Thanks to the rising emphasis on user-experience and the increasing clout of quality content, Content Marketing has become one of the most essential components of digital marketing today.
Content has always been king, “getting social” has been a common piece of marketing advice for a number of years, and even Google is telling businesses they need to be focusing on what giving users really want. But a number of businesses still struggle to understand what all of that really means, and how exactly they need to be going about doing it.
Content marketing, to put it short and sweet, is all about creating original, quality content and sharing it around the web. But do businesses really benefit from Content Marketing? And how do you go about creating an effective Content Marketing strategy in the first place? We’re here to help.
Step 1: Get Familiar With The Many of the Benefits of Content Marketing
- Build brand awareness and start customer conversations
- Enhance customer service
- Boost retention and customer loyalty
- Drive sales and encourage upsells
- Generate links and improve your search rankings
- Drive Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing
- Grow your audience, create passionate subscribers, followers, fans and customers
Step 2: Decide on Your Goals and Go From There
The type of content marketing your brand will need to do ultimately depends on the kinds of goals you’re looking to accomplish.
Are you looking to build your brand? Try creating and sharing original videos, podcasts, images, presentations, viral content and more.
Are you trying to work on customer loyalty, enhance customer service, or increase retention? Create and circulate FAQs, webinars, how-to videos, or even host and record a Q and A session with some of your customers.
Are you looking to upsell? Try white papers or ebooks, create a presentation about a new product or service, a video about an exciting upcoming event or launch, an infographic about the benefits of your business vs your competitors and more.
Step 3: Center your Strategy around These Content Marketing Best Practices
Here are just a few tips and content marketing best practices to keep in mind when you’re starting out:
- Create high-quality content. Content marketing is effective in a whole host of ways, but all of them depend on the fact that what you’re putting out into the online world is, to put it simply, “worth it”. Content simply for the sake of content is a dying strategy and a fairly dead end SEO tactic, even Google’s Matt Cutts mentions that content marketing done shoddily isn’t worth the bother. So whatever you put out there, make sure its something that’s relevant to your industry, enjoyable to encounter and share, and appeals to an audience, large or small, niche or not.
- Start by venturing into some of the top content marketing avenues:
- Social Media
- Article Posting
- Blogs
- Case Studies
- Podcasts and Audio Sharing
- Videos
- Event Listings
- Email Newsletters
- White Papers and eBooks
- Reports and Research
- Write content from a marketing standpoint. Think about your niche, write for your audience, make it quality, relevant, and shareable–but don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal: this isn’t just a chance to show off your writing skills or your give your company its video-debut, its about creating content that will drive traffic, encourage engagement and boost sales.
- And check out these insider insights and expert content marketing strategies in our latest webinar on “How To Master Content Marketing” here.