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Content Marketing
What is content marketing and what's its purpose in business
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Whether you’re trying to understand more about digital marketing in order to boost your business results or you’re a professional looking to enhance your skill set, you’re in the right place.
We’ll deconstruct and rebuild every single question you could have regarding the best practices in data marketing. Explain the tactics as if our parents asked us what we’re doing as marketers. Provide you with great examples and help you have a better understanding of this industry’s strategies.
So, what IS content marketing?
Content marketing encompasses all the means by which a business is providing their audiences with coherent, consistent content they need. Instead of disrupting advertising, content marketing provides valuable information, answers important questions, satisfies needs and helps overcoming challenges. The level of engagement is beyond any other marketing tactic, as its purpose is to fill in the blanks between what the businesses want to sell and what the customers are looking for. In the words of some marketers we really appreciate for pushing the industry so far:“Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis.” - Neil Patel“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” - Joe Pulizzi, CMI
The shapes of content marketing
Content marketing comes in a variety of shapes, styles and sizes, as there is no recipe to fit them all. However, the more you’re digging into different types of content, the more you’ll grow both business-wise and as a brand. So let us sketch some of these shapes for you:Written content marketing
Some may still sell the idea of content marketing as corporate blogging. And, while blogging is a form written content marketing may have, it’s often misunderstood or misguided:
- Think about those brands whose only messages are about THEIR products, THEIR new launch, THEIR events, THEIR awards. “Because a lot of you have asked how we’re doing…”
- Think about all the branded content no one ever read, not to mention no one ever converted for,
- Think about all the corporate blogs Google never showed you when you conducted an intended search.
So, yes, blogging is a part of written content marketing, but there are so many others.Pay attention to the product descriptions that actually help you decide between two similar products. To those landing pages that not only flash your eyes, but keep you engaged and reading. To the press releases that actually improved your knowledge and kept you updated with different subjects of interest. To the long-form guides and tutorials that helped you fix things around the house or create your own diy designs. To the FAQs pages that provided you the information you were looking for, without having to be waiting for an employee to return your call. To the eBooks, white papers and case studies brands are giving back to the most loyal of their audiences.
Video content marketing
Video blogs or vlogs became more and more popular in the past few years. And so did studio production, on-location videos, demos, promos, event footages or animation videos.
Other forms of video content marketing are already well established, if not obsolete; we’re talking about video interviews or vox populi series.
And others are just getting started, such as virtual and augmented reality videos.
Infographic content marketing
According to Visme, one of the greatest resources for visual communicators, 67% of B2B marketers created infographics in 2020 and the last four years show an ascending trend. Another statistic, conducted by Infographic World, highlights the following:
- 74% of marketers rely on visuals in their social media messaging,
- 56% of companies queried use infographics,
- 84% who’ve used them consider the medium effective.
Social media content marketing
We could talk for hours about social media, but we’ll be deconstructing it in further articles. For now, let’s resume to mention the user generated content, the hashtag campaigns, the complementary social posts, the contests, the giveaways, the quizzes and surveys, as social media content marketing. Briefly, just about everything.
Audio content marketing
We do ingest information in all of its forms and embrace the novelty. While audio content marketing is not entirely new to marketers and brands, there are some forms of it which became more and more popular in the recent period.
Let’s take podcasts, for the sake of popularity. Whether they’re educational or meant to entertain, they’re a great way to engage the audience without monopolizing its full attention. There are people listening to podcasts while cooking, driving, jogging, shopping, cleaning the house or following a personal care routine, precisely because it’s only engaging the hearing.
Webinars are also so much popular since the coronavirus, when they became the very best way to inform, educate and engage brands’ public.
Another form of audio content marketing are recorded interviews. Basically, anything you can consume in this format and it’s related to a brand can be tagged as audio content marketing.
Paid Ad Content Marketing
When it comes to paid ads and performance marketing, the content you’re promoting is like a business card for your brand. That’s why it’s of utmost importance to find the right balance between the PPC specialists who set, test and optimize your campaigns and a great copywriter, who is capable not only to follow their brief, but to think about new ways to attract customers, through content.
There are a lot of tactics, like using emotional triggers or optimizing your CTAs, using PPC and SEO data to shape your copy and finding the right and most performant keywords to include in your messages, so there’s always room for improvement when it comes to paid ad content marketing.
Distribution channels for content
One must really know his audience in order to address the right messages through the right channels. Are your consumers more active on social media or are they heavy users of search engines? Are they more likely to consume audio content, written content, graphic content or video content? To what extent are they using search engines for informational queries?