Content marketing is the future of marketing. The digital revolution has changed how people interact with brands, and today it’s more important than ever to connect with them on an emotional level. Content has replaced traditional advertising because it provides a better ROI (return on investment) for businesses. But here’s the thing: content can be so much more than just a number—it can create feelings, memories, and even real-world experiences that last long after someone leaves your site or app. And if you want to succeed in this new world of marketing, you need to know what makes great content tick…and what factors hold back your own creative genius from reaching its full potential.
What is content marketing?
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.
It’s about creating content that has a clear objective. For example, you may decide to build an email list from scratch and your goal is the number of subscribers. This leads us neatly into the golden rules:
1) You must have a goal for each piece of content you create
2) Each piece of content must contain valuable information for your target audience
3) Your brand voice and tone should be consistent throughout all communications
4) Content should speak to a clearly defined audience
5) Each piece of content should offer some sort of incentive for people to take action (i.e., “buy now!” or “sign up here!”). Or the next step in the sales funnel.
The two types of content marketing:
Traditional marketing is built on the premise that you can drive traffic to a landing page, and if someone’s in the right place at the right time with enough information about your product, they’ll convert into a customer. In this model, marketers rely largely on search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising to drive traffic to their sites. But as more consumers become suspicious of intrusive ads and “bait-and-switch” SEO tactics, business owners are looking for methods that encourage prospects to come back willingly, not by force. Content marketing is no longer just an option — it’s vital for businesses who want to stay relevant online.
Content marketing puts the focus on providing value up front, and then asking for a reward later.
Here’s how it works:
1) Create valuable content that educates your audience (but doesn’t sound like an information dump).
2) Use social media to reach your target audience.
3) Encourage people to share your content with their friends.
4) Track who shares what; segment accordingly.
5) Each time someone takes action by using or sharing your content, give them another piece of valuable information in exchange for their name and email address. Once you have permission from those leads to communicate with them regularly about other products or services, you can begin building a relationship with them and hopefully turn them into lifelong customers.
The major difference between these two models is that traditional marketing puts more focus on the number of people who visit a website or download an app, while content marketing focuses on nurturing future customers by educating them about your product in exchange for their permission to interact with them regularly. When you’re ready to build a killer content marketing strategy, it all boils down to knowing what your audience needs most and then figuring out how you can educate them about it in a way they’ll remember, share with their friends, and buy from you again and again.
Content Marketing ROI
According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute , companies that consistently invest in content marketing are three times more likely to enjoy a positive ROI from their efforts than those who don’t.
The best part about measuring content marketing ROI is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. You can measure the return on investment based on your goals for each piece of content and see how each strategy affects your bottom line. For example, if you want people to sign up for an email list, you could use a third-party service like MailChimp or Constant Contact . These platforms can track the number of leads generated by each blog post or social media campaign so you know what works and what doesn’t across different platforms.
With platforms like these, you can also track your social media ROI so you know which content is more likely to be shared on Facebook or Twitter. This information will help you tailor future posts specifically for the networks they’re most likely to perform well on.
Pitfalls of Content Marketing
Even though content marketing can have a positive impact on brand awareness and new customer acquisition, it only works if the right content is created at the right time by an expert who understands how each piece of content fits into a cohesive strategy across all relevant channels. It’s important to make sure that every word, image, or video you create has actionable information in it for your audience. If there isn’t any valuable content on a social media profile, even if it has solid numbers, no one is going to stay there very long. Without a solid strategy, you’ll be spinning your wheels trying to market without ever seeing the results you’re looking for.
How to Build a Content Marketing Plan
If you think about how your business relates to its customers, it becomes easier to come up with ideas for specific content topics and formats that will resonate with each audience. By creating an editorial calendar detailing what you plan on publishing and when during the next few months or years, it will help clarify your goals so you can measure how well your content marketing is helping your business grow over time.
Here are some steps to get started:
- Write down all of the different ways your target audience finds information online. This could include search engines like Google and Bing, social networks like Twitter and Facebook, or online forums.
- Make a list of the most common questions that people ask about your product or service. Then find ways to answer each question in a way that will help your audience understand how you can solve their problem.
- Use Google Analytics to get real-time information on what your customer base is interested in right now so you know exactly when and where to publish new content for maximum impact. This helps you make sure each piece of content has the highest chance of being shared across different channels.
- Take advice from other companies who have successfully used content marketing before so you can learn from their mistakes and replicate what they did right. Check out blogs like Content Verve , The Content Marketing Institute , or Copyblogger to learn valuable tips and tricks that have been tested in a variety of industries.
These are just some basic steps you can take to build your content marketing strategy. Once you’ve laid out the framework of your plan, it’s time to start executing so you can begin seeing positive results for your business!
The 3 stages of the buying process and how content marketing helps with each stage:
Consumers have varying levels of awareness and involvement prior to engaging with your product or service — which means there are different needs to meet at each stage of the buying process.
The 3 stages are: awareness, consideration and decision/action. As you move from one stage to another, there is a greater need for content that will positively impact your customers’ understanding of what your product or service can do for them and why they should use it.
Research has shown that consumers spend an average of 9 minutes online researching or comparing products before making a purchase decision — but only 2 percent of companies contribute content during this research phase while 50 percent contribute content after consumers start looking at prices.
It almost goes without saying that if people aren’t aware of a solution, they can’t even consider it as an option… so the first step is to make sure your content is being seen by as many people as possible. By publishing relevant, valuable information on a regular basis, you can help customers become aware of the unique benefits and solutions you offer and guide them through their decision-making process.
To get familiar with your audience’s “voice,” look at how they talk about topics that are important to them online in real life (social media groups, chat rooms or forums). Every industry has its own jargon — especially when it comes to business or finance!
Once you know the terms they use, you can connect with customers by speaking their language and including those words and phrases in your content so they feel understood and learn more about what they need from your product or service. This also allows you to understand your target audience and how they perceive themselves, which will help you deliver the right content at the right time.
When people are first exposed to a new idea or product, they usually need to be educated on why it’s valuable and what it can do for them — otherwise, there’s no reason for them to engage further in the buying process.
That means writing and sharing compelling content that explains the benefits of your unique offering and shows customers exactly why you’re different from your competition is critical at this point in the marketing funnel.
Not only does learning about solutions help potential customers decide whether or not yours is viable (and if so, how it could solve their problem), but it also helps them build a relationship with your company.
Customers can learn much about your brand and what you stand for — which is why they’ll feel invested in developing a long-term relationship with you, which will eventually lead to business.
Once someone has decided that they need your product or service, they are more likely to engage further in the buying process. Content marketing at this stage should focus on helping customers reach a final decision by sharing unbiased information that compares features and benefits across similar products as well as offers alternative options based on factors such as price, quality and delivery time.
Your customers’ journey doesn’t end with their initial purchase. It is quite common for people to return and buy after they have already tried your product — in fact, almost one-third of consumers will do this!
To help these recurring buyers, you should create content that offers tips and advice based on what they need to know now that they’re more familiar with the features, benefits and use cases of your product or service. Of course, it might also be valuable to provide a relevant discount code showing how much money people can save if they re-purchase from your site… but only if the original sale was profitable enough for you!
Different types of content you can use in your strategy – blog posts, videos, infographics, etc
Most people start researching their purchase online. To make sure your content gets seen, you should focus on producing a variety of types of valuable content using different formats: For the research phase (when customers are looking at solutions), you should produce blog posts and other long-form content that provides in-depth information about products or services and shows readers what makes yours unique. For the evaluation phase (when they’re comparing similar offerings), shorter and more visual formats such as videos, infographics or comparisons between different products is great because it allows customers to quickly digest large amounts of information. Finally, for the purchase phase (when people are ready to make a final decision), you should use promotional content like discount codes, coupons and recommendations from influencers to encourage people to return and purchase again.
As you create content that fits at different points across the funnel, it’s important to understand how each piece of your strategy can — and should — tie into what you’re doing in other channels.
For example, if someone has looked at your blog posts through search results on Google or while browsing Facebook for more information about a topic related to yours, they’ve already indicated some level of interest in your industry. That means you can capture their contact details when they sign up for a webinar to learn more about products or services like yours (noting preferences such as solutions they are interested in) so that you can target them with a more relevant piece of content later on.
How to make your own great content
To be effective, content marketing must be authentic, relevant and truly valuable to your customers.
To achieve that, you need a strategy that aligns across channels — from the way you set objectives for campaigns through to how you select topics and create content based on those goals… all the way down to what goes into each piece of content itself.
You also need an ecosystem where all team members can articulate their roles in executing this strategy both to make sure everyone understands why they’re doing what they’re doing but also so people aren’t duplicating effort (which happens more often than you might think!).
One part of achieving that is ensuring your content marketing process is scalable — because successful strategies are not about creating one piece of content to rule them all.
For example, your ideal buyer persona will likely be someone who is going through the research phase and comparing different solutions to solve a problem they are having right now, so it might make sense for you to create an infographic showing how yours compares against competitors in terms of features or cost. A more advanced version could include coupons for people looking for a solution that matches their specific needs — perhaps by offering money back guarantee if they choose this option!
At the same time, you could also create another piece of content aimed at customers who have already evaluated different options and are ready to purchase — such as an ebook containing expert advice on how to use your product or service most effectively. As mentioned above, you can target this piece of content to people who are already familiar with your brand through other channels — but it’s also worth looking at specific keywords as well, particularly those that related to the topics in your ebook. When customers search for these terms, they indicate a more advanced stage in their purchase journey where they are much more likely to be ready to buy and purchase again in future when they find a product or service like yours suits them best.
The third part is around structuring the workflows of all team members so everyone understands what each person does and why they do it. One thing I think we could improve on from our previous structure is posting our scheduled blog posts into a social media tool called “Buffer” earlier than 24 hours before, allowing us to use the scheduling feature of Buffer to schedule our tweets at the same time.
Tips for building a killer content marketing strategy in 60 minutes or less
Once you have figured out your metrics, it’s time to think about how much time and money you can invest into building this new strategy. Once you figure those two out, ask yourself if it fits with a business goal you are trying to achieve (such as more conversions or more repeat sales) and start writing down some ideas based on your topic for each of the three areas:
1. Creating content . Start by brainstorming at least five ideas that could work well for your target audience — and get feedback from anyone who might be able to help you make them even better! You should also consider possible formats, such as infographics, blog posts or videos.
2. Promotion . How will people find your content? Will you use paid advertising, organic content promotion or social media — or a combination of all three? And how long should you spend trying to get it in front of your target audience before you move on to the next piece of content?
3. Structure . Workflow is just as important for content marketing as any other area within your business! Not only does this part help you make sure no one goes off script but it also helps ensure everyone knows what they need to do, when they will do it, and why they are doing it at that time. Think about things like approving topic ideas (so people aren’t working on the same thing) as well as who needs to approve new content once its written up and ready to go live.
This may sound like a lot to do in just 60 minutes, but once you have it set up and running it will become second nature. If you decide content marketing isn’t for your business — or it turns out not to be the best use of your time — fine-tuning your strategy each month is easy enough that we could build another one for next month!
Done right, content marketing can be a powerful tool for your business. It’s time to stop thinking about it as an afterthought and start seeing it as the most important part of your social media strategy that drives sales. When you are ready to get started with creating a killer content marketing strategy in 60 minutes or less, reach out to us at Baron Webservices! We specialize in putting together world-class SEO campaigns and digital marketing strategies that help businesses generate leads and increase conversion rates through high quality blog posts, Social Media Ads and content for your website. Contact our team today if you want more information on how we can design a custom campaign just for your business needs!
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