"Content Marketing", is simply a form of digital marketing that focuses heavily on sharing value and building trust with your target audience, using various online platforms. It is a simple, yet powerful marketing strategy that can improve the relationship between you and your customers.
So, do you practice content marketing in your business? while this is a relatively new terminology in marketing, the approach has been around for as long as marketing itself in traditional ways.
Why Content Marketing Matters
Content marketing works by slowly and deliberately building a connection between your business and its customers, minus the “sell sell sell” mentality. Just like in the development of a new friendship, content marketing allows you to share more about who you are, your values and what you offer. It allows you to add value to the lives of your audience through sharing relatable content, or interesting information that can help solve your customers’ problems.
Good content marketing also brings like-minded individuals together into your community, thus creating a space where your followers can comfortably connect and interact with your business and each other, without feeling pressured to buy anything.
When you nurture your audience through content marketing, you are more likely to increase likeability and loyalty to your brand, and as a result, create more leads and sales conversions.
Types Content Marketing
So how do you start forming these connections with your customers? How do you go about sharing information and building friendships with your ideal clients, online? While there are several different ways you can use content marketing in your business, let’s focus on the four of the more popular methods used. That is, through social media, blogs, videos and paid ads.
Social media - Here, it’s all about socializing. Social media is the best place for interacting with your audience, directly, and provides an atmosphere that is a lot more friendly and relaxed than other online platforms. You can freely share content like memes, images, stories and videos. Ensuring that your content is motivational, relatable or funny is a great way to quickly warm your audience to engage with your content. Its networking.
Blogging - Owning a blog is useful for providing your audience with valuable tips and solutions about your industry. It also provides you with a space of your own where audiences are welcome to view your content exclusively without getting distracted by other content, as often happens on social media. Be sure to use a call to action (CTA) and external links when blogging as it helps to create easier access to more of your content and provides a way for your audiences to learn more about you and your company.
Videos - Connections are easier to form when people can see and hear the person behind the content. Facial expressions and vocal intonations help audiences to scope out your personality and make faster decisions on how likeable or trustworthy your business is (There is a lot you can learn from just watching people talk!). You can also share a lot more information just talking for five minutes than you can in writing, as people get bored quickly.
Paid Ads - These are great for reaching broader audiences and can take on almost any form as well. Paid ads help you to easily target your specific audience so that you spend less time searching for where they might be. You can also make them appear on many platforms such as on social media, landing pages, through other websites and almost anywhere on the Internet. These ads work better by sharing some nugget of information that hooks your customer and reels them in to find out more about an offer or service.
Lives and Webinars- Your audience gets a chance to see your natural, unfiltered brand personality through interacting in real-time with your company.
Ready to Invest?
So, are you convinced about the importance of content marketing in your business? No doubt investing in content marketing will grant you a great advantage in the digital market, given the genuine connections you will be able to form with your customers, thus allowing for faster sales conversions. Additionally, a healthy mix of different content marketing techniques will help you to achieve maximum outreach, as you cater to customers whom all have their preferred ways of interacting online. Finding a healthy balance between your budget, your audience's consumption preferences and your goals, while planning for growth is the formula for success.
Let's figure out what content marketing mix will best work for your company. Type ‘CONTENT’ in the comments to explore your content marketing strategy together.