less likely to ignore it.

✔️ I need to create a preference for my brand

Content marketing engagement creates preference through thought leadership by establishing you as a trusted source of information and education. You can also create preference through relationships, which are strengthened every time your content entertains or helps your buyers. People are more likely to buy from companies they have relationships with.

✔️ I Have a Content Marketing Plan, But It's Not Engaging My Customers

Content marketing should help your customers, not sell to them. When you freely give your audience something so valuable that they would be willing to pay for it, you build trust, which is ultimately your most powerful sales tool.

✔️ I need to reach more customers, while keeping my costs low

According to a study by Forrester, today’s customers are wary and hate marketing that interrupts or intercepts them. Engaging content marketing should be part of a natural conversation with current and potential customers. It should also be relevant to their interests and behaviors, and build an ongoing story over time. Content marketing pays dividends over time, and this effect multiplies as you grow your content library.

The Impact of Content Marketing on Business

So, you might still be wondering why content marketing? Isn’t it just starting a blog every now and then? How do you know that content marketing has a real return on investment (ROI)? It’s normal to be apprehensive about investing in something that seems hypothetical in nature. But the statistics don’t lie. Consider these impressive numbers:

Businesses that blog have, on average, 434% of pages indexed than those that don’t. In fact, more content equals more traffic. Content marketing generates three times more leads than paid advertising. Plus, content marketing costs less to execute than any other type of campaign. Brands that use content marketing can expect higher conversion rates.

People read blogs every day. The more you post on your blog, the more likely you are to get noticed. People prefer to learn about brands through articles rather than ads. The truth is that B2B buyers consume three to five contents before making the purchase.

Developing a library of credible content that signals your authority and expertise attracts decision makers. In fact, thought leadership convinces buyers to purchase a product or service they had never considered before. Numbers don't lie. This is just a short collection of what you can expect when you give your content marketing momentum. You can enjoy these benefits and more. However, you need to start with a strategy, discerning what content marketing means to your business and how you will go about it to be intentional with what you produce and disperse.

The components of content marketing

Content marketing can take various forms. To get it right, you'll need to figure out what type of content your potential buyers prefer to consume.

✔️ Blog posts

Distill your content marketing strategy into your blog calendar or strategy. Your company blog can and should be used to cross-promote other content. This will help keep posts on a consistent schedule. If you don’t have a marketing team member familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), this is an area you may want to consider. consult a professional.

✔️ E-books

The content of the ebook should follow a narrative structure and include plenty of good visual design. The goal of an ebook is to educate, but it’s important to keep the language consistent with your brand voice.

Videos. The trick to using video effectively as part of a content strategy is to keep it as timeless as possible so you don’t have to spend time and money creating more of it. High-quality video content can also be used to expose your brand to the large and active audience.

Infographics. Use as little text as possible and let the images tell the story. If you don't have an in-house graphic designer, find a freelancer who can create something beautiful and informative.

The cheat sheets. These are short, two or three pages to the maximum. This means there won't be much room for large images, so you'll need to use text formatting to make them easy for a reader to scan quickly.

Workbooks and models. These resources are great ways to keep your brand in front of buyers while continuing to educate. They should be designed for print and made as interactive and convenient as possible.

White papers and reports. These documents are similar to an e-book in that they are primarily educational. But white papers and reports are typically less graphically designed and use slightly more professional language. They can also create opportunities for partnerships with other organizations.

The slides. Slide decks are a great format for breaking down complex ideas into simple steps or chunks. Keep the slides simple: use minimal text in a single font and large graphics throughout.

Distribution channels

Possesses : sharing your content on the brand's social media channels is a fast, customizable and free opportunity to connect with your target audience.

Organic : incorporate some SEO best practices into your content. This will help you make a good impression on Google and help your website rise in the rankings. The power of a good marketing strategy Content is about providing the information and answers your target audience is looking for, so make sure they can find it.

Paying: Most social networks allow some form of paid advertising. Matching a network’s demographics with your brand’s personas will help you determine where to invest.

Won : This is the most valuable, yet the most difficult to create. Earned social media promotion happens when your audience chooses to share your content with their network.

What Content Marketing Is Not

When using content marketing, it is important to understand what it is. With that in mind, content marketing is not just about pieces of content, there is much more to it.

✔️ It's not more "thing"

Where many brands go wrong with content is that they fail to get the strategy part right, launching content campaigns without the direction it should take the business and without understanding who the content is for.

Without a strategy, you may end up with a promotional video that looks more like a promotional ad for your business. A promotional video, no matter how high-quality the video production may be, is not a useful piece of video content, designed to resonate with the target group at a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, and that is connected to the other content within your strategy.

✔️ A blog is not a content marketing strategy

Yes, blogging is very important in content marketing, but just having a blog doesn't make you a content marketer. It's one part of the equation, but not the only aspect. Content marketing is about providing information, and this can happen in many formats and channels. The central theme of this information is that it is useful to its target audience.

It is only when corporate blogs are structured like publishers - with 3 to 5 key themes and a consistent publishing schedule – that they can be considered the key delivery mechanism for your content marketing. Content goes far beyond blog posts. It also goes far beyond the digital world. Content is information, but it can be delivered through a myriad of channels. What differentiates this information as content is that it is designed for a specific audience, for a specific purpose.

✔️ This is not an advertisement

The mistake many companies make is that they think all they have to do is create content without direction. In turn, they start developing things that go back to the old ideas of advertising. A video that should explain how to make a customer's life easier turns into an ad about features. This is not the kind of content that will engage your audience.

✔️ It's not about posting on social media

You don’t own Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. And while these platforms can be useful for sharing your content and spreading your thought leadership on the platforms they use, social media posting in and of itself is not content marketing. The value of social media is in driving people back to your website. Social platforms decide what content is presented to which audience. Unless you pay them to target specific people. It's just advertising. Consider social media as the effective distribution channels in your content marketing strategy.

✔️ It's not pay to play

With content marketing, you own the distribution channels, from your website to your social media profiles to your email list. You can formulate the storyline and build relationships with your target markets. Advertising, on the other hand, is paid. You don’t really control where it appears or who sees it. You’re simply handing over money to a third party for the space rented.

✔️ It is not meaningless

Think about it. What problem does your Facebook ad solve? How did your company’s latest AdWords campaign make a positive difference for your customers? Content is meant to solve a problem. It’s that genuine intention to help your customers that delivers the authenticity that consumers are so drawn to. Take one step further, from creating value for your buyer to creating value for society, and you’ve landed on the future of content marketing—purpose-driven brands.

✔️ This is not a rented space

Where content stands out is that a brand owns the distribution channels. Advertising, on the other hand, is a rented space – you have to constantly buy a media channel to market.

Why content marketing is important

You may be carefully rethinking your content right now. Big changes have disrupted virtually every industry. Content marketing is not new. It has grown in importance over the past decade and its acceptance as a critical strategy is growing. This is especially true in relation to to the “failures” of traditional marketing, which is now more ignored than watched.

Now the playing field is more level. They don't have to invest millions in ads to get noticed. Instead, they can use content marketing to build community and offer a refreshing new take on old problems to their audience.

Content marketing is important because your customers say so. Maybe not verbally, but the statistics and data on how much content buyers consume backs this up. No one wants to be sold to, no matter what their audience is. They want to be informed and engaged. They respond much more to a story that shows them how to overcome their challenges than to a dry, rambling approach that can play on fear. Buyers are always looking for valuable content.

A buyer’s journey maps out a buyer’s decision-making process when making a purchase and will help you determine what content you need. Different types of content appeal to different buyers at different stages of their journey. By mapping out your buying stages, you’ll better understand the process by which buyers consider your product or service.

Planning and creating new content is about more than mapping and metrics. THE brainstorming and asset planning can be one of the most challenging and important parts of content creation. To find inspiration when it strikes, you need a receptive environment and a willingness from the entire team to try new things.

An editorial calendar isn’t just where you track, coordinate, and share your upcoming content. It’s a strategic tool that helps your team execute integrated programs that include your content.

If you start with original, high-quality content that you have invested real time and money to create, you'll want to get the most out of each asset. You'll also want to make sure your content stays up to date. Obsolete content, which is no longer relevant, damages your brand credibility. To ensure you get the most out of your content marketing, remember the three Rs :

Rearrange: It’s not only an effective way to distribute new content, it’s also a smart way to reach members of your audience who like to consume content in different ways. Some people you’re marketing to may enjoy eBooks, while others prefer infographics, and still others learn best from slides. Slicing and dicing allows you to reach more people with less effort.

Rewrite : Whenever an asset shows consistently high performance, bookmark it for a future update. Eventually, the number of engagements will start to drop, a good sign that it’s time to update.

To retire : Even the best content doesn’t last forever. If a piece of content needs help beyond a design refresh or a simple update, it may be time to retire it. Content that’s past its expiration date hurts your business’s authority and credibility, undoing all the good work your content has done.

Content Marketing Strategy Tips

When researching what content marketing is and how to leverage it, it comes down to executing your strategy. Maybe you already have one, but it was derailed by the pandemic. As noted, your content marketing strategy needs to be agile no matter what. Most disruptions are unpredictable, but here are some things you can do now to use content marketing to continue cultivating connections with your audience.

✔️ Use LinkedIn to support your B2B content marketing

LinkedIn has cemented its position as the social media site for B2B businesses. Its importance is supported by the fact that 94% of specialists B2B marketers are using LinkedIn for content marketing. But how can you use LinkedIn more effectively in your content marketing strategy? LinkedIn has advantages over other social media sites. These advantages are just as essential today as they were in 2019, including:

Better targeting

Ce who is great with LinkedIn, is that it’s a place where you can find decision-makers at every level of a company. You can target based on both job titles and demographics. Of its millions of users, LinkedIn even breaks down influence levels, allowing you to focus on those who ultimately drive purchasing decisions.

Why is it even more important now? Because people are still heavily using the site to find answers to new problems—problems they hadn’t considered until now. Think about the company that now has to transition to a remote workforce. They have a lot of worries, and companies that can offer them technology may be the answer.

✔️ Strategy alignment

Before you start trying something new on LinkedIn or getting started, you need to make sure that how you use it fits with your content strategy.

• Why do you use it? Thought leadership, lead generation, awareness?
• How do you use it to generate traffic? Where do you want them to go?
• How will you interact with customers, partners and industry experts on site? And how will it help you achieve your content marketing goals?

✔️ Optimizing content marketing for e-commerce

Ecommerce retailers are in a new boat now. Even if they had physical locations, online shopping demand is now the only channel for most. While it may seem like ecommerce and content marketing don’t mix, many online sellers are taking advantage of this. They’ve discovered that optimizing content for their ecommerce brand can lead to success.

This is also true for B2B e-commerce. B2B e-commerce is expected to reach $1,8 billion by 2022. Why this growth, which could actually surpass B2C e-commerce? This is largely due to the evolution of a B2B buyer. They are digital natives and appreciate the convenience of buying online and are looking for content to support their purchasing decisions.

Evaluate the performance of your strategy

Now that we’ve discussed what content marketing is and how to implement it, it’s time to talk about how you can measure its performance. Once you have a strategy that’s making noise and you’re deploying meaningful, high-quality content, you need to pay attention to these content performance metrics.

✔️ Define content marketing KPIs

When you set your key performance indicators (KPIs) for content marketing efforts, it’s different than answering the question of ROI. KPIs focus on the operational side of content marketing. The most important aspect of KPIs is your “ Why "Why do you do what you do? It's what people buy –not what you do. Here are some KPIs to consider:

Measuring the impact of a content marketing campaign on your sales team’s productivity: Does your sales team understand the campaign goals and why it would provide them with leads? If you have a disconnect here, leads won’t convert into conversions.

Understanding the percentage of customers generated by marketing: knowing what new business has been won through content marketing shows its influence.

Revenue Generation Timeframe: How long does a campaign need to generate interest? If it seems like a long time, you need context (i.e., is your solution’s buying cycle long, have you built urgency into your campaign?).

Customer acquisition costs (CAC): calculating the CAC for each campaign provides key insights on how to streamline operations to reduce them.

✔️ What metric indicators for performance evaluation?

After defining the KPIs, you should pay attention to these key metrics:

Trafic

Look at users, pageviews, and unique pageviews in Google Analytics. Find out where your traffic is coming from and make changes based on that. For example, if referral traffic is coming from your Pinterest page, you should consider developing more content for the site.

Conversions

Is your content driving conversions? It’s a simple question, but not a linear answer. You can see from traffic that your content is getting more attention, but what are they doing next? Figure out how you can tie conversions, however you define them, to content to understand its sphere of influence.

Commitment

Traffic is excellent; engagement is better. Engagement happens when people spend more time on your site and how many pages they view during a visit. These are all metrics you can find on Google Analytics. Another element of engagement is what you do on social media. Is your content generating reactions, is it shared and commented on ? The more this happens, the more likely it is to generate more credible traffic.

SEO

Organic search rankings are essential to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords are important because they’re how your audience searches for answers. You should constantly monitor your keyword performance, including your current position for each keyword you’ve targeted. At least check it all 30 days. See where you're going up and down and find out why. It's also imperative to optimize each piece of content, including having correct metadata, as well as a good keyword-to-content ratio.

Authority

Authority is not easy to measure, compared to the other metrics described. The goal is for your website to have a strong domain authority (DA), which is a number between 1 and 100. The higher the score, the greater the authority. Building authority improves SEO and conversions and is measured by Google. Google looks at things like backlinks of sites with good DA, as well as the quantity of content shared, which Google would consider as an illustration of the quality of the content.

In short

Content marketing is one of the techniques used to make a website appear among the first results in search engines. This is the principle of SEO, Search Engine Optimization. The concept is to distribute quality content related to user requests. By positioning yourself on keywords and responding to the topics sought, your business stands out more easily on the internet.

Better referenced, you then gain visibility. The strategy helps build your brand image; you must produce original, non-duplicated content. Other issues lie behind the optimization of your content. They allow you to generate more traffic on the website, develop your online notoriety or even acquire new qualified prospects.

Do you want to get into practice? I leave you with this premium training that will allow you to better reference your website or online store. Leave a comment to tell us about your experience